“Haven’t seen you in a long time, Dan,” she said. “Stop by and visit. At least show your support for the rally.”
I had no idea what sort of rally the vixen werewolf was talking about, but I had my suspicions . . . and my dread. “Haven’t heard about it.”
“Come on over, then. Be a Dick supporter. It’ll be a lot of fun—I promise.” She licked her muzzle again.
Neffi was not much of a political activist, but she was a businesswoman. Chambeaux & Deyer had helped her out in a conflict against the corrupt Smile Syndicate, and she had offered me some of the Full Moon’s services in payment, but we preferred cash or credit card. With Sheyenne as our business manager, what did Neffi expect?
Because Thunder Dick was a client, I detoured to the standalone row house that, through a quirk of architecture, seemed to have discreet back doors on every side of the building. Maybe it had been designed by Escher’s ghost.
In the unseasonable cold snap caused by the weather wizards, the Full Moon Brothel looked like a magical winter wonderland from a classic Currier & Ives Christmas card. A white blanket of snow had fallen on the roof and eaves, piled up in a perfect coating along the bannisters and the shrubs. Thick, puffy flakes continued to fall through the air like glitter.
Thunder Dick was there in person to create his own microclimate, a cheery, snowy scene that invited hot chocolate and caroling (if that was the sort of thing that intrigued unnaturals). Because the weather wizard limited his cheery snowfall to such a discrete (and discreet) area, it looked as if the brothel were enclosed in a snow globe.
Outside, Neffi and her girls were holding a political rally that seemed more like a party. Thunder Dick wore his tie-dyed weather robes, clutching his portable sundial talisman, finger painting incantations in the air as he waved at passersby. “I hope I can count on your vote.”
Campaign signs had been pounded into the lawn in front of the brothel announcing, WE ARE PROUD DICK SUPPORTERS.
Of course they were.
I doubted that the old mummy madam had read either candidate’s platform statement; she simply chose which of the two she wanted to support based on their names. Seeing me, the weather wizard waved vigorously to get my attention, thereby causing an inadvertent swirl in the wind pattern, which picked up some of the clean white snow and splattered it on a group of werewolves who had come by to observe.
Thunder Dick’s cat familiar huddled near his feet, shivering in the cold. Cats rarely find anything charming about snow.
“Look, Mr. Chambeaux!” the wizard called. “I took your advice to heart! See my clean and honest rally? I’m a nice guy, everybody’s favorite uncle. You were right: Being fair and aboveboard is the best way to get support. I want Wuwufo voters to choose me because of my ability and integrity, and because they like me—not because of some childish spat with an arrogant jerk.”
“You’ve matured a great deal,” I said.
“I wouldn’t say ‘a great deal,’ ” said the cat. “Can we go now?”
“Soon.” Thunder Dick smiled and kept waving at the attendees. “I thought you’d enjoy being at a cathouse.”
Neffi came over to me, walking with stiff and jerky movements, as if she had been produced in a bargain-basement special-effects shop. “There’s my favorite zombie private investigator. It’s been far too long since you darkened our door and brightened our lives.”
“Business elsewhere,” I said.
“Oh, we can definitely take care of business,” she said with a seductive lilt in her voice, a habit she had developed after thousands of years of practice. She was the oldest madam in the world working the oldest profession.
I noted the Dick Supporter signs around in the brothel yard. “Since when did you get into politics, Neffi?”
“Oh, it’s not politics—we just like the slogan. It attracts attention, brings customers over for our Happy Hour, and then we can give them special coupons for our Happy Endings Hour.”
Listening in, Morris/Maurice glared up at the weather wizard. “You can have my coupon. I’ve been neutered. He did it to me.”
Thunder Dick dismissed the cat’s concerns. “Don’t be silly—I had a professional vet do the snipping. After I read the instructions, I decided it would be too complicated to perform myself. I only did it because I care for you so much, Morris. Everyone says that neutered cats are happier cats.”
