Chapter Six
Awkward.
I could feel it, and I saw McGoo fidgeting, too. The mere mention of Rhonda was enough to set our teeth on edge, as if we had signed up for a couple’s root canal. As we made our way from the tavern to the Hellhound bus station, we had trouble making conversation.
McGoo told another one of his stupid jokes, hoping to lighten our mood. “Hey, Shamble, you know why the skeleton didn’t ask a girl to prom?” He paused a beat. “He didn’t have the guts!” It was no funnier than the jokes usually were, and my obligatory laugh had a nervous tinge.
I finally said, “Any idea what this is about, McGoo? Sheyenne didn’t give me much information.”
“You know Rhonda,” McGoo said.
Yes, I did. We both did. Intimately—and the thought made me shudder.
“Rhonda’s never been good at saying what she really means,” McGoo continued. “She wasn’t much of a conversationalist in the best of times.”
McGoo’s ex-wife suffered from a severe case of avoiding direct answers to direct questions. When you asked her where she wanted to go out to dinner, she’d give a rambling and oblique reply that mentioned politics in Venice or Rome, from which you were supposed to infer that her answer was “Italian food.” McGoo had put up with Rhonda for three years, although my torrid little affair with her afterward lasted only a couple of weeks; I guess I’m a fast learner.
McGoo didn’t look at me as we kept walking toward the station. “She just told me the bus number, said I had to be there. No other details.”
“‘She’s your problem now,’” I quoted to him. “That could mean a lot of things.” But McGoo and I both had a pretty good idea what was up, even though we didn’t admit it.
Arriving at the Hellhound bus station, we looked at the boards and saw that the 10:13 bus was fifteen minutes late. “Great, let’s drag this out even longer.”
The Hellhound bus line was a new service established for unnaturals with special travel needs, blackened windows for sunlight-sensitive travelers and widened seats to accommodate ogres, oversized demons, and other creatures with unnaturally large buttocks, special seat backs with wingspace for gargoyles and other flying things.
On one of the benches inside the bus station, a skeleton sat motionless next to a battered old suitcase. He seemed to have missed his bus … maybe ten years ago. I couldn’t tell from the look in his eye sockets whether he was awake or asleep.
Up at the ticket counter a mummy was arguing over the extra baggage charge to bring his sarcophagus along, pointing to reduced rates for vampire coffins and complaining about discrimination. Nearby, a vending machine sold packets of the various kinds of NEW! IMPROVED! Monster Chow.
One entire rack of paperbacks contained volumes of the “Dan Shamble” adventures released by Howard Phillips Publishing. The cover artist hadn’t come close to matching my likeness, and the stories sounded overblown and improbable, with titles like Slimy Underbelly and Hair Raising. But unnaturals seemed to enjoy reading them on long cross-country bus rides; I just hoped they didn’t get motion sickness.
A gargoyle family with two miniature kids walked into the main gallery, where one of the small winged tykes strained rambunctiously against a leash around his neck, trying to fly away. The tether slipped out of his mother’s hand, and the gargoyle kid flapped up toward the arched ceiling. With a sigh of impatience, the father flew up with his much larger wings to seize the child and bring him back to earth.
McGoo and I found a bench and sat down with a sigh. “This should be interesting,” I said in resignation.
“Yeah, interesting is my favorite thing these days,” McGoo said. We fidgeted for several minutes.
Awkward …
McGoo and I had been young and stupid. We’d both dated and eventually married women with the same name. Rhonda. Mine was a blonde, McGoo’s was a brunette. We expected to take the world by storm. The four of us did a lot of things together, double dating, best friends, but just as our careers spiraled away from our imaginary goals, so did our marriages. The sweet, beautiful, and sexy Rhondas rapidly turned into henpecking and shrewish Rhondas … though they would probably describe the situation in different terms; McGoo and I hadn’t turned out to be knights in shining armor either.
My Rhonda and I split up around the same time McGoo and his Rhonda split up. Maybe it was because we liked to do everything together.
In one of those “the grass is always greener” moments, I came to a bourbon-induced epiphany, back when I was human and back when I could enjoy a good bourbon. The problem hadn’t necessarily been Rhonda, I decided—it was just that I had married the wrong Rhonda.
The four of us had done so many things together, and I suddenly realized all the times that McGoo’s Rhonda—the dark-haired one, just so we don’t get them confused—must have been flirting with me, coming on to me. Since she’d broken up with her husband and was “lonely” (which I didn’t realize meant “desperate and needy”), we had a wild fling. Enjoyable, sweaty, heavy-breathing good times. My future seemed bright … for about two weeks, then I came to my senses.
I confessed to McGoo, and he did his duty by saying “I told you so.” Except for the fact that he, too, briefly got back together with his Rhonda … until he realized what “lonely” truly meant in her mind.
While I’d been off in my fling with dark-haired Rhonda, I was isolated and paid very little attention to my friend, or even what my own estranged wife was doing. To this day, I suspect McGoo had his own little thing with her, but every time I tried to raise the question he got all funny and avoided answering by telling more stupid jokes. I didn’t press him, primarily because I didn’t want to hear any more jokes.
Now at the bus station, McGoo broke the silence. “What do you think she’s like?”
“Who, Rhonda? And which Rhonda?”
“No, the little girl. Rhonda said she’s ten years old.” He paused. “You know that’s who’s on the bus.”
