The Lunatic Cafe

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  "Zerbrowski didn't answer his first page. He lives in St. Peters. He'll have to come right by you. He can pick you up."

  "Is that okay with him?"

  "It will be," Dolph said.

  Great. Trapped in a car with Zerbrowski. "Fine, I'll be dressed and waiting."

  "Dressed?"

  "Don't even start, Dolph."

  "Touchy, very touchy."

  "Stop it."

  He laughed. It was good to hear him laugh. It meant not many people had died this time. Dolph didn't laugh much during serial-killer cases.

  He hung up. So did I.

  "You have to go out?" Richard asked.

  "Yeah."

  "Do you feel well enough to go?"

  "Yes."

  "Anita..."

  I leaned my head against the wall and closed my eyes. "Don't, Richard. I'm going."

  "No debate allowed?"

  "No debate," I said. I opened my eyes and looked at him.

  He was staring down at me, arms crossed.

  "What?" I said.

  He shook his head. "If I told you that I was going to do something, no debate, you'd be mad."

  "No, I wouldn't."

  "Anita." He said my name the way my father used to say it.

  "I wouldn't, not if your reasons were valid."

  "Anita, you'd be pissed, and you know it."

  I wanted to deny it but couldn't. "All right, you're right. I wouldn't like it." I stared up at him. I was going to have to give him reasons why I was going to go out and do my job. It wasn't a pretty sight.

  I stood. I wanted to say I didn't have to explain myself to anyone, but if I meant this marriage thing, it wasn't true anymore. I didn't like that much. His being a werewolf was not the only hurdle to domestic bliss.

  "This is police business, Richard. People die when I don't do my job."

  "I thought your job was raising zombies and executing vampires."

  "You sound like Bert."

  "You've told me enough about Bert that I know that is an insult."

  "If you don't want to be compared, then stop saying one of his favorite things." I walked past him towards the bedroom. "I've got to get dressed."

  He followed me. "I know that helping the police is very important to you."

  I turned on him. "I don't just help the police, Richard. The spook squad is just over two years old. The cops on it didn't know shit about preternatural creatures. It was a garbage detail. Do something to piss off your superiors and you get transferred."

  "The newspapers and TV said it was an independent task force like the major task force. That's an honor."

  "Oh, yeah, right. The squad gets almost no extra funding. No special training in preternatural creatures or events. Dolph, Sergeant Storr, saw me in the paper and contacted Bert. There was no training in preternatural crime for law officers in this country. Dolph thought I could be an adviser."

  "You're a heck of a lot more than an adviser."

  "Yes, I am." I could have told him that earlier in the summer Dolph had tried not calling me in right away. It had seemed like a clear-cut case of ghouls in a cemetery getting a little ambitious and attacking a necking couple. Ghouls were cowards and didn't attack able-bodied people, but exceptions to the rule and all that. By the time Dolph called me in, six people were dead. It hadn't been ghouls. So lately Dolph had started calling me at the beginning before things got too messy. Sometimes I could diagnose a problem before it got out of hand.

  But I couldn't tell Richard that. There might have been a lower kill count if I'd been called in this summer, but that was no one's business but Dolph's and mine. We'd spoken of it only once, and that was enough. Richard was a civvie, werewolf or not. It wasn't any of his business.

  "Look, I don't know if I can explain this so you'll understand, but I have to go. It may head off a larger problem. It may keep me from having to go to a murder scene later on. Can you understand that?"

  He looked perplexed, but what came out of his mouth wasn't. "Not really, but maybe I don't have to. Maybe seeing it's important to you is enough."

  I let out a deep breath. "Great. Now I've got to get ready. Zerbrowski will be here any time. He's the detective giving me a ride."

  Richard just nodded. Wise of him.

  I went into the bedroom and closed the door. Gratefully. Would this be a regular occurrence if we married? Would I be forever explaining myself? God, I hoped not.

  Another pair of black jeans, a red sweater with a cowl neck, so soft and fuzzy that it made me feel better just to wear it. The Browning's shoulder holster looked very dark and dramatic against the crimson of the sweater. The red sweater also brought out the raw-meat color of the scrapes on my face. I might have changed it, but the doorbell rang.

