Battle of the Network Zombies Page 15

  He swung his feet down and stood up lazily, his greasy hair hung in strips. His eyes were bruised and his nose taped, the victim of a beating or a sloppy surgeon. More likely a robbery. “Yeah?”

  “Um. Do you have a back door?”

  “What?”

  “A back door?”

  He twisted his head quizzically. I’m not sure why I expected him to be anything other than an idiot. Maybe I figured the black eyes were earned. Like he was a smartass or something. Sadly nothing like that, just dim.

  “I need to get away from that guy out there.” I pointed at the cab. “He’s been following me. Stopping and flicking his tongue between his fingers.”

  He made a peace sign with his fingers and lifted them to his face. “Like this—” he began.

  “You don’t have to.” I waved my hands hopefully.

  The clerk flicked his tongue in the webbing.

  “Really?” I shook my head. “Listen, fucktard. Is there a back door?”

  He pointed to a hallway even darker than the rest of the store. I looked out the front door. Lumpy stood on the cab hood, a mischievous smile at play on his shadow lips. Pie-hole sat in the passenger seat facing Raj, his mouth working pretty fast for a ghost no human could hear.

  What are you up to? I thought.

  Then, Raj bolted out of his side and charged the door, screaming in that same unintelligible way. Fucking ghosts were learning new tricks every damn day. It seems like just yesterday, Mr. Kim walked away from my Volvo, like he’d never been chained to it in the first place.

  Now they can be informants? It’s like there’s no fucking rules.

  I darted down the hallway, slamming myself into the door, somehow expecting it to just pop open easy as ten dollar hooker, but luck wasn’t playing fair. Never did.

  The door was locked. I bounced off it and spun around as Raj reached out for me, fists pumping with anger.

  I hissed and ratcheted my jaw open fully, snapping at the air in front of him. I lurched forward, doing my best impression of a shambling mistake. My nails were dragging the walls as I went for him. Raj opened his mouth and let out an honest-to-God “ieeee” before clutching at his chest, twitching a bit and then dropping to the floor in a heap. I closed my mouth with a snap and a second later—as luck would have it—the clerk was hovering over the body.

  “What happened?” The kid knelt beside Raj and dug through the layers of clothes to feel for a pulse.

  “He had a heart attack, I think.” My jaw still ached from the threat of chowing down on some Indian food. I, of course, had no intention of eating Raj. First off, I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but they tend to wear a lot of clothes around these parts. Sure, it’s cold compared to Mumbai or wherever, but really…parkas? Two, he’d taken at least fifteen radio calls since he picked me up, including a heated argument with Baljeet, whoever that was, over spices or some shit—I wasn’t really listening, though he made it clear after he clicked off that she was “full of spite and cruelty.” Plus I was kind of full, so I’d have to purge at some point. Try and explain regurgitating a partially digested corpse—they don’t flush well—I know, I’ve tried.

  Finally—Hello—Witness!

  “Well he’s dead, now.” The kid pulled back his hand like he’d accidentally touched a fresh turd. He even stared at his fingers, a look of actual horror in his eyes.

  An odd feeling took hold of me. Something not unfamiliar, but latent, missed.

  It was envy.

  I opted not to disrupt his epiphany and instead said, “Wow. Life really is fragile.”

  The kid nodded, still examining the body.

  “Okay, then. I gotta go.” I rushed for the front door.

  “But wait. What about the—”

  “Bye!”

  “—police?”

  Pie-hole and Lumpy sat on the front bumper of the idling cab applauding. What’s the sound of two spectral hands clapping? You guessed it. Nothing.

  “I’m afraid you two are going to need to get a new driver. Sorry.”

  I sallied off down the sidewalk toward Smitty’s; behind me I could hear the two ghosts commiserating.

  “Must have been all the ghee.”

  “I’ve heard lentils are actually dried roundworms.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “I hope that guy turns off the car, or we really will be here all night.”

  A thought stopped me in my tracks.

