Mark Henry_Amanda Feral 01 (20 page)

“Um…maybe it was your love of life? Your free spirit and passion. Some men have difficulty expressing emotion,” I suggested. Gil was clearly insane, and had no clue about relationships. Not that I was a fount of knowledge, but to tell him the truth might be dangerous. He might go crazy and suicidal and drive us into a telephone pole, or something. I couldn’t risk it. Despite the temptation to say: Listen, you were too clingy, and you’re not alone, it’s a problem that many women have. I had to keep lying.

“What?” Gil started to sniffle. A bizarre action, since his tear ducts dried up years ago.

I reached across the expanse between us and patted his thigh. “Gil. You are a wonderful man. There’s a guy out there for you somewhere. I’ll help you find him.”

“Thanks,” he mewled. “You’re a real friend.”

“That’s me.”

The conversation filled the time from Wendy’s place to the cemetery. Hump day traffic is atrocious. It was late summer, 7:30, and the gates closed at dusk. By the time we made the grounds it would be black as pitch. Gil parked in a residential area and we hoofed it to a service gate.

“What’s next?” he asked.

I held the darkened paper out to the streetlight. No. 2 read:
Walk straight from the main gate through the beds until you reach the other side.

No problem—in theory. We tried to follow the fence around but tripped as often as we took steps.

“Goddamn it.” Gil toppled over a low inset of headstone.

“Shit.” I stumbled on some unseen obstacle.

If there wasn’t a headstone to stumble over, there were roots from a high grove of poplars, or mounds of dirt covered in tarp, or protrusions of board hovering over empty graves. A tall hedge provided far too much shadow. The path was treacherous, but before long we reached the main gate, and stepped out of the shadows, me with stubbed toes, and Gil with scratches up both forearms and a shining welt above his brow.

We headed west through the markers, headstones and crypts. A haze crept across the black swath of lawn, illuminated by thin tendrils of moonlight cutting through clouds that carried only misty patches of rain. Lucky day. Occasionally, we passed specters sitting atop their tombstones. Their ethereal frames blurred at the edges like charcoal rubbings. The phantoms glowed in a mood ring of colors; those that stomped and kicked atop their final resting spots were surrounded with a deep peacock azure; others lazed in sunken rectangles of lawn, like comfortable divans, shimmered emerald.

One ghost wore a vibrant red aura. A woman. She brushed her hair, with the aide of a hand mirror, her familiar face lit by reflected moonglow. She took particular interest of our movement, and our task. She uncrossed her legs and hopped from her headstone with the ease of a girl. Soon, she had caught up and tagged along.

“Where ya goin’?”

“We’re on a bit of a mission, Ms.?”

“Ms. Mercer, thank you. If you’re looking for Jimi he’s over at Greenwood, now. They dug him up a while back. Family.”

“We’re not, ma’am,” Gil said, politely. “But thank you. Good to know.”

“What are you looking for then?” She skipped by and was walking backwards in front of us, passing through headstones, bushes and lawn ornamentation. She left trails of red glow on the stones, like phosphorous. “Brandon Lee’s over there. Everyone thinks that his father’s not, that he faked his death, but he’s here, too. Right there next to him. Body’s not, but he’s there. Would you like to meet them? It would be no trouble at all. Lovely people.”

“Some other time, Ms. Mercer.”

She stopped dead in her tracks, her glow darkened into a regal purple shade. She planted her hands on her hips and roared, “Fine.” My hair flipped back from the force of her…expectoration. She stomped off, mumbling something about
rude young people
and
heathens
.

“I somehow didn’t expect ghosts.”

Gil stopped ahead of me and turned, smiling. “Yeah, they kinda show up in the oddest places. Are you crazy? It’s a cemetery. What’d you expect to see?”

“Nothing. I thought I’d seen everybody at the clubs.”

“Ghosts are linked to things. Sometimes coffins, sometimes an object at the place they died. There’s one over at Les Toilettes.”

“Oh.” I laughed. “Now it comes out.”

“I’ve heard. I’ve heard there’s one there.”

“You are such a chubby chaser. I swear to God.”

“Shut up.”

