Unnatural Acts Read online

  “That’s monstrous.” Robin took detailed notes. She looked up and said in a soft, compassionate voice, “And how did you escape, Bill?”

  The golem shuddered. “There was an accident on the bottling line. When a batch of our Fires of Hell hot sauce melted the glass bottles and corroded the labeling machine, three of my golem friends had to clean up the mess. But the hot sauce ruined them, too, and they fell apart.

  “I was in the second-wave cleanup crew, shoveling the mess into a wheelbarrow. Max commanded me to empty it into a Dumpster in the alley above, but he forgot to command me to come back. So when I was done, I just walked away.” Bill hung his head. “But my people are still there, still enslaved. Can you free them? Stop the suffering?”

  I addressed the golem. “Why didn’t you go to the police when you escaped?”

  Bill blinked his big artificial eyes, now that he was more moisturized. “Would they have listened to me? I don’t have any papers. Legally speaking, I’m the necromancer’s property.”

  Robin dabbed her eyes with a tissue and pushed her legal pad aside. “It sounds like a civil rights lawsuit in the making, Bill. We can investigate Maximus Max’s sweatshop for conformance to workplace safety codes. Armed with that information, I’ll find a sympathetic judge and file an injunction to stop the work line temporarily.”

  Bill was disappointed. “But how long will that take? They need help now!”

  “I think he was hoping for something more immediate, Robin,” I suggested. “I’ll talk to Officer McGoohan, see if he’ll raid the place . . . but even that might be a day or two.”

  The golem’s face showed increasing alarm. “I can’t stay here—I’m not safe! Maximus Max will be looking for me. He’ll know where to find me.”

  “How?” Sheyenne asked, sounding skeptical.

  “I’m an escaped golem looking for action and legal representation—where else would I go but Chambeaux and Deyer? That’s what the tourist map says.”

  “I’ve got an idea,” I said. “Spooky, call Tiffany and tell her I’ll come to her comedy improv show if she does me a quick favor.”

  Sheyenne responded with an impish grin. “Good idea, Beaux.”

  Tiffany was the buffest—and butchest—vampire I’d ever met. She had a gruff demeanor and treated her life with the utmost seriousness the second time around. But she had more of a sense of humor than I originally thought. Earlier that afternoon, Tiffany had dropped in, wearing a grin that showed her white fangs; she waved a pack of tickets and asked if we’d come see her for open-mic night at the Laughing Skull, a comedy club down in Little Transylvania. Maybe we could trade favors....

  I knew Tiffany from the All-Day/All-Nite Fitness Center, where I tried to keep myself in shape. Zombies don’t have to worry about cholesterol levels or love handles, but it’s important to maintain muscle tone and flexibility. The aftereffects of death can substantially impact one’s quality of life. I worked out regularly, but Tiffany was downright obsessive about it. She said she could bench-press a coffin filled with lead bricks (though why she would want to, I couldn’t say).

  Like many vampires, Tiffany had invested well and didn’t need a regular job, but due to her intimidating physique, I kept her in mind in case I ever needed extra muscle. I’d never tried to call in a favor before, but Sheyenne was very persuasive.

  Tiffany the vampire walked through the door wearing a denim work shirt and jeans. She had narrow hips, square shoulders, no waist, all muscle. She looked as if she’d been assembled from solid concrete blocks; if any foolish vampire slayer had tried to pound a stake through her heart, it would have splintered into toothpicks.

  Tiffany said gruffly, “Tell me what you got, Chambeaux.” When Bill emerged from the conference room, she eyed him up and down. “You’re a big boy.”

  “I was made that way. Mr. Chambeaux said you can keep me safe.”

  After I explained the situation, she said, “Sure, I’ll give you a place to stay. Hang out at my house for a few days until this blows over.” Tiffany glanced at me, raised her eyebrows. “A few days—right, Chambeaux?”

  Robin answered for me. “That should be all we need to start the legal proceedings.”

  Bill’s clay lips rolled upward in a genuine smile now. “My people and I are indebted to you, Miss Tiffany.”

