Strange Brew

by P. N. Elrod

  “But you can’t—”

  Andy interrupted me. “Who’d I be protecting?”

  Prieto had been waiting for the question, and he seemed to take a special kind of pleasure in saying, “It’s her. Holly Anne Caldwell. These fucking freaks are taking out witches.”

  WE LEFT THE viewing room to go down the hall to a small airless conference room, where Prieto had set up shop for the night. He had folders.

  He had a lot of folders.

  I knew every one of the victims. Shayle Gallagher had been the first—he’d been taken right out of his flower shop (like me, he only moonlighted at the resurrection business), and there had been signs of a vicious struggle. Could have been robbery or a hate crime, so that hadn’t raised too many unusual flags at first, especially with no body found.

  Two weeks ago, though, Harrison Wright had failed to show up to work at his medical practice, and his multimillion-dollar estate showed signs of the same brutal attack as at Gallagher’s store.

  Lottie Flores had been the next victim, and she’d disappeared the day after I’d taken the case from Sam.

  “We kept it out of the news,” Prieto said. “Wasn’t easy. Oh, and Sam agreed we shouldn’t interrupt you while you were working.”

  Sam agreed? I was going to have a talk with Sam. One involving a punch in the mouth.

  “You said there were dead officers,” Andy said.

  Prieto nodded. “My guys had missed a scheduled check-in. When backup arrived, their car was empty. They were found in the Flores house.”

  “Why not bring one of them back, find out just what went on?”

  Prieto looked grim. “We thought about it, but the families wouldn’t sign off, and by then, we were knee-deep in missing resurrection witches. Didn’t think we should waste the time trying to convince anybody.”

  I looked at the photos of the two dead police officers, and felt my stomach twist. They’d been beaten to death. That wasn’t easy to do with any cop, but you could at least see how the five-foot-five, petite woman could have been overpowered. Not her partner, six-foot-four and big enough to intimidate pretty much anyone. He looked like he chewed nails as vitamins.

  “Neither one got a shot off,” Prieto said. “No sign of Flores in the house, but we found blood and the same smash-up indicating a struggle. Blood in the bedroom turned out to be hers.”

  Lottie’s house was neatly kept. Most of the damage was confined to her bedroom—bed pulled sideways, covers wrenched half off, blood smeared on the sheets and floor, leading down the hall. She’d been dragged out.

  I hated Lottie. I had good reason; I’d been her apprentice for three resurrections, before I’d transferred to Marvin Jones, my permanent instructor. I’d hated every filthy second of being around Lottie and watching her work. I’d lodged a complaint against her with the Board of Review; nothing had come of it, of course. There weren’t so many resurrection witches running around that they could afford to turf one just because she was—let’s face it—a psychopath.

  Even with all that, it still made me cringe to think about what that had been like . . . and what might still be happening to her.

  The next file was even worse, because I had no reason at all to dislike Monica Heitmeyer; she was a nice older lady specializing, like me and Lottie, in resurrections, but she mainly did family gigs, reconciling loved ones. As far as I knew, she’d never done any work with the police. She was in the feel-good business.

  Two more dead officers at her house, these two killed in the backyard. One had a snapped neck. The other looked like a sack of raw meat. Someone had used him for punching practice. Monica, like Lottie, was missing, but she’d left behind a lot of blood.

  Andrew hadn’t said anything. His eyes had gone dark and cold, and whatever he was thinking, he kept it to himself.

  “What makes you think I’m next on the list?” I asked.

  “Not a hell of a lot of witches in your line of work in Austin,” Prieto said. “Most of them are already gone. It’s down to you and the other one—”

  “Annika,” I said. “Annika Berwick.” I knew her slightly, not well enough to have much of a feeling for how well she’d handle something like this. Annika was frail, nearly seventy, a sweet old grandmother of a witch who’d informally retired from practice last year. “You’re protecting her, right?”

  “Sure they are,” Andy said softly. His gaze hadn’t left Prieto at all. “They leave you open, you’re the next target. That the idea, Detective? Holly’s your damn stalking horse.”

