The Undead

By Rachel Caine

A “fresh, intense, erotic, funny, and scary” novel of vampiric horror from the New York Times–bestselling author of the Stillhouse Lake novels (P.N. Elrod, author of Drawing Dead and Other Stories).

After eight years of marriage, surgeon Mike Bowman and his police officer wife have snuck time into their busy schedules to celebrate their anniversary. But work is never far from Mike’s mind, which is why he finds himself in the morgue in the middle of night instead of in his wife’s arms . . . 
 
Trying to come to terms with two young murder victims he wasn’t able to save, Mike unburdens himself to his friend and morgue attendant Adam Radburn. Good ol’ Adam, whose eyes seem bizarrely dark tonight and whose reflection in the cold storage drawers . . . doesn’t exist. 
 
When Adam reveals his true self to Mike—and saves him from the clutches of death—Mike goes from a man trained to save lives to one who must take them to survive. And though Mike is now immune to mortal dangers, there are new threats to contend with and worse creatures who walk the Earth. One has been tracking Adam for centuries. To satisfy his bloodlust, he’s willing to destroy everyone Adam holds dear—including his new offspring.
 
“In The Undead, vampires lurk menacingly, and they are not the cute, cuddly, romantic-type vampires of modern urban fiction. These are serious, life-threatening, blood-sucking, kill-you-till-you’re-dead vampires . . . [A] diamond in the rough.” —Rambles

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Dec 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9781504080675

Rachel Caine

Rachel Caine is the #1 internationally bestselling author of almost fifty novels, including the New York Times bestselling Morganville Vampires young adult series. Her novel Prince of Shadows won multiple awards, including being named to the Spirit of Texas Reading List, and most recently, Ink and Bone, the first of her Great Library series, is an international bestseller and critical success, and winner of multiple nominations and awards, including being named to the Lone Star List by the Texas Library Association.

Book preview

Chapter One

The Living

It was my eighth wedding anniversary, and I was late as hell for dinner. That wasn’t really surprising, since I could count on one hand how often I’d been on time for dinner, but I was eager to see my wife and perform some intimate apologies. I held the mail in my teeth while I juggled the wine in one hand and my keys in the other; I finally got the front door open, and kicked it shut behind me.

I dropped the mail out of my mouth and realized that the house was still dark. Damn.

Maggie? Echoes answered me. I sighed and lugged everything into the kitchen, which Luisa had left spotless as always. Some people, my in-laws among them, thought having a maid was a yuppie extravagance. I looked on it as a sanitary necessity: the way Maggie and I kept house, we’d probably have been the first private household shut down by the health department. I stuck the wine in the refrigerator and tossed the mail across the room toward the table. Half of it even made it.

While I was reaching up for a glass, the security alarm went off. I swore and ran for it; we’d only put the damned thing in three days ago, and I was definitely security-challenged, couldn’t seem to remember to punch in the code to disable it when I came in. Not only that, I couldn’t remember the damned code word to placate the alarm company. By the time I managed, I knew the cops were on the way. Well, it was a good excuse to call the station, anyway.

False alarm, I announced to the sergeant. He grunted as if he’d already known that. Word of my reliability with technical things had obviously spread. Is my wife logged in, by any chance?

Yeah, Doc, she’s here. Hang on, I’ll get her—

Click, buzz, a breathless and harried contralto hello. I closed my eyes and pictured her. It worried me when it was hard to do.

Mike? Oh, goddammit, I’m sorry. Nick! Nick, I’ve got to—Nick! A brief, fierce exchange on the other end of the phone, incompletely muffled. "No, I don’t want to haul in Angelo tonight. You take care of it! Nicky, it’s my anniversary, for God’s sake, have a heart—"

Maggie, if you can’t make it, we can go out this weekend I put in helpfully, if not honestly. She was silent for a moment, listening to her partner’s low rumble in the background.

