He frowned at me, that flash of anger back in his eyes. “What kind of reason do you want?”
“One good enough to make me disturb the dead.”
“I’m willing to pay your rather exorbitant fee, Ms. Blake; I would think that would inspire you.”
“Money isn’t everything, Mr. Bennington. Why do you want her raised from the dead? What do you hope to gain from it?”
“Gain,” he said. “I don’t know what you mean by that.”
“I don’t, either, but you keep not answering my original question; I thought maybe if I rephrased it you would.”
“I don’t want to answer either question,” he said.
“Then I won’t raise your wife. There are other animators at Animators Inc. who will be happy to take your money, and they don’t charge my rates.”
“Everyone says you are the best.”
I shrugged. I was never sure what to say to things like that, and found silence worked best.
“They say you are a true necromancer and have power over all types of undead.”
I kept my face blank, which I’d gotten better at over the years. He was right, but I didn’t think it was commonly known. “You’ll turn a girl’s head with talk like that.”
“You have the highest number of executions of any member of the U.S. Marshals preternatural branch. Most of them were rogue vampires, but some of them were wereanimals.”
I shrugged. “That’s a matter of record, so yeah, but it has no bearing on what you want from me, Mr. Bennington.”
“I suppose it has as little to do with my request as your reputation as a sort of female Casanova.”
“My love life really has nothing to do with my ability to raise the dead.”
“If you can truly control all manner of undead, then it might explain how you can slay vampires and still date them.”
Jean-Claude, one of the vampires in question, was a little iffy on who wore the pants in our relationship sometimes because of my powers; just as I was iffy on how much of our relationship was my idea because of his vampire powers over me. We had a sort of metaphysical detente. “Jean-Claude and I were in the papers recently, so that didn’t take much research.”
“One of St. Louis ’s hottest couples, I believe was mentioned in the article.”
I tried not to squirm with embarrassment, and managed it. “Jean-Claude is pretty enough that anyone on his arm looks hot.”
“That much modesty doesn’t become a woman,” Bennington said.
I blinked at him, frowning. “Sorry, I don’t know what you mean by that.”
He studied my face, then said, “You really don’t, do you?”
“I just said that.” I felt like I had missed something, and didn’t like it. “I am sorry for your pain, but you’re not winning me over.”
“I need to know if your reputation is real, or just talk, like so many of the tall tales about you.”
“I’ve earned my reputation, but if you really did your research on me then you also know that I don’t raise zombies for kicks, or thrill seekers, or tormented relatives unless they have a plan.”
“A plan. What kind of plan?”
“You tell me. Why-do-you-want-your-wife-raised-as-a-zombie?”
“I understood the question, Ms. Blake; you don’t have to say it slowly.”
“Then answer the question, or this interview is over.”
He glared at me, that anger darkening his eyes to a nice storm-cloud gray. His hands made fists on the chair arms, and a muscle in his jaw flexed as he ground his teeth in frustration. Iron self-control it was.
I stood up, smoothing my skirt down in back, out of habit. I’d been polite because I knew how much money he’d paid just to talk to me, and since I was going to refuse I wanted him to feel he’d gotten something for his money, but I’d had enough.
“I need you because there isn’t much left of her body. Most animators need a nearly intact body to do the job; I don’t have an intact body to work with.” He wouldn’t look at me as he said it, and there was a flinching around his mouth, a tension to those eyes he was hiding from me. Here was the pain.
I sat back down and my voice was gentler. “How did she die?”
“It was an explosion. Our vacation home had a gas leak. She’d gone up ahead of me. I was going to join her the next day, but that night…” His fists tightened, mottling the skin, and that muscle in his jaw bulged as if he were trying to bite through something hard and bitter. “I loved my wife, Ms. Blake.” He sounded like the words choked him. His dark gray eyes gleamed when he raised them back to me. He held on to his unshed tears the way he held on to everything else: tightly.
“I believe you, and I really am sorry for your loss, but I need to know what you think you’ll get out of raising her like this. She will be a zombie. Mine look very human, Mr. Bennington, very human, but they aren’t. I don’t want you to believe that I can raise her up and you can keep her with you, because you can’t.”
“Why can’t I?”
I made my voice soft as I told him the truth. “Because eventually she’ll start to rot, and you don’t want that to be your last visual of your wife.”
“I heard you raise zombies that don’t even know they’re dead.”
“Not at first,” I said, “but eventually the magic wears off, and it’s… not pretty, Mr. Bennington.”
“Please,” he said, “no one else can do this but you.”
“If I could raise her from the dead for real for you, maybe I would. I won’t debate the whole religious/philosophical problem with you, but the truth is that even I can’t do what you want. I raise zombies, Mr. Bennington, and that is not the same thing as resurrection of the dead. I’m good, maybe the best there is in the business, but I’m not that good. No one is.”
A tear began to slide down each cheek, and I knew from my own hatred of crying that the tears were hot, and his throat hurt with holding it all in. “I don’t beg, Ms. Blake-ever-but I’ll beg you now. I’ll double your fee. I’ll do whatever it takes for you to do this for me.”
That he was willing to double my fee meant he had as much money as he seemed to have; a lot of people who wore designer suits and Rolex watches were wearing their money. I stood again. “I am sorry, but I don’t have the ability to do what you want. No one on this earth can bring your wife back from the dead in the way you want.”
“It’s too late for her to be a vampire, then?”
“First, she’d have to have been bitten before she died to have any chance of raising her as a vampire. Second, you say she died in an explosion.”
He nodded, his face ignoring the tears, except for the pain in his eyes and the hard line of his jaw.
“Fire is one of the few things that destroy everything, even the preternatural.”
“One of the reasons I’m here, Ms. Blake, is that most animators have trouble raising the dead when there’re just burned bits left. I thought that was because of how little they had to work with, but is it because of the fire itself?”
It was a good question, an intelligent question, but I didn’t have a good answer to give back to him. “I’m honestly not sure. I know that most animators need a nearly complete body to raise from the dead, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen an article on whether death by fire impedes the process.” I stood up and walked around the desk to offer him my hand. “I am sorry that I can’t help you, Mr. Bennington, but trust me that what I could do for you, you don’t really want.”
He didn’t stand up, just looked at me. “You’re the girlfriend of the Master Vampire of St. Louis. Isn’t he powerful enough to overcome all that and raise her as a vampire?”
I was a lot more than just Jean-Claude’s girlfriend. I was his human servant, but we tried to keep that out of the media. The police that I worked with as a U.S. Marshal already mistrusted me because I was having sex with a vampire; if they were certain of our mystical connection they’d like it even less.
I lowered my hand and tried to explain. “I’m sorry, truly, but the Master of the City is still bound by some of the same laws of metaphysics as all vampires. Your wife would have to have been bitten several times before death, and the explosion would have destroyed her even if she had been a vampire.”
I put my hand back out and hoped he’d take it this time.
