The Wicked & The Dead (Faery Bargains Book 1)

by Melissa Marr

  “Can we go inside?” I said bluntly, trying to at least sound like myself despite the mellow feeling which was most likely a side-effect of kissing Eli.

  “Of course,” Tres said.

  One of the suits opened the door he’d been propping open with his foot. Obviously, at least one of them had been inside. Both men entered in front of Tres, either to lead him or guard him. It wasn’t clear.

  I followed behind Tres, and Eli was behind me. The hallway had the sterile look of cheap government buildings. Walls of mint green were illuminated by the harsh lights that buzzed faintly.

  “It locks automatically,” Suit One said.

  I made a point of pushing the door, so Eli didn’t need to touch it. He had gloves on, knowing where we were headed, but even with gloves, steel was unpleasant for him.

  “Geneviève,” Eli said softly.

  I slowed so Eli could walk at my side.

  “Are you . . . well?”

  I nodded once, but I mouthed, “Very calm.” Then I leaned in close enough that my lips were almost touching his ear and whispered, “You taste like honeysuckle wine.”

  Despite common sense, I flicked his ear with my tongue while I was there, and for a blink of a moment, I wondered if we could get this done and go somewhere else. Naked Eli. I had a strong suspicion that Naked Eli would be one of my favorite kinds of Eli. Logic tried to shove traitorous thoughts away, but I was standing still, staring at Eli.

  “Is everything in order, Miss Crowe?” Tres asked.

  “We were at a bar when you contacted us,” Eli said, nudging me to continue walking. “Relaxing with friends.”

  “I’m a little tipsy,” I said in a softer than normal voice, an almost girlish sound that really ought to belong to someone else.

  “Tipsy?” Tres echoed.

  I took a few seconds to focus myself, correct my voice and posture, and added, “Tipsy, not drunk. I’m relaxed but more than sober enough to work, Tres.” I met his gaze unflinchingly. “I am fine. The job will be fine. Even if I were drunk—and I am not—Eli is completely sober, and he is more than adept at gathering the information you have.”

  I gave Eli the sort of smile that probably made it seem like we were lovers, but fuck it, I was being honest. He was capable. Maybe I needed to bottle whatever wine Eli had been drinking. I felt lighter, giddier, happier than I’d ever felt before. Sex was a great mood leveler for me. Witch, right? But this was different. A kiss shouldn’t relax me this much.

  “I’m the slash and kill part of this team,” I added cheerily. I mean, technically, I was all of the team until recently. For years, it was just me. Eli was a very recent addition, but it sounded better this way, and my drunk brain wanted to sound professional.

  “I see,” Tres said. “Well, perhaps then, Eli can notice the evidence that you will need to know when you are ready to work.”

  “What do you mean by—"

  “Do not question her ability, Chaddock.” Eli stepped forward as if I needed shielding. “Even slightly inebriated, Geneviève is more adept at understanding death than the rest of us combined. She’s easing your worries, but a few sips of something intoxicating will not decrease anything other than her manners.”

  “You say the sweetest things,” I murmured. “Do you remember when I came to the bar with a broken ulna jutting out of my thigh?”

  “Do you mean a femur?” one of the suits asked.

  I laughed because, really, a femur? A bone that big would’ve severed an artery if I got stabbed with it.

  “No. Ulna.” I pointed to my forearm. “Arm bone.”

  “It was not Ms. Crowe’s bone,” Eli said, clarifying what I thought was obvious already.

  Why would my own ulna be jabbed in my leg?

  “One of the draugr used it to stab me after his friend went all goop and bone. That one hurt,” I explained. “I lost so much blood I was like a stumbling drunk. I think I actually crawled into the bar that night after I finished the job.”

  Eli glanced at me. “It was more of a roll than a crawl.”

  I looked at Tres and his lackies and smiled. “Anyhow, a little blood loss or booze doesn’t really stop me from getting the job done. I still got it done that night. I was just a little rough the next few days. So, no worries.”

  I met their gazes, offering reassuring smiles at each man. Weirdly, they didn’t look comforted. I was going to offer more examples, but Eli said, “Let us see their evidence and get you home.”

