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desertvixen Because I simply can't stop watching the train wreck, I pushed through this book.
Overall verdict: The old "start with a mystery plot for a few chapters, and pick it up in the end chapters" is still alive and well. I wonder if maybe she should think about doing more short stories, because I think the main mystery plot (concerning zombie porn) and the subplot with the too-real zombie that she raises would have each made a good, strong short story, because that's about the amount of plot and attention devoted to them. The middle of the book is eaten up with the usual relationship/metaphysics stuff that most of us are just bored by. Plus, bad wedding planning stuff that doesn't advance that plot at all. The book also features the traditional 2-3 page epilogue at the end that ties everything up (but Anita didn't get knocked out this time, so progress!) but doesn't actually resolve anything. Parts of the book dealing with the FBI case appear to have actually been edited.
It's better in some places, and worse in others than the last one.
Snarky bits: Please note that this includes naughty words.
“The sergeant is here because he’s your partner when you work with the Regional Preternatural Investigation Squad. Everybody calls it the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team, but officially it’s not,” Manning said. “It’s the nickname,” I said. “They call us RIPIT, both for the Rest in Peace, and because most of the crimes are violent, things get ripped apart. Other cops and even the media have used RIPIT for so long that people want the T in the actual name of the squad.”
This is just the first example of “WHY is this even in here?” filler, and this is in a section of the book that appears to have been edited. Or it’s meant to be a shout-out for older fans. I don’t have my older books handy, but if she really wanted a cutesy nickname, she should have come up with that first in her world building, then made it fit – something that I’ve seen plenty of times in the Army.
The only plus was that the camera had moved back enough to catch the sex, so we couldn’t see her eyes. She just lay there like the corpse she almost was, and that was the only tiny saving grace. He ended by taking his dick out of her body and doing the obligatory porn movie end to show that he’d actually gone.
Let me get the “come”/”go”/”brought” rant out of the way early…because if I didn’t know what the “obligatory porn movie end” was supposed to mean, I’d assume the guy was not only a necrophiliac, but into golden showers. I have had my share of sexual partners, and none of them has ever said they were “going”. Is it some weird Midwestern thing? Also, OMG, did LKH use an actual specific term for a body part? (Don't worry, it won't happen again.)
“Dominga Salvador; she was the most powerful vaudun priestess in the Midwest.” “She went missing just after she challenged you.” I raised eyebrows at Manning. “Challenged me? You mean sent killer zombies into my apartment to kill me? If that’s your definition of challenge, then okay.”
Oh the old days, how I miss them, when Anita used to sound like this all the time.
I DIDN’T FEEL bad about the death, because she’d been trying to force me to murder someone else as a human sacrifice at the time, but it was still technically murder. She’d also been the first person I ever killed with zombies that I’d raised from the grave, which was still an automatic death sentence. It fell under the magical malfeasance laws; any practitioner of psychic or supernatural gifts who used such as a method of murder, or violence outside self-defense parameters, was subject to the strictest enforcement of the laws therein. Strictest enforcement was execution, which is pretty damned strict.
The laws in LKH-land go back and forth between incredibly punitive to the monsters, and being unbelievably lenient towards them. I could understand the former, because the monsters are dangerous, but the way they whip around just makes it seem like she’s plugging them in where convenient.
“It was a horror preview for the other zombies. I think the Señora enjoyed the sadism of it, but the threat was for her frenemies, like me. It was supposed to make me too afraid of her to refuse what she wanted, and apparently it had worked on other people.”
Better people than me have tried to figure out the timeline for the series. I’d point out that the majority of this book seems to take place in 48 hours or less. However, this whole deal where she wants to have both little passage of time (7-8 years) from the early books, but she keeps up with stuff like current jargon (frenemy?) and tech. Make up your mind.
I believe she meant to do what I do for clients sometimes: You put them inside the circle and bind the zombie to them so it’ll do what they say, and I go on to my next client. We’ll make an appointment for them to bring the zombie back and I’ll lay it to rest then, but I can’t babysit every zombie I raise in a night.”
Am I the only one who thinks this sounds like a REALLY bad idea?
“Like untrained telepaths who go crazy because they can’t block everyone else’s thoughts,” Brent said. “Yeah, except for me it was roadkill following me home, or my first dog that died and came back.” Zerbrowski gave me wide eyes; apparently I’d never shared that with him.
Another LKH phrase that is overused and jarring – “I gave X (adjective) eyes”. It just sounds stupid. I’m picturing Z with eyeballs in his palm here. Also, HOW has he never heard this, because I think it’s in every single book.
“But would killing a chimpanzee or a dolphin be a bigger death than a cow, but less than a human?” he asked. I thought about it, and finally said, “Maybe, but an adult male chimpanzee can tear a normal human being’s arm out of its socket, and I can’t even wrap my head around trying to get a dolphin alive to a grave site just to slit its throat to raise a zombie.”
Aside from the fact that this seems like a pointlessly filler discussion, I’m kind of amused by the dolphin thing even being brought up. Can zombies even be raised from shipwrecks (assuming they haven’t been lunch for the fishies)?
“Dominga’s plan was to give the zombies in as fresh a condition as possible to her buyers as perpetual sex slaves, but she didn’t see the possibility of porn online. I’m assuming that there must be customers paying for this stuff.”
Another danger of the timeline issues. I forget when Laughing Corpse (the book Dominga Salvador shows up in) was published, but pretty sure it was before online porn really took off. This is actually an interesting plot idea, though.
“I’ll bet; you don’t look anywhere near thirty.” I shrugged. “Good genetics.” It was, but there was the possibility that being Jean-Claude’s human servant, as well as fiancée, meant that I wasn’t aging, that I might stay just like this forever.
Genetics, by the way, is one of the “words of the book”.
Manning narrowed her eyes at me. “Every beautiful woman knows just how beautiful she is, and you are not a three.”
Can this whole thing just die? Beautiful women can be just as insecure as the rest of us, but Anita’s whole “I can’t be pretty” despite the legion of reassuring sycophants gets old.
I shook my head. “The daytime jeweler is the nighttime jeweler’s human servant, and ancient vampires are all about the formalities,” I said. “Yeah, it’s not every day you get to meet a human who can tell you that Helen of Troy had black hair,” Lisandro said. “She did not say that,” Socrates said. “Yes, she did.” “She said, these rings would be worthy of Helen of Troy, another raven-haired beauty.” “Raven-haired means black hair,” Lisandro said. “Are you saying she compared me to Helen of Troy?” The two men stopped bickering long enough to look at me. Then they looked at each other, and back to me. Lisandro said, “Any other woman I’ve ever met would be flattered, but you’re going to get all weird about it, aren’t you?”
This is just idiotic. Do the guards have a combined IQ smaller than their shoe size? Not that Anita is much better sometimes.
Now the thought that he hadn’t fed, and that it could be part of our foreplay, tightened things low in my body so hard and suddenly that I had to reach for the edge of the desk to steady myself, and I hadn’t even gotten to his face.
Catchphrase alert!
I didn’t know whether to be flattered, amazed, or ask, Why me? Why not a thousand more traditionally beautiful women out there? He could have had movie stars, or models, but he’d chosen me. Me, too short, curvy even with my gym workout, and scarred from my job, still struggling to heal all the issues life had saddled me with, and yet he smiled at me, held his hand out to me. I went around the desk to take his hand, but I didn’t feel like the princess to his prince; I felt like a clumsy peasant to his very regal king.
Never mind that later on she gets all virtuous about her scars. Anita’s body issues are just getting old.
It had been somewhere in what would be the Middle East today, but I think had been Mesopotamia then, yeah, as in the cradle of civilization. She gave her name as Irene; I doubted it had been her birth name, but I’d learned that it was rude to ask a vampire or human servant’s original name. Whatever name they came with was their name. I guess you can’t go through centuries being mud-dabble-wat-wat, so Irene it was.
This just strikes me as rude. It’s right up there with calling Jade an Oriental.
Murder victims crawl from the grave with only one thing on their minds—vengeance. They will tear through anyone in their way in an attempt to hunt down and kill their murderer. It was the reason you couldn’t just raise the victim of a homicide and ask them who killed them. It had been tried and the death count was always higher than just the one murder they’d been trying to solve.
So, this whole “murder victims always do X” bit is also annoying. It’s just not thought all the way through. Do they have to know they were murdered? What if they were poisoned, or something where they didn’t know the killer? What about violent deaths?
He’d put together a new act that had more romance at the beginning, but the end was romantic only if you considered “sexy as hell” romantic. I tended to think of it that way, but the human media had been split between headlines stating I was jealous and angry at him for going onstage again, to wondering how long until I might join him onstage. I had done it a few times as the pretend “lady victim” from the audience for some of my lovers, but not lately. One, the customers didn’t like the idea of a plant in the audience who had already had the pleasure of, um, meeting the men for real, and two, the U.S. Marshals Service didn’t think much of one of their officers going onstage at a strip club. Technically I wasn’t stripping, but just helping out the show with a “victim” who wouldn’t make a fuss or pressure the dancers for real sex, but somehow helping out a friend didn’t cover getting up onstage at a strip club.
Yet she can’t understand why everyone she runs into professionally has issues with her personal life, or why this is inappropriate. I’m not even going to tackle the mess that is that last sentence. She really needs an editor.
I smiled, and knew it was my unpleasant smile, the one that said I could do really awful things and never stop smiling. It wasn’t voluntary, and it always unnerved people for some reason.
I can’t imagine why this would bother anyone. It would be one thing if she was writing Anita as a good guy gone bad, or an antihero, but she’s not.
I looked at the ceiling, took in a deep breath, let it out, and said, “Fuck, you didn’t tell me we had to wear crowns.” “You will look lovely, ma petite.” I gave him a narrow look. “If I have to wear one, you have to wear one.” He gave that almost-shrug again. “Very well.” I frowned at him, and then a thought made me try to fight not to smile at him, but I finally gave up. “Why do I think the thought of wearing a crown has been a goal of yours for a few centuries?” He smiled, and then finally grinned wide enough to flash the edge of dainty fangs. “It has been my experience that if you have the responsibility of leadership, you might as well have the jewelry to go with it.”
Crowns? What, are they getting married in a Greek Orthodox Vampire ceremony? I’ll address the king thing later.
WE LOVED OURSELVES out of some of our clothes, but not all.
