Shapeshifted (Edie Spence 3)

* * *

He took a look at the silver cross hanging on my wall. “I’d ask if you were religious now, but I think I know the answer to that. ”

“You never know who’s going to visit,” I said, well aware that neither crosses nor silver worked on zombies.

There was an awkward silence. I waited for him to fill it. I figured he was here for a reason, and I didn’t want to give him any outs.

He walked into my living room and looked around. “I can’t tell. Is this a step up or down?”

“It’s a lateral move. ” What does one normally do when one sees exes whom one perhaps wants to stay on congenial terms with, but only for five minutes or so? I walked over to my kitchen. “Tea? Coffee?”

He smiled softly. “I’m fine. ”

Of course he was. Zombies didn’t need to eat or drink, except for show, and to regrow—and besides, he’d gotten to do the leaving, not the being left behind. Of course he was fine.

“Edie, I didn’t mean to—”

“Yeah. No one ever means to. ” I walked past him and sat down on the far end of my couch. He sat opposite me.

“This is a nicer couch than your last one. ”

“It is. So why’re you here?” I was actually more interested in where he’d gone, and why he’d left, but the answers to those questions were more likely to piss me off.

“I wanted to check in on you. The last time I saw you, you were in pretty dire straits. ”

“You mean when you left me. ”

“At a hospital. Your hospital. ”

I crossed my arms again, this time over my stomach. The last time Ti’d seen me, I’d been stabbed by vampires and was bleeding at a prodigious rate.

“I was wounded too, Edie. I had to go … and heal. ” We both knew what that meant for him. Killing people. Eating them. Not nice people, but still. “I didn’t leave town, though, until I knew you were going to be okay. I asked around. ”

“You could have asked me. ”

He rubbed his knees with his dark hands. “I should have. But—you know what I am, Edie. What I do. I should have never been with you. ”

“Didn’t I get a vote in that?” I asked, my voice small.

He slowly shook his head. “No. ”

“Ti—”

“I tried to tell you. I don’t know why I thought it could be different with you. ”

“Maybe it could have been, if you’d just given things a chance. ” I didn’t want to hope that things could change now, did I? I was still mad at him for leaving me, right?

“When we were in the back of that limo together, when you were bleeding out, and I was falling apart—you smelled like death. ” He paused, and I could tell whatever he was going to say next would pain him. “And it smelled good. ”

I started shaking my head. “You never would have, Ti, never ever—”

He cut me off without meeting my eyes. “No. And yet, I can’t deny what I am. What I’ll always be. ”

“I don’t judge you, Ti—”

“You did once. And you should. ” He shrugged softly. “It’s the right of the living to judge the dead. ”

I bit my lips to keep quiet. Anything I said now would be the wrong thing. And yet— “Why’re you here now, Ti?” If he was back for me, I wanted to hear it. I didn’t know what I’d say at that point, but I wanted to hear him say the words. And if he wasn’t back for me, well, I wanted to know that too.

“I was out of town for a while. And when I came back, I wanted to check on you. ”

“I’m not the reason you came back, though, am I. ” It wasn’t even a question. If he’d wanted to come back for me, he would have done it already.

“No. There’s a magician here who says he can give me back the rest of my soul. ”

It wasn’t me. It was never me. Ti’d been looking for the rest of his soul ever since he’d been freed as a zombie. He had half of it—enough to keep him him—but whoever had changed him had the other half, and had used it to control him. Getting or growing a whole soul was the only way he could really die. Not just be-dismembered-die, but really die and go to heaven, where he thought he would see all his old friends. His dead wife.

I crossed my arms again.

“I don’t know if he really can, but he’s working on it. He has power like I’ve never seen—no, I don’t see it, I feel it. He can do magic, Edie. Like my old master. The real thing. ”

“What’re you trading him?”