The drinks arrived, and Gil ordered a vodka martini with two olives, an extra glass, and a pint of warm red. He explained that the vodka was a sheer sensory pleasure, sniffed and rolled over the tongue. Isobel would have to bring a spittoon if she expected a tip. I tried to avoid eye contact with the incompetent waitress, lest she cause me to become irritable. Regardless, the Flirtini was perfect (see inset); it glowed hot pink under the disco’s black light. Ricardo was on point. The frost clung to my cold dead fingers, like sugared fruit on a holiday centerpiece.
“Is that Armani with an ‘e’?” I asked. Although, in truth, the whole outfit hung on that jacket, and it was a beautiful cut.
“Funny. Where are the others?”
I directed his eyes to the other side of the room. Shane nuzzled against Wendy’s neck. His lips were parting and beginning to bare canines. It startled me a bit. I wondered if Wendy was aware of the possibility of being scarred by her encounter with the pretty boy7.
* * *
Flirtini
1 part X-RATED®
Fusion Liqueur
1 part vodka
Splash of Cointreau
Splash of cranberry juice
Squeeze of fresh lime
* * *
“Ew, whore,” Gil said, stretching the accusation into two distinct syllables.
“No doubt. Could you?”
“Absolutely.” Gil shook the look of faux-disgust from his face. He bit the inside of his cheek and blew a vibrating blood-fueled whisper across the room. It unfurled and coiled and stretched as though a snake of pink mist escaped from his mouth. It stained the air until it found its target ear, and then slid inside, snapping from view. No one in the club seemed at all interested.
He’s going to bite, bitch.
Wendy pushed back from Shane and took his upper lip in her fingers; she examined his slowly retracting teeth and then let his lip go. He gave her a sickening smile, she returned a playful slap, and then darted from his side, galloping back to our table, leaving him looking around, embarrassment spreading across his cheeks like fresh blood-kill.
“Gilly!” she yelled. “Love you.”
“And you.” He leaned toward her and gave her a Euro double kiss.
“Thanks for the heads-up on the biter. I swear to God if he’d left a mark I would’ve torn him apart. Is Liesl here yet?”
“No,” I said. “Haven’t seen her. Let me text her.” I fumbled for my BlackBerry and danced the familiar patterns to create the message:
Bitch, where r u? The crowd is grossly overrated, Cameron’s here! Ick!
“I told her that Cameron’s here.”
“What?” Gil’s neck craned to gain a view. Wendy pointed out the actor’s location. “Holy shit! Do you know who that is with him? It’s that skank weathergirl from Channel 8.”
“No way,” Wendy said. “Ew. She’s got legs like uncooked spaghetti.”
“What’s her name?”
“Rochelle somebody, I think.”
“He brought a pseudo-celebrity victim to the Well?”
“Looks like it.” Gil walked off toward the bar, and slid between a severely butch demonette with short blonde hair and curly goat horns, and a cute young gent of USO8. He lingered on a well-rehearsed stare into the man’s eyes, then leaned across the bar and spoke to Ricardo.
Ricardo Amandine was a burly abovegrounder and tall. He had a cherubic face with cheeks like peaches; in other words, a zombie hottie like Wendy and me. He was a master entrepreneur—an undead Trump—and had turned the crumbling warehouse into the hottest club in the nation. He existed in death, as he had in life, with rich aplomb. Self-confidence dripped from him like marketable sweat; the musk hung around him tucked with dollar signs. I needed a bottle and an ad campaign.
Gil grabbed something paper from the bar, and scribbled a note on it; he handed it to the man next to him as if the paper were magical, and pulled from thin air, or from his ass. He winked and strutted back to the table, actually strutted. Desperate.
“How do you make strutting look natural?” I asked.
Gil slid in close to me and whispered, “Practice.”
“So what are we talking about?” Wendy asked.
“How about the freaky-ass weather?”
Normally far too banal for cocktail banter, the Seattle weather had gone full-on biblical. Raining or drizzling, at least, every day for the past two months. There had even been a tornado in some rural town that doesn’t bear repeating, a farm destroyed, or something. It hardly seemed worth mentioning. Once you’re dead there’s no need for agriculture.