But she’s not writing romances, she’s writing hard-boiled books…
I sighed, and looked down at our hands sort of bunched at the top of his pants. “Okay, but I need some foreplay. I’m not really in the mood for a quick-quickie.” “I would not dream of it,” he said, lifting my hands up, so that I wasn’t trying to fish inside his pants. He laid a light kiss on each of my hands and then a firmer kiss on my mouth. His lips were already scarlet with my lipstick. It was a great color on him, actually.
Anita, acknowledging the need for foreplay?
Also, could someone please clue her into the existence of long-wearing lipstick and how to put it on? At least we don’t have to hear about the “go-faster stripe”.
I’d fought shaving completely for years, but it had been a request to just try it, and if I didn’t like it, it would grow back. It was as if everything was more heightened to touch and especially to oral without the hair to interfere, or maybe you could just lick and suck better with nothing between the mouth and the body. Besides, I didn’t like picking pubic hair out from between my teeth either. He licked the edge just above that spill into even more intimate parts.
Details we didn’t need to know – but we’re back to the vague-rotic terms.
teased back and forth, tracing the edge of me without ever going deeper, until I whispered, “Please.”
moved his finger back to playing with the intimate bits that weren’t inside, and lowered his mouth back to me, so that he was licking just in front of where his fingers caressed. That delicious pressure began to build where he was licking and touching.
More vague-rotica.
“Anita and Nathaniel would marry Nicky, but I won’t,” Micah said.
This might be the smartest thing he’s ever said.
“No; if I could figure out a way to marry all three of you for legal real, I would.”
Editor, please get an editor. This is how it appears in the Kindle edition. Plus she sounds like a tween girl “for legal real”.
“Oui, if Ethan had not held the bloodlines of red, gold, and blue tiger clans, then the white and black of Domino would not have been enough, but the point stands, ma petite. You had the power of the tiger clans at that moment, that singular moment that the tigers had been prophesying about for over two thousand years.” “Yeah, yeah, I’m supposed to save everybody from the great bad thing, because I’m the Queen of Tigers.” “But it worked exactly as the prophecy predicted, ma petite; without the weretigers you could not have prevailed, and without you to harness their power they could not have killed their dark nemesis.”
Just when you thought the tiger plot couldn’t get worse… now there’s a prophecy.
“That makes no sense; either you’re a victim or you’re not.” “Not true,” Micah said. “You can experience trauma without getting stuck as the victim forever. You can choose to work the shit and rebuild yourself, or you can sit in the ruins and mourn forever. You and I both chose to rebuild.”
This would be handy if she ever worked on those issues.
“Not without raising the dead by accident,” I said. We’d shared stories of our powers affecting the dead by accident. My first had been my dog. His had been a toddler cousin. What did they both have in common? A lot of emotion from us, and for me, I wanted my dog back, so she came back. The college prof who committed suicide and showed up at my dorm room had been harder for me to understand, but good little Catholic that I had once been, I hadn’t wanted him to spend eternity in hell, so . . . another chance to repent.
Enough with the back story that people already know.
“But you’re thirty, and I want to have a child with you.” “I’ve got a few good years left in me,” I said, and didn’t try to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. “Thirty isn’t old, Anita, I know that, but for a woman to have babies, early thirties is decision time.”
Is she 30 or 31? Both ages have been given in the book.
“Nicky is walking this way,” Nathaniel said. “He’s probably coming for a covert kiss; we made an agreement, no kissing and stuff in front of the clients.”
The fact that you even have to make an agreement like this is stupid. Acting like a grown-up is not that hard.
“I’m not,” he said, but he made it a question with uplift in his voice at the end of it, so that the statement was all question.
He made it a question. Another phrase I have an undying hatred for. Plus, paging the editor – is it a statement or a question?
He kissed me firmly, but not with a lot of lip movement, because he knew I’d be mad if he sent me to the clients with my lipstick smeared like clown makeup.
Again, long-wearing lipstick exists.
“I was going to walk over and make sure they’d read the handouts I sent home with them, or give them a refresher on what to expect. People never listen in the office and then sometimes they freak out during the zombie-raising, and I hate that. The coveralls are hot, even in spring, so I’ll talk to the clients and then get changed.”
It seems like if Bert at Animators, Inc was as on the ball as she wants him to seem, the clients would have to sit through a video or sign a ton of paperwork indicating that they had been briefed on the process and understood, legal waivers, and the like.
He nodded. “Just tell me what to do.” I turned for the cars, because what I wanted to say was, Read the damned handouts!
I hope someone beside Anita wrote these handouts, because otherwise they’d be worthless.
Theoretically it didn’t have to be livestock. I knew some animators who used cats instead of chickens, but I just couldn’t do it. I liked cats.
This is reassuring… not.
The historical society had paid for me to raise over two hundred years’ worth of corpse. I was about the only animator in the country who could guarantee a zombie this old that could remember its past and answer questions without a human sacrifice.
Yes, Anita is just a special, special snowflake.
But anyone who had died on one of my graves had been trying to kill me at the time. You should never attack a necromancer in a cemetery; it’s like chasing Rambo into a building full of loaded guns. Some people seem to help you kill them.
It’s a glimpse of the old Anita…just a glimpse.
If I needed a bigger death to raise the older dead, then wasn’t part of that using more blood?
If you needed a bigger death, then why did we have to hear the whole BS about feline sacrifice?
How did I know that I didn’t need all the steps to raise this zombie? I just knew, knew with capital letters, I KNEW I could pull this zombie from the grave.
Someone PLEASE edit this.
But technology and enough profit to buy the technology had given us options. I had an electronic ankle cuff waiting to put on the zombie. I’d use it to track him just like the police do with someone on house arrest. This model of cuff would also alarm if it was tampered with, so if they tried to take it off I’d know and they could be charged with disturbance of a corpse, among other things.
What if the leg just falls off? Am I the only one who think this sounds like a bad idea? The whole “just because we can doesn’t mean we SHOULD” concept seems to be in play here.
We billed per zombie raised, not by the hour, so that much revenue loss had finally convinced even Bert that we needed a different way to keep track of our zombies.
Why not just bill by the hour? Or, more appropriately for zombies, bill by the age of the zombie? Because then we couldn’t have this whole side plot.
I smiled at the look on his face; I couldn’t help it. “Yes, some girl weretigers, too. Who knows, maybe we’ll meet the woman of all our dreams.” “Not possible,” Nicky said. “Why not?” I asked. He leaned over and kissed me. “Because we’ve already found her.” It took me a minute to realize he meant me, and then I wanted to protest, but in the end I just took the compliment like I was supposed to.
Excuse me, I have to go throw up now…
“Oh, that’s right; you’re progressive and so very American. You want to make the shapeshifters equal with the vampires.” “You said it, I’m American, and we like this whole equality thing.” “The great experiment,” she said, and made it sound like an insult.
So, if we’re into equality, why are we having this whole king and queen deal? I get that maybe it’s just supposed to be putting the shifters and the vamps on an equal footing, rather than having the vamps run everything, but…maybe if there was more world-building, we’d KNOW.
“I didn’t lose any of these fights; I won them all. Everyone who hurt me is dead; I killed them. I think of the scars as an advertisement for just what a bad-ass I am.” I smiled at her, and she gave me a weak one in return.
Lita looked at me, head slightly to one side. “You didn’t worry that it’d make men not want you?” “No,” I said. “You didn’t worry that it made you look like a victim?” Kelly asked. I frowned at her. “No, every time I look at my scars I think that I lived, and I killed what hurt me. These are victory marks, not victim,” I said.
Because Anita is the only strong woman ever.
“And that’s a big reason we could never be a couple. I’m not good at just fucking.”
I have news for Anita, she’s not good at other aspects of relationships either.
Her eyes narrowed, and I realized that even her eyelashes were a pale powder blue. Cynric’s eyelashes were black, weren’t they? Could they possibly be a dark navy blue so that I’d only assumed they were black? It made me want to get him and make him stand with the light behind so I could double-check.
But remember, Anita is totally a guy, not a woman. Who cares about his eyelashes?
ONCE A WEEK we tried to eat dinner like a family at the Circus of the Damned.
What is this, Anita Blake: After School Special?
“Thirty minutes tops; the chicken is already marinated and we’re just steaming veggies.” “Please tell me there’s a carb of some kind,” Domino said. Nicky answered, “No, if you want carbohydrates have them at lunch.” “It’s not my fault that your metabolism can’t digest potatoes,” he said, frowning a little, but smiling to take the edge off it. “Have potatoes at lunch,” Crispin said. “Most of us have to take our clothes off onstage. No carbs at dinner.” “Nicky doesn’t strip,” Domino protested. “Nathaniel does,” Nicky said. “What’s that got to do with you?” Nicky gave Domino a flat, unfriendly look. “What?” “I’m the main cook,” Nathaniel said. “If you want different food, you plan the week’s menu, do the grocery shopping, and prep the meals.”
While Nathaniel has a valid point (that he does the work and he’ll do it his way), why are the shifters concerned about carbs? Don’t their metabolisms run pretty fast?
Domino held his hands up. “You win; I am so not that domestically talented. I can’t even sous chef the way Nicky and Cynric can.”
So now I’m picturing a Hell’s Kitchen: Anita Blake season. Does anyone actually say they “sous chef” for someone unless they are a sous chef? (And even then, I doubt it.) Also, the dreaded “so” is invading everyone’s vocabulary.
“Cynric was happy to entertain the idea of another woman added to our household,” Jean-Claude said in his most pleasant and emptiest voice. Crispin shook his head. “But you didn’t interview anyone, did you? You had a metaphysical crisis and it’s all back-burner again.” “They couldn’t have planned my fight with Thorn,” Dev said. “No, but there is always something that can be used as a legitimate excuse to postpone things that Anita, or Micah, or Jean-Claude doesn’t want to address, and there always will be something.” Domino was looking uncomfortable, as if he wanted to push his chair farther away so it was clear that either he didn’t agree with everything Crispin was saying, or he didn’t want to get included if we got angry. “It is true that there will always be a crisis to attend to,” Jean-Claude said. I frowned at him. “We don’t do it on purpose.” “No, but you admit that there is always something, right?” Crispin asked. Micah finally said, “I can’t disagree.”
While I would be happy to stuff the relationship plot in a coffin with crosses and never let that sucker out…the were-tigers have a point.
Jean-Claude stepped around them, pressed to the wall to move around Dev’s tawny side. “Impressive, ma petite, mon chat, mon tigre. Very impressive.” Dev shook that thick mane. “I’m not a tiger now.” “Mon lionne, then.” “Am I your lion, Jean-Claude?” The question seemed to mean more than it should have.
