Maybe someone had hired it done? Hired an assassin, and the assassin had chosen the manner of death?
Kyle had a lot more enemies than I did. When he chose to use it, his special gift was to make the opposing parties in a courtroom look either like violent criminals, or like complete idiots—and sometimes both. Some of them had quite a bit of money, enough to hire a killer, certainly.
Maybe it wasn’t my fault.
A zombie hit, though, screamed expensive, a lot more expensive than someone like Kyle would normally command. Which meant it was probably my fault.
I heard Elizaveta arrive and stride down the hall to the conference room. The lack of talking led me to believe that Kyle was still cleaning up.
Elizaveta opened the conference room door and entered like the Queen Mary coming to port in a wave of herbs and menthol instead of salt water, but with the same regal dominance, a regality accompanied by enough fabric and colors to do justice to a gypsy in midwinter—and it was hotter than sin outside.
I’d always thought that she must have been beautiful when she was young. Not a conventional beauty, something much more powerful than that. Now her nose looked hawkish and her eyes were too hard, but the power was still there.
“Warren, my little cinnamon bun, what have you found?” She never spoke to me in Russian as she did Adam, who understood it; instead she translated the endearments that peppered her speech—probably because they made me squirm. Why would you compare a grown man to a sweet roll?
I responded to her overblown presentation as I usually did, dipping down into my childhood accent—added to a bit by Hollywood Westerns. “Ah reckon it’s a zombie, ma’am, but I thought you oughta take a good look first.”
She smiled. “What was it doing when you found it?”
“It found me, ma’am. Lookin’ for Kyle.”
“And you relocated its jaw for that, my little Texas bunny?” she asked archly.
“No,” said Kyle from the doorway. His spare shirt hung over his shoulders, folded back to avoid possible contact with the blood from the liberally splattered towel he held to his collarbone. He smelled like whiskey, but not even a zombie attack could make him unpretty or completely destroy his composure. “He broke her jaw when he pulled her off me. You must be Elizaveta Arkadyevna Vyshnevetskaya. I’m Kyle Brooks.”
She looked down at him—she is damn near as tall as I am. Her face was turned away from me, but Kyle had his lawyer face on, so I doubted her expression was friendly. The zombie’s noises increased and so did its struggles. The witch turned to look at it without addressing Kyle.
“Quit playing and kill it,” she told me coolly. “Breaking its neck should be enough.” She’d never been happy with bringing humans into things she’d rather they be ignorant of. I guess she was trying to teach him and me a lesson.
I didn’t like playing her game, but if she didn’t need the zombie running around, Kyle would be safer with it dead.
I didn’t look at Kyle when I popped the thing’s neck. Its spine broke easily under my hand—which was what she’d wanted Kyle to see. I laid the limp body down on the conference table as carefully as I could, pulling the dress down over the dead woman’s thighs.
Elizaveta turned her attention to the corpse, and I finally noticed that she wasn’t alone. Nadia’s gift was blending in—some of that was magic. I’d been occupied with the zombie, Kyle, and Elizaveta, but I still I should have noticed her.
“Nadia,” I said, “thank you for coming.” Of all Elizaveta’s numerous family, I liked Nadia the best; she was quiet, competent, and smart. She also was, I understood, one of three of the family who were honest apprentices rather than dogsbodies who did Elizaveta’s bidding.
The old woman’s grandson, who was supposed to inherit the family business, had been found to be jump-starting his career in a manner Elizaveta found embarrassing. He’d quietly disappeared. I figure in a few hundred years someone would discover his remains in a jar in Elizaveta’s basement.
I’d shed no tears for him. He’d conspired to murder Bran Cornick, the Marrok who ruled the wolves in this part of the world—the man who made being a werewolf less of a nightmare than it might have been. Elizaveta was still mad at Bran for outing the wolves—I’d always secretly wondered if she’d been a part of that mess, too, if only by being complicit.
Nadia lifted a pair of deep gray eyes to mine and smiled at me, light crow’s feet dispelling the illusion of youth that her fine-pored skin and gray-free, seal-brown hair gave her. But the appearance of youth was no great loss because her smile was big and sweet.
“Warren,” she said. She’d been born in the Tri-Cities and not a hint of Russian accent touched her voice. “You look . . .”
“Dressed up?” I said looking down at my slacks. “I’m working for Kyle’s firm and they are a bit upscale. I got to keep the boots, though. As long as I remember to polish ’em once in a while.”
She flushed a little. “I didn’t mean to be rude, sorry. I didn’t know you were a lawyer.”
“Nah,” I told her. “Kyle’s the lawyer.” I introduced her to him. She took the hand he held out and murmured her greeting. “I’m the gofer,” I told her, answering the question she hadn’t gotten around to yet.
“Private detective,” corrected Kyle.
“Ink’s so new it might smear,” I told Nadia’s raised eyebrows.
“Niece, quit flirting with the men and tell me what you see,” said Elizaveta sharply, without looking up.
Nadia blushed—not because she’d been flirting, but because her great-aunt had embarrassed her—and turned her attention to the body on the table. After a steadying breath, she was all business.
“I know her face,” she said in some surprise. “This woman has been in the papers. She disappeared when out for a jog last Saturday morning. I don’t remember her name—”
“Toni McFetters,” said Kyle. “You’re right. I didn’t recognize her before.”
“Not unexpected under the circumstances.” Nadia was clearly paying more attention to the dead body than she was to any of us; her voice was clinical. “Easiest way to get a corpse to raise is to kill her yourself.”
“Are you saying that she was killed just for this?” Kyle looked cool and composed, but I could smell his agitation.
“Probably,” said Nadia when her great-aunt didn’t say anything. “This kind of magic works best on a fresh corpse. Hopeless to try it with one a mortuary has filled with embalming fluid, and stealing a body from a hospital morgue is tough. Too many people at a hospital.” She glanced over her shoulder, saw Kyle, and clearly, from the consternation on her face, ran the past few minutes of conversation through her head. “I’m so sorry. I’m not used to discussing my work with a layman. I do know this is difficult for you. Whoever did this was willing to kill you—I’d imagine that murder doesn’t bother them much.”
“If it had killed Kyle,” I asked, “would it have died?”
“Deanimated,” said Elizaveta briskly. “It was already dead when it came here. It would be possible to give such a one a directive, and then dissipate the magic after that directive was accomplished.”
“So someone would have come in here and found Kyle dead—killed by this woman who would be dead, too,” I said. “Elizaveta, ma’am—” I tried to work a way around the question I wanted to ask without offending her. “Is there anyone in the Tri-Cities who knows how to animate a dead body like this?”
Elizaveta gave me a smile with teeth, so I guess she was offended. “Yes, my little bunny, I could have done it. But I am obligated to the Alpha of your pack and I am aware of your ties to the lawyer. I would not accept a commission to kill him.” She examined my face and saw that wasn’t enough for me. “No,” she said clearly. “I did not kill this woman, nor did I turn her into a zombie and send her after your lover.”
“My apologies,” I told her. “But I had to ask.”
“The magic keeps them warm,” murmured Nadia into the tense atmosphere. I couldn’t tell if she was blind to the tension between me and Elizaveta, or if she spoke to dispel it. “Almost at normal body temperature. Forensics wouldn’t give an accurate time of death. It would look as though she’d died at the same time he had. A murder-suicide, perhaps. Impossible to tell without further work—but I think she was killed with an overdose of something that overworked her heart. Cocaine, perhaps. Something of that sort.”