“Tina!”
She stopped in her tracks and turned around, searching for the person who’d called her. When she saw me, she scowled in greeting.
“Aren’t you joining the march?” I asked. It seemed like the kind of diversion that Tina would be first in line for. The closer to the front, the better the chances of getting on TV.
“Yeah, but I was going to your place first. Now at least I don’t have to trek all the way over there.” She knelt on the sidewalk and dug into her bag. She pulled out three celebrity gossip magazines, four tubes of lip gloss, a hairbrush, cell phone, assorted ponytail holders, and two pairs of sunglasses before she found what she was looking for: Russom’s Demoniacal Taxonomy, the book I’d loaned her during the weeks she’d been my apprentice. “Here’s your book,” she said, thrusting it at me. “If you won’t teach me about demons, I don’t need it anymore.”
I reached for the book, but Mab stepped between us. “Ah, so this must be the young lady you told me about a while back. The one who was your apprentice.” Funny that I’d never mentioned Juliet to Mab, but I’d told her all about Tina on my last visit to Wales.
“Young lady?” Tina wrinkled her nose. “That’s what my mom used to call me when she was mad.” She shoveled items back into her bag. Then she stopped and squinted up at Mab. She looked at me, then at Mab again. “Wait. Are you Vicky’s aunt? The one who taught her how to fight?”
“Yes,” I said. “This is my aunt Mab.”
“How do you do?” Mab said.
Tina stood, hauling the bag back onto her shoulder. She stared at Mab appraisingly. “So you must be, like, better than Vicky, right? At demon fighting? I mean, since you taught her and everything.”
Mab didn’t answer, but she favored Tina with her tiny, pursed-lip smile.
Clutching Russom’s, Tina said to Mab, “Would you teach me? Vicky’s all graduated and stuff, so you need a new apprentice, right? Plus my dad always said if you want something, you should go straight to the top.”
“Mab’s retired,” I said. “Anyway, she’s only in town for a few days before she goes back to Wales.”
“Oh. That’s another country, isn’t it?” Even Tina knew it was virtually impossible for zombies to get visas to travel internationally. It was due to fear of the plague. Although the possibility of contagion was long past, there was still widespread terror of the virus that had killed and reanimated two thousand Bostonians. Boston had no choice about its zombies, but nobody else wanted them.
Tina looked down at the book in her hands, as if trying to memorize its cover. When she held it out to me, she didn’t meet my eyes.
I reached out again to take Russom’s, but Mab stopped me, putting her hand on my arm. “We’re on an errand right now and can’t be lugging books about,” she said sharply. Tina stepped back as if slapped. “If you want to return my niece’s book, bring it to her apartment after you’ve finished school for the night.”
“But I don’t go to school anymore.”
“Did you earn your diploma?”
“No, but—”
“Then you have no business saying you’re done with school. Go to class. Learn something. And then return Russom’s in the morning on your way home.”
Never before had I seen Tina at a loss for words. She gaped at Mab, red eyes wide, mouth hanging open, and stunned into silence. She held Russom’s in front of her like a shield. Then she shut her mouth and gave a tiny nod.
“Tina,” I said, “if it’s easier, you can leave the book with Clyde. He’ll make sure I get it.”
“Not good enough.” Mab waved away the very idea. “We’ll expect to see you in the morning. Now, off you go to school.”
Tina turned and fled. But not, I noticed, in the direction of her school. She joined the flow of zombies pouring toward the starting point of the protest march.
I watched her go. WHAT THE HELL WAS THE QUESTION? bobbed through the crowd until she was out of sight.
“Mab,” I said, “I think you’ve just become the first mortal creature ever to terrify a zombie.”
“Nonsense. I merely made some suggestions about manners and the importance of education. Things she’d do well to consider.”
Tina, consider manners? That seemed about as likely as Commissioner Hampson stopping by Deadtown to link arms with protesters and lead the march. But I wasn’t going to ponder that now. I wanted to complete our errand and see Juliet.
