by Vicky Loebel
I backed away.
“Hey,” Ruth called from the coal room.
“I’m ruined. Finished!” Beau snarled. “Trapped mixing cocktails inside this rotting corpse, thanks to you.”
“You’re not rotting. At least, I don’t think so. Not yet!”
“My god. I must look ghastly.” Beau dropped his fist and grabbed the oil lamp off the workbench, carrying it to a gleaming copper still. “Quick!” He stared intently at his reflection. “Fetch some pomade!”
“You look perfect. That was incredible the way you charmed Priscilla.”
“I’m not perfect.” He shrugged his dinner jacket straight. “I’m a zombie, you little nit. And you and I are not on speaking terms.”
“Hey,” Ruth called again. “There’s stuff back here you ought to see.”
“I’m so sorry.” I grabbed Beau’s sleeve. “I tried to save you. I didn’t mean to turn you into a zombie. I tried!”
Dark eyebrows lifted in surprise. “You turned me into a zombie?”
“A demon tricked me. I’ll make it up to you after the contest. After we teach Ruthie to dance.”
“Not me, sister.” He spit into his palms and swept his hands back through his hair. “I’ve been watching that lady cripple dance partners all morning.”
“But I need help. We’re both in this together. If things go wrong….” Hans would claim ten pints of Woodsen blood. I’d probably survive, thanks to the hellfire left from last night. But if I didn’t, that would be bad for Beau. “Well, I don’t know.” I shuddered. “You might get hurt.”
“That won’t happen,” Beau stated. “Because I won’t be here.”
“Did I mention,” Ruth called, “you ought to come back and take a look?”
“Good bye.” Beau strode away.
I chased him to the secret door. “You can’t leave me.”
“Farewell, Clara.” He turned and took me in his arms.
My insides melted. “Oh.”
“We shall not meet again,” Beau murmured. “Remember, oh Voodoo Queen, what might have been.” His lips touched mine.
Something inside boiled up and burned my skin. Until that instant, I’d never truly lived. My heart, my body, cried out for Beau, were his more thoroughly than they’d ever been my own. I’d have died then and there to bring him back to life.
Beau tipped me sideways. We kissed.
I swooned.
Next thing I knew, my zombie minion was halfway out the door.
“Oh, no! It isn’t safe!” I scrambled after him. “Oh, won’t you listen?”
“That’s showbiz, kid.” Beau kissed his fingertips. “So long!”
“No, wait!” I couldn’t let him go. “Stop right now! That’s an order!”
Beau laughed. And then he realized he couldn’t move.
“You see,” I babbled. “Zombies belong. That’s how it works. Zombies, genies, most dead creatures except demons have to belong to someone, and Hans gave you to me.”
He stared, frozen. Bitter resentment crept into his gaze. In one fell swoop, my heart shriveled and died. The full horror, the full cruelty of Hans-the-demon’s trick grew clear. Beau would hate me forever for making him my slave.
“You can move now,” I said sadly. My body ached with shame. I wanted nothing more than to curl up in a ball and cry. But Beau was mine. For both our sakes, I had to keep my head. “Don’t try to leave again. Stay in this building. That’s my command.”
“I see.” Beau squared his shoulders, the picture of injured pride.
“Please don’t be angry,” I begged. “I’ll work this out. I’m not sure how, but Bernie and I will think of something. We always do. Give me a chance.”
His face thawed slightly.
“Try to be happy.” I grasped his hand. “I wish I’d saved you. This isn’t perfect, I know.”
“It’s awful. The way I felt before.” Beau squeezed my fingers. “Not speaking. Barely feeling at all. Cut off and hungry. I’d rather die.”
“Not any more you wouldn’t.” Ruth stood beside us. “A zombie’s soul is bound to its dead body. When your corpse is destroyed, your soul gets stuck wherever the flesh rots apart. Trust me, that’s worse.”
“It won’t happen.” I hugged him. “We’re partners. We won’t let it. I won’t!”
“Partners.” Beau turned his face away.
“Meanwhile,” Ruth clamped one hand on each of our shoulders. “I wasn’t kidding. You need to see this. Now.”
We followed Ruth to the coal room. Sunlight slashed through the open chute, dazzling my eyes.
