the grave.” Her hands were starting to mottle again.
“I don’t see the difference,” I said.
“That’s because you’re evil!” She shouted it at me. If the office hadn’t been mostly soundproof, it might have brought our daytime office staff to the door, but for help to come that way I’d need her to yell louder. If we made that much noise, then it would probably be from me handling it myself.
“So, you don’t want me to raise a zombie for you.”
“Of course not!” She stood then, shaking with her anger and other strong emotions I couldn’t even guess at.
“Do you have a vampire or shapeshifter problem?” I asked, keeping an eye both on her husband and on her hands clutching the purse. It was big enough that she could have hidden anything from a .380 to a small .45. Maybe all that was in there was her wallet and an understated lipstick, but I’d never gotten in trouble being paranoid. I was a U.S. Marshal for the Preternatural Division; it wasn’t paranoia if they really were trying to kill you.
“No, no, none of that,” said Mr. Henderson. He tugged on his wife’s arm, trying to get her to sit back down, but she stood there ramrod straight and glaring at me. He wasn’t going to shush her or make her sit down. In fact, I wasn’t sure I could count on him for any real help. If I had to shoot her, he’d probably lie and say I shot first. Screw this. I reached for the button on the telephone.
“Please, Miss Blake, we don’t know who else to go to.”
I hesitated over the button. “The note by your appointment said ‘zombie,’ so I assumed you needed one raised, or maybe laid to rest.”
“You defiled our daughter!”
I pressed the button and smiled at the crazy woman while I counted slowly in my head. Before I got to twenty, there was a knock on the door and Mary, our daytime receptionist, poked her head in. “Sorry, Anita, but you’ve got an emergency call.”
It was now up to me to decide how serious the fake emergency would be. Was it a small one, so that she could escort the Hendersons to the lounge for coffee, tea, and some calming down, or was it a big one, so I was done with appointments for the day and she’d escort the would-be clients out of our offices for good? They would then find that my calendar would be full for them for, like, ever.
“Julie, sit down or they’re going to think we’re crazy.”
“I’m sorry but I really do have to go,” I said, standing up.
Mary walked into the room to help herd them out.
“You raised a zombie and it got our little girl pregnant.”
“And we’re done,” I said, making shooshing motions at them toward the door, while Mary made come-right-this-way motions on her end.
Mr. Henderson stood and took his wife’s arm, pulling her away from me but not exactly going for the door. “Miss Blake, you raised Thomas Warrington for the historical society our daughter belonged to.”
I stopped shooshing, because I did remember raising Thomas Warrington from the grave. I remembered because he’d been one of the most perfect zombies I’d ever raised. He’d not only looked alive, but he’d felt warm, had a pulse. He’d felt alive even to me, and it was my psychic ability, or magic, or whatever you want to call it, that had raised him. It had been creepy as hell.
“I can see it in your face, you remember now, don’t you?” Mrs. Henderson said, and she sounded triumphant.
“I remember Thomas Warrington. I put him back in his grave when the historians were finished with their interview. He’s still dead and gone and in his grave.”
“Our daughter told us that you knew they’d had sex, that you knew what he’d done to her.”
“I don’t expect to have to warn my clients that they shouldn’t fuck the zombies I raise. If they want them for that kind of shit, they can go somewhere else, because that’s a hard limit for me.”
“My daughter did