I threw up in the bed. I lay back on the sticky sheet and tried not to cry and throw up at the same time. Something wet trickled between my toes in my left wellie. My foot throbbed and the memory of the skull gnawing on my foot returned. I took stock. Was I feverish? Hot? Did I suddenly have a craving for raw flesh?
No to all three, but it didn’t mean much. I feel so rotten the first few minutes after waking it would be hard to tell. The taste of vomit in your mouth is never appetising. I didn’t feel any worse than usual at least.
After a minute I pushed myself up on my elbows, shook my head experimentally, then sat up when no further nausea appeared. A stab of pain jolted through my foot as I touched it to the floor.
I pulled the boot off to see bright blood soaked through the sock. I hopped to the bedroom door, opened it, and hopped across the landing to the bathroom. I closed the door behind me and pulled the first aid box out of the cabinet. I pushed down the lid on the toilet and sat. I used the first aid scissors to cut the sock off scrap by scrap.
When my foot was finally desocked, I stood awkwardly on one leg and ran the foot under the bath tap. I gave out an involuntary gasp when the water hit and gritted my teeth. I held it unmoving until the water swirling down the plughole was only a healthy shade of pink and not thick with clotted blood and scraps of flesh. An entire tube of antiseptic ointment and a roll of bandages later, and I’d done everything I could.
I bumped into Stanley on the way out of the bathroom. He looked down at my foot.
‘What the hell happened to you?’
‘Harpies,’ I lied. ‘Bloody things.’
‘What? On your foot? I thought they usually drop from above.’
‘Usually.’
He frowned. Stanley’s known me my whole life. He tends to know when I’m lying. I pushed past him to my bedroom.
‘I’ve got a few phone calls to make.’
‘At this time of night?’
‘Yes.’
I shut the door firmly behind me. I pulled the tarp off the bed, rolled it into a ball, and dumped it into a plastic bag. I was still weak with nausea, and the thought of cleaning vomit off the thing was too much. Either I’d be in the lucky two percent, which meant I could do it later, or I’d be in the unlucky ninety-eight percent and it really wouldn’t matter.
I made up the bed with fresh linen, then sat, careful with my foot. I used the browser on my phone to look up the number for Neil’s employer. Elior Services had a twenty-four-hour receptionist. People don’t do stupid things with magic only during office hours.
‘Elior Services. Rachel speaking.’
I went for friendly. ‘Oh, hi, Rachel. How are you?’
‘Fine, thanks. How are you?’ Her voice was unsure, clearly feeling she was supposed to recognise my voice but with no idea who I was.
‘Oh, good, good. It’s Vivia from the Lipscombe Trust. I just needed to know if there were any major incidents anywhere between Christmas afternoon and Boxing Day evening.’
There was a pause as she probably tried to decide whether asking me if I was entitled to the information was going to be embarrassing. She gave in.
‘Let me have a look, but I bet there will be. We usually have a few over Christmas.’
‘Thanks.’ I waited.
‘Sure, there was a major curse gone wrong in Notting Hill. A whole block of flats turned to slugs. And just after one a.m., some idiot summoned a water sprite in Alexandra Palace.’
‘That’s the one. I assume Neil Brannick got rid of it?’
‘Uh, yes. He does all the water stuff.’
‘How long did it take to sort out?’
Rachel laughed. ‘Now that I can tell you off the top of my head. Thirty-two hours. You know why?’
‘Why?’
‘Because along with the water guy, we needed the elemental guy. And the elemental guy refused to work with Brannick unless he got paid extra. Fifty quid extra an hour to work side-by-side with Brannick for that long. I paid his invoice this morning.’
‘I’m surprised you’re still in business.’
‘Oh, we just pass the additional costs on to the council.’
‘Well, thanks, Rachel. That’s all I needed to know.’
I hung up. That gave Neil an alibi for Berenice’s murder. He might have murdered one of the women, but he hadn’t murdered them all. I yawned, and spots danced in front of my eyes.
I snuck the door open and peeked out. No Stanley in sight. I checked on Sigrid then hopped downstairs to the kitchen. I opened the fridge door and sniffed at an open packet of bacon. It didn’t appeal. I imagined ripping someone’s throat out, but it just made the nausea worse. So far, so good.
I made myself a cheese and pickle sandwich—only drunks can be bothered to make a feast after midnight—and ate it at the kitchen table with a glass of cranberry juice. Then, finally, I went to shower. I resisted the temptation to peel off the bandage and instead protected it from the water with a plastic bag. It still hurt like hell, but blood had stopped steeping through the material, which I took to be a good sign. I stood in the shower and turned the tap as hot as I could bear while I scrubbed myself down and washed my hair.
Finally clean, I dressed in a clean nightie and got into bed. I was exhausted, but my brain refused to shut down. The throbbing from my foot didn’t help. The bite mightn’t mean anything. It wasn’t a real zombie. No one had ever been infected by a ghost zombie before. Yeah, but no one else is able to visit the ZDC in the underworld, even if they were stupid enough to do so.
And even if it was a proper zombie bite, I still had a chance. Not a big one, but a chance. Maybe I’d be in the tiny percentage who became a carrier instead of zombifying.
There were a lot of maybes. I refused to worry about it until I knew which way it would go. It wasn’t like there was anything I could do about it one way or the other.
Nevertheless, my last thought before I fell asleep was, ‘I better not wake up dead.’