Books 1–4

by Nancy A. Collins

  Palmer shrugged. “Fine by me. But I’m waiting for a ‘she’, not a ‘he’.”

  “Oh, I see.” Interest drained from Velveeta’s voice as she returned her gaze to the mirror behind the bar, readjusting her wig.

  “Maybe you know her? Her name’s Sonja Blue.”

  The drag queen jerked her head in his direction so hard she unseated her wig. Palmer glimpsed thinning hair the color of wheat straw. “The Blue Woman? You’re meeting the Blue Woman? Here?!” she gasped, staring at him as if he’d just announced he had an armed nuclear device strapped to his back.

  Palmer was suddenly aware that everyone else in the bar was staring at him as well. The music continued to thump and growl like a caged animal, but no one spoke. His armpits began to dampen.

  “Get out of here! We’ve got enough trouble as it is without you bringing her here!” The bartender shouted, gesturing angrily at the door.

  “But—!”

  Suddenly a dozen pairs of hands grabbed him, lifting him off the floor. Palmer recalled how he used to stage dive at the hard-core concerts, leaping out into the crowd for a brief moment of stolen glamour before jumping back into the seething confusion of the mosh pit. He didn’t try to fight them and, instead, allowed himself to be roughly passed over the heads of the bar’s patrons and dumped, unceremoniously, back onto the street. He straightened his rumpled clothes as best he could, glancing back at the doorway. The two men dressed in leather and chrome moved forward and blocked the entrance.

  “Fuck this shit.” Palmer was in no position to take on two guys ten years his junior. Not if he wanted to keep what was left of his teeth in his head. He shoved his hands in his pockets and stalked off around the corner before pausing to light a cigarette with trembling hands.

  Palmer.

  The voice was so close, it sounded like it was in his head. He spun around so fast he burned himself with his lighter, and found himself face-to-face with the woman he had been searching for. She was dressed in a pair of faded, much-worn blue jeans, a Cramps T-shirt, a ragged leather jacket a size too big for her, scuffed engineer boots and mirrored sunglasses.

  “Are you Sonja? Sonja Blue?”

  “You are Pangloss’s agent?”

  He shrugged. “You could say that.”

  “Were you followed?”

  “No.

  Her lips twisted into something like a smile. “You seem pretty sure of that.”

  “I’m good at what I do.”

  “You spoke of a letter from my... grandfather?”

  Palmer reached into his jacket and withdrew the envelope. “Funny, the Doc doesn’t look old enough to have a granddaughter your age,” he quipped.

  “He’s very well preserved. It’s a family trait. I’ll take that now, if you don’t mind.” She extended a pale, narrow hand toward him.

  As he handed her the sealed letter, his fingers accidentally brushed against hers, and he heard what sounded like an old-fashioned flashcube going off in the back of his skull. He saw Sonja jerk her head as if she’d received an unexpected electrical shock. The street around them disappeared and Palmer found himself transported to what looked like a pool hall. Scattered around him were splintered pool cures, cracked billiard balls...and broken young men. The smell of blood and fear was everywhere, its primal intensity acting like an aphrodisiac. Standing before him was a frightened youth with Parrish-blue hair and the face of an errant choirboy. Palmer’s lips peeled back in a humorless smile as he plunged his teeth into the baby-faced miscreant’s throat. An orgasm shuddered through his nervous system as a hot gush of thick, salty blood filled his mouth.

  The razor-sharp image disappeared as Sonja jerked her hand away from his, growling like a mountain lion. She then turned and ran, disappearing into the darkness before Palmer had a chance to orient himself. He felt dizzy, as if he’d just stepped off aTilt-A-Whirl. He could still taste the boy’s blood. The very memory of it made bile burn the back of his throat. He didn’t want to think about it; not now, not ever. He especially didn’t want to think about how he’d recognized the blue-haired boy as being Jimmy Eichorn.

  All he wanted to do was get back to the house, phone Pangloss and tell him he’d fulfilled his part of the bargain. He’d collect his bonus and go somewhere nice and sunny, like Mexico, and sell tchotkes to the turistas. He’d had enough of the private detective business to last him a lifetime.