  Zerbrowski. Richard was answering the door while I stared at myself in the mirror. That thought alone was enough. I went for the door.

  Zerbrowski was standing just inside the door, hands in the pockets of his overcoat. His curly black hair with its touches of grey was freshly cut. There was even hair-goop in it. Zerbrowski was usually lucky if he remembered to comb his hair. The suit that showed from his open coat was black and formal. His tie was tasteful and neatly knotted. I glanced down, and yes indeed, his shoes were shined. I'd never seen him when he didn't have food stains on him somewhere.

  "Where were you all dressed up?" I asked.

  "Where were you all undressed?" he asked. He smiled when he said it.

  I felt heat rush up my face and hated it a lot. I hadn't done anything worth blushing for. "Fine, let's go." I grabbed my trench coat from the back of the couch and touched dried blood. Shit.

  "I've got to get a clean coat. I'll be right back."

  "I'll just talk to Mr. Zeeman here," Zerbrowski said.

  I was afraid of that, but I went for my leather jacket anyway. If we ended up engaged, Richard would have to meet Zerbrowski sooner or later. Later would have been my preference.

  "What do you do for a living, Mr. Zeeman?"

  "I'm a schoolteacher."

  "Oh, really."

  I lost the conversation then. I grabbed the jacket from the closet and walked back out. They were chatting along like old buddies.

  "Yes, Anita is our preternatural expert. Wouldn't know what to do without her."

  "I'm ready. Let's go." I walked past them and opened the door. I held the door for Zerbrowski.

  He smiled at me. "How long have you two been dating?"

  Richard looked at me. He was pretty good at picking up when I wasn't comfortable. He was going to let me answer the question. Good of him. Too good. If he would only be completely unreasonable and give me an excuse to say no. This isn't worth it. But damn if he didn't work really hard at keeping me happy. Not an easy task.

  "Since November," I said.

  "Two months, not bad. Katie and I were engaged two months after our first date." His eyes sparkled, his grin was mocking. He was pulling my leg, he didn't know it was coming off in his hands.

  Richard looked at me. The look was long and serious. "Two months isn't very long, really."

  He'd given me an out. I didn't deserve him.

  "Long enough if it's the right one," Zerbrowski said.

  I tried to get Zerbrowski through the door. He was grinning. He had no intention of being hurried. My only hope was for Dolph to page him again. That'd light a fire under his butt.

  Dolph didn't call. Zerbrowski grinned at me. Richard looked at me. His big brown eyes were deep and wounded. I wanted to take his face in my hands and wipe that hurt from his eyes. Oh, hell.

  He was the right one--probably. "I've got to go."

  "I know," he said.

  I glanced at Zerbrowski. He was grinning at us, enjoying the show.

  Was I supposed to kiss him good-bye? We weren't engaged anymore. Quickest engagement in history. But we were still dating. I still loved him. That deserved a kiss if nothing else.

  I grabbed the front of his sweater and pulled him down to me. H
e looked surprised. "You don't have to do this for show," he whispered.

  "Shut up and kiss me."

  That earned me a smile. Every kiss was still a pleasant shock. No one's lips were this soft. No one else tasted this good.

  His hair fell forward and I grabbed a handful of it, pressing his face to mine. His hands slid around my back, underneath the leather jacket, hands kneading the sweater.

  I pushed away from him, breathless. I didn't want to go now. With him staying overnight maybe it was a good thing I had to leave for a while. I meant it about no premarital sex, even if he hadn't been a lycanthrope, but the flesh was more than willing. I wasn't sure the spirit was up to the fight.

  The look in Richard's eyes was drowning deep and worth anything in the world. I tried to hide a rather sappy smile but knew it was too late. I knew I would pay for this in the car with Zerbrowski. I would never hear the end of it. Staring up into Richard's face, I didn't care. We'd work out everything, eventually. Surely to God we could work it out.

  "Wait 'til I tell Dolph we were late because you were smooching with some guy."

  I didn't rise to bait. "I may not be home for hours. You might want to go home instead of waiting here."

  "I drove your Jeep here, remember? I don't have a ride home."

  Oh. "Fine, I'll be back when I can."

  He nodded. "I'll be here."

