It was long and painful, a horrible, lingering way to die.
I never left her bedside in the hospital. Sheyenne wavered in and out of lucidity, but she always knew who I was. “I thought you wouldn’t call me back, Beaux. Thought I’d . . . scared you off.”
“Never,” I said. “Just waited too long.” Then I let out a long sigh. “I wish I could find some way to help you, Spooky.”
Shadowy hollows surrounded her eyes, but her smile was the same. “You’re doing it, just by being here. I’ve got no one.”
“You’ve got me.”
“I wish I could stay with you, Beaux. But someone wanted me dead. You’re the private detective. Find out who did this to me. For me, please?”
“I promise I’ll solve this case. I’ll find your murderer, if it’s the last thing I do.”
“You’re so sweet,” she said in a breathy voice. “Have a good life.”
She died an hour later, but I never forgot my promise to her.
One of her last acts in the hospital had been to scrawl a note, a holographic will, granting me custody of her meager worldly possessions—nobody really cared, since she didn’t have any living relatives. When her ghost did not appear immediately after her death, I thought she was gone for good.
Weighed down with grief and anger, I went to her apartment to clear out Sheyenne’s stuff and was surprised to discover that her snotty building manager was already intending to sell her possessions in order to recoup his lost rent. I had no intention of letting him do that, and we ended up in a shouting match. As a favor to me, Robin drafted and signed an impressive-looking legal document that intimidated the manager, and I hauled out the boxes myself, put them in the storage unit that we retained for holding old case records.
Feeling lost and alone, I dropped all my other cases to work on hers, to track down who might have poisoned my Sheyenne. But my other cases didn’t forget about me, and I should have paid more attention to the fact that a cocktail waitress/nightclub singer/med student wasn’t the only one with enemies in the Quarter.
Less than a month after she died, there I was late at night, minding my own business—or Sheyenne’s, actually—when one of those cases caught up with me in a dark alley not far from Basilisk. I’d taken the same shortcut back to the office that I always do. Someone came up behind me, put an antique Civil War pistol to the back of my head, and fired a round through my skull.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t one of those cartoon villains who likes to gloat and gab and explain every little bit about his dastardly plan. No, this time it was just the gun, then the bang....
Now, as I stood in front of her desk reminiscing, Sheyenne crumpled the chemical analysis report and tossed it across the room with a swirling breeze of ghostly annoyance. “So much for sticking it to JLPN. I was so sure there’d be some contaminant or hazardous component, something that was a factor in my poisoning. But I know the lab guy, and this is for real.” She looked fiercely determined. “I have half a mind to manifest before Brondon Morris, chew him out, and give him a wedgie in front of his zombie ladyfriends.”
“You’re a ghost,” I said. “He knows you can’t touch him.”
“Oh, I can still make him miserable.”
No doubt she was right. “I really think I could have loved you, Spooky,” I said, startling her.
“Oh, Beaux, under normal circumstances you would have forgotten about me in a few weeks,” she teased.
I didn’t think so at all, but maybe Sheyenne needed to say that just to make the regrets glide down easier, like a $300 bottle of wine. Maybe I’d be smart to do the same thing, but it was damned hard to see that beautiful woman in my office every single day and never be able to touch her....
Chapter 15
Lunchtime. I’ve never been, nor do I intend to become, one of those disgusting ambulatory corpses with a sweet tooth for brains. Even though I don’t need to eat as often as before—undead metabolism is all out of whack—lunch isn’t something a man should give up. I liked to do things out of habit just to pretend that my life was normal.
The big sign in the front window of Ghoul’s Diner, my favorite lunch counter, said in bright orange letters: YES, WE SERVE HUMANS! The diner was a warm and cheery place, crowded with unnaturals who liked to sit in the booths or take a stool up at the counter with elbows propped on the speckled Formica.
At the grill in back stood a sweaty grayish creature who looked decidedly unwell. Albert Gould, the proprietor, had skin with the sheen and consistency of sliced ham left too long in the sun. I had talked with him face-to-face a few times. Albert could be an unsettling fellow for anyone with a queasy stomach. Cockroaches scuttled around in his spiky hair, and thin whitish things dripped in and out of his nostrils as he inhaled and exhaled. At first I thought they were boogers; then I realized they were maggots.
Albert concocted variations of the daily special, catering to different types of clientele. Zombie special, vampire special, werewolf special, human special (although the humans who dared to eat there rarely became repeat customers). He served platters of sliced, discolored mystery meat, sometimes on a bun with all the condiments, other times spread out on a blue plate pooled in gelatinous gravy made from a mucus roux.
The smells inside Ghoul’s Diner were rich and ripe. Conversation buzzed among the booths; a cash register rang up sales. From the back, a gush of steam and spray of water rose from where a reptile-skinned dishwasher blasted globs of food off the plates, then stacked them back on the shelves.
Esther, the diner’s lone waitress—a harpy who never provided good service, but always received excellent tips because the customers were afraid to annoy her—chatted with two necromancers in a corner booth. She seemed to have no interest in her other customers.
I took a seat at the counter beside a bespectacled hunchback who was poring over stock listings in the newspaper. The folded front page had a headline story, ELVIS FOUND!
I’d heard the story on the radio: A zombie came back to life, insisting he was Elvis Presley. Over the years, there had been many Elvis sightings, people who claimed the King had never died. This one was different, because the guy was unquestionably dead, and he had submitted flesh scrapings for DNA testing to verify his identity.
“Can I borrow the front section?” I asked.
The hunchback shrugged, a languorous rolling movement that made me a bit seasick. “Help yourself.”