Battle of the Network Zombies (8 page)

“So not cool, Kelley,” I called after her and she gave a little wave behind her that brought her friends to tearful laughter.

Friday
9:00–9:30
P.M.
American Minions Pre-show

Scott jammed his thumb against the call button, clearly still irritated to be woken hours before his swing shift at one of Ethel’s clubs—and yeah, I know, I’d been slowly making progress on getting him to quit and giving the police force another go.
³⁵
The speaker crackled, then fell silent. “The damn thing’s busted.”

“Thanks for giving me a ride, again.” I smiled coyly. “And this.” I raised my bandaged hand. Scott was a miracle worker of impromptu medical attention; a regular Annie Sullivan, except instead of blind deaf mutes, he had to deal with a bitchy dead woman, and he really didn’t even have to deal with her.
³⁶

“Just so you know, we’re broken up. You know that right?” He grimaced.

“Of course. Just one friend doing a favor for another. Totally broken up.” I winked and looked over my shoulder into the dark neighborhood.

The beefy little Mustang idled in front of wrought iron gates worked to resemble a tangle of thorny rose bushes gone to hips. The stalks scrolled around vertical rods like snakes slithering toward the sharp spires at each peak. Ivy crept in from either side where it took root in the cracks in the brick wall that surrounded the property. Atop the wall, on either side, stone lions kept watch through eyes gone lazy with time.

And shit, did the place ever need watching over and that wall.

Being Seattle, where the estates were often bordered by properties of considerably less value—and by considerably, I mean ghetto—Harcourt Manor stood as a refuge against crackheads, skinny whores and dim real estate speculators. Remodeled craftsman bungalows sat with FOR SALE signs staked in the yards rather than cute topiary and squatters shot up tar in their dirty underwear on the front porch instead of the promised iced-tea-toting thirty-somethings.

So, yeah…super desirable locale.

A few burnt out cars, mostly 70s domestics, completed the overall look. Trendy in that punk, I-refuse-to-shave-my-armpits kind of way, I supposed. I’d have to remember some of the spots we drove through as particularly nutrient-rich hunting grounds. At least I wouldn’t have to walk far to get a meal.

See, I’m
brightsiding
sans the stupid little dance that makes me want to run for a gun locker.
³⁷

“Maybe it’s unlocked,” I offered.

“Yeah. You go check.”

“Just bump it.” I motioned for him to drive into the gate.

“Jesus.” He rolled up his window and stepped out of the car, leaving the door swinging on the hinge. Rattling the gates did no good, so he started yelling, “Hello? Hello?”

Though, over the rumble of the engine, it sounded more like “yellow yellow.” Way too informal for such a grand gate, but when you’re trying to re-snare a lover it’s best not to be too critical, I find.

When that bore no fruit, Scott turned back to the car, sour as a preserved lemon, and threw his hands up. I always thought that kind of boyish frustration was cute, but with Scott it was adorable. If I’d been out there, I bet I could have heard him huffing.

I leaned over and started honking.

Not a few short bursts, like you might do, I let it blare.

Scott jumped a bit, but in a moment he waved me off the horn and pointed beyond the gate.

A few moments later, the gates swung open and Scott smiled and gestured to someone inside and trotted back to the car.

“Caretaker, or something,” he said. “Good thinking with the horn.”

“I know.” I fluttered my eyelids for him.

He turned away.

Remind me not to pull that move again.

The road took a sharp left inside the wall, bordered by a dense patch of dying rhododendrons, spindly and beaded with an early evening drizzle, and an old growth of evergreens that towered into the night sky, blocking any view of the actual manor house.

Anyone buying into Washington’s blatantly misleading state name (“Evergreen”) hasn’t seen it from eye level. In dense forests, like those surrounding Harcourt, the fir trees only give off their green at the tips. Like a cougar in need of a dye job, the twelve or so feet poking from the roots are dead with graying moss. Beige and unfurling fingers of fern reach from the ground like lazy dead folk—not that we actually do that mind you. The dead don’t just crawl from graves to eat your brains, they have to be infected somehow, silly. I suppose if I had a hose and a big drill, maybe. But why? Seriously?

The fog didn’t help the mood. It clung to the undergrowth like dust bunnies massing under a couch—no matter how many times you take the vacuum to them there’s always more. Always.

