The demon tossed me to his partner, who turned me upside down and dropped me to the street, as if they had invented a new game called “Pass the Zombie.”
I picked myself up. I knew I was damaged, some pieces broken, and my clothes were definitely torn and dirty. The orange-eyed demon stomped on my fedora again for good measure, though it was already flat.
“Just watch yourself,” said the larger demon, leaning close and exhaling again so that I couldn’t breathe without burning my nostrils.
“You’ve got a bad case of the vapors,” I said.
“Stop poking into Goodfellow matters, if you know what’s good for you,” said the less intelligent thug. “The Smile Syndicate doesn’t like it.”
“Really?” I shook my head to clear it. “Missy told me she has nothing to hide.”
It was the wrong thing to say, but then I often do that. The scarlet-eyed demon was annoyed that his partner had blabbed the Goodfellow name. They propped me up and used me as a punching bag, hammering away at my chest and face, tearing my jacket (which was going to need several more stitches—as would I).
“If you don’t learn your lesson, maybe we’ll go twist the head off your lawyer friend,” the red-eyed demon said. “Like unscrewing a lid off a jar.”
His companion chuckled. “The lid off a jar!”
They left me in a rumpled heap before strutting away, whistling a cheerful tune. “Let’s go celebrate,” said the big demon.
The orange-eyed partner trotted along beside him. “Can we? Can we?”
I lay there for a long time, feeling a thousand aches, hoping I could be patched up, but knowing I was no longer quite so well-preserved. I work hard to maintain my condition, but it doesn’t help when a couple of supernatural bullies target you for your lunch money. I would have preferred that they just gave me a wedgie.
It took a long while to get back on my feet, a little bit at a time. I straightened my limbs, checked the damage—mostly superficial. Fortunately, I knew a good cosmetic artist. Rather than being frightened or intimidated, as the demons had intended, I found myself growing really angry.
I retrieved my fedora. I poked and prodded like a master sculptor, or just a kid with modeling clay, to reshape it into a semblance of a hat. Eventually it looked as much like a fedora as my suit jacket looked like a suit jacket, and I looked like a dead man walking.
I already disliked the Smile Syndicate’s practices, the golem souvenir sweatshop, their line of overpriced and intrusive gift shops, their acquisition of the Goblin Tavern, how they had treated Francine, and the fact that they—for whatever reason—had acquired Jerry’s heart and soul. Missy Goodfellow was behind the harassment of the Full Moon, I was sure of it. Her goons must have smashed the windows, broken the cat sarcophagi.
Missy had hired those demons to beat me up, and her thugs had threatened Robin. She had crossed a line, and I intended to expose whatever Missy was doing, whatever she was hiding, whether or not it was directly related to one of my cases.
As a private detective, I might not have a lot of muscle, but I do have brains. Missy Goodfellow was playing dirty—and I could do the same.
It was on.
Chapter 43
I shambled back to the office to clean myself up and change clothes, hoping to hide the most prominent bodily damage and wardrobe malfunctions from the ladies. Robin was in her office with the door mostly shut, burning the midnight oil (although it was barely 9:00 P.M.) as she went over the Unnatural Acts Act. As of that afternoon, she had gotten up to Tome-Section VII, so she still had a long way to go.
I slipped in as quietly as possible, but there was no getting past Sheyenne. Something about her ectoplasmic ears gives her excellent hearing. “Beaux! What happened?”
“The Quarter isn’t a nice place to live anymore,” I said. “No wonder the Pattersons and even Harvey Jekyll want to get out of here.”
She whisked off to get a wet washcloth from the kitchenette and returned to dab my face. I could feel her ghostly hands through the moist rag. At some other time it would have been a pleasurable intimate experience, but now the main sensations came from all the new lumps around my face and forehead.
“Who did this?” Sheyenne said. “Who do I need to kill?”
“You want to end up in ghost prison like Alphonse Wheeler?”
“At least I’ll be in good company, and I’ll feel satisfied.”
A couple of my teeth were loose, and I needed to have them glued in securely. Maybe when I met with Mavis Wannovich to brainstorm about their line of zombie detective novels I could get next month’s restorative spell a little early. (Apparently she had called the office yet again, sounding even more anxious to talk with me.)
“Missy Goodfellow sent a couple of demon thugs to complain about my digging into Smile Syndicate business,” I said. “If she’s this bothered, I must have touched a nerve.”
“I’m going to go all poltergeist on her ass,” Sheyenne vowed. “I’ll find a piano somewhere and drop it on her head, just like the one that missed her brother. I think someone went after the wrong Goodfellow.”
I glanced at myself in the mirror and looked at the dirty, rumpled, and damaged sport jacket and the dirty, rumpled, and damaged fedora, all of which went well with my dirty, rumpled, and damaged body.
My thoughts and my conscience were in a spin, as if inner demons were still playing Pass the Zombie with me. The Unnatural Quarter had gone to hell in a handbasket, and now the handbasket was falling apart. With the Smile Syndicate expanding into the Quarter, and Balfour’s Unnatural Acts Act threatening to repress unnaturals in their most basic daily activities, it would only get worse.
I had the sense that the windmill we were tilting at was about to collapse and fall on top of us, but I didn’t intend to stop, and Robin would never stop. We weren’t going anywhere. Even so, in a derailed train of thought, I felt I needed to do something right away, something good, for a person who didn’t have anybody else helping her.
I went to the safe in the wall behind Sheyenne’s desk. It took me three tries with clumsy fingers (I think one was broken) to get the combination right. I withdrew a stack of bills, most of our petty cash fund. “There’s something I need to do.”
“Where are you going?” Sheyenne asked.
I pocketed the wad of bills. “To the Full Moon.” Presumably for the last time. I was already down the stairs and out on the street before I realized what a stupid thing that was to say to Sheyenne.
It was nearly midnight when I arrived, and Mike the door golem let me into the parlor and took my hat. Due in part to a massive coupon mailing Neffi had launched, the place was hopping: half a dozen natural and unnatural clients making nervous chitchat with the ladies. Two of the doors upstairs were closed.