you look twice. He had a strong jaw and a wide nose, and his hair was beginning to grow back in a short layer across his scalp and he almost needed to shave his chin. Burn victims usually didn’t have hair regrow; their scars precluded it. But maybe he was transitioning back to the body he’d had before, because he was a zombie. I resisted the urge to reach up and touch the new growth to see.
“I’m not the giving-up sort. I am the easily frustrated sort, though.” A wind kicked up between us. I held my own arms and shivered.
“I don’t put out much body heat. But I function as an adequate windblock.” He grinned and moved to stand beside me. Somewhere, underneath layer after layer of cotton and nylon on both sides, our elbows touched.
Madigan whistled to his dogs and started walking up the street with them.
“Should we follow?”
“He’ll whistle when they’re onto something.” He was watching his friend and the dogs walk down the street, and I was watching him.
“Mind telling me what all this is about?” he asked me.
He had just jumped through every hoop I’d held out and then some. But— “What’s your stake in helping me?”
Scar tissue around his eyes crinkled in thought. “I have to have a stake? I can’t just be a helpful kind of guy?”
“No one is just a helpful kind of guy. I’m a nurse, but I only became a nurse because they freaking pay me.” I stared straight out at the red stone of Mr. November’s town house. From the second floor, the old lady I remembered peered out from between her curtains, and then yanked her head back. At least she was still alive.
“All right.” He rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. “I’ll admit I have some scores to settle. But none of them matter right now. I really am helping you of my own accord.”
“How’d you become a zombie?” I asked.
“I didn’t get a choice.” He looked down at me and smiled softly. “Your turn. What’s behind you that’s got you running so scared?”
I hadn’t thought of it like that before. Maybe he did deserve an explanation. I inhaled to tell him all of it when Madigan whistled from down the street. Jimmie leaned out of the truck bed to butt the back of my head with his nose.
Ti laughed. “You can tell me later, okay?” he said, and began walking away.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Madigan stood at the entrance to an alleyway. Jack and Jenny were barking quietly to one another as they paced down it, like they were having a conversation.
“Did something happen here?” Madigan asked and gestured to include the surrounding area.
“This is near where my friend got jumped.”
“Well, this alley smells like vampires. Not like the one that your shirt smells like, but vampires. They must have been waiting for you.”
It was the first time Madigan had said the V-word. I guessed he was in on the County’s little joke after all.
“How can you tell?” I asked.
He held out a palm full of cigarette butts. “Damn things always smoke.” Jenny bounded ahead, then dug in the snow, unearthing a fresh pile, right beneath a fire escape. She barked.
“Hand-rolled. Apple-flavored tobacco,” Madigan reported.
I put a hand to my stomach. That part was familiar at least—I could remember the stench of rotting apples coming off the vampire that got away.
“They drove off in a car, though—” I looked up the fire escape, snaking a path up the back of a short red town house. Mr. November’s building. The bottom of it was off the ground, but the top easily reached Mr. November’s back window. “How hard would it have been for them to climb up there?”
“Not very.” Ti walked over, bent down, and then launched himself up to catch the edge. He pulled it down along with a light snowfall of rust as it descended. Jenny and Jack ran up it as it hit the ground, paws clattering along. They reached the top landing and barked.
“After you,” I told Ti, and we followed, much more slowly, after them.
The metal landing outside of Mr. November’s room was littered with cigarette butts. I peeked in through the window. The room was now completely trashed. All the photos from the walls were shredded, looking like kindling left in several small piles.
“We didn’t even hear them outside—” I said.
“They could have been there for days. Stalking the place, waiting for you and your friend to show up,” Madigan said. “Cold doesn’t bother them much either.”
“But what about the daylight?”
“Daytimers. Besides, your vampire friend, the one they were waiting for—they knew she couldn’t come here herself during the day.”
“We were attacked by ten of them, though. Ten wouldn’t have fit up here.”
Ti paced in the small area. “Then one called the rest.”
“Yeah.” They had had enough time, what with Anna and I arguing, loudly, inside. I couldn’t imagine one of them managing to be quiet outside on the escape—which felt like it was threatening to disconnect from the wall and collapse with each movement we made—but she’d been so emotional. Which was strange, when you considered the fact that she was a vampire.
A baying sound began from below. Jenny and Jack raced back down the escape, closely followed by Madigan. Ti and I followed, the rickety structure feeling less certain every step. I suddenly remembered that I’m not so fond of heights, especially not at high speed—and maybe three days’ worth of work and worry caught up with me at once. Something small and black flashed in the corner of one eye, and I stopped quickly on the stairs.
“Are you okay?” Ti caught my arm as I threatened to tumble forward.
“I’m fine.” I stood for a second and blinked a lot. It must have been a flake of rust—or vampire ash. I rubbed at my eye, but kept slowly going down, Ti at my side.
We exited the alley, with Ti’s hand on my elbow, supporting me. I kept blinking, but the speck of gray wouldn’t disappear. Madigan stood near his truck with his three dogs beside him, holding on to the shoulder of a pissed-off teen. He was dressed like the thugs hovering in the background on Nyjara’s album covers, puffy black leather coat, black pants, white leather shoes, only he didn’t look angry enough to pull off the look. Given time, though—
“I just wanted to pet your dog, mister!” the teenager said, yanking his arm out of Madigan’s grasp.
“And not steal my rims?”
The teenager cursed under his breath. “You think you got anything worth stealing? Please.”
I was still muddling with my eye; the black speck hadn’t gone anywhere. I hadn’t had a stroke, had I? I held my arms out, and could see them both, even and unwavering, in front of me.
“Edie?” Ti asked.
“My face—it’s all the same, right? None of it is drooping?” I stuck out my tongue, wondering if it was still even. Then I held one hand up in front of my face.
I covered my bad eye first and saw Ti watching me, with my good eye. He was clearly worried. I covered my good eye up, and looked at him with my bad eye … and saw a glow. Like the afterimage you’d get from rubbing any eye too hard, lights and blurs. Only I wasn’t rubbing it now, and the lights wouldn’t stop. Had I somehow managed to get instantaneous glaucoma?
“Look, you don’t just pet another man’s dog. You’re lucky that he didn’t bite you,” Madigan went on.
“He was wagging his tail. He seemed friendly enough,” the teen protested. I heard Jimmie’s tail thump from inside the truck’s bed—his guard dog duty had been a clever sham, and this kid’d walked by, and—I looked over at the kid and winked.