What? No, Mike, I’m on my way now. Really. Jeez, give it a rest, Nick, will you? I’ve got to go! Maggie was really getting pissed. Her voice always got lower when she got mad. Right now she sounded like Katherine Hepburn’s meaner sister. Angelo will wait until tomorrow. What’s he going to do, skip town? The little creep hasn’t got any money except what he cons out of us. Michael?

I’m here.

I’m on my way, hon. You go ahead and get ready, and it won’t take me thirty minutes after I get there, okay?

I looked at my watch, raised my eyebrows, and contemplated the virtues of being fashionably late.

I’m on my way to the shower now, I hesitated for just a second. Maggie? Are you sure you can get away? We really can do this later.

Yes, I’m sure! She sighed loudly in my ear, which wasn’t nearly as sensuous as it should have been. Hey! Dvorak! I’ve already got three homicides on my desk, give me a break, will you? Thus isn’t even my file!

When I winced, it was both for the unfortunate Dvorak and for my ringing ear. I said something suitably loving that couldn’t possibly have been heard over the uproar on the other end of the line, hung up while she was still shouting, stared at the phone blankly, and then wandered off into the bedroom. I’d readied a state of exhaustion that in most people is accompanied by uncontrollable drooling and twitching; I had to make a recovery before my notoriously hyperactive wife got home.

Midway through my shower (I take very long showers, as Maggie constantly complains), the shower door slid back and a long slender hand held out a tall glass of wine to me.

Peace? my wife asked, eyebrows arched and elegantly questioning. I took the glass and tossed the wine back without savoring it—it was that or watch it swirl down the drain along with the soap—and then grabbed her hand and pulled her into the spray. She gasped as the hot water hit her, plastering her blouse and skirt hard against her skin, but she didn’t look especially surprised—or displeased.

Hi, Doc, she said; her voice matched her smile, warm and welcoming. She put her arms around my neck. The kiss was long and warm and apologetic on both our parts, and I slid my hands up over her hips to the wet satin of her shirt; The buttons were tricky, but I eased them open and found the skin below. It tasted like rain.

Happy anniversary I murmured.

What about the show, Romeo? I thought you were hot to see this thing. Maggie’s smile reached her eyes, and the effect was luminous and beguiling. I shrugged and kissed her again. At length.

Show? What show? Now, as to the hot—Maggie opened her mouth to remind me, then changed her mind and finished opening the buttons on her blouse.

How was your day? she asked, which was kind of a silly question to be asking while arching her back like that. The water turned the tan nylon fabric of her bra into a transparent and very interesting display of smooth rounded flesh. I helped her peel the wet satin sleeves off her arms, then turned her gently around and began easing the zipper down on her skirt.

Fine I answered blandly. How was yours?

The zipper caught halfway, to my exasperation, but I wasn’t about to quit. With the application of a little force, it came free and slid smoothly down. I was distracted from the fascinating process of pulling the skirt down by Maggie’s hands, which slid up my legs and pulled me tight against her.

Oh, it was all right. The usual, you know, she said, and made a slow, torturous circle of her hips that made my heart—and organs coming into contact with those beautiful buttocks—receive a disproportionate share of blood pressure. Kind of boring, actually. Nicky got all excited about busting Angelo, but—hell. Not much of a challenge, you know?

Uh-huh, I replied. I had not the vaguest idea what I was replying to. Instead of pulling her skirt down, I reached for the hem and pulled it up. Ah, that was better. Maggie had the delicious habit of wearing absolutely nothing under her pantyhose, and today was no different; the silky feel of her hose against my wet skin was only bettered by the erotic sight of what was in the nylons.

And how was your day? Maggie purred. I slid my hands around her hips and down into the hollow between her legs. Her head fell back against my shoulder, and I felt her shiver convulsively. She was trying to keep her breathing steady, but she was breaking out into soft panting noises.

Funny, so was I …

You already asked me that, I whispered. She twisted around enough to brush her wet warm lips against mine.

So? she asked. Her hands, so clever, found what they were looking for. It was easy enough to find, considering the circumstances. You want brilliant conversation at a time like this?

