“Yeah…that’s right. Yes, I’m Angel. Nice to meet you.” I decided to play dumb about knowing who she was. “Are you one of his cousins?”
Amusement lit her eyes, though she didn’t laugh. “No, I’m just a family friend. I’ve known Marcus since high school. Have you two been dating long?”
“Not really,” I replied. “Only a couple of weeks.”
“Well that explains why we haven’t heard much about you,” she said with a light chuckle. “Though he does tend to stay pretty private.” Her lips twitched. “It says quite a bit that he brought you around to meet us so soon.”
I gave a weak laugh in response. “Well, we’ve actually kinda known each other for a while. I mean, we just weren’t dating is all.” Crap, what had he told them about how long we’d known each other?
Sofia tilted her head slightly. “Ah. That makes more sense. So, tell me about yourself, Angel. Where did you go to school?”
It took everything I had to not pretend I heard Marcus calling for me or my phone ringing. I fought to keep the smile on my face, but I was pretty damn sure it looked sickly. “I, uh, went to East St. Edwards high school.”
Sofia waited a beat as if expecting me to say more, then seemed to realize that I was finished. “Of course. Any plans for college?”
A sick tightness began to form in my stomach. You don’t belong here was the clear message. “Um, not right now. Just working, y’know.” The last thing I wanted to tell her was that I hadn’t even graduated high school. But hey, I was studying for my GED at least. Or rather, I was about to start studying for it. Any day now.
She took a sip of her drink. “Of course. There are some great online courses that are pretty affordable and don’t eat up too much time. That’s how Marcus is working toward his masters.”
I blinked. “Masters? Oh, I, um, didn’t know he’d gone to college.” Here I was thinking he was just a cop. He had a degree? Why hadn’t he ever told me? Trying to protect my feelings again?
What the hell did he see in me?
“He has a bachelors in sociology. But he figures that with a masters he has a better chance of going federal.”
“Federal?” I asked weakly.
She smiled at me over her glass. “Federal agent. FBI or DEA. That sort of thing.”
“Oh,” I managed. “He…never told me that.”
Marcus came back then, and I nearly seized him in relief. “I see you’ve met Sofia,” he said, then surprised me by giving her a kiss on the cheek. “You’re looking as sharp as ever,” he told her.
“And you as well. I was just getting to know your new girlfriend.”
“Well, I hate to interrupt, but I need to steal Angel away from you to introduce her to Uncle Pietro.”
Sofia’s eyes crinkled in what looked like amusement, then she gave me a polite smile and turned away. Marcus tugged me toward the stairs. He glanced over at me as we climbed. “You all right?”
I plastered on a smile. “Sure thing.” I wasn’t about to tell him that I was suffering from a crisis of inferiority because I was an uneducated doof, and that I was feeling more and more like I didn’t deserve to be with him. “I’m peachy keen,” I added for good measure.
He didn’t look convinced, but luckily for me there wasn’t time for him to pry more details out of me. At the top of the stairs we proceeded to the room at the end of the hallway. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting. A sitting room or maybe an office. Something that looked a bit like the room Marlon Brando sat in during the beginning of The Godfather. It was my dad’s favorite movie. I knew that room.
This wasn’t that room. Not even close. Oh, there was a big ol’ oak desk and leather chairs and that sort of thing. But one wall was taken up by an enormous TV, along with consoles for several different video game systems. Opposite that was a smaller desk with a computer and flat screen monitor. Every bit of wall space that wasn’t taken up with TV, windows, or door, was filled with bookcases all chock full of books. All kinds—hardback, paperback, non-fiction, fiction, mystery, sci-fi—all precisely shelved and, as far as I could tell, alphabetized.
I pulled my attention away from the intimidating number of books. In a chair by the window was a man who I could only assume was Uncle Pietro. To my relief, he looked exactly how I’d pictured him. Stocky and swarthy, dark brown hair with a scattering of grey, and dark eyes that seemed to crackle with intelligence. I found myself discreetly peering to see if I could detect any evidence of hair dye or makeup but quickly gave up. Whoever did his work was damn good. As far as I could tell the man really was in his sixties.
He stood when we entered and came over to give Marcus a warm hug. “Good to see you, my boy. Very glad you could make it.” He then turned to me. “And you must be Angel. I’ve heard a bit about you.” But before I could respond he glanced to Marcus. “Close the door, please. Then we can talk.”
That wasn’t encouraging. Looked like I was in for another third degree on whether Marcus could do better than me.
