Zombies Sold Separately (6 page)

When I was ready, I jogged back downstairs to meet Olivia in the office. The moment I opened the office door, she nailed me with an eraser. Right on the nose.

“Ow.” I rubbed my nose and caught the next flying projectile in my hand. “Okay, you got me.”

“Not enough.” Olivia slid her rubber-band gun into her top drawer. “But it’ll do for now.” I gave her a pretend glare as she grabbed her Mets jacket and met me at the door. “Let’s go, Princess.”

“You are so pushing it today,” I said as Fae bells jingled and jangled as I opened the door. She also knew I didn’t like to be called Princess. “You might want to sleep with one eye open tonight.”

“Ha,” she said before heading down the sidewalk to where our corner office–slash–apartment building was.

Even with New York City’s programs and pledge to get all homeless people into shelters, there were still an estimated four thousand people living on the street, so we didn’t anticipate difficulty finding some to interview.

Since the teenage girl who mentioned a homeless man happened to live in my part of the city, the Upper West Side, Olivia and I walked from the office, down 104th to Broadway. There it would be easy finding panhandlers and the obviously homeless.

A bit of sunshine made it through a spot in the gray cloud cover as we walked, but then it was gone, leaving the city looking tired. I shoved my hands into my jacket pockets and we elbowed our way through the crowds once we hit Broadway. Yellow taxis zipped by, weaving through traffic like bumblebees buzzing through a field of sleeping sunflowers.

The first man we met looked tired, haggard, but gave me a smile and an enthusiastic “thank you” when I dropped a ten-dollar bill into his almost empty collection jar. I had a feeling that any other cash he’d received was tucked away in his coat pocket.

I returned his smile, but it slipped away as I took in his obviously malnourished body and gaunt face. His threadbare but relatively clean clothing hung on him, several sizes too large for his thin frame.

Despite his fatigued and starved appearance, it was easy to see he took pains to clean himself up. I had never become a hardened New Yorker like some, but I was used to panhandlers. I still felt for him as I read his sign that looked like it had been torn from a cereal box, the message written on the side that was blank and gray:

lost job lost home

wife and 2 kids

Please help

I took a deep breath and met his soft brown eyes. “Can I ask you a couple of questions?”

The man said, “Thank you,” to a woman who dropped a dollar into his jar before he returned his attention to me. “Sure.”

His accent had a distinctive southern twang to it, but I wasn’t familiar enough with the South to guess what state he came from.

“Do you and your family sleep in one of the shelters at night?” I asked.

He nodded. “Crowded this winter but as long as it’s a place out of the cold, we thank God and count our blessings.”

“Have you noticed a rise in the homeless population?” I said, hoping he had something that I could use.

“Not more than a person could expect in a place like this,” he said.

“What about at night?” Olivia asked.

“Don’t get out much at night.” He said, “Thank you,” to another passerby who dropped change that rattled in the jar. He addressed Olivia again. “Keep to ourselves. Don’t want no trouble.”

“I understand,” I said, disappointed that our first try hadn’t turned up anything. “Thank you for your help,” I added before Olivia and I moved on.

The next panhandlers we came across, a woman and a man, were equally unhelpful. One was rude, the other very kind.

We found a guy who was reclined with his back up against a brick wall. In one hand held a sign painted on a broken piece of plywood that had me laughing too hard to talk for a moment.

BOOGIEMAN ATE MY FAMILY

SPARE ANY CHANGE

FOR NEW CLOSET DOOR?

Just for making me laugh I dug in the front pocket of my jeans and handed him a ten. Olivia didn’t seem as impressed as I was—but then she’d been an NYPD cop before I met her and had probably seen it all.

I think the man was smiling—his tangled beard was so bushy it was hard to tell for sure. But his “Thank you, ma’am” was loud and clear and he had a spark to his dark eyes. He didn’t look as though life had beaten him down. He had the appearance of a man who took it a day at a time and found things to smile about.

My gut told me he wasn’t one of the panhandlers who weren’t really homeless and took advantage of the city’s tourists. And my gut is usually right on.

“What’s your name?” I asked after I handed him the cash.

He looked surprised that I’d hung around and was asking his name. “Victor,” he said. His voice was deep and lovely. He should probably have been singing for his supper with a voice like that.

“Victor, we’d like to ask you a few questions.” Olivia bulldozed right into it with a tough expression to her tone and on her features.

His expression shuttered and if he’d been smiling he probably wasn’t anymore. “You’re cops.”

I held up my hand to Olivia to indicate that I wanted her to shut up so that I could handle the interview. Sometimes she had the grace of a Gargoyle in a ballet with Mikhail Baryshnikov.

“We’re private investigators.” I kept my voice businesslike and professional but not hard-core like Olivia could be. “Can we talk for a moment?”

The man looked down at the ten in his hand and then back at me. “If you have another one of these.”

Olivia gave a disgruntled noise while I pulled another ten out of my pocket. He reached for it but I shook my head.

“I want to talk a little with you first.” I stuffed my hands into my jacket which hid the money from his gaze. “Do you sleep in one of the city’s shelters, or on the street?”

Victor said, “I hate the shelters.”

I studied him, frowning inside. “But it’s freezing out here.”

With a shrug, he said, “I’m from Alaska. I dig the cold.”

“Are there more people than usual hanging around who are not in shelters?”

He tilted his head to the side. “Yeah. I guess. Hadn’t really thought about it.”

“Have you noticed anything strange at all?” I looked around me as if I might see something weird now. “At night.”