We finished the trek to the far fence and Gil lit the note with his watch. Instruction No. 3:
Find the oval marker at the base of the oak and get to diggin’ for the wee coffin.
This was the easiest, so far, as the oak was only a few steps away. We spread out on our hands and knees feeling for the marker.

“Do you think Liesl will appreciate our effort?” Gil asked.

“I’ve been thinking the same thing. It’s my impression that most people don’t appreciate a goddamn thing.” The grass was damp and I felt moisture seeping between the fibers of my pants, staining them. I was unperturbed. I brought a change of clothes, anyway. Helmut Lang. I hoped Gil had remembered to do the same. I would have suggested Jil Sander. I’ve been meaning to talk to him about expanding his wardrobe.

“I don’t know if I’d go that far, Amanda. I appreciate—”

“I was making a sweeping generalization, Gil. It’s rhetorical, please don’t respond. I feel ugly enough that I’ve even said it. I’m so negative.” Had I said that? Negative? The living me would have never copped to that. Sleuthing must have suited me, or, perhaps my brain was rotting into a jaundiced slush. I hoped that wasn’t the case; one needs a brain.

“Over here!” Gil was on the opposite side of the tree, knees between thick exposed roots.

Gil dug for the small coffin like a bowel impaction, his fingers crooked, widening the hole, and then picking at the dirt pocked with small stones, loosening it. Although, I would have never thought of it in quite that way if Gil hadn’t remarked, the hole was tighter than a virgin’s ass. Oh, why do I lie? I was already going to compare it to digging a corn kernel from a butt-hole, before he said a single word. I’m a sick fucker like that.

“This hole is so tight,” he said, in all seriousness, like that, like that’s not a funny statement, and hunched over it on his knees, pressing his probing fingers deeper and deeper. Honestly, that’s a little gay.

“Oh, yes!” I screamed, then laughed, then screamed again. “Get in that hole, Gil. Yeah! Deeper! Deeper!”

“Shut up, Amanda!”

No bigger than a shoe box, the coffin was probably the top of the line of pet burial implements; mahogany, gold fixtures, doggy swank.

“Open it,” I said. “Open it, open it, open it.” Like the coffin was a morbid little Tiffany box, and this was
Black Christmas
.
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A small button on the side unlatched the lid and despite its diminutive size the coffin creaked with an echo across the graves.

“Can you keep it down?” Ms. Mercer shrieked in the distance. “I’m reading, for Christ’s sake.”

Inside the box was an amulet. Round and heavily carved, it hung from a thick gold-corded chain. But was it
the
amulet? Would it fit in that dusty shadow box, in Liesl’s bloodbath of a room?

“The size of a monocle,” I said. “Weren’t those Wendy’s words?”

“Yep.” Gil picked at the dirt crammed underneath his fingernails. A look of annoyance spread across his handsome face. He dragged his hands across the damp grass then rubbed them together, repeating the action until his hands were skin-colored.

We carried the casket to a more lit area. The moon wasn’t illuminating for shit. The bronze pendant was the size and shape of a small compact. Its face and back were engraved and embossed in an intricate orgy scene, like a miniature Kama Sutra. A hedonistic variety of creatures in various ridiculous positions, flitting across its surface—you could almost hear the moans.

“It’s a sex scene. That just screams incubus/succubus, no?” I asked.

“Oui, Mademoiselle. Très érotique.”

“Lovely. But, I took Spanish.”

“Let’s go back to the car,” he said, in a dull, disgusted monotone. “My eloquence is lost on the likes of you.”

We crossed the street and the instructions must have fallen from my pocket, because they crunched under Gil’s foot. He picked them up, and read them under the dome light, for a next step, presumably.

“Oh shit. You’re such an asshole, Amanda.”

“So much for eloquence. What is it?” I snatched the note from his hand.

There, following the directive to dig up the coffin, in my own handwriting, if you’ll recall, was an important note.

It read:
Do not open the box
.

After all the hassle of recovering the doggy casket, Clevis didn’t answer his door. We knocked, just short of hammering blisters into our knuckles. A second-story window was lit behind a closed curtain, the light bleeding through the break. Someone was shut up in there.