“It’s kind of spooky, right?” Scott’s smile came with a hint of boyish evil, standard, like reclining bucket seats. I waited for him to go on. It was inevitable. “The mist? The fog? An old creepy mansion? Who knows what horrors wait in the shadows.”

I yawned. “Um…zombies and werewolves, for two.” I shifted in my seat to face him. “Have you been reading those adolescent vampire romances again?”

He shrugged.

“You know how they scare you.”

A flush broke out on his cheeks like a riot. “Well, it beats those mysteries you pile everywhere. I’ve yet to see you read one. You’re very good at buying and stacking, though.”

“I read them,” I interjected with a snarl.

“You’d think you get enough drama, as much trouble as you and those two friends of yours get into.”

“At least my books are meant for adults.”

He clicked his tongue.

The road wound back and forth and descended gently into a glen, where we eventually passed the haggard groundskeeper wrapped up in a damp barn jacket and jeans tucked into rubber boots. He nodded to Scott and hopped over some low ferns into the undergrowth to make way. The brush fell to the sides and the gravel road split a great manicured lawn converted into a parking lot of trailers and tents and beyond that, what had to be Harcourt Manor.

“Um. Is it just me, or does that look like a mental institution?”

Scott nodded. “It’s beautiful.” He pointed out the window at the people bustling between the tents and trailers. “This, however, looks like a madhouse.”

I shrugged.

The architect who crafted the massive two stories with its heavily dormered mansard roof was not satisfied with simply intimidating visitors, he—who else but a man—made centerpieces of eight equidistant and giant phallic chimneys, which sprung from the roof like a giant circle jerk. In the center of the roof, a window-ringed cupola stood watch over the grounds like Karen Black at the end of
Burnt Offerings
.

“It’s creepy.”

“And awesome.”

Scott pulled up to a stone stair and hopped out. “Let’s get your shit and make this happen.”

He pulled my bags from the trunk and set them on the stairs rather than the damp gravel. It’s like he knew I’d have a fit if my Vuitton got wet. Oh, who am I kidding? He did know. I’d bitched at him before about the very same thing. Scott didn’t give a crap about material possessions, but he clearly got tired of my demands.

He probably needed this break.

See how I can be positive in the face of adversity? He calls it broken up, I call it a time-out, like when your kid’s called you a bitch and you need to teach them a lesson that won’t get you locked up.

I swept out of the car and went to kiss him. The kind of kiss he could think about while he jerked off in the shower, or wherever he did it. I clutched at him, ground my hips into his and played with the waist of his jeans, tucking my fingers just past the crimped edge of his boxers. I pulled away a bit to make sure I’d had the desired effect.

His teeth were clenched, his eyes steely. I guessed that meant angry. Not the desired effect, but still, he’d think about that kiss later.

Hopefully.

“Don’t do that again.” He spat the words like a mouthful of vinegar.

“Sorry.” Over his shoulder, figures gathered in various windows. “I think we’re being watched.”

His neck craned and a grin replaced his glower. “You think I’ll get to meet your new boss?”

“He’s not my boss.”

“Well, whatever he is.”

I started up the stairs, rubbing my hip a bit as I climbed. It was only slightly sore, but Scott didn’t need to know that.

He grabbed the bags and followed me up to the entryway. The doors swung inward and a robust black woman, no taller than a chest of drawers, with dreadlocked hair tied up in braids, beads and strips of cotton, burst out. She clutched my arms, as I reached the next to the last step, so we seemed to be matched in height, and shook them like I was having a breakdown—the kind of shaking that’s often accompanied by the demand, “snap out of it.” “Amanda Feral, darling!” she barked in a spicy Caribbean accent. “You’re more gorgeous than pictures in the tabloids give you credit for—now give Mama Montserrat some love.”

I lurched forward as the woman circled me in surprisingly strong arms and squeezed until I was sure my intestines would liquefy and drop out of me in a wholly unattractive way. She smelled of curry powder, Poison (the perfume, not the weapon, though from the creepy house, I can certainly understand your confusion) and, oddly enough, the dense chemical scent of ink. Of course, what I was most interested in was the fact that she reeked of fresh meat. She pushed me back but still held on.

“And who are your two friends?”

Two?

I knew before I turned.