CARLOS WASN’T IN, BUT HE’D LEFT AN ENVELOPE WITH MY name and the amount I owed penciled on the front. Mab’s eyes widened when she saw the figure, but I paid without telling her it was only half the total.
Outside, I gave Mab her card. She scrutinized it, and a most unladylike snort erupted from her. “Mabel!” she exclaimed, waving the card in my face. “He has me down as Mabel Vaughn.”
“That’s not such a bad thing, Mab. It puts a little bit of distance between you and your false identity.”
“Hmph.” Mab held the card as though it were a particularly slimy piece of garbage. “You won’t have to call me that, will you?”
“No. You only need to show the card when you pass through a checkpoint. Or if a cop asks for it. Most people never see it.”
“Good. Because I will not be referred to as ‘Aunt Mabel.’ ” She harrumphed again as she slid the card into her pocket. “Sounds like a Victorian charwoman.”
I laughed and patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry, Mab. Your secret is safe with me.”
MAB PASSED THROUGH THE CHECKPOINT OUT OF DEADTOWN like she’d lived in Designated Area 1 all her life. As we walked the half-block to Creature Comforts, I tried to prepare her for meeting Axel. “He’s obviously not human, but nobody knows what he is. And nobody likes to ask, either. Axel doesn’t say much, and his privacy is important to him. Like, really important.” We stopped in front of the door. “So if he won’t let you downstairs to see Juliet, please don’t take offense.”
I reached for the door handle, then paused. What would Mab see when I pulled it open and we went inside? A dingy dive bar with a surly bartender, most likely. That wasn’t an inaccurate assessment. But Creature Comforts was more than its appearance—at least, it was to me. It was like a second home, and I didn’t want Mab to judge it too harshly.
I opened the door and gestured Mab inside. I followed. The place was empty. No rowdy werewolves tonight; that was one good thing. Axel leaned on the bar and watched us approach. His small eyes glinted as he took in Mab.
“Axel, this is my aunt, Mab,” I said. “She’s come with me to see Juliet. I hope you won’t mind if she visits your guest room with me.”
Axel regarded Mab as if sizing her up—or thinking about having her as a snack. Mab appraised him just as coolly. For a minute, I thought we were headed for some kind of O.K. Corral showdown.
Then Mab stepped forward. She offered her hand and said something in a language I didn’t understand. It sounded a bit like German, although it wasn’t German.
A grin cracked Axel’s face. He shook Mab’s hand so vigorously it rattled my teeth where I stood beside them. He spoke in a rapid-fire barrage of words in the same language Mab had used. In two minutes, he said more to her than I’d heard him say in three years.
Mab laughed, and Axel laughed with her. He came out from behind the bar, bowed, and offered Mab his arm. The two of them chatted away like old friends as they walked back to the storeroom together. I followed, feeling like a third wheel.
In the storeroom, Axel was showing Mab how to open the secret door. She clapped her hands together, impressed, then tried it herself.
Axel walked over to me, chuckling. “Lovely lady, your aunt,” he said. He picked up a couple of cases of pretzels and, still laughing to himself, carried them into the bar.
Mab stood by the open door, smiling a private smile.
“What did you say to him?” I asked. “What language was that?”
“Trollspråk. It turns out Axel and I have some mutual acquaintances. I simply passed alo
ng news from the old country.”
“Axel is a troll?” I’d wondered for years what species Axel was. And Mab had figured it out at a glance.
“Yes, of course, a jötunn, one of the Old Norse giants.” She shook her head. “I must say I’m disappointed you never recognized him as such. But then, you were never a keen student of mythology. If it wasn’t a demon, it didn’t interest you.”
“Hey, I was focused.”
Her face softened. It may have looked about as soft as marble to anyone else, but I could tell the difference. “That you were, child.”
Mab moved aside so I could go first, and then she followed me down the stairs. As we reached the bottom, I half-expected my aunt to start conversing fluently in whatever dialect they spoke in fourteenth-century Verona, but there wouldn’t have been much point. Juliet was dead to the world, asleep.