My first thought? He knew we’d opened it. Clevis had somehow gained the knowledge that we’d debauched the coffin and fondled its contents. Probably in the same way Nick had detected my unwholesome interest.

I ended up leaving a curt message on his voice mail.

Gil floored the British racer, weaving in and out of traffic and, at times, bottoming out, after tight leaps from unexpected hills.

“That was a complete waste of time, Amanda,” he railed. “What did we accomplish tonight, besides missing half-price happy hour?” Gil loved Ricardo’s specialty vamp snacks; he called them blood crisps. Apparently when not managing the hottest club in town, or promoting his newest, Ricardo was an amateur chef and fan of late night infomercials. The crisps were pungent and snappy, but reminiscent of hard fruit rollups. Ricardo made them in a food dehydrator, a regular undead Ron Popeil.

“Don’t forget ruining three hundred dollar jeans. I’m sorry. But, honestly, is there anything more important than jewelry?”

I reached into the floorboard and after some finagling with the latch, retrieved the amulet and donned it. I slumped in the seat like a pachuco, and gave him a nodding pout. Doing my best hand signal gang signs: the Chanel double C logo.

Gil looked over and his demeanor brightened. “No she didn’t! Mary J. in the house!”

“Hey-Ho!” I waved my hand in the air and used all four of the required syllables.

The vampire slowed down a bit then, typical male, needed Mommy to soothe his precious little head.
Baby got a temper, he do
. He parked the car under the viaduct, and arms linked, we traversed the living obstacles in the gutter, on our way to the Well.

The club was packed as tight as Nick’s jeans. Clumps of supernatural subgroups were plopped here and there in a vibrating throng of inhumanity. Heavy-handed description, to be sure, but, nonetheless true.

Wendy and Shane hung off the bar like utility disconnect notices, rejecting would-be suitors with flippant waves or disturbed shakes of the head, all the while, in rapt conversation. Gil bounded off ahead of me to join up, but I had slid into stilettos and had to maneuver dark stairs.

A blatant hand shot out from between a pair of translucent water sprites in Valentino. It latched onto my forearm, like a cuff. Before I could think to snatch it back, I was face to smiling face with the hand’s owner, Elizabeth Karkaroff.

Let me give you the rundown: The Devil does not as has previously been reported favor the designs of Miuccia, Donatella, or even the man, himself, Giorgio. She wears Carolina Herrera, and wears it well, like the Brazilian seamstress pulled her as a muse. The dress was a tweed boatneck and ended below the knee where jet stockings took over. Her heels were high and rounded at the tip—now, those were Italian. Impeccable. Her long flaxen hair was streaked with platinum, and waved like Veronica Lake. Her eyes were as dark and stormy as a Victorian gothic novel. Her handbag was an Hermès Birkin, in orange ostrich.
Holy shit!
The woman was intimidating.

I turned back to scream for Shane. The hand pulled me close. I shut my mouth.

“Ms. Amanda Feral,” she cooed. Up close, her tongue could have circled the fleshy knob, dead center of my ear, if she’d wanted. “I’ve been meaning to have a word with you.” The accent was studied and aristocratic, as if harked up from a wet lung. South African, perhaps, smooth as dark roast coffee.

She dragged me through the crowd, her arm enveloping my waist, feeling far larger than its appearance. We stopped at the farthest table, with the highest vantage. She guided me deep within. I tried to spot my friends, but would have had better luck plucking grey hairs from a child. My memory started to speak, shout.
Don’t look her in the eye
. Who’d said that?
If you appear rude, you’re dead
. Now, I know I’ve never heard that before.
She’ll put thoughts into your head
. That was me.
Make you kill yourself
.

“I certainly would not,” she responded, her hand to her chest.

“Did I say that aloud?” I asked, apologetically, staring thoughtlessly into her cat shaped eye, the left one. I began to feel faint.

“Well…no.” She pushed her hair back over her shoulder—it fell with the luminous weight of a shampoo commercial
99
—and spun a single pearl on a pink lobe. “I hear you took a meeting with my man Snell, yesterday.”

“Yes.” I fumbled through my purse looking for something important, or just something to avert my eyes. She needn’t know there was a difference.

