Dirt #3
As soon as I got into the car, I slammed the door shut and twisted to look at Poppy. Quickly I explained what I’d learned.
“She probably used some of the life force she stole from them to raise the zombie.” Poppy groaned and leaned back in her seat. “Fantastic. Another trial. I’m never going to get back to work.”
I pulled out my cell phone. “I’m going to call this witch and see if I can arrange a meeting.”
“Try to control the meeting place,” Poppy warned. “Whoever this is, she left without laying the zombie to rest, so she clearly doesn’t care about collateral damage.”
Alex nodded slowly. “Those who deal in death hide their faces from the beauty of life.”
I shared a look with Poppy, trying to keep my eyebrows down. “Well said, Alex, well said.”
“Alex, you stay in the car. We need to make sure she doesn’t see you.”
Alex tilted his head. “I often go unseen by those who confuse darkness with despair.”
Peasblossom narrowed her eyes at Alex from her position on the dashboard as she slipped on the straps that held the small warming stone I’d given her to her chest. “Do you always talk like this, or are you having us on?”
“I like it,” Poppy said, patting Alex on the shoulder. “I think he’s poetic.”
“All of life’s a stage,” Alex said seriously.
Peasblossom jumped off the dashboard and glided to my shoulder, flying lower than usual with the extra weight of the stone. “We need to work on attracting a less weird clientele.”
“I’m a witch helping people with Otherworld-related crime,” I reminded her, a hint of indignance pushing my voice up a notch. “Weird comes with the job.”
“Got that right,” Poppy agreed, grabbing her backpack from the floor of the back seat. Jenkins’s skull slid side to side, the rustle of the rest of his bones emanating from the backpack. “Let’s go take care of this weird so we can move on to more entertaining weird.”
She unzipped her backpack and scowled. “Damn.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked, pausing with my hand on the door handle.
“I’m out of Reese’s hearts. All I have left is the regular peanut butter cups my neighbor gave me.”
I nodded sympathetically. “The cups aren’t as good.”
“You know what I really need right now?”
“Reese’s eggs,” I guessed.
Poppy beamed. “Too right. They’re the best.”
“Truer words.” I rubbed my stomach. Great, now I had a sugar craving.
I opened the car door, turning to make sure Alex was out of sight of anyone passing by before I got out. The gothic young man had obediently slid down in his seat, hiding his head from view.
“Where are we?” Poppy asked as she got out of the car.
She looked around the suburban neighborhood, squinting at the combination of neatly kept houses and homes that looked like they were either about to be condemned or were soon to be featured in a Hollywood horror movie.
“There’s something familiar about this place. ”
“This neighborhood was a victim of the housing collapse of 2008–2009.” I pointed to the house in front of us.
“The people who lived here were evicted, but the bank didn’t transfer the house title out of their name and never bothered to tell the evicted tenants.
It’s what people in the industry call a ‘zombie house.’ Pretty much just an abandoned property. ”
“So some of these houses have people living in them and some are abandoned?” Poppy frowned. “Weird, but that’s not why it looks familiar. I just can’t put my finger on it.”
We headed up the driveway to the door. There was no car but ours in the driveway or the street in front of the house, so we must have beaten the other witch here.
“My main concern was avoiding collateral damage to other people, and this house has an empty lot next to it.” I gestured at the overgrown field next to the house sitting on the end of the block.
“I just hope she shows up.” Poppy climbed the stairs to the porch, careful to avoid the broken boards. “Anyone without the sense to stick around to lay down a zombie they’ve raised is too dangerous to have running around the city.”
“If she doesn’t show, we’ll find another way to track her down,” I promised, opening the front door to let Poppy go inside first. I watched the dog skull clinking against the backpack’s zipper as she passed me, reflecting that Poppy was one of the most creative necromancers I’d ever known.
Not many people had a zombie-raising service dog.
“Shade, she’s here.”
“What?” I followed Poppy’s voice, picking my way through a litter-strewn living room to the window that looked out over the backyard and the empty lot next door. “I didn’t see a car anywhere.”
“Maybe she parked close by and walked.” Poppy pointed to a figure standing underneath one of the trees in the backyard. “I’m guessing that’s her.”
“Oh, great, so we’re meeting her outside?” Peasblossom demanded.
“You have the warming stone. You’ll be fine.”