“Some of the dudes I’ve seen hanging around just aren’t cool,” he said. “Mostly everyone keeps to themselves but these other guys walk around like they’re mental.”

“Mental?” I said, puzzled.

“Like they belong in a mental institution,” Olivia said.

“Oh.” I studied Victor’s face. “Have you seen any of them attack people?”

Victor’s expression changed, his eyes looking almost angry. “Just because we don’t have money or a place to live doesn’t mean we should be blamed for people getting hurt.”

“I know.” This was not going easy, but I still felt like I was getting somewhere. “But these strangers—you don’t know them.”

Tenseness seemed to leave his body. “Hadn’t thought about that.”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out.” I pushed my hair behind my ear. “Some strange things are happening in this city.”

Victor gave a short laugh. “Hell, lady. This is New York City. Strange isn’t so strange here.”

“Got me there.” I slipped the ten out of my jacket pocket. With it I included a business card.

He took both and looked at the card. “I know. Call you if I see any weird shit.”

“Please do.” I smiled. “Good luck with that closet door.”

Six not-so-helpful panhandlers later, Olivia and I spotted a bearded man with a giant sign. He’d taken a black marker and had written in huge capital letters:

MY FATHER WAS

KILLED BY NINJAS

NEED MONEY FOR

KARATE LESSONS

Bonus points for making me smile again.

By the smooth skin around his eyes and on the parts of his face his beard didn’t cover, I could tell he was only in his early thirties. I wondered what his story was.

The weight of the roll of cash in my pocket was considerably lighter but I still had plenty.

After giving him a ten, Olivia and I questioned the man named Richard. He was a thoughtful man, answering our questions after considering each one with slow deliberation.

“Yes,” Richard said when I asked if he’d noticed anything stranger than normal about some of the homeless on the streets at night. “Some of these new guys are creepy. A few that I’ve seen look like they crawled out of a grave.”

I shuddered at that image.

“That went well,” Olivia said when we headed back to the office. Her tone held sarcasm, indicating she didn’t think it went well at all.

“I don’t know about you,” I said, “but I think your hunch was a good one and that in part that was affirmed by the two who were most helpful.”

“I suppose.” Olivia brought her hands out of her jacket pockets when we reached the office door. “I didn’t expect much to come out of this anyway. It’s a far-fetched idea to begin with.”

“I don’t think it’s so far-fetched.” I unlocked the door with my air elemental magic and Olivia stomped the snow from her boots as I opened the door. “And I don’t think it’s all a coincidence.” I shrugged out of my coat and tossed it on the credenza, next to a stack of file folders. “Something is going on and we need to figure out exactly what that is.”

“Whatever you say, grape butt,” Olivia said with a smirk.

My retribution was swift as I whirled and nailed her in her belly with a jumbo eraser.

Heh.

SEVEN

“Your Highness.” I set Kali’s Waterford crystal bowl on the hardwood floor in the kitchen as I called to her. “The Fancy Feast is going to get cold.”

Kali liked her food a little warm, so I indulged her by heating it for a few seconds in the microwave.

The Persian slipped into the kitchen. Her head was tilted at a regal angle. She gave me the briefest glance with her haughty gold eyes before she began to take dainty bites out of her warm dinner.

I rolled my eyes. Why couldn’t Rodán have given me a puppy? Something adorable like Fred was in his Doppler form as a golden retriever. Except a real dog. Not any kind of Shifter dog, of course.

As I started to walk out of the kitchen I looked over my shoulder and saw Kali had paused and was staring at me with those wicked eyes. At that moment I could almost imagine Kali as a Shifter who had infiltrated my home. Maybe she was. How else could she reach a lingerie drawer three feet up and destroy its contents. A cat with a panty destruction fetish … Go figure.

A strange feeling tickled my spine and I looked away from her and headed into my living room.

If Rodán had given me a Doppler or Shifter instead of an ordinary housecat I’d have had to kill him. Not that he would do anything like that. Besides, no one could
give
a Doppler or Shifter. That was equivalent to selling one human to another. It was an absolutely absurd thought.

Shifters did make great spies for hire in the human world. It was easy to fool norms.

On the other hand it was very difficult to fool most paranorms. Vampires and Witches, and any other human-born individual with paranormal talents, were the exception. They didn’t have the same kind of sixth sense that allows the rest of us to recognize another paranorm the moment we’re in the same vicinity. Para-radar. Sort of.

I shook off all of my crazy thoughts. It seemed that since I came so close to death with the Vampires that I’d been pinging all over the place, one thought bouncing against another.

My skin began to tingle. The sun was about to set. Even when the New York City sky is shadowed with winter, I don’t shift until the sun actually sinks below the invisible horizon.

The wood flooring was cool beneath my bare feet as I walked toward my bedroom and began to strip off my clothing. The tingling sensations grew stronger and by the time I was in my panties and bra I felt the shift begin.

I tossed my clothing onto the bed, then leaned forward, stretching my body into the change. My body felt strong and lean, and filled with power.

When I shift, my movements are slow and sensual. Like a cat I’m graceful and sinuous as I ease into one stretch after another. Dark Elves and Light Elves are inherently sensual beings and I’m no exception.

As I moved, my black hair rippled into luxurious cobalt blue, black highlights shimmering in the soft glow from my new bedside lamps. My softer and more sensitive skin tone turned the faintest shade of amethyst marble as my body tingled with the change.

I raised my hands over my head and reached high before slowly lowering them as my muscles shifted and my arms and legs became more sculpted, stronger, more powerful.