  “No debt involved. Actually, I could use a hand if you don’t mind pitching in. I’m doing some remodeling at home, installing shelves, flooring, and a workbench in the garage, plus dark paneling and a wet bar in the basement den. I also need help setting up some heavy tools I ordered—circular saw and drill press, that kind of thing.”

  “I would be happy to help,” Bill agreed.

  “Thanks for the favor, Tiffany,” I said.

  The vampire gave me a brusque nod. “Don’t worry, he’ll be putty in my hands.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Eager to shut down the illegal golem sweatshop, I went to find Officer Toby McGoohan. McGoo was my BHF, my best human friend, and our lives were closely related, but not in lockstep. Back in college, we’d both wanted to be cops, but my life didn’t turn out as I had planned. After a lackluster career on the outside, I set up my private detective business in the Quarter, and I did all right for myself (my own murder notwithstanding).

  McGoo stuck with his law enforcement and criminal justice training, became a police officer. And his life hadn’t turned out as planned, either. He had never been a rising star. His sense of humor and lack of political correctness had gotten him transferred from a dead-end career on the outside to an even deader-end career here in the Quarter.

  McGoo didn’t like the assignment, but he made do. As a cop, he believed his job was to enforce the law and keep the peace. “If I was in a quiet, affluent district with a low crime rate, what would I do with myself all day long? Hang out at the doughnut shop and get fat?” Victims were victims, and scumbags were scumbags; it didn’t matter that they had fangs or claws. McGoo knew he wasn’t going to be promoted to a better job, regardless of how many gold stars he got on his record. He was always going to be a beat cop. So be it.

  He made sure I understood the irony. “Who would have guessed it, Shamble? You were the one who dropped out of the curriculum, and you’re the one who made detective!” It was a joke, but not a very funny one. Most of McGoo’s jokes weren’t funny.

  Where do you find a zombie that’s lost its arms and legs?

  Exactly where you left it.

  His monster jokes were a safe bet. These days, a guy could get in trouble for picking on ethnic minorities, but it was perfectly all right to disparage unnaturals (though it wasn’t smart to insult a werewolf in full-moon heat).

  McGoo and I often helped each other. He could use department channels off the books to get me details I needed on cases; for my own part, since I didn’t wear a badge, I could use unorthodox means to dig up information that he needed. It was a good partnership. We were also drinking buddies.

  Our friendship had changed fundamentally once I became a zombie. No surprise there: A lot of things changed after I came back from the dead. It was only natural . . . or unnatural.

  Around McGoo, I would try to pretend that nothing had happened, for old times’ sake. I drank the same brand of beer and sat on the same bar stool, and McGoo did his best to ignore the differences. But when we sat together in the Goblin Tavern, sometimes he couldn’t look me in the eyes; instead, he focused on the neat round bullet hole in the center of my forehead (makeup notwithstanding).

  Right now, I found McGoo leaving the Transfusion coffee shop, where I knew he’d be this time of day. As a service to the customers, Transfusion had opaque windows so that insomniac vampires could hang out during daylight hours, have a cup of coffee, read a book or work on a laptop. McGoo just liked their coffee. From his gruff exterior, McGoo seemed like the type of person to order coffee strong and black, but he preferred cinnamon lattes (and was ready to deliver a punch in the nose to anyone who called him a sissy for it).
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br />   Carrying his latte as if it were a live hand grenade, McGoo saw me coming toward him down the street. “Hey, Shamble!”

  “I need a favor, McGoo.”

  His grin turned into a frown. “Never a good way to start a conversation.”

  “Consider it job security, some excitement in your life. A good deed for the day.”

  “I just try to get through the day, Shamble. Wanna hear a joke?”

  I cut him off. “I’d rather tell you about an illegal sweatshop, enslaved and abused golems, a black-market souvenir racket. I need you to call in a raid. You’ll be glad you did.”

  For all his curmudgeonly exterior, McGoo took his job seriously. “You aren’t kidding, are you?”

  “When have I ever lied to you?”

  McGoo took a long sip of his cinnamon latte. “You really want me to stand here and make a list?”

