“Um, actually—”
“But why do I stink of rum? Did someone pour a bottle over me thinking it would wake me up?”
“You won’t like what I’m about to tell you,” I said.
“In that case,” he said with weary resignation, “I should probably pull myself together first.” He slid off the bed and stood up.
“Wait.” I was a little worried about him being on his feet only moments after regaining consciousness. “Are you sure you feel okay?”
Looking fairly normal, albeit tired, he said, “Yeah. Actually, for someone who was knocked out for two hours, I feel surprisingly good. But, uh, I need to get cleaned up.”
“Okay.”
He was familiar with my apartment, so he went down the hall, through the living room, and closed the bathroom door behind him. I sat on the bed with my chin in my hands, relieved that he seemed to be all right—and wondering exactly how much to tell him.
Everything, I decided. I should probably tell him everything.
He had made quite an impression at the Vodou ceremony. People were bound to talk about what had happened tonight. And I didn’t think Lopez would want to find out about his possession trance from a stranger or a suspect; he should hear about it from me. He still wouldn’t like it, but it was better than his getting broad-sided by someone else who’d seen him dancing half-naked around a Vodou altar with a bottle of rum and a fistful of hot coals.
Meanwhile, Puma was probably in danger, Biko was trying to kill Frank Johnson, and we thought the bokor had murdered Darius. With lives at stake, it seemed like it was time to pony up and tell Lopez what I knew, even though he wouldn’t like that, either.
He finished his ablutions and returned to the bedroom, using a hand towel to dry off his neck and face. Then he towel-dried the front of his hair, which was dripping a little. Still slightly damp, but now looking surprisingly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, he stood in the doorway and smiled at me as I sat on the bed.
“Thanks for helping me out tonight,” he said. “Thanks to Max and Jeff, too. I guess they left after they carried me in here?”
His shirt still hung open and, staring at him as he stood in the doorway of my bedroom, I forgot what I had intended to say. So I just nodded dumbly.
He stared, too. After a long moment, he started to speak, stopped, cleared his throat, and tried again. “There’s something we have to talk about, but I can’t remember what.”
“Maybe the bump on your head made you forget?”
My voice was husky, and my heart was starting to beat harder. Since meeting him, after all, I had thought often of him being in this room with his chest naked and his gaze pinning me to the bed.
“No . . .” he said slowly, his voice soft. “I don’t think it’s . . . my head.” He took a breath. “We shouldn’t be in your bedroom.”
“Where should we be?” I asked.
“You shouldn’t be on the bed.”
“Okay.” I slid off the bed, joined him by the door, and looked up at him. “Is this better?”
His black lashes were wet and spiky, his blue eyes intense as his gaze moved over my face. “Um . . .”
Lopez started breathing harder as he dropped the towel and lowered his head toward mine.
His phone rang, startling me. He froze, scant inches away from kissing me. I could tell from his conflicted expression that he was going to have to take the call. I started to back away from him, but his arm slid around my waist, stopping me.
His gaze locked with mine as he fumbled in his pocket for his cell. “This’ll just take a second.” He flipped open the phone and said, “Lopez.”
I leaned against him and slid my arms around him, feeling his naked skin under my palms and the warmth of his bare chest seeping through my cotton dress. I also felt him stiffen with surprise as he listened to his caller, his dazed, heavy-lidded expression suddenly growing alert.
“When?” he said. “And you’re sure it’s him? Uh-huh. Okay.” Looking at me with obvious regret, he said, “Yeah, I’m on my way.”
I sighed with disappointment as he hung up and slipped the phone back into his pocket. “Police business?”
“I’m sorry,” Lopez whispered. He pressed his forehead against mine, his hands caressing my arms. “I’ve got to go.”
I made an involuntary sound of protest and kissed him. He kissed me back.
“No, really, I’ve got to go,” he breathed against my mouth, starting to sound dazed again. “They didn’t even want to call me.”
“Hmm?” I inhaled scent of his skin, still tinged with rum, and nuzzled his neck.
He tilted his head back and tightened his hold on me. “If I don’t go, they’ll use it as an excuse to . . . to lock me out of . . . Mmm.”
“Out of?” I breathed into his ear.
“What? Oh.” His hands were on my back, searching for the zipper of my dress. “Out of the case.”
“It’s on the side.” Our lips met again as I tugged on his hand to show him where to unfasten my dress.
Lopez started kissing my neck—then he coughed a little. He gave up on my zipper and raised both hands to the back of my neck to untie the thin brown string that held my gris-gris pouch in place. “Okay, the bag of peppered frog toes has to go. How can you wear this thing?”
“No, leave it.” I reached up to move one of his hands back to my zipper.
“Esther . . .”
I kissed him again, getting things back on track. He made a sound low in his throat and got serious about what we were doing.
Until he sneezed. Then he gave a resigned sigh, still holding me tightly, and whispered, “I have to go.”
“What case is so important?” I grumbled as I pushed his shirt aside and nibbled on his shoulder.
“What?” he said faintly, his hands moving to my bottom.
I brushed his lips with mine. “The case.”
