Page 13 of Deader than Dead

“Your loss.”

“I’m sure it is.”

I turned down two more prostitutes before I reached the end of the street, neither of them male, thankfully, or I might have had to come up with a better excuse. Dormant syphilis, maybe, or a severe case of crabs. The next street I turned down had a drug deal in progress, neither of its participants worried by my presence. None of this boded well for what lay at the end of my journey. Sure enough, the high-rise block of flats that bore the address on the email looked like exactly the type of place I would normally have avoided: boarded-up windows; graffiti; signs of fire damage, and to top it all off, a skip overflowing with furniture front and center. Where the fuck had Cade sent me? Fuck thinking it, I was going to ask him. Hopefully, there’d been a mix-up, and I was supposed to go to a nice tea shop instead, where they served tea in bone china cups with a saucer and tiny cakes on a three-tier cake stand.

The phone rang multiple times, all without Cade picking up. When it went to voicemail, I left a message. “What the hell is this, Cade? Whatever this job is, I’ve got a bad feeling about it. I’m betting you didn’t send Griffin because he told you where you could stick the idea. And you knew Calisto would be too shit scared to set foot in a place like this. But me… You think I’m stupid enough.” I gave a humorless laugh. “Well, fuck you, I’m going home, and the dead guy will have to stay dead, because this whole thing reeks more than a fish left behind the radiator for a month.”

I hung up, already envisioning the conversation that Cade would subject me to in his office. One where he’d remind me as if I didn’t already know that he was the one who paid my wages, and there were certain standards of etiquette he expected me to adhere to that didn’t include swearing at him. He wouldn’t fire me, though. Not when necromancers were hardly two a penny on the streets of London. As job security went, it made mine pretty much iron-clad, which again begged the question why, when I’d had a bad feeling about this from the get-go, I was here?

A loud bang had me swinging around, my heart going nineteen to the dozen. Just a car backfiring. Why was I so jumpy? Yes, it was a dodgy area, and the building didn’t look all that welcoming, but it was just a building. What was the worst that could happen? Someone could murder you and stuff you in the skip. They’d have a job. There was no room. How did you find the body, detective? It was easy. It was lying across two broken dining chairs, just next to the fridge. I’m surprised it didn’t fall out.

I turned back to the building and, despite what I’d told Cade, I started walking toward it. Strange as it might seem, I felt drawn to it, like I might always regret it if I didn’t find out what was going on, because one thing was for sure, this was no normal job. Not by any stretch of the imagination. The annoying thing was Cade would know I’d do it, that my words had just been about letting off steam. I needed to work on being less predictable.

The building looked no more hospitable up close. And that was before I noticed the three men standing between me and its entrance. Gargantuan, Monstrous, and Giant, as I immediately named them, were huge, their bulky shapes in dark clothing renewing that feeling of wanting to turn tail and run. I didn’t run. I squared my shoulders and walked toward them.

Chapter Seven

John

It was Gargantuan who reacted to my presence first. He held up one meaty hand, his jacket shifting so that I could see the holster he wore underneath it. “Stop right there.”

I stopped so suddenly that if this had been a game of musical statues, I would have been a dead cert for the win. To my relief, Gargantuan didn’t reach for his gun. Good. I had absolutely no wish to stare down the barrel of a gun. Not tonight. Not any night.

It was safe to assume that if Gargantuan was armed, then Giant and Monstrous were too, but their hands stayed by their sides. Obviously, none of the three saw me as a threat, which I wasn’t, so hopefully, they’d go right on thinking that. Giant cocked his head to one side and scrutinized me, tension sizzling in the air. “We didn’t order no pizza.”

Monstrous and Gargantuan both chuckled. If I hadn’t been shitting myself, I might have taken offense at being mistaken for a pizza delivery boy. “Someone asked me to come here. Trust me, there are hundreds of other places I’d rather be tonight.” Like at the bottom of a snake-infested pit with no ladder.

Monstrous crossed his arms over his chest, his biceps bulging in a way that made him look like he could bench press a rhinoceros. “Asked by who?”

“My boss, Cade Everleigh.” I was guessing these three were brothers. Their looks and build were too similar for them not to be related.

“Never heard of him,” Giant said.

“You’ve got a corpse, apparently. One you’d like reanimating.”

Brief interest flared on Gargantuan’s face. “You’re a necromancer?” His gaze drifted slowly over me. “You don’t look like a necromancer.”

Here we go again! Maybe it was time to give in to the inevitable and invest in some black hair dye and eyeliner. I could paint my fingernails black while I was at it and get a neck tattoo. “Well, that may be, but I am one.”

“ID,” Monstrous demanded.

I slid my hand slowly into my pocket, not wanting them to think I was pulling some sort of move. Mind, I’d have had to be suicidal to take these three on single-handedly. Once I’d extracted the official PPB card from my pocket, I held it up, Giant shuffling forward to examine it, his gaze flicking between the photo on the card and my face a few times before he offered a nod to his brothers. “He checks out.”

“He’d better come in, then,” Gargantuan said. “O’Reilly’s expecting him.”

Figuring that was an invitation, I stepped forward. Giant’s palm came to rest in the middle of my chest, pushing me back a greater distance than I’d made it forward. It was like taking a wrecking ball to the chest. “Not so fast, cheeks.” Sweet cheeks! Jesus. That was horrifying from the lips of such a man mountain. Even if he was the smallest man mountain of the three. “We need to frisk you first. Make sure you’re not smuggling anything interesting in.”

Before I could even think about protesting, Monstrous had already joined his brother. He snatched my bag off my shoulder and passed it back to Gargantuan. Then, Monstrous and Giant subjected me to such a thorough going over that I wasn’t entirely sure that the three of us weren’t now in a polyamorous relationship. Giant seemed particularly taken by my groin area. A decade passed before they were satisfied I didn’t have a weapon secreted about my person. Or at least it felt that long. Given that Gargantuan was still going through my bag with a look of distaste by the time they stepped back, it must have only been a matter of minutes.

“What’s in there?” Giant asked.

“Candles,” Gargantuan said. He lifted his gaze to mine. “You run a fucking market stall on the weekend or something?”

It took all the willpower I had not to roll my eyes. No wonder Cade had warned me not to mouth off. “I use them in the process of reanimation.”

Monstrous pulled a face like the whole thing wasn’t something he wanted to give a moment’s thought to. They were probably worried that all the guys they’d killed over the years would come back to wreak revenge. And If I knew where the bodies were buried, I would have been quite happy to make that happen.

Gargantuan shoved the bag into my arms without bothering to fasten it, and I looked down to hide a smirk. Some searcher he was. He’d completely missed the knife in the side pocket. He took out a key and unlocked the door. Would they lock it behind me? This just got better and better. “He needs an escort,” Gargantuan said.

---