Read Online The Dead (The Thaumaturge Series Book 1) by Cal Matthews - Free Book Online Page A

three hours. Disemboweled with a knife.”
    He scribbled it all down in his pretty cursive handwriting. “Okay. What else?”
    “Nothing unusual about the resurrection itself. I got a headache in my left temple, I think, during, and afterwards the side effects were the same.”
    “Headache, nausea, tightness in your chest?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then approximately two hours later you healed the girl at the bar.”
    “Yeah, and I still had a headache up until we got home and I ate something.”
    “Hmm.” He stuck the pen in his corner of his mouth and studied what he’d written down, then reached for one of the older notebooks and began to flip through it. I took the opportunity to head into the kitchen to scavenge for food.
    I wondered if I should mention the witches. The thought made me shake my head, confused at my own reluctance until I thought about Marcus and his pretty green eyes and how he had gently flirted with me. And call me sentimental, but I could count on one hand the number of times men came on to me and I didn’t want to lose the feeling. Even if I omitted the part about Marcus, Leo would still pounce on the incident like a dog on a chew toy, and I didn’t want his vampire slobber all over an innocuous, but private moment.
    I put together a sandwich and grabbed a bag of Doritos that was mostly orange crumbs and rejoined Leo on the couch. He glanced up at me distractedly, the pen still in his mouth.
    “Look,” he said, tapping his finger on the open page. “It’s been ten months since you resurrected anyone, right?”
    “Uh, yep,” I said, talking around a mouthful of deli meat and cheese. “Last time was that car wreck off the frontage road. Last New Year’s, I think.”
    “Yeah,” he agreed. “And then the next day, we went to that party and you took care of that guy for me, remember?”
    Hmm. Yeah. In general, I didn’t dislike watching Leo feed on people, but the guy he had seduced at the New Year's party had been on a whole ‘nother plane of attractiveness and I hadn’t handled it well. We fought the whole car ride home and Leo had left a few days later. Of course I remembered the New Year’s Eve guy.
    “I don’t get what you’re looking for,” I said, maybe a little too sharply.
    “The last time you did two back to back –”
    “You can’t count the New Year's Eve guy,” I interrupted. “That was twelve hours later.”
    “Yes, but he was, uh, not in good shape.” Leo had the decency to look a little embarrassed, but I just snorted.
    “Not in good shape. Yeah, if I recall, you did a number on him. Like, ripped out his neck.”
    Leo scowled. “I’m getting better.”
    I chewed my sandwich, shoved a few chips in my mouth.
    “Those are just chemicals, you know,” he said, wrinkling his nose as he watched me chew. “Triangle-shaped chemicals.”
    “And they’re delicious .” I crunched into another handful, making my cheek bulge like a chipmunk. I wiped my orange-dusted palm on my thigh.
    “You’re so...” Leo heaved a sigh. “Okay, fine. We won’t count New Year's Eve guy. You did the alcohol poisoning girl and the really gross combine guy two days apart, three years ago.”
    “Yeah,” I said, and couldn’t repress a shudder. That combine accident had been horrific.
    “And afterwards, you couldn’t get out of bed for days. Your lost vision in one eye.”
    “I remember,” I said. “What is your point?”
    “My point is, you don’t suffer the same side effects anymore. You’re getting stronger and we need to figure out what your new limits are.”
    I didn’t respond and Leo waited, his eyes fixed intently on me, his body turned towards mine so that our knees pressed together.
    “The first guy you ever brought back...” Leo said softly and I nodded.
    At nineteen years old, I resurrected my first human body. Leo and I had stumbled upon the teenager boy on an isolated Forest Service road, curled up in the driver’s seat of a banged up hatch-back. .He’d