  It was almost midnight, and Bourbon Street was jammed with partygoers determined to wring the few remaining minutes of pleasure out of Carnival. The noise and excitement was almost enough to make him forget what had just happened.

  At first he thought the fluttering of his sleeve was nothing but the wind. Then it spoke his name.

  He turned and stared into the pale, haggard face of a man in his late thirties, dressed in an expensive, but poorly-fitted suit. The stranger lifted a smoldering Gaulois to his thin lips, his eyes seeming to glow in the fluorescent and neon glare from a nearby live sex show sign.

  With a start, he recognized the smirking, arrogant features. He took an involuntary step backward, his scalp tightening as his heart began to race. The street noise faded into an indistinct rumble, as if he were underwater. He prayed he wasn’t having a stroke, though that would at least explain what was happening to him.

  “You’re dead,” Palmer said in an accusing voice.

  Geoffrey Chastain, known to friends and enemies as Chaz, simply shrugged his shoulders. “Tell me something I don’t know.” The dead man drew another lung full of smoke from his phantom cigarette, causing his midsection to swirl. “I’ve been tryin’ to get your attention all bloody night! Coo! You’re a dense bugger! Look, there’s not much time left: Mardi Gras is one of the few times us friggin’ spirits of the dead can corporealize and mingle with the living. We dead men aren’t supposed to be tellin’ tales, but take some advice from one who knows: Sod getting your pay from Pangloss. Just get on the next bleedin’ bus outta town and forget you ever saw her!”

  “You mean Sonja—?”

  “Who the bloody fuck else? She’s the Bloofer Lady herself! She’s death on two legs, not that she can help it, mind you. It’s just her way. But that won’t help you none when the time comes. Look, mate; I was a real pisser when I was alive like you. It’s not pretty, lookin’ back an’ seeing me for the bastard I was. But I prefer things are to when I was flesh ‘n’ blood. So maybe how she did me wasn’t so bad.”

  Palmer’s stomach knotted tighter. “Are you saying she—?”

  “Snuffed me? Ain’t you the bright student! She killed me, alright; just like she did the Blue Monkeys. She was feeling her oats that night. Not that I could blame her for it—but I haven’t been knackered long enough t’ forgive her for the murdering.

  “Why are you warning me?” Palmer’s fear had abated in the face of this mundane, chain-smoking specter. He was starting to feel more aggravated than frightened.

  Chaz’s smirk widened. “You and me, we’re kindred spirits. That bullet did more than punch a hole in you, mate. It woke up something inside you. Jump-started it, as it were. So far you’ve only had a taste of having the world turn itself inside out like a magician’s sack, and you being the only one who seems to notice, but you better get used to it, mate, before it drives you mad, like it did me mum—and yer Uncle Willy. You’re what they call a ‘sensitive,’ now. They like using sensitives like you and me; we make handy servants. How do you think Pangloss found you, eh? You’ve been broadcasting like a bloody shortwave radio since you’ve been shot!

  “Wait a second! What do you mean by that?”

  The cathedral bell began to toll, marking the transition from excess to penance. “Sorry, mate. Seems me time’s run out,” Chaz grinned as he stepped into the street.

  “What do you mean? Who are they?”

  Second toll. Third toll.

  The ghost laughed and shook his insubstantial head. “You’re not going to leave it be, are you? I can see it in th’ folds of your brain!”
/>   Fourth toll of the bell. Fifth.

  “Why are you telling me these things?” Palmer demanded. “Why?”

  “Because you put flowers on me grave, that’s why!” Chaz replied. “We dead are a sentimental lot.”

  Sixth. Seventh.

  Halfway up the block mounted policemen appeared in the street, riding six abreast, bullhorns held in their hands. Behind them Palmer glimpsed the huge street-sweeping machines, brushes wildly spinning in anticipation of flushing the gutters clean of accumulated filth, human and otherwise. “Mardi Gras is over! Everyone go home!”

  Eighth. Ninth.

  Chaz now shimmered with every toll of the bell, like a reflection in a bestirred pool. Palmer tried to push past the throng of revelers, desperate to win one last answer from the specter.

  The police on horseback moved inexorably forward, forcing the people milling in the street either back onto the sidewalks or into the bars. “Mardi Gras is over! Everyone go home!”The sanitation trucks blasted their horns as if to punctuate the commandment.