A vampire’s sleep resembles death so closely that it was always a little bit of a shock to see my roommate so absolutely still and silent. But vampires turn to dust when they die, so I knew death hadn’t claimed her. Yet it wasn’t good that she was fast asleep so many hours after dusk. She should be awake and active at this time of night.
I’d already described Juliet’s wound to Mab; now I showed her. As gently as possible, so as not to disturb the sleeper, I pulled back the covers over her leg. The putrid stench still reeked, but it didn’t faze Mab. She leaned forward to examine the injury more closely.
As Axel had said earlier, Juliet was holding steady. The wound hadn’t really changed since the last time I’d seen it—swollen, purple, and hot. Axel’s stitches held, but they were coated with seeping pus.
“How long since she was injured?” Mab asked.
“Two nights ago. It shouldn’t take a vampire so long to heal.”
“You’re right, it shouldn’t.” Mab laid a hand on Juliet’s calf. “And she’s very hot.” She nodded at the blue jar on the nightstand. “That’s the salve I gave you?”
“Yes. I thought it might help.”
“It was a good thought. It’s not healing her, but it’s prevented the injury from getting worse.”
“Do you think the wound is poisoned?” I told her how I’d given Daniel a swab from the Old One’s sword for analysis.
“Offhand, I can’t think of any poison that would harm a vampire. Their system won’t absorb most poisons. But I’m not an expert. I’ll be interested to learn the results of the analysis.”
So would I. Until then, I didn’t know what to do—and neither did Mab. That was an odd feeling. I was used to relying on my aunt to have all the answers.
“Axel told me that the last four or five times he’s checked on her, she’s been asleep like this,” Mab continued. “He couldn’t rouse her.”
“It’s like she’s in a coma.”
Mab shook Juliet’s shoulder, gently at first, then more vigorously. No response.
Resting her chin in her hand, Mab sighed. “I don’t understand it. I suppose it could be a poison, something augmented by silver, perhaps. But at least she’s stable for the moment.”
Out of options, we let Juliet sleep. We went back upstairs and carefully closed the hidden door. In the main room, a customer had arrived. He sat alone at the bar, hunched over his drink. When he heard us come in, he looked up and sneered. I knew that sneer—it was Norden, the Goon Squad cop.
“Been to the ‘Ghouls’ room?” he said. “What the hell do you females do in there, anyway?”
“Powder our noses.” I walked past him.
Mab sat on a stool and began talking to Axel in that troll language. He pulled out a bottle from under the bar—must be some kind of special reserve if he hid it there—and poured her a generous portion.
“Aquavit,” Mab explained. “The Scandinavian ‘water of life.’ It’s from Axel’s private stock. Would you like some?”
She held out her glass to me, and I sniffed. The liquid smelled strongly of alcohol, but also of herbs. It had a licorice smell, and lemon, and something else—carraway, maybe?
I shook my head. “Too intense for me. Can I have my usual, Axel?”
He sighed and produced a bottle of lite beer. Mab made a face when she saw it, then sipped her aquavit. Axel watched her anxiously. She nodded, and they were off on another Trollspråk conversation. A troll. I couldn’t get over it. Mab was likely bringing him up to date on the Billy Goats Gruff—they’d probably bought a condo together in Oslo or something.
Abandoned, I drifted down the bar and found myself talking to Norden. Or trying to.
“What brings you to Creature Comforts?” I asked. “I’ve never seen you here except when you’re working.” Giving Axel and his customers a hard time is what I meant by working.
“I’m on patrol later,” he said. “Just killing time.” He stared into his drink.
That seemed to exhaust our conversation. I sat there, peeling the label off my beer.
After a few minutes, Norden snorted. “If you’re going to sit there nursing a beer, at least get something that tastes like one.”
“I don’t like beer. This stuff is okay.”
He replied with another snort. And we went back to having nothing to say to each other.
At the far end of the bar, Mab and Axel laughed uproariously. I wished they’d let me in on the joke. Axel poured more aquavit into Mab’s glass. Great. If they kept it up, I was going to have to borrow a wheelbarrow to get “Aunt Mabel” home.
