Speakeasy Dead: a P.G. Wodehouse-Inspired Romantic Zombie Comedy (Hellfire Universe Historicals) (17 page)

Ruth flipped me over and landed on my chest.

“I’m not so sure it
is
a rescue, old man,” Gaspar contributed.

“Shut up, you parasite!” Ruth uttered a low, forbidding growl. Ribbons of red light—some sort of hostile magic—began to swirl and close in around the ghost.

“Try other words starting with ‘r’.” Gaspar whipped out his sword and sliced the ribbons into bits.

The genie tore my union suit down to my waist.

“Stop it!” I bucked her off.

The light went out, leaving me blind.

“Ruthie?” I crab-walked backward and hit a wall of ice. “Aren’t you getting me out?”

Oddly, the ghost glowed, just as visible as ever. But he didn’t illuminate the room.

“I can’t,” Ruth wailed. “Hans would boil me in oil!”

I felt the wind of her lunge and shimmied sideways to crawl across the floor.

“I don’t suppose,” I asked Gaspar, “since you’re here to protect me, you could help?”

Ruth caught my ankle and began dragging me toward her, hand over hand.

“Go left,” the ghost advised.

I kicked free and dove face-first into a wooden crate. Pain lanced like a hot poker into my brain and I collapsed in agony.

“Sorry, old man,” Gaspar said distantly. “I meant
my
left.”

One hand went to my nose and filled with blood. The genie caught me, wrapping me in her arms, and I debated the relative merits of a girlish scream vs. a low-pitched whimper.

“Oh, sweetie,” Ruth crooned, licking the blood off of my face.

The low-pitched whimper won.

“Oh, sweetie, don’t you see? I can’t just help. It’s got to be a trade.”

Headlights swept the icehouse, dazzling my eyes. A truck rumbled, tires crunching to a stop in the dirt yard. Knife-blades of light outlined the wooden door.

I thrust my arms back in my union suit.

“Listen.” Ruth punched her fist into an ice block and placed a chunk of frozen water against my nose. “I heard those gangsters. They’re going to kill you.”

My stomach sank.

“I can’t help you unless we make a trade.”

“Like what?” Well, I knew what. “But why?”

Door’s slammed. Voices sounded outside.

“Look,” I said. “Just get me out of here. I’ll trade something of equal value later.”

“I can’t.” She shook her head sadly. “It’s not enough.” The genie changed to silver mist. A moment later, she’d turned into a tabby cat.

“You! You tripped me this afternoon?”

Gaspar ducked through the wall and back again. “How many tins of fuel do you suppose,” he asked casually, “they usually carry on delivery vans?”

“Gasoline cans?” I frowned. “A couple? None? Depends on how far they’re driving, I suppose.”

“What if they’re driving here?”

The lock clicked loudly. Headlights blazed as one of Gibraltar’s thugs opened the door. I raised an arm, shielding my eyes. Behind the thug, carefully outside the ring of salt, stood Stoneface, clutching a Tommy gun.

Gaspar frowned.

“What the devil?” The mobster’s voice slammed through the room. He stared at my bloodstained unmentionables, the broken crate, the bits of clothing scattered around. “What the devil has been going on in there?”

“Nightmare,” I said. “I’ve always been a restless sleeper. You see—”

“Never mind that.” Stoneface leveled his Tommy gun. “Back up, real slow, and put your rear end on the coffin.”

I did. The cat followed, rubbing my shins. “Ruth,” I implored. “You can’t just leave me here to die!”

“Shut up! No mumbo jumbo!” Stoneface turned toward his men. “You three. Get in there. Get the booze. And don’t, by god, disturb that ring of salt. And as for you,” he called to someone outside, “get busy with them cans.”

Three men filed in. Gaspar drew his épée.

The gangster ratcheted his gun. “Anything happens to them and you’re
not
going to live to regret it.”

“I see.” I nodded. “How am I going to feel if nothing happens to them?”

That almost brought him in. He raised his fist but at the last moment stayed safe behind the salt.

The men grabbed crates and lugged them to the truck.

“All right,” I asked the cat. “What will it take to get me out of this?”

Stoneface laughed scornfully. “You got a million bucks?”

The cat scratched effortlessly on the wooden floor: YOUR SOUL.

“Sadly,” I said, shaking my head at both of them, “no.”

Gaspar stretched out his sword and pierced one of the thug’s ankles. The man staggered. His footsteps slowed.