“Who says that?” asked Morris/Maurice, then sneezed, still miserable from the snow. “Not any cats, I guarantee you.”
Slender vampire seductresses, gray-skinned but well-preserved zombie ladies, two werewolf hookers including Cinnamon, and even a slippery-looking shape-shifting creature who was a new acquisition (offering “endless possibilities” according to the Full Moon’s advertisements) handed out campaign buttons, even though some of the spectators didn’t have garments to which they could attach them. The ladies called out, “Join us. Be a Dick supporter!”
The weathermancer was delighted and proud, as well as oblivious to the snickers. Even Neffi could barely cover her grin, but because the skin of her lips was so dried and leathery, she never managed much of a smile anyway.
“I thought Ramen Ho-Tep changed his support to Alastair Cumulus the Third,” I said. “Aren’t you two still an item?”
Neffi stiffened even more than she already was. “We’ve been on again, off again for millennia. Politics and relationships don’t mix. I had him wrapped around my gnarled finger, even put up a Thunder Dick poster in the museum—but now he supports that prissy fop just because he dried out a few damp bandages. He should have more of a backbone than that. Ramen Ho-Tep was the pharaoh of all Egypt, after all.”
“I know,” I muttered, “he reminds us often enough.”
“But pharaohs are too focused on the upper class, the one percent. Thunder Dick, though, speaks for the common people.”
The cat snorted. “He is exceedingly common.”
Several of the ladies called for Thunder Dick to make a speech (because Neffi had encouraged them to do so). The weather wizard chuckled in embarrassment, brushed down his perpetually windblown hair and beard. “As president of Wuwufo, I promise only the best weather across the Unnatural Quarter throughout my administration. That will be my number one priority.”
“Best weather for which species?” called a reptilian person in a hooded cloak.
“And that is where I promise to achieve a consensus,” said Thunder Dick. The werewolves began to howl, and he turned to them. “For werewolves I promise a full moon every night.”
Two of the younger werewolves looked excited, their tongues lolling out of their mouths, but their pack leaders responded with active scorn and cuffed their younger furry brothers. “Don’t ever believe campaign promises,” one snarled. “Besides, a full moon is astronomical, not meteorological. You don’t control the movement of celestial bodies. Wuwufo doesn’t have that much power.”
“But I could make sure the moon isn’t covered with clouds,” said Thunder Dick.
“Either way, we still transform,” answered one of the werewolves.
The cat hissed at the wolves. When they raised their hackles and growled back at Morris/Maurice, the tuxedo cat bounded back to hide behind the tie-dyed robes.
“And for vampires,” Thunder Dick continued, raising his voice, “I promise no bright sunlight. Always a protective haze and—”
“My foggy bottom, what nonsense!” yelled a thunderous voice, which was conveniently accompanied by a peal of thunder. Alastair Cumulus III appeared, suddenly illuminated by flashes of lightning. His arrival seemed staged, even operatic, as if he had taken inspiration from Don Giovanni.
“Don’t make promises you can’t deliver, Richard. And with your level of incompetence, you couldn’t cause rain during monsoon season. The Unnatural Quarter deserves consistency in their weather, not climate change that plays favorites.” He bowed to the gathered audience. “Ignore this amateur. Vote for me—for climate change you can believe in!”
By now, cameras from the competing weather networks had showed up and their staff meteorologists made bold predictions about the outcome of the Wuwufo elections, accompanied by contradictory weather forecasts.
Thunder Dick was so outraged at his rival’s arrival that he conjured a wind that blew straight at Alastair Cumulus, flapping the curled prongs of his forked beard, and the other weather wizard countered with an equal and opposing wind. The campaign signs rattled on their wooden sticks. Coupons and flyers for the Full Moon fluttered in the air. When the ladies ran for shelter, each grabbed a potential customer and rushed into the brothel, where it was safe and warm and dark.
Unsuccessful with his weathermancy, Thunder Dick scooped up a big handful of snow and smacked Alastair Cumulus in the face with a snowball.
