No, a zombi was a creature that required a fairly fresh corpse, a long and arduous ritual and expensive (and in many civilized nations, illegal) components. This is not the sort of thing you give to somebody who 'did a few jobs' for you when you were alive.
And that would be me. Even if you're a super-powerful whatever-it- is, sometimes there's stuff you don't want to do. Either because you don't want your name involved, or because your personal (false) identification isn't up to it, or because it involves cold iron, or whatever. That's when your smart super-powerful whatever-it-is calls somebody like me.
And Elmaranth had called me, on more than one occasion. Sometimes it was obviously important stuff, like delivering a package up to DeSoto estates, fifty miles outside of town, in half an hour. Sometimes, it was inconsequential stuff like dynamiting a stump somewhere in a meadow at a very specific time. Sometimes it was just plain weird, like driving a vintage Tucker around the block, widdershins, thirteen times. But it was a great car to drive, still in cherry condition, and I got well paid each time.
And, about a week after Elmaranth's 'accident', I was called by a representative of Hambler and Fitzhugh and asked to attend a reading of his will, which is where I acquired Jeeves.
Some of the others of his clan who were there snickered behind their hands and looked at me in very significant ways, so I kept Jeeves in the backyard for a couple of weeks, in case he oozed noxious wastes or tried to assassinate me in the night or did some other cute Spritely trick like that. But he seemed fine, and he looked lonely out there, so I toweled him off and brought him inside.
It was only a few days later that the Witches of Endor came to visit, and all was revealed to me. That's supposed to be a joke. The Witches of Endor are this collective of Sorcerers who specialise in prophecy and foresight. One of the unpleasant side effects is that they take themselves far too seriously, despite the fact that they act like a troupe of mummers dancing through a field full of ergot. I'd bumped into them from time to time in the course of my work, and was amazed repeatedly at what self-centered pretentious gits they were. Their newest member, Martin, had been a corporate mage for a while, and I'd worked with him once.
So it's six-thirty in the morning when a knock at the door drags me out of bed in my tattered terrycloth robe which I've lost the belt to years ago, and there on my doorstep are Solomon Quadmegis and the three motleys who make up the rest of the Witches.
Solomon is your classic cinema evil genius looking type. He's tall and muscular, handsome in a weird and discomfiting way, shaved bald, and when he looks at you his eyes try to burrow through to whatever's behind you. He has a robe kind of like mine except his has a hood, is made of expensive thick black linen and is covered in mystical golden sigils. Oh, and he still has the belt. He has this huge deep resonant voice so that when he booms out "Maria Juarez!" at six-thirty in the morning, you can feel it in your back molars.
"Good morning, Solomon, you amazing putz. This had better be pretty damned important and very lucrative. Do you have any idea what time it is?"
"Maria Juarez!" he said again, on the odd chance that one of my neighbours hadn't caught it the first time, "We have come to claim what is rightfully ours. It is an abomination in the sight of the universe that you possess it!"
Okay, it was going to be one of those days. "Why don't you boys come in, and we'll discuss the matter. Jeeves!" He lurched into view, kicking my dirty laundry along as he shuffled out of the hallway. "Coffee, black, for five," I said, knowing that the Witches eschewed caffeine, feeling it interfered with their precognitive abilities, and then pushed a bunch of research books and paperwork off the sofa to make room to sit.
The three cronies stared, gape-mouthed, as Jeeves groaned in acknowledgement and scuffed into the kitchen. Ha ha, I thought, I have a zombi butler and you don't. What I didn't notice, though, was the way Solomon's mouth tightened and his eyes bulged just a little more than usual. Of course, none of them sat down at the space I'd cleared, just stood about looking important.
Then Solomon started booming again. He was good at it--he'd had lots of practice. "You will issue no further commands to his Eminence, and will apologize for your impertinence when he returns from the kitchen!" he ordered.
I looked back over my shoulder. "What, you mean Jeeves? If I issue no further commands, he'll stand in the middle of my living room and rot until he drops the coffee tray."
"And you will address the mighty Novenus, or his mortal remains, as His Eminence, certainly not 'Jeeves'."
Jesus, Mary and Joseph. I worked to keep my face stony and not to gape like a beached sturgeon as puzzle pieces the size of dock workers slammed into place in my head. Elmaranth, you rat bastard, you're lucky you're dead, or I'd have to kill you.
