Kiss Me Deadly Page 39

  Manny raised an eyebrow and crossed to the other side of the mammoth room. A study in gray Hollywood glamor, the gunmetal-colored silk gown draped on her slim figure like a cascade of water, and the short train was shirred elegantly. Her hair coiled about her lovely face in perfectly coiffed waves. She flipped open a carved wooden box, set atop a mirrored bureau, and pulled out a pale pink envelope and a slip of folded paper and retired to her writing desk where she jotted notes as they talked.

  “We’ve uncovered an issue,” she said, voice echoing across the expanse. She tapped the edge of the envelope into the palm of her hand. “A haunting, of course. But this one is marked by both its chronicity and audacity. Amie was sent to fill us in on the details, so I expect she’ll do that.”

  Manny wove her hands together and gazed across the temple of her index fingers.

  Velvet and Nick watched Amie as she rose and paced back and forth between the settee and the Station Agent’s kidney-shaped desk, weaving in between the columns of light cast by the gas lanterns, like a vampire would daylight.

  “The tremors started only a couple of weeks ago. A light rumbling soon gave way to more moderate shaking and the appearance of the inky shadows rushing into Vermillion like a dense fog,” Amie said.

  “You got yourself some shadowquakes.” Nick flopped into the armchair and pulled Velvet into his lap, hand resting gently on her stomach.

  Velvet snuggled in and yawned. “Obviously.”

  Amie stopped for a moment and glowered before Manny encouraged her to continue. “You must understand, we run a very tight ship in our district and hauntings have declined rapidly in the past quarter. So it comes as a surprise, but not nearly as much of a surprise as who we believe is causing the disturbance.”

  The girl paused dramatically, scanning their faces. Probably checking to make sure they were enthralled.

  Holy crap, Velvet thought. She’s totally full of herself.

  Normally, hauntings are a pretty simple fix. You can count on a shadowquake when there’s some sort of psychic meddling going on in the world of the living, but that’s not always the case. Velvet knew from experience that ghosts traveling through the cracks could create just as many, if not more, problems than any medium, fortune-teller, witch, or telephone psychic ever could. But, you merely had to scare humans badly enough to put a stop to their shenanigans—a well-placed undertaker and a corpse will suffice, on that count—or just snare the ghost and bring it back to the City of the Dead for a proper comeuppance. Who in the business didn’t know that? Velvet wasn’t sure how they did things in Vermillion, but the Latin Quarter had a massive cellar full of ghosts who were absolutely, positively sorry for what they’d done.

  “So who is it?” Velvet asked, taking the bait.

  “Our undertaker, Abner Conroy.”

  It was as though the news stripped the room of oxygen, of sound. Velvet glanced at Nick. His mouth hung open, horrified at the possibility that his counterpart in Vermillion would perpetrate such an offense. Though they were both adept at possessing bodies, Nick’s expertise was in raising the dead, not burying them as his job title implied. They didn’t make the rules, any more than they picked their occupations. If they had, Velvet would have christened Nick ‘The Zombie Guy,’ which is way more appropriate. But that’s neither here nor there.

  “How do you know?” Nick snapped.

  “We’ve long suspected Abner.” Amie tossed a hand flippantly. “Well, for the past two weeks, anyway. He was never quiet about his desire to join the revolution, so we were surprised he didn’t vacate Purgatory during that exodus with the rest of the criminals. Now he’s gone missing. It’s been two weeks and the shadowquakes have increased. So what do you think? Who else could it be?”

  Velvet pushed herself off Nick’s lap, bristled the crinoline of her skirt and straightened the stocking seam rising from her combat boots. “You’re sure he hasn’t moved on to another of Purgatory’s boroughs? You’ve gone in? You’ve searched?”

  “Of course, we’ve searched,” the girl spat. “We’re no amateurs...” She struggled for a word.“...Miss.”

  Manny’s eyes narrowed in Velvet’s direction. She took it as a cue to ease the tensions building since their introduction to the strange and possibly schizophrenic girl. The last thing Velvet wanted to do was get on the Station Agent’s bad side. Manny had nearly as bad a temper as Velvet’s.

  “Of course not, Amie. I only meant to cover the bases,” Velvet smiled. Amie straightened and gave a little nod of acquiescence. “Okay.”

  “So what is it your team needs from us?” Velvet asked.

  “Well, I’m not convinced we need you,” Amie said huffily. “But our Station Agent is of a different mind about all this, and we are rather busy, just now.”

  “What does your Station Agent want, then?” Nick sat forward on the chair, elbows resting on his knees and head cocked to the side. He had that easy comfort about him that Velvet never quite got a handle on, as though he’d never be out of place anywhere ... even in death. Plus he was smokin’ hot. She never turned down a chance to ogle him, profusely.