The other weather wizard’s eyes flared, and he summoned a powerful spell that brought down a crackling heat wave that instantly melted all the fresh white snow and removed any nostalgic Currier & Ives trappings. Runnels of water streamed off of the eaves and left the surrounding area a soggy mess.
“Oh, that’s not fighting fair!” yelled Thunder Dick.
Cumulus snorted, “Says the man who threw a snowball in my face.”
Thunder Dick turned to me. “You see why I hired you, Mr. Chambeaux? You see what slimy tricks he uses?”
“Yes, I saw it all,” I said, my voice carefully neutral. “For all our sakes, I’ll be glad when this election is over.”
CHAPTER 21
While I was busy at the brothel, Sheyenne had done her homework about Jody Caligari’s landlord. Officially, I’m the detective, but my ghost girlfriend has connections and resources. She knows who to call, and she can track down information that eludes other detectives—whether humans, zombies, or even werewolves in pin-striped suits.
She levitated from her desk to greet me. “I dug up everything I could find about Ah’Chulhu, Beaux—and it’s a sordid story.”
“Hmm, I never expected that.” I hung my fedora on the hat rack. “He seemed like such a normal person.”
Sheyenne looked determined as she reviewed files and printouts, calling up more scraps of detail from online records. “Ah’Chulhu had a twisted life. It’s no wonder he’s at war with the world.”
“I thought he was a real-estate agent and a slumlord.”
“It’s all interconnected. He has great power and great potential, which comes from his parentage, even though his mother and father are no longer in this universe. They retired to another dimension, but in their day they were quite notable Senior Citizen Gods.”
I had never heard the term before. “Don’t you mean Elder Gods?”
“Not quite the same. Senior Citizen Gods get discounts, and they tend to cause most of their mayhem between four and six P.M. But you don’t have to worry about those two, Beaux—they’re long gone. Ah’Chulhu hasn’t had any connection with them since his childhood. In fact, he’s probably bitter.”
“Plenty of us have parental issues,” I said.
“This guy has it worse than most. He was discarded as a baby, dumped into a manhole, and left to die or fend for himself. Apparently, since so many alligators had been flushed down toilets, the parents assumed their infant half demon would be devoured in the sewers.”
“They couldn’t just put baby Ah’Chulhu up for adoption? With all those wriggly tentacles on his face he must have been a cute little tyke.”
“This is the sordid part.” Sheyenne pointed to pictures. I was surprised she had been able to find the old photos and obscure reports, until I remembered that people have a tendency to share even the most intimate and uninteresting details of their lives on social media. “When Ah’Chulhu was born, his parents were horrified—a tentacle head like they expected, but a human body. It caused quite a scandal. The mother was forced to admit that she’d had a torrid affair with a human and gotten pregnant, which resulted in the half-breed child. The mother attempted to keep her infidelity secret, but she couldn’t deny it once the baby was born.”
I glanced at the blurry image of the horrific, slimy, and tentacle-faced female that was Ah’Chulhu’s mother. I tried to imagine any human man entangled in a passionate embrace with that squid demon from another dimension. And then I couldn’t get the image out of my mind. “Ewww,” I said.
“Some people have a foot fetish, some people get turned on by tentacles,” Sheyenne said. “The two Senior Citizen Gods had such a titanic domestic dispute that it nearly ripped the cosmos apart.”
“I think I remember that,” I said.
“They initiated divorce proceedings, but finally committed to do their best to patch up the marriage. Since baby Ah’Chulhu was a painful reminder of the mother demon’s indiscretion, however, they discarded the half-breed creature, and the two Senior Citizen Gods disappeared into the Netherworld, where they vowed to go through couples’ counseling and attend a relationship-building retreat.”
I nodded. “Ah’Chulhu must have been a tough little creature if he survived and thrived in the sewers.”
“Yes, even as a toddler he befriended the gator-guys who were supposed to have eaten him, trained them to walk erect and be his henchmen, then built up a successful business selling sewer laboratory space for mad scientists, before expanding to other real-estate investments in low-lying areas. In fact, he’s made quite a name for himself.”
