Crimson Death (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 25)

"Nap, food, and sunshine, and then we'll see how you're feeling," Nicky said.

"I am not going to raise a zombie in Ireland just to see if I can do it."

"It's hours until dark, Anita. We'll revisit the topic later."

"No, we won't," I said very firmly.

Nicky leaned in and whispered, "You want to know if you can raise the dead here. You want to know if you can be the first necromancer to ever raise the dead in Ireland. I can feel what you want, Anita."

What could I say to that? I didn't want to raise the dead there, and I tried to never raise zombies without a reason. I'd raised them to answer historical questions, to tell which will was the real one, or to finish giving court testimony, but to just raise one to see if I could didn't seem to qualify as a good reason, but . . . Nicky was right: There was a part of me that wanted to know if I could do what I'd been told was impossible there. Was it ego to want to see if I was really legendary enough to raise zombies in Ireland? Yes. Was I going to give in to that much ego? No. No, really, I wasn't. No raising zombies in Ireland. I'd gone there to help with the vampire problem. I wasn't going to make a second undead problem for them. Nope, not going to do it, but part of me was really wondering if I could.

50

AS WE ROUNDED the corner and were finally in sight of the car, Nathaniel jiggled my hand in his and said, "If you tell me that Ted is good at undercover work, I'll believe you, but wow."

I looked down the brick-lined street to where Edward and Nolan were waiting beside the truck, car, vehicle. Edward was leaning against it with his cream-colored cowboy hat pulled low over his face as if he were napping. He'd bent one leg so that the bottom of his black cowboy boot was against the side of the truck. He'd opened his marshal coat enough that you could glimpse his white button-up shirt. Normally he'd have been in tactical pants and boots made for fieldwork that didn't involve horses, but except for the jacket, he looked like he'd come from central casting for a Western movie.

"He is undercover," I said. "He's pretending to be Ted Forrester, good ol' boy."

Nicky added, "He's being what most foreigners want Americans to be: cowboys. They'll see the stereotype and not look as closely at the reality of him."

Nathaniel looked from one to the other of us. "So you're saying he's hiding by not hiding?"

"Something like that," I said.

Nolan stepped out from behind the vehicle and he was all in black. He'd gotten out of his special teams battle rattle like the powers that be had strongly suggested, but he was still wearing tactical pants, boots, and a black Windbreaker, and well, he just looked so damn military. It was partially his choice of civilian clothes, but it was also the attitude. He was so on alert, while Edward looked almost asleep.

"Nolan is the same no matter what he wears," Nathaniel said.

"Ted changes like a chameleon. You just haven't seen him do it much, because he gets to be himself around me."

"Where are Jake and Kaazim?" Dev asked.

"We'll ask Ted and Nolan," I said.

When we were close enough, Ted folded himself off the car and came toward us. He was smiling his best happy-to-see-you smile. Even his blue eyes seemed a warmer shade of color, as if he believed the smile all the way up and through. The world had lost a scarily good character actor when Edward went into covert ops.

"Jacob is saving us a table at a restaurant that Nolan says will give us a good opinion of Irish cuisine."

"Sounds good," Nicky said without missing a beat. I looked from one to the other of them.

"Maybe I'll learn a new recipe we can use at home," Nathaniel said.

"Sure, but after food, Nicky says a couple of hours' nap will help me deal with the jet lag."

"You having a problem with it?" Nolan asked.

"She's crankier than normal," Dev said.

Edward laughed out loud, his head back, his whole face shining. "Crankier, and no one's bleeding or dead yet?" He laughed some more. I was beginning to think it wasn't his Ted act, but just him being genuinely amused. Nolan was starting to chuckle along.

I looked at them, my face totally deadpan, and said, "Flannery isn't with us anymore, is he?"

Nolan stopped laughing and looked at me. Edward laughed harder. The other men with me managed to look solemn. Nicky said, "It was him or us."

Edward laughed so hard, he was starting to cry as Nolan said, "Where's Flannery?"

It would have been even funnier if Flannery hadn't cleared the corner behind us just then. Nolan scowled at all of us. "That wasn't funny."

