He stood up then, and shook my hand. He held on to my hand and gave me serious eye contact. “You could raise her as a zombie that wouldn’t know it was dead, and wouldn’t look dead.”
I didn’t pull my hand back, but let him hold it, though I didn’t like it. I never liked being touched by strangers. “I could, but in a few days she’d begin to deteriorate. If her mind went first then she’d just stop being your wife, but if the body began to rot before the mind went, then she’d be trapped in a decaying body, and she’d know it.” I put my hand over both of ours. “You don’t want that for her, or for yourself.”
He let go of my hand then, and stepped back. His eyes were lost rather than angry. “But a few days to say good-bye, a few days to be with her, might be worth it.”
I almost asked if by “be with her” he meant sex, but I did not want to know. I didn’t need to know because I wasn’t raising this zombie. There had been cases of other animators raising deceased spouses and having that happen, which is why most of us make the client understand that the zombie goes back in the grave the same night it comes out. It avoided a whole host of problems if you just put the dead person back in its grave immediately. Problems that made me have to fight off visuals I did not need in my head. I’d seen way too many zombies to think sex was ever a good idea with the shambling dead.
I walked him to the door, and he came, no longer arguing with me. I wasn’t sure I’d actually won the argument. In fact, I would bet he’d try to find someone else to raise his wife from the dead. There were a couple of animators in the United States who could do it, but they would probably refuse on the same grounds I had. The creep factor was entirely too high.
The door opened and he went through. Normally, that would have meant I could close the door and be done with him, but I caught a glimpse of someone who made me smile in spite of my client’s grief. But then again, I’d learned a long time ago that if I bled for every broken heart in my office, I’d have bled to death from other people’s wounds long ago.
Nathaniel had his back to us, and in the overlarge tank top with those boy-cut sleeves, a lot of muscle showed. His auburn hair was tied in a thick braid that traced down almost every inch of his five-foot, seven-inch frame. The braid trailed over wide, muscular shoulders down that back, to the narrow waist, and the tight rise of his ass, to fall down the muscled length of his thighs, calves, until the end of his braid stopped just short of his ankles. He had the longest hair of anyone I’d ever dated. His hair was darker than normal, still damp from the shower that he’d caught between dance class and picking me up for lunch. I tried to look reasonably intelligent before he turned around, because if just seeing him from behind made me stupid-faced, the front view was better.
It was Jason who peeked out from around Nathaniel’s wider shoulders to grin at me. He had that look in his eyes, that mischievous look that said he was going to push his luck in some way. There was no malice to Jason, just an overly developed sense of fun. I gave him the frown that should have told him,
He was handsome, too, but he, like me, was not the prettiest person in the room with Nathaniel standing there. He was Nathaniel’s best friend, and I lived with the prettiest boy in the room, so we were used to it. What made Jason appealing was not the packaging-the blue eyes; the yellow-blond hair, now long enough that he’d started having Nathaniel French-braid it for dance class; the almost-not-there tank tops and shorts, which showed off his own muscular and very nice body, all packed into a nice five-foot, four-inch frame-it was that grin and that light of mischief that made his eyes bright with thinking naughty thoughts. Not sex, though that was in there, but just a host of things he knew he shouldn’t do, but so wanted to do.
To forestall whatever he had planned, I said, “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Bennington, and sorry I can’t help you more.”
Jason’s a good guy at heart, and his face sobered, and I knew he’d take the hint. Nathaniel turned at the sound of my voice, but his face was sober, too. He knew what kind of work I did, and knew that I dealt with more grieving relatives than most police.
I had a moment to see those huge violet eyes, like an Easter surprise in a face that was somewhere between beautiful and handsome. I could never decide if it was the eyes or all that hair, then he’d pull the hair back so you could see his face. I’d gazed at him sleeping often enough to know that he was just that beautiful.