I sighed. “The kid’s been raised alone all these years by Rhonda. What do you think she’s like?”
“You just answered my question, Shamble.”
Shortly after our mutual breakup with our mutual, and even exchangeable, Rhondas, the Big Uneasy occurred. The return of all the monsters caused plenty of turmoil. Since neither of us wanted anything to do with our Rhondas, we hadn’t kept up with their lives, didn’t keep them on our Christmas card lists.
Not long ago when we were working the case of the sewer slumlord Ah’Chulhu, McGoo had received a call from out of the blue—Rhonda seeking child support. He hadn’t even known there was a child, much less one with a balance due. McGoo had offered to pay his ex if she came down to the Quarter, but Rhonda never responded. We assumed it was a hoax.
Apparently not.
“But why would she call me, too?” I asked.
“Moral support,” McGoo said. “That means it must be bad.”
“A few nights ago we were running through the streets after a serial-killer demon. Tonight we’re just meeting a little girl at a bus station. That’s got to be an improvement, right?”
He frowned. “Remember, we’re talking about Rhonda.”
Two zombie teenagers rattled the Monster Chow vending machine in an attempt to score a free packet, but when an item finally dropped into the bin it was only Harpy Chow, and the zombie teens were not interested.
The questions kept bothering me. “And why would Rhonda put your daughter on a Hellhound bus? That makes no sense.”
McGoo shrugged as if to demonstrate that he had long since stopped trying to make sense out of Rhonda. “Maybe it was the most direct route to the Unnatural Quarter? Don’t think about it too much.”
Finally the black luxury-liner coach rolled into the station, letting out a hiss of air brakes as loud as a Medusa on a bad day. With a hollow rattle, the skeleton sitting on the nearby bench leaped to his feet, showing more excitement than I expected from a pile of bones. The bus door opened to reveal the driver, a goblin hunched over a wheel that was wider than his shoulders. He wore a snappy-looking gray bus driver cap and gray jacket that matched his gray skin.
Passengers began to file off the bus, the usual assortment of vampires, werewolves, zombies, ghosts, and ghouls, as well as a terrified-looking old human couple who must have boarded at the wrong bus stop.
Nervous, McGoo and I stood together a few steps back from the open door watching the unnaturals disembark, not sure what to expect. We recognized the kid as soon as she stepped off the bus.
“That’s her!” McGoo said, his voice cracking. I couldn’t deny it.
She was a ten-year-old waifish girl with light brown hair done up in pigtails that stuck out like mouse ears on either side of her head. She was cute, I’ll grant her that, with large eyes, an elfin face, a pink sweater, and a pleated plaid skirt. I couldn’t see any hint of McGoo’s features on her face, which was a good thing.
She was also a vampire.
Pinned to the front of the girl’s fuzzy pink sweater was a laminated index card on which Rhonda had written, “I’m supposed to meet Toby McGoohan and Dan Chambeaux. Don’t mess with me!”
I lifted my stiff arm and waved at her, because it seemed the appropriate thing to do. McGoo stood like a statue, and I elbowed him until he waved as well.
The girl saw us and came forward. She wore a pink backpack that apparently contained most of her worldly possessions, and carried a small suitcase that held the rest. “She said you’d meet me here.” She seemed angry, maybe at us, maybe at her mother, maybe at the world.
“And we’re here!” I said in a bright voice, wanting to make her feel at home. “Welcome to the Unnatural Quarter.”
“You’re … Rhonda’s daughter,” McGoo said stupidly.
The girl sniffed. “She said she was going to call my father to come get me.” She looked from McGoo to me. “I’m supposed to stay with you, now that I’m a vampire.”
Her comment took us both aback, for more reasons than one.
McGoo and I looked at each other and swallowed in unison. He spoke to the girl. “You’re supposed to stay with us? But we don’t … I can’t …”
“You know how good Rhonda was at planning ahead, McGoo,” I pointed out.
“I don’t even know your name,” he said, bending down to be closer to the girl’s height.
“It’s Alvina, so now you know. That means I can stay here.” She plucked at the index card pinned to her sweater and grimaced. “Can you take this thing off me? I hate it. It makes me look like a little kid.”
“Why couldn’t you take it off yourself?” I asked.
“Mom used a silver safety pin, on purpose, and I can’t touch it. This sucks.” She made an angry grumbling noise. “Another stupid disadvantage of being a stupid vampire.”
“I know plenty of smart vampires,” I said as I fumbled with the safety pin to remove the offending index card, but my fingers were too stiff and clumsy. McGoo helped, and his hands were shaking too; eventually, we removed the badge.
“Thanks, that’s better.” She sighed. “I’m not angry at you. It was her.”
“You’re a vampire,” McGoo said. Not his wittiest comment.
“I know,” said Alvina. “Does that mean you don’t like me? I couldn’t help it. I cracked my head open in a stupid skateboarding accident. I lost a lot of blood. Mom said the regular clinics were too expensive, and the cheap one accidentally used contaminated blood for my transfusion. So here I am, a ten-year-old vampire. Just great.” She sighed again, even louder than the first time. “She says I belong in the Unnatural Quarter with all the other little monsters, and the big ones too.” She set down her suitcase and unslung her backpack. “This sucks. I hope you have a place for me to stay. I brought all my dolls.” She looked expectantly from me to McGoo, then back at me again.
“So,” asked the cute little girl, “which one of you is my father?”