Incubus Dreams (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 12)

28

At 3:00 that afternoon, I was at work, right on time. Neither sex, vampires, shapeshifters, nor metaphysical meltdowns will deter this animator from her appointed rounds. At least not today.

I was sitting in Bert Vaughn's office. He'd been the boss at Animator's Inc. once, but recently we'd had a sort of palace coup. He was still office and business manager, but he was more like our agent than our boss. It hadn't lost him any money, so he was happy, but it had meant that most of the animators here were like partners in a law firm. Once you made partner, you almost had to kill someone to lose your job, well, kill someone and get caught. So Bert wasn't the boss anymore. Which meant he didn't get to treat us like the hired help. He hadn't liked that part, but it was either agree to our terms, or we all walked, and since he can't raise the dead, that would pretty much put him out of business. Especially if we opened another firm in direct competition with him. So we had a new power structure, and we hadn't worked all the kinks out of it yet.

Bert's office was now a warm yellow with orange undertones. It was cozier than the pale blue cubicle it had once been, but not by much. The entire office had gotten a face-lift, along with buying out the offices next door, so that most of the animators at Animator's Inc. no longer had to share their office space. Since most of our time was spent out in the field, or cemetery as it were, I thought the new offices were a waste of money, but I'd been outvoted. Charles, Jamison, and Manny had wanted bigger offices, Larry and I had been fine sharing, but Bert voted with the other three, so they'd taken out a wall and voil¨¤, we were suddenly twice as big. The reason that most of the offices had gone to warmer tones, earth tones, comforting tones of yellows, browns, tans, ecru, was that Bert was dating an interior designer. Her name was Lana, and, though I thought she was far too good for him, she irritated me. She constantly went around talking about the science of color and how with a business like ours we needed to make people feel loved and cared for.

I'd told her that it wasn't my job to love my clients. That I wasn't in that business. She'd taken it wrong and hadn't really liked me since. That was fine, as long as she stayed the hell away from my office.

Mary, our daytime secretary, had asked me to wait in Mr. Vaughn's office as soon as I hit the door. Not a good sign. To my knowledge I hadn't done anything wrong at work, so I had no clue what the meeting was about. Once it would have bugged me, but not now; I was used to not knowing things.

Bert came in, and shut the door behind him. Shutting the door was not a good sign either. Bert is 6'4", and played football in college. He'd started to gain that past-forty, nearing-fifty extra around the middle, but Lana had put him on a diet and an exercise program. He looked better than he had for most of the time I'd known him. She'd even persuaded him that tanning cocoa brown every summer was not healthy for anyone. So he looked pale, but healthy. It also meant that his hair hadn't gone that white-blond that it used to in the summer. His hair was actually a pale yellow, with a little white creeping in, but the white was so close to the way his hair used to look with his tan, that it had taken me days to figure out it was his way of going gray.

I was sitting in one of the two dark brown, nicely upholstered client chairs that had been another of Lana's ideas. They were more comfortable than the straight-backs he'd had before. My legs were politely crossed, my hands folded in my lap. I was the epitome of ladylike.

"That skirt is too short for business hours, Anita," he said as he rounded his big desk and eased into a chair even bigger and browner and more leathery than the one I was sitting in.

I slumped down in the chair and put my boots up on his desk, with my ankles crossed. The movement raised my skirt up high enough to flash every last inch of the lace tops of my thigh-high hose. I was a little short for the movement to be comfortable, but I doubted Bert could tell I was uncomfortable. I looked at him around the heels of my knee-high black boots.

"The skirt is also black. We all agreed that we don't wear black to work. It's too depressing."

"No, you think it's too depressing. Besides the skirt has flowers embroidered on the side by the slit. Blue, green, and turquoise, which matches exactly the shade of turquoise of the jacket, and the blue of the top, it's like an outfit," I said. I was also wearing a gold chain with an antique locket on the end of it. It had two tiny paintings, one in either side of it. They were tiny oil paintings of Jean-Claude and Asher. The locket had once belonged to Julianna, and was more than three hundred years old. It was handwrought gold, heavy and solid, and very antique-looking. Tiny sapphires traced its edges, with one larger one in the middle. I'd thought it looked great with the outfit. Apparently not.

