did not see it done, ma petite, then perhaps someone took a souvenir rather than do their duty.”
“Are you honestly telling me that if the skull and some of the skeleton survived, it could reach out to Justine like this?”
“Not without help.”
“What kind of help?”
“Magical help.”
“Are you seriously saying that just the bones of this guy are draining Justine’s life away?”
“It is possible.”
I stared down at Justine Henderson dying in front of our eyes and realized that her mother was right: I owed them one.
* * *
—
I’d gotten enough ashes back from the crematorium to make up a body the size of Thomas Warrington, so how did I prove that it hadn’t been his ashes? They were scattered in a stream near the original cemetery and in two different rivers, so even if it had been possible to get DNA to prove identity, it was too late, the ashes were gone. If we’d had more time, I’d have reported my suspicions through normal channels and an investigation would eventually start. Justine didn’t have “eventual” in her time frame. If we were going to save her life, it had to be now.
I needed another cop that I could trust implicitly, and I needed supernatural backup. The cop was easy. Sergeant Zerbrowski was my unofficial partner when I worked with the Regional Preternatural Investigation Taskforce. It had been the Regional Preternatural Investigation Squad then, but they’d changed it recently to reflect how many cross-state-lines and multi-agency cases they’d been handling for years. They were handling supernatural cases before the government had forced the U.S. Marshals Service to have a preternatural branch. Taskforce covered what they did a lot more than squad or team had.
Zerbrowski had also been at the graveside when I had to roast Thomas Warrington’s zombie. He’d seen how dangerous the zombie was, and how different it had been from any other zombie we’d seen. All I had to do was tell him, “Remember the flesh-eating zombie that we had to roast at the graveside?”
“Hard to forget that one.”
“Someone may have done a switch at the crematorium and kept some of its bones. I think someone is using them for black magic, and if we don’t stop it, a woman younger than I am is going to die.”
“I’ll clear my dance card, just tell me when and where.” See, the cop part was easy, and once I thought about it, so was the supernatural backup. Nicky Murdock had been one of the guards that helped us fight and finally kill the zombie. Zerbrowski would accept that I’d want someone with me that knew what we might be up against, and he and Nicky got along, which wasn’t true of all of the guards on Jean-Claude’s payroll. Besides, Nicky was one of my lovers and a blood donor for Jean-Claude, so it meant he got along with all of us. The older I got the more I valued that in a partner, whether romantic or police. Why didn’t I take Jean-Claude with me? It was daylight and all the vampires had to be a snooze in their coffins—or bed, in Jean-Claude’s case.
Nicky and I pulled into the parking lot of the crematorium to find Zerbrowski waiting for us in his new car. I wondered how long it would take him to trash the interior of it under fast-food wrappers and other debris. I knew for a fact that his wife, Katie, made sure he was neatly dressed when he left the house, but he got out of his car with his tie crooked and a food stain that I could see from feet away. His short curly hair was almost completely salt-and-pepper now, which made his silver-framed glasses blend in more and his brown eyes stand out, as if they and his eyebrows were the only dark colors left on his face.
“Hey, Anita, hey, Nicky.”
I said, “Hey, Zerbrowski.”
He grinned up at Nicky, who towered above me and looked massive even beside the detective. “Jesus, Murdock, did you put on more muscle?”
“No, I just look bigger standing next to you.” Nicky gave the line completely deadpan. He was one of the few people I’d ever