Nina stepped outside to stand near her, draping a coat around her shoulders and handing her a knit cap she pulled over her damp hair. “Carl’s a zombie,” she said, as George put on the jacket even though she discovered she couldn’t really feel the cold. “We found him in a witch doctor’s fucking house when we were on a case for Marty’s sister-in-law, Mara.”
A witch doctor and a zombie. She wanted to be surprised, but George guessed this was going to be her norm from here on out. Instead, she listened intently, needing to understand what this all meant.
Nina drove her hands into her pockets and rocked back on her heels as the blowing wind deposited flakes of snow in her shiny dark hair and Gladys pressed herself against the vampire’s legs. “He was a shitshow, always screaming and breaking pieces of his limbs off.”
George held up a hand and swallowed hard. She had a bit of a weak stomach and she didn’t want to yak in front of the vampire for fear she might show that weakness.
Inhaling, she took a long gulp and asked, “His limbs broke off, you say?”
“Yeah. That’s why he’s got all that duct tape on his elbow. But that’s not the fucking point. The point is, he was an accident like us. A dumbass spell to try and save him gone really wrong, which left him pretty fucked. He’s never been able to tell us who he was before he was accidentally zombified or what that time was like in his life. We don’t know if he had family, or someone who would miss him. I mean, he was tied up, for fuck’s sake—because he was reckless and a danger to not just everybody else, but to himself.”
“Tied up?” George whispered in horror. Who would do that to such a sweet boy?
“But we took his ass out of there as fast we could, and we sorta did a rehab on him. He’s a good fucking kid, George. He’s smart. He’s funny. He’s sweeter than anyone I damn well know, and I want to kill the motherfucker who left him in such fucking shitty shape on the doorstep of a witch doctor.”
Reaching out, her fingers chilled from the cold, George put a hand on Nina’s arm. “The things I felt weren’t specific to people, Nina. I mean, I didn’t see faces attached to the emotions or anything like that. He’s been trapped inside his body, I take it? Unable to communicate?”
Nina made a face as she looked out at the long expanse of lawn in front of them. “Yeah. For a long time, he thumped on shit to get our attention and he’d howl. He was always running the fuck off. We could never keep track of him. I was always asking, ‘Where the fuck is Carl?’ But he’s come a long damn way. He can read now. He babysits his little sister Charlie. He’s talking, even though it’s hard for him. He’s gentle as a damn lamb, but mostly, he’s mine. He’s ours. We love him. Fuck all, I hate that he was hurting and couldn’t tell us.”
“Do you want to know what he was feeling?”
Nina looked down at her work boots, her eyes soft, her body language far less tense than what George had experienced so far. “I do,” she whispered in her husky voice.
Tucking her hands inside the jacket, George’s eyes filled with tears. “He was scared. Really scared, and without the ability to talk, or to tell anyone how he felt, he suffered in ways I don’t know how to put into words. Not physically, but mentally. I think he had a bunch of questions he was unable to ask, but the words were all jumbled up in his head for some reason. I felt the emotions and they were…hard. That’s the best word I have for it. They were just so damn hard.”
Nina nodded as if she had come to accept this about Carl. “We think it’s because he doesn’t have a fully functioning brain. He’s only half zombie, and we figure the half human side of him is at war with the zombie half.” She shrugged and rocked back on her feet. “I dunno. It’s all just a bunch of sad-ass theories. I was just hoping he’d told you something we couldn’t understand.”
“But Nina,” George said, gripping the vampire’s arm and squeezing. “He also feels love now. So much love, comfort, and acceptance from all of you, and joy. There’s joy, and most of all, his feelings about you. You’re foremost in his thoughts. He feels like you’re a mother to him.”
The vampire rolled her tongue along the inside of her cheek and looked away from George’s gaze. “Does he? I’m glad. Really fucking glad.”
And George was, too. As they stood there, watching the snow fall and the wind blow all the fancy trees Marty’s yard featured, she absorbed, maybe for the first time, what Titus meant about her experience helping other people.
And she was glad, too.
The door creaked open, making them both turn around to find Wanda, her beautiful face smiling at them. “Dinner’s on, girls. Get it while it’s hot.”
“Be right there,” Nina said, clearing her throat.
Wanda closed the door with a soft hush, leaving them alone again.
George with her thoughts and Nina with hers.
“Hey,” the vampire said suddenly. “You okay? Must have been a lot of shit to deal with all at once.”
George nodded, coming down from the rush of emotions she hadn’t been prepared to receive. “I’m okay.”
Now Nina reached a hand out of her, and when George let her envelope her fingers, she said, “Thanks. I don’t know what the fuck that was in there. Some kind of weird Vulcan mind-meld or whatever, but it looks like you helped my kid. He looked lighter, happier, I guess. You best believe, I won’t ever forget