“I’ve been wondering why it’s been raining so—”
“It is total ass. My hair is—”
“Next!” I shouted; the topic was tiresome regardless of its timeliness. I was sorry to have brought it up. “Zombie plague, anyone?”
“That’s just a rumor,” Wendy said. She stirred her drink with her pinky and scanned the dance floor, eyes as dull as if she were trying to stay awake in first-year botany.
“I heard…” Gil said, leaning in with that in-the-know conspirator, gotta-listen thing, “…there was another outbreak just last week. Are you bitches out on a taste test, or something? Because someone is doing a bite and run. Anyway, it happened at some coffee shop in Renton. Six caffeine-pumped zombies just chewing through customers and baristas alike. The reapers cleaned it up before the media got there. Although they might have let it go public. Renton could use the exposure.”
“Totally.”
“What a dump.”
Three sips around the table and a new topic popped.
“So, how’s your afterlife going?” Gil asked.
I sighed. “Are you serious? That topic is as fresh as Wendy’s poon9.” Wendy punched my leg. I blew a kiss. “Let’s talk about your conversation with Ricardo.”
“Yeah,” Wendy said, chiming in, almost singing the words; we love her. “Let’s.”
“I just wanted to be sure that he was keeping an eye on Cam. There’s no way he can kill the weather-ho and go unnoticed.”
“Well yeah, the reapers would be on him in like a minute,” I said, “right after the media, in her case. Channel 8 probably has her lo-jacked.”
“Ricardo said he had it under control,” Gil ended the topic. All three looked over at the celeb’s table. “And it seems Cam is looking for something other than a kill tonight.”
In the shadows of the booth, the three were making out feverishly. The actor was in the middle, trading off his mouth first to the weathergirl then the Asian adolescent. Thick ropes of spittle stretched between puffy lips and hands groped and stroked under the table.
“You know, I knew that weathergirl was nasty,” Wendy said.
Just then my BlackBerry vibrated, alerting me to a text message, I hoped from Liesl. I pulled it into sight and checked.
Help.
That’s all it said.
Help.
“Look at this shit, right here.” I leaned over to display the message for Gil and Wendy.
“Help?” Gil asked. “That must be a wrong number.” Then, an aside to Wendy, “Do we do help?”
“It’s from Liesl.”
“Oh shit.” Wendy was already grabbing for her purse.
Christ, I thought, how are we going to help? Not a caring nurturer in the bunch.
Chapter 2
The Narcissistic Search Party of the Year
Do bring an umbrella. The locals may be okay with scraggly overhumidified hair, but we all know it won’t cut it on the red carpet.
—Ghastly Miss
Getting out of the Well of Souls proved to be a hassle. By 2:00 on Saturdays, it’s a given that the club breaches the fire code, and that night was no exception. We snaked our way through the crowd, slithering between the hot backs and cold fronts of horny and horned devils, cloud-doped bloodsuckers, musty shifts10 and a wealth of zombies in various states of decay. The wall of water that signaled the club’s exit seemed farther away the
deeper we delved into the crowd. We passed Claire Bandon by a video wall that featured a loop of the Well from that Japanese movie about that dirty-haired dead girl. Claire was a shapeshifter with the most extraordinary control of her ability. She changed seamlessly between human and any animal in the zoological spectrum. Needless to say, she made a killing in her consulting business, appropriately named Globalshift, Inc. She winked and waved me over. Her face mashed to make room for an overzealous smile.
“Hey, Claire. We’ll do drinks next week. ’Kay?” I yelled, and slid through a hole in the throng to palm her my card. “I’ve got some great ideas for promoting Globalshift. Call me.” She nodded and her smile faded as she realized our interaction would end there. I didn’t have time to make nice.
As we neared the wall of cascading water, the deluge parted like a curtain and did so throughout its width, creating a small tunnel. The effect was fun, fabulous really. I have never gotten so much as a drop on me, in the many times I’ve passed. Coming out the other side, we spilled into a wet alley, where rain fell in fat drops, spotting the bands of fabric in my Alaia like ink. Destroying it.
