Drake nodded. “He was rambling on about that the other night when he called my new smartphone. What do they call it? An Ephone? Aphone? Some vowel with phone after it. . .”
Natalie turned on the man beside her with a blank stare. “You have a cell, a six hundred dollar cell, but you think sparkling vampires are real?”
Kai bit back a laugh. “Okay, we’ll just assume he isn’t here, because if he is, ignoring him will drive him crazy.”
Alec let out a burst of laughter. “I like that idea.”
Kai tilted her head. “And I guess we are back to me for introductions. So I’m Kai. I am a mummy, reincarnated by some idiot archaeologists in 1922.”
“That makes you the oldest and the youngest of our group,” Alec pointed out, just as he did at every meeting.
And just like at every meeting, Kai pursed her lips in annoyance and continued, “It’s been since . . . I guess 1940 since I was last revealed to anyone, though there were some close calls in the nineties. Stupid mummy movies . . .”
She shook her head and adjusted her suit jacket. Natalie blushed as she caught a glimpse of the white gauze Kai always wore beneath her clothes. She’d once admitted it was a way to keep moisturizer trapped against the dry skin, but Natalie always felt like she was seeing her underwear whenever she caught a glimpse of it.
“Hello, Kai,” half the group droned, while the other half was distracted by other things.
Kai sighed. “Great, so that’s done. Now, does anyone have anything they want to talk about?”
“Ellis might be at an audition, which explains his absence,” Linda whimpered. “But what about Bob?”
Natalie stared at Kai. Yeah, what about Bob? Blob. The Blob. She was kind of wondering that herself.
Hyde snickered. “Perhaps he got stuck on a subway car. Literally. Fat ass.”
Natalie folded her arms. Hyde was a nasty bastard and she refused to encourage him. “Look, the guy might be big, but he’s never missed a meeting in all the years we’ve been doing this. Plus, he runs Overeaters Anonymous in the room after us. I can’t picture him skipping out on two meetings without some kind of notification for someone. It’s just not in his nature. You know he takes this shit super-seriously.”
“Unlike some of us,” Kai said with a pointed glare for Natalie. “All this talk and speculation won’t do us any good until we actually know what’s going on. Has anyone called him?”
Linda nodded her head quickly. “Oh yes. Every day. He didn’t answer this morning.”
Natalie blinked. “You call Blob every day?”
Linda’s green eyes narrowed at Natalie’s tone. “Lay off the attitude, Zombie Girl. I like to check in.”
“Shit.” Alec chuckled. “That might explain it right there. Maybe he just needed a vacation from Linda.”
Kai ignored them all. “Whatever the reason for his absence, can someone do a welfare check on Blob tonight?”
Silence hung heavy over the group. They might meet a couple times a week, brainstorm on how to stay hidden, and keep each other informed about things that might be of interest to the modern monster . . . but none of them had ever been all that big on actually helping each other.
Kai shook her head in disbelief. “Seriously, no one is willing to do this? Drake, you live near him, don’t you?”
“He’s just a few blocks from me.” Drake nodded. When Kai gave him an expectant stare, he sighed heavily. “Fine, I’ll stop by.”
“Great, thank you. Are there any other issues?” Kai asked, though by her terse tone and tapping foot it was clear she was done with all of this.
Alec ignored her signals and waved his hand low at his side. From his grin, Natalie couldn’t help but think he was doing it on purpose just to piss Kai off.
“Yeah,” he said when Kai pointed at him with annoyance. “One. So I actually just got another warning from my nighttime delivery job.”
Drake shook his head. “Young man, you are only drawing attention to yourself.”
Kai nodded in agreement. “For once Drake isn’t wrong. Were you caught stealing razors from shipments again?”
Alec shrugged sheepishly. “Look, you have no idea. I have to shave three times a day to keep from being wolfed out all the damn time. And when it’s this close to a full moon? Forget about it. It’s more like six times a day. And each shave is, like, three or four heavy-duty razors.”
Jekyll tilted his head. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. Why don’t you just buy them?”
Alec glared at him and the teasing in his tone and on his face faded to something a bit darker. Not Hyde dark, but a little monstrous nonetheless. “Not all of us have family money, Doctor. We don’t all live on Park Avenue and wear thousand-dollar suits.”
“Three-thousand,” Hyde said with a thin smile as he smoothed the fine line of the suit he currently wore.
“Hyde,” Jekyll said softly, without looking at Hyde. “You know that isn’t true.”
Hyde shrugged. “Only because you’re cheap. Honestly, a fifteen-hundred-dollar suit is hardly fit for peasants, brother.”
“You think too much about money. Among other things.” Jekyll rolled his eyes, then shook his head apologetically, as if to imply they all knew Hyde. And they did.
“Whatever.” Alec shrugged. “I make, like, fifteen an hour at my job—”
“Fifteen hundred?” Jekyll interrupted with wide eyes as Hyde snorted in amusement at his brother’s inexperience when it came to normal people.