  I walked out into the hallway, not smiling anymore. I wasn't sure how I felt about coming home to Richard. How was I ever going to come to a real decision if he kept hanging around, making my hormones run amok?

  Zerbrowski chuckled. "Blake, I have seen everything now. The heap-big vampire slayer in luuv."

  I shook my head. "I don't suppose it would help to ask you to keep this to yourself?"

  He grinned. "Makes the teasing more fun."

  "Damn you, Zerbrowski."

  "Loverboy seemed sort of tense, so I didn't say anything before, but now that we're alone, what the hell happened to you? You look like someone took a meat cleaver to your face."

  Actually, I didn't. I'd seen that done once and it was a lot messier. "Long story. You know my secret. Where were you tonight all dressed up?"

  "Married ten years tonight," he said.

  "You're kidding?"

  He shook his head.

  "Big congrats," I said. We clattered down the stairs.

  "Thanks. We hired a baby-sitter and everything. She made me leave my beeper home."

  The cold bit into the sores on my face and made my head ache worse.

  "Door's not locked," Zerbrowski said.

  "You're a cop. How can you leave your car unlocked?" I opened the door and stopped. The passenger seat and floorboard were full. McDonald's take-out sacks and newspapers filled the seat and flowed onto the floorboards. A piece of petrified pizza and a herd of pop cans filled the rest of the floorboard.

  "Jesus, Zerbrowski, does the EPA know you're driving a toxic waste dump through populated areas?"

  "See why I leave it unlocked. Who would steal it?" He knelt in the seat and began shoveling armfuls of garbage into the backseat. It looked like this wasn't the first time he'd cleaned out the front seat by shoveling things in back.

  I brushed crumbs from the empty seat onto the empty floorboard. When it was as clean as I could get it, I sat down.

  Zerbrowski slid into his seat belt and started the car. It coughed to life. I put on my seat belt, and he pulled out of the parking lot.

  "How does Katie feel about your job?" I asked.

  Zerbrowski glanced at me. "She's okay with it."

  "Were you a cop when she met you?"

  "Yeah, she knew what to expect. Loverboy didn't want you to come out tonight?"

  "He thought I was too hurt to go out."

  "You do look like shit."

  "Thanks."

  "They love us, they want us to be careful. He's a junior high school teacher, for God's sake. What does he know about violence?"

  "More than he'd like to."

  "I know, I know. The schools are a dangerous place nowadays. But it isn't the same, Anita. We carry guns. Hell, you kill vampires and raise the dead, Blake. Can't get much messier than that."

  "I know that." But I didn't know that. Being a lycanthrope was messier. Wasn't it?

  "No, I don't think you do, Blake. Loving someone who lives by violence is a hard way to go. That anybody'll have us is a miracle. Don't get cold feet."

  "Did I say I was getting cold feet?"

  "Not out loud."

  Shit. "Let's drop it, Zerbrowski."

  "Anything you say. Dolph is going to be so excited that you've decided to tie the noose...ah, knot."

  I sank down into the seat as far as the belt would let me. "I am not getting married."

  "Maybe not yet, but I know that look, Blake. You are a drowning woman, and the only way out is down the aisle."

  I would have liked to argue, but I was too confused. Part of me believed Zerbrowski. Part of me wanted to stop dating Richard and be safe again. Okay, okay, I wasn't exactly safe before, what with Jean-Claude hanging around, but I wasn't engaged. Of course, I still wasn't engaged.

  "You okay, Blake?"

  I sighed. "I've lived alone a long time. A person gets set in her ways." Besides he's a werewolf. I didn't say that part out loud, but I wanted to. I needed a second opinion, but a police officer, especially Zerbrowski, wasn't the person to ask.

  "He crowding you?"

  "Yeah."

  "He want marriage, kids, the whole nine yards?"

  Kids. No one had mentioned children. Did Richard have this domestic vision of a little house, him in the kitchen, me working, and kids? Oh, damn, we were going to have to sit down and have a serious talk. If we did manage to get engaged like normal people, what did that mean? Did Richard want children? I certainly didn't.