“Goddamn it!” I yelled. Why don’t I ever carry an umbrella? Wendy flashed a thin grin of sympathy. Gil grimaced at the fashion disaster. Even Seattle’s most well-known cultural event, Bumbershoot, is named after an umbrella. Because news flash: it rains here. So stupid.
Just then, a racket of metal clanging accosted us from above.
“You ingrates! Be quiet down there!” said a curt voice.
We looked up to find a loathsome Hitotsume-kozou yelling from a third story window, two pots dangling limply from its hands. He was the size of a ten-year-old boy, with a huge glaring single eye distinguishing his bald head.
“Shut up freak!” Wendy yelled. “If you don’t like the noise, get a real estate agent, and move your annoying ass.”
The kozou’s face stretched into a glower. The pans he white-knuckled dropped to the street with a clatter, and he exploded into an obscene stream of Japanese, that was undoubtedly curse-ridden11.
“Ooh,” I said. “Those are supposed to be really bad luck.” Notoriously unlucky, if you’re familiar with the lore. Not that I’m an expert or anything, but it doesn’t take too many verbal assaults from cyclopic foreigners, before you do the research.
“That’s just superstitious crap,” Gil said. “I just wish I had a stick. I’d whack him.”
“You’re gonna whack him?” I laughed, so did Wendy. “Who are you, Joe Pesci?”
“I wish I had a stick,” Wendy said, looking off at an amorous couple pressed into a doorway, poorly sheltered by a shallow brick overhang. They were locked in a pleasant molestation.
Gil drove an old Jaguar Vanden Plas, in British racing green. He said the queen had one, which was appropriate, considering. So, the drive to Liesl’s place was smooth. Wendy played with the mahogany “picnic tables” that collapsed from the seat backs like in an airplane. Gil shamed her for it on multiple occasions. I spent most of the ride smoking and making extended eye contact with food at stoplights. Sometimes they would notice and I would fake a smile. It was hard to pull off enthusiastic responses when your Saturday was ruined and you didn’t know why. We propelled through the city streets of the real world, past the cars and homes of humans, and some of our own, too. We are not completely without a presence. The percentage is actually quite high, ten percent. That’s the highest in the country and growing. We’re so proud.
Liesl’s apartment took up the entire first floor of an updated Victorian on Capitol Hill. Gil piloted the Jag into the driveway. The lights blazed from inside and the front door swung open on creaking hinges in the slow night breeze. The upstairs unit was dark. I was the first one out and running. On the sidewalk, which had not fared well in the last earthquake, I tripped on a jut of concrete. I scrambled for a sure footing, horrified that I’d tumble and scar myself beyond my artistic makeup abilities. But, Wendy was behind me, pulling up on my waist, stabilizing me.
“Jesus. Thanks.”
We continued up the front stairs and slowed to a stop at the door. Wendy and Gil seemed to lock up, frozen. I noticed I wasn’t moving either. There wasn’t any supernatural event that prevented their entry. It was a tiny object lying a mere foot inside her door, small, shiny, and silver: Liesl’s cell phone.
“Liesl? Sweetie?” I called. The door was all the way open now, and the hall beyond stretched deep into the dark, seemingly further than the architecture allowed. “Are you in there?”
There was no response. I knew there wouldn’t be. No one leaves his or her cell phone on the floor with the door open. It screams take it, make free calls, drive out of town and use my roam at ten times the rate. Liesl wouldn’t be caught undead without it although, come to think of it, Liesl was the opposite, quite alive, in fact. Or at least I hoped that was still the case.
“So what do we do now?” Gil peeked through the front window.
“Go in,” I said.
“Who?” Gil pressed his palm to his quiet heart.
“She’s talkin’ to you, bitch,” Wendy said in a thick Latina burr, mimicking a line from her favorite movie, Freeway. She says Reese Witherspoon hasn’t been as endearing since, and if I had to hear that one more time….
“Me, why me?”
“Well let’s see. You can heal,” I said, shrugging. “You know; if something gets you.”