  I parked the cab in the alley behind Smitty’s, tucked it right in between a Dumpster overflowing with flattened cardboard and a drunk passed out in a puddle of his own sick. Oh yeah, I’m awesome at parallel parking. I didn’t even clip the fucker’s feet. Pie-hole and Lumpy were suitably impressed.

  “Nice job.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Could you turn off the radio before you go? Baljeet will be calling every ten minutes, screaming about Raj’s laziness.” Lumpy paused. “Of course, he just got a whole lot lazier.”

  I reached for the knob and found it had been snapped off, probably by Baljeet, herself. As if on cue, the squelch of the radio kicked in again.

  “Raj, you soppy pile of baboon shit, where are you? Raaaj!”

  “Sorry.” I shrugged.

  The two ghosts looked at each other, Pie-hole through the nearly opaque hands that covered his face.

  Ancient grease clung to the warm air or the waitress with the blue-washed bouffant smelled like an order of onion rings—and if that’s the case, she was definitely my ideal meal. I rounded the bar and spotted Scott dunking fries into a salad bowl full of tartar sauce. He shoved them into his waiting maw three at a time and swallowed with an economy of chomping.

  He looked up, deep-fried content turning into a wholly unnecessary scowl.

  “Jesus, Amanda. What are you doin’ here?” he asked, dropping his face into his palms and groaning. “I thought you were on location?”

  I slid into the booth next to him. “I figured you’d be moping, so I swung by to cheer you up with my sparkling personality.”

  “Is that what you’re calling it?” He eyed me suspiciously.

  “Um…yeah.” I beamed, aiming for wide-eyed innocence, but may have overshot into babydoll, a dangerous misstep as evidenced by…

  Scott slid away down the seat, putting a few more inches between us and pulling his fries along protectively. “Well, thanks, but just so we’re clear, when I break up with someone, I usually don’t talk to them again.”

  “Hold on. Is that what happened?”

  He responded with a narrow stare, a sadness slogging in the creases on his forehead. “Amanda, come on.”

  What I said was, “I’m totally going to respect your need for space and I own that it was all my fault and I’m an asshole and all that. You’re a great guy, Scott, and I want all the best for you.” What I meant was: you’re totally mine. Don’t even try to run, ’cause I’ll hobble your ass.56

  He angled a wary eyebrow.

  “Fine,” I said. “Don’t believe me.”

  “All right.” He passed me a fry to sniff. “We’ll try out the friend thing.”

  “Deal.” I beamed at him and he actually cracked a smile, while I snorted the hell out of that fry. “While I’ve got you here…”

  “Yes?”

  “Those people making threats against Johnny Birch?”

  “Mmm-hmm? Oh, I dug up something about that, yeah.”

  “Wait. What I was going to say is, they acted on their threats. He’s dead. We found what’s left of his body a few hours ago, burnt down to cinders in his room. That wood nymph went up like kindling. Must not have used moisturizer.”

  Scott inhaled sharply. “Rough!”

  “I’m just glad enough time has passed where we can laugh about it. Oh! And get this! The door was locked.”

  “Suicide?”

  “I don’t think so. He had another one of those creatures on his desk—this one apparently had been delivered to the mansion.”

 
“Was there anything else in the room?”

  “A large collection of porn. His clothes. Nothing that didn’t seem normal for Birch.”

  “Hmm. So what now? Did the reapers come?”

  “Jesus no. There weren’t any humans about so they didn’t sense an issue and I sure as shit didn’t call them. In case you don’t remember, they’re not exactly happy with my debt to them.”

  “Doesn’t this mean the end of the show?”

  “Absolutely not. I talked it over with the producer and we’re going to continue the show, only with Johnny’s murder as the premise. It’s gonna be huge.” I looked away. Or tank completely, I thought, leaving me penniless and mooching off my friends.

  “But? You look worried.”

  “I need to be sure what I’m doing. I’m going to be the ‘sleuth’ and all I have to go on is a handful of mystery novels—none of which involve people as nasty as the yetis—and the handful of real life crap I keep falling into.”