Only according to Google Translate, “lionne” is lioness.
“Women have been doing that math on me all my life, I’m used to it.” “Modern American women seem to believe that being tall and thin is beauty, but I have lived in centuries when that was not so.” “But when she enters a room, heads turn and follow all that height and blondness,” I said. “I’ve never gotten that same treatment just walking through a crowd.”
Can we please cut the body image stuff? We get it, Anita, you don't feel pretty, even though you have all these attractive (to you) men telling you that you are. Work your issue and make it go away.
“I’m on duty tonight, so I’m watching the GPS on the zombies we have out.” “Zombie babysitting, better you than me.” “The zombie you raised tonight isn’t at any of the addresses on the list of clients.” “Where is it?” “Denny’s.” “Denny who?” “The restaurant,” he said. “You mean the zombie is at Denny’s restaurant?” “That’s where the ankle GPS says it is.” “Shit, they can’t take him to a restaurant. It’s illegal to have a zombie inside a place that does food service. Health services will close them down for an investigation if they find out.”
And this, boys and girls, is why someone zombie-sits in person. Because if you don’t they take the zombie to Denny’s. I’m pretty sure that info was in the infamous handouts, but since she knows people don’t read them…
A man’s voice, cultured, with a slight southern echo in it, said, “Miss Blake, I am told that I owe my adventure on this side of the veil to you.”
Pretty sad when the zombie is the best speaker in the group.
“This zombie isn’t a murder victim, though, right?” Domino said. “No, I made certain of that. He died in his bed of disease, not in battle.” “Do soldiers count themselves as murder vics?” Nicky asked. “I’ve known it to happen,” Manny said, “but usually not.”
As I said before, this whole “murder victim” fact thing needs work.
I slowed down, easing through the last bit of traffic as I made toward the restaurant. Once I turned off the lights I was just another car and all the traffic laws applied to me again. I’d had some of the other regular cops explain to me that once the lights and sirens were turned off on an unmarked car, the magic get-out-of-my-fucking-way card vanished. Some people seemed to go out of their way to block you once the light show was over. It was like they resented it or something. It was hard to slow down after driving like a bat out of hell, but I’d learned that the other plainclothes cops were right, and people would get in your way just like now. It made me want to scream at the cars, but an accident this close to the goal would slow me down more than a little bit of traffic.
What part of this is news? Why did a cop have to explain it to her?
We walked through the door with me in my official Windbreaker, the one that read MARSHAL in big letters.
Department of Useless Capitalization is on the Phone, LKH…
The hostess hurried toward us, her face worried. We just so looked like trouble.
Can we please never use the word “so” in dialogue/thoughts ever? I’m so over it.
“If I’d dreamt you’d take the zombie out for a meal, I’d have mentioned it.”
Sounds like something that should be covered in the handouts…
Two, I was going to have to confiscate everything he’d recorded. Proof that I could raise something this lifelike could not get out on the Internet. I’d had a government element interested in me for raising a certain dead world leader, and that zombie had been much less alive than this one. If they saw this one, I’d be lucky if they didn’t show up before the night was over. Keeping Bob close to me seemed like the best way to ensure I could bully him out of the “evidence” later.
Remember, Anita is the good guy here… she can’t be bothered to do her job, but she’s all about protecting herself.
“You are engaged to marry a vampire, Ms. Blake. Is he any more alive than I am?” I frowned at MacDougal. “He had questions for us about how he got here, Ms. Blake. The Internet was the easiest way to explain, and when your name is typed in, the engagement story is the first thing to come up in the feed.” I sighed. “Of course it is.”
So now even the ZOMBIE knows about the trainwreck that is Anita’s life. What historical society do these people belong to?
Justine held his hair back for him, which meant maybe it wasn’t just lust. You usually have to love someone to do that.
Not everything is about sex or love. I think plenty of us have held someone’s hair, just because it’s the decent thing to do.
“Did you consume human flesh when you were alive?” “We were trapped in the mountains by an early blizzard that blocked the pass, and then true winter fell upon us. I was young and inexperienced, and it was only after we were well and truly trapped that the senior officer admitted that we had started too late. He thought we could make it out before snow, but that once we were delayed we were there until they found us in the spring. We were able to trap and hunt meat for a time, and we had melted snow to drink, but in the end the animals fled the heights and it was just our small group up on the mountain.”
What, is she raising a member of the Donner Party here?
I gave him blank cop face, because I’d learned that people will tell you their horrors, but you can’t be horrified by it.
Just kill this phrase, kill it with FIRE. Or decapitate it, burn it, and scatter the ashes in different bodies of water so she can never write it again.
Her brown hair was straight and untouched by chemicals, skirt not too short or too long. Her blouse was long-sleeved with a little frilly collar; her shoes were sensible pumps. But it wasn’t the clothes either. I’d known people who dressed like that who actually had had horribly tragic childhoods, or old romances that had needed police to save the day. I couldn’t put my finger on it, or list the reasons, but Manny was right.
Another reason I have no sympathy for the “persecution” Anita faces. Anita makes all these judgments based on people’s clothes, but doesn’t understand why coming to crime scenes in some of her getups (the stiletto in the chest in Kiss the Dead) gets her talked about.
“I watched him from a baby, Anita; he’s not right. He’s never been right. That’s not going to change. Men like that are attracted to girls like that.” “The crazy bitches are attracted to the male equivalent,” Nicky said. Manny and I nodded. “Bad boys and girls either like the good boys and girls, or people as bad as they are,” Domino said.
What is this, Shapeshifters are from Mars, Vampires are from Venus? Why are we having these discussions? Why are all the guys involved? Let Anita do her damn job.
Bob told the others, “Blake is going to put Tom back in the ground tonight.” One of the other women said, “We paid to have him until tomorrow night for questioning.” MacDougal said, “It’s all right, Iris; Ms. Blake and I have discussed things and circumstances have changed.” “Is it because Justine and he are boning?” one of the younger guys asked. The rest of the group immediately turned on him with looks that said, Way to overshare.
Well, then, maybe you should have been asking questions, instead of taking him out for dinner… Also why is everyone so blasé about the fact that this woman had sex with a zombie?
He knew that neither of us was sure that Justine would be a hundred percent. We’d never had a client that boned one of our zombies before.
Nice duplication there…
“Eat me, you mean?” Nicky said. “Yes, very much.” The southern drawl was thicker with every word, as if by the time he rushed us, or we shot him, he’d sound like Scarlett O’Hara.
Has she even seen Gone with the Wind? Vivien Leigh doesn’t really sound like a typical Southerner.
Nicky said it. “Do you really want Anita to tell a judge she raised a flesh-eating zombie and now she wants to make sure it’s not trapped undead in its grave?” “It wasn’t technically a flesh eater. It just wanted to eat flesh,” Domino said. “Oh, that’s much better,” Nicky said.
If Anita’s this all-powerful necromancer, why can’t she tell?
“I’ll write a paper about it for the academic publications, and just put the word out to add that to the list of things that put a big fat do not raise this corpse sign over a site.”
Anita is going to write an academic paper?
“I’ve been up against ghouls that were real active, Manny, and I just don’t believe anything that’s that good at killing and eating people doesn’t do it when they get the chance.” “Those are aberrant cases, Anita.” “Yeah, but all it takes is one aberrant case to kill your ass.”
I’ll give her this one.
“I’m sorry, Susannah, really sorry; that must have been awful.” And just like that I had my lesson. I shouldn’t assume that every woman a man bashes gave him a good reason to do it.
Really, you’re just now getting this? Sad to say, this is progress.
“Anita,” Manny said. I looked at him. “How are we going to give him back to death?” I thought it was an odd phrasing, but I didn’t have a better one. “I don’t know, Manny, there’s no ceremony for this, not really.” “We could try a second animal sacrifice and blood circle and put him back with salt and steel.” “You’re talking about the old-school way where we sew his mouth up with salt, aren’t you?” “We try modern first and if that doesn’t work, we go old-school.” “You really want to try to hold him down while we sew his mouth shut, while he screams for help? Fuck no.” “I second that,” Zerbrowski said. “No, we are not doing that.”
I’m with Anita and Z on this one.
Zerbrowski frowned at me. I had a moment of wondering just how much I’d told Zerbrowski about Nicky. Did he know absolutely that he was my Bride? No, I hadn’t burdened my fellow cop with that knowledge. If the police understood just how connected I was to the “monsters” they’d be sure my loyalty was compromised. They already mistrusted me because I was with Jean-Claude and Micah.
Your loyalty is compromised. They should mistrust you.
“If you say Is Timmy down the well, I’m going to punch you later, just so you know,” Zerbrowski said.
It’s Zombie Lassie, or rather Ghoul Lassie. This actually warranted a laugh.
“This has got to be a fetish, it’s like clear bukkake.” I gave him a dirty look. “It’s thicker, lasts longer, and doesn’t break down as quickly.” I scraped more of it off my arms and onto the grass.
I think people have been saying this for awhile… ew. I'm waiting for the book where that shows up for real. However, I wonder if some of the toning down sex scenes had to do with fan reaction to the breath play scene in Affliction that turned a lot of people off. There's fewer scenes, and by LKH standards they're all pretty tame. No giving men oral while they're "small",no scenes where the men pass her around like a blow-up doll, and while daisy chains are referenced, it's sort of a fade to black.
“I’ve found Kirkland to be absolutely professional, very by-the-book.” “Yeah, if you haven’t noticed I’m not really a by-the-book kind of gal.” She laughed again. Glad I could amuse someone today. “Well, your record does certainly speak to a level of rule breaking that I could see Kirkland disapproving of in a partner.” “God, you do good polite-speak, Manning.” The laughter died off in her voice. “I do more paperwork than you do, I have to be more polite.”
I like Manning.
“He’s seen some of the videos,” she said, and her voice had that I’m-hiding-something tone again. “He stopped near the beginning of them, didn’t he?” “He said that he didn’t have your level of expertise and that you would be able to help us more.” “Son of a bitch,” I said. “Blake, there’s no call for profanity.” “The hell there isn’t; he didn’t want to watch the videos all the way through, because he didn’t want to see the nightmares on them, but he’s fine with me seeing the whole fucking mess.” “You are better with the dead than Kirkland, aren’t you?” “Yes.” “Then he was right.” “He was right, but not for the reason he said.”