  “He wants you to go in and search, though there’s really no need. I’ve personally exhausted every trail.” Amie’s voice was condescending and haughty, two words Velvet imagined were carved into the girl’s headstone.

  Actually, she was kind of sure of it.

  Velvet sneered at her.

  Amie glowered back.

  “Velvet and her team are the best we have,” Manny said, breaking the tension. She folded the stationery and slipped the paper into the envelope. “See that this gets to Howard Barker at the Temple of the Nomadic Star.”

  Velvet gripped the corner of the envelope and tugged but Manny didn’t let go. She glanced up. The Station Agent had a serious look gracing her normally placid face.

  “And don’t open it please.”

  “What? Of course, I wouldn’t.” Velvet chuckled uncomfortably and glanced at Nick, who shrugged in silent judgment. “Really? You have to ask?” She turned the envelope over between her fingers, examining Manny’s luxuriant cursive. Letters are so romantic, she thought and shot a suspicious glance in the Station Agent’s direction.

  The woman cocked her brow, daring Velvet to ask.

  “Now, Amie will accompany you on the journey to Vermillion. She’s to be your guide. I’m sure that won’t be a problem.”

  “Oh no, not at all,” Velvet said. But what she meant was:

  Huge problem. Ginormous problem.

  ***

  The next morning came terribly early.

  Velvet set her bags on the dark platform and sneered at the commotion coming up the ramp. Amie had somehow coerced Nick into carrying her luggage—the biggest trunk in the world. Probably via a little helpless woman routine that made Velvet want to throw up nerve endings in a nice wet sparking pile ... preferably all over Amie.

  Nick was, of course, polite about it, but underneath, Velvet searched for a clue that he was seething with irritation, as she was.

  He’d better be, she thought.

  “Thank you sooo much,” Amie said, her face tortured into what was supposed to be a pretty smile but looked like constipation, as far as Velvet was concerned. “I don’t know what I’d have done, if I didn’t have a strong man to help. I suppose it should teach me to pack lighter, huh?”

  Those things at the ends of Velvet’s arms were called fists, and she was pumping them furiously and debating whether to hammer them into the girl’s face. It seemed like the only logical response. Stereotype much?

  Nick put the epic leather trunk down next to his girlfriend’s carpetbag. Velvet reached down and made sure there was a gap between the two, even just an inch—you never could tell where the dreaded asshole virus would strike next, so precautions are often necessary.

  “Good morning, Amie.” Velvet choked the words from her vocal chords. What she’d wanted to say was: Are you wearing skin-colored headphones? Because those ears are massive! Dam
n.

  And at least that would have been the truth. With ears as large as Amie’s, you don’t wear your hair back. It’s just not okay. Ever.

  “Ah.” The girl’s face brightened dramatically when she saw Velvet. “You look so pretty today, with your hair up like that.”

  Yes, Velvet thought, I have normal, human-sized ears. I can wear it like this.

  Amie reached up and stroked a length of dreadlock hanging from the pile atop Velvet’s head. Velvet resisted the urge to jerk away and simply eked out a curt smile.

  Nick ran up next to them, his blond hair flopping about on his forehead and a grin plastered across his face that she hoped wasn’t genuine, though she suspected actually was. It was her curse to be in love with someone so nice. And the fact that he was legitimately hot—and not just average, as all her living boyfriends had been—filled her with two things: pride and proprietary jealousy.

  Her eyes ricocheted off Nick’s brilliant smile and back toward the girl who was eying not Nick, as she’d suspected, but ... her. Amie was watching her in an odd, assessing way.

  “How long did you say this trip would take?” Velvet asked.

  “No more than a day. So, plenty of time for us to get to know each other. Won’t that be great?”

  “Awesome,” Velvet said sarcastically.

  Nick on the other hand was excited. “Can’t wait. It gets so boring hanging out in the Latin Quarter. Same old ashen souls wandering the streets every day. ‘Hello, how are you?’ ‘Fine and you?’ Ugh. Vermillion, though. Now that sounds exotic to me. Like Chinatown or something, but with less hobos.”

  “Mmm. Sweet and sour,” Velvet said. “Remember that?”

  Of course he did. Everyone in the entire City of the Dead could get in on that conversation as though someone had wheeled up a watercooler or screamed “gossip!” in a crowded cafeteria.

  “The barbecue pork with hot mustard was my favorite.” Nick’s eyes rolled into the back of his head as he searched for the pleasurable memory.

  “Fried chicken feet at Uncle’s Dim Sum.” Amie added, trying to join in.

  Velvet startled, her mouth agape. “Chicken’s feet?”

  “Oh yeah, they are delicious ... and so crunchy. You could just suck the skin right off the bone...”

  The girl continued to wax nostalgic about her disturbing meal, while Velvet glanced at Nick, happy to see that his face was a sour as hers. Uncle’s Dim Sum must have been a mental institution. Maybe Amie just thought it was a Chinese restaurant. She seemed easily confused.