Hell, no—

Shh, she interrupted, and stiffened against me. I lifted my head from her shoulder and listened.

Sure enough, the sharp annoying whine of a beeper filtered in.

Oh, shit, she snapped, and twisted to look at me. Her dark blue eyes were wide and more than a little wicked. We can pretend we can’t hear it.

Hah, I told her sourly. Yours or mine?

It’s a B-flat, she said after a moment of thought, and a faint, very regretful smile flickered across her lips. Yours, I guess. Mine’s a—

G-sharp. Yes, I remember. I had the tonal accuracy of a deaf donkey, but Maggie’s life before becoming a cop included two years of graduate-level music study and an artist’s certificate in performance. Great. Listen, hold this thought, okay? Five minutes, I promise.

Sure, she said, unconvinced. I slid the shower door aside and grabbed a towel on the way to the bedroom where I’d dropped the damned beeper.

The LCD read off a number I knew all too well. I squished over to the bedroom phone and dialed, mopping at my hair with one hand and trying not to drip too much into the mouthpiece. There were five rings before somebody picked up— again, something I was more than familiar with.

City Square Hospital. If it hadn’t been for the telltale Virginia drawl, I wouldn’t have known Katy’s voice. She was usually slow and friendly—but not tonight.

Hi, Irish, whatcha got for me?

About time you got your ass on the phone, buddy. Dr. Voorhees wanted to talk to you as the attending on the Julio Ramos thing. Hang on, he’s right here—no, Carl, it’s Mike Bowman—

As soon as she said the magic word—Voorhees—I yanked the receiver an extra two inches from my ear. As usual, I underestimated; when Carl took the phone he was still loud enough to rattle my teeth. He really didn’t yell, everyone assured me, it was just that he had such a strangely pitched voice—but you couldn’t prove it by the speaker in the ear-piece. It jittered like water on a hot plate.

MIKEY! he roared. There was a flutter of noise at the other end, probably Katy Shaughnessy trying to tone him down. Whatever it was, his voice went from a sonic boom down to a nearly normal bullhorn level. Mikey, I hope I didn’t interrupt anything—

Yeah, well, it’s my anniversary, so make it fast. I’ve got—ah—dinner on the stove.

Yeah, I’ve seen the dish, Carl said solemnly. Tasty, very tasty. I wouldn’t let some old fart like me get in the way if I were you—

I don’t intend to.

Ah, yes. Carl cleared his throat. I could just see him, a great brown-haired bear of a man who looked more like a lumberjack than a physician. He was probably the best doctor I’d ever known, in spite of his notoriously simple social graces. It’s about Julio Ramos. I thought you’d want to know he ended up back in here tonight.

What? I discharged the kid yesterday. I had a bad feeling growing in the pit of my stomach, a sickness that had the density of lead. Carl’s voice had gotten softer, more apologetic, and that wasn’t like him. Cops bring him in?

Yeah. Look, Mikey, I know you liked the kid, so I’ll just be blunt and brutal: he’s dead. We lost his girlfriend before the wagon pulled in, but we thought Julio might pull through-then all kinds of shit started going wrong. I worked on him in OR for an hour; I didn’t want you to think I didn’t go goal-to-goal on this one. Carl paused, and I could feel the wheels turning on the other end. You got him on stab wounds originally, didn’t you?

Yeah, yeah, it’s in the chart. I sat down on the edge of the bed, never mind the drips. The eager length of my erection was already dwindling. He told the cops he was stabbed in a gang fight.

That wasn’t what he told you.

No. My free hand grabbed hold of the smooth flowered surface of the Laura Ashley bedspread under me and made a fist. I needed an anchor. He told me his father stabbed him in a fight over the girlfriend. Julio wanted to marry her. Dad apparently had a problem with interracial dating.

Goddamn. Carl’s expletive was soft and contemplative. You know what happened, then. Julio and the girl were shotgunned in his car. Looks like they had everything they owned packed in there.

Did the cops pick the bastard up?

