Cerulean Sins Read Free Page A

phone number, you can reach me twenty-four hours a day.”
    â€œAre you in a hurry for this?”
    â€œLet’s just say that I never know when an offer may come my way that I would find hard to resist.”
    â€œNot just money,” I said.
    He gave that smile again. “No, not just money, Ms. Blake. I have enough money, but a job that holds new interests . . . new challenges. I’m always searching for that.”
    â€œBe careful what you wish for, Mr. Harlan. There’s always someone out there bigger and badder than you are.”
    â€œI have not found it so.”
    I smiled then. “Either you’re even scarier than you seem, or you haven’t been meeting the right people.”
    He looked at me for a long moment, until I felt the smile slide from my eyes. I met his dead eyes with my own. In that moment that well of quietness filled me. It was a peaceful place, the place I went when I killed. A great white static empty place, where nothing hurt, where nothing felt. Looking into Harlan’s empty eyes, I wondered if his head was white and empty and staticky. I almost asked, but I didn’t, because for just a second I thought he’d lied, lied about it all, and he was going to try and draw his gun from his jacket. It would explain why he wanted to know if I was a shape-shifter. For a heartbeat or two, I thought I’d have to kill Mr. Leo Harlan. I wasn’t scared now or nervous, I just readied myself. It was his choice, live or die. There was nothing but that slow eternal second where choices are made and lives are lost.
    Then he shook himself, almost like a bird settling its feathers back in place. “I was about to remind you that I am a very scary person all by myself, but I won’t now. It would be stupid to keep playing with you like this, like poking a rattlesnake with a stick.”
    I just looked at him with empty eyes, still held in that quiet place. My voice came out slow, careful, like my body felt. “I hope you haven’t lied to me today, Mr. Harlan.”
    He gave that unsettling smile. “So do I, Ms. Blake, so do I.” With that odd comment, he opened the door carefully, never taking his eyes from me. Then he turned and left quickly, shutting the door firmly behind him, and left me alone with the adrenaline rush draining like a puddle to my feet.
    It wasn’t fear that left me weak, but the adrenaline. I raised the dead for a living and was a legal vampire executioner. Wasn’t that unique enough? Did I have to attract scary clients too?
    I knew I should have told Harlan no dice, but I had told him the truth. I could raise this zombie, and no one else in the country could do it—without a human sacrifice. I was pretty sure that if I turned it down, Harlan would find someone else to do it. Someone else that didn’t have either my abilities or my morals. Sometimes you deal with the devil not because you want to, but because if you don’t, someone else will.

2
    L INDEL C EMETERY WAS one of those new modern affairs, where all the headstones are low to the ground and you aren’t allowed to plant flowers. It makes mowing easier, but it also makes for a depressingly empty space. Nothing but flat land, with little oblong shapes in the dark. It was as empty and featureless as the dark side of the moon, and about as cheerful. Give me a cemetery with tombs and mausoleums, stone angels weeping over the portraits of children, the Mother Mary praying for us all, her silent eyes turned heavenward. A cemetery should have something to remind the people passing by that there is a heaven, and not just a hole in the ground with rock on top of it.
    I was here to raise Gordon Bennington from the dead because Fidelis Insurance Company hoped he was a suicide, not an accidental death. There was a multimillion dollar insurance claim at stake. The police had ruled the death accidental, but Fidelis wasn’t satisfied. They opted to pay