For a zombie, it’s hard to move quickly until the dead joints and muscles warm up. Still, it’s not difficult to follow a human through the streets of the Unnatural Quarter, especially when he’s wearing a loud sport jacket and trailing nose-curling fumes from a case full of clashing deodorants, colognes, and body washes.
By the time I left the Goblin Tavern, the city’s night life was hopping. Neon signs glowed, and traditional shops opened up for unnatural clientele. Streetlights flickered ominously in an electric rhythm sure to trigger epileptic seizures; on side streets, many lights were burned out or smashed.
Brondon Morris walked with a jaunty stride, swinging his case, whistling a tune that only he could interpret. Going about his rounds, he certainly didn’t look like a man engaged in nefarious activities. He dropped by an exclusive zombies-only bar, then a gentleman vampires’ club, but when he stopped at a place just outside of Little Transylvania, I had to ponder my next move.
Basilisk: A Place without Mirrors.
The nightclub had powerful memories for me. I needed to go inside, even if following Brondon was just a pretext. I whispered a personal reminder, “The cases don’t solve themselves.” Whether or not I got any leads in the Jekyll divorce case by following Brondon, maybe I’d learn something about an even more important mystery.
Basilisk was where I had met Sheyenne.
After Brondon entered the nightclub, I waited a few minutes outside so he wouldn’t suspect I’d been following him, then I pulled open the door.
Even my dulled senses were assaulted by the curling fog of cigarette smoke, incense, and scented black candles. Red lights filled the main room with a crimson glow, and the cocktail bar was brushed nickel, cold and unwelcoming, completely unlike the cozy Goblin Tavern. As advertised, there was no mirror behind the bar, no mirrors on the ceilings; even the brushed nickel appointments cast no reflections.
I heard an inane melody played on the piano by, appropriately, a lounge lizard. The microphone on the stage stood ready, but the spotlights were dark. Ivory would be performing tonight—she had no competition now that Sheyenne was gone. (I kept telling Sheyenne that even as a ghost she had a nice set of lungs—and that wasn’t a euphemism for “nice pair of breasts,” although that was true too.) Sheyenne couldn’t get over her bad feelings about Basilisk, sure that she’d been poisoned in this place, though she had no proof.
I walked to one of the tables near the stage. The place was filling up, and the entertainment would start soon. I folded myself down into a chair as the lounge lizard plinked out a peppy tune.
I’d never gone inside Basilisk until a case brought me there. I remembered the night I first heard Sheyenne sing here, when she captivated the audience with a sultry rendition of “Spooky.” I was still alive then, and so was Sheyenne.
I’d been investigating illegal blood-bank sales at the nightclub, fresh packets that had “fallen off the refrigerated truck” on the way to the hospital. I was hired to get to the bottom of it by Harry Talbot, the disgruntled owner of a licensed blood bar, who believed the competing black-market sales were cutting into his business. When I caught Fletcher Knowles, Basilisk’s human bartender and manager, red-handed (so to speak), he was more annoyed than guilty. “Why get your panties in a wad about it, Chambeaux? I sell my stuff for almost the same price as Talbot does, but some customers prefer to be discreet. Would you rather they get back to basics and start feeding on people in dark alleys?”
Fletcher was balding, in his late thirties, with round John Lennon eyeglasses and a full goatee that he bleached very blond. He looked as if he should have been a barista rather than a nightclub manager. Fletcher got along perfectly well with unnaturals; he didn’t care about their species or the color of their skin (white, brown, or gray) or their fur—it was all business to him. Basilisk was one of the more successful nightlife spots in the Quarter, and he lined his pockets with extra income from under-the-table blood sales.
Through word on the street, Fletcher already knew that Talbot had hired me, but he didn’t see the situation as a problem. “Be reasonable. Nobody’s getting hurt.” He bought me a beer and told me to ponder long and hard about what I wanted to do, then made a halfhearted threat to have his goons beat me up if I didn’t cooperate. Since I was still alive back then, the threat was enough to give me pause.
And then, as I was sitting at the table in front of the stage, trying to figure out how to keep both sides of the feud happy and me undamaged, Sheyenne came out to sing.
She was riveting: her eyes, her beautiful face, her gorgeous figure, and her bravery. I couldn’t think of any other human who’d be willing to stand up and sing in front of a room full of stomach-turning, hungry, and potentially murderous unnaturals.
