“One more thing.”
I looked up, again into those blue eyes. Why did Daniel Costello’s eyes always draw my gaze like a magnet?
“I thought you left,” I said.
“I did. But I came back to tell you something.”
“Yes, Detective?”
The eyes went all crinkly with his smile. “Call me Daniel. I like the way it sounds when you say it.”
I didn’t answer. Anything I said would’ve come out as a squeak.
“Here,” he said, handing me a card. “I wanted to give you this.” It was his business card, listing his precinct address and phone number. He touched my hand—I hoped he couldn’t feel how that made my pulse race—and twisted slightly to flip the card over. There was another phone number written in pencil on the back.
“That’s my home number. Please don’t hesitate to call me, at either one.”
“You mean about the Hellion?”
Just the slightest increase in pressure on my hand. You couldn’t call it a squeeze, but it was—something. “About anything.” He smiled and exited Creature Comforts for the second time that evening.
12
KANE SHOOED AWAY THE COLLEGE BOYS WHO’D BEEN SITTING next to Juliet. They grumbled, and Husky Boy shook his fist in Kane’s face, clueless that this was a stupid thing to do to a werewolf. Lucky for him, Kane was in public-relations mode tonight. Juliet leaned over and whispered something to the angry kid, and he moved off to one side, although he clearly wasn’t happy about it.
Next, Kane arranged the zombies at the bar, getting the male a beer and the female a glass of white wine. He kept telling them to relax, but they were both stiff. What else could you expect from zombies?
Someone from the camera crew set up lights around the zombies, and a woman in black leggings and a silvery tunic started patting powder all over their faces. Makeup on zombies! It seemed, well, overkill. Zombies had spongy, green-gray flesh. Everyone knew that. If Kane wanted people to accept the zombies as they were, trying to make these two look more human could easily backfire. The makeup girl fluttered her powder puff across Juliet’s face. So she’d be on camera, too. Nothing like a sexy vampire to give the zombies some credibility, I guess. Of course, as Tina had pointed out, there’s undead, and then there’s undead. All you had to do was glance at these three to see that.
Kane came over and put his hand on my arm. “Do you want to be in the shoot?”
“No, thanks. I have no ambition whatsoever to be on TV.”
“You sure? Might be good for business.”
“You’re not making a commercial for my business, Kane. You want me there because I look human. I can sit next to the big bad zombies and not look scared.”
“And what’s wrong with that?” He smiled one of those smiles that melted you all the way down to your toes. How come he was always looked so damn good when he was trying to talk me into something?
“Nothing, I guess.” I shrugged; I wasn’t in the mood to melt. “I just don’t want to be on TV.” I nodded at Husky Boy, now skulking at a table. He wore his baseball cap sideways, making him look like he hadn’t yet perfected his dressing-himself skills. “Why not use a real human?”
“Those kids are drunk. They’d just make goofy faces at the camera.” But he seemed to like the idea. He scanned the crowd, then went over to talk to a woman who was sitting at a table with three others. She had that Midwestern tourist vibe going on. She shook her head and batted Kane away, but she was laughing. Kane whispered something to her and treated her to one of his trademark smiles. I’ve yet to see a woman who could resist the Kane charm when he had it going full blast. A minute later, she was seated at the bar getting powdered.
The lights guy had finished setting up, and the guy with the clipboard—who must be the director—said, “Listen up, people! Everybody in position, now. Let’s get started.”
Kane stepped in front of the group at the bar, adjusting his tie and closing his eyes as he got the powder-puff treatment. The director moved everyone around a little, so that Juliet and the male zombie could be seen behind Kane to his left; the female zombie and the tourist sat to his right. He squeezed them in close to fit everyone in the shot.
“Hey! Zombie boy!” yelled Husky Boy. “Hands off my lady!” His friend laughed and punched him on the shoulder.
“Quiet on the set!” The director glared around the room until everyone settled down. He addressed the group at the bar. “Relax. You’re out having a good time. Look like you’re having fun. That’s all you have to do while Mr. Kane says his lines. Got it?” Juliet flicked back a strand of hair while the other three nodded in unison, looking various degrees of terrified.
The director pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. “Take one.” He nodded to Kane.
Kane flashed his smile at the camera. “Hello. I’m Attorney Alexander Kane. After a hard day at work, Bostonians like to unwind. And we have many options for unwinding: a home-cooked meal, a quiet evening in front of the television, a visit to a neighborhood tavern. Previously deceased Bostonians, innocent victims of a now-dormant virus, also work hard. They also like to unwind, just like you and me.”
