Battle of the Network Zombies (13 page)

Ancient grease clung to the warm air or the waitress with the blue-washed bouffant smelled like an order of onion rings—and if that’s the case, she was definitely my ideal meal. I rounded the bar and spotted Scott dunking fries into a salad bowl full of tartar sauce. He shoved them into his waiting maw three at a time and swallowed with an economy of chomping.

He looked up, deep-fried content turning into a wholly unnecessary scowl.

“Jesus, Amanda. What are you doin’ here?” he asked, dropping his face into his palms and groaning. “I thought you were on location?”

I slid into the booth next to him. “I figured you’d be moping, so I swung by to cheer you up with my sparkling personality.”

“Is that what you’re calling it?” He eyed me suspiciously.

“Um…yeah.” I beamed, aiming for wide-eyed innocence, but may have overshot into babydoll, a dangerous misstep as evidenced by…

Scott slid away down the seat, putting a few more inches between us and pulling his fries along protectively. “Well, thanks, but just so we’re clear, when I break up with someone, I usually don’t talk to them again.”

“Hold on. Is that what happened?”

He responded with a narrow stare, a sadness slogging in the creases on his forehead. “Amanda, come on.”

What I said was, “I’m totally going to respect your need for space and I own that it was all my fault and I’m an asshole and all that. You’re a great guy, Scott, and I want all the best for you.” What I meant was: you’re totally mine. Don’t even try to run, ’cause I’ll hobble your ass.
⁵⁶

He angled a wary eyebrow.

“Fine,” I said. “Don’t believe me.”

“All right.” He passed me a fry to sniff. “We’ll try out the friend thing.”

“Deal.” I beamed at him and he actually cracked a smile, while I snorted the hell out of that fry. “While I’ve got you here…”

“Yes?”

“Those people making threats against Johnny Birch?”

“Mmm-hmm? Oh, I dug up something about that, yeah.”

“Wait. What I was going to say is, they acted on their threats. He’s dead. We found what’s left of his body a few hours ago, burnt down to cinders in his room. That wood nymph went up like kindling. Must not have used moisturizer.”

Scott inhaled sharply. “Rough!”

“I’m just glad enough time has passed where we can laugh about it. Oh! And get this! The door was locked.”

“Suicide?”

“I don’t think so. He had another one of those creatures on his desk—this one apparently had been delivered to the mansion.”

“Was there anything else in the room?”

“A large collection of porn. His clothes. Nothing that didn’t seem normal for Birch.”

“Hmm. So what now? Did the reapers come?”

“Jesus no. There weren’t any humans about so they didn’t sense an issue and I sure as shit didn’t call them. In case you don’t remember, they’re not exactly happy with my debt to them.”

“Doesn’t this mean the end of the show?”

“Absolutely not. I talked it over with the producer and we’re going to continue the show, only with Johnny’s murder as the premise. It’s gonna be huge.” I looked away.
Or tank completely
, I thought,
leaving me penniless and mooching off my friends
.

“But? You look worried.”

“I need to be sure what I’m doing. I’m going to be the ‘sleuth’ and all I have to go on is a handful of mystery novels—none of which involve people as nasty as the yetis—and the handful of real life crap I keep falling into.”

“Oh, about that.” He perked up. “I did find out that there’s been a little tiff going on between the nymphs and the yeti, which used to be called sasquatch but they took offense at being categorized by the humans and took back the previously derogatory Asian moniker. Also, don’t call them ‘abominable’ if you want to live to tell about it.”

“That’s all very interesting. What does it have to do with Birch?”

“Well. The yeti have been launching frequent attacks on wood nymph strongholds, which aren’t, like you’d think, made of old rotty bark and twigs but actual cities out there in the woods.”

“Creepy.”

“So apparently, there’s talk of the yeti taking out a very visible member of the wood nymph constabulary.”

“Johnny.”

“Exactly.”

“It’s all very sci-fi channel, don’t you think? Too easy? Territorial bullshit is so kindergarten.”

“I thought that too, but when you take into account the threats and now this obvious statement being made with the method of his murder, it kind of makes sense.”

“It does. Except for one thing. No one mentioned seeing or hearing a yeti rampaging through the mansion.”

“Ah. But they’re very good at concealing themselves.”

“Well, not the one—” I stopped myself. Maybe the yeti at the Hooch and Cooch hadn’t left the cage at all, maybe it’d gone chameleon or some shit. “So maybe the yeti was in the hallway, hiding in the leaves or something?”

“Leaves?”

“Yeah, Johnny had a boner for interior decorating. He overdid it with the ivy.”

Scott called over the waitress. She dropped a plate of toast in front of some homeless teens counting change on the counter and slunk over.

“Two coffees, please.”

She nodded, collecting his empty plate and tartar sauce and trudged off.

“I’m gonna need, at the very least, a conspirator. Someone in that house that knew it was going down.”