  “Oh, about that.” He perked up. “I did find out that there’s been a little tiff going on between the nymphs and the yeti, which used to be called sasquatch but they took offense at being categorized by the humans and took back the previously derogatory Asian moniker. Also, don’t call them ‘abominable’ if you want to live to tell about it.”

  “That’s all very interesting. What does it have to do with Birch?”

  “Well. The yeti have been launching frequent attacks on wood nymph strongholds, which aren’t, like you’d think, made of old rotty bark and twigs but actual cities out there in the woods.”

  “Creepy.”

  “So apparently, there’s talk of the yeti taking out a very visible member of the wood nymph constabulary.”

  “Johnny.”

  “Exactly.”

  “It’s all very sci-fi channel, don’t you think? Too easy? Territorial bullshit is so kindergarten.”

  “I thought that too, but when you take into account the threats and now this obvious statement being made with the method of his murder, it kind of makes sense.”

  “It does. Except for one thing. No one mentioned seeing or hearing a yeti rampaging through the mansion.”

  “Ah. But they’re very good at concealing themselves.”

  “Well, not the one—” I stopped myself. Maybe the yeti at the Hooch and Cooch hadn’t left the cage at all, maybe it’d gone chameleon or some shit. “So maybe the yeti was in the hallway, hiding in the leaves or something?”

  “Leaves?”

  “Yeah, Johnny had a boner for interior decorating. He overdid it with the ivy.”

  Scott called over the waitress. She dropped a plate of toast in front of some homeless teens counting change on the counter and slunk over.

  “Two coffees, please.”

  She nodded, collecting his empty plate and tartar sauce and trudged off.

  “I’m gonna need, at the very least, a conspirator. Someone in that house that knew it was going down.”

  “Listen to you with your lingo.” Scott grinned, playfully, eyes crinkling at the corners. “What you really need is to get in there and pore over that room. Look under the bed, in the closets, drawers. Everywhere.”

  “That’s not going to be must-see-television.”

  Scott shrugged and took the mug from the waitress, dumping a pile of sugar so large it floated on the surface for a moment before drowning in the brackish brew. Not having thought to bring a mutsuki, I greedily inhaled the heady aroma curling off my own mug. I stuck my tongue in, swirled it a bit.

  Scott’s brow arched.

  While I’ve kept some secrets, the zombie versus food issue has been all over the supernatural news lately. So much so, that I’d learned a new trick. I grabbed my napkin and circled my tongue with it, blotting off the offending liquid.

  “That’s damn good coffee,” I said.

  Frankly, if I’d known how much fun investigating was going to be, I’d have opened a private detective agency, just to experience more easy banter with Scott. I totally took the guy for granted. He knew his shit. Add to that his ability to all but overlook my eating issue and drive me to bowel-churning orgasms almost every time we went at it, and the regret started to really sink in. Still, the healing had begun, as one of my previous therapists would have said.57

  Or at least I hope it had.

  “So, start interrogating people,” he said. “Get the bastards alone. See where they were when he died. Do you even know when he died?”

  “Well he screamed around 1:30, so I’m guessing right about then.”

  “Find out where people were. Also, if they knew Johnny before the show. Find out their motives.”

  I nodded. It made sense, and I totally would have done all those things eventually, but it never hurt to dot your “Is” and cross your “Ts”. Plus, if I was ever going to be able to snare the were-hunky ex-cop again, it would be by showing him I have the capacity to change. And the first step was valuing him.

  “Thanks, so much.” I put out my hand to shake and his fell right into my palm (said the spider to the fly). “I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”

  I slid out of the banquette.

  “Call me if you need anything else,” he offered.

  I smiled, already making an extensive list of things I “needed.”

  CHANNEL 12

  Wednesday

  10:00–11:00 P.M.

  Satyr Island 8

  Molly finds herself in a hot mess of trouble as Leroy gallops to a victory in the weekly “virginity cup.” Will she survive the dreaded interspecies mating prize? Tune in!