  “Instead, how about making a few calls, bring in some backup, and bust down a door?” My face wasn’t good at expressions anymore, but I made sure I looked absolutely confident. “One condition, though—I get to come along. I have to make sure my clients’ interests are served.”

  “And who exactly is your client?”

  “About a hundred oppressed golems. We’re going to have a civil rights suit for unsafe and inhuman working conditions, employee abuse, health hazards. You know how Robin is when she gets feisty.”

  “Sure do.” McGoo nodded with a wistful smile. “All right, let me get back to the precinct house, file some paperwork, twist some arms. If I get this rubber-stamped, we should be ready to roll by twilight.”

  Before they busted down the door to the underground sweatshop, McGoo told me to stand behind the five cops with us. “Just in case there’s any gunfire,” he said.

  “Gunfire? I can handle being shot better than you can. I’ve already been through the experience a few times.” (All but once after I was already dead, fortunately.) Even now, my jacket sported several bullet holes that had been repaired by a not-too-skilled zombie seamstress named Wendy. I could have bought a new jacket, but I rather liked the reminder. Sheyenne thought it lent me character.

  “Don’t give me more heartburn, Shamble. I ate my last meal at the Ghoul’s Diner.” Too often, last meal was an apt phrase at the Ghoul’s Diner.

  I hung back. “It’s your show, buddy.” I hoped we had the correct address. I’d never live it down if I accidentally called a raid on an old witch’s bridge club.

  When we crept along the shadow-choked alley past a rusty Dumpster, the brownish fumes wafting up made the cops cough and rub their stinging eyes. I saw four rats lying dead on the ground next to the Dumpster, their mouths open, their little paws clutching their throats in agony. I knew this had to be the place where Bill had dumped the toxic hot sauce.

  A metal door set into the brick alley wall was marked with hexes and protective spells—standard stuff. Since the Big Uneasy, all search warrants came with counterspells that nullified home-security hexes and protective runes.

  McGoo wielded the battering ram with obvious relish. He smashed the lock, pushed open the bent wreckage, and yelled down the stairs. “Police! We have a search warrant!”

  The raid team charged down the cement steps into the subterranean levels, trying to outdo one another with their enthusiasm. “Freeze!” “Stop where you are!” “Hands up!” I hurried after them, keeping my .38 in its holster, but I could draw it if necessary.

  I heard deep-voiced groans from the underground lair and a high-pitched yelp of panic. “Don’t shoot! I surrender!”

  The golem workshop was a cesspit—and I don’t mean that as a good thing. The place reeked of rot and wet clay, the sour stink of mudflats on a humid summer day. A crowd of clumsily formed, mass-produced golems stood shoulder to shoulder at cramped work stations, applying labels, filling bottles, operating silkscreen presses or thermal package sealers, printing and folding T-shirts, wrapping salt and pepper shakers, boxing up snacks labeled “Certified Unnatural.” Crates and crates of finished souvenirs were stacked against a wall, ready for shipment.

  Even during the raid, the golems continued to work, trying to meet their quotas. The sound they made was not quite a song, but a low miserable chant that caused the brick support pillars to thrum.

  At the far end of the underground chamber, a gold-painted supervisor’s chair sat like a throne. The tall necromancer, presumably Maximus Max, sat on the throne and flailed his long-fingered hands. He wore a purple robe embroidered with crudely stitched symbols; I wondered if he had done the embroidery himself. Though I’d never heard of necromancers taking up cross-stitch, I’d seen plenty of strange things in the Quarter.

  Max had a long horsey face, as if someone had taken his chin and stretched his head beyond tolerance levels. He was balding, his sparse brown hair in a comb-over that he must have been able to see in a mirror. The center of his forehead sported a third eye drawn in eyeliner. He had been working on a digest-sized book of sudoku puzzles.

  “Maximilian Grubb, I have a warrant for your arrest,” McGoo said.

  He had run the records: Maximilian Grubb, aka Maximus Max, was a two-bit necromancer with a rap sheet of petty crimes. Nothing major, nothing violent—just a lifetime of questionable choices.

  Max kept his hands up in surrender, terrified. “On what charge? I’ve done nothing wrong. I run a good clean business here!”