The short little turquoise jacket also covered the black shoulder holster and the Browning Hi-Power under my left arm. I'd have put on the wrist sheaths, but with the jacket off, the knives showed under the thin material of the top. I could just take off the gun if it got hot enough in the office, but to remove the wrist sheaths, I'd have to strip off the shirt. It didn't seem worth it. They were in the car, just in case I started to feel insecure.

Bert didn't have any weapons under his rich, chocolate brown suit, which had been tailored to fit his body. As he'd lost weight, the athletic cut to his suits had emphasized his broad shoulders, which had sort of appeared as his waistline had decreased. His shirt was pale yellow, and his tie was a paler brown, with tiny gold and blue figures on it. All the colors suited him, they even brought a little warmth into his gray eyes.

I slumped down further into the chair, using the padded corner to brace my back and head. The skirt had scooted up far enough that the black silk of my underwear was peeking out, though it probably couldn't be seen from where Bert was sitting.

"If I tell you the skirt is too short, you'll wear something even shorter tomorrow, won't you?"

"Yep."

"And if I complain about the black..."

"I've got black dresses," I said, "I've even got short black dresses."

"Why do I even bother?"

"Arguing with me," I said.

He nodded.

"I have no idea."

"At least you're wearing makeup, I appreciate that."

"I've got a date after work," I said.

"That brings me to another problem," he said. He leaned forward and folded his hands on his desk. He was trying for fatherly, but he never quite made it. It came off more as pretentious.

I did straighten up in my chair, because I simply wasn't comfortable. I straightened the skirt as I sat up. There was enough skirt to smooth down the back of my thighs. My rule for skirts was that it was too short if there was no skirt to smooth over your ass. This skirt passed the test, so I was glad Bert had given up. I really wasn't comfortable in skirts much shorter than this one. Wearing them just to spite Bert wouldn't have been as fun as it once would have been.

"And what problem would that be, Bert?"

"Mary tells me that the young man in our waiting room is your boyfriend."

I nodded. "He is." Strangely, the ardeur hadn't risen today at all, not a quiver, not a shake. But we'd all been a little concerned about what might happen if it suddenly sprang to life at work. There was nobody at work that I wanted to have sex with, so that meant I needed someone nearby, just in case. Nathaniel was sitting outside in the warm sienna orange waiting room, looking very decorative in one of the brown leather chairs. He was wearing street clothes--black slacks, a violet business shirt that was almost a match to the one he'd worn to the wedding, and black over-the-ankle boots. He'd braided his hair so it looked as professional as ankle-length hair can, and he was reading back issues of some music magazine that he had a subscription to and had fallen behind on reading. He'd brought a messenger bag full of magazines from home and was prepared to wait until I dropped him off at work, or until he was needed, whichever came first.

"Why is your boyfriend out in our waiting room, when you're supposed to be working?"

"I'm dropping him at work later," I said, and my voice was much more neutral than his had managed to be.

"Doesn't he have a car?"

"We only have two cars at the house, and Micah may need the other one if he gets called into work."

Bert did the slow blink, and what little warmth he'd managed to get into his gray eyes faded. "I thought the one in the other room was your boyfriend."

"He is."

"Doesn't that mean that you've broken up with Micah?"

"Your assumption is your problem, Bert."

He gave another long blink and leaned back in his chair, looking puzzled. I'd always puzzled Bert, but just not in the personal department. "Does Micah know you're dating..."

"Nathaniel," I said.

"Nathaniel," Bert said.

"He knows," I said.

He licked his thin lips and tried a different tact. "Would you think it was professional if Charles or Manny brought their wives into sit in our waiting room?"

I shrugged. "Not my business."

He sighed and started rubbing his temples. "Anita, your boyfriend cannot sit out there the entire time you're in the office."

"Why not? "I asked.

"Because if I let you start bringing in people, everybody else will want to, and it would be a mess. It would disrupt business."

I sighed. "I don't think anyone else will be bringing their sweeties to work," I said. "Charles's wife is a full-time registered nurse, she's a little busy, and Rosita hates Manny's job. She wouldn't darken the door. Jamison might bring a girl around, if he thought it would impress her."

He sighed again. "Anita, you're being deliberately difficult about this."

"Me, deliberately difficult, why, Bert, you know me better than that."

He gave a surprised burst of laughter and sat back in his chair and stopped trying to treat me like a client. He looked instantly more comfortable, and less trustworthy. "Why did you bring your new boyfriend to work?"