“I don’t . . . Oh! The case. Right. No. Esther, no. Stop that. Stop right now!” Breathing hard and laughing, he was simultaneously kissing me and trying to push me away. “I’ll be dropped off the case like a bag of cement if I don’t show up now that they’ve found one of the bodies.”
“Bodies?” Startled, I pulled away to look at him.
“Oops. Sorry.” He smiled wryly and touched my cheek. “I guess I’m not so good at pillow talk, huh?”
“What bodies?” I had a feeling I knew.
“Those four bodies that disappeared from the same cemetery where Darius Phelps was buried,” he said, smoothing my hair away from my face. “One of them just turned up.”
20
“Whoa! They found a body?” I asked, stunned by this news.
“Yeah.”
“How could they have found a body?”
“It washed up in Queens.” He was watching me intently now. “They figure the body snatcher dumped it in the river.”
I couldn’t understand what this meant. Why wasn’t the dead guy a zombie? How could he just be an ordinary corpse? Had something gone wrong? Had the bokor lost control of the reanimated slave? Or was Max’s theory wrong?
If so, then . . . “Where are the others?”
“We haven’t found them yet.” Lopez prodded, “Esther? Is there something you ought to tell me?”
“Which one did you find?” I asked.
“The guy with the head injury. Why?”
“Was it the head injury?” I wondered. Had it made him unsuitable zombie material?
“Was what the head injury?” Lopez asked.
But why would the injury matter? Presumably all the corpses were damaged in some way, after all. Darius had died of a ruptured intestine, and that hadn’t prevented the bokor from turning him into a zombie.
“Maybe I’m looking at this wrong,” I realized.
“Oh?” Lopez’s hands were on his hips, and he was studying me with dark suspicion.
“Did this person die before Darius?” I asked.
“He died before any of the others.”
“He was the first one to die?” I said. “So maybe that’s it! Was he the first one to go missing, too?”
“We’re not sure yet.” Lopez took me by the shoulders and said firmly, “What’s going on?”
“If he was the first one, then maybe it didn’t work out,” I said. “Maybe the bokor hadn’t really figured out how to do it yet!” It made sense that there might be experiments—and failures. No one was born knowing how to raise a zombie from the grave, after all. It was a learned skill.
“Do what?” Lopez said impatiently. “And what’s the bokor?”
I met his gaze and realized we still did have to talk.
“You’re not going to like this,” I said.
“I really, really believe that,” he said. “Go on.”
“Okay. Here goes. And just remember, you asked me to tell you this.” I took a breath. “I did see Darius Phelps that night. He was raised from the grave by the bokor—that’s a dark sorcerer—who’s menacing Harlem. Darius is a zombie now.”
There was a long pause.
“A zombie,” Lopez said at last. “Now why didn’t I think of that?”
Ignoring his tone, I explained, “That’s why there was no blood when his hand was torn off. Zombies don’t bleed.”
“Ah.” He shrugged. “That explains it, then.”
I decided just to keep going. “Somehow or other, Darius broke away from the bokor’s control and was wandering the streets that night. The creatures that attacked him are baka. They’re deadly little monsters who do the bokor’s bidding. They killed Biko Garland’s dog, and they’ve been terrorizing Harlem by night.”
“I see.”
“The night I saw them, they’d been sent to retrieve Darius. We’re not sure—”
“We?”
“Max and I.”
“Of course.”
“We’re not sure what happened to Darius after I was arrested, but no one has seen him since. And zombies aren’t exactly stealthy, if left to their own devices. So I think the bokor probably regained control of him while I was in jail.”
“Tough break.”
“He’s probably under wraps somewhere, at least most of the time, with the other zombies.”
“Yes, probably.”
“Anyhow, we’re not sure why yet, but the bokor is raising an army of zombies. Well, a small team of them, anyhow. I guess five zombies—four, now that you’ve found a discarded body—doesn’t really count as an army. But there may be more that we don’t know about. You haven’t had time to investigate every cemetery in the tristate area, after all.”
I fell silent, unable to keep going in the face of his carefully blank expression.
After a long moment, he asked very calmly, “Is that all?”
“No, there’s more.” I added, “I was just waiting for, um, your reaction.”
“Reaction? I see.” He nodded. “You want a reaction.”
“Or I could just tell you the rest,” I said in a rush, sensing the storm was about to break.
“No, no. You want me to react? Okay,” he said. “How’s this for a reaction? You know why I had to give you up? This! Right here! THIS! This is exactly why I had to stop seeing you! This lunatic, crazy, nutbag garbage of Max’s that you swallow hook, line, and sinker!”
“I haven’t swallowed—”
“A little eccentricity is one thing—in fact, I like that you’re different. I liked it the night we first met, when you were covered in green body paint and had just destroyed an expensive stage prop with a hammer because you were trying to help someone. I liked it the night I had to get you out of jail because you’d tried to assist an assault victim while you were dressed like a hooker.”
“I—”
“But you always go too far, Esther! Way too far. You’re going to get yourself killed!” Lopez said. “Or Max is going to get you killed! And other people will get hurt—or worse—because of both of you!”