“Unless you got a cool million, forget it,” Stoneface said. “Them Woodsen girls is gonna make me more than that.”

“Them Woodsen girls is gonna eat you for breakfast.”

Gaspar pricked both remaining thugs as they walked in. Their tread grew heavy.

I looked at Ruth. “Name something else.”

“There’s nothing else,” Stoneface told me. “I want more booze. I want a lotta booze, and you’re gonna teach that cupcake cousin what happens when she don’t cooperate.”

Ruth scratched the floor again: YOUR GOLEM.

I sighed. “Be serious. I don’t own Gladys.” More the reverse. “I could owe you a favor. A
big
favor.” The sound of sloshing came from outside. Gasoline fumes clogged the air. “Even—” I swallowed. This was no time for modesty. “What you w-wanted just now.”

Ruth scrawled another option: FIRSTBORN.

I’d read those stories. “No.”

There was one thing remaining I could bargain with. The Benjamin legacy. A little box stuffed full of trouble. Each time the lid was raised, so I’d been warned, something different slipped out into the world. Maybe a good thing. Possibly very bad.

I wasn’t about to hand that wild card to a demon.

Which left nothing. I slumped against the wall. My head pounded. My nose was sore. My chest already burned from the foul stench of the icehouse combined with gasoline. I’m no clairvoyant, but my future was pretty clear.

But on the other hand…. I bit my lip. On the other hand, Gaspar’s attack was having an effect. Men dragged their feet, staggering under the heavy crates of booze, scuffing—if not breaking—the ring of salt.

Two more thugs came to help load the truck. Gaspar skewered their ankles as well.

“C’mon. Get a move on,” Stoneface encouraged.

“This stuff is heavy, boss.” One man dropped his crate with a crash.

“Come here. Hold this.” Stoneface passed his machine gun to the thug. “C’mon! Let’s go!” He strode inside, scattering salt, driving Gaspar back toward my bench.

Stoneface picked up three crates at once. His men, inspired, picked up their pace. Within minutes, the building had been cleared back to the stacks of ice and shelves stocked with embalming fluid.

The last thug emptied a can of gasoline around the room while Stoneface watched from outside.

“That’s it, boss.” The man left hastily.

Stoneface lit a cigar. “Perfect.” His boot, unnoticed, kicked through the ring of salt.

“I had an uncle died in a fire.” The mobster drew his revolver from a pocket. “It’s a bad way to go.” He shrugged. “If you want, I’ll shoot you and let your cousin think you burned.”

“No, thanks.”

Gaspar, flat as a sheet of paper, threaded between the chunks of scattered salt.

Ruth’s tail flashed silver. The ghost went
poof
and drifted, like green and sparkling dandelion fluff, into the amulet around my neck.

“Well, kid. You got more guts than I expected.” Stoneface shrugged. “So long.” The red cigar flew through the air.

I dove forward to catch it and stumbled on the cat. The icehouse door banged shut.

Flames
whumpfed
, slamming me back onto the coffins.

Ruth landed in my lap, human again. “I can’t save you! But if you fuck me fast, I’ll take away the pain.”

Smoke boiled out of the fire. My eyes watered around poisonous fumes.

“That’s your best offer?” The heat, ten feet away, already burned my skin. “Go fuck yourself!” Outside I heard the roar of fire around the building. The structure shook, or maybe that was me.

Cinders showered along the walls.

Ruth shielded me with her body. “I can’t rescue you,” she wailed. “I
can’t!
Don’t you see?”

Flames crackled across the wooden floor, danced up the walls behind the stacks of ice. The air was black, orange, and billowing white: smoke, fire, and hissing steam.

“Hans wants Clara all to himself. Without your help.”

My lungs howled for fresh air. “I’m not that helpful!”

Ruth grabbed me through my underwear.

“No! No deal!” I shoved her off. Heat flashed into the space she’d vacated. My mind flooded with fear, but I’d been afraid so often in my life, I hardly noticed.

The icehouse groaned. Water ran down the blocks of ice like boiling tears.

“Oh.” Ruth wrung her hands. “Oh, sweetie!”

Heat raked my skin. I threw my arms over my face.

“Sorry old man.” Gaspar shimmered through heavy smoke. “For a minute, I thought we’d make it out alive.”

“Is this—” I wheezed. “Will you—” Would Gaspar burn? His ankh was carved from wood.

The ghost shrugged. “I’ve been advising the family to invest in bone magic for centuries.”

Flames chased each other along the rafters. A blazing board dropped on my thigh.