"None of your business."

"It is, if he's sitting in the waiting room that we all share. It is, if you're going to let him sit in on clients."

"He won't sit in on clients," I said.

"Then he's going to be in our waiting room for how long?"

"A few hours," I said.

"Why?" he asked again.

"I told you, none of your business."

"It is, if you bring him to work, Anita. I may not be the boss anymore, but we're also a democracy. You really think that Jamison won't kick a fuss?"

He had a point. I couldn't think of a lie that came close to explaining it, so I tried for partial truth. "You know that I'm the human servant to Jean-Claude, Master of the City, right?"

He nodded, eyes uncertain, as if this was not the start of the conversation he'd expected.

"Well, there's been an interesting side effect. Trust me when I say that you'll want Nathaniel here if things go wrong."

"How wrong are they going to go?" he asked.

"If I take him into my office, just lock the door and make sure we aren't disturbed. No harm, no foul."

"Why would you need privacy with him? What side effect? Is it dangerous?"

"None of your business. You wouldn't understand even if I told you, and it's only dangerous if I don't have someone with me when it happens."

"When what happens?"

"See first answer," I said.

"If it's going to disrupt the office, then as manager I need to know."

He had a point, but I wasn't sure how to tell him, without telling him. "It won't disrupt anything, if Mary keeps everyone away from the door until we're finished."

"Finished?" he said. "Finished what?"

I looked at him. I tried to make it an eloquent look.

"You don't mean..." he said.

"Mean what?" I asked.

He closed his eyes, opened them, and said, "If I don't want your boyfriend sitting in the waiting room, I sure as hell don't want you fucking him in your office." He sounded outraged, which was rare for Bert.

"I'm hoping it won't come to that," I said.

"Why is this a side effect of being a human servant to the Master of St. Louis?"

It was a good question, but I was so not willing to share that much with Bert. "Just lucky, I guess."

"I would say you're making it up, but if you were going to pull some elaborate joke on me, it wouldn't be this." That one comment proved Bert knew me better than I thought.

"No," I said, "it wouldn't."

"So you've become like a what, a nympho?"

Trust Bert to find just the right thing to say. "Yes, Bert, that's it, I've become a nymphomaniac. I need sex so often that I have to take a lover with me wherever I go now."

His eyes went wide.

"Calm down, boss man, I'm hoping today will be the exception, not the rule."

"What made today different?" he asked.

"You know, Mary told me to report to your office as soon as I hit the door. Before you could have possibly known that I'd brought my boyfriend with me, or worn a black skirt that is shorter than you would like. So you didn't call me in here to discuss my wardrobe or my love life. Why did you want this little meeting?"

"Did anyone ever tell you that you can be very abrupt?"

"Yes, now what's up?"

He sat up straighter, all professional and client-worthy again. "I need you to hear me out before you get upset."

"Wow, Bert, I can hardly wait for the rest of this little talk."

He frowned at me. "I turned the job down, because I knew you wouldn't take it."

"If you turned it down, why are we discussing it?"

"They doubled your consultation fee."

"Bert," I said.

"No," he put a hand up, "I turned it down."

I looked at him and knew my face said clearly, I didn't believe him. "I've never known you to turn down that much, Bert."

"You gave me a list of cases that you wouldn't handle. Since you gave me the list, have I sent anything your way that was on it?"

I thought about it for a second, then shook my head. "No, but you're about to."

"They won't believe me."

"They won't believe what?" I said.

"They insist that if you'd only see them, you'd do what they want. I told them you wouldn't, but they offered fifteen thousand dollars for an hour of your time. Even if you refuse, the money belongs to Animators, Inc."

When I said we worked like a law firm, I meant it. That meant that this money went into the kitty for everybody. The more we made, the more everyone made, though some of us got a higher or lower percentage of our fees. We'd based it on seniority. So my turning down money didn't just hurt me or insult Bert anymore, it affected the bottom line for everybody. Most of those everybodys had families, kids. They'd actually come to me en masse and asked for me to be more flexible on my consulting fees, i.e., take more of them. Manny had a daughter about to enter a very expensive college, and Jamison was paying alimony to three ex-wives. Sob stories, but most of them, except for Larry, had more overhead than I did. So I'd started being nicer about at least talking to people when they offered outrageous sums of money. Sometimes.