A truck engine rumbled outside.
I blinked. Mr. Vargas’ once tidy coal room was a disaster, with empty liquor crates, loose straw, and stray bottles scattered around. A strange ladder was propped against the wall under the chute.
“Someone’s been here.” I couldn’t believe it. No one in Falstaff was dumb enough to steal Priscilla’s booze. “We’ve been robbed. The liquor’s gone!”
Beau found an open bottle and took a swig. “Want some, partner?” He held it out.
I shook my head.
“I tried to tell you,” Ruth said. “And something else is gone, too. Someone.” She pointed to the brick wall separating the empty coal storage area from the furnace. “That’s where I left your janitor.”
“Mr. Vargas?” I gasped. “You left him here?”
“Partners.” Beau drained the bottle and searched a crate for more. “Like Echo and Narcissus.”
“But where’d he go?” I asked. “The janitor couldn’t get up and walk away.”
“Or maybe he could.” Ruth growled and a soft light appeared. Dried smears of blood trailed from the brick wall, across the floor, up the ladder, and out the chute. “Considering he’d just been eaten by a zombie.”
“Partners.” Beau found more brandy and gulped it down. “Like Fatty Arbuckle and Virginia Rappe.”
Outside, a motor roared. A set of gears clashed loudly.
I climbed the ladder and tried to peer up through the coal chute but wasn’t tall enough to see outside. “Zombies are not contagious! They’re made with binding spells.” I’d checked this morning in The Girl’s Guide to Demons. “Aren’t they?”
“Usually.” Ruth shrugged. “But then, zombies are not usually turned loose to eat the staff.”
Beau drained his third bottle of brandy. “Partners like Claire Adams and fucking Rin Tin Tin.” He sank down on a crate.
“Please, Beau, enough.” I climbed back down. “Oh, this is awful! We need to find Mr. Vargas!”
“Woof, woof.” Beau swayed. “Your loyal pooch will search in every well.”
Tires crunched outside. There was a long, shrill shriek of metal.
“I’d better see what’s going on.” Ruth started up the ladder.
“No! Wait!” I grabbed her skirt. “You swear you didn’t hide him? It’s not a genie trick?”
“I haven’t seen or touched your janitor since we left him here,” Ruth said. “I swear.” She climbed upward and pushed her head out through the chute.
“No corpses,” Ruth called. “But…um…ohhh mmmm.” Her voice sank to a growl.
“What is it?” I asked. “Is Bernie there? Where’s Mr. Vargas? What’s going on?”
“Poultry!” Ruth shuddered. Her dress transformed into dense, spotted fur. “An alley full.” She snarled. Powerful haunches leapt up the ladder and scrambled through the chute. Her long tail swished and disappeared.
A chicken burst into the basement and hit the ceiling. Feathers rained down.
“You know.” Beau slid drunkenly off of his crate onto the floor. The chicken landed in his lap. “This place is going to the dogs.”
“Oh, Beau!” I yanked my hair in aggravation. “Can’t you be helpful?”
The zombie hiccupped. Ruth’s magic light went out.
A long, low groan suffused the air.
“What’s that?” I froze.
It wasn’t Beau. The groan sounded agai
n. It seemed to be back by the furnace, behind the brick dividing wall.
“M-Mr. Vargas?” I hated that furnace. Hated its dark, dusty, octopus arms.
“Khlaaah.” The groan changed to a name. “Khlaarah.”
Goosebumps popped up along my arms. Where was my cousin when I needed him?
“C’mon!” I shook Beau’s shoulder. “Get up. We’ve got to look.”
Beau staggered upright. “Your wish, oh Voodoo Queen, is my command.” He draped one arm, and most his weight, across my shoulders, letting his breath, thick with brandy, flow over my face.
“Khlaarraaah.”
I clutched my half-full vial of hellfire and marched with Beau around the brick dividing wall to where the furnace perched like an upside-down spider, its fat legs bent and twisting into ducts.
Someone was slumped across the furnace in the shadows. A man.
I blinked.
A man wearing a pale pink suit whose perfect grooming and round glasses—I knew—went with kindly, gentle intelligence. George Umbridge, Junior, Luella’s older brother.