  The three men continued on to a closed door. I didn’t need to hear their explanations to know there were multiple corpses in the room.

  I felt the answers before they opened the door. One of the corpses was likely to wake, to be an again-walker. Like the light in the hall, there was a soft hum of energy around it, as if the spark wasn’t there completely.

  I wanted to sit and watch, a wake for the not-properly-dead. I wondered if someone would sit shiva for me one day. Eli. I’d need to ask it of him, not to mourn but to protect my mother and friends if I woke. I really ought to have done it before now. I looked at him and asked, “If I die, stay with my body for mourning. Not at a morgue.”

  “Are you in peril here?” Eli stepped close. “Geneviève?”

  “Not really. Maybe?” I shot him a look and a smile. “Aren’t we always?”

  He nodded. “I will attend your wake if you exit the world of the living.”

  It was enough for now. He wasn’t asking questions I’d rather avoid. Maybe doing the hard conversations during disasters was the trick. And I was starting to think this was going to be a disaster.

  I stepped into the room. The dead man before me hummed, and I felt like a moth trying to ignore a bright light. My magic wanted to explore. It was a rare thing to be so near to a draugr before it stood. I could feel it, a sort of low noise of awareness that buzzed over the skin of the corpse. There was a spark of energy hovering in wait, and I wanted to catch it. I felt like I was Dr. Frankenstein about to catch lightning.

  My magic could do that with corpses, call them back to our world. They weren’t alive, though. They were animated dead, and the moment they were too far from me, they crumbled as they were when they were raised. They weren’t alive when I brought them back to our world. They weren’t tethered. No food. No drink.

  On the other hand, they were a lot more sentient than the average draugr.

  The draugr before me would wake with or without me. It would walk, eat, destroy, and eventually, it would gain sentience.

  With the truly dead, the only spark was me. When I called flesh and sinew to knit over bones, I felt a warmth in my belly like I’d just had a long drink of hot cider. I felt as if I had a hearth for them to gather near. I was the hearth. This was different. The closest comparison I could draw was a rattlesnake, coiled, poised, vibrating so fast that the possibility of motion felt tangible. I wanted to understand, but I didn’t want to be on the receiving end of fangs.

  I drew my sword.

  “Geneviève?” Eli asked.

  “Alert,” I explained. “It’s alert now.”

  “Do not behead it,” he reminded me.

  “It shouldn’t want to wake yet, but I feel it. It wants to come talk to me.” I felt my eyes trying to shift, to slid into those slits that would bring me the vision of the grave. “Mind the humans, please.”

  Eli nodded. “Gentlemen, Ms. Crowe needs a little bit of space to assess the deceased.”

  I glanced at the pair of men with Tres. They were average, middling men who wore the sort of suits that were clearly off the rack—the cheap rack, to be specific. Most of my clothes were thrift, so I wasn’t judging. I was merely trying to get a sense of who they were. The one on the left, Suit Two, had a weak valve in his heart.

  “See a heart doctor soon,” I told him.

  Suit Two frowned, gaze unhealthier than I realized until now.

  “You’re dying.” I pressed my magic along his heart, sliding it like a fingertip over the wet warm thing that pumpe
d his blood. It stuttered. I wanted to pet it into health, but I wasn’t a physician. Experimenting with my unexpected surge in abilities seemed like a wretched idea. Was this part of the break of binding my mother had created?

  I could tell the suit, though, that his heart wasn’t strong. “Three years, tops.”

  “Miss Crowe,” Tres said. He didn’t move away as I approached. It wasn’t the sound of a stranger greeting me. His voice was deep and friendly, and I knew that he was responding to the pulse of magic that was slowly drifting toward the covered bodies on the tables.

  I let my magic slide over him, feeling the shape of him. His heart was strong. Muscles taut. I blinked at the longing radiating from him, and then I felt his body respond to my magic.

  “Miss Crowe?” Tres’s voice held awe, not just interest, but something closer to devotion.