Bennington stopped right outside the door, looking at the two men. “Aren’t you going to introduce me?” He was climbing back into his blank face, all that anger and disappointment shoved down behind the iron of his will.
I wasn’t, actually. “Maybe they’re not mine to introduce,” I said.
Bennington looked back at Nathaniel and Jason. “You’re dancers at Guilty Pleasures. The website says you’re a wereleopard and a werewolf. My wife went on a shapeshifter night. She said it was extraordinary watching you slip your skin and change shape.”
I sighed and said, “Mr. Bennington, this is Brandon and Ripley.” I used their stage names automatically, because once someone recognizes someone from the club, it’s just safer to continue to be that persona. All the dancers had their share of overzealous fans. It was doubly problematic when they were one of the shapeshifters who danced. Hate crimes are alive and well. Hell, there are still some western states where varmint laws cover wereanimals, so you can kill one and all you have to say is they attacked you, and get a blood test prove that the dead human body was a lycanthrope of some kind. Nathaniel was also my leopard to call, and Jason my wolf to call. Through Jean-Claude’s vampire marks and my own necromancy, I’d become a sort of living vampire with some of the powers of a master. Jean-Claude was descended from Belle Morte’s line of vampires. They fed on love and lust as well as blood, and I’d inherited the need to feed through sex and love. If I didn’t feed periodically I began to die. I might have been stubborn enough and embarrassed enough to simply let it happen, but long before I died Nathaniel would die, drained to death by his “master,” and Damian, my vampire servant, would die, and then Jason. Suicide was selfish enough, but that would have been ridiculous. I was still making peace with the metaphysical mess my life had become.
Once upon a time I’d have sensed their beasts through the office door, but I was getting more control and so were they, so it was like with normal folks. They could surprise me if they wanted to.
Jason, aka Ripley, smiled, and it filled his face with that cheerful, hail-fellow-well-met that he could turn on and off. “I don’t remember seeing you at the club, Mr. Bennington.”
“I haven’t been, but as I said my wife visited you once or twice.” He hesitated, then got his phone out of the inside pocket of his suit coat. It was one of those phones with the big screen so you could watch video on it, if you didn’t mind having the picture be the size of your palm. Bennington pushed some buttons and held the phone out to Jason. “Do you remember her?”
Jason smiled, but shook his head. “It must have been on a night I wasn’t working. I’d have remembered her.”
Bennington held it out to Nathaniel. He didn’t touch the phone, but looked at it, face solemn. He shook his head. “She’s very beautiful.”
“Was, Brandon, was beautiful.” He held the phone out to me. The woman was blond, and beautiful in that Hollywood way, so that she was truly beautiful but there was nothing to make her stand out from a dozen other blond beauties. It was a type of attractiveness that always seemed artificial, as if they were all made at the same factory and sent out into the world to seduce and marry well.
Nathaniel said, “I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?” he asked, and that flash of anger was back.
“Anita said she was sorry for your loss; isn’t your wife who you lost?”
Bennington nodded.
“Then I am sorry.” I knew Nathaniel well enough to know that his emotion was a little stronger than just normal condolences, but I’d ask later when Tony Bennington was far away.
I was still trying to usher him out, but I had one last boyfriend outside the door. Micah had been planning to join us for lunch, if he could, and there he was, joining us. He stepped in, my height with brown hair that curled past his shoulders, tied back in a ponytail that had too many curls to make his hair lie flat. His eyes were green and yellow, and not human. That beautiful face-and for Micah it truly was beauty, not handsome, more delicate jawline, more slender-was only just masculine. The leopard eyes in that lovely face just added to the impact. He wore sunglasses most of the time to hide the eyes. He started to get the glasses out automatically when he glimpsed the man behind me.
“Don’t bother hiding the eyes,” Bennington said, “I saw the interview you did for the news. You’re the head of the Coalition for Better Understanding Between Humans and Lycanthropes, and I know you’re a wereleopard.”