Well, should he have watched them just for kicks or to torment himself? Anita probably thinks so.
We don’t like to admit that people are just smart animals, but you see the star athlete marry the athletic cheerleader or gymnast, and most of their kids are great at sports, because it’s in their genes. Why can’t necromancy be the same?” “I didn’t say it couldn’t work, Nicky, I said it was creepy.” “You said it was weird that she wanted you to breed with her family, but it’s actually really logical if you want to get some uber-necromancer out of it.”
Or maybe they are good at it because their parents value it?
My phone gave Micah’s text tone, which was how I knew to look at it. The little word balloon read, “Can you meet me down in Rafael’s room in medical?”
Well, that’s what the text tone is for…
Nicky was the local Rex, which meant when there was other muscle around he didn’t carry shit either.
What about that equality thing you were talking about earlier? Yes, being the boss has perks, but most of the leaders in this series make me want to run them over with my car.
It wasn’t the first time one of the fresh-from-the-military guys had done that. I’d been told the rules. I did not salute back; if I’d been a superior officer then it would have been my call whether to return the salute anyway, but since I’d never served in the military for real, my saluting could be seen as a sign of disrespect.
At least in my branch, superiors are supposed to return salutes whether they feel like it or not. Also, “never served in the military for real”? WTF? You either served or you didn’t. Just hanging out with them doesn’t make you one.
I moved closer to him, drawn by the heat of his anger and the musk of his wolf, but it was the anger I wanted. I was hungry, and his anger sat on my tongue bittersweet like super-dark chocolate; it’s sweet, but there’s that undertone of bitterness that can become its own addiction.
Why all the hate for chocolate, LKH?
Just feeling him push his way inside me made me cry out. I was writhing and making small eager whimpering sounds before he got himself as tight inside me as he could go. There were inches left outside my body, but we’d learned that I wasn’t deep enough to hold all of him.
Because, in case you’ve forgotten, Micah has the coke-bottle sized equipment.
Male cats often bite the back of their mate’s neck during sex, but if what I was feeling bit the back of my human neck I was gone, or crippled for life, unless I could heal it.
Sadly this does not happen. However, Micah finds out that now he can shift into another animal’s form because he’s the special snowflake mate.
“That’d be great, doc, but the FBI could call anytime, and I’m supposed to go to something for Cynric this afternoon.”
You didn’t even want to go, so why are we bringing this up now?
“It’s not his heart that overrules his head, Anita, it’s his dick.”
I know we’ve complained about how vague her anatomical terms are, but LKH has no issues using them as insults.
“Oh, he doesn’t have to be first place in anything that matters, but he’s like some women I’ve known who had to be the prettiest girl in any room, or men who have to be the best man at any party, or meeting. It’s the same deal, except Asher wants to be first in everyone’s libido and heart, but his heart belongs to only one man.”
Wait, so kind of like how Anita is the corpse at every funeral and the bride at every wedding?
I hear your pussy is almost as tight as an asshole; it might work.”
So speaks Narcissus, the intersexed were-hyena. Can I just say, oh please? There’s no way.
“I’ve probably seen as much bad stuff as you have. I’m a cop, remember.”
No, no you’re not. Getting grandfathered into the Marshals program and doing whatever you think you need to do does not make you a cop. Being an executioner doesn’t make you a cop. Withholding information when you think it's necessary from the cops doesn't make you a cop. Helping the cops doesn’t make you a cop. Training with them doesn't make you a cop. Being a cop makes you a cop.
“If you think sleeping with you could hurt my reputation with the other cops, think again. They already disapprove of me sleeping with all the vamps and shapeshifters. Hell, some people want me to give up my badge because I’m about to marry Jean-Claude and it’s a conflict of interest.” “So I’m a bad guy.” “Yeah, you are.”
No, Anita, you are a bad guy.
“I didn’t know you were in Europe,” I said. “Let’s say it made me appreciate my own country more, and be a little less judgmental.” “You hit the psychic radar pretty hot yourself, Larry,” I said. “So I was told in several countries that I won’t be traveling to again. They accused me of being a necromancer, and that particular talent is an automatic death sentence in several countries, especially in Eastern Europe.” “Former Soviet bloc countries don’t allow necromancers,” I said.
Just say “Warsaw Pact” if you’re talking Eastern Europe.
man in the corner ordered the zombie to go down on the man on the bed, and there was a flash of something. I so wouldn’t have wanted that rotted mouth on my junk, but it wasn’t my kink. Either the man was a good actor, which I doubted, or it felt good. It was hard to concentrate on seeing with the corner of my eye when what my main vision was showing me was so damn disturbing. When the white stuff spilled out through a rotted hole in her cheek, Larry got up and went for the door.
Ick. Also, she just got done telling the FBI crowd not to call it “kink”.
There was a man pacing in front of the back door; I thought at first it was more security, but as I parked in one of the reserved spots near the door I realized it was Cynric. His shoulders were hunched with tension, movements jerky with anger. Crap. My stomach sank to my knees, then tightened like an aching fist. I did not want to have a fight about my not being able to make the senior awards ceremony. By the time I got out of my car I was ready to have a fight. If he couldn’t understand that my job had to come before a lot of things, then he wasn’t the right person for my life.
So why did she even bring it up with Lillian earlier, because she didn’t want to go.
I’d spent years having the other cops treat me like the “girl” until I proved myself; even now I still had to convince officers who hadn’t worked with me before that I wasn’t just a zombie-raising slut fucking her way to power through the preternatural community. You think I’m being harsh? I wish.
If the stiletto stuck in the vamp’s chest fits, then wear it…
I looked around the room and nodded. “I am actually sleeping with almost everyone in this room, but I don’t think my pussy belongs to everyone here; I see it more as, all the cocks belong to me.”
I have to go puke now. Also, could we stop with all the semi-colons in dialogue? And why is the word pussy suddenly all over this book, except in an actual sex scene?
Richard was one of those big men who doesn’t look that big most of the time, until he does.
You know that thing that’s like one thing, except it’s not, until it is?
“I say again, why are you even here, Micah?” Of course, Asher wasn’t the wisest cookie in the jar either.
LKH is a fail at English idiom.
“He wouldn’t be my first,” Nicky said. That got everyone’s attention. “You told me you didn’t like guys,” Dev said. “I don’t, but the bitch who raised me made me sort of anti-girls for a few years. If I were a little less of a raging heterosexual, and had a different therapist, I’d probably still be hooking up with guys.” “I guess I’m just not pretty enough,” Dev said. “You shut me down in the shower with Anita pretty fast.” “The only thing I looked for in a guy when I was a teenager was good hygiene, good at giving blow jobs, and a willingness to take anal sex.” “Hey, I’m all of those things,” and Dev pretended to pout at him. Nicky smiled, shook his head hard enough for the triangular fall of hair to swing, and said, “If I were still into guys, I’d totally do you.”
WHY? Why is this even coming up? Stay on topic! It’s like she’s trying to make this longer.
Nathaniel came to me looking handsome in a black suit tailored to his body like a European glove, lavender shirt and a black tie with tiny purple fleur-de-lis. It made his skin look darker, his auburn hair tucked back in a long braid redder, his eyes almost purple, though maybe that was him being angry.
She’s so guy, but this is like a fashion show…I have read Jem and the Holograms fanfic with less description of hair and clothes than this...
“You are uncontrollable. Your powers seem to have grown exponentially and no one knows what the limit of that power is, or if you have limits to your necromancy. You have your uses for helping the common good and keeping the peace, but your gift has been misused for centuries. Necromancers always seem to be creating armies of the undead and trying to conquer countries.” “Actually, everyone says that, but I can’t find a single historical account of it really happening; can you?” He was caught off guard for a moment, but he recovered his surety and his prejudice rapidly. “I don’t have to debate with you, Marshal. You can go home and leave things in our capable hands.” “You mean in the hands of people you can control, with talents that don’t scare you.” “The man we’re chasing, this Sir, is a necromancer like you. Will you argue that he’s not evil?” “He’s evil, but he’s not necessarily a necromancer.
I like Jarvis, and he has a point.
“I don’t abuse my powers.” “You raise historical figures for academics to question. You raise families’ lost ones so they can cry at the grave and ask forgiveness. You raise people from the dead over disputed wills and grand jury testimony. You disturb the dead for money, Marshal Blake; I think that is an abuse of power.”
But of course he’ll be minimized because he’s obviously prejudiced. Never mind that he has a point.
“I’m open-minded, Blake, I just think you’re dangerous, more dangerous than anyone knows. Maybe more dangerous than you know.” I shook my head, and said, “Bye, Teresa, I hope you don’t drink too much of this man’s Kool-Aid.”
Good point. But of course he’s a hater.
“Sister. Manny and Rosita only have one son.” “That’s right, Manny and Rosita only have one son, and two beautiful daughters,” he said. I didn’t like the way he emphasized beautiful, but I also knew the phrasing about Manny and Rosita was important to him. I just didn’t know why.
I hope they’re just trying to drag out the suspense, but this one seemed pretty obvious to me. Manny has two sons. Rosita has one. It’s not rocket science. Plus, bet you can't guess who his mother is.
Thanks to being on the headset I could text and he wouldn’t hear anything, like the text alert noise, not if I turned off my sounds. I knew how to do that, yay!
And we were doing so good with not using “yay”…
“So you’re Manny’s son from a different mother.” “Yes, did he tell you about me?” I debated on what to say, and finally chose truth; I didn’t always lie well enough. “No, but I know he was wild when he was young, and Rosita never sowed any wild oats.” “She looks so dull and ordinary. How could he have chosen her over the Señora?” “Señora?” I made it a question. “The Señora—don’t you know who I am, Anita? Don’t you know who my mama was?” I had one of those moments when things click into place.
This one was pretty easy to see coming. But points for trying to have an actual plot.
Anyone who’s been around me intimately, even briefly, knows I’m probably never going to be a woman just for other women. As Fortune said one night at dinner, “You like dick too much to give it up.” The fact that Fortune, Echo, and Magda could all understand that without sleeping with any of us, and Jade can’t after over two years of being in my bed, says a lot about why Jade isn’t making much progress in therapy. You have to be honest in therapy, with your counselor and with yourself. I know Jade isn’t being honest with herself, which probably means her therapist isn’t faring much better.
How come Anita expects everyone else to get over their issues, but not herself?
*** ***
Like I said, some improvement, but not enough.