From the stage she hooked her eyes on me, clearly interested (maybe just because I was the only human customer in Basilisk that night). I bought her a drink during break. She sat down and talked with me.
Sheyenne was her stage name, she told me, derived from “shy Anne,” because she’d been nervous when she first auditioned. She started out as a cocktail waitress, then did a short stint as an exotic dancer, but decided that wasn’t for her. After working a few years in business and management, she had changed her mind and become a medical student, working her way through school, and she needed to earn money. I don’t know what compelled her to fill out an application at Basilisk, but she told me the pay was twice what she could earn in any normal nightclub, though the tips were generally awful.
I told her I admired her, and that wasn’t just a pickup line. I told her she was beautiful, and I meant that too. I came back to see her the next night, and the next. After hearing her sing, it seemed only right that I started calling her Spooky, and she asked if it was all right to call me Beaux.
Then I saw her outside of work, and we had dinner. One thing led to another, and after two weeks she invited me back to her apartment.
She was poisoned shortly thereafter, so we never really had a chance, although I like to imagine that our relationship could have grown into a lot more. Now that she’d come back as a ghost, she saw no point in continuing medical school—nobody wanted a ghost for a doctor. And not being able to touch her patients would definitely have been a drawback. I was damned glad to have her working for Chambeaux & Deyer….
Brondon Morris took me by surprise when he pulled up a chair and sat next to me at the table in front of the stage. “You’re following me, Mr. Chambeaux.”
I kept my composure, which is easy for a zombie to do. “I enjoy nightclub singing.”
“You were at the Goblin Tavern too.” He sounded more teasing than accusing.
“I believe I was on my second drink before you arrived. If I’m following you, then I’m going about it backward.”
“Ah, you’ve got me there,” he said with a grin.
I looked toward the still-dark stage. “My girlfriend used to perform here.”
“Ah, yes, that human singer. What was her name … Wyoming?”
“Sheyenne,” I said.
“Yes, a poor lost young woman. She sneaked one of my Zom-Be-Fresh samples from an undead cocktail waitress, but she broke out in a horrible rash from using it.” He laughed. “Then she got mad at me, even though I pointed out that necroceuticals are intended for unnaturals only, not for human use.” He seemed embarrassed. “I apologized profusely, and JLPN compensated for her pain and suffering. The company is very sensitive about their public image.”
“Tell that to all the bald vampires who used your shampoo.”
The comment clearly annoyed him, but he maintained his pat smile. “I see why you’re the private investigator and I’m just a salesman.” He set his case on the chair and opened it. “I really wish you’d try our products. They’re designed for undead men just like you.” He pulled out a bottle of Zom-Be-Fresh. “Nothing to be embarrassed about.”
“I keep myself clean, and I wear clean clothes.”
“Yes, but to some people you still have a—how do I say it?—a dead smell about you, the way very old people have a certain odor.”
“It’s natural,” I said, then realized the irony in my statement.
“Body odor is natural, but that doesn’t mean we have to put up with it.”
“Doesn’t bother me,” I said, then gave him a hard glance. “Why are you pushing it so hard, Brondon? You’ve got plenty of customers. What do you care about one more?”
“It’s a matter of pride, Mr. Chambeaux. I started out as JLPN’s research chemist, and I helped develop the whole line of necro-ceuticals, but the hard part is marketing. Even a brilliant idea will sit in a garage unless the public knows about it.
“I realized I’d come up with something remarkable for all unnatural customers, and I could see the need for it, so I decided to pound the streets of the Unnatural Quarter, knock on doors, get the word out. I sniffed out new customers, if you know what I mean. Over the years it’s been my mission to see that these lifestyle products are widely distributed among all the unnaturals.”
He seemed lost in his own story. “And because I was willing to do the legwork and gamble my reputation on this, Mr. Jekyll invested in me, gave me the financial resources. I knew that unnaturals would be skeptical, but I was sure I could win them over. That’s why I provide so many free samples. My service to humanity”—he grinned again—”in all its forms.”
“Thank you for being so inclusive,” I said sarcastically.