Yep. He’s in jail, where I hope to God he’ll rot, but your wife can tell you the chances of that. Anyway, the bodies will be transferred to County tomorrow for the autopsies—as if having a pound of buckshot in the bloodstream isn’t a valid cause of death.

Jesus, I fucked this up, I whispered, and rubbed at my aching eyes. I told the cops what he said, but Julio wouldn’t back me up —I should have tried harder, Carl. I should have made sure his bastard father got picked up, and this wouldn’t have happened.

You aren’t a goddamn psychic, Mikey, and you aren’t the police. Lighten up. Carl was in a rare bitter mood, but he sighed and forced some cheer into his voice. Anyhow, I thought you ought to know rather than hear it from some flat-foot out to take a statement—or worse, some bloodsucking journalist.

Yeah, the vampires will be out in force. Thanks, Carl. Hey —the bodies are in the morgue?

Yep, I checked them in with Adam about fifteen minutes ago.

Okay. Thanks for calling. I hung up and sat there for a long while, watching drops of water run off the smooth plastic of the handset. The room smelled of Maggie’s sweet perfume and orange potpourri.

Julio Ramos had been seventeen years old. His girlfriend—well, she hadn’t looked more than sixteen. God only knew how young she really was.

Fuck, I hate this, I whispered. It came up directly out of the black weight under my heart, bypassing my brain. The words surprised me, and so did the anger coating them.

Mike? Maggie asked. I looked up to find her standing there in the bath doorway, wrapped in a big towel. The shower had stopped. I’d been too wrapped up in my thoughts to even notice.

Sorry. I was—thinking. My voice got lost. I didn’t try to find it. I just stared at her, at the damp glittering blonde hair and big blue eyes and china-smooth curve of her body, and I thought about making the wrong decisions. Somewhere, eight years ago, I’d made the right one.

Oh, thank God. Thank God there were still things in the world that survived, like my love for her.

Don’t think, she advised me quietly. What happened?

I told her, flatly. She didn’t flinch. She rarely talked about work, but when it did come spilling out of her it was a thousand times worse than my little honor stories, and I knew she saw a hundred Julios a year.

Nasty Maggie sat down next to me on the bed and stared at her fingernails. And you fed responsible.

I knew the son of a bitch was dangerous.

Nobody knew that better than the kid she put in softly. Her voice was very steady, a cop’s voice. Cops and doctors, models of professional detachment. You want I should take a look at it, make sure everything gets done by the book?

I didn’t mean for you to punch the dock, Maggie. It was a halfhearted apology, at best, and she smiled at it. At me.

Bullshit, but thanks. Maggie looked up at me, and her face was gentle and earnest. Hey, I mean it, Mikey. I’ll trade for the case. What’s the kid’s name?

Julio Ramos. I swallowed hard. The chief of staff would be appalled, I thought. Dr. Bowman, you’re taking this personally, back off and take a good look at yourself. I could almost see his walnut-withered little face pucker up in disapproval; there was only one sin deadlier than not caring about your patients, and that was caring about your patients. I pulled in a deep breath. Only if you can. Understand?

Yeah. You let go of it, huh? We both need to punch the dock now

I forced a smile and tackled her backward onto the Laura Ashley bedspread. She raised her eyebrows comically high, but she didn’t fight me. Didn’t, apparently, feel inclined to fight.

I’m damned sorry, sweetheart, I whispered against her hair. It smelled dean and a little fruity from the shampoo. She put her arms around me and ran her fingernails lightly down my spine.

Oooohhhhh … very nice.

No apologies, Doctor. I’m off duty—unless you’d care to have an intimate little interrogation session—just the two of us?

Nah, I pretended to think while I pulled the towel open around her body. Let’s play doctor.

I get to be the doctor.

Says who? My voice was muffled by the smooth weight of her breasts. She laughed, a deep, throaty laugh, and pulled me back up for a long, long kiss. I’d almost forgotten how very good it was to kiss her.

All right, Doctor, she finally gasped, it’s your turn to operate. Make it good.