“Khlara.” George’s skin, normally the tone of warm mahogany, was pale as ash. His right wrist had a ragged, shallow gash. “Khlaaaa—”
“What happened?” I squatted and caught the ginger stink of Jacques cocktails. A lot of Jacques! But that was crazy. George Junior was a medical student, a teetotaler, a soft-hearted advocate of vitamins and soap.
“Khlara.” The man lunged furiously, mouth snapping open and shut.
Beau intercepted him as I scrambled backward, gagging on the smell of booze.
“Woof, woof,” my zombie drawled sarcastically. “Don’t hurt my mistress. Bark. Bark.”
George stiffened. His arms and legs twitched violently.
“Oh dear.” I glanced from Beau and George up to the coal chute. “Oh, dear, what do we do?”
Outside, a child’s shrill voice began to scream.
VII: Under the Chicken Tree
Faint heart never won fair treatment.
—The Boy’s Book of Boggarts
Bernard:
IF YOU’VE BEEN READING closely, you may have formed the impression I do not always approve of young Clara’s behavior. Summoning a demon, for example, is nothing an affectionate cousin could recommend, although—growing up, as she did, in a family stocked to the gills with warlocks—it was pretty much bound to happen sooner or later.
Then there was the matter of hellfire, stolen from Priscilla’s lab. It would have to be repaid, which meant another deal with Hans in the near future…assuming Clara didn’t die in the even nearer future from forfeiting ten pints of Woodsen blood.
Such sober reflections occupied my thoughts during the short walk from the Ninepin Fellowship to my own modest stone-decorated bungalow, and you may rest assured a fair number of Benjamin teeth were ground together en route.
Nevertheless, the day was sunny. July breezes stirred the air. Robins twittered merrily on high, and a certain inner wisdom whispered that Clara could have done worse than start her supernatural career in an altruistic attempt to relieve Beau Beauregard’s suffering.
The result of all this physical and mental exercise was that by the time I rolled my red Nash touring sedan out of its garage, the cheerful Benjamin temperament was largely restored. Yes, we had a corpse on our hands—two, counting Beau—and no, I hadn’t missed the fact my blood was as much Woodsen as Clara’s, the only difference being that my mother had defied family tradition by taking her husband’s name and bearing a son.
Against these heavy concerns was weighed the fact that Blindour’s Bakery, halfway between my own door and the coven, discounts their wares each day precisely at noon. I made my way along streets cluttered with party-goers, purchased two cheese danish for the price of one, and was happily anticipating my first bite as I motored the Nash into the sloping gravel alley behind the Falstaff Ninepin Fellowship building.
Oddly, a Ford delivery van was blocking the coven.
Even more oddly, two brawny strangers were loading crates into the van.
I parked the Nash three doors uphill, slipped out to chock the wheels, and ducked around the wood and mesh chicken coop behind Aimsley’s Dry Goods.
Keeping one eye on the hens—no redhead is ever safe near poultry—I cast the other below. Someone was passing brandy bottles up through the coal chute and into the arms of two men who were, in turn, packing the bottles in crates and loading crates into the van.
In short, the Fellowship was being burgled. I wondered if this was some mad scheme of Clara’s. Had she decided to sell Priscilla’s liquor after all? Bribed someone to dispose of Mr. Vargas’ body?
The flow of brandy halted. The men gathered, talking, at the coal chute. My stomach rumbled. I was just about to fetch the cheese danish out of my car and circle around through the dry goods building to check with Clara when the delivery van popped open and, creaking heavily, disgorged Stoneface Gibraltar.
Well, well.
The gangster joined his men. “Whaddaya mean, he attacked you?”
A man’s head and shoulders emerged from the coal chute. “Lemme out!” His face was bloody. “Ya gotta lemme out!”
Stoneface pushed him down. “Go get him.”
The head popped out again. “I ain’t kidding.” The man scrambled desperately. “I ain’t going back!”
“What’s happening?” a woman asked from the delivery van.
Stoneface lifted the bleeding man out of the coal chute. The fellow clutched his cheek and began sobbing drunkenly against the van.
“Okay, that’s it.” The gangster made a slicing gesture. “We’re done. Pack up.”