“Listen to you with your lingo.” Scott grinned, playfully, eyes crinkling at the corners. “What you really need is to get in there and pore over that room. Look under the bed, in the closets, drawers. Everywhere.”

“That’s not going to be must-see-television.”

Scott shrugged and took the mug from the waitress, dumping a pile of sugar so large it floated on the surface for a moment before drowning in the brackish brew. Not having thought to bring a mutsuki, I greedily inhaled the heady aroma curling off my own mug. I stuck my tongue in, swirled it a bit.

Scott’s brow arched.

While I’ve kept some secrets, the zombie versus food issue has been all over the supernatural news lately. So much so, that I’d learned a new trick. I grabbed my napkin and circled my tongue with it, blotting off the offending liquid.

“That’s damn good coffee,” I said.

Frankly, if I’d known how much fun investigating was going to be, I’d have opened a private detective agency, just to experience more easy banter with Scott. I totally took the guy for granted. He knew his shit. Add to that his ability to all but overlook my eating issue and drive me to bowel-churning orgasms almost every time we went at it, and the regret started to really sink in. Still, the healing had begun, as one of my previous therapists would have said.
⁵⁷

Or at least I hope it had.

“So, start interrogating people,” he said. “Get the bastards alone. See where they were when he died. Do you even know when he died?”

“Well he screamed around 1:30, so I’m guessing right about then.”

“Find out where people were. Also, if they knew Johnny before the show. Find out their motives.”

I nodded. It made sense, and I totally would have done all those things eventually, but it never hurt to dot your “Is” and cross your “Ts”. Plus, if I was ever going to be able to snare the were-hunky ex-cop again, it would be by showing him I have the capacity to change. And the first step was valuing him.

“Thanks, so much.” I put out my hand to shake and his fell right into my palm (said the spider to the fly). “I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”

I slid out of the banquette.

“Call me if you need anything else,” he offered.

I smiled, already making an extensive list of things I “needed.”

Wednesday
10:00–11:00
P.M.
Satyr Island 8

Just because things went well with Scott, don’t go thinking I started shooting stars and moonbeams out my ass—we are, after all, talking about…me. How I rose to the top of karma’s shit list was still a mystery. Another one. I mean, seriously, don’t I play my part in alleviating the homeless crisis? Aren’t you happy not to have to put up with a herd of patchouli-smelling hippies picketing your favorite boutiques? Haven’t I improved the general aesthetic of the supernatural scene?

I’m going with yes.

I’m a fucking giver. I don’t care what you say.

So stashing Raj’s full-sized cab on the grounds of Harcourt Manor should have been way easier.

It’s not like I could just pull it up to the door, Baljeet hollering on and on in that ugly mish-mash of words—the damn radio must have some magical power supply for the beating she put it through. It was bound to draw attention—maybe less so than out in the ghetto neighborhood surrounding the Minions Mansion, where it would either be stripped or used as a shooting gallery, or worse, a toilet—especially with the phone number tattooed across it twenty million times, as if anyone has ever tried to call a cab that just passed them. Come back! No. Doesn’t happen. But one of the bitches up in the mansion might just respond to Baljeet’s call, just to be spiteful. With the slew of threats the woman had vomited during the drive back, I just couldn’t risk it. Apparently she’s fond of both eviscerations and amputations, to hear her tell it.

Old Mister Withers, let’s call him, the caretaker, shambled up to the gate in a rain slicker, torrents streaming down the folds. He tugged at the lock a few times, finally slamming his fist down on it to get the mechanism going. Fifteen minutes, people. To think he didn’t get the finger as we blew past him. Lumpy chastising Pie-hole for an impromptu b-a, an affront to only two people and the intended victim wasn’t one of them.

“Get your hairy ass out of my face!” he yelled, causing the dwarf to just shake his wide haunches all the more, ass jiggling like a rap video dancer. Lumpy’s aura turned bright red, his face seethed with anger. “Knock it off!”

He swung at Pie-hole and, to my surprise, made contact, doubling the ghost over.

“Jeez. Cool it, I was just fuckin’ around.”

“Fuck around over there.” He pointed to the opposite side of the car. “Or on the roof. Nowhere near my face or I’ll do you worse next time.”

I curved past Withers’s cabin and pointed the cab into a gap in the undergrowth. A squeal echoed as branches dragged their sharp nails against the body and the windshield was showered in pine needles. They wriggled in rainy rivulets like teeming maggots.

“Jesus!” Pie-hole yelled. “That sound is nearly as painful as Baljeet’s screeching.”

With that, Baljeet let loose with another stream of curses.

“Whoever you are, know this. I’m coming for you with my khukuri! You’re a dead woman. Oh yes, you are. So dead I can hardly keep from laughing. You hear me? You hear me?”

There was one last squelch and then an ominous silence.