  “Geneviève,” I offered, almost against my will. Perhaps it was the proximity to the corpse, but he was eliciting the same protective urge that the dead did.

  Tres smiled, and then he looked guiltily at the suits and the covered corpses. The suits were already looking at me with the same fondness I suspect they’d show maggots. I wasn’t surprised. My eyes were reptilian, not human, and my knowledge wasn’t the sort I ought to have. More than a few people hated witches, and goodness knows, a barbeque or two had been suggested to me over the years.

  “The dead don’t mind,” I assured Tres, who was looking appalled when he realized he was nearly flirting over a corpse.

  Either way, Tres wouldn’t be smiling in a moment. Most men only found me attractive or interesting when they hadn’t seen my affinity with death. The new abilities were interesting, but they didn’t undo what I was.

  I stepped closer to the corpse I was there to see. “Uncover him.”

  One of them asked, “How did you know which—"

  “I can feel his infection.” I watched as he peeled the sheet back. My grave vision is uncommonly useful with the recently infected. I could see the venom under his skin, like green light. “Between the toes, right? That’s where the injection is. Tell me about him.”

  “Mr. Odem was an associate of my father’s,” Tres began, sounding serious and businesslike now. “His widow, three daughters, and seven grandchildren are in mourning. There was no reason to expect him to be…changed.” He paused, awkwardly, as if guilty, and then he said, “I’ve made considerable donations. Legal, of course, but I asked to be notified of any injection sites on recent deceased.”

  “No judgment.” I glanced at Tres. “It’s your money now.”

  Tres said nothing further, so I let myself draw on even more of my grave magic, letting it drift over the corpse. I found no other traces. Most draugr had a limited capacity for venom. To fully infect the living took several envenomations. They had a limited food supply, so evolutionarily speaking, they were remarkable. There were a lot of fail-safes to prevent overpopulation. Draugr were the apex predator, and much like a shark on a reef, they needed to have enough food to support them. If every bite was contagious, that would quickly complicate the balance of food to predator. Venom could kill, or weaken, but transformation required a choice.

  Aside from the obvious, draugr sure as fuck couldn’t bite someone between the toes.

  One of the suits spread the toes of the deceased to look for a mark. “She’s right.”

  With my grave vision, I could see the vibrant green of venom. Without my vision, I suspect it looked almost unnoticeable, a minute blemish between the toes. For an older man with a cardiac history, a post mortem exam was probably not as thorough as in the case of a suspicious death. Money changed hands to get this exam and to get me into the morgue.

  Eli leaned in, took a picture of the injection, and stepped back. “No diabetes? Social drug use? Vitamin shots even?”

  He knew the answer, but it was form to ask.

  “Jimmy Odem was a respectable man,” Suit One said.

  “And a member of SAFARI?” Eli asked. I knew by the tone of his voice that he recalled the man’s name from the list.

  “He was,” Tres confirmed.

  I still had my sword at ready, but I was curious. I let magic fill me until I felt like my skin was going to split and spill the energy onto the world. When I could stand no more, I released it in the direction of the late Mr. Odem. I was the conduit from the grave to the living, or in some cases, a conduit from the far side of the grave to our side. Either way, undead magic filled me to the point that my vision slid into that place where the world looked like a dream, hazy and ethereal, as if I’d become a ghost for a moment—not that ghosts were real, mind you. They were just like shapeshifters and cyborgs and tentacled aliens: merely the stuff of fiction. I enjoyed reading of them, but not of witches or draugr. I had the ability to see the world with such an eerie vision that any horror director would be jealous.

  With that grave vision, I saw that Tres burned with a light, but his glow was a flicker next to the shining glow that made Eli look like he’d swallowed a city-sized menorah on the night of the last candle.

  “They’re dead,” I said, gesturing at the other corpses in the room. “Truly gone, but I could summon—”

  “No. They are unrelated,” Eli said. “They have nothing to tell us.”

  He was right, and until recently, the resting dead could not be summoned. I felt enough power flowing into my skin tonight that I wanted to try. Eli’s voice stopped me, though. I trusted him, and experimenting as I’d been doing was dangerous.