  “One of your workers—a golem named Bill—filed a complaint. And on first glance, I see about a dozen permit violations.”

  The necromancer missed the point entirely. “You found Bill? I thought he’d gotten lost.”

  I said, “Bill has engaged the services of Chambeaux and Deyer on behalf of himself and his fellow golems.” I looked around the subterranean chamber. “The inhuman work conditions are pretty obvious.”

  “Inhuman? But they’re golems!” As the cops put Maximus Max in handcuffs, he remained distraught, babbling excuses. “I’m a reformed necromancer! At least I don’t play with dead things anymore. I’m just trying to make a living.”

  McGoo and his companions ladled out water to the listless golems, who gratefully moisturized their clay skin.

  I wandered to the sealed crates of souvenirs ready for shipment, and when no one was looking, I pulled the delivery label off one box. If there was more to this black-market souvenir racket, I wanted to know the details. The cases don’t solve themselves. I slipped the tag into the pocket of my sport jacket.

  McGoo came up to me, shaking his head. He pulled out a T-shirt that showed a cartoon figure of a hairy werewolf who had yanked down his pants to flash his bare buttocks. Full Moon in the Unnatural Quarter.

  “Scout’s honor, I’ve never seen so much stupid junk in my life,” he said. “We’re going to impound tons of it for the case—and I mean tons. We’ll have to build a separate evidence locker.”

  “Or maybe you could hold an officers’ benefit yard sale,” I suggested.

  McGoo picked up a black whoopee cushion billed as Sounds just like a real outgassing corpse! “When I was a kid, my parents took me on camping trips—it was rainy and miserable and full of mosquitoes, but at least it was a family vacation. Who in their right mind would want to visit the Quarter as a tourist?”

  “I guess there isn’t any place on Earth too seedy to be commercialized.”

  As the necromancer was ushered off, his hands cuffed behind his back, McGoo impounded his book of sudoku puzzles as evidence. “Can’t be too careful. Might contain potential spells.”

  The hundred golems were freed, and Bill would be pleased at how this had turned out. Even I was surprised at how swiftly we had shut down the sweatshop. Case closed, justice served.

  CHAPTER 3

  I intended to celebrate by going on a genuine, long-postponed date with Sheyenne. Unfortunately, Robin overheard me ask her. “Oh, I love Shakespeare in the Park!” Robin flashed me that big bright smile that could always soften my heart, even if it wasn’t beating anymore.

  “It�
��s Shakespeare in the Dark,” I corrected her, but the detail didn’t matter to her. “The theater troupe is composed mostly of ghosts, with other unnaturals as guest stars.”

  “They’re doing Macbeth!” The troupe had originally announced a performance of the comedies Taming of the Shrew and The Merchant of Venice, but the bloody and murderous tragedies were bigger crowd pleasers in the Unnatural Quarter.

  Robin’s excitement continued to grow. “Would it be all right if I tagged along? I’ll pay for my own ticket, and I’ll be no trouble—I promise.”

  So much for the quiet, romantic date with my ghost girlfriend....

  I saw the flicker of disappointment on Sheyenne’s face, knowing she would have preferred a semi-normal evening with me, but she smiled. “Sure, Robin. We wouldn’t expect you to go by yourself, especially at night, to the Greenlawn Cemetery.”

  Robin looked as happy as I’d seen her in a long time, and I appreciated Sheyenne for being so flexible. Robin is a partner and a friend, and all-around good company—not your typical fifth wheel. Besides, it wasn’t as if she would put a damper on any hanky-panky, since Sheyenne and I could have no physical contact anyway. It would just be a nice night out for the three of us.

  Sheyenne showed her genius at innovation, adding spice to our date. Although I couldn’t touch her, and she couldn’t touch me, she could touch inanimate objects. (Don’t think about it too much—I didn’t make up the rules.) As we passed through the cemetery gates, she slipped a tan polyester glove over one spectral hand and reached out to me. “It takes a fair amount of poltergeist concentration to do this, Beaux, and it won’t feel exactly the same, but at least we can hold hands. Sort of.”