Peasblossom grumbled but stayed hidden in my collar as Poppy and I made our way to the back door that led outside.
My night vision was much better than a human’s, and I was able to see the woman clearly in the light from the almost full moon.
She was short, an inch under my own five foot three, with dark skin and long hair twisted into braids.
Her blue jeans had a brown leather pouch hanging from the belt, and her hand rested close enough to it that it felt vaguely threatening.
I let my magic rise inside me, humming directly under my skin, just in case.
“Catherine Scott?” I said, when we were close enough to speak without shouting.
The woman smiled. “You must be Shade and Poppy?”
“Yes. Thank you so much for meeting us on such short notice.” I gestured behind me to the house. “We could go inside and get out of the wind?”
“I’m fine out here.” Catherine looked back at the house. “Any reason you chose an abandoned house instead of a nice warm coffee shop?”
“It will be easier to see if anyone else is around here, and, like I said when we talked earlier, I think I’m being spied on. Someone at work. Which is what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“So you said on the phone.”
There was something about the smile that never quite left Catherine’s mouth that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
“Our friends recommended you,” Poppy added. “Gabrielle and Lauren.”
“So she said on the phone.”
My magic reached through my body to my fingertips.
Something was wrong.
“Lauren said you can raise a zombie,” Poppy said, inserting a hint of excited awe into her voice. “Is that true? Could you do it for me?” She scowled. “You wouldn’t believe what our boss puts us through. He makes everyone’s life hell. He—”
“I could raise a zombie for you,” Catherine said slowly, her eyes never leaving Poppy’s. “But I’m not sure you’d want me to.”
“Why?” Poppy asked.
“Well, what if you didn’t approve of the way I did it?” Catherine pouted. “What if you reported me to the authorities? Tattled to the Vanguard?”
“Shade, there’s something moving by those trees!” Peasblossom hissed.
“Do I know you?” Poppy spoke slower now, a furrow between her brows as she studied Catherine as if seeing her for the first time.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if you did,” Catherine said, stepping farther away from the tree. Her voice hardened. “You are so incredibly nosy, after all.”
Poppy raised her hand to point at the pouch hanging from Catherine’s belt. “Hey, that’s not yours. Where did you get that?”
Suddenly a figure lurched from behind the tree Catherine had just been leaning against. It was a woman wearing a cream-colored dress decorated with roses and a strand of pearls around her neck. Her skin looked like thin papier-maché, and her long white curly hair shifted in the wind.
I knew what she was even before I saw her milky, unseeing eyes.
Catherine had brought a zombie.
The zombie lurched toward us, and Catherine took off at a run through the empty lot, heading for the street on the other side.
“Poppy, look out!” I shouted.
Poppy was already turning to face off with the woman who’d just shambled from her grave.
“Now I know why this place looks familiar. There’s an old church less than a block away.
And it has a graveyard. She must have raised the zombie there and brought it with her.
” She slung her backpack onto the ground and took the dog skull off the back with one hand while unzipping the bag of bones with the other.
“I’ll handle the zombie. You go after Catherine! ”
I moved a few feet to the side, keeping my eye on the zombie. Her dead eyes locked on Poppy as she shuffled forward, her head held slightly to the side as if her neck weren’t quite strong enough to hold it.
“Peasblossom, get eyes on Catherine.”
“Right!” Peasblossom wriggled out of my collar and leapt from my shoulder, only the sound of her wings buzzing as she gained altitude telling me what direction she’d gone in.
“Poppy, I don’t want to leave you—”
“Jenkins and I are more than a match for one zombie,” Poppy said, winking at me as she laid the terrier’s bones on the ground. “Even without the sugar rush. Don’t let Catherine get away.”
“I’m not worried you can’t handle the zombie. I’m worried this is too easy and there’s something worse.”
“All the more reason to catch her.”
I cursed and started to run in the direction Catherine had disappeared in, not staying to watch Poppy raise Jenkins. Poppy is a professional, I told myself firmly. She knows what she’s doing.
“Shade, she’s over here!”
I followed Peasblossom’s voice and spotted Catherine up ahead. She’d parked her car behind the line of trees that edged the street where it met the empty lot, and as I cleared the trees, she reached the driver’s side door.
“Not so fast!” Peasblossom bellowed.