Zombies Sold Separately Read Online Free

in?”
    Kali said nothing. I didn’t expect her to. Not that she talked, although sometimes I wondered if she could and I just didn’t know. It wouldn’t have surprised me if Rodán—my mentor and former lover—had gifted me with a magic cat.
    Kali did manage to travel secretly from my upstairs apartment all the way to the ground-level PI office. I still hadn’t figured out how in the Otherworlds she managed to do it, but I’d tried.
    The cat gave me a haughty look before jumping off of the credenza and onto the tile floor with amazing feline grace. She turned her back on me and her tail twitched back and forth as she started toward the break room.
    Uh-oh.
    In order to save my panty drawer from her, I did my best to stay on Kali’s good side. That cat had one bizarre panty fetish for shredding them. Trying to stay on her good side didn’t help much, said my stack of Victoria’s Secret receipts.
    I’d made a mistake naming her after Shiva’s fierce and destructive Hindu wife. Kali lived up to her name and then some.
    With a sigh I went back to sorting through the mail. Paranorms, like norms, didn’t communicate a whole lot via snail mail. In my office we normally received nothing more than the junk flyers our Werewolf mailman brought us.
    Our main modes of communication were email, phone, and video conferencing. Sure, I came from the world of the Dark Elves, a world that remained in the Dark Ages, but in my office in Manhattan we were a little more high-tech.
    Which wasn’t much but it was better than parchment and a quill.
    Boring. The flyers were specials on Were nail trimming and tooth sharpening, Shifter maid services, Faerie-made warding bells, Witch garden care, Fae grocers, Sorcerer litigation services—Goldbug & Oz … The usual.
    “Junk, junk, junk.” I threw each flyer into the wastebasket that was parked next to the credenza. I stopped when I reached a Nymph lingerie sale flyer, then decided to toss it, too.
    Fae bells tinkled and I looked over my shoulder to see Olivia pushing open the door. She looked pissed, her brows angled inward and a scowl on her face, her dark eyes flashing.
    “Um, hello?” I dropped the rest of the flyers into the wastebasket and straightened.
    Olivia put her hand up in a “stop” motion, as if she was still an NYPD police officer directing traffic, before she was on the SWAT team. “Not in the mood, purple wonder.”
    It was rare for Olivia to come in looking like she was going to take the Sig Sauer out of her side holster and start shooting first and asking questions later.
    I leaned my hip against the credenza and folded my arms across my chest. “What happened?”
    Olivia shrugged out of the New York Mets jacket she wore during the cold months and tossed it onto her desk. The neon green sticky notes on her desktop fluttered and a large stack of case folders teetered, threatening to slide onto the floor.
    She blew out a breath and faced me. “Got a freaking speeding ticket from that wiener of a cop, Freeman.”
    I winced. That was enough to ruin Olivia’s mood for the day.
    Then I noticed her T-shirt.
     
    YOU’RE A REALLY GOOD FRIEND
    BUT IF THE ZOMBIES COME
    I’M TRIPPING YOU
    I didn’t laugh. If it had said anything but Zombies—except maybe Vampires—I would have at least grinned. I didn’t know why, but just the mere mention of Zombies made my insides feel like someone had gutted me with a Drow-forged blade and twisted the dagger just to hear me scream.
    “That sucks.” My words teetered on the verge of trembling as I grabbed my purse off of the credenza and headed toward my desk, my heels clicking on the ceramic tile. “Traffic school?”
    “I already took a class after the last ticket Freeman gave me. This one will give me points.” Olivia made a low sound in her throat. “Any other cop in this city would let me go—”
    “And has,” I put in as I rounded my desk, then slid into my leather office chair.
    “—but not that jerk,” she