The female zombie was stuffing her face with peanuts. Handful after handful, she crammed them into her mouth. If there’s food around, zombies will eat it; and besides that, she was nervous. It was distracting to watch her, so much so that I forgot to listen to Kane.
“Cut!” yelled the director. “Cut, cut, cut! Somebody take those peanuts away from that zombie.”
“Previously deceased hu—” Kane started to correct him, when some of those peanuts went down the wrong way. The female zombie clutched at her throat and started coughing, spraying chewed-up peanut crumbs all over the norm woman sitting next to her. The woman squealed and jumped off her stool, brushing at her clothes like they were on fire, while Axel leaned over the bar to pound the coughing zombie on the back.
She shuddered and gasped and eventually stopped coughing. She drained her glass of wine, then looked around unhappily. “Sorry,” she said, and hiccupped.
Axel refilled the zombie’s wineglass. She picked it up and promptly spilled it down the front of her orange dress.
The college boys howled with laughter and high-fived each other. Kane looked ready to toss them out of the bar—he could’ve done it without wrinkling his suit—but he must have decided they weren’t worth bothering with, because he merely smoothed his jacket and waited while the makeup girl dealt with the flustered zombie, blotting her dress and applying more powder.
“Let’s get it right this time, people. You guys at the bar—no eating, no drinking. Just sit there and smile while Mr. Kane speaks. All right? Okay, go. Take two.”
The camera began rolling again, and Kane repeated his speech. He made it past the first cut, and continued: “The previously deceased are Bostonians. They are our spouses, our family members, our friends.” His brow clouded, just enough to make him smokily handsome. “But Seth Baldwin calls them monsters. If Baldwin becomes governor, he’ll take away their limited rights and force them from their homes. Haven’t the previously deceased suffered en—”
Husky Boy leaped to his feet, pumping his fist in the air and yelling, “Baldwin for Governor! Woo-hoo! Yeah!” His friend, laughing, added a couple of rebel yells. The two of them made so much noise I could barely hear the director’s “Cut!” over their racket.
Kane glared at them. Juliet rolled her eyes. The tourist slid off her bar stool and returned to her table. The zombies looked lost. When Kane started toward the college boys wearing his scary face—an expression that was way more werewolf than public-relations exec—I followed. This looked like a situation where a little backup couldn’t hurt.
By the time I got there, the less drunk kid was holding the other one back. Husky Boy was red-faced, shouting at Kane. “It’s a free goddamn country, and I’ll say whatever I goddamn please.” Drops of spittle, lit up by the TV lights, sprayed from his mouth. “Humans got freedom of speech, ya know!”
“I think it’s time you boys went back to the dorm.” Kane took an arm in each hand. The students tried to shake him off, but he was too strong, which only made Husky Boy yell louder and add more obscenities to his words. Kane ignored him, propelling them both toward the door.
“Lemme go!” Husky Boy struggled, jerking his arm around and dragging his feet. Kane kept moving toward the door; the kid had no choice but to go with him.
I opened the door for the trio. Kane pitched both norms onto the sidewalk, just hard enough to make his point. Husky Boy, who’d lost his baseball cap, lay on his back and shouted, “You let goddamn freakin’ zombies in there an’ throw out real Americans!” As I closed the door, his friend was saying, “C’mon, man, let’s just go.”
Kane was halfway across the room when the door burst open and the angry kid came after him, waving a broken beer bottle. Kane turned, swinging his arm out, and Husky Boy ran smack into it, nose to elbow. He went down like someone had kicked his legs out from under him. His nose spouted a fountain of blood, and he’d cut his own arm on the broken bottle.
The moment the smell of blood hit the air—real blood, and lots of it—everything went still. For a long moment, nobody uttered a sound, nobody flicked an eyelid.
Then Juliet licked her lips.
Vampires rose to their feet. Both zombies sniffed the air and looked at Husky Boy, who’d rolled on his side and was trying to get up. As if hypnotized, they got down from their stools and staggered toward him.
I grabbed a handful of napkins and handed them to the kid. “Here,” I said, “you’d better stop that bleeding.” I raised him to his feet, but his knees kept buckling. So I picked him up like a child and turned to carry him out the door. Six vampires, their eyes glowing, blocked our way. Behind us, heavy zombie footsteps came closer.