All modesty aside, it was. Very good. But after we’d eaten our delivered pizza and had our wine and made love again and again, my mind kept skipping over the pleasure and returning to the pain—to Julio Ramos.

I wasn’t able to sleep. I slid out of bed at two a.m., careful not to wake my wife, and threw on a warmup suit and shoes. It was only a short walk through the park to the hospital, and I needed the exercise.

Chapter Two

The Dead

The elevator wouldn’t go past the ground floor without a passkey. I fumbled for mine, but before I could dig it out of the lint desert in my pocket a woman stepped in and, without a word, inserted her own key in the slot. She was tall, angularly thin, weighted down with file folders in her arms; for the briefest possible second she looked at me and registered my presence. She had startlingly pretty blue eyes—startling because of the pallid plain expanse of her face and limp colorless hair. She was make-upless, and arrogantly proud of it. Her name was Rebecca Foster, but nobody called her Rebecca, Becky, or anything affectionate at all. To the doctors (at least to her face) the was Foster. To the rest of the staff she was known as A.G.—Assistant Ghoul.

She was the morgue assistant on the night shift, backup to my friend Adam Radburn. You’d think that having christened Foster as A.G. the staff would have referred to Adam as H.G.—Head Ghoul—but they didn’t. Everybody called him Adam, or buddy. Even when they called him names, they clearly liked him. Foster just as clearly resented it. Of course, Foster took a dim view of the world in general, and her boss in particular. Adam was just too avant-garde for her rigid tastes.

Good evening, Foster, I said, resisting the impulse to drop into my Bela Lugosi impression. Her eyes remained stubbornly on the panel as she turned her key; with a faint hiss of air, the elevator fell and left my stomach behind. She smelled like high-school science class, or those midnight cadaver sessions in med school. Not exactly the perfume I preferred in close quarters. How’s business?

Foster blinked, but she didn’t look at me. Her pale lips were compressed into a straight line as if she’d stapled them together.

Fine, she answered. As quickly as she could. Conversation was an unpleasant duty that she avoided at all costs—and with surprisingly little effort, since nobody ever felt compelled to keep trying. I sighed, and leaned against the rail that ran around the elevator wall, the one some med-school wag had joked was part of the physical therapy equipment. We watched the numbers pass in silence.

How was church? I heard myself ask—blame it on exhaustion, or pique, or just plain crazed self-abuse. There are people with whom you don’t ever, for the sake of your sanity, discuss animal rights. Or abortion. Or politics. The one thing you never—never—discussed with Foster was religion. It was dangerous. Foster was a rabid, frothing fanatic, and she’d been known to drone on for hours to those feebleminded enough to get her started.

Like me. Her blue eyes dowdy swiveled to peer in my direction.

I’m sure you wouldn’t know, Foster said with dry, superior hauteur. But if it matters to you, it was very inspirational. I taught an adults class tonight, and we went over the trials of Job.

Cheerful, I murmured. Whatever conversational engine had started to chum in her squealed, sputtered, and chugged on to new life.

"God doesn’t have to be cheerful, Doctor. He isn’t the God of fuzzyheaded humanists." She spat the word out like a curse. "God is angry. He has a right to be, with all the sin that goes on in this world. You think we don’t see it every day in those pitiful bodies? Prostitutes and drag addicts, drunks and violent men. God isn’t smiling."

Well, it’s great that you had dinner with him and I’m not just getting this secondhand, I said, and immediately regretted it. You don’t slap the face of a martyr. It only pleases them, and makes you look mean and stupid.

Except that it didn’t please Foster, which meant she wasn’t much of a martyr. More of a martyrer.

I’m sure you wouldn’t know God if you stepped on Him, Doctor, she hissed, and the Doctor was purely contempt. I wondered briefly if she was one of the fringers who believed only sinners went to the hospital, and that God healed all his chilluns who deserved it without medical intervention. Sort of like a cosmic video game and karmic shell game all wrapped up in one. "Maybe God will step on you instead."