Novenus, one of the most powerful sorcerers of the modern age, had disappeared a few years back. Some thought he'd entered the fifth dimension or some magical bullshit like that. Some thought his spell research had backfired in some impressive way. Some suspected foul play. There had been a search for him, physical and magical, that grew more frantic as time went on. Magi get frustrated and cranky when their spells don't work as they are expected to.
I wondered to myself--had Elmaranth actually managed to do the old fossil in, or just snatched the body off whoever had done the job? "I'd heard the coot was shacked up on a tropical island somewhere with Elvis. So you think you finally found him, huh? What took you so long?" Jeeves lurched into the room, his clumsy uneven gait sloshing coffee from the five mugs over the thin metal of the TV tray, and I grabbed one of the mugs, blotting it on the threadbare monkeypuke fabric of my LazyBoy.
Solomon threw out his arms in dramatic gesture. Oh God, he was going to boom again. "The interloper Elmaranth met his well-deserved end at the claws of a Manitou, whose anger he had aroused with his ill-considered impertinence!"
I sat patiently, tucking my robe around me and waiting for him to stop posturing and tell me something I didn't know.
"With the demise of the miscreant, so began the death of his spell of obscuration which shielded our mentor from us and his proper interment. We have now come to put his remains to rest. You will relinquish your unclean hold on him now."
I leaned forward in my chair at this, fingers wrapped tightly around the coffee mug. "I'm assuming you brought your economy size wallet, Solomon. Zombis are not cheap these days, you know. A lot of work goes into them." I spared a glance up to see how close to blowing a gasket he was. He was getting pretty close. This was fun.
Solomon sputtered and waved his arms and for a full second utterly failed to boom. "Money?!" he finally managed, "You would further compact your error by forcing your avarice on us? Do not tempt me to bring the power of my Order upon you!" As he said this, he reached into his pocket and grabbed up a crystal which he lifted to his forehead.
Quickly, fluidly, I pushed up out of the chair, coffee mug in my fist, and whipped it underhand across the room at Solomon. Even I was surprized at how perfect the throw was. Solomon sure as hell was. It caught him right on his crystal; the mug and the crystal both shattered and he toppled backwards onto my coffee table. For a long moment, I thought it might hold him, but then one leg snapped and splintered, sending him sliding headfirst toward the rest of the sorcerers, mouths popping open like the pipes on a carved wooden Swiss organ.
His three cronies tried to grab me then, but I held up my hand and stopped them. "I got four coffee mugs just like that," I said, jerking my thumb back over my shoulder. "Get out and take him with you."
They hesitated, and I won't compliment myself by thinking they left because they thought they were in any danger from my flying ceramic attack, but they did pick Solomon up by the shoulders and gently drag him out.
One of them turned and pointed an accusing finger at me. "You have tempted the wrath of the Witches of Endor, magic-bereft worm. Prepare, now, to feel their vengeance. We shall have what is ours, and... You shall have what is yours!"
With that, the lot of them stormed out my front door, leaving the damn thing open behind them, Solomon's heels leaving damp trails in the frayed fabric of the carpet in the corridor.
Great. He's training a lieutenant boomer.
**********
The laundromat was hot, humid and overcrowded. Standard Saturday afternoon. I was nearly half through the monthly ritual, perched on an uncomfortable molded-plastic chair with a dusty copy of Time, waiting for the washer to finish spinning.
Instead, it lurched and wheezed and the red 'out of balance' light flicked on. The little old lady next to me waiting for a free washer glowered in my direction from under her sunbonnet.
I sighed and pushed myself up out of my seat, smiling semi-apologetically at the old bat, and went to open the damn thing up. The stench was almost as bad as the sight--nearly my entire wardrobe stewing in thick, coagulating blood.
I staggered back, somebody screamed, and that's when things started getting really interesting. Some frat boy dropped a knee in my back--must've been there washing his jock strap or something--and pinned me to the concrete floor. It'd been a while since I'd tasted my own blood, and I didn't care for it much. If I'd been motivated, I probably could've taken the guy. But that would've given the others an excuse to jump me, and the way they were staring at me and the mess in that electric cauldron, I'd take my chances with the cops, thanks all the same.