  Just because things went well with Scott, don’t go thinking I started shooting stars and moonbeams out my ass—we are, after all, talking about…me. How I rose to the top of karma’s shit list was still a mystery. Another one. I mean, seriously, don’t I play my part in alleviating the homeless crisis? Aren’t you happy not to have to put up with a herd of patchouli-smelling hippies picketing your favorite boutiques? Haven’t I improved the general aesthetic of the supernatural scene?

  I’m going with yes.

  I’m a fucking giver. I don’t care what you say.

  So stashing Raj’s full-sized cab on the grounds of Harcourt Manor should have been way easier.

  It’s not like I could just pull it up to the door, Baljeet hollering on and on in that ugly mish-mash of words—the damn radio must have some magical power supply for the beating she put it through. It was bound to draw attention—maybe less so than out in the ghetto neighborhood surrounding the Minions Mansion, where it would either be stripped or used as a shooting gallery, or worse, a toilet—especially with the phone number tattooed across it twenty million times, as if anyone has ever tried to call a cab that just passed them. Come back! No. Doesn’t happen. But one of the bitches up in the mansion might just respond to Baljeet’s call, just to be spiteful. With the slew of threats the woman had vomited during the drive back, I just couldn’t risk it. Apparently she’s fond of both eviscerations and amputations, to hear her tell it.

  Old Mister Withers, let’s call him, the caretaker, shambled up to the gate in a rain slicker, torrents streaming down the folds. He tugged at the lock a few times, finally slamming his fist down on it to get the mechanism going. Fifteen minutes, people. To think he didn’t get the finger as we blew past him. Lumpy chastising Pie-hole for an impromptu b-a, an affront to only two people and the intended victim wasn’t one of them.

  “Get your hairy ass out of my face!” he yelled, causing the dwarf to just shake his wide haunches all the more, ass jiggling like a rap video dancer. Lumpy’s aura turned bright red, his face seethed with anger. “Knock it off!”

  He swung at Pie-hole and, to my surprise, made contact, doubling the ghost over.

  “Jeez. Cool it, I was just fuckin’ around.”

  “Fuck around over there.” He pointed to the opposite side of the car. “Or on the roof. Nowhere near my face or I’ll do you worse next time.”

  I curved pa
st Withers’s cabin and pointed the cab into a gap in the undergrowth. A squeal echoed as branches dragged their sharp nails against the body and the windshield was showered in pine needles. They wriggled in rainy rivulets like teeming maggots.

  “Jesus!” Pie-hole yelled. “That sound is nearly as painful as Baljeet’s screeching.”

  With that, Baljeet let loose with another stream of curses.

  “Whoever you are, know this. I’m coming for you with my khukuri! You’re a dead woman. Oh yes, you are. So dead I can hardly keep from laughing. You hear me? You hear me?”

  There was one last squelch and then an ominous silence.

  Two questions. How does she know I’m a woman?

  And.

  What the hell’s a khukuri?

  I threw open the double doors of the grand hall dramatically and posed there for a moment, the wind whipping hair around my determined face.58 The storm followed me inside, the space exploding in a whirlwind of dry leaves and whipping vines. With Johnny gone, the ivy withered and died back to woody creepers. It swayed from the ceiling like hangman’s nooses and coiled limply around the bottom of columns.

  It would have made an awesome opening shot.

  Would have.

  Neither the camera nor Wendy were there to catch the melodrama.

  “Wendy!” I barked and stomped across the wasteland and through the doors into the main hall.

  What I saw there filled me with an unnatural glee. Flattened against the wall, terror bouncing around her slim featured face, was my best friend. Leaning in and trapping Wendy between her wanton and frighteningly thick forearms, Absinthe’s eye twinkled lasciviously in the dim light. If I could have peed myself, I probably would have.

  Instead, I did what any reasonable best friend would do. I dove into my bag for my cell phone to capture the entire event on a surprise video.59

  “So, uh.” Absinthe growled when she spoke. This was her sexy voice, I presumed, though she sounded exactly like a French waiter I’d had once—and I don’t mean that in a dirty way. “Are you and your girl, how do you say…close?”