“This is just his opening salvo—any unnatural will do.”
“You were always good at killing large numbers of unnaturals all at once, Jekyll,” I said, remembering his previous genocidal plans.
He looked annoyed. “Yes, Rupert consulted with me. Normally, I’m willing to lend a hand to my friends, but I no longer count the senator among them.”
“We gotta go, boss,” Larry said. “Dentist appointment.”
Jekyll sighed. “I wish you’d set up these things on your own time.”
The werewolf picked at his fangs. “We can stop for coffee on the way.” That seemed to make Jekyll happy.
After they left the offices, another man entered, wearing a suit off the bargain rack and a thin black tie. I realized I had seen this guy-in-tie before at the Pattersons’ house. All business, the man handed Robin a folded packet. “Ms. Deyer, this is for you. I hope you enjoy it. You’re served.” He briskly walked away down the corridor.
Frowning, Robin unfolded and scanned the document. First her expression fell, then her eyes blazed, as she flipped the pages. “Balfour’s playing hardball.” She handed the papers to me. “He’s slapped me with a defamation and libel suit and filed a complaint with the State Board of Professional Responsibility to get me disbarred.”
Sheyenne said, “That’s ridiculous.”
The troubled look on Robin’s face, though, told me that from a legal perspective, the suit was far from ridiculous. Some phrases from her vitriolic press release, which she phrased as actual fact, might have crossed the line. “Ambulatory wad of phlegm” stood out in my mind.
“Looks like I’m going to be working late again,” Robin said. “More briefs to file, and now I’ve got to write up an Answer to his Complaint.”
“We’re here, Robin, whatever you need.”
Sheyenne tried to hide the frown on her translucent face. “We can go see a different performance of Shakespeare in the Dark, Beaux. We don’t have to go tonight.”
I had forgotten it was time for us to leave, and Sheyenne and I really needed close time together, a night doing something normal for a change. “No, I promised you we’d go. The acting troupe has been through a lot, and this is their big comeback. We need to be there.” The crowds would already be arriving as night set in, and I was glad we had reserved seats. There would be a lot of ghosts at the event.
Suddenly, something clicked in my mind. Travis had reacted with visible alarm when he saw that Sheyenne had tickets for the play. Why wouldn’t he want her to be there? Why would he care?
The ticket presales had been high. The Greenlawn Cemetery would be crowded with half the ghosts in the Unnatural Quarter, coming to support the spectral company. And Jekyll said that Senator Balfour had just purchased two industrial-strength ectoplasmic defibrillators powerful enough to eliminate a spectral army . . . or disintegrate a whole crowd of ghosts gathered in one place.
Sheyenne saw the expression on my face. “What is it?”
“First they tried a bomb, but this is a hell of a lot worse,” I said. “Change of plans!”
When I explained my suspicions, Robin gasped. “And the Unnatural Acts Act is currently in force, with provisions that humans can take any actions whatsoever against unnaturals! The senator will wrap himself in the law! It’s a slippery legal slope: You can’t murder a ghost, which is, by definition, already dead.”
“He won’t murder those ghosts,” I said, “because we’re going to stop him.”
Chapter 46
As we raced to the cemetery, I called McGoo. “Bring backup to the Shakespeare stage right now! I don’t have proof, but I think Senator Balfour is going to attempt a mass disintegration of all the ghosts there.”
McGoo did not hesitate. “If there’s a chance to implicate Balfour, I’m there. I’ll call out the squad cars and meet you.”
As Robin, Sheyenne, and I charged through the cemetery gates, I tripped on the welcome mats. I had been trying to shuffle less in my step, but right now I was distracted. At least I didn’t do a face-plant into a gravestone. The Welcome Back Wagon vampire with cat’s-eye glasses tried to hand me another plastic bag full of goodies, but we hurried past.
Unnaturals were already crowding the cemetery. Hundreds of ghosts had gathered around the tombstones, picking the best spots in the festival seating area. Vampires sat in lawn chairs they had brought. At any other time, I would have been pleased to see that the audience was so large—at least Shakespeare could afford to pay our bill. A disastrous tragedy would ruin the evening.
We elbowed through the line as more ghosts streamed in. The hunchback taking tickets glared as Sheyenne, Robin, and I bulldozed past. “Hey, you can’t just—”
“Private detective,” I yelled. “The police are on the way.”
Since this was supposed to be a quiet, romantic date, I had hoped to catch the warm-up act with Sheyenne, but it was already in full swing. To the delight of the early-bird audience, three particularly limber zombies juggled a set of shrunken heads, bobbing up and down, passing the heads back and forth in a blur, like a macabre shell game. Towering speakers on either side of the stage blared out peppy music, set to a volume high enough to make the tombstones vibrate.
Then the final piece clicked into place. That big sound system could easily hide a pair of industrial-strength ectoplasmic defibrillators.
“They’re in the speakers,” I said. “The defibs are in the speakers!”
Sheyenne cried out, “There’s Travis!”
Up near the stage, I saw a man who looked like her brother; he wore a fake mustache and a bright yellow shirt with the words Stage Crew silkscreened on the back, but he wasn’t fooling us. She flitted forward much faster than I could have run even if I weren’t so stiff.
As the opening act finished, the zombie jugglers tossed the shrunken heads out to lucky audience members, then ran off the stage.
Robin said, “We’ve got to get these ghosts out of here, now.” I drew my .38, pointed the gun into the air, and fired off three shots. “Evacuate immediately! This is an emergency!” I could have shot the speakers, but too many unnaturals were crowded up close to the stage. Some of the crowd listened; the others thought it was just theatrical effects and part of the show.
Robin kept shouting. “You’ll all be disintegrated! What are you waiting for?”
We could never get the entire ghostly audience to safety fast enough if Travis was ready to activate the defibs. I fired twice more into the air. Some ghosts began wafting away, alarmed; others stopped at the ticket booth to ask for a refund. I had no idea what sort of range an industrial-strength ectoplasmic defibrillator had. I heard the yowling sirens of squad cars as McGoo brought backup to the cemetery, and the noise added to the panic.