DV
Overall verdict: The old "start with a mystery plot for a few chapters, and pick it up in the end chapters" is still alive and well. I wonder if maybe she should think about doing more short stories, because I think the main mystery plot (concerning zombie porn) and the subplot with the too-real zombie that she raises would have each made a good, strong short story, because that's about the amount of plot and attention devoted to them. The middle of the book is eaten up with the usual relationship/metaphysics stuff that most of us are just bored by. Plus, bad wedding planning stuff that doesn't advance that plot at all. The book also features the traditional 2-3 page epilogue at the end that ties everything up (but Anita didn't get knocked out this time, so progress!) but doesn't actually resolve anything. Parts of the book dealing with the FBI case appear to have actually been edited.
It's better in some places, and worse in others than the last one.
Snarky bits: Please note that this includes naughty words.
“The sergeant is here because he’s your partner when you work with the Regional Preternatural Investigation Squad. Everybody calls it the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team, but officially it’s not,” Manning said. “It’s the nickname,” I said. “They call us RIPIT, both for the Rest in Peace, and because most of the crimes are violent, things get ripped apart. Other cops and even the media have used RIPIT for so long that people want the T in the actual name of the squad.”
This is just the first example of “WHY is this even in here?” filler, and this is in a section of the book that appears to have been edited. Or it’s meant to be a shout-out for older fans. I don’t have my older books handy, but if she really wanted a cutesy nickname, she should have come up with that first in her world building, then made it fit – something that I’ve seen plenty of times in the Army.
The only plus was that the camera had moved back enough to catch the sex, so we couldn’t see her eyes. She just lay there like the corpse she almost was, and that was the only tiny saving grace. He ended by taking his dick out of her body and doing the obligatory porn movie end to show that he’d actually gone.
Let me get the “come”/”go”/”brought” rant out of the way early…because if I didn’t know what the “obligatory porn movie end” was supposed to mean, I’d assume the guy was not only a necrophiliac, but into golden showers. I have had my share of sexual partners, and none of them has ever said they were “going”. Is it some weird Midwestern thing? Also, OMG, did LKH use an actual specific term for a body part? (Don't worry, it won't happen again.)
“Dominga Salvador; she was the most powerful vaudun priestess in the Midwest.” “She went missing just after she challenged you.” I raised eyebrows at Manning. “Challenged me? You mean sent killer zombies into my apartment to kill me? If that’s your definition of challenge, then okay.”
Oh the old days, how I miss them, when Anita used to sound like this all the time.
I DIDN’T FEEL bad about the death, because she’d been trying to force me to murder someone else as a human sacrifice at the time, but it was still technically murder. She’d also been the first person I ever killed with zombies that I’d raised from the grave, which was still an automatic death sentence. It fell under the magical malfeasance laws; any practitioner of psychic or supernatural gifts who used such as a method of murder, or violence outside self-defense parameters, was subject to the strictest enforcement of the laws therein. Strictest enforcement was execution, which is pretty damned strict.
The laws in LKH-land go back and forth between incredibly punitive to the monsters, and being unbelievably lenient towards them. I could understand the former, because the monsters are dangerous, but the way they whip around just makes it seem like she’s plugging them in where convenient.
“It was a horror preview for the other zombies. I think the Señora enjoyed the sadism of it, but the threat was for her frenemies, like me. It was supposed to make me too afraid of her to refuse what she wanted, and apparently it had worked on other people.”
Better people than me have tried to figure out the timeline for the series. I’d point out that the majority of this book seems to take place in 48 hours or less. However, this whole deal where she wants to have both little passage of time (7-8 years) from the early books, but she keeps up with stuff like current jargon (frenemy?) and tech. Make up your mind.
I believe she meant to do what I do for clients sometimes: You put them inside the circle and bind the zombie to them so it’ll do what they say, and I go on to my next client. We’ll make an appointment for them to bring the zombie back and I’ll lay it to rest then, but I can’t babysit every zombie I raise in a night.”
Am I the only one who thinks this sounds like a REALLY bad idea?
“Like untrained telepaths who go crazy because they can’t block everyone else’s thoughts,” Brent said. “Yeah, except for me it was roadkill following me home, or my first dog that died and came back.” Zerbrowski gave me wide eyes; apparently I’d never shared that with him.
Another LKH phrase that is overused and jarring – “I gave X (adjective) eyes”. It just sounds stupid. I’m picturing Z with eyeballs in his palm here. Also, HOW has he never heard this, because I think it’s in every single book.
“But would killing a chimpanzee or a dolphin be a bigger death than a cow, but less than a human?” he asked. I thought about it, and finally said, “Maybe, but an adult male chimpanzee can tear a normal human being’s arm out of its socket, and I can’t even wrap my head around trying to get a dolphin alive to a grave site just to slit its throat to raise a zombie.”
Aside from the fact that this seems like a pointlessly filler discussion, I’m kind of amused by the dolphin thing even being brought up. Can zombies even be raised from shipwrecks (assuming they haven’t been lunch for the fishies)?
“Dominga’s plan was to give the zombies in as fresh a condition as possible to her buyers as perpetual sex slaves, but she didn’t see the possibility of porn online. I’m assuming that there must be customers paying for this stuff.”
Another danger of the timeline issues. I forget when Laughing Corpse (the book Dominga Salvador shows up in) was published, but pretty sure it was before online porn really took off. This is actually an interesting plot idea, though.
“I’ll bet; you don’t look anywhere near thirty.” I shrugged. “Good genetics.” It was, but there was the possibility that being Jean-Claude’s human servant, as well as fiancée, meant that I wasn’t aging, that I might stay just like this forever.
Genetics, by the way, is one of the “words of the book”.
Manning narrowed her eyes at me. “Every beautiful woman knows just how beautiful she is, and you are not a three.”
Can this whole thing just die? Beautiful women can be just as insecure as the rest of us, but Anita’s whole “I can’t be pretty” despite the legion of reassuring sycophants gets old.
I shook my head. “The daytime jeweler is the nighttime jeweler’s human servant, and ancient vampires are all about the formalities,” I said. “Yeah, it’s not every day you get to meet a human who can tell you that Helen of Troy had black hair,” Lisandro said. “She did not say that,” Socrates said. “Yes, she did.” “She said, these rings would be worthy of Helen of Troy, another raven-haired beauty.” “Raven-haired means black hair,” Lisandro said. “Are you saying she compared me to Helen of Troy?” The two men stopped bickering long enough to look at me. Then they looked at each other, and back to me. Lisandro said, “Any other woman I’ve ever met would be flattered, but you’re going to get all weird about it, aren’t you?”
This is just idiotic. Do the guards have a combined IQ smaller than their shoe size? Not that Anita is much better sometimes.
Now the thought that he hadn’t fed, and that it could be part of our foreplay, tightened things low in my body so hard and suddenly that I had to reach for the edge of the desk to steady myself, and I hadn’t even gotten to his face.
Catchphrase alert!
I didn’t know whether to be flattered, amazed, or ask, Why me? Why not a thousand more traditionally beautiful women out there? He could have had movie stars, or models, but he’d chosen me. Me, too short, curvy even with my gym workout, and scarred from my job, still struggling to heal all the issues life had saddled me with, and yet he smiled at me, held his hand out to me. I went around the desk to take his hand, but I didn’t feel like the princess to his prince; I felt like a clumsy peasant to his very regal king.
Never mind that later on she gets all virtuous about her scars. Anita’s body issues are just getting old.
It had been somewhere in what would be the Middle East today, but I think had been Mesopotamia then, yeah, as in the cradle of civilization. She gave her name as Irene; I doubted it had been her birth name, but I’d learned that it was rude to ask a vampire or human servant’s original name. Whatever name they came with was their name. I guess you can’t go through centuries being mud-dabble-wat-wat, so Irene it was.
This just strikes me as rude. It’s right up there with calling Jade an Oriental.
Murder victims crawl from the grave with only one thing on their minds—vengeance. They will tear through anyone in their way in an attempt to hunt down and kill their murderer. It was the reason you couldn’t just raise the victim of a homicide and ask them who killed them. It had been tried and the death count was always higher than just the one murder they’d been trying to solve.
So, this whole “murder victims always do X” bit is also annoying. It’s just not thought all the way through. Do they have to know they were murdered? What if they were poisoned, or something where they didn’t know the killer? What about violent deaths?
He’d put together a new act that had more romance at the beginning, but the end was romantic only if you considered “sexy as hell” romantic. I tended to think of it that way, but the human media had been split between headlines stating I was jealous and angry at him for going onstage again, to wondering how long until I might join him onstage. I had done it a few times as the pretend “lady victim” from the audience for some of my lovers, but not lately. One, the customers didn’t like the idea of a plant in the audience who had already had the pleasure of, um, meeting the men for real, and two, the U.S. Marshals Service didn’t think much of one of their officers going onstage at a strip club. Technically I wasn’t stripping, but just helping out the show with a “victim” who wouldn’t make a fuss or pressure the dancers for real sex, but somehow helping out a friend didn’t cover getting up onstage at a strip club.
Yet she can’t understand why everyone she runs into professionally has issues with her personal life, or why this is inappropriate. I’m not even going to tackle the mess that is that last sentence. She really needs an editor.
I smiled, and knew it was my unpleasant smile, the one that said I could do really awful things and never stop smiling. It wasn’t voluntary, and it always unnerved people for some reason.
I can’t imagine why this would bother anyone. It would be one thing if she was writing Anita as a good guy gone bad, or an antihero, but she’s not.
I looked at the ceiling, took in a deep breath, let it out, and said, “Fuck, you didn’t tell me we had to wear crowns.” “You will look lovely, ma petite.” I gave him a narrow look. “If I have to wear one, you have to wear one.” He gave that almost-shrug again. “Very well.” I frowned at him, and then a thought made me try to fight not to smile at him, but I finally gave up. “Why do I think the thought of wearing a crown has been a goal of yours for a few centuries?” He smiled, and then finally grinned wide enough to flash the edge of dainty fangs. “It has been my experience that if you have the responsibility of leadership, you might as well have the jewelry to go with it.”
Crowns? What, are they getting married in a Greek Orthodox Vampire ceremony? I’ll address the king thing later.
WE LOVED OURSELVES out of some of our clothes, but not all.