"What's the job?" I asked. I didn't sound happy, but I asked.

Bert was all smiles. Sometimes I suspected that he'd been behind that en masse meeting, but Manny and Charles swore up and down he hadn't been. Jamison I wouldn't have believed either way, so I didn't ask.

"The Browns' son died about three years ago. They want you to raise him and ask some questions."

My eyes were unfriendly slits. "Tell me all of it, Bert, so far I wouldn't have turned it down."

He cleared his throat and fidgeted. Bert didn't fidget much. "Well, the son was murdered."

I threw my hands into the air. "Damn it, Bert, I can't raise a murder victim. None of us here can. I gave you a list that you were supposed to refuse for all of us, for legal reasons, and that was one of them."

"You used to do it."

"Yeah, before I found out what happens when you raise a murder vic as a zombie, and that was before the new laws went into effect. A murdered person rises from the grave and goes after their murderer, no ifs, ands, or buts. They will tear through anyone and anything that tries to stop them. I had it happen twice, Bert. The zombies don't answer questions about who killed them, they just go rampaging off and try to find who did it."

"Couldn't the police just follow them, sort of like they do bloodhounds?"

"These bloodhounds will tear people's arms off and crash through houses. Zombies do a very straight line to their murderers. And the way the law reads now, the animator that raised the zombie would be liable for all the damage, including the deaths. If one of us raised this boy and he killed anyone, even his own murderer, we'd be charged with murder. Murder with magical malfeasance. That's an automatic death sentence. So no, I can't do it, and neither can anybody else."

He looked sad, probably about the money. "I told them you'd explain it to them."

"You should have explained it to them yourself, Bert. I've told you all this before."

"They asked me if I was an animator, when I said no, they wouldn't believe me. They said if they could just meet with Ms. Blake, they're sure they could change your mind."

"Jesus, Bert, this is really unfair. It can't be done, and watching their son rise from the grave as a shambling murderous zombie is not going to help them heal."

He raised eyebrows at that. "Well, I can't say I put it as well as you just did, but I swear to you that I did tell them no."

"But I'm meeting with them anyway, because they offered fifteen grand for an hour of my time."

"I could have gotten them to twenty grand. They're desperate. I could smell it on them. If we turn them down flat, they're going to try to find someone less reputable, less legal."

I closed my eyes and let the air out in a long slow sigh. I hated that he was right, but he was. When people get to a certain level of desperation, they'll do stupid things. Stupid, foolish, horrible things. We were the only animating firm in the Midwest. There was one in New Orleans and one in California, but they wouldn't take this job for the same reason we wouldn't. The new laws. I could say it was to save the clients pain, but in all honesty the idea that you could raise a murder victim from the grave and just ask them who killed them was so tempting that several of us had tried to do it. We'd thought it hadn't worked because of the trauma of the murder, or that the animators doing it weren't powerful enough, but that wasn't it. If you were murdered, you rose with only one thought in your dead brain: revenge. Until you got that revenge, you wouldn't listen to anyone's orders, not even the animator or voodoo priest or priestess that raised you from the grave.

But just because none of the reputable people would do it, didn't mean that a disreputable person wouldn't do it. There were people here and there across the country that had the talent without the morals. None of them worked for the professional companies because they'd either been fired as a liability, or they'd never been hired. Some because they didn't want to be hired, but most because what they did was secret and rarely something they wanted the authorities to know about. They kept a low profile, and didn't advertise much, but if you started waving twenty grand around, they'd come out of the woodwork. The Browns would find someone willing to do what they asked, if they were willing to pay for it. Someone who would give them a false name, raise the kid, and run with their money, and leave the bereaved parents to clean up the mess and explain things to the police. There was a test case in New England at state supreme court level that was seeking the death penalty for the person who paid a magical practitioner to kill someone by magic. I didn't know how it would go, and it would probably get to the Supreme Court before all was said and done. I'd never forgive myself if the Browns found someone less reputable and ended up on death row for it. I mean, that would just suck, especially if I could prevent it here and now.

I gave Bert the look he deserved. The one that said he was a greedy son of a bitch, and I knew he'd turned down their money for something other than humanitarian reasons. He just sat back and smiled at me, because he knew what that particular look meant. It meant I would do it, even if I hated it.