Pietro turned back to me and gestured toward a chair. “Please, make yourself comfortable.”
I didn’t want to sit in the chair, mostly because I wanted to sit next to Marcus. Not to be all publicly affectionate with him, but because I was really fucking needing some reassurance at this point, and a simple hand-holding would have suited me just fine. But I went ahead and sat in the indicated chair, then realized that Pietro probably knew exactly what he was doing and had wanted me separated from Marcus so that he could get a better idea of what kind of person I was. A nervous wreck, I thought with a silent sigh.
Marcus closed the door and took the chair next to mine. Still too far apart for me to reach out and take his hand or anything, at least not without me looking like a complete spaz. Which I probably already looked like. Yes, my self-esteem was currently hovering somewhere below rock bottom.
I expected Pietro to sit on the edge of the desk, thereby allowing him to loom over us, or at the very least take the seat behind the desk so that he could be more boss-like. But to my surprise he pulled a third chair over so that we formed a circle. Or a triangle. A circular triangle.
He glanced at the door as if to verify that it was shut, then picked a remote up from a side table and turned on some sort of vaguely familiar classical music. “The speakers are pointed so that it’s louder by the door,” he explained to me. “Makes it pretty much impossible to eavesdrop on us from there.” He set the remote down and then leaned back in the chair. I tried to hide how freaked out I was at the sudden display of security. “So, tell me, Angel,” he said. “How are you adjusting to being a zombie?”
“It’s fucking weird,” I said, then flushed at my complete lack of couth. “Sorry, sir, I mean, it’s pretty odd, but I think I’m getting a handle on it.”
The smile he gave me was almost friendly. Almost. “I don’t mind an f-bomb, Angel. Especially considering that you saved Marcus from the hunter.”
At first I thought he meant a deer hunter, and it took me a couple of seconds of mental floundering to figure out what the hell he was talking about. Hell, I was a redneck. Of course I’d think of deer hunting first. “You mean Ed?” I asked, just in case.
“Yes. The zombie hunter.” He shifted, crossed one leg over the other. “I confess I was less than thrilled when Marcus told me he’d created a zombie. There are sustainability issues, you understand.”
I knew I looked perplexed. “You make it sound like he put me together in his garage,” I said. “And no, I don’t understand. What are, um, sustainability issues?” Hell, they already knew I was uneducated. What, I was going to lower their opinion of me?
“I’m referring to how to keep our population fed without resorting to means that would draw attention to us.”
“Oh, you mean how to get enough brains,” I said. Why the hell couldn’t he have said that?
Pietro tipped his head in a nod. “Precisely. You are a new zombie, which means that your need is somewhat higher. You probably consume, what, a full brain a week? Perhaps a bit more?”
“Yeah, sounds about right,” I said. Hey, look at that, something resembling some answers. “You saying I won’t always stay this hungry? How long does that last?”
“About a year. It will gradually taper off a bit to where, with normal exertion, you’ll be able to make a brain last about a week and a half. But, this still means that the average zombie needs about forty brains a year.” He gave me a sardonic smile. “I’m sure you can see why our population needs to be strictly controlled.” He met my eyes, and I had zero doubt that he would have preferred that my population had been controlled, perhaps even before I’d been made a zombie.
Well, fuck him and fuck this whole thing. I leaned back and crossed my arms over my chest. “Yeah, well, you’re stuck with me now,” I said with a tight smile. “And I guess you’re all right with Ed taking a bunch of y’all out?”
He frowned. “We don’t kill our own. There are plenty of others willing to do that for us—and Ed is a perfect example.”
Marcus cleared his throat softly. “Angel, Ed’s not the only zombie hunter out there.”
Pietro waved his hand dismissively. “Doesn’t matter. There are ways to deal with these hunters.”
“Is that who you think stole the body?” I asked. “Zombie hunters?”
Pietro’s eyebrows drew down in a frown. “What body?”
“Angel was held up at gunpoint last night,” Marcus quickly explained. “They took the body of a man who was killed in a fall out at the lab where Sofia works.”
Pietro pursed his lips. “Very mysterious. But unless the victim was a zombie, I can’t see why you’d think hunters would be involved.”
I silently bristled at both his “you silly idiot” tone and the fact that, apparently, Marcus hadn’t talked to Pietro about the body. So why was it so goddamn important that we come see his uncle so soon? I cast my mind back over our conversations. As far as I could remember he’d definitely given the impression that the body theft was the big reason why we needed to see him.