But she’s not writing romances, she’s writing hard-boiled books…
I sighed, and looked down at our hands sort of bunched at the top of his pants. “Okay, but I need some foreplay. I’m not really in the mood for a quick-quickie.” “I would not dream of it,” he said, lifting my hands up, so that I wasn’t trying to fish inside his pants. He laid a light kiss on each of my hands and then a firmer kiss on my mouth. His lips were already scarlet with my lipstick. It was a great color on him, actually.
Anita, acknowledging the need for foreplay?
Also, could someone please clue her into the existence of long-wearing lipstick and how to put it on? At least we don’t have to hear about the “go-faster stripe”.
I’d fought shaving completely for years, but it had been a request to just try it, and if I didn’t like it, it would grow back. It was as if everything was more heightened to touch and especially to oral without the hair to interfere, or maybe you could just lick and suck better with nothing between the mouth and the body. Besides, I didn’t like picking pubic hair out from between my teeth either. He licked the edge just above that spill into even more intimate parts.
Details we didn’t need to know – but we’re back to the vague-rotic terms.
teased back and forth, tracing the edge of me without ever going deeper, until I whispered, “Please.”
moved his finger back to playing with the intimate bits that weren’t inside, and lowered his mouth back to me, so that he was licking just in front of where his fingers caressed. That delicious pressure began to build where he was licking and touching.
More vague-rotica.
“Anita and Nathaniel would marry Nicky, but I won’t,” Micah said.
This might be the smartest thing he’s ever said.
“No; if I could figure out a way to marry all three of you for legal real, I would.”
Editor, please get an editor. This is how it appears in the Kindle edition. Plus she sounds like a tween girl “for legal real”.
“Oui, if Ethan had not held the bloodlines of red, gold, and blue tiger clans, then the white and black of Domino would not have been enough, but the point stands, ma petite. You had the power of the tiger clans at that moment, that singular moment that the tigers had been prophesying about for over two thousand years.” “Yeah, yeah, I’m supposed to save everybody from the great bad thing, because I’m the Queen of Tigers.” “But it worked exactly as the prophecy predicted, ma petite; without the weretigers you could not have prevailed, and without you to harness their power they could not have killed their dark nemesis.”
Just when you thought the tiger plot couldn’t get worse… now there’s a prophecy.
“That makes no sense; either you’re a victim or you’re not.” “Not true,” Micah said. “You can experience trauma without getting stuck as the victim forever. You can choose to work the shit and rebuild yourself, or you can sit in the ruins and mourn forever. You and I both chose to rebuild.”
This would be handy if she ever worked on those issues.
“Not without raising the dead by accident,” I said. We’d shared stories of our powers affecting the dead by accident. My first had been my dog. His had been a toddler cousin. What did they both have in common? A lot of emotion from us, and for me, I wanted my dog back, so she came back. The college prof who committed suicide and showed up at my dorm room had been harder for me to understand, but good little Catholic that I had once been, I hadn’t wanted him to spend eternity in hell, so . . . another chance to repent.
Enough with the back story that people already know.
“But you’re thirty, and I want to have a child with you.” “I’ve got a few good years left in me,” I said, and didn’t try to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. “Thirty isn’t old, Anita, I know that, but for a woman to have babies, early thirties is decision time.”
Is she 30 or 31? Both ages have been given in the book.
“Nicky is walking this way,” Nathaniel said. “He’s probably coming for a covert kiss; we made an agreement, no kissing and stuff in front of the clients.”
The fact that you even have to make an agreement like this is stupid. Acting like a grown-up is not that hard.
“I’m not,” he said, but he made it a question with uplift in his voice at the end of it, so that the statement was all question.
He made it a question. Another phrase I have an undying hatred for. Plus, paging the editor – is it a statement or a question?
He kissed me firmly, but not with a lot of lip movement, because he knew I’d be mad if he sent me to the clients with my lipstick smeared like clown makeup.
Again, long-wearing lipstick exists.
“I was going to walk over and make sure they’d read the handouts I sent home with them, or give them a refresher on what to expect. People never listen in the office and then sometimes they freak out during the zombie-raising, and I hate that. The coveralls are hot, even in spring, so I’ll talk to the clients and then get changed.”
It seems like if Bert at Animators, Inc was as on the ball as she wants him to seem, the clients would have to sit through a video or sign a ton of paperwork indicating that they had been briefed on the process and understood, legal waivers, and the like.
He nodded. “Just tell me what to do.” I turned for the cars, because what I wanted to say was, Read the damned handouts!
I hope someone beside Anita wrote these handouts, because otherwise they’d be worthless.
Theoretically it didn’t have to be livestock. I knew some animators who used cats instead of chickens, but I just couldn’t do it. I liked cats.
This is reassuring… not.
The historical society had paid for me to raise over two hundred years’ worth of corpse. I was about the only animator in the country who could guarantee a zombie this old that could remember its past and answer questions without a human sacrifice.
Yes, Anita is just a special, special snowflake.
But anyone who had died on one of my graves had been trying to kill me at the time. You should never attack a necromancer in a cemetery; it’s like chasing Rambo into a building full of loaded guns. Some people seem to help you kill them.
It’s a glimpse of the old Anita…just a glimpse.
If I needed a bigger death to raise the older dead, then wasn’t part of that using more blood?
If you needed a bigger death, then why did we have to hear the whole BS about feline sacrifice?
How did I know that I didn’t need all the steps to raise this zombie? I just knew, knew with capital letters, I KNEW I could pull this zombie from the grave.
Someone PLEASE edit this.
But technology and enough profit to buy the technology had given us options. I had an electronic ankle cuff waiting to put on the zombie. I’d use it to track him just like the police do with someone on house arrest. This model of cuff would also alarm if it was tampered with, so if they tried to take it off I’d know and they could be charged with disturbance of a corpse, among other things.
What if the leg just falls off? Am I the only one who think this sounds like a bad idea? The whole “just because we can doesn’t mean we SHOULD” concept seems to be in play here.
We billed per zombie raised, not by the hour, so that much revenue loss had finally convinced even Bert that we needed a different way to keep track of our zombies.
Why not just bill by the hour? Or, more appropriately for zombies, bill by the age of the zombie? Because then we couldn’t have this whole side plot.
I smiled at the look on his face; I couldn’t help it. “Yes, some girl weretigers, too. Who knows, maybe we’ll meet the woman of all our dreams.” “Not possible,” Nicky said. “Why not?” I asked. He leaned over and kissed me. “Because we’ve already found her.” It took me a minute to realize he meant me, and then I wanted to protest, but in the end I just took the compliment like I was supposed to.
Excuse me, I have to go throw up now…
“Oh, that’s right; you’re progressive and so very American. You want to make the shapeshifters equal with the vampires.” “You said it, I’m American, and we like this whole equality thing.” “The great experiment,” she said, and made it sound like an insult.
So, if we’re into equality, why are we having this whole king and queen deal? I get that maybe it’s just supposed to be putting the shifters and the vamps on an equal footing, rather than having the vamps run everything, but…maybe if there was more world-building, we’d KNOW.
“I didn’t lose any of these fights; I won them all. Everyone who hurt me is dead; I killed them. I think of the scars as an advertisement for just what a bad-ass I am.” I smiled at her, and she gave me a weak one in return.
Lita looked at me, head slightly to one side. “You didn’t worry that it’d make men not want you?” “No,” I said. “You didn’t worry that it made you look like a victim?” Kelly asked. I frowned at her. “No, every time I look at my scars I think that I lived, and I killed what hurt me. These are victory marks, not victim,” I said.
Because Anita is the only strong woman ever.
“And that’s a big reason we could never be a couple. I’m not good at just fucking.”
I have news for Anita, she’s not good at other aspects of relationships either.
Her eyes narrowed, and I realized that even her eyelashes were a pale powder blue. Cynric’s eyelashes were black, weren’t they? Could they possibly be a dark navy blue so that I’d only assumed they were black? It made me want to get him and make him stand with the light behind so I could double-check.
But remember, Anita is totally a guy, not a woman. Who cares about his eyelashes?
ONCE A WEEK we tried to eat dinner like a family at the Circus of the Damned.
What is this, Anita Blake: After School Special?
“Thirty minutes tops; the chicken is already marinated and we’re just steaming veggies.” “Please tell me there’s a carb of some kind,” Domino said. Nicky answered, “No, if you want carbohydrates have them at lunch.” “It’s not my fault that your metabolism can’t digest potatoes,” he said, frowning a little, but smiling to take the edge off it. “Have potatoes at lunch,” Crispin said. “Most of us have to take our clothes off onstage. No carbs at dinner.” “Nicky doesn’t strip,” Domino protested. “Nathaniel does,” Nicky said. “What’s that got to do with you?” Nicky gave Domino a flat, unfriendly look. “What?” “I’m the main cook,” Nathaniel said. “If you want different food, you plan the week’s menu, do the grocery shopping, and prep the meals.”
While Nathaniel has a valid point (that he does the work and he’ll do it his way), why are the shifters concerned about carbs? Don’t their metabolisms run pretty fast?
Domino held his hands up. “You win; I am so not that domestically talented. I can’t even sous chef the way Nicky and Cynric can.”
So now I’m picturing a Hell’s Kitchen: Anita Blake season. Does anyone actually say they “sous chef” for someone unless they are a sous chef? (And even then, I doubt it.) Also, the dreaded “so” is invading everyone’s vocabulary.
“Cynric was happy to entertain the idea of another woman added to our household,” Jean-Claude said in his most pleasant and emptiest voice. Crispin shook his head. “But you didn’t interview anyone, did you? You had a metaphysical crisis and it’s all back-burner again.” “They couldn’t have planned my fight with Thorn,” Dev said. “No, but there is always something that can be used as a legitimate excuse to postpone things that Anita, or Micah, or Jean-Claude doesn’t want to address, and there always will be something.” Domino was looking uncomfortable, as if he wanted to push his chair farther away so it was clear that either he didn’t agree with everything Crispin was saying, or he didn’t want to get included if we got angry. “It is true that there will always be a crisis to attend to,” Jean-Claude said. I frowned at him. “We don’t do it on purpose.” “No, but you admit that there is always something, right?” Crispin asked. Micah finally said, “I can’t disagree.”
While I would be happy to stuff the relationship plot in a coffin with crosses and never let that sucker out…the were-tigers have a point.
Jean-Claude stepped around them, pressed to the wall to move around Dev’s tawny side. “Impressive, ma petite, mon chat, mon tigre. Very impressive.” Dev shook that thick mane. “I’m not a tiger now.” “Mon lionne, then.” “Am I your lion, Jean-Claude?” The question seemed to mean more than it should have.
