The next morning began as a nice outing with Robin, Sheyenne, and me going out to do our social duties at the refurbished and reopened Recompose Spa.
Though I promised myself I’d check out the new direct connection to the sewers soon, we left the Chambeaux & Deyer offices by the street-level entrance—and stepped into a mist so thick it felt as if we were already in the sauna. The feuding weather wizards had created some sort of inversion layer that burbled up from the manhole covers, clotted in the alleys, and curled along the streets. The fog was as thick as proverbial pea soup, and actually smelled like the digestive aftermath of pea soup.
I heard a shriek overhead and saw a shadow, but could make out no details in the mist; probably a harpy flying above the clouds, I decided. A mummy was setting up his newsstand, straightening the day’s papyrus edition and arranging his selection of chewing gum, cough drops, and souvenir amulets. An enterprising clothier had set up bins on wheels filled with sun hats, parkas, rain shawls, umbrellas, bikinis, and discount all-weather combos. The bins could be swapped and rearranged as fast as the weather changed.
A love-struck vampire couple strolled along hand in hand, enjoying a rare late-morning walk made possible by the opacity of the fog. Outside a Talbot & Knowles Blood Bar, a hemoglobin barista was handing out free samples to any potential blood-sucking customers who passed by, or even humans who were hemo-curious. The vampire couple frowned in disdain at the smiling young barista. “We don’t patronize chains,” said the woman with a sniff. “We buy only organic, locally sourced, guaranteed no additives hemoglobin.”
Even after the tumultuous upheaval that changed the world more than a decade ago, life had a way of settling back into its own definition of normal. Some days I had a hard time remembering what the world was like before the Big Uneasy. I had been alive then, setting my sights on a career as a private investigator because I couldn’t make it as a cop.
A strange and unexpected sequence of events had triggered the return of all the supernatural creatures and magic to the world. The combination of a rare planetary alignment and the blood (from a paper cut) of a virgin (a fifty-eight-year-old lonely librarian) spilling on the pages of an original copy of the Necronomicon had unleashed all the unnaturals. At first it seemed like a true holocaust, the end of days, an every-kind-of-monster apocalypse, but society settled down soon enough and people, of all sorts, got back to normal. It was everyday life, but with added monsters.
Robin dedicated her career as an attorney to serving the downtrodden unnaturals, insisting that they deserved justice just as much as anyone else did. I’d come to town as a private investigator, hanging out my shingle and taking cases, no matter how unusual. Back in the outside world, I would have been stuck taking photos of cheating spouses for divorce cases. Even here, I still got hired to do the occasional sit-and-wait, but adding monsters to the equation made even simple cases a lot more interesting.
Even though Sheyenne and I were both murdered here in the Quarter, this is still the place I call home, warts and all (regardless of where those warts came from).
As the three of us strolled along, the fog cleared, then came back with a vengeance, cleared again, and came back in alternating blocks. Sheyenne flitted along as insubstantial as the mist, but a lot prettier. She said, “If this is the spa’s grand opening, Beaux, then we should bring flowers.” She placed a ghostly finger against her ghostly lips. “Lily pads would go with the theme, brighten the place up.”
In other times, a guest might have brought a bottle of wine or champagne, but after the Big Uneasy, with so many different types of creatures drinking so many different types of beverages, flowers were a safer bet.
“I should’ve thought of that,” Robin said. She was a thousand percent dedicated to her work, intent on her cases with a laser focus to the exclusion of etiquette.
As for me, no one had ever accused me of being socially adept. “Flowers it is,” I said.
So, we stopped at a boutique florist called the Medium-Sized Shop of Horrors. The proprietor was a raspy-voiced woodwitch with thistles and moss for hair and spiderwebs for clothes; her knuckles and elbows looked like knotty hunks of driftwood. Small decorative fountains trickled in alcoves in the shop, and New Age music, complete with chimes, added to the heady atmosphere.
Sheyenne drifted down the aisles, inspecting strange mushrooms, thorny plants, flowers that talked, blossoms with inset eyeballs—and lily pads floating in a reflecting pool. After Sheyenne found what she was looking for, Robin and I carried the lily pads to the cash register so the woodwitch could ring up our purchase. Robin selected an appropriate gift card to accompany the lily pads.
Outside, we heard a buzzing engine, a squeal of tires up against the curb, then the clatter of little feet. The door to the Medium-Sized Shop of Horrors burst open, and a crowd of brightly painted lawn gnomes charged inside brandishing machine guns.
Their normally cheery expressions were angry, their painted lips curled downward, their eyes glinting with evil. The machine guns they carried were old-fashioned and miniaturized—not traditional Tommy guns, but the smaller, cuter versions known as Timmy guns.
Even in the Unnatural Quarter, with its oh-so-typical strange goings-on, a customer doesn’t expect machine-gun fire inside a flower shop.
The gnomes chattered in the quaint voices that normally made gnomes so charming, but their leader, a standard-size gnome model who had painted his cap and vest an ominous black, shouted out in a surprisingly loud and commanding voice, “This is a stickup!”
