The Voodoo Killings Read Online Free Page B

of Cameron’s bindings could destabilize. He slumped back into the chair, his face covered in sweat as he gasped for air—not that he needed to breathe anymore. A long moment passed before he glanced at me.
    “That was more than a few seconds,” he said. “And it hurt like a son of a bitch.”
    I shook my head. “Cameron, I hate to break this to you, but—”
    “But what?” he said.
    I started again. “What just happened—it should be a physical impossibility. Your bindings…” Damn, how to explain instability of bindings to a barely compos mentis zombie? “Look, I don’t know how to put this exactly, but I don’t think you were made right.”
    Cameron just stared at me.
    I tried again. “Imagine if you were building a car, except instead of ordering all the right parts, you just used whatever you had lying around. You’re one massive jerry rig.” Or, more accurately, like a bomb ready to go off…
    Cameron didn’t take his eyes off me. “That doesn’t strike me as particularly comforting.”
    Well, his faculties were working a little better than they had been, probably from the massive hit of adrenalin caused by the seizure. One little chemical, so many wonders. “It wasn’t meant to be comforting.”
    “Can you fix it—me?”
    “I have no idea.”
    The burner rang, and I grabbed it. “Mork, what the hell?”
    “Ms. Strange,” Mork said. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
    I frowned. I hated people using my last name. Mork only used it to piss me off. “I need a delivery. Now.”
    “Now will cost you. High grade? Low grade?”
    “High, and don’t mix. I’ll smell the formaldehyde.”
    “Five hundred, Strange. I’ll see you in an hour. You know where.”
    “Five hundred? Are you out of your—Goddamn it!” Mork had hung up on me. I tossed the phone and Cameron jumped as it hit the floor.
    “Sorry, Cameron. I didn’t mean to scare you,” I said.
    It took him a second to look away from the phone. “Who—what was that?”
    “Negotiation, or lack thereof,” I said, nodding at the phone. “Mork’s special—he manages to piss everyone off.”
    It wasn’t just the price I’d wanted to negotiate. Mork’s “you know where” was the underground city. Which meant I had to either drag Cameron with me or lock him up here. Neither of those options appealed to me. It was like flipping a coin: heads, get caught with a zombie outside, tails, have a zombie discovered in my home….
    Though the underground city did have Lee, and she’d seen more zombies come and go than anyone else in Seattle. Maybe she’d know what the hell was wrong with Cameron’s bindings.
    Cameron cleared his throat.
    I glanced up. I was used to zombies, but they have a tendency to stare.
    “Where can I get—whatever it is I need to eat?”
    It was my turn to stare.
    “That’s what you were talking about, wasn’t it? Food?” he said.
    Right. If Cameron had regained enough cognitive function to not only deduce the subject of a one-sided conversation but analyze it with respect to an unrelated, earlier conversation, there was no way I was leaving him alone. Chances were too good he’d get bored and take off. And losing him would not be good, not with those unusual bindings. I checked the clock: 10:30. One hour to meet Mork.
    “Come on, Cameron,” I said, and tossed him a leather jacket out of the closet, one that Aaron had left behind. He managed to catch it. If I’d had any doubt that my meddling with his unusual bindings had had an effect, the recovered reflexes sealed it.
    “Stay right there,” I said, and headed into the bathroom. I grabbed the red lipliner out of the toothbrush holder and held it up to the mirror.
    Mirrors are the easiest way to send messages to the Otherside. Ghosts are bored by nature and drawn to any mirror they come across. It’s like a voyeurism TV channel for ghosts: look but don’t touch. If the mirror is primed—and this one was—they can send messages across to the side