They were reasonably pleasant about it, for cops. Threw me in lockup with some diesel dyke named Red who kept me up all night talking about her pet ferret, Niko. Early the next afternoon, when they found out that the blood in the washer belonged to a cow, they let me go. Don't leave town, and all that, here's your wad of ruined clothes.
I suppose I should have suspected that phase two had already started, but when I flung open my apartment door I was still shocked to find the place swarming with gnats. They spilled out into the hallway like smoke, it was that thick.
Leaving my door open, I went to the neighbour to borrow a silk scarf (Oh, sure, they look good on him.) and wrapped it around my head so the little bastards didn't get into my eyes or my mouth. Halfway through the living room I slammed into Jeeves, who toppled over into my chair as I spun off to the side and headed into the kitchen, the bedroom, the bathroom--every room that had a window in it, opening them to let the buggers out.
By sunset, most of the things had been convinced to find another room mate. On the kitchen counter, artfully arranged in gothic script, a squadron of tiny dead gnats spelled out the word 'Submit'.
There's probably something witty I could've said at that point, but I was damned if I could think of it. I just swept the things into the sink and rinsed them down the drain.
**********
The fish bowl was a clotted mess of blood. Before tossing it down the back stairs, I plucked the two koi (Spreitel and Chim Chim) out with salad tongs so they could be given a proper burial, and I had a long think.
The thing about zombis, see, is they're dead. Let me try that again. The thing about zombis is, even though they used to be people, they're things now. Things with enough intelligence to know they're things. If cars could be built like this, then grand theft auto would become a thing of the past. The car would just drive itself back, probably with the thief still trapped inside it.
They couldn't take Jeeves away, they had to squeeze me until I gave him to them. But they had this squeezing action down pat. Of course, some folks don't react well to being squeezed--they just get stubborn and bull-headed. Me, I don't know anybody like that.
**********
The plague of boils really sucked. I couldn't sit down or lie down without breaking a bunch of them. The last of my wardrobe was soaked in the putrid smelly stuff. But it just pissed me off and made me that much more stubborn.
I wrote a note for Sam, the druggist at the Rexall, and gave Jeeves some money and the note in an envelope. "Go down to the drugstore. Give Sam the envelope. Bring back the package he gives you," I said, slow and deliberate as if he were a particularly slow five-year-old.
Jeeves lurched off down the hall, leaving the door wide open. Maybe he was a particularly slow five-year-old. I shut the door just as the phone rang. I snatched up the receiver from the cradle and held it to my ear like a sweaty stick of dynamite, determined not to get boil-goo into the earpiece. "Yeah?"
"Maria Juarez!" the voice on the other side boomed. Dammit. This phone call was not going to increase my joy levels for the day.
"Solomon, you pretentious git. How nice to hear from you. My neighbor hates that plague of boils you sent him." Take that, you prick.
There was an uncertain silence for just a moment, and I savored it because I knew it wouldn't last long. "Maria Juarez!" he announced again, "Until you surrender his Eminence to us, you will continue to be visited by a host of plagues!"
"Yeah. Well, so long as you don't visit again, I'll be perfectly happy with a few plagues. You have a nice day now."
Whatever he was saying, I had the delicious satisfaction of cutting off as I slammed the receiver down. A few minutes later, Jeeves came back with a box of sterile gauze. I shucked off my stinky gooey clothes in the kitchen, lay down on the linoleum and ran him, step by step, through cleaning me up. I'd never had a boyfriend this considerate; I began to suspect men were much better dead than alive. Sure, he was a little clumsy, a little blunt, but so were most men.
I curled up on a wad of towels, confident that, if the spell continued as it had been, the boils would be gone in the morning. Unfortunately, that sterling logic failed to carry through to the obvious conclusion.
I awoke, exactly at sunrise I'd bet, being pelted by a barrage of hailstones that fell from an imaginary spot about half an inch below the ceiling. Tiny ice pellets slammed against my already pink and stinging skin as I tried to scramble under the sink. The space was too small to do much good, so I shot out into the living room.
The coffee table. That would work, if I didn't knock the last 'leg' (A pile of canned goods holding up the corner) out and drop the damn thing on my head. I caromed off Jeeves, who was standing at parade rest in the middle of the room, so all I did was whack my shoulder on one of the good legs.