“I was expecting a bit more of an answer, dear.”

“Yes, I met with Snell. I had questions about Oliver Calver.”

“Lovely boy.” Her brows shifted suggestively. “I hope Snell answered your questions adequately.”

I wondered if it were possible that Elizabeth Karkaroff was, actually, a polite, genuine woman?

“It’s entirely possible,” Ms. Karkaroff replied, looking off into the cavernous club. “And before you launch into an internal dialogue, yes, I am reading your thoughts.” She reached over and patted my thigh. “Darling, you’ve nothing to fear from me.”

I caught up with my train, surprisingly able to continue talking despite the shock of the brain rape that was going on. “Mr. Snell was cordial and helpful. Although, I haven’t found Oliver, as of yet. I’m not sure if you’re aware but his girlfriend, Rochelle, was killed in an accident.”

“Oh, but of course.” She muffled a snicker behind a long-fingered, porcelain-white hand. “Everyone knows. Cameron Hansen.
Undead on Tape
. I suppose there are many here who find that sort of thing entertaining.” As if on cue a clown-grinned photographer blew in and offered to take a picture, snapping it with a big Hasselblad before a comment could be returned. I imagined that Karkaroff had set it up, that the camera
had
stolen my soul, like primitive tribes once believed.

Elizabeth continued, as if uninterrupted, “But, regardless, your statement is flawed. That weathergirl may have been killed in the accident. But she was not Oliver’s girlfriend. I’d question where you got that bit of information.”

I thought of my conversation with Claire Bandon. She had told me, and Rochelle hadn’t denied it. But had the weathergirl actually said that she and Oliver were together?

Karkaroff winked at me. “Now you are thinking. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve been getting quite a few things jumbled.”

She means Sha—I immediately tried to layer over the thoughts.
Dead kitties, dead kitties. No! Lalalalalalalalalalala.

Elizabeth was locked on to my eyes; her wan smile faded to a flat line. “What are you on about, girl?”

Lalalalalalalala
. A pressure seemed to envelop me like saran wrap and tighten. Elizabeth was exerting the same force Snell had back in the conference room. Only with more power behind it.

“Fear is such a sad emotion, so common. And, how do I get this through to you, child? So futile. I’ve told you you’ve nothing to fear from me, but you choose disbelief. I fear our chat is over.” Karkaroff motioned for me to depart. I’d been excused.

I did it
, I thought. I had successfully kept Shane’s name from my head.

Oops.

“Ah. Shane King, such a beautiful boy. How is he?” Elizabeth called from the banquette. When I looked back, she toasted me with a crystal flute (see inset).

The Well of Souls’ Champagne Cocktail

 

1 cube sugar

2 dashes bitters

Chilled Bollinger

 

Add sugar and bitters to chilled flute. Muddle. Add champagne.

Garnish with lemon curl.

I ran down the risers to the bar. If I’d had functional lungs I would have been breathless. Shane and Wendy were talking about live skin transfer, a new procedure they’d seen on a supernatural cosmetics show, and Gil was making out with a werewolf, who’d begun to change with arousal, his fingers elongated with sharp knuckle pops. Ricardo intervened.

“Chuck! Gil! If you guys like it rough, you’re going to have to take it somewhere else.”

Gil looked over and mouthed an exaggerated
nosy
. They detangled like a Johnson and Johnson’s sex show. Chuck’s claws retracted like ten hairy lipsticks.

“What’ll you have, Amanda?” Ricardo was in front of me, so smooth you barely see him move that lanky undead frame.

“Something strong, I just had a run-in with Elizabeth Karkaroff.”

He reached for an unlabeled bottle and poured it into a thin frost-glazed glass. It tasted of jet fuel. My skin turned pink before the liquid made it to my stomach.

“Holy shit!” I gritted my teeth.

“That’ll take your mind off anything, right?” he asked, beaming. “Just got it in. It’s called Life Fuel.”

“Well, cheers. Have you tasted this shit?”

“It’s great, right? What did you mean run-in?”

“She took me aside and assaulted my thoughts. Up in the rafters over there.” I tried my best to look wounded and aloof, but damsel-in-distress doesn’t really work for me. Ricardo caught on immediately.

