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Major brought his stuff home from Fillmore Graves and dropped it on the bed. He should unpack it, he thought. He should really unpack it and put it all away before the pile of bags started mocking him and it became utterly impossible to deal with it. Half-heartedly, he opened a bag and started pulling stuff out, dropping it on the bed.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. Zack Stoll with party plans? Justin commiserating with him over his lost job? Chase Graves to tell him to sign the confidentiality papers that were sitting in his email? Did he really want to know?

Instead, to his complete surprise and delight, it was Natalie. "What's new pussycat?" her text read.

Major stared at it for a moment. "No way," he whispered. Of all the people, she was the last one he would have expected to hear from—and, it occurred to him, the one he most wanted to. Quickly he texted back, "Where the hell have you been?"

"Everywhere. Here's where I am now." She followed the text with a photo: Natalie under the space needle, wearing a broad smile … and a "Killer Abs" T-shirt. For the first time, Major thought that stupid shirt looked cute. He was laughing as she texted again: "Meet for a drink?"

"Abso-frickin-lutely!"

It took him only a few moments to put on his coat and hurry downstairs, happier than he'd been in—it felt like months. Maybe could have been years, the way his life had been going recently. He opened the door—

And she was standing there, on his porch. "Come on," she said, grinning. "Like I'd be seen at the Space Needle with the Chaos Killer."

He remembered that if he had never been the Chao$ Killer, he never would have met her, and suddenly that part of his life didn't seem so bad, either. "Come on in. Get you a coffee?"

"Please."

Natalie followed him through the house as he went to the kitchen and got the coffee started.

"You're a sight for sore eyes," he told her. "I was worried about you."

"I was worried about you, too. I thought—well, I figured you'd land on your feet. You always seem to." She frowned slightly, studying him. "And … you're human?"

"Yeah. I had to take the cure. The rest of the doses were lost, though, stolen from the morgue."

"You mean, your ex-fiance …"

"Is still a zombie." He didn't tell her Liv was a zombie because Major had given the last dose to Natalie, but she seemed to understand.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. Liv has Ravi, he'll find a way to make more cure eventually. You needed to be able to get out of there. You did, right? You're safe?"

"I'm safe."

"You look it. You look great." He felt nervous, suddenly, and focused on the coffee again. "Cream?"

"Black."

"My kind of girl." He handed her a cup and led her to the living room.

"I'm going to need an explanation of this, though." Natalie gestured at the T-shirt.

"I'm an idiot?"

"Major."

"Fine." He sighed, settling down on the couch. "It's been a … long few months. I had to become human, and I had to hide it from all my squad, because if they found out I'd be out of a job—which they did, and I am, but that's another story. This woman, Shawna, wrote to me. I get—I mean, the Chaos Killer gets a lot of mail, and hers was one of the few that didn't want me to die horribly. So …"

"You called her."

"I was looking for something … fun. Something that wasn't doom and gloom and dead things all the time."

"I get that."

Major smiled, gratefully. He was glad she did. "And she came over and we had sex—a lot of sex."

"So I gathered." Natalie pointed at the shirt again.

Blushing, Major took a sip of his coffee. "Anyway, she turned out to be a psycho. She put my picture and videos of me and texts between us all up on her Tumblr, and when I broke up with her, she did that." He gestured at the shirt. "I guess she wanted her fifteen minutes. And the fan mail has tripled, so, lucky me?"

"So, some fame-hungry floozy reminds all of Seattle why they hate you, and then the zombie army outfit that's like your only family throws you out because the floozy outed you as a human?"

Put that way, it kind of sucked. Actually, it sucked any way you put it. "Pretty much covers it."

"That's terrible." She studied him, her sympathy and her outrage for him warming him all through. "What are you going to do now?"

"Well, lately, I've been really into … lying on the couch, and looking up, sometimes sideways … But enough about me. What about you?"

Natalie smiled. It was a beautiful smile, and Major loved seeing her look so happy and content and confident. "Well, since you liberated me and gave me the cure, I've done what I said I was going to do. Traveled the world, looking for a perfect place to call home, and I found it. Italy. Amalfi Coast. I rented a place in Positano. Six-month lease—as long as a tourist visa allows."

"Sounds fancy."

"I may have been a working girl, but I was no dummy. I saved."

"Like Jamie Lee Curtis in Trading Places."

"Hm?"

He pointed at the TV. "It was on cable." Natalie giggled. "I watched it on the couch."

"I just came back to move the stuff from my house into storage, and … of course, to thank you for what you did for me." They were silent for a moment, looking at each other, Major thinking that she represented the few good things he had accomplished since … since the boat party. Natalie smiled again, pointing at his face on her chest. "And then I saw this shirt, and—well. Anyway."

"Here you are."

"Here I am."

He wondered where this went from here. She was special to him, had been since the moment he met her, but she was also a former prostitute who had been forced to trade her body for brains—Major wouldn't feel right putting the moves on her, wouldn't want her to get the idea that somehow she owed him because he had given her the cure. No, if this was to become anything non-platonic, that would have to come from her. "Hey," he said, "if you need help moving stuff tomorrow, I mean, my schedule is …" He pretended to think. "Wide open? Yeah."

"Really?"

"Uh-huh."

"Okay."

Major thought he could never get enough of seeing Natalie smile.

Picking up her coffee cup, she drained the last of it. "Well, I'm hoping to get an early start tomorrow, so I better get home and keep packing. You're serious about the moving?"

"Totally."

"Well, you know the address. 8:30?"

"I'll bring the coffee."

"It's a date. A deal." They stood there looking at each other, Major wanting to kiss her but holding himself back, and Natalie seeming not entirely sure where she wanted to take this, before she said a hasty good-bye and left. Major closed the door behind her and leaned back against it, smiling.