Shifting Shadows

“I know her face,” she said in some surprise. “This woman has been in the papers. She disappeared when out for a jog last Saturday morning. I don’t remember her name—”

“Toni McFetters,” said Kyle. “You’re right. I didn’t recognize her before.”

“Not unexpected under the circumstances.” Nadia was clearly paying more attention to the dead body than she was to any of us; her voice was clinical. “Easiest way to get a corpse to raise is to kill her yourself.”

“Are you saying that she was killed just for this?” Kyle looked cool and composed, but I could smell his agitation.

“Probably,” said Nadia when her great-aunt didn’t say anything. “This kind of magic works best on a fresh corpse. Hopeless to try it with one a mortuary has filled with embalming fluid, and stealing a body from a hospital morgue is tough. Too many people at a hospital.” She glanced over her shoulder, saw Kyle, and clearly, from the consternation on her face, ran the past few minutes of conversation through her head. “I’m so sorry. I’m not used to discussing my work with a layman. I do know this is difficult for you. Whoever did this was willing to kill you—I’d imagine that murder doesn’t bother them much.”

“If it had killed Kyle,” I asked, “would it have died?”

“Deanimated,” said Elizaveta briskly. “It was already dead when it came here. It would be possible to give such a one a directive, and then dissipate the magic after that directive was accomplished.”

“So someone would have come in here and found Kyle dead—killed by this woman who would be dead, too,” I said. “Elizaveta, ma’am—” I tried to work a way around the question I wanted to ask without offending her. “Is there anyone in the Tri-Cities who knows how to animate a dead body like this?”

Elizaveta gave me a smile with teeth, so I guess she was offended. “Yes, my little bunny, I could have done it. But I am obligated to the Alpha of your pack and I am aware of your ties to the lawyer. I would not accept a commission to kill him.” She examined my face and saw that wasn’t enough for me. “No,” she said clearly. “I did not kill this woman, nor did I turn her into a zombie and send her after your lover.”

“My apologies,” I told her. “But I had to ask.”

“The magic keeps them warm,” murmured Nadia into the tense atmosphere. I couldn’t tell if she was blind to the tension between me and Elizaveta, or if she spoke to dispel it. “Almost at normal body temperature. Forensics wouldn’t give an accurate time of death. It would look as though she’d died at the same time he had. A murder-suicide, perhaps. Impossible to tell without further work—but I think she was killed with an overdose of something that overworked her heart. Cocaine, perhaps. Something of that sort.”

I don’t know about Elizaveta, but I was distracted from her by what Nadia said. There wouldn’t be a zombie to horrify the mundane public, just a mystery of why they’d killed each other. The use of the zombie as a murder weapon suddenly made more sense. No one would know about the magic—and no forensics to tie the real killer to the crime.

Nadia continued with her analysis. “In view of the fact that she was abducted while out jogging, her clothing is of some interest—no one jogs in a dress like this. The pearls are fake—good fakes, but nothing any insurance company or jewelry store would have a record of. The lipstick is of a common shade. The dress is more interesting. It isn’t new. Maybe it came from a thrift store—we should be able to check it out.”

“Shouldn’t we call the police?” asked Kyle.

We all looked at him.

“We have a dead body of a missing person on my conference table. Someone is going to notice,” he said.

“She has disappeared,” said Elizaveta, speaking to him for the first time. “There is no gain in making her reappear.”

Kyle’s face hardened. “She has a family. Two kids and a husband. They deserve to know what happened to her.”

“Can you fix her up?” I asked Elizaveta. “Repair the damages I did and then leave her somewhere she’ll be found?”

“It is safer and easier to dispose of the body entirely,” said Elizaveta dismissively.

“Well, yes, ma’am,” I told her, making a subtle motion with my hand to stop Kyle from saying anything more. If Kyle started demanding things, we’d be up a creek without a paddle and maybe with a few more bodies besides. He saw my gesture and let me take point. Of all the humans I’ve ever known, Kyle is one of the best at reading body language.

“Easier and safer,” I agreed with Elizaveta blandly. The witch shot me a suspicious look. “But if you did decide to put the body out where someone could find it—you and I both know that you could do it so’s no one would ever associate it with you, this office, or magic of any kind. Easier if the damage I did to her, which might be tough to explain, can be repaired.”

“There’s no bruising around the site,” said Nadia. “I could mend the flesh together, Aunt Elizaveta, so they could never tell.”

The old witch stared at me, torn between resenting my manipulation and preening under my confidence in her abilities. I meant it and made sure she could hear it in my voice.

“You know that you enjoy the tough ones more,” I coaxed. “Cleaning up another body is boring. This presents more of a challenge.”

“Another body,” said Kyle. But he said it real quiet and I think I was the only one who heard him. One of Elizaveta’s gifts was making bodies disappear—around a werewolf pack, even a well-run pack like ours, there are going to be some bodies that need to disappear.

The corners of Elizaveta’s mouth turned up, her shoulders relaxed, and I knew that I’d won.

“All right, sweet boy. You are right. Never could forensics unravel the mystery I can weave. If I wanted them to learn nothing, nothing is what they would learn. Still . . .” She smiled at me, eyes veiled with satisfaction. “It would be more challenging yet to show them evidence that doesn’t exist. You, my private detective, will help to find who did this. When it is known, I will point the police in the correct direction.”

“Thank you,” I said, dropping my eyes from hers as was proper. As I did so, I noticed that Kyle had dropped the hand that held the towel and I didn’t like what his wound looked like. I know about bite wounds; I’ve seen a lot of them. Bite wounds shouldn’t get black edges a half hour after they’ve been inflicted.