I saw an opening and wanted to ask him more about his work with Harvey Jekyll, especially that secret meeting six weeks ago, or Harvey’s furtive nocturnal trip to the dump, but then the piano player reached his crescendo, the stage lights blazed on, and the audience members began to applaud, whistle, and cheer. “Ivory!” A group of werewolves in the back howled.
With unexpected grace, an enormous well-endowed woman glided onto the stage, swaying, jiggling. She had ebony skin, fiery red eyes. Ivory’s grin was wide enough to show her long white fangs to good effect, when she curled her pointed tongue to lick her lips, relishing the adoration of the audience. She wrapped both hands around the shaft of the microphone, grasping it and sliding her face close to it, as if it were a porn movie prop. “Evening, boys.”
The werewolves howled even louder.
Ivory was a big mama with a big voice, a vamp in both senses of the word, and quite the diva. She advertised herself and her “services” in the Unusual Singles classifieds, as a BBV, or big-breasted vampire. I suppose there’s a customer base for that sort of thing.
The words purred out of Ivory’s throat and built in volume and power until she sang in a voice powerful enough to shatter glass. Maybe that’s the real reason why Basilisk has no mirrors.
Back when Sheyenne had first taken the stage as a young human waitress in an unnatural nightclub, she had ruffled Ivory’s feathers: The big vamp thought she was a star, while Sheyenne was just working her way through med school. But with her sincere delivery, Sheyenne’s waifish crooning stole the show. There was no love lost between the two.
Sheyenne was convinced that Ivory was the one who had slipped toadstool poison into her drink, just to get rid of the competition. Normally, I would have considered that too extreme, but a vampire doesn’t have the same standards about taking a life. I considered her to be a suspect, but the MO didn’t make any sense. If Sheyenne had had her throat ripped out, I might have considered the vamp singer a more likely perpetrator. Surreptitious poison just didn’t seem like Ivory’s style.
I listened to the big vamp’s first two numbers, then glanced to one side, surprised to see that Brondon Morris had taken his sample case up to chat with the bartender. I looked at the two of them, thinking hard.
I was killed only two blocks from this nightclub. Several people had heard the gunshot, but the shooter managed to run away without being seen. Fletcher Knowles himself was the one who had found my body. Convenient.
Sheyenne had worked here, and she’d been poisoned.
Could be a connection. I would definitely have to dig deeper.
From the stage, Ivory fixed me with her hot-ember eyes, one of those scary and seductive glamour gazes that can turn human victims into putty. Even I found it hard to resist, and parts of me began to stir. After all, I wasn’t entirely dead.
After her first set, the vamp singer bowed to resounding applause and told the audience she would be back after her break. Customers shuffled toward the stage, wanting to talk to her but too shy to speak. Ivory glided through the crowds of admirers and stepped directly up to me; she ignored her fans, much to their disappointment. Some glowered at me, and I could sense their jealousy. Most of them couldn’t understand why I wasn’t grinning like a schoolboy from the attention.
Under other circumstances, Ivory would never have noticed me, but when she noticed my brewing relationship with Sheyenne, she decided to get me for herself. But it hadn’t worked. With Sheyenne around, how could I look at anyone else?
“Hey, sugar. I haven’t seen you around in a while.” Ivory leaned closer, and her cleavage reminded me of a Venus flytrap about to swallow my head. She inhaled deeply. “You’re less warm-blooded now than before.”
I tapped my forehead where the mortician’s putty still covered the scar. “Got shot in the head.”
“Sorry to hear that, but I’m glad you came back to hear me sing.”
“I came back for a lot of reasons.”
She frowned. “Yeah, I heard about your poor little girlfriend. Never knew what you saw in that scrawny thing, when you could have had so much more.” She traced her hands from her rib cage to her waist, then her hips.
“Sheyenne and I were happy enough while it lasted,” I said.
Again, that mock sorrowful pout. “I heard she died, poor thing. I hope she’s doing better now?”
“Sheyenne’s just fine. And we’re still seeing each other.”
“Whenever you’re ready to move on, sugar, I can meet you back in my dressing room.”
“I wouldn’t want you to disappoint all these adoring fans.” I glanced at the crowd of men hovering around.
“Who says I don’t have enough to share?” she said. “Stay for the next set—we’ll talk afterward.”
Without saying a word to the other fans, Ivory returned to the stage, and the lounge lizard played her intro. I got up and left quietly. No need to make a long night seem longer.