The unfairness of that last comment made me angry. “Other people’s lives have been saved because—”
“I’m not doing this, Esther!” He looked like his head hurt again. “What man in his right mind would fall for a woman who actually believes the things that you say to me?”
I tried to calm down. “Okay, this is more of a reaction that I was really looking for. Maybe we should both—”
“Has Max got you out there hunting zombies by night? Are you running around Harlem after dark with an armed teenager and a lunatic old man who’s giving you God only knows what kind of hallucinogenic drugs to feed these bizarre fantasies?”
“Oh, for God’s sake! Max is not drugging—”
“I’m warning you right now,” he said. “Don’t expect me to write more false reports and lie to more cops when I find you and Max knee-deep in missing corpses. I won’t keep covering up for you!”
“I’m not asking—”
“And who’s watching your back while you’re skulking around looking for a body snatcher?” he demanded. “How am I supposed to protect you when you lie to me about what you’re doing?”
“I haven’t lied,” I protested. “I just left out some things. And this is exactly why! Just look at the way you’re behaving now that I’ve told you!”
“Stop right there,” he snapped. “No way is this fight my fault!”
“All right, look, I know how crazy it all sounds. Okay? I do. And I knew how you’d react. Well, I didn’t know you’d be quite this loud,” I said critically. “But I was pretty sure you’d react badly. And you have.”
“You’re talking about a sorcerer raising zombies from the grave!” he shouted. “Of course I’m reacting badly!”
“You need to calm down,” I said firmly. “There’s more that I have to tell you, and I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.”
“No,” he said. “No. I don’t want to hear anymore. Not unless the next words out of your mouth are that you’ll end your friendship with Max and submit to drug testing.”
I ignored this and said, “What do you think sent Frank Johnson over the edge? He was attacked by the baka!”
“You’ve been talking to—” His dark brows swooped down. “Oh, Jesus, Esther! You used me to find that poor deranged guy?”
“No! I just wanted you to make sure he wasn’t dead!” I said. “I was worried about his safety, because I think Darius Phelps was murdered!”
“Well, at least that’s one thing you and I can agree on,” Lopez said irritably.
“Really?”
“But I’ll never prove it.”
“Because Darius was killed by a voodoo curse?” I said.
“No, Esther,” Lopez said with forced patience. “Because the body is missing.”
“Oh! Right.”
“And even if I find it, it’ll probably be too contaminated by then for forensics to get good evidence.” His shoulders sagged. “Maybe there wasn’t any evidence, anyhow. That’s probably why the hospital is convinced Darius died strictly of natural causes. But I don’t believe it.” He took my shoulders between his hands, and his grip was hard, making me wince a little. “Listen to me. I don’t want you going back to the foundation.”
“You think the killer is there?”
“And I especially don’t want you hunting zombies by night in Harlem.”
“But something is coming! Something very dangerous! Why else would the bokor raise zombies and—”
“Stop talking.” His expression was angry again. “Just stop.”
“That’s why the community held the ceremony tonight!” I said. “Because of the dark magic that someone’s working in Harlem!”
“Enough,” he said.
“No, listen to me! At the ritual, you—”
His mouth came down on mine. I was surprised enough to struggle. He gripped me tighter and kissed me harder, his mouth ruthless and punishing. And I realized I didn’t want to struggle. I surrendered to the angry strength of his arms and the cruel pressure of his mouth. Surrendered and begged fo
r more, kissing him back with all the pent up hunger of the past few months. Where had he been? He should have been here all along, damn him.
I had tried so hard not to think about him. Not to imagine this. I had failed over and over.
“You should have been here,” I said, clinging to him.
“Don’t talk,” he insisted, his breathing harsh and fast now.
“But—” I grunted in surprised pain when he sank his teeth into my lower lip. Then he soothed my bruised mouth with a long, hot, wet kiss as his hands tangled in my hair, holding my head still for his plunder.
His rum-scented breath clouded my mind as he whispered against my mouth, “No more talking.”
He shrugged out of his shirt and dropped it on the floor, still kissing me.
“No more talk,” I said with difficulty. Then I gasped as he roughly tore open the zipper on the side of my dress, ruining it. “Oh!”
Instead of apologizing, he knocked me down onto the bed, falling heavily with me. My head was reeling dizzily as his weight pinned me to the mattress and his mouth came down on mine once again.
My eyes suddenly stung, and my nose tickled. Lopez drew his head back and coughed a little.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” he muttered as he realized what was irritating his senses.
His expression dark with impatience, he grabbed the thin string that was around my neck, yanked it so hard the knot snapped and broke, and tossed the gris-gris pouch across the room. Then he kissed me with rough insistence.
He had never touched me like this before. Out of his head. Not tempering his strength. Not worrying about whether he hurt me. Leaving bruises and teeth marks that would be visible on my skin in the morning.
I clutched his naked shoulders and arched against him as he punished me with his passion and tried to make me regret pushing him this far. As my legs embraced his hips, he pulled up my skirt, tugging on the material until a seam gave way and tore. Then his hands were on my bare thighs, and I didn’t care that this dress was in tatters by now.
Unsympathetic Magic Page 28