  Prieto didn’t answer. The truth was that he probably had strike teams ready to roll, and full surveillance, but he wanted it to look like he wasn’t coming anywhere near us.

  He wanted everyone to think that we were all on our own.

  “Have you talked to Annika?”

  Prieto nodded. “She’s good.”

  I didn’t know about Annika, but I knew how I felt about it, and good didn’t exactly ring true. I desperately needed a shower and a gallon of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream to deal with this.

  All of this explained why the Police Department was willing to spend the exorbitant cost to have Andrew Toland brought back. Resurrection witches were a rare breed, and valuable. Six in a city of more than six hundred thousand; there were fewer in Dallas, only a couple hanging tough against a storm of fundamentalist persecution. Austin remained the home—and refuge—of the weird.

  Didn’t feel like home right now.

  I turned to Andrew. “You don’t have to do this,” I said. “I can release you. I should release you. This isn’t your fight, it’s mine.”

  He gave me a look that drilled right into my core. “No, it’s not. They were right to bring me into it, Holly. This is how the war starts—put down those who might fight, and do it early. Nobody left to fight when the evil comes calling.” His blue eyes took on distance and chill. “I’ve seen it done.”

  It had, in fact, been done to him. “It’s still not your problem.”

  “True enough,” he said, and there came that slow, warm smile again, breaking my heart. “Still. I think you’re my problem.”

  ______

  WE DIDN’T SPEAK on the drive back. I heard the jingle of the bottles in my case in the backseat; I’d been watching Andy for any sign that he needed a booster, but he seemed fine. Better than fine, actually. The spell that bound him here also bound us together; I knew I’d feel some sense from him if—when—he began to feel pain, or drift.

  So far, nothing. It was like being with anyone. Any living person, that is.

  “The last time,” Andy said. “I know we got the killer. What about the girl? Did I get her out?”

  I shuddered. I couldn’t help it, and I couldn’t hide it. All of a sudden, the realities of it crashed down on me, and the lockbox of feelings blew open, and I was shaking like a leaf in a storm.

  I dimly heard Andy asking me what was wrong, but I couldn’t tell him. I pulled the car over into a vacant parking lot, threw it into park, and stumbled out with my arms wrapped around myself for comfort. The warm humid air didn’t help. I was coming apart.

  I heard Andy’s passenger-side door slam, and quick footsteps on the gravel, and then his arms wrapped around me fast and hard. “Hush,” he murmured, with his lips against my hair. “Hush, now, Holly. It’s not so bad as that.”

  But it was—oh, it was. His question had opened up Pandora’s box, and I couldn’t keep any of it under lock and key anymore. “She—she—oh, Andy, I’m sorry—”

  “She died,” he said, and pushed me back far enough that he could look into my eyes. His were dark, all pupil even under the streetlight. “Feared she would. Couldn’t get to her before he cut her. All I could do was try to get her to you before it was too late.”

  My heart just broke. He remembered, but he didn’t know. I’d resurrected Andrew last year to deal with a witch out of Chicago who’d been on the run, who’d taken to abducting girls he fancied, killing them, and reviving them over and over for his
fun.

  Andy had gone in to stop the witch, and save the last girl before it was too late.

  He’d accomplished part of it—the witch was dead, and Andy had made damn certain the bastard couldn’t come back. The girls he’d enslaved were gone as well.

  But that last child, all of sixteen. . . . She’d died in Andy’s arms as he used the last of his strength to try to get her to safety. It had felt like it was all for nothing, because of that. It wasn’t—the witch wouldn’t be hurting anyone else—but it had felt hollow. Horribly empty.

  I hadn’t realized until just now why it had felt so awful. It had been the tragedy of the girl, yes, but it had been Andy. Andy’s stunning courage.

  I’d felt him go, and it had felt like losing someone I loved.

  I burst into tears and buried my face in his hospital-style shirt. He smelled sterile, astringent, not living at all, but it didn’t matter. He felt real.

  And I could not be in love with a dead man. I just could not. No matter how close we’d gotten before. No matter how good this felt just now.

