Flirt

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 the 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.”

Copyright ¨ 2010 by Laurell K. Hamilton