  Where would we live? My apartment was too small. His house? I wasn't sure I liked that idea. It was his house. Shouldn't we have our house? Shit. Kids, me? Pregnant, me? Not in this lifetime. I thought furriness was our biggest problem. Maybe it wasn't.

  29

  THE RIVER SWIRLED black and cold. Rocks stuck up like the teeth of giants. The bank behind me was steep, thick with trees. The snow between the trees was trampled and slicked away to show the leaves underneath. The opposite bank was a bluff that jutted out over the river. No way down from there unless you were willing to jump. The water was less than five feet deep in the center of the river. Jumping from thirty feet wasn't a good idea.

  I stood carefully on the crumbling bank. The black water rushed just inches from my feet. Tree roots stuck out of the bank, tearing at the earth. The combination of snow, leaves, and nearly vertical bank seemed destined to send me into the water, but I'd fight it as long as I could.

  The rocks formed a low, broken wall into the river. Some of the stones were barely above the swirling water, but one near the center of the river stuck up about waist high. Draped over that rock was the skin. Dolph was still the master of understatement. Shouldn't a skin be smaller than a breadbox, not bigger than a Toyota? The head hung on the large rock, draped perfectly as if placed. That was one of the reasons the thing was still in the middle of the river. Dolph had wanted me to see it in case there was some ritual significance to the placement.

  There was a dive team waiting on the shore in dry suits, which are bulkier than wet suits and better at keeping you warm in cold water. A tall diver with a hood already pulled up over his hair stood by Dolph. He'd been introduced as MacAdam. "Can we go in after the skin now?"

  "Anita?" Dolph asked.

  "Better them in the water than me," I said.

  "Is it safe?" Dolph asked.

  That was a different question. Truth. "I'm not sure."

  MacAdam looked at me. "What could be out there? It's just a skin, right?"

  I shrugged. "I'm not sure what kind of skin it is."

  "So?" he asked.

  "So, remember the Mad Magician back in the seventies?"

&
nbsp; "I'd think you wouldn't remember it," MacAdam said.

  "I studied it in college. Magical Terrorism, senior year. The Magician specialized in leaving magical booby traps in out-of-the-way places. One of his favorite traps was an animal skin that would attach itself to whomever touched it first. Took a witch to remove it."

  "Was it dangerous?" MacAdam asked.

  "One man suffocated when it attached itself to his face."

  "How the hell did his face touch it first?"

  "Hard to ask a dead man. Animating wasn't a profession in the seventies."

  MacAdam stared off across the water. "Okay, how do you find out if it's dangerous?"

  "Has anyone been in the water yet?"

  He jerked a thumb at Dolph. "He wouldn't let us, and Sheriff Titus said to leave everything for some hotshot monster expert." He looked me up and down. "That you?"

  "That's me."

  "Well, make like an expert so my people and I can get in there."

  "You want the spotlight now?" Dolph asked. They'd had the place lit up like an opening night at Mann's Chinese Theatre. I'd made them turn off the lights after I'd gotten the first glance. There were some things that you needed light to see, other things only showed themselves in the dark.

  "No light yet. Let me see it in the dark first."

  "Why no light?" Dolph asked.

  "Some things hide from light, Dolph, and they might still take a chunk out of one of the divers."

  "You're really serious about this, aren't you?" MacAdam asked.

  "Yeah, aren't you glad?"

  He looked at me for a moment, then nodded. "Yeah. How are you going to get a closer look? I know the weather just got cold the last few days, so the water should be about forty degrees, but that's still cold without a suit."

  "I'll stay on the rocks. I might dip a hand in to see if anything rises to bait, but I'll stay as dry as I can."

  "You take the monsters serious," he said, "I take the water serious. You'll get hypothermia in about five minutes in water this cold. Try not to fall in."

  "Thanks for the advice."

  "You're going to get wet," Aikensen said. He stood just above me, leaning against a tree. His Smokey Bear hat was pulled low over his head, thick woolly collar pulled up near his chin. His ears and most of his face were still bare to the cold. I hoped he got frostbite.

  He put his flashlight under his chin like a Halloween gag. He was smiling. "Didn't move a thing, Miss Blake. Left it just where we found it."

  I didn't correct him on the "miss." He'd done it just to irritate me. Ignoring it irritated him. Great.