Alec stared for a moment, then slowly shook his head. “No, numbnuts, fifteen dollars. U.S. currency, a ten and a five. Shit, you are clueless. What that means is that I don’t have the cash to pay for that kind of expenditure.”
Natalie shook her head. “But Alec, if you lose your job because you’re caught stealing too many times, you won’t have any money at all. Plus, I’m sure the amount of razors you take has to seem super-weird. Don’t you worry they might get nosy if they start the paperwork to let you go—ask too many questions about why you need that many razors? It draws attention to you in a way that could be dangerous.”
He grinned at her, crooked and utterly charming. “I’m not sure I’m going to lose anything, sweetheart. This is my third warning and there’s been no consequence so far.”
Drake tilted his head. “How do you manage that if they keep catching you in the act?”
Alec laughed. “Female supervisor.”
Kai rolled her eyes. “So did you bring this up to brainstorm ideas on how you can manage to get razors and keep your job, or did you bring it up to brag about all the tail you get?”
“Both?” Alec said with a shrug.
“Eh,” Kai groaned. “You’re on your own, jackass. Anyone else have something to say?”
Linda raised her hand and the group as a whole sighed. There weren’t many movies about Swamp Dwellers. The closest one had been the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and in that feature the monster didn’t talk and he/she (that part wasn’t really clear . . .) was always portrayed as a bit of a badass. A thing that could get things done, even when they were totally evil things.
Linda . . . not so much. In fact, she was living proof of what everyone in the room already knew: authors of books and directors of movies got their lives so consistently wrong. Those hacks took a fraction of truth and then exploited and twisted it beyond recognition.
So Linda, unlike her movie counterpart, was timid, needy, and . . . well, flaky. Kind of like cooked fish. A joke Linda did not find funny in the slightest, so Natalie kept it to herself.
“Seriously, Linda?” Kai asked. “Really?”
Linda’s hand came down slowly and she slouched in her chair. “I like Blob better.”
To be honest, so did Natalie. He was the calming influence on a grouchy bunch of freaks. They didn’t argue as much when he led the proceedings. Hell, sometimes they even had a breakthrough, not that any of them would admit that if asked. Poor Blob had been trying to get someone to acknowledge a break
through for years.
Kai shrugged. “Well, maybe he’ll be back where he belongs on Wednesday, okay? And then you can tell us all about your cats and your neighbors you don’t like and whatever other tedium constitutes your day. Until then, why don’t we break this up for the night?”
Although Linda still looked pissed, the rest of the group appeared as relieved as Natalie felt. After all, they shared a common bond of what they were, but other than that, she felt very little connection to these people . . . er, things. And she had to go to work anyway. The medical examiner’s office waited for no man, nor beast. Not in New York.
Everyone gathered their things and Jekyll and Hyde ducked into the bathroom to perform their creepy ritual. No one waited for them. Instead they trailed out onto the street in a disorganized and silent group. No chitchat. No offers to share a cab or a walk to the subway station.
The church was on an iffier end of the street where there were no doormen at the apartment buildings. To Natalie's mind, that made it the perfect place to be mugged, and so as she half-assed waved to the others and trudged toward the station, she kept a wary eye out for people. She was made of various parts from dead people, convicts, mostly, which she tried not to think about (thanks a lot, "Dad"). Whoever had “donated” her ears to the project had exceptionally good hearing in life. Natalie used that to her advantage in the city, where danger did occasionally lurk, though admittedly not as much in the last fifteen years when the city had been “cleaned up.” (Translation: freaks were not welcome).
In the distance she heard a woman arguing with a man, probably over a purse. Part of Natalie thought about heading in that direction, of using her super-Frankenstein’s-Monster strength to be a hero.
But she’d learned the hard way that a hero’s path didn’t really get a person anywhere. Hell, she’d been chased out of a German village a century ago by people brandishing pitchforks and torches because she’d tried to help a child. And afterward? The brat had turned on her and started screaming and running.
She shivered. Not again. Nope, not in this life.
So instead of putting on her superhero cape (which she just knew would be far more stylish than Drake’s Dracula cape), Natalie walked down the steps into the train station and off to work with the dead. None of them talked, none of them caused her any problems whatsoever.
About the Author
Jesse Petersen grew up a geek in love with Star Wars, video games (King’s Quest, anyone?), books of all kinds, and even the occasional RPG. Eventually she grew up, at least in body, but she still loves anything with whimsy, and her books reflect that. Whether it’s funny zombies or monsters in group therapy, you’ll find books that mix giggles with gore. You can find Jesse at her website JessePetersen.net, her Twitter @jessepet and on Facebook, where she talks about Weird Al, cats, and even her books.
Table of Contents
Praise for Married with Zombies
Other books in the Living with the Dead series:
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Epilogue
A Note to My Readers
Club Monstrosity Preview
About the Author
Table of Contents
Praise for Married with Zombies
Other books in the Living with the Dead series:
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Epilogue
A Note to My Readers
Club Monstrosity Preview
About the Author
The Zombie Whisperer (Living With the Dead) Page 17