"Yeah, it was," I said.

Edward just nodded, laughing so hard, he had to lean against the car. The other men held out until Flannery came up and said, "What's so funny?" Then we all lost it.

51

WHEN EDWARD HAD finished laughing his ass off, he came over and hugged me, which he almost never did. He even apologized for laughing at me, which he did even less often. During all the unheard-of hugging and apologizing he managed to whisper, "Local informant wants to talk."

I pulled back as if everything was normal and said, "So, where is this amazing Irish food?"

He grinned, very Ted, and said, "Pub."

I gave him a look, suspecting this was the Irish version of his cowboy act. Pubs and drinking, very Irish, right? God, I hoped not, because as a teetotaler, I'd learned years ago that people are far less interesting drunk than they think they are, and they don't have nearly as good a time as they remember. I drank occasionally for Jean-Claude, because he could taste solid food, wine, and liquor through me. It was one of the common benefits of having a human servant: You could taste food that you hadn't tasted in centuries. I'd never be the wine snob that he was, but I was learning to appreciate a few vintages.

The pub was full of dark wood just like the last one, but this one had more tables placed closer together so it was more like those back home. It seemed the owner of the place planned on making money from all the crowded tables. It was so crowded in fact that if Jake and Kaazim hadn't already been there holding tables in the corner, we'd have never gotten seats together and maybe not at all.

Normally I wouldn't have liked the level of noise and crowd, but today it was a nice change from the strangely empty pub where Flannery had taken us. This one felt like a real business; the other one had felt like a front where you did things that didn't really have to do with drinking or food.

There is always that moment when you have police officers or combat vets when no one wants to sit with his back to the door, but there's usually no way to avoid it for a large party. Jake and Kaazim had gotten there first, so they had seats with a good view of the room and a solid wall at their backs. I expected them to offer me a seat beside them--I was queen and all, or was going to be--but Jake stood up and did the air-kiss thing as a greeting, which he'd never, ever done, but he used it to whisper, "You need to sit where you can get up easily."

I was already tired of the whole clandestine thing, but I nodded, smiled and went along

with it. I ended up sitting at the end of the table with my back to part of the room, but at least I could see the main door from the corner of my eye, and the bar with the door to the kitchen area was straight in front of me. Nathaniel sat by me, but at the corner of the table so his back was to the main door. He was used to sitting that way most of the time when we went out with enough of the guards. Damian was tucked under the table at our feet again. Dev didn't fight that his back was to the door here any more than he had at the last pub, because he could hold Nathaniel's hand. But he looked at the mirror above our table and I realized he could see the whole room in it, including the door. I tried to remember if there had been a mirror in the last place, but if there'd been one, it had been too small for me to notice. Ethan drew the short straw and had to sit beside Dev, but he was using the mirror, too. Really, there were no terrible seats here. Jake and Kaazim had done well. Edward sat beside Kaazim so he'd be closer to our conversation, with Nicky and Domino beside him. Nolan and Flannery were actually on the other end, opposite me. I thought at first their seats were bad because they had their backs to the bar and kitchen entrance, but there was another large mirror on the wall in front of them. Either through reflections or direct line of sight, we all had pretty good seats.

The waitress got our drink orders. I asked for a Coke and a glass of water, because apparently hydration helped with jet lag, so part of my problem was I hadn't had enough water, or so Edward told me. At Nolan's suggestion, most of us ordered the Guinness beef stew. Most of the men ordered either Guinness to go with the stew or another local beer or ale. Nathaniel was the only one who got just water; even Edward indulged in a local stout that Flannery recommended.

The waitress set a couple small, useless napkins down in front of me before she set my water on one, but she hesitated before putting the Coke on the other napkin, and I realized there was writing on the napkin. In neat block letters, the message read, "Ladies' room, five minutes."

I fought not to look up at the waitress in any way that wasn't perfectly normal. She had medium brown hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, dark brown eyes, and a pale face, so either she needed just a little makeup or she was pale for other reasons. Was she going to be meeting me in the bathroom? Was she the informant? Was she scared? Was that why she was pale?