“Ah’Chulhu is, indeed, quite a name,” I said.
Robin emerged from her office. It was late, and I thought she might have gone home by now, but she often worked all night on one case or another. “Sorry about his troubled childhood, but that doesn’t excuse what he did to Jody. Unless Ah’Chulhu stacks the benches with enough demons, no jury will buy that sob story. Even the illegitimate half-breed son of a human and a Senior Citizen God still has to follow the law.”
“Ah’Chulhu’s background shows that he’s a fighter, though,” I pointed out. “This might end up being a rough and tumble battle.”
“I’m ready to get down and dirty,” Sheyenne said.
“So am I,” Robin added.
Considering where the battle would likely take place, that was exactly how it would have to be.
CHAPTER 22
These days when revenge extends far beyond the grave, you want to keep your former clients happy.
Next morning, we received good news for a change. Although it wasn’t the solution to one of our pending cases, Sheyenne was positively glowing as she waved a slip from her phone message pad. “Just got a call from the Unnatural Quarter Beautification Committee. Because of his renovations to the old Zombie Bathhouse, Lurrm has been named Amphibian of the Year. He’s getting an award and a certificate of appreciation.”
“That’s wonderful.” Robin brightened. “And he deserves it.”
I was happy for him, but also confused. “Why would the committee call here?”
“We’re the contact point on his business licenses and permits,” Robin explained. “Lurrm doesn’t like to talk on the phone, says his tympanic membranes aren’t what they used to be. And he thinks it makes Recompose a classier establishment if it has an unlisted phone number.”
“Isn’t that part of doing business?” I asked. “How do people make reservations?”
Robin shrugged. “I tried to convince him otherwise, but that ship has already sailed—and sunk. He can call out, but we can’t call in.”
I didn’t get it, but I wasn’t a crack businessman either; I just liked solving cases: that was what kept me ambulatory.
“Then how do we tell him about the award?” Sheyenne said.
Robin looked at me, and I could see the answer in her eyes even before she said, “Dan and I are going to deliver the news in person.”
When Robin and I entered, the spa attendant Carrl was flipping through the pages of a fishing magazine. “Need towel
s? Change for the lockers?”
“We’re here to see Lurrm,” I said.
He let the two of us through the turnstiles, and we descended the dank stairs into the steamy lower levels. Our noses were assaulted by the smell of sulfurous vapors, a hint of rotting flesh, and a strong undertone of sewage so thick it actually left an aftertaste.
In one of the large family pools, several zombies were playing water polo with a detached eyeball, which disoriented the owner of the body part with the conflicting views as his eyeball shot back and forth, even though he squeezed his other eyelid shut.
Something oozed out from under the wooden door of the sauna, and I heard deep satisfied moans coming from the massage rooms. Just another day at Recompose.
Two gaunt older zombies sat in one of the steaming hot pools along with a sticklike, completely unwrapped Aztec mummy who was softening up and rehydrating. In one of the private VIP spawning pools, two giggling amphibious creatures were flirting and making extremely large eyes at each other.
A skittering movement on the floor caught my attention. C.H. hurried toward us on light fingertips. He waggled his fingers in greeting.
Robin said, “Talk to the hand.”
I bent down. “Can you take us to Lurrm? We’ve got good news for him.”
C.H. extended his index finger to point toward one of the offices, then scurried ahead of us as we followed. Inside his management office, Lurrm sat at his desk, still wearing his frock coat and tapping out answers to e-mail on his computer screen. C.H. got a running start and sprang up onto the desk, where he tapped his fingers impatiently.
Lurrm puffed out his rounded throat, obviously pleased to see us. “You came back for a soak? Ayup, we’re happy to have you!”
I let Robin do the honors. Smiling, she said, “We’re pleased to inform you that the UQ Beautification Committee has named you Amphibian of the Year. There’ll be a plaque, a ceremony, and you’ll get the recognition of your peers.”
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