I screamed.

The genie’s hand plunged through my mouth. I felt a pinch…and then nothing.

No fire, no searing lungs, no pain
.

“I’m taking this.” Ruth held one of my molars. “Is that a deal?”

“Absolutely!” I blinked through streaming eyes.

“You’re a swell kid.” She kissed my head. “Look me up if you’re around after you die.” She started to change to mist.

“Wait!” I pulled off my wristwatch and placed it in her hand. “Give this to Gladys.”

“Eventually.” The genie nodded once and vanished.

Fire howled almost too loud to hear. I’d stoked a locomotive, once, riding with Clara’s dad. The ash and noise had been like this, minus the bubbling blisters along my skin. My body was shivering uncontrollably but, true to Ruth’s promise, I felt no pain.

“I think,” I told the ghost, “those trading cards I owe you are a lost cause.”

Gaspar jumped up and swung his épée at a low block of ice. “Help me!” He swung again, carving a tiny notch. “I’ve got a plan.”

I tried to stand, tumbled off of the coffins, and landed, choking, on knees and elbows on the smoldering floor.

My arms and legs began to char.

The ghost hacked wildly. He had a space three inches deep carved in the ice. I crept toward Gaspar, leaving strips of myself behind. The smell of burning hair and roasting meat, roast Bernie, clogged my brain and I pitched forward. In one last herculean effort, I tugged Luella’s ankh off of my neck and wrapped it in my hand. The fist holding the ankh reached just as far as Gaspar’s little cave.

“Good luck, old man,” I told the ghost.

The icehouse roof collapsed. Boards rained down fire. I felt a rush of pure, sweet air and then white, holy incandescence blossomed and tossed me upward.

It was the light of heaven. The glorious dawn of suns.

I floated gladly, wishing my cousins well.

XIII: Who’s Sorry Now?

“Do not concern yourself with things outside your door.”
—Chinese proverb
(qtd. The Girl’s Guide to Demons)

Clara:

WE SPENT A LONG EVENING searching for Bernie first, then Gladys, and then finally Priscilla, who wasn’t downstairs in her lab after all. The town had gone mad, some people drinking and dancing drunkenly in the street, many fighting or staggering blindly in groups. Some—nearly all the visiting actors and musicians—valiantly fighting small nuisance fires that had been set by vandals.

Mary Pickford and Marion Davies took over the Hollywood Grand’s ballroom, serving coffee and sandwiches, setting up cots for volunteers. Douglas Fairbanks rescued two urchins from a burning shed. William Randolph Hearst strode back and forth, gleefully rubbing his hands, issuing edicts to mobs of reporters while little Grover Aimsley dogged his heels. When Grover’s legs gave out, the newspaperman carried him on his shoulders first, then in his arms, not letting go until the boy was tucked safely into a cot so, try as I might, I couldn’t dislike the old windbag.

Ruth, after we started looking for Bernie, spent the evening in and out of tears. I dragged her everywhere that I could think of, starting with the Hollywood Grand, the genie changing to hellfire so she could search each room unobserved, and then moving on to the Woodsen homestead, Luella’s house, the Umbridge Funeral Emporium, and even the grounds around the smoldering remains of their icehouse—one of the many outbuildings that had been burned by vandals.

Each time we failed to find my cousin, I felt more frantic, less certain I still trusted my best friend. Would Luella risk starting a blood feud with my family? Had she convinced herself that I’d already started one because of George? Once that doubt hit me, we repeated the entire search, this time looking for Stoneface Gibraltar. But he and his men appeared to have left town.

Around midnight, Falstaff’s electric plant broke down and the streets plunged into darkness. People began shuffling and wringing their hands.

Where was Priscilla? All my life, I’d always had family around me. Now there was no bossy advice, no criticism, no one who might know what was going on, except for Hans. I was sure the demon would be delighted if I begged him for help. And I was pretty sure that begging Hans would only make things worse.

At one a.m., with no place left to search, Ruth and I slunk back to the Fellowship. Beau Beauregard was standing forlornly in the open doorway, watching candles flicker at the Hollywood Grand.

“All right. I want the truth!” I led the genie to the bar and lit a pair of oil lamps. “Has Hans taken Priscilla? Where’s Bernie? What’s going on? I order you to tell me everything you know.”

“I can’t.” The genie hunched her shoulders. “I can’t discuss my master’s plans.”

“I’m your master.” I grasped her chin. “And I want facts.”