Flirt

“I want you to raise my wife from the dead, Ms. Blake,” Tony Bennington said, in a voice that matched the expensive suit and the flash of the Rolex on his right wrist. It probably meant he was a lefty. Not that his handedness mattered, but you learn to notice primary hands when people try to kill you on a semiregular basis.

“My condolences,” I said automatically, because Bennington didn’t display any grief. His face was composed, almost blank, so that if he was handsome in that gray-haired, I’m-over-fifty-but-keep-in-good-shape way, the lack of expression took all the fun out of it. Maybe the blankness was his way of showing grief, but his gray eyes were steady and cold as they met mine. It was either some steely control of grief, or he didn’t feel anything about his wife’s death; that would be interesting. “Why do you want me to raise your wife from the dead, Mr. Bennington?”

“At the rates you charge, does it matter?” he asked.

I gave him a long blink and crossed my legs, smoothing the skirt over my thighs as automatically as I’d said my condolences. I gave him the edge of a smile that I knew didn’t reach my eyes. “It does, to me.”

An emotion filled his eyes then: anger. His voice held barely a hint of the emotion that turned his eyes a darker shade of gray. Maybe it was steely self-control after all. “It’s personal, and you don’t need to know it to raise her as a zombie.”

“This is my job, Mr. Bennington, not yours. You don’t know what I need to raise a zombie.”

“I did my research, Ms. Blake. My wife wasn’t murdered, so she won’t rise as a vengeful, flesh-eating monster. She wasn’t psychic, or a witch, and had never gone near any other religion that might make her more than a normal zombie. There’s nothing in her background that makes her a bad candidate for the ceremony.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I’m impressed; you did do your research.”

He nodded, once, manicured hands smoothing his tailored lapel. “Then you’ll do it?”

I shook my head. “Not without a reason.”

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.”