Anyway, it wasn’t fair. I was still listed in the rolls of the Clear Creek Baptist Church. I even attended sometimes. But, in the world according to A.G. —Foster, dammit, someday I was going to put my toes on my tonsils over that—anything less than attendance at every single church function from sunrise service to Thursday night freestyle Bible study made me a baby-sacrificing heathen.

If she was the mainstream, hurrah for baby-sacrificing.

Not a very Christian sentiment, Foster, I reproved mildly. She looked away, but not before I saw the dull fury in her eyes. Her face turned pink and blotchy. But I’ll turn the other cheek.

If there was anything that could have made her furious, that did it. When the doors hissed open, she took off as if shot out of a catapult, heading for the frosted glass doors marked

NO ADMITTANCE

. She banged into them so hard I expected to see the glass crack. Her passage sent a faint wave of music lapping along the corridor, nothing I could immediately identify; as I got closer I recognized it as New Age, something slow and luminous that reminded me of the lingering warmth of Maggie’s skin against mine. I’d bet big money Foster hated it. Smiling at the thought, I pushed open the doors and entered the morgue.

These halls of the dead tend to take on the character of their keepers, in a sterile sort of way; some attendants like the ordered peace of Vivaldi or Mozart, and some bounce Quiet Riot or Metallica off cold tile. Adam was different from either of those, in the same way his music was different; he’d stamped some of his quiet personality even on this coldly metallic room. His cubicle held relaxing pictures of clouds and sunsets, and sitting on one corner of his scrupulously neat desk was a tiny perfect crystal ball on a golden stand. Adam was, most certainly, different. I liked him one hell of lot—but not because I understood him, four-year friendship notwithstanding. Sometimes beerfests and pizza parties and movie marathons didn’t give you a clue at all to what went on inside, no matter how much fun they were.

We weren’t the sort of friends who unburdened our souls to each other. More like the kind who unburdened our wallets over poker.

Foster’s desk, by contrast with this warm (if slightly off-center) decorating style, held a severe-looking Bible. Small print. Going blind while reading the Good Book was evidently a plus in getting past Peter at the pearly gates, who probably was armed with an AK-47 and mortars for those pesky gate-stormers. The Bible was all she permitted herself; apparently even Precious Moments religious knick-knacks were vanities.

Morning, Michael, or is it still night for you? I get confused. Adam was standing in front of a lectern by the door, a pen in one hand as he carefully noted down facts on a new arrival. He paused and glanced at me over the top of his ridiculous Lennon glasses, brown eyes bright with curiosity. Morning, I see. You look like you haven’t slept yet.

Yeah, you look just great too, Adam. When’s the last time you got a little sun, eh? I leaned one arm over the lectern, more for the support than for the effect. He finished the entry in his precise, flowing script and capped the pen. The question seemed to amuse him all out of proportion to the feeble wit behind it.

I don’t know. What year is this? he asked, then wheeled his cart over to the rows of silver drawers. I automatically moved to help him, but he lifted the corpse and slid it into the drawer without needing my none-too-legendary strength. Foster, who was viciously slamming files one by one into stainless steel slots, didn’t even bother to volunteer. She sent me a hot acidic look when Adam wasn’t watching her, then bent to her mindless job as if it took all of her concentration. Adam shut the door on his new charge and followed me back into the little cubicle that served him for an office. He acted just as if Foster didn’t exist, evidently a truce they’d defined over these last few unpleasant months.

Coffee, I sighed worshipfully, and helped myself to the pot brewing on the single-burner machine in the corner. The smell helped to cut the reek of death and ammonia. When I offered some to Adam, he refused with a polite gesture. While I sipped it, Adam took the crystal ball and rolled it nimbly over the backs of his fingers. It dipped and bobbed like a yo-yo on a string. When Adam noticed me staring, he made a dramatic flourish and slowly turned his hand over. The ball was gone.

I’m breathless, I said in a bored tone. Actually, I did think it was pretty neat. He smiled and palmed the crystal out of the air, then replaced it on the stand.

Finger exercises. Well, you didn’t jog all the way down here to watch me do magic tricks, Michael. What do you want?