  Tenth. Eleventh.

  Suddenly a huge, heavy hand closed on Palmer’s shoulder, pinning him to the spot. He looked up to see the brutish features of the man he’d seen skulking in Pangloss’s shrubbery, the one called Kief, the one who looked like a shaved gorilla.

  “Renfield say come now.”

  Twelfth stroke: Midnight.

  Chaz wavered like a laser hologram projected onto smoke. Palmer watched as one of New Orleans’ finest rode through the dead man. He expected the horse, at least, to react to the ghost, but all it did was flare its nostrils, toss its mane and leave a pile of dung in its wake.

  “Renfield say you come now!” arrived, ushering in Lent.

  The shaved gorilla tightened his grip, causing Palmer to cry out in pain. This made Kief smile, something Palmer definitely wished he hadn’t seen.

  Chapter Four

  Sonja Blue watched as the police and sanitation workers brought Carnival to an end. She knew that the hard-core partying would continue well until dawn, but from now on it would have to be indoors, not on the streets. The harlequin’s mask had been exchanged for the sackcloth of the penitent. She lifted her gaze from the streets, watching the spirits of the dead spiral upward like bats leaving a cave. Neither variety of tourist would be staying to take communion.

  She frowned and pulled the envelope from her pocket, turning it over and over as if by handling it she could divine its contents. Pangloss. She was surprised to realize it had been a decade since they last met face-to-face. Like most Pretenders, her sense of time had become distorted, and was increasingly difficult for her to distinguish months from years.

  She ran her fingers over the wax seal, her mood darkening as she recalled the good doctor’s treachery below the streets of Rome. The seal cracked easily, falling in three separate pieces at her feet. The letter was on expensive stationery that felt like silk and smelled of cologne. The penmanship was exquisitely baroque. No doubt Pangloss still favored an old-fashioned quill pen.

  My Dear Sonja,

  Please forgive the convoluted method by which this letter had been delivered. I have attempted to contact you on numerous occasions, through various menials, but you are a difficult woman to communicate with in such a manner. However, I do not hold the rash disposal of my minions against you. In many ways, I find your gift for carnage reassuring. It has been far too long since we last spoke, and I fear that our prior meeting has resulted in an unfavorable view of me. In the years since we last met, I have followed your antics with great interest, and found your handling of the Catherine Wheele situation gauche but effective. You have a natural talent for atrocity, my dear. It needs refining, but I believe you have it in you to produce a tableau on the level of Baron Luxor’s Jonestown or Lord Kinksi’s classic Texas Tower massacre. But I am not writing simply to compliment your style. No, there is much I must tell you concerning Morgan. You can contact me through the human, Palmer.

  Sonja looked at her left hand, the one the private investigator had touched. She had not recognized him as sensitive when they first met—possibly because he was unaware of his own talent—so she had been unshielded at the moment of contact. The result had been a barrage of sensory images, the most vivid that of a scarlet-clad woman armed with a smoking gun, before breaking contact. The exchange had been unexpected and unwelcome, but she had gleaned enough information from the jumble to discern that Palmer was exactly what he thought he was: a free agent.

  Perhaps, after all these years, it was time to finally get back in touch with the “family”, after all.

  Renfield’s pallid bureaucrat’s features broke into something like a smile at the sight of Palmer being dragged into the room by the ogre. “Ah! Seeing that Kief has reeled you in, I assume you must have fulfilled your part of the bargain. You did succeed in delivering the letter, did you not, Mr. Palmer?”

  “Yeah, I delivered your fucking letter!” Palmer tried to jerk free of Kief’s grip, only to hear the seams in his jacket tear. “What the hell are you trying to pull, Renfield?”

  “Mr. Palmer, if you continue to struggle, I will tell Kief to pull your right arm off and beat you with it,” Renfield warned, smiling that empty smile of his.

  Palmer immediately fell still. He glanced around the room, which was empty save for Renfield and the chair he was sitting in, and wondered if the louvered shutters were nailed shut. If not, he might stand a chance of escape, providing Kief loosened his grip and he didn’t break every bone in his body jumping from the third-floor balcony onto the overgrown garden patio below.