Only according to Google Translate, “lionne” is lioness.
“Women have been doing that math on me all my life, I’m used to it.” “Modern American women seem to believe that being tall and thin is beauty, but I have lived in centuries when that was not so.” “But when she enters a room, heads turn and follow all that height and blondness,” I said. “I’ve never gotten that same treatment just walking through a crowd.”
Can we please cut the body image stuff? We get it, Anita, you don't feel pretty, even though you have all these attractive (to you) men telling you that you are. Work your issue and make it go away.
“I’m on duty tonight, so I’m watching the GPS on the zombies we have out.” “Zombie babysitting, better you than me.” “The zombie you raised tonight isn’t at any of the addresses on the list of clients.” “Where is it?” “Denny’s.” “Denny who?” “The restaurant,” he said. “You mean the zombie is at Denny’s restaurant?” “That’s where the ankle GPS says it is.” “Shit, they can’t take him to a restaurant. It’s illegal to have a zombie inside a place that does food service. Health services will close them down for an investigation if they find out.”
And this, boys and girls, is why someone zombie-sits in person. Because if you don’t they take the zombie to Denny’s. I’m pretty sure that info was in the infamous handouts, but since she knows people don’t read them…
A man’s voice, cultured, with a slight southern echo in it, said, “Miss Blake, I am told that I owe my adventure on this side of the veil to you.”
Pretty sad when the zombie is the best speaker in the group.
“This zombie isn’t a murder victim, though, right?” Domino said. “No, I made certain of that. He died in his bed of disease, not in battle.” “Do soldiers count themselves as murder vics?” Nicky asked. “I’ve known it to happen,” Manny said, “but usually not.”
As I said before, this whole “murder victim” fact thing needs work.
I slowed down, easing through the last bit of traffic as I made toward the restaurant. Once I turned off the lights I was just another car and all the traffic laws applied to me again. I’d had some of the other regular cops explain to me that once the lights and sirens were turned off on an unmarked car, the magic get-out-of-my-fucking-way card vanished. Some people seemed to go out of their way to block you once the light show was over. It was like they resented it or something. It was hard to slow down after driving like a bat out of hell, but I’d learned that the other plainclothes cops were right, and people would get in your way just like now. It made me want to scream at the cars, but an accident this close to the goal would slow me down more than a little bit of traffic.
What part of this is news? Why did a cop have to explain it to her?
We walked through the door with me in my official Windbreaker, the one that read MARSHAL in big letters.
Department of Useless Capitalization is on the Phone, LKH…
The hostess hurried toward us, her face worried. We just so looked like trouble.
Can we please never use the word “so” in dialogue/thoughts ever? I’m so over it.
“If I’d dreamt you’d take the zombie out for a meal, I’d have mentioned it.”
Sounds like something that should be covered in the handouts…
Two, I was going to have to confiscate everything he’d recorded. Proof that I could raise something this lifelike could not get out on the Internet. I’d had a government element interested in me for raising a certain dead world leader, and that zombie had been much less alive than this one. If they saw this one, I’d be lucky if they didn’t show up before the night was over. Keeping Bob close to me seemed like the best way to ensure I could bully him out of the “evidence” later.
Remember, Anita is the good guy here… she can’t be bothered to do her job, but she’s all about protecting herself.
“You are engaged to marry a vampire, Ms. Blake. Is he any more alive than I am?” I frowned at MacDougal. “He had questions for us about how he got here, Ms. Blake. The Internet was the easiest way to explain, and when your name is typed in, the engagement story is the first thing to come up in the feed.” I sighed. “Of course it is.”
So now even the ZOMBIE knows about the trainwreck that is Anita’s life. What historical society do these people belong to?
Justine held his hair back for him, which meant maybe it wasn’t just lust. You usually have to love someone to do that.
Not everything is about sex or love. I think plenty of us have held someone’s hair, just because it’s the decent thing to do.
“Did you consume human flesh when you were alive?” “We were trapped in the mountains by an early blizzard that blocked the pass, and then true winter fell upon us. I was young and inexperienced, and it was only after we were well and truly trapped that the senior officer admitted that we had started too late. He thought we could make it out before snow, but that once we were delayed we were there until they found us in the spring. We were able to trap and hunt meat for a time, and we had melted snow to drink, but in the end the animals fled the heights and it was just our small group up on the mountain.”
What, is she raising a member of the Donner Party here?
I gave him blank cop face, because I’d learned that people will tell you their horrors, but you can’t be horrified by it.
Just kill this phrase, kill it with FIRE. Or decapitate it, burn it, and scatter the ashes in different bodies of water so she can never write it again.
Her brown hair was straight and untouched by chemicals, skirt not too short or too long. Her blouse was long-sleeved with a little frilly collar; her shoes were sensible pumps. But it wasn’t the clothes either. I’d known people who dressed like that who actually had had horribly tragic childhoods, or old romances that had needed police to save the day. I couldn’t put my finger on it, or list the reasons, but Manny was right.
Another reason I have no sympathy for the “persecution” Anita faces. Anita makes all these judgments based on people’s clothes, but doesn’t understand why coming to crime scenes in some of her getups (the stiletto in the chest in Kiss the Dead) gets her talked about.
“I watched him from a baby, Anita; he’s not right. He’s never been right. That’s not going to change. Men like that are attracted to girls like that.” “The crazy bitches are attracted to the male equivalent,” Nicky said. Manny and I nodded. “Bad boys and girls either like the good boys and girls, or people as bad as they are,” Domino said.
What is this, Shapeshifters are from Mars, Vampires are from Venus? Why are we having these discussions? Why are all the guys involved? Let Anita do her damn job.
Bob told the others, “Blake is going to put Tom back in the ground tonight.” One of the other women said, “We paid to have him until tomorrow night for questioning.” MacDougal said, “It’s all right, Iris; Ms. Blake and I have discussed things and circumstances have changed.” “Is it because Justine and he are boning?” one of the younger guys asked. The rest of the group immediately turned on him with looks that said, Way to overshare.
Well, then, maybe you should have been asking questions, instead of taking him out for dinner… Also why is everyone so blasé about the fact that this woman had sex with a zombie?
He knew that neither of us was sure that Justine would be a hundred percent. We’d never had a client that boned one of our zombies before.
Nice duplication there…
“Eat me, you mean?” Nicky said. “Yes, very much.” The southern drawl was thicker with every word, as if by the time he rushed us, or we shot him, he’d sound like Scarlett O’Hara.
Has she even seen Gone with the Wind? Vivien Leigh doesn’t really sound like a typical Southerner.
Nicky said it. “Do you really want Anita to tell a judge she raised a flesh-eating zombie and now she wants to make sure it’s not trapped undead in its grave?” “It wasn’t technically a flesh eater. It just wanted to eat flesh,” Domino said. “Oh, that’s much better,” Nicky said.
If Anita’s this all-powerful necromancer, why can’t she tell?
“I’ll write a paper about it for the academic publications, and just put the word out to add that to the list of things that put a big fat do not raise this corpse sign over a site.”
Anita is going to write an academic paper?
“I’ve been up against ghouls that were real active, Manny, and I just don’t believe anything that’s that good at killing and eating people doesn’t do it when they get the chance.” “Those are aberrant cases, Anita.” “Yeah, but all it takes is one aberrant case to kill your ass.”
I’ll give her this one.
“I’m sorry, Susannah, really sorry; that must have been awful.” And just like that I had my lesson. I shouldn’t assume that every woman a man bashes gave him a good reason to do it.
Really, you’re just now getting this? Sad to say, this is progress.
“Anita,” Manny said. I looked at him. “How are we going to give him back to death?” I thought it was an odd phrasing, but I didn’t have a better one. “I don’t know, Manny, there’s no ceremony for this, not really.” “We could try a second animal sacrifice and blood circle and put him back with salt and steel.” “You’re talking about the old-school way where we sew his mouth up with salt, aren’t you?” “We try modern first and if that doesn’t work, we go old-school.” “You really want to try to hold him down while we sew his mouth shut, while he screams for help? Fuck no.” “I second that,” Zerbrowski said. “No, we are not doing that.”
I’m with Anita and Z on this one.
Zerbrowski frowned at me. I had a moment of wondering just how much I’d told Zerbrowski about Nicky. Did he know absolutely that he was my Bride? No, I hadn’t burdened my fellow cop with that knowledge. If the police understood just how connected I was to the “monsters” they’d be sure my loyalty was compromised. They already mistrusted me because I was with Jean-Claude and Micah.
Your loyalty is compromised. They should mistrust you.
“If you say Is Timmy down the well, I’m going to punch you later, just so you know,” Zerbrowski said.
It’s Zombie Lassie, or rather Ghoul Lassie. This actually warranted a laugh.
“This has got to be a fetish, it’s like clear bukkake.” I gave him a dirty look. “It’s thicker, lasts longer, and doesn’t break down as quickly.” I scraped more of it off my arms and onto the grass.
I think people have been saying this for awhile… ew. I'm waiting for the book where that shows up for real. However, I wonder if some of the toning down sex scenes had to do with fan reaction to the breath play scene in Affliction that turned a lot of people off. There's fewer scenes, and by LKH standards they're all pretty tame. No giving men oral while they're "small",no scenes where the men pass her around like a blow-up doll, and while daisy chains are referenced, it's sort of a fade to black.
“I’ve found Kirkland to be absolutely professional, very by-the-book.” “Yeah, if you haven’t noticed I’m not really a by-the-book kind of gal.” She laughed again. Glad I could amuse someone today. “Well, your record does certainly speak to a level of rule breaking that I could see Kirkland disapproving of in a partner.” “God, you do good polite-speak, Manning.” The laughter died off in her voice. “I do more paperwork than you do, I have to be more polite.”
I like Manning.
“He’s seen some of the videos,” she said, and her voice had that I’m-hiding-something tone again. “He stopped near the beginning of them, didn’t he?” “He said that he didn’t have your level of expertise and that you would be able to help us more.” “Son of a bitch,” I said. “Blake, there’s no call for profanity.” “The hell there isn’t; he didn’t want to watch the videos all the way through, because he didn’t want to see the nightmares on them, but he’s fine with me seeing the whole fucking mess.” “You are better with the dead than Kirkland, aren’t you?” “Yes.” “Then he was right.” “He was right, but not for the reason he said.”
