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If he wanted me to offer to arm wrestle him, he was in for a disappointment. “Back off, Tommy, or I’ll drop you here and now. All the muscle in the world won’t help you.”

I watched something move behind his dead eyes, then his whole body relaxed. He took a deep breath through his nose. “Okay, you got the drop on me today. But if you keep disappointing my boss, I’m gonna find you without that gun.” His lips twitched. “And we’ll see how tough you really are.”

A little voice in my head said, “Shoot him now.” I knew as surely as I knew anything that dear Tommy would be at my back someday. I didn’t want him there, but . . . I couldn’t just kill him because I thought he might come after me someday. It wasn’t a good enough reason. And how would I ever have explained it to the police?

“Get out, Tommy.” I opened the door without taking either my gaze or the gun off the man. “Get out and tell Gaynor that if he keeps annoying me, I’ll start sending his bodyguards home in boxes.”

Tommy’s nostrils flared just a bit at that, veins straining in his neck. He walked very stiffly past me and out into the hall. I held the gun at my side and watched him, listening to his footsteps retreat down the stairs. When I was as sure as I could be that he was gone, I put my gun back in its holster, grabbed my gym bag, and headed for judo class. Mustn’t let these little interruptions spoil my exercise program. Tomorrow I would miss my workout for sure. I had a funeral to attend. Besides, if Tommy really did challenge me to arm wrestling, I was going to need all the help I could get.

9

I HATE FUNERALS. At least this one wasn’t for anyone I had particularly liked. Cold, but true. Peter Burke had been an unscrupulous SOB when alive. I didn’t see why death should automatically grant him sainthood. Death, especially violent death, will turn the meanest bastard in the world into a nice guy. Why is that?

I stood there in the bright August sunlight in my little black dress and dark sunglasses, watching the mourners. They had set up a canopy over the coffin, flowers, and chairs for the family. Why was I here, you might ask, if I had not been a friend? Because Peter Burke had been an animator. Not a very good one, but we are a small, exclusive club. If one of us dies, we all come. It’s a rule. There are no exceptions. Maybe your own death, but then again being that we raise the dead, maybe not.

There are things you can do to a corpse so it won’t rise again as a vampire, but a zombie is a different beast. Short of cremation, an animator can bring you back. Fire was about the only thing a zombie respected or feared.

We could have raised Peter and asked him who put a gun to his head. But they had put a 357 Magnum with an expanding point just behind his ear. There wasn’t enough left of his head to fill a plastic bag. You could raise him as a zombie, but he couldn’t talk. Even the dead need mouths.

Manny stood beside me, uncomfortable in his dark suit. Rosita, his wife, stood spine absolutely straight. Thick brown hands gripping her black patent leather purse. She is what my stepmother used to call large-boned. Her black hair was cut just below the ears and loosely permed. The hair needed to be longer. It emphasized how perfectly round her face was.

Charles Montgomery stood just behind me like a tall dark mountain. Charles looks like he played football somewhere. He has the ability to frown and make people run for cover. He just looks like a hard ass. Truth is, Charles faints at the sight of anything but animal blood. It’s lucky for him he looks like such a big black dude. He has almost no tolerance for pain. He cries at Walt Disney movies, like when Bambi’s mother dies. It’s endearing as hell.

His wife, Caroline, was working. She hadn’t been able to switch shifts with anyone. I wondered how hard she had tried. Caroline is okay but she sort of looks down on what we do. Mumbo jumbo she calls it. She’s a registered nurse. I guess after dealing with doctors all day, she has to look down