And I was safe, for a while. Then I peered out into the room and noticed what the hail was doing to Jeeves--the magic kept him from decomposing, but it wouldn't save him from being torn apart by flying ice. Those idiots! For a bunch who specialise in prophecy and augury, they sure didn't think ahead much.
"Jeeves!" I shouted, sticking my hand out from under the table and waving it at him, "Jeeves! Get outside!" I assume that the reason he kept standing there, slowly disintegrating, was because he couldn't hear me over the din of crashing ice pellets. It wasn't because he was jonesing on the process, I'm pretty sure.
There was what remained of a ratty old wool blanket draped over the couch, I couldn't see it so I hoped it wasn't buried in ice. I rolled out from under the table, plowing into a can of baked beans the size of my grape. The table teetered for a moment, like the coyote in those old cartoons, before crashing down just beside me, sending a slough of collected ice showering over my back.
The ice was big enough and falling hard enough now that I was pretty sure it would leave bruises. Actually, at the time, I wasn't thinking much about the hail beyond that it hurt like a bastard. With a quick and dexterous yank, I flipped the ice off the blanket and freed it from the couch. Nearly with the same motion, I wrapped Jeeves up protectively and shuttled him out the door.
Or at least that was the plan. It went more like this, really. The blanket tore nearly halfway loose before I slipped on the ice under my feet. I spun, trying to keep my balance, and only managed to wrap one arm up in the blanket and pin it to my body. Then I hit Jeeves, and the both of us spilled to the floor like a miniature Busby Berkeley routine.
Of course, it was at this moment that a key rattled in the battered front door, and it swung open to reveal Mrs. Feinman, in her landlady uniform of faded pink housecoat, fuzzy slippers and hair rollers.
A brief digression. Mrs. Feinman had developed the annoying habit of bursting into my place without announcement at the least of pretenses--loud music after ten, gunfire putting holes in her ceiling, the extended fall of hailstones, or anything like that. Being some six weeks behind in my rent, I'd had little leverage to cure her of the habit. Until now.
I could see her slowly taking in each element of the scene, and the impact as it registered on her brain. Me, naked, ensnarled in a blanket, sprawled on top of Jeeves, all in a sparkling field of falling ice.
I tugged the blanket up to cover my downstage breast and smiled shyly, waggling my fingers at her. I tried to avoid wincing in pain as it would have spoiled the effect. Her jaw nestling comfortably in the neck of her housecoat, she blinked a handful of times before just turning and walking away. And the sweetheart left the door open. "Jeeves!" I shouted, right in his ear, "Get the hell out!"
In the hallway, we sat and stared back into the room. The ice fell until about ten, when they either got bored or ran out of juice to fuel the spell. But that was plenty; by then, everything that hadn't been broken by falling hail or crushed by the weight of three hours' collected ice pellets would be destroyed when it all melted. Mrs. Feinman wasn't going to be pleased.
We started shoveling ice into the tub, running hot water full blast. That afternoon, Martin stopped in. Martin's not a bad guy for a schmuck, which is probably why he's pretty much low man on the Endor totem pole. He stood in the hall, looking vaguely uncomfortable as he surveyed the damage over my shoulder. "I thought this was a bad idea. But Simon says it's neccessary." He looked at me, then. Actually looked at me, like another human being. That's one of the things I respect about Martin. "You know what's coming. The last plague? Give up, before somebody gets hurt."
I don't know if it's intentional or not, but there's this thing about his voice when he talks like that, a tone or whatever, that makes me feel all fuzzy and want to do what he says. If I didn't have a rule about dating magi, I'd let him talk to me like that more. But I was cold, bruised, sore, and I'd banged my knee on the side of the tub, and I didn't feel particularly like being soft and fuzzy at the moment.
"You tell Simon that if anybody gets hurt, I suspect it won't be me. There's a magus currently at the top of the list of possibilities." I pantomimed loading a magazine into a pistol. "Way on top."
Martin shook his head. "You don't know what you're up against, Maria. I don't want to see anything happen to you." He stepped back, further into the hall and away from my door. "Solomon's right; you don't know anything about magic. Give him up, before it's too late."
I made a sour face and pushed the door shut on him. I wasn't about to roll over for an inept game of good cop bad cop like this. Especially not for Simon.