“You mean you couldn’t contain yourself and she read your mind? What? Were you afraid, or something?”

“Of course! Jesus! How many supernaturals in this town can read minds, Ricardo? It seems like everyone I run into lately is in my head. It’s like a rape. Especially her.” I looked into the upper banquettes. Snell had joined Karkaroff and the two were rapt in a serious conversation. Brows were furrowed and eyes locked on each other.

“Someone’s been filling your head with a line of bullshit, then.”

“What are you talking about? I’ve heard she’s the Devil.” I felt the urge to cross myself, but onlookers might have been offended, so…I crossed myself—and I’m not even Catholic.

“The Devil? Well if I’d known she was
The Devil
, I might have sent up some Cristal. Someone’s pulling your chain, Amanda. I know a lot of people say that about Elizabeth, but it’s simply not true.”

“Could we not talk about that now? Something big is going on. She mustn’t hear.” I pushed in close and mouthed
shut up
.

Ricardo rolled his eyes. “Fine.”

“Whatever. Listen, do you know of a recovery group for werewolves?”

“Not for werewolves, specifically, no.”

“What about for supernaturals in general, then?”

His eyes scoured the floor and his forehead cringed into a W. It loosened. “There is a twelve-step over on Magnolia, but you couldn’t mean that.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “Oh, no reason. Check it out. It’s the only thing I can think of. Plus they’d be more likely to know of other groups.”

“True.”

He leaned in and put his hand over mine. “And princess, be careful; you seem to be caught up in something.”

Yeah, I thought. Caught up in the drama of it all. And going nowhere. I brushed him off and marched up to Shane and Wendy. “What’s the topic?”

“Lost love,” Gil said. I thought of Martin.

“Bad sex,” Wendy said. I thought of Shane. I decided to just listen. The conversation ultimately turned to the rollicking topic of favorite foods, it continued deep into the night.

The group met on Thursdays, the female voice on the machine said, “Supernatural to Supernormal and Beyond, meets on Thursdays at 11:00 P.M., at McAlinden’s Tavern on Magnolia, newcomers welcome.” No beep.

I took another sick day from work, locked up in my apartment
100
. I drove out at 10:45. I wanted to watch as people arrived. McAlinden’s was an ivy-covered brick building with a black lion statue out front and a smoking tent in the rear. The parking lot was nearly full, so I parked on the street with a full view of both the main entrance and the back door, which was covered by a slapping screen. It got a ton of use, as the humans had passed a no-smoking-within-twenty-five-feet-of-a-building law. Bullshit, posturing. There were certainly more deadly things than cigarettes, and they were convening at McAlinden’s.

A stumpy army jeep whipped past, nearly clipping the bumper and parked with a skid in the damp lot. A tall man, about twenty-five, got out and headed for the back door, his hands buried deep in his ass pockets. A woman parked on the opposite side of the street. She took some time getting out of her aging Crown Vic, and seemed to be talking to her reflection in the rearview. She gave her ratty hair a sloppy brush-out and shuffled to the building in bright orange garden clogs.

It was 10:55.

I grabbed my purse and reached in, circling the amulet and then digging for some gloss, checked my face, applied and stepped out onto the curb.

McAlinden’s reeked of sauerkraut and dirty butt. Small tables were scattered about like driftwood, and surrounded by small segregations, secretaries at this one, college students at that, etcetera. The bar was oak and mirror; its top probably carved by a drunken stupor of regulars.

“What can I do you for?” asked the keep. An older man with Brillo-pad hair and sparse muttonchops, his nose carried the telltale signs of alcoholism, a multitude of broken capillaries. I could sympathize.

“I’m looking for the meeting.”

His brows raised and he nodded to the back of the building. “Back behind the restrooms, right past the smoker’s door. You can’t miss it.”

I couldn’t help think, he’d rather not have the group there at all. Couldn’t blame him. Who’d want a bunch of zombies, vamps and other threats to the national welfare so close to the vulnerability of an exposed ass? I wondered how many of the customers knew that they were opening themselves up to possible attack, every time they pulled down their pants in the john. So close to the evil, but with vulnerable assholes exposed, it would be so difficult to run.