Two questions. How does she know I’m a woman?

And.

What the hell’s a khukuri?

I threw open the double doors of the grand hall dramatically and posed there for a moment, the wind whipping hair around my determined face.
⁵⁸
The storm followed me inside, the space exploding in a whirlwind of dry leaves and whipping vines. With Johnny gone, the ivy withered and died back to woody creepers. It swayed from the ceiling like hangman’s nooses and coiled limply around the bottom of columns.

It would have made an awesome opening shot.

Would have.

Neither the camera nor Wendy were there to catch the melodrama.

“Wendy!” I barked and stomped across the wasteland and through the doors into the main hall.

What I saw there filled me with an unnatural glee. Flattened against the wall, terror bouncing around her slim featured face, was my best friend. Leaning in and trapping Wendy between her wanton and frighteningly thick forearms, Absinthe’s eye twinkled lasciviously in the dim light. If I could have peed myself, I probably would have.

Instead, I did what any reasonable best friend would do. I dove into my bag for my cell phone to capture the entire event on a surprise video.
⁵⁹

“So, uh.” Absinthe growled when she spoke. This was her sexy voice, I presumed, though she sounded exactly like a French waiter I’d had once—and I don’t mean that in a dirty way. “Are you and your girl, how do you say…close?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Wendy flinched.

“Oh come on,
cherie
. I mean, why don’t we take zis quiet time, go upstairs to my room, and I’ll fuck you like you’ve never had it before. Fuck you square.”

Wendy’s mouth dropped open and I must have giggled because Belgium’s own lezzie ghoul’s head snapped in my direction.

“Well, hello, Amanda. I’ve just been chatting up your girl here.”

I put the cell phone to my ear and pretended to end a very important call. Wendy pleaded with her eyes. If I’d had time, I might have played with this situation, but we needed to get the opening shot before the wind died down.

I swept in between them and wrapped up Wendy in a tight hug. “This one is all mine, Butch.”

Wendy’s lip curled back in horror.

“Aren’t you, baby?” I asked.

“Um.”

“No need to put on a show
pour moi
. I could tell you two were…family.” Absinthe wrapped the words in an exaggerated set of air quotes. “Just wish I’d known yesterday. I might have talked you two into heading down to ze Boar’s Snout for a couple of beers and darts with a few of my girls.”

“
That,
” I said, “would have been fuckin’ awesome. Huh, doll baby?”

Wendy glowered.

“Well, Absinthe, we’ll be chatting with you later. Got a TV show to salvage. We didn’t put our balls in this basket just to get ’em smashed, now did we?”

“Hell no.”

I led Wendy out by the hand.

“She was going to eat me alive. Dead or not, I could tell.”

“Oh yeah. She was lookin’ to eat something.” I stuck my tongue out and flicked it.

“Gross. You’re getting dirtier, the more you rot.”

Chuckling, I pointed out the room and how creepy it looked. Wendy got it. Another reason we’re friends: we have that whole sync thing going on. I told her about Scott and my successful first steps to winning him back as we blocked out the scene.

Don’t ask me how she managed it—half the time I don’t understand the mechanics of the world I inhabit, like it’s piecemealed together from the whims of some unseen madman
⁶⁰
—but the manangal, Angie, had turned her meager quarters into a full-blown nail salon, complete with paying customers and a mix of Top-40 chart-toppers bleating. I had to give it to the girl—she definitely capitalized on her assets.

Janice and Eunice sat at repurposed writing desks, their hands being worked over by the deftly nimble filing of a pair of Angie’s tentacle-like innards stretched across the room from a gaping gash in the back of her neck. More stringy gore slithered down the back of her smock and washed brushes in a little basin, soapy bubbles stained pink in the effort.

Do I need to mention that my stomach turned at the sight?
⁶¹

Tanesha lounged in the comfort of a massaging pedi-bath, a copy of
Hello Underworld
spread across one palm. The claws on the werewolf’s other hand appeared massive and threatening threaded through Angie’s delicately massaging hands.

Angie looked up from her work. “You two want mani-pedi?”

I scanned my nails. They were a little ragged from the torture I’d wreaked on them at the Stoppe and Shoppe, but not totally fucked. Wendy was doing the same, the camera drifting to her side with the effort. I gave her a quick elbowing. “No, thank you,” I said. “We have some questions.” I spun toward the camera. “For Tanesha Jones.”

“Drag wulf,” Wendy added.

“Yes,” I agreed.

The glamorous shapeshifter glanced up from her magazine, eyelashes batting violently. “Do you realize that every year in this God-forsaken country, werewolves go hungry because of supernatural job discrimination? Makes me want to vomit.”

“I was not aware of that, no. Now—”

“Well, it’s true.” Her eyes returned to the article, her index claw tracing a punctuating line as she read, “Janice Dickinson, for one, is appalled. It says here, the ‘world’s first supermodel’ and recent werewolf transformee is leading the charge against werewolf inequality next month in a campaign she’s calling…‘Claws across America.’”