When I turned around, Jeeves was standing there, dully looking at me. He'd finished the last task I set him to--cleaning the ice up in the hallway. The dustpan he'd been using to scoop up hailstones was dangling from one hand. "Don't look at me like that," I told him, shaking my head firmly, "I'm not doing this for you. This is strictly between me and them. So don't get any funny ideas." I hadn't given him an order, so he stood there like a corpse, staring at me with those dark, deep set eyes. "Well? What are you waiting for? Go start on another room for Christ's sake."
With that, I stormed into the kitchen to grab a beer.
**********
After the hail, the locusts were a cakewalk, really. Everything was destroyed so there was nothing left to be devoured. It was the clean up that was unpleasant--some thousand tiny crunchy insect bodies everywhere.
It was during this clean up, shaking out the bedclothes and bundling them for the laundromat, that I found an old framed picture of my older brother that had been knocked under the bed. I stared at it. Then I sat on the stripped bed, picture in hand, and stared at it some more. The glass in the frame had shattered, leaving a web of distortion across his face. Symbolism so blunt even I could get it.
Now, I'm not incredibly fond of my brother. In fact, he's a wart on the cheek of humanity, more or less. But... he's family. Much more than some cadaver that cleans your kitchen, right?
Maybe.
With a shrill scream, the phone interrupted whatever deep thoughts and earth-shattering epiphanies I was about to stumble onto. The picture jerked itself free of my hands, plummeting to the floor and spraying glass across the room.
"Your time grows short, Maria Juarez, as does our patience!" exclaimed the voice on the other end of the line.
There's nothing I hate more than a nag. I set the phone down on the desk and let him rant. He must have eventually noticed that I was gone, because the line was dead when I came in to go to bed.
**********
I went to bed, but I didn't sleep. This was it. Last chance to change my mind. I stared up at the ceiling, fingers laced behind my head, not exactly thinking of anything. The same thoughts chased each other around in a frantic little circle. That probably doesn't count as thinking.
The ugly grey light of near dawn started filtering into the room through the window, painting the ceiling as I watched. Then, at sunrise, everything abruptly went pitch black. Mondays. I hate 'em.
I moved carefully to the bathroom and showered--I think I washed my hair with the fancy bath oil--and got dressed in something that certainly felt color co-ordinated.
I was sitting on the kitchen floor idly trying to discover which box was the corn flakes and which was the instant potato flakes when I finally came to a decision. It wasn't one I liked, but that just didn't seem like an option given the circumstances. I crawled across the floor to the doorway, then eased up the wall to the phone. I carefully dialed, hoping Martin would answer and not a pizza place one digit off.
He did. "Martin," I said, "This is insane. It's not worth getting somebody killed over. If you think your boss is narrow minded, stubborn and petty enough to see this through, then you tell him I give and he can come get his monkey."
Martin paused, not saying "Yes my boss is narrow minded, stubborn and petty, so we're on our way." Instead, he said "He's not a monkey, Maria. He's Novenus, possibly the greatest magus of our age."
I allowed that, gracefully. Nobody can say I'm a poor loser. "I've grown kind of... fond of him over the past few weeks. Like a favorite toaster or something. Turn on the lights and give me time to say goodbye? Say, about noon?"
Almost instantly, the darkness was banished. "No tricks. Please, Maria," he said, with that voice of his, "For everybody's sake." Then he hung up.
**********
I was barely ready for them when they showed up at eleven-fifteen. Solomon gloated. I glowered. They all stood around looking important. I went back to the bedroom to get Jeeves. I didn't even tell Solomon how much I'd miss Jeeves, that he'd been like a son to me. I don't think Solomon appreciated how much respect I was showing him. I did notice that Martin couldn't look me in the eye the entire time they were here.
In the living room, I tenderly stroked one of the hailstone divots on Jeeves' cheek and told him goodbye. It was kind of sappy, sure, but give me a break. He was my first zombi.
Solomon was getting all antsy by then, stalking around the room. So I let them take him away. They quickly shuttled him out the door and down the stairs, crowing over their victory. And they left the door wide open. I watched out the window as they left the building, checking my watch as they climbed into their car. What beautiful timing.
They were just pulling out of their parking spot when there was a dull boom from the street below my apartment, and gouts of smoke poured out of the car windows. The four witches pushed open their doors and staggered out onto the street as I dialed 9-1-1 and prepared to duck out the back and make myself very scarce for a few days.
Solomon was right. I don't know shit about magic. But I'm a whiz with explosives.