  Andy smoothed my hair with gentle strokes, not speaking. I felt him touch his lips gently to the top of my head.

  “I remember, you know,” he said at last. “You were there all the time, Holly. You were all that kept me moving, at the last. You were the light.”

  That only made me cry harder. I was thinking about him wounded and dying, struggling to save that girl. About how I’d kept him alive, alive, alive through all the pain and agony.

  Until I hadn’t.

  It hadn’t been Andy who’d faltered. . .. It had been me. I hadn’t been strong enough for him, in the end.

  “She was dying before I ever got to her,” he said. “And she’s peaceful now, Holly. So let it be.”

  I couldn’t stop crying. His hand rubbed my back in slow, gentle circles.

  “I don’t think you understand what it was like waking up today, seeing you.” His fingers touched my chin and tipped it up. “If I need to die for you, I will. But let’s not spend the time in tears.”

  I could feel his heartbeat. See the fast pulse moving under his skin. I could feel our souls touching, intimate in ways that mere living people couldn’t achieve, and I understood just how deep this went between us.

  I pressed my hand over his heart, feeling the strong, steady pace. “You can’t stay with me,” I said. My voice, normally so steady, sounded soft and uncertain. “We don’t get second chances, Andy.”

  He smiled. “Sure we do,” he said. “What’s this, if it ain’t a second chance? Or, more proper for me, a third?”

  And he kissed me. Warm lips, blood-warm, tasting of the potion that I’d given him. Toxic, something in me warned, but I didn’t care.

  Andy’s thumbs stroked my cheekbones, and his big hands seemed so certain about what they were doing.

  I was kissing a dead man, and I didn’t care a bit. I wanted to keep on kissing him until the sun burned out.

  The memory of the harsh, bloodstained photographs Prieto had shown us flashed across my eyes, and I pulled free with a gasp, stepping back.

  “What?” he asked. He took my hands, but didn’t try to pull me into his arms.

  “It’s not safe,” I said. “We’re not safe. We need to get inside.”

  Andy smiled—a real, full smile. “You think I can’t protect you, Holly?”

  “I don’t want you to have to.”

  He nodded out into the dark. “Ain’t the only one. Prieto sent a couple of fellas on our tail. They’re parked over there, watching us.”

  I shuddered. Somehow, that made it even worse, both that there were eyes on us, and that I was putting Prieto’s men at risk just by being such an easy target. “Let’s go home.”

  We got back in the car, and I broke speed limits on the way.

  ANDY WAS ALL business when we pulled into the drive. Although he’d never worked as a bodyguard, at least not that I knew of, he made me stay in the car with the motor running and the garage door open as he went into the house and checked it out. I waited tensely, imagining every second that I would feel an echo of something through the bond . . . I’d lived through the sickening spiral of his torment and death once already, and I knew what it would feel like.

  I nearly screamed when he popped up next to the car and motioned for me to get out. I closed the garage door, shut off the motor, and followed him into the house.

  “Locks?” he asked. I turned them, and then set the security alarm for instant alarm. If any door or window opened, we’d know, and so would the police. My heart was hammering. I thought about Lottie, evidently surprised in her sleep. Monica, taken in the evening as she was getting ready for bed, bathwater gone cold in the tub. “They come at night,” I said. “Don’t open any doors or windows. The alarm will go off.”

  “Fancy.”

  I smiled faintly. “Normal, these days. We live in scary times.”

  “Ain’t nobody ever lived any other time.” Andy, not content with the electronic alarm, was roaming around and testing doors and windows, engaging all locks. “You set this magic watchdog when you left today?”

  “I didn’t know I was being stalked.”

  Andy stopped and looked at me, hands gone still on a windowsill. “They didn’t tell you.” I shook my head. “Why not?”

  “People all that fond of resurrection witches, back in your day?”

  That earned me a full crooked grin. “Not enough so you’d blush. Stay here, I’ll check the other floor.”