“Wow, she’s like a saint. Saint Janice.” Angie moved on to cutting away at the cuticles that curled around Tanesha’s nail beds like seawalls.

“That’s quite magnanimous of her,” I said. Note to self: contact Ms. Dickinson for possible ad placement. “Now, Tanesha. I have some questions as to your connection to the death of one Johnny Birch.”

“I was with you.”

“Well, yeah, but before that?”

She sighed heavily and folded the magazine, slipping it between her hip and the arm of the lounge chair. “I was in my room. Getting ready for bed, untaping my candy, which can always be a bit of a chore. Need to soften up the adhesive—”

“It won’t be necessary to go into—”

“Or else,” Tanesha spoke louder, daring me to interrupt her again. “When I pull it off, a little bit of me comes with it. Or a whole lot of me, if you know what I’m sayin’.” She tossed her weave over her shoulder and winked saucily at Angie, who cackled.

“Ooh girl, you so bad.”

“Bad ain’t the half of it, catch one of the boys wrong and the maid’ll be cleaning balls off the lampshade and Tanesha dies childless.”

Janice and Eunice chortled.

These questions were going nowhere. It was time to pull out the big guns and I think you know I mean lying. Nothing will get someone to tell you the truth quicker than a big fat lie.
⁶²

“Isn’t it true you hated Johnny Birch?” I peeked at Wendy. Confusion marred her pretty face.

“Hate’s an ugly word, Ms. Amanda.” Tanesha’s tone turned haughtier than a Kiera Knightley character. “I don’t hate anyone.”

“But you didn’t like him.”

“That ain’t true at all.” She moaned. “Oh Johnny!”

I shot a wide-eyed glance at the camera. Wendy licked her lips in anticipation. We love the gossip, you could probably tell—I suspect you do as well, or you wouldn’t have stuck with us for the long haul. Again, if I’d known this was part of the detective thing, I’d have started long ago. Long ago.

“There was a time we were very much in love, Johnny and me. He swept me off my feet, so to speak. Or rather I wrapped him in a gossamer cocoon of my charms. I’m talking about a croquembouche.”

“The French wedding cake?” Wendy suggested.

I shot her a suspicious look. Leave it to the Twix fiend to have an encyclopedic knowledge of international desserts.

“They’re my specialty. I surround the cream puffs in a golden nest of spun sugar. Johnny Birch was entranced.” She stood up and stepped out of the footbath, pacing the room and speaking with broad extravagant gestures. “It was years ago, but I remember it like yesterday.

“Johnny was a guest at the wedding of Gloria Gaslight, the famous performance artist and her life partner Cuddles, which happened to be a blow-up doll with black electrical tape over its gaping mouth and eyes—also its butthole, but I didn’t ask why. The two of us were standing in the back of the hall, me behind the cake in my black beaded flapper dress with the feather trim and my hair up in a blisteringly stylish Mohawk. That’s right, it was delicious.”

“Sounds like it,” I said.

“And Johnny leaning against the wall in his tight little tuxedo pants, making roses grow from the cheap 70s paneling. He plucked one out of the wall and tossed it to me.” Tanesha leaned in to whisper, “That’s not all he tossed that night.”

“See, now I thought Johnny was straight.”

“Oh, he was. Most definitely.”

“How do you figure, doll? I mean no disrespect, Tanesha. You are a gorgeous and powerful woman, but let’s not kid ourselves about—”

“About my candy? Oh honey, I’m not sure if he ever got a good look at it. I’m very good at finding flattering lighting.”

“Still,” I pressured. “The sex.”

“Now Amanda, I don’t have to tell you about the three options, now do I?”

“I guess not.”

“Besides, Johnny was not what you’d call a gentle lover, he was unskilled labor, despite a healthy roster of conquests, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

“So how did this affair end? Badly, I’m assuming?”

Tanesha crossed her arms, her jaw tightened.

“There was another woman. Greedy and cruel. With an unusual accent. Fat old island woman.”

I gasped. “Mama Montserrat?”

Wendy nodded, as if she’d known all along.

“Twisted old bitch wouldn’t leave us alone. She’d call at all hours of the night and day. She’s a nasty thing with pejohos in her fapuna.”

“What?”

“Never mind. But I’ll tell you this, even after we separated, she stalked Johnny.”

“But she’s his agent. The producer of his shows. How could the gossip columns have missed such an odd pairing. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“It makes sense all right. She had him under her spell and I’m not talking about beguiling him with her sex. She doesn’t have that in her. I’m saying she cast out some dark magic and lured him in. Johnny didn’t have a chance and in the end, neither did our love.” Tanesha crossed the room in three long strides and dropped onto the window seat tragically.