  I tapped my sword tip on the sheet covering the late Mr. Odem. “He knows things.”

  I pressed grave magic into him, filling him from the soles of his feet to the crinkles on his balding head. I’d never tried to speak to the dead who were at a crossroad like this. Not full dead like the corpses I drew together. Not awake yet as a regular draugr would be a few days after death.

  “Geneviève?” Eli asked. “What are you doing?”

  I was about to tell him that I had it under control, but the dead man sat up. He slid to the edge of the table and stood with a sudden lurch. He leaned against the edge of it, but he had pushed to his feet and opened his eyes.

  “Talk to me,” I ordered. “Tell me what I seek.”

  I let my magic carry questions: the visual of the injection, the dead Chaddock, the conversation snippet of Tres telling me someone had murdered his father.

  When the corpse of Odem tried to speak, he noticed that his lips were sewn shut—as all corpses’ were. He frowned, looked around, and then the naked dead man walked over to a counter, grabbed a scalpel and sliced the threads sealing his mouth.

  “What is the meaning of this?” The re-animated Mr. Odem gestured at all of us with the scalpel.

  One of the suits fainted.

  I held my sword at ready.

  What had I done? The dead man ought to be a muttering, hungry corpse, no more sentient than any other newborn. This was unexpected. I tried to keep myself positioned, so I was between the dead and the living. Eli, Tres, and the suits ought to leave so I could . . . what was I to do? Odem seemed coherent.

  “Mr. Odem?” Tres asked. “James?”

  “Chaddock.” The late Mr. Odem stepped forward. “What are you doing here? I was sorry to hear about Alvin, but . . .” He paused, glanced down, and frowned. “Why am I standing here starkers?”

  “Geneviève?” Eli walked up to my side. “What just happened?”

  James Odem was alert, dead, and sounded very much like he’d skipped the entire decade-plus of drooling, starving nonsense that draugr all had.

  I cleared my throat and admitted, “I think I, umm, accidentally fixed a draugr.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Tres looked at me and then the dead man who was wrapping a morgue sheet around himself like a cheap toga. The suits, who were both upright now, gaped at me. Their expressions were horror-filled. Tres, however, had a look of awe on his face that frightened me more than I could explain.

  “You did that.” Tr
es gazed at me, all semblance of calm businessman long gone. He watched me in the way of zealots—and not the predictable pitchforks-and-torches sort. This was worse. He looked more like he might build me a temple than a pyre.

  “You, boy.” Mr. Odem gestured at one of the suits, who were both watching him warily. Neither man moved, but they both looked at Odem. The old man held out a very steady hand and ordered, “Jacket.”

  “I need to get out of here,” I whispered to Eli. Tres’ reaction had been odd before, but this?

  “Could you bring my father back?” Tres reached for my arm.

  “I cut his head off.”

  “Could a plastic surgeon or”—he gestured to the morgue—“pick a new body. Something younger.”

  “The fuck . . .? They’re not cars, Tres.” I backed away from him. “Eli?”

  “Chaddock, step out into the hall with us.”

  When Tres joined us in the hall, he was no longer looking at me in any way remotely resembling normal. He looked at me the way folks looked on prophets or false messiahs.

  “Do you want to deal with Odem or should I behead him . . .?” I asked Tres.

  Tres laughed. “You restored him. The possibilities, Geneviève! Can you—”

  “So, you’ll stay here and deal with the police and whatnot?” I glanced into the room where Odem was holding court. One disaster of shit-storm potential at a time. Odem was first. He might be alert now, but I had my concerns about what this all meant. Would he stay alert? Could he be trusted to go home? Would the police find a house full of mutilated corpses if he did?

  “You could save so many people.” Tres tried to take my hand, but I jerked away. He dropped to his knees and stared up at me. “You created life, Geneviève.”

  Eli shook his head.

  “Does that mean you will protect my secret?” I tried to sound holy, but I felt like I mostly sounded constipated. “No one can know, Tres.”

  “Why wouldn’t you want people to know?” He stared at me in confusion.