Jenks was gone, but his dust lay warm upon me. I couldn’t bring myself to brush it away, and slowly it vanished in the heat from my hand. It would be hard without Ivy, not just for her expertise but because she was our friend. But like I’d said, she wasn’t dead, and I had to stop feeling as if she was simply because she wasn’t sleeping across the hall.
“Thanks,” Ivy said, and I smiled when she gave my hand a tight squeeze.
“Don’t thank me,” I said as I turned her touch into a full hug. “I’m serious. We’re going to miss you like the undead miss the sun, but this is where we are.”
“Yeah, Ivy.” Jenks flew circles around us until Ivy and I parted. “Just you wait,” he said as he landed on my shoulder to feel right. “You’ll be begging to come back after six months in the tower.”
“Back to this? Not a chance,” Ivy said over her shoulder as she headed for the back, giving the plywood-covered hole in the floor a wide berth. But it was obvious how hard it was for her to let go. Nina needed her, and Jenks and I . . . did not. And Ivy needed to be needed.
“I think the smell is coming from the graveyard,” Ivy said, her movements edging into vampire quickness as she went down the hall to the plywood nailed over the raw opening that once led to the kitchen and back living room. I could see her frustration that she couldn’t be what Nina needed and still keep things the same, but Ivy and Nina shouldn’t have had to put up with any roommates, much less a pixy and a witch-born demon with more baggage than an entire rock band.
David’s hands clasped uneasily. “Er, I should leave if you have a body out there.”
“If we do, it’s not ours.” I started for the back, wincing at the screech of a nail pulling out. “Ivy, be careful!” I exclaimed. “There’s a six-foot drop past that plywood.” Jenks was on my shoulder, and for the first time in weeks, I felt good. “You okay with the temp, Jenks?”
“Don’t turn into my mom, Rache,” he muttered, but he didn’t leave my warmth.
David’s shoulders jostled mine in the tight confines of the hall, and, grinning, he tried to beat me to where Ivy was working on the makeshift door. Giving up, she backed up three steps and gave it a solid kick. Nails screeching, the plywood was knocked clear into the burned foundation of what had once been the kitchen and back living room.
Cool air and sun poured in. I squinted, my hand going over my nose in disgust. Past the burned foundation stones and weedy garden was a zombie stumbling about in the leaf-coated, long-grassed graveyard.
“Oh, yuck.” David dropped back with his hand over his nose.
“Dude.” Jenks hovered beside Ivy and me, a weird silver-purple dust spilling from him. “The news said they got the last one three days ago.”
“Apparently not.” David leaned against the hall’s wall, pale behind his stubble. “He looks like an old one. He smells too bad for it to be just what he’s been eating. That’s decay.”
“You think?” My jaw clenched in revulsion. It was a zombie. Animated dead. A handful of them had been found in Cincinnati over the last few months, all in various stages of decay and age. No one was sure where they’d come from, but the timing made me think they’d been tucked in an I.S. quarantine somewhere and had escaped when the ley lines had gone down. That the I.S. was claiming innocence made it seem more than likely.
“How did it get past the graveyard’s gates?” Ivy asked, seeming to handle the stench better than David, who had slumped back down the wall until he was sitting with his knees to his chest, his head low as he took shallow breaths.
“No idea,” I said, but knowing from experience that a person could slip through the chain holding the car gates shut. “You know, seeing him careening from stone to stone out there looks both somehow really right and really disturbing.”
“Tink’s titties, he smells worse than the wrong end of a Were’s outhouse.” Jenks’s wings rasped as he landed on Ivy’s shoulder. “Get him to leave, Rache.”
My God, he stinks. “Why is this my problem?” I said as the zombie made a lonely, guttural, social caw. Arms over my middle, I watched Mr. Z stumble into a headstone to leave a black smear. Nice. Someone’s experiment had gone free-range and was leaving chunks in my graveyard.
“Awwwww, Rache. He’s dropping parts. Do something!”
“I’ll call it in,” David said from behind us, and the beeps of his phone rose faintly.
“This is going to make me late getting home,” Ivy said with a sigh.
One hand on the broken wall, I leaned out, almost gagging on the smell. “How did he get across the river? Weren’t most of them found in Cincy?”
“I think everyone is ignoring them now so they don’t have to deal with them,” David said, clearly on hold.
“I can’t imagine why,” Ivy said, a hand over her face and voice muffled.
“Rache,” Jenks begged, “he’s dropping chunks. How am I going to get rid of that?”
I shrugged, my eyes lifting to a sudden commotion in the trees as a murder of crows began a raucous cawing, hounding something in the scorched oak tree in the back. Jenks touched his sword hilt, his eyes on the bare branches, but then they all flew off with harsh calls.
“Why is this my problem?” I said again, and then I sneezed, the unexpectedness of it making it loud and obnoxious.
“That did it,” Jenks said as Mr. Z turned, his filthy lab coat fluttering as he focused on our voices with an odd concentration. At my feet, David shuddered.
“Fantabulous,” I said as Mr. Z began shambling our way. “You think someone lured him in here, hoping we’d take care of it?” Crap on toast, I didn’t want to have to stop at the boat and change before meeting Trent and the girls at the top of Carew Tower for his lunch and my breakfast, but that’s what I’d be doing if I touched it.
“Probably.” Ivy jumped from the open hallway to land on the plywood with an attention-getting thump. “You got anything on you for this?”
Jenks looked at me and shrugged, and sighing, I awkwardly followed her. “I should have worn more leather,” I muttered, then louder, “Anything that works on a zombie?” I hefted a charred two-by-four the cleanup crew had missed. “Sure. Jenks, some distraction?”
Jenks darted off, and Ivy lifted a crowbar, wiping the colorful wet leaves from it and taking a few practice swings. “You look nice today,” she said. “I’ll take the bottom.”
“Thanks,” I said in relief. “I dressed up for David. He always makes me feel like a slob.”
“I know what you mean,” she said, glancing back at the trim man. Yes, he had some scruff, and his long hair was escaping the clip at the back of his neck, but he carried himself with enough grace that he looked like a million bucks in jeans and a leather coat.