Well, should he have watched them just for kicks or to torment himself? Anita probably thinks so.
We don’t like to admit that people are just smart animals, but you see the star athlete marry the athletic cheerleader or gymnast, and most of their kids are great at sports, because it’s in their genes. Why can’t necromancy be the same?” “I didn’t say it couldn’t work, Nicky, I said it was creepy.” “You said it was weird that she wanted you to breed with her family, but it’s actually really logical if you want to get some uber-necromancer out of it.”
Or maybe they are good at it because their parents value it?
My phone gave Micah’s text tone, which was how I knew to look at it. The little word balloon read, “Can you meet me down in Rafael’s room in medical?”
Well, that’s what the text tone is for…
Nicky was the local Rex, which meant when there was other muscle around he didn’t carry shit either.
What about that equality thing you were talking about earlier? Yes, being the boss has perks, but most of the leaders in this series make me want to run them over with my car.
It wasn’t the first time one of the fresh-from-the-military guys had done that. I’d been told the rules. I did not salute back; if I’d been a superior officer then it would have been my call whether to return the salute anyway, but since I’d never served in the military for real, my saluting could be seen as a sign of disrespect.
At least in my branch, superiors are supposed to return salutes whether they feel like it or not. Also, “never served in the military for real”? WTF? You either served or you didn’t. Just hanging out with them doesn’t make you one.
I moved closer to him, drawn by the heat of his anger and the musk of his wolf, but it was the anger I wanted. I was hungry, and his anger sat on my tongue bittersweet like super-dark chocolate; it’s sweet, but there’s that undertone of bitterness that can become its own addiction.
Why all the hate for chocolate, LKH?
Just feeling him push his way inside me made me cry out. I was writhing and making small eager whimpering sounds before he got himself as tight inside me as he could go. There were inches left outside my body, but we’d learned that I wasn’t deep enough to hold all of him.
Because, in case you’ve forgotten, Micah has the coke-bottle sized equipment.
Male cats often bite the back of their mate’s neck during sex, but if what I was feeling bit the back of my human neck I was gone, or crippled for life, unless I could heal it.
Sadly this does not happen. However, Micah finds out that now he can shift into another animal’s form because he’s the special snowflake mate.
“That’d be great, doc, but the FBI could call anytime, and I’m supposed to go to something for Cynric this afternoon.”
You didn’t even want to go, so why are we bringing this up now?
“It’s not his heart that overrules his head, Anita, it’s his dick.”
I know we’ve complained about how vague her anatomical terms are, but LKH has no issues using them as insults.
“Oh, he doesn’t have to be first place in anything that matters, but he’s like some women I’ve known who had to be the prettiest girl in any room, or men who have to be the best man at any party, or meeting. It’s the same deal, except Asher wants to be first in everyone’s libido and heart, but his heart belongs to only one man.”
Wait, so kind of like how Anita is the corpse at every funeral and the bride at every wedding?
I hear your pussy is almost as tight as an asshole; it might work.”
So speaks Narcissus, the intersexed were-hyena. Can I just say, oh please? There’s no way.
“I’ve probably seen as much bad stuff as you have. I’m a cop, remember.”
No, no you’re not. Getting grandfathered into the Marshals program and doing whatever you think you need to do does not make you a cop. Being an executioner doesn’t make you a cop. Withholding information when you think it's necessary from the cops doesn't make you a cop. Helping the cops doesn’t make you a cop. Training with them doesn't make you a cop. Being a cop makes you a cop.
“If you think sleeping with you could hurt my reputation with the other cops, think again. They already disapprove of me sleeping with all the vamps and shapeshifters. Hell, some people want me to give up my badge because I’m about to marry Jean-Claude and it’s a conflict of interest.” “So I’m a bad guy.” “Yeah, you are.”
No, Anita, you are a bad guy.
“I didn’t know you were in Europe,” I said. “Let’s say it made me appreciate my own country more, and be a little less judgmental.” “You hit the psychic radar pretty hot yourself, Larry,” I said. “So I was told in several countries that I won’t be traveling to again. They accused me of being a necromancer, and that particular talent is an automatic death sentence in several countries, especially in Eastern Europe.” “Former Soviet bloc countries don’t allow necromancers,” I said.
Just say “Warsaw Pact” if you’re talking Eastern Europe.
man in the corner ordered the zombie to go down on the man on the bed, and there was a flash of something. I so wouldn’t have wanted that rotted mouth on my junk, but it wasn’t my kink. Either the man was a good actor, which I doubted, or it felt good. It was hard to concentrate on seeing with the corner of my eye when what my main vision was showing me was so damn disturbing. When the white stuff spilled out through a rotted hole in her cheek, Larry got up and went for the door.
Ick. Also, she just got done telling the FBI crowd not to call it “kink”.
There was a man pacing in front of the back door; I thought at first it was more security, but as I parked in one of the reserved spots near the door I realized it was Cynric. His shoulders were hunched with tension, movements jerky with anger. Crap. My stomach sank to my knees, then tightened like an aching fist. I did not want to have a fight about my not being able to make the senior awards ceremony. By the time I got out of my car I was ready to have a fight. If he couldn’t understand that my job had to come before a lot of things, then he wasn’t the right person for my life.
So why did she even bring it up with Lillian earlier, because she didn’t want to go.
I’d spent years having the other cops treat me like the “girl” until I proved myself; even now I still had to convince officers who hadn’t worked with me before that I wasn’t just a zombie-raising slut fucking her way to power through the preternatural community. You think I’m being harsh? I wish.
If the stiletto stuck in the vamp’s chest fits, then wear it…
I looked around the room and nodded. “I am actually sleeping with almost everyone in this room, but I don’t think my pussy belongs to everyone here; I see it more as, all the cocks belong to me.”
I have to go puke now. Also, could we stop with all the semi-colons in dialogue? And why is the word pussy suddenly all over this book, except in an actual sex scene?
Richard was one of those big men who doesn’t look that big most of the time, until he does.
You know that thing that’s like one thing, except it’s not, until it is?
“I say again, why are you even here, Micah?” Of course, Asher wasn’t the wisest cookie in the jar either.
LKH is a fail at English idiom.
“He wouldn’t be my first,” Nicky said. That got everyone’s attention. “You told me you didn’t like guys,” Dev said. “I don’t, but the bitch who raised me made me sort of anti-girls for a few years. If I were a little less of a raging heterosexual, and had a different therapist, I’d probably still be hooking up with guys.” “I guess I’m just not pretty enough,” Dev said. “You shut me down in the shower with Anita pretty fast.” “The only thing I looked for in a guy when I was a teenager was good hygiene, good at giving blow jobs, and a willingness to take anal sex.” “Hey, I’m all of those things,” and Dev pretended to pout at him. Nicky smiled, shook his head hard enough for the triangular fall of hair to swing, and said, “If I were still into guys, I’d totally do you.”
WHY? Why is this even coming up? Stay on topic! It’s like she’s trying to make this longer.
Nathaniel came to me looking handsome in a black suit tailored to his body like a European glove, lavender shirt and a black tie with tiny purple fleur-de-lis. It made his skin look darker, his auburn hair tucked back in a long braid redder, his eyes almost purple, though maybe that was him being angry.
She’s so guy, but this is like a fashion show…I have read Jem and the Holograms fanfic with less description of hair and clothes than this...
“You are uncontrollable. Your powers seem to have grown exponentially and no one knows what the limit of that power is, or if you have limits to your necromancy. You have your uses for helping the common good and keeping the peace, but your gift has been misused for centuries. Necromancers always seem to be creating armies of the undead and trying to conquer countries.” “Actually, everyone says that, but I can’t find a single historical account of it really happening; can you?” He was caught off guard for a moment, but he recovered his surety and his prejudice rapidly. “I don’t have to debate with you, Marshal. You can go home and leave things in our capable hands.” “You mean in the hands of people you can control, with talents that don’t scare you.” “The man we’re chasing, this Sir, is a necromancer like you. Will you argue that he’s not evil?” “He’s evil, but he’s not necessarily a necromancer.
I like Jarvis, and he has a point.
“I don’t abuse my powers.” “You raise historical figures for academics to question. You raise families’ lost ones so they can cry at the grave and ask forgiveness. You raise people from the dead over disputed wills and grand jury testimony. You disturb the dead for money, Marshal Blake; I think that is an abuse of power.”
But of course he’ll be minimized because he’s obviously prejudiced. Never mind that he has a point.
“I’m open-minded, Blake, I just think you’re dangerous, more dangerous than anyone knows. Maybe more dangerous than you know.” I shook my head, and said, “Bye, Teresa, I hope you don’t drink too much of this man’s Kool-Aid.”
Good point. But of course he’s a hater.
“Sister. Manny and Rosita only have one son.” “That’s right, Manny and Rosita only have one son, and two beautiful daughters,” he said. I didn’t like the way he emphasized beautiful, but I also knew the phrasing about Manny and Rosita was important to him. I just didn’t know why.
I hope they’re just trying to drag out the suspense, but this one seemed pretty obvious to me. Manny has two sons. Rosita has one. It’s not rocket science. Plus, bet you can't guess who his mother is.
Thanks to being on the headset I could text and he wouldn’t hear anything, like the text alert noise, not if I turned off my sounds. I knew how to do that, yay!
And we were doing so good with not using “yay”…
“So you’re Manny’s son from a different mother.” “Yes, did he tell you about me?” I debated on what to say, and finally chose truth; I didn’t always lie well enough. “No, but I know he was wild when he was young, and Rosita never sowed any wild oats.” “She looks so dull and ordinary. How could he have chosen her over the Señora?” “Señora?” I made it a question. “The Señora—don’t you know who I am, Anita? Don’t you know who my mama was?” I had one of those moments when things click into place.
This one was pretty easy to see coming. But points for trying to have an actual plot.
Anyone who’s been around me intimately, even briefly, knows I’m probably never going to be a woman just for other women. As Fortune said one night at dinner, “You like dick too much to give it up.” The fact that Fortune, Echo, and Magda could all understand that without sleeping with any of us, and Jade can’t after over two years of being in my bed, says a lot about why Jade isn’t making much progress in therapy. You have to be honest in therapy, with your counselor and with yourself. I know Jade isn’t being honest with herself, which probably means her therapist isn’t faring much better.
How come Anita expects everyone else to get over their issues, but not herself?
*** ***
Like I said, some improvement, but not enough.
DV
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Date: 2016-01-09 05:00 am (UTC)