“If something gets me? Gets me what?”
Wendy pulled her thumb across her throat, for the internationally known symbol for a Colombian choker.
“Oh hell no!” Gil pulled a pack of cigarettes from his inside jacket pocket and lit up; started puffing, then pacing.
So did I. My mind drifted to the text message again.
Help.
I leaned over the open doorway and picked up Liesl’s phone, flipped it open and checked caller ID for recent calls and messages: mine, one from Sanguine Industrial Bio Products, likely a telemarketer, and two missed calls, both restricted. I checked the outgoing calls and found that the help request had been the second-to-the-last call.
2065559056 was dialed at 1:48 A.M. Local. I looked at my watch. 2:38 A.M. Almost an hour ago. I pocketed the cell.
Cars crossed the intersection two houses away, bad ’80s butt rock blared in the distance, and the oak in the yard lost its leaves like anvils dropping from the sky. But any sound worth hearing, someone lurking inside, escaping out the back, jumping the fence, was washed out by Gil’s paranoid stomping. The boards were cracking with his insanity. It must have been viral; I started pacing myself, partly from fear, partly out of a familiar hunger that was building gradually. It started in the car, progressed to my head, and then sat, squatted really, polluting my stomach12. I needed to complete the search to take my mind off the growing inevitability of coming unglued in a maniacal George Romero way, like a mindless bitten mistake, a flesh-junkie.
Liesl’s car, a metallic cinnamon-colored Mustang, clogged the driveway; close in to a single-car garage, the door to which was the kind that swung out instead of retracting into the ceiling. The bumper blocked that entry. I called inside, but there was only a faint scrabbling in response, too weak to be human, and certainly not humanish, rats probably. Ivy cleaved to the building’s side like an abused child; wood rot proved neglect. There was no other way in.
Back on the porch, the view from the window into the living room revealed no movement, just an eclectic eye for décor—retro davenport and Eames chairs, a Lucite coffee table stacked neatly with architecture and home magazines, some framed photos hung from a picture rail, no fireplace—and no evidence of either a struggle or a rushed departure.
Beyond the living room, the kitchen was shrouded in shadow: appropriate, since it had likely never been used. Liesl only consumed restaurant food and souls. The window to the right of the front door was blocked from view by thickly drawn curtains.
Gil stepped off the porch and stamped out his cigarette on the walk; he turned, puffed
up his chest, and walked back up the two steps, passing Wendy and me, into the apartment. He stopped just past the threshold, and clicked his tongue.
“Well…are you bitches coming, or what?”
I followed. Wendy crept inside behind. Gil tossed a look back at us shaking his head as if to say, You three will be the death of me—only there were just two now. A six-panel door to the right was closed, two other doors farther down the hall stood open, and an arch led from the thin hall into the living room. The vampire’s back visibly tensed as he stood to the side of the first door. We all listened for a moment and then Gil twisted the knob and pushed in; peeked around the corner.
“No one here.” His shoulders relaxed to a slouch.
We walked down the slim hall as a single mass, clutching each other like drowning victims. The next doorway was open, her office. The room had the musty attic smell of the elderly. A heavy oaken desk and leather office chair, situated near a small window, were coated with a layer of dust. Liesl wasn’t big on work any more than cooking, or correspondence, either.
“No one.”
The bathroom ahead was clearly empty; the shower curtain was left open. The tiles sparkled with anal retention. Unless they were flattened in the tub, the place was vacant. Gil pressed into the bathroom doorway and seemed about to speak, lips parted. Who were they, exactly, I wondered.
“Well—” Gil started.
“—Alright, big man, obviously there’s no one here,” I said, cutting him off and pushing away from the pack. “Let’s start trying to figure out what the fuck happened.” My hunger was spreading out from my organs to my muscles. They were twitching. I looked over to Wendy who was standing facing the wall, bracing her forehead against her arm like a schoolgirl in corner punishment. She was hungry, too. “And we have to hurry; us zombie girls are breaking down.”
Gil studied our faces, our stance, and understood; his hunger was similar, only we eat our solids. Big Baby.
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