  Nick leaned over to Velvet and whispered, “Um ... no. That’s so not delicious.”

  Thank you, Velvet thought. Chicken’s feet are for one thing, so that chickens can walk around a barnyard. What’s next, a big plate of fried beaks? Gross.

  She glanced back at Amie and noticed that, at some point during the exchange, she’d stopped talking about gross things that weren’t actually food and was staring directly at the two of them. Velvet shuffled her feet uncomfortably.

  “That’s probably something you have to be brought up eating. It just kind of sounds...” Nick searched for the word. “Different. To us. You know?”

  Amie’s face softened, and she nodded, agreeing. “Sure.”

  Thankfully, the funicular creaked into the station at that moment. A rickety wooden car with several doors down each side, each fitted with fringed café curtains and brass handles, jerked and heaved as it came to a stop before them. The doors opened and a fresh crop of souls, not an hour between their death and arrival in Purgatory, flooded out onto the platform. They were truly strangers. As strange as they come, ash spread on their skin in a sloppy amateurish way and the glow of lingering nerves beaming from patches of cosmetically neglected flesh. Souls who’ve been around know to ash generously. The glow can be a real eyesore.

  Suffice it to say, they looked a mess.

  And for once, Velvet was glad she wasn’t responsible for their education.

  She glanced at Nick, and thought of their first meeting, months ago, in that gothed-out storefront, amidst tons of black candles, stuffed ravens, and one unscrupulous fortune-teller named Madame Despot who was in possession of an imprisoned soul—a sixteen-year-old sporto guy, the kind Velvet wouldn’t ever have even talked to had she been alive. Nick. Velvet and her team had been sent to free him and arrest the Madame.

  At the time, Velvet was in the body of a particularly crotchety-looking nurse in her mid-fifties, so it was probably a tad inappropriate to be crushing on the unnervingly hot spirit that spilled out of Despot’s shattered crystal ball. It’s not that she was being pervy, exactly, it’s that she wasn’t in her seventeen-year-old ghost form. But that didn’t stop Velvet from eyeing Nick greedily. Even balled up in a fetal position, sandy hair tussled and blue eyes drilling into her brain like lasers, Nick was mesmerizing. And he’d taken to the afterlife so quickly, with aplomb even.

  New souls sort of shuffled and moped. Nick stood proud, broad shoulders erect, like he were still alive, and in many ways, of course, he was. More alive than anyone she’d ever known. She’d saved him that day, and later he’d returned the favor. She guessed they’d saved each other.

  He tossed their bags on the rack atop the funicular and opened the door for the two young women.

  “Such a gentleman,” Amie said.

  There was something in both the words and the tone that irritated Velvet. Though at that moment, nothing the girl said would have filled her with a warm happy feeling.

  Velvet slipped into the funicular and sat back on the long bench, making sure she was between Nick and Amie—there’d be no casual brushing of hands or flirting on her watch.

  Not. A. Chance.

  The funicular, really no more than a low-tech train pulled along on a single rail, ambled a path through the boroughs, districts, and shantytowns of Purgatory. The Latin Quarter, where they lived, gave way to Little Cairo with its flapping awnings and wide-open markets. In the real Cairo, there’d have been the rich scent of spices piled high in metal bowls, instead of the fragrance-free pigments sold in the City of the Dead. Fantastically colored wool carpets were replaced by stacks of newsprint as tall as the biggest men, some teetering, threatening to fall on the women underneath, rolling them into tubes for the dusty souls to carry home.

  Little Cairo spilled into Hipstertown, which despite its name was more longhaired-hippie-types and less expensive-cocktail-bars-with- sidewalk-verandas-and- tons-of-chain-smokers. Though, Velvet had heard that the Salons there were quite risqué. Only the most irreverent souls ended up settling in Hipstertown. She watched its denizens with speculative intent as the gears and pulleys cranked underneath the car. It shuddered forward past the smirking souls in tight pants and Hello Kitty backpacks, stolen and brought across the gap by their resident Collector, Booda Khan.

  “Are you watching for Booda?” Nick asked, leaning toward Velvet. His foot was propped on the bench ahead of them casually, his ankle glowing from the break between his cuff and the wingtip shoes he wore, sockless.

  She shrugged, “Of course. He’s a legend.” Velvet glanced at Amie who was, likewise, eying the bit of flesh Nick was selling.

  “Like the religious guy?” the girl asked. Making deliberate eye contact with Velvet, or so she presumed, so as not to eyeball Velvet’s boyfriend any longer than would seem unusual or slutty.

  “He’s only the coolest operator in Collections today,” Velvet said. “How can you not have heard of him?”

  The girl shrugged. Her eyes traveled down the length of Velvet’s body, lighting on the silver buckle of her pants. “That’s pretty.”