In my earlier surveillance, I’d seen Brondon tagging along with Harvey Jekyll, no doubt feeling special because the boss had invited him to party with the big boys, though I’d never figured out what sort of party Jekyll was attending. Brondon might be an opportunity for me to track down Jekyll tonight.
After he sipped one drink with the zombie cougars and saw no new customers around the bar, Brondon bade them good-bye to a chorus of disappointed pleas. He just laughed and waved, promised he would see them all again soon, then slipped out of the Goblin Tavern.
I decided to follow him. He might be nothing more than a JLPN lapdog, but you never know where things might lead. I finished my beer, put some money on the bar, and said, “Gotta go to work, McGoo.”
“If you say so. I’m going to take my time here. Thanks for the beer.” I left the tavern, turned right, and quietly shadowed the perfume salesman.
Chapter 11
For a zombie, it’s hard to move quickly until the dead joints and muscles warm up. Still, it’s not difficult to follow a human through the streets of the Unnatural Quarter, especially when he’s wearing a loud sport jacket and trailing nose-curling fumes from a case full of clashing deodorants, colognes, and body washes.
By the time I left the Goblin Tavern, the city’s night life was hopping. Neon signs glowed, and traditional shops opened up for unnatural clientele. Streetlights flickered ominously in an electric rhythm sure to trigger epileptic seizures; on side streets, many lights were burned out or smashed.
Brondon Morris walked with a jaunty stride, swinging his case, whistling a tune that only he could interpret. Going about his rounds, he certainly didn’t look like a man engaged in nefarious activities. He dropped by an exclusive zombies-only bar, then a gentleman vampires’ club, but when he stopped at a place just outside of Little Transylvania, I had to ponder my next move.
Basilisk: A Place Without Mirrors.
The nightclub had powerful memories for me. I needed to go inside, even if following Brondon was just a pretext. I whispered a personal reminder, “The cases don’t solve themselves.” Whether or not I got any leads in the Jekyll divorce case by following Brondon, maybe I’d learn something about an even more important mystery.
Basilisk was where I had met Sheyenne.
After Brondon entered the nightclub, I waited a few minutes outside so he wouldn’t suspect I’d been following him, then I pulled open the door.
Even my dulled senses were assaulted by the curling fog of cigarette smoke, incense, and scented black candles. Red lights filled the main room with a crimson glow, and the cocktail bar was brushed nickel, cold and unwelcoming, completely unlike the cozy Goblin Tavern. As advertised, there was no mirror behind the bar, no mirrors on the ceilings; even the brushed nickel appointments cast no reflections.
I heard an inane melody played on the piano by, appropriately, a lounge lizard. The microphone on the stage stood ready, but the spotlights were dark. Ivory would be performing tonight—she had no competition now that Sheyenne was gone. (I kept telling Sheyenne that even as a ghost she had a nice set of lungs—and that wasn’t a euphemism for “nice pair of breasts,” although that was true too.) Sheyenne couldn’t get over her bad feelings about Basilisk, sure that she’d been poisoned in this place, though she had no proof.
I walked to one of the tables near the stage. The place was filling up, and the entertainment would start soon. I folded myself down into a chair as the lounge lizard plinked out a peppy tune.
I’d never gone inside Basilisk until a case brought me there. I remembered the night I first heard Sheyenne sing here, when she captivated the audience with a sultry rendition of “Spooky.” I was still alive then, and so was Sheyenne.
I’d been investigating illegal blood-bank sales at the nightclub, fresh packets that had “fallen off the refrigerated truck” on the way to the hospital. I was hired to get to the bottom of it by Harry Talbot, the disgruntled owner of a licensed blood bar, who believed the competing black-market sales were cutting into his business. When I caught Fletcher Knowles, Basilisk’s human bartender and manager, red-handed (so to speak), he was more annoyed than guilty. “Why get your panties in a wad about it, Chambeaux? I sell my stuff for almost the same price as Talbot does, but some customers prefer to be discreet. Would you rather they get back to basics and start feeding on people in dark alleys?”
Fletcher was balding, in his late thirties, with round John Lennon eyeglasses and a full goatee that he bleached very blond. He looked as if he should have been a barista rather than a nightclub manager. Fletcher got along perfectly well with unnaturals; he didn’t care about their species or the color of their skin (white, brown, or gray) or their fur—it was all business to him. Basilisk was one of the more successful nightlife spots in the Quarter, and he lined his pockets with extra income from under-the-table blood sales.
Through word on the street, Fletcher already knew that Talbot had hired me, but he didn’t see the situation as a problem. “Be reasonable. Nobody’s getting hurt.” He bought me a beer and told me to ponder long and hard about what I wanted to do, then made a halfhearted threat to have his goons beat me up if I didn’t cooperate. Since I was still alive back then, the threat was enough to give me pause.
And then, as I was sitting at the table in front of the stage, trying to figure out how to keep both sides of the feud happy and me undamaged, Sheyenne came out to sing.
She was riveting: her eyes, her beautiful face, her gorgeous figure, and her bravery. I couldn’t think of any other human who’d be willing to stand up and sing in front of a room full of stomach-turning, hungry, and potentially murderous unnaturals.
From the stage she hooked her eyes on me, clearly interested (maybe just because I was the only human customer in Basilisk that night). I bought her a drink during break. She sat down and talked with me.
Sheyenne was her stage name, she told me, derived from “shy Anne,” because she’d been nervous when she first auditioned. She started out as a cocktail waitress, then did a short stint as an exotic dancer, but decided that wasn’t for her. After working a few years in business and management, she had changed her mind and become a medical student, working her way through school, and she needed to earn money. I don’t know what compelled her to fill out an application at Basilisk, but she told me the pay was twice what she could earn in any normal nightclub, though the tips were generally awful.
I told her I admired her, and that wasn’t just a pickup line. I told her she was beautiful, and I meant that too. I came back to see her the next night, and the next. After hearing her sing, it seemed only right that I started calling her Spooky, and she asked if it was all right to call me Beaux.