The lawn gnomes pointed their Timmy guns at the flower-shop walls and opened fire with a rat-a-tat-tat of tiny-caliber bullets that sounded like popcorn popping. The gnome robbers sprayed the vases and flowers on the shelves, shattered the decorative fountains with a hail of projectiles.
Robin hurled her lily pads at the lawn gnomes, knocking one over. When they turned their Timmy guns at her, I threw myself on Robin and covered her with my body as a dozen stinging slugs pounded into my back. Even though the small-caliber slugs caused some damage, I decided it was better me than Robin. She’s still young, perky, and very much alive. As for myself, a few more bullet holes wouldn’t make much difference, especially tiny ones like this.
I would have protected Sheyenne, too, but she didn’t need my help. She used her poltergeist powers to hurl flowerpots at the gnomes, and they ducked from side to side to dodge the projectiles.
The terrified woodwitch had the presence of mind to work a spell that turned her gentle New Age wind chimes into rattling alarms that jangled and clanged, drawing even more attention than the shouting gnomes and the machine-gun fire.
Not expecting so much resistance, the gang leader yelled, “Grab the cash register and let’s get out of here.”
It took four of the lawn gnomes to lift the heavy cash register, but they raced out the front door of the flower shop with it nevertheless.
I picked myself off of Robin, and she insisted she was all right. My back was perforated in a dozen places, and I knew the sport jacket would need stitching again. But not now. I drew my .38 and lurched toward the robbers.
The black-garbed leader bellowed back at us, “When the coppers come asking, you tell ’em you’ve been stuck up by Mr. Bignome!”
Meanwhile, the woodwitch worked druidic magic to summon an instant fecundity spell that made the plants and vines grow wildly, proliferating like spam e-mails from supposed Nigerian princes. Foliage surged upward in exuberant growth, vines covering the door and forming a barricade that would have been sufficient for landscaping around Sleeping Beauty’s castle.
The leafy vines lashed across the doorway a second too late to stop the fleeing lawn gnome robbers—and just in time to prevent me from going after them. I yanked and tore at the vines, trying to get the foliage out of the way. I threw a glance over my shoulder at the woodwitch. “Timing could have been better.”
She seemed embarrassed. “I forgot about the spell delay. Sorry.”
As I tugged at the barricade, I watched lawn gnomes lug the cash register over to the curb and toss it in the back of a getaway jalopy the size of a go-kart. I heard police sirens in the street, squad cars rushing to the scene of the robbery.
I finally pulled the vines free from the doorway and stumbled out onto the sidewalk, nearly tripping as a persistent (or pissed-off) vine wrapped around my ankle and snagged me. “Halt!” I yelled at the gnomes, not because I expected it to work but because it was the first thing that came to mind. I hopped on one foot, disentangling the vine from my leg.
With a sneer on his painted face, one of the scuttling gnomes gave me the finger—a stubby little finger, but it qualified nevertheless.
I shot him, though I only meant to wing him. The bullet struck the rude gnome in the foot, and with a plink his sprightly boot turned into a puff of plaster dust. He toppled over on the street and lay writhing and wobbling, trying to get back up.
“Help!” he called in his cute gnomish voice. “Don’t leave me behind.”
As the other gnomes secured the cash register in the jalopy, Mr. Bignome took a step back toward his fallen comrade. With an angry glare, he swung his Timmy gun around. “Dead gnomes tell no tales!” He opened fire and shattered his comrade into broken fragments.
I shot three times at the jalopy, hoping to put out one of the tires. I chipped off the top of one of the gnomes’ pointed hats, but missed the tiny vehicle.
Squad cars roared in, and a familiar florid-faced, redheaded beat cop ran up, arriving on foot just as the patrol cars screeched to a halt in front of the Medium-Sized Shop of Horrors. He was gasping for breath, angry that he hadn’t arrived sooner.
Other cops piled out of their squad cars and charged into the flower shop, but the lawn gnomes had already gotten away. The beat cop bent over with his hands on his knees, heaving giant breaths. “Hey, Shamble.”
“Hey, McGoo,” I answered.
It was our usual exchange.
Officer Toby McGoohan is my BHF, my best human friend. We’ve been through life, death, and afterlife together, and we remain friends through it all. Not every relationship can survive that. We both came to the Unnatural Quarter by roundabout ways, and we both stayed here. If I had to be stuck anywhere, though, it was good to have a friend like McGoo.
“Am I too late?” He took off his cap and wiped sweat from his forehead.
“It’s the thought that counts.”
McGoo put his cap back on. “Well, I’m not up for a promotion anytime soon. Was it Bignome again?” When I nodded, he shook his head. “Unbelievable! This is the third floral shop they’ve knocked over in the last two weeks.”
“Unbelievable,” I agreed. “The Quarter has three floral shops?”
The woodwitch managed to shut off the jangly wind-chime alarms, returning blessed silence to the foggy streets. Robin emerged, carrying the bedraggled water lilies. Surprisingly cheery, considering the mayhem, Sheyenne said, “At least we got the flowers at a discount.”
After we gave our statements to McGoo, we headed off to the Recompose Spa. After an early-morning robbery, the day was bound to get better.