Wendy peeked from around Scott like a nosy neighbor, head tilted and mouth pursed dramatically. She wore her hair in a chignon, like my own (though not nearly as smooth—she needed a lesson, to be sure), a cheap pinstriped banker’s suit—one of those you can pick up at Penney’s on sale five days out of seven—and carried a small suitcase in one hand and a briefcase in the other.

“This must be your boyfriend?”

“No,” Scott grumbled, setting the suitcase at my feet.

“This is Scott.” I intentionally ignored Wendy as he stepped forward with his hand extended and was pulled into a grappling hug worthy of a wrestling ring. Mama Montserrat was a bull.

“Nice to meet you,” he mumbled into the tunic that covered her breasts and torso.

Wendy stomped forward, dropped her suitcase and handed the buoyant woman a business card so fresh you could see the heat rising off it in waves. “I’m Ms. Feral’s agent, Melody Daniels. It’s a pleasure.”

Where did I know that name?

Mama Montserrat pinched the card between her index finger and thumb as though she were collecting a dirty diaper. “Her agent? I been told there’s nothin’ left to negotiate and I don’t recall no agent bein’ involved.”

“Ms. Feral will be needing a large suite with enough room for her bags and a small but comfortable salon for me,” Wendy said, and then quickly added. “To make business calls, of course.”

“Of course.” Mama Montserrat’s demeanor chilled to sub-zero, the welcoming glow replaced by ashen suspicion.

Scott snorted a bit, shoved his hands in the back pockets of his jeans and gawked at Wendy, shaking his head in disbelief. “You girls have fun,” he said as he backed down the stairs. Wendy’s eyebrow rose defiantly, daring him to say anything more.

I shrugged. Wendy could have her fun, but from the scowl on Mama’s face, she had her hands full with that one.

Scott smiled and nodded to me genially, then bounded down the stairs to the car. The curtness of it hit me hard and I had every intention of calling out to him, until I felt Mama’s stubby hand slip into the crook of my arm.

“Follow me, Ms. Feral. We got you a beautiful room right at the top of these stairs.” She took the larger of my bags and pulled me inside.

For all its external grandeur and English manor-ness, or whatever, Harcourt’s interior was, as is so common in our world, an exercise in overkill. Like the warehouse that housed Skinshu, the mansion was stripped bare and redesigned to resemble some woodland copse. Tree trunks stood in for columns and rose in ashy lengths from a carpet of green moss to a canopy of—you guessed it—leaves. A cobbled path forked to the left and right, dueling staircases arced from a balcony above, clad in stone and patches of loam. A trio of dazzling antler-and-crystal chandeliers dropped from floral medallions in the ceiling; they flooded the space in warmth and a shower of sparkling refractions lit on the foliage like dew.

Identical twin girls hovered against the far edge of the hall like a couple of hookers on a smoke break.
³⁸
They peered silently from around a bust on a pedestal, its head fully sprouted into a tangle of clover—this being the only setting where Chia is an acceptable decorating option. Contestants, no doubt—their pale and stony flesh not unlike a vampire’s, though that seemed too pedestrian a character for the show’s audience. Twins would be the draw, certainly. One guzzled from a bottle of wine, while the other hammered out a text on a little black phone, sneering at us as we entered.

“That’s Janice and Eunice,” Mama said. She leaned in conspiratorially. “Sirens. So don’t let ’em get goin’, or they’ll sing their little song until you either kill yourself or just wish you were dead. And you know I ain’t kiddin’.” She added for Wendy’s benefit. “You go on ahead though. I’m sure they’ll like you.”

Wendy sneered.

Voices sprang from an arch in the opposite wall, where shadows danced in firelight and stretched out into the ivy like phantoms. A door opened above us and a tall black woman appeared on the balcony for a moment, waved dramatically and then disappeared down another dark hall.

It occurred to me I didn’t really know who Mama Montserrat was, other than her name, obviously. “Mama, I’m sorry to ask this but, what is your role on the
American Minions
show? You seem to know what’s up.”

“Oh, I definitely know ‘what’s up.’ I’m Johnny Birch’s manager and one of the executive producers for this season. Unfortunately, it’ll probably be the last.” She looked off into the twilight through the open doors. “We kept it going awhile and that’s all you can ask the good spirits for. Ain’t that right?”

“Or the bad ones, for that matter.” It was my attempt at a joke. Now, normally you know they don’t fall flat, but Mama just crinkled her eyebrows and stared a moment. Wendy broke through the discomfort with her irritating “agent voice.”