The passenger door opened. A pair of shapely rolled-stockinged legs descended onto the running board. They were followed, to my surprise, by the even shapelier person of young Luella Umbridge. Black hair, lustrous brown skin, enormous eyes containing—I knew—mysterious flecks of green, she looked stunning, as usual, in a broad-belted orange and yellow geometric print and matching cloche hat.
“What’s happening?” she asked again.
The basement man stopped crying. He raised both arms, flailed wildly, and then slid straight-legged down the side of the van to the ground.
Luella bent over him. “What’s going on? Where’s George?” She turned to Stoneface and they began a low debate.
Luella Umbridge. That changed things, changed them a lot.
Luella and my cousin had a pact, a girlish bargain, sealed years ago, granting Luella all the liquor she ever wanted and promising Clara unlimited funerals in return. A girlish bargain, but no less binding. Ghosts might be insignificant, compared to demons, but the Umbridges were every bit as serious as the Woodsens when it came to keeping vows.
If Luella was taking liquor from the coven, that made this a prank instead of a robbery. Something the girls would have to work out on their own.
My car door thumped. Gravel scattered as a small, wretched creature approached my place of concealment. It had bare feet, ill-fitting overalls, and an expensive, oversized panama hat with an engraved PRESS card bearing the name of William Randolph Hearst.
“Hi, Bernie,” one of the Aimsley horde—Grover—chirped cheerfully.
Luella and Stoneface stopped arguing and glanced my way.
“Someone” —the boy held up a cheese danish— “left this in your car.”
There were fifteen Dry-Goods Aimsleys as of the last census, most of them kids. This particular accident of conception sometimes worked retrieving balls in the Fellowship’s ninepin bowling alley.
“You can place a missing pastry notice in the Aimsley Examiner,” Grover informed me, “for the insubnificant price of one small penny.”
“Beat it!” I doffed my cap and edged deeper into the shadowed space between the chicken coop and the Aimsleys’ back steps.
Down by the van, the man who’d come out of the basement lay thrashing and foaming at the mouth. As I watched, one of the thugs grasped him around the chest and t
hen yelped in outrage as he was bitten on the wrist. The other thug delivered a roundhouse punch that ended the biter’s thrashing.
“In that case,” Grover asked, stuffing the danish under one armpit and flipping open his pad, “would you like to deform our readership about events?”
“We’re not leaving,” Luella told Stoneface. “We are not going anywhere without my brother.”
The gangster leaned close and spoke into her ear.
Luella slapped him.
“I’m busy,” I told Grover. “Go away.”
Stoneface picked up Luella by the waist and stuffed her, bodily, into the van. He walked around to the driver’s side and put one foot on the running board.
“For instance,” Grover piped shrilly, “who’s flavored to win your dance contest? Did someone biff Beau Beauregard on the bean? Informed mimes want to know.”
“Ow!” Something sharp pecked my scalp. “Ouch!” I ducked. “Ow!” A hen, perched on a nesting box, stretching its villainous neck through the wires.
Stoneface glanced up the alley. He spoke to Luella and then slid a pair of brass knuckles onto one hand. Sunlight glinted off of spikes in the steel rings.
Time for yours truly to make tracks. Unfortunately, there was a pint-sized cub reporter blocking my way.
“Your mother’s calling,” I fibbed.
“Is there any truth to the murmur,” the boy asked brightly, “that your cousin Priscilla’s a witch?”
Stoneface began lumbering up the hill.
I fished for change in my pocket. “I’ll give you a nickel for the danish if you’ll go back inside.”
Grover frowned. “It’s worth a dime.”
“Two nickels.” Stoneface was thirty feet away. “No, wait. Here, take it all.” I dropped coins into his grubby hand. “And keep the danish.”
“Are you trying to imbibe the press?”
“It’s a present.” I gave the boy a shove. “Go someplace else and eat it. Make yourself sick.”
“Say.” Young Grover planted his feet. “Is this thing poison?”
I’d like the record here to clearly state that I did not throttle, mutilate, or otherwise slaughter any person or persons of half my height.
“It’s deadly poison,” I assured him. “The most horrific substance known to man. Go feed it to your little brothers and sisters.”