Maybe I just craved the pleasure of your company. I took a long sip of the coffee and made an automatic face of pain. You know, you’re never going to get that Folgers commercial unless you learn how to make this shit right.

Adam leaned back in his chair and tilted his head back against the cushions. There was something unnerving in the way he watched people, as he was watching me now. I’d seem him do it to others, principally Foster, so I knew it wasn’t anything personal, but my nerves prickled all along my spine anyway. It’s just exhaustion, I told myself. It couldn’t possibly have been what I thought—that his eyes were, just for a brief instant, strange. Impatient. The eyes of a stranger.

Michael, I don’t mean to rush you, but the sooner you get to your point, the sooner you can get back to a warm bed and a warmer woman, Adam prodded. I grinned a little guiltily, thinking about Maggie, and he smiled in turn. I have a very accurate sense of smell. I don’t think you douse yourself in Poison on a regular basis.

I’m surprised you didn’t just say I smelled like sex, you asshole, I said. His smile widened.

It did cross my mind, but I’m a polite asshole. Come on, Michael, we’re on company time here. What’s up?

He steepled his fingers under his chin, a curiously antique gesture for someone who probably got carded in every bar he ever stepped in; even with a ponytail longer than my sister’s, he looked no older than twenty-two. He was still staring at me—not rude, Adam didn’t know how to be rude. He simply had no conception of tact. In most situations, the difference between that and rudeness was pretty much academic.

I’d always had a secret fantasy of locking Adam and Carl Voorhees together in a room and letting them practice remedial conversation together. The winner could take on Foster.

"No, I can see why you need to get moving, your patients will get anxious. Look, I understand you booked in a couple of my ex-patients tonight."

Adam just looked at me, eyes blank. I took a long sip of coffee and waited. Adam never consulted records, only his memory, which was a damned sight more reliable than anything I’d ever looked up on paper—but it took time. Adam ran on his own schedule, as many irate administrators had discovered.

Julio Ramos. He was your stab wound. Game in with his girlfriend. Adam’s voice, when it finally came, was quiet and certain. I nodded. Messy, my friend, very messy. You want to see the record?

I guess that’s what I came for.

You think so? Adam asked obscurely, but turned and pulled two file folders out of his box. He passed them over, then stood up and walked to the far wall of the cubicle. He paused before a big glossy photo of sunset over the ocean, and stood there staring at it while I flipped pages.

The boy’s dad hadn’t wanted any survivors, that was for damned sure. I was surprised they hadn’t both been DOA; the amount of sheer will it had taken to hold Julio in his body made me feel sick at heart. All for nothing. Two lives, for nothing.

Romeo and Juliet, Adam observed quietly. I looked up from the file. He was tracing the outline of the setting sun with one long fingertip. Not so romantic close up, is it?

"More like Psycho, if you ask me."

Adam turned to look at me, still holding his fingertip on the burning disk of the sun. His glasses caught the sterile white fluorescents and reflected; I was strangely and powerfully reminded of Little Orphan Annie and her cartoon pupilless eyes.

You came here for some kind of explanation, Michael. I can’t give you one. All I’ve got is dead flesh and lots of questions. He smiled slightly and the reflection passed over and away from his lenses. His brown eyes were again bright and vital. You want to view the bodies?

I almost said no, but then I got to my feet and followed him to the drawers. I wasn’t sure why; I’d seen enough death and bodily destruction in my years, and I didn’t want to carry the memory of Julio with me, not like that—but I followed anyway. Even doctors aren’t immune to ghoulish curiosity.

Adam turned, one pale hand on the metal, and looked at Foster, who continued sorting folders with scowling intensity. She didn’t seem to notice, but her shoulders tensed. He looked at her for several beats before he spoke.

Foster, why don’t you take a break? Go get some lunch? he asked. She didn’t look up at all, just dropped the folders onto a tray with a thump and stalked out the doors. I winced when she crashed into the doors again.

Lunch? I asked. He shrugged.

"Yeah, on our hours. On at eight,