I turned back to Norden. “How come you’re back on the Goon Squad? When I saw you last month, you’d quit to go solo.”
“And you saw how well that worked out.” He lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. “It’s a living.”
“Yeah, but—sorry for being blunt—you hate paranormals. You call us freaks and monsters. Why do you even want a job where you spend all your time in and around Deadtown?”
Another half-shrug. “It was different when Sykes was alive. Or undead, or whatever the hell he was. When he was here. We’d been partners before the plague, back when he was human. Sykes was okay. But maybe I spent too much time with him, because after he died, I didn’t know how to be with real people anymore.” His eyebrows lowered, and he tossed back the contents of his glass. “Bartender! I’m dry here.”
Axel sauntered to our end of the bar and poured a shot into Norden’s glass.
“Make it a double,” Norden said. “And gimme a beer chaser while you’re at it.” He glanced at my bottle and grimaced. “Make sure it’s real beer.”
“You sure you want to drink all that before a shift?” I asked after Axel had gone back to Mab. The two of them were singing now.
“What the hell is it to you?”
“Just saying.”
Norden twisted away from me on his stool, grumbling something about nosy freaks who can’t mind their own business. Then he twisted back. “You know why I’m back on the Goon Squad? ’Cause I’m a freak, just like you. There’s no place I fit in anymore. Ever since I got out of the hospital, nothing’s been the same. I’m just a goddamn freak sitting in a goddamn freak bar.”
Mab and Axel broke off their song and stared. Axel’s eyes narrowed as he gauged whether it was time to throw Norden out.
Before he made his decision, the front door burst open. Throngs of zombies tumbled into the room, laughing and chanting, “Let us out! Let us out!” Norden tensed beside me, and I knew what he was thinking. Permits were rescinded. Zombies were restricted to Deadtown; they couldn’t even go into the New Combat Zone. And he was the lone cop in a bar full of law-breaking zombies.
In the crowd, I saw a familiar face. I made my way over to him.
“Carlos, what’s going on?” I said.
“We stormed the checkpoint! It was amazing. We marched to the border of Deadtown, and then people started chanting, ‘Let us out!’” The chant still resounded through the bar. Carlos grinned and raised his fist in time to the chant. He turned back to me. “Why should we stay penned up in Deadtown? We’re not criminals. We don’t b
elong in jail. You should’ve seen it—the crowd surged right past the barriers. There wasn’t a thing the border guards could do.” He laughed at the memory.
The chant had changed. Now it was “Bring us beer!” Carlos called for beer, too, pounding on the table. Zombies don’t get drunk, but for some reason they still like the taste of beer. Maybe reanimation damaged their taste buds.
Axel got busy filling pitchers. Mab went behind the bar to help, and I offered to carry pitchers to the tables of thirsty zombies. As I picked up a tray, I noticed Norden wasn’t doing too hot. He was trembling, and sweat ran down his face.
“Are you okay?” I knew he should’ve slowed down on the drinking.
His lip curled, and he wiped a hand across his forehead. “Damn zombies. Too many of them. The smell. It makes me—” He covered his nose and mouth with both hands. “I can’t stand it!” he screamed through his fingers. He jumped from his stool and ran out the front door.
Normally, you don’t try to push your way through a crowd of zombies. But they moved aside to let Norden through. Everyone stared after him, silent. Then the chant of “Bring us beer!” started up again.
It was then I noticed that Norden’s second drink was untouched. So was his bottle of beer. So what was the guy’s problem? I knew he hated zombies—hell, he seemed to hate everyone—but I’d never seen him freak out like that before.
Axel cleared away Norden’s drinks as a zombie took his spot at the bar. I carried pitcher after pitcher of beer to the euphoric protesters. Something told me their party wasn’t going to last long. Sure enough, within an hour the Goons arrived to break it up and close down the bar. There was no trouble. The zombies went peacefully back to Deadtown—they’d made their point and downed a few beers besides. It was a good night for them.
We couldn’t risk seeing Juliet again, not with Creature Comforts full of Goons. Axel promised he’d check on her before he went home for the night. Mab and I left with the protesters.
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