  I watched him take the stairs, then went to the kitchen and put away the ritual pots I’d washed. I fixed myself a sandwich. Spellcasting took a lot out of me, and despite everything, I was feeling a small, significant drain of energy through the bond with Andy. Needed to keep my strength up, through the magic of carbs and protein.

  I was just swallowing the last bite when Andy walked into the kitchen. “Never got to see your house last time,” Andy said. He sat down at the kitchen table and looked around. “Big place. Warm. You live here all on your own? What about your family?”

  “My parents and my sister live in New England. You going to tell me a woman can’t live on her own?”

  “I’d never dare,” Andy said. “ ’Specially not one who holds the keys to life and death. Then again, that’s pretty much any woman, so I’ll just keep my peace about it. Besides, I don’t know your world all that much, ’cept it’s about as full of villains as the time I knew. Could be women tell men what’s for now, strange as that would seem.”

  “Andy—”

  His blue eyes stopped surveying the granite countertops and focused on me, and wow, that packed voltage. “I’m not sorry,” he said. “Stupid for a man to fall in love once he’s dead, but I’ve done it, and there it is. But at least you know I’ll do everything in my power to keep you alive, Holly Anne.”

  I couldn’t even speak. What do you say to that? A dead man falls in love with you, and there’s no chance for a future together. I knew that every minute, every second of this was limited. I wanted to take him straight to bed, but I didn’t know—I didn’t know for certain how that worked. Or even if it did. The subject of the sexual performance of dead men had never been included in my apprenticeship—probably deliberately. The potential for abuse of resurrections was huge, and our limits were strict. It was part of why we maintained such emotional distance.

  Andy sensed my internal struggle, and he brought out his gentlest smile. It did great things to his face, put a devastating sparkle in his eyes.

  I stood up, barely able to feel my legs. “I’m—going to bed. Do you want—?” My throat closed up, and I had to clear it. Embarrassing. “Do you want me to make up the spare bed?”

  Andy kept smiling. “No. I ain’t sleeping, am I?”

  He had a point. Bodyguards didn’t, and neither did the dead. I felt flushed and awkward and out of control.

  “Okay, then,” I said. “Good night.”

  He nodded, and watched me as I left the kitchen.r />
  A hot shower and a pair of silk pajamas later, I retreated to my soft, lonely bed and tried to sleep. It was getting on toward the wee hours of the morning, but I didn’t feel tired. I felt anxious, and achy, and relentlessly squirmy.

  I could hear Andy roaming around downstairs. I wondered what he was doing—looking over my bookshelves? Examining my pictures? Getting intimate with me in ways that didn’t involve climbing into bed with me?

  Shut up, I told myself when my brain started to run wild with images. The man is dead. He’s here to do a job, and then he’s gone. And that’s it.

  Except it wasn’t, and Andy had said he loved me, and I knew I loved him. No getting around that. Bringing him back a second time—no, for him it was the third—had been cruel, and unnecessary, and wrong, and if I’d known what Prieto wanted him for, I’d have said no even at the cost of my own life.

  I didn’t want Andy dying for me.

  I’D DRIFTED OFF into an uneasy half slumber when something woke me up. I felt a tingle inside, and opened my eyes to stare at the ceiling. I knew that feeling, all too well. No chance of sleeping now.

  I slipped out of bed, wrapped myself in a silk robe, and went downstairs.

  Andy was standing at the windows, looking out. He didn’t wait for me to ask. “I’m fine,” he said.

  “You’re not.” I’d carried my black case in from the car, and now I flipped it open and reached for the second vial of the stepped dose.

  It felt light.

  The bottle was empty.

  I stared at it in stupefied horror for a few seconds, then dropped it back into the holder and pulled the third. The fourth.

  The bottles were all empty. I began yanking the rest out to check. Empty, empty, empty!

  Andy turned at the sound of my labored breathing and the rattle of glass. He frowned. “What?”

  “It’s not—someone sabotaged my case.” Breathe, I told myself. Come on. Think. The case had been with me, and completely full, at the morgue. All the time? No. I’d set it in the corner of the viewing room, and we’d both gone with Detective Prieto to look over files. The case had been left unattended. “The potions. They’re gone.”