  “I wouldn’t recommend trying such heroics, Mr. Palmer,” Renfield smiled, crossing and re-crossing his legs like a bored personnel manager at a job interview. “The shutters are, indeed, nailed shut. No need to look so surprised! Of course I can read your mind—what little there is of it. You’re an open book to me. Or should I say short story? You may let go of him now, Kief. I can handle Mr. Palmer from here. Go and watch the door.”

  The vise clamping his shoulder disappeared as Kief lumbered out of the room, pausing at the door to give Palmer a final, hungry look.

  “Go on! Go on! Do as I say!” snapped Renfield, waving at the goon as if shooing a bothersome child out of the kitchen. “You’ll get your share, as always!”

  Once Kief was safely on the other side of the door, Palmer swung around to face Renfield, his hands balled into fists. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? If I don’t get some answers I’m gonna—”

  “You’re going to die, Mr. Palmer,” Renfield said coolly.

  Suddenly fire coursed through Palmer’s veins, turning his blood to slag. His intestines boiled in their own juices as his bones powdered into ash. His eyeballs exploded and dribbled down his cheeks like egg yolks. He tried to scream, but his lungs were full of burning water.

  Then the fire disappeared as quickly as it descended, leaving Palmer on the bare floor, knees drawn up under his chin. He could taste blood in his mouth from having bitten his tongue.

  “Wha-What did you do to me?” he rasped.

  “I killed you, Mr. Palmer,” Renfield replied matter-of-factly. “And I will continue to kill you until I grow bored or you lose your mind, whichever comes first. Frankly, I can’t understand what it is Pangloss finds so fascinating about you. True, you have some wild talent,” he sniffed. “But all the other mental and emotional baggage you carry— empathy, sympathy, the capacity for love—is simply not worth the effort of deprogramming!”

  Without warning, extreme cold shot through Palmer, spearing his nervous system with a million icicles. His lungs filled with ice crystals and his urine turned to slush in his bladder. He whimpered as his toes and fingers turned black and fell away like wilted petals.

  Suddenly Renfield was back, except now his head was wreathed in a strange glow the color of a fresh bruise. He had abandoned his chair and was kneeling beside Palmer, staring into his face. “Of course, I have no intention of allowing you to surviv
e this little ordeal,” he said with a nasty smile, his normally wan features now flushed with color. “I’ve worked too long to allow some upstart to replace me. You think I didn’t notice how he looked at you?” His voice quavered, drunk on emotions long held in check, his eyes bright and feral as a starved coyote’s. “He promised me power and life eternal! Me, not you! He told he loved me, that he needed me! But that was just a lie. But I’ll make sure he never has you. I’ll tell him you couldn’t handle the deprogramming. It won’t be a lie, really. And once I give you to Kief for disposal, no one will know the difference! Not even the Doctor!”

  Just then the louvered shutters shattered inward in a spray of splintered wood as a leather-clad figure landed on the bare floor, snarling like an enraged panther. Palmer felt the numbness in his limbs vanish as Renfield turned his attention to the intruder. The reverse-negative halo surrounding his head pulsed, snapping forth a whip-like tendril.

  The leather-clad figure rose, revealing itself to be none other than the elusive Sonja Blue. She motioned with her left hand, as if batting away a worrisome insect.

  “You call that a psychic attack?” she laughed. “No wonder Pangloss is looking to upgrade!”

  Palmer got to his feet, surprised to find the recent agonies he’d undergone had left him physically unscathed. Sonja grabbed Renfield by his lapels, pulling him so close they were literally nose-to nose. As Palmer looked at her, he saw a spiky crown of reddish-black light radiating from her head, flickering like a defective neon sign.

  “Kief!” Renfield shrieked.

  “Where’s Morgan?” she growled.

  “Do you honestly believe I’d tell you?” Renfield sneered.

  “You’ve got a point,” she agreed, letting go of his jacket.

  Renfield smiled smugly as he straightened his lapels, only to have her grab him by the jaw and force his head sharply upward, just as the door to the room banged inward, snapping its hinges.

  Kief squeezed through the doorway, his piggy little eyes moving from Palmer to Sonja before settling on Renfield’s corpse. Sonja stepped forward, motioning for Palmer to get behind her. He saw that she held an open switchblade in one hand.