1 Broken Hearted Ghoul (3 page)

“Terry, this is my new partner, Skye Mertz. Skye, this is my husband.”

“Nice to meet you.” I shook his hand. It was icy cold. Nothing new for a zombie, but there the resemblance ended. My instincts said that Terry wasn’t a zombie—but he wasn’t human either.

That didn’t make any sense. Maybe my zombie-detector instincts were off.

“When did they assign you a partner, Debbie?” Terry asked.

“I’m doing this big project, and it’s going to take a long time,” she explained. “Skye is a wonderful graphic artist. We’re going to work well together.”

“I look forward to seeing some of your work.” Terry smiled at me. “And I hope you two won’t be pulling many more all-nighters. We’re used to having Debbie around. He kissed the hand that had been resting on his shoulder.

“Terry is going back to work next year.” Debbie’s eyes begged me to play along.

“Thanks for the warning. I always drive too fast.” I was confused. Was she keeping his paralysis a secret too? She’d already told me that he’d never walk again.

“What does your husband do, Skye?” Terry questioned.

“He died in a wreck two years ago. It’s just my daughter and me now. Kate’s seven, like Raina.”

“I’m so sorry. At least my family was spared that.”

“Yeah.” I glanced at Debbie. I guessed she wasn’t going to tell him about having twenty years to live after all. “Well, I have to go. Nice meeting you.”

“You too,” he returned. “Don’t drive too fast now.”

I smiled and waved as I walked toward the front door.

Debbie met me there before I could leave. “Thanks for stopping in. I just couldn’t tell him—not yet. I wanted him to meet you anyway for when—”she shrugged “—you know.”

“Us knowing each other won’t make it any easier, if that’s what you’re thinking,” I told her. “Besides, I’ve got two years on him. I’ll be gone, and someone will have taken my place. Maybe you.”

She went as pale as Brandon, and blinked. “Not
me
. I hope Abe isn’t thinking that. I could never do this by myself. I don’t know how you have.”

I smiled as I opened the door. “It helps that I was a cop before, I think. I’ll see you later.”

I closed the door on the wonderful, homey scene in the cabin that really wasn’t wonderful, or homey. The undercurrents of lies and fear were enough to choke a hog. Debbie was going to have take care of all that before her world imploded.

Chapter Three

I lived in the next suburb up from where Debbie lived, past the big lake in the center of town. The suburb of Wanderer’s Lake was surrounded by expensive homes, shops and restaurants.

I’d been raised here. So had Jacob. Many things had changed since I was a child. For a long time, there hadn’t been any growth in the area. Now it was exploding with new shops, houses, and people. It seemed like every month brought something else.

I missed the way it had been. I liked the sleepy quiet of the lake, and the two-lane, winding road. If the area kept growing, we might as well all move into Nashville.

Apple season in the fall used to be my favorite time. The ripe smell of apples on the trees, and in crates on the side of the road, had been everywhere. I loved the small farm stands that featured apples, pumpkins, and cabbages.

Those were mostly gone now too, replaced by convenience stores.

The large inn where I live was named for that time of year. Apple Betty’s Inn had been on that same curve of U.S. Highway for as long as anyone could remember.

Jacob’s family had taken it over from his grandparents in 1941, and had maintained it through floods, fires, and heavy snows. It had remained a popular tourist stop—with guests coming from across the country—until Jacob’s mother, Addie, had passed about a year ago.

Now the three stories only housed me and Kate—unless you counted Addie’s ghost.

I pulled the van in back where the wide circular drive was still a parking area that could hold at least a dozen cars. I went inside through the mudroom and into the kitchen. Addie was there with Kate, making sure my daughter ate her breakfast.

“I was wondering if you were getting back sometime or what.” Addie Mertz had been a plainspoken woman when she was alive. Nothing had changed since cancer had claimed her.

“Things got a little complicated.” I poured myself a cup of coffee, and sat down at the big wood table. “Did you get that math done last night?”

“Of course.” Kate played with her oatmeal. “Why can’t we have something else for breakfast? I hate oatmeal.”

“Because that’s what I can still make,” Addie told her. “It’s good for you. Eat it.”

“I like sausage biscuits.”

“We’ll pick up some frozen ones when we go shopping.” I tried to put an end to the problem. “We can eat them when I’m home for breakfast.”

“Which is never.” Addie walked away from the table.

She didn’t so much walk—at least not the way living people do—or even zombies for that matter. It was more a graceful, floating motion. She could still make some electrical appliances work, like the microwave. But Kate had to put the food inside for her.

It was a big help to me that Addie was there. I never had to worry about the odd hours I kept. I knew Kate was safe. Addie knew my twenty-year secret. I didn’t plan to tell Kate, at least not until it was nearly time. She was too young to understand why I’d made this choice.

Sometimes I wondered myself.

I tried not to let it bother me. I wanted to enjoy the time I had. I didn’t want to be like Mr. Tappman when it was over. No regrets, I promised myself. No begging for more time.

I cleaned up the kitchen, and grabbed a slice of toast—yes zombies eat—while I waited for Kate to get her things together for school. We don’t
have
to eat, but Abe said it makes living humans feel better when you eat around them.

Addie flitted around the kitchen. “You know this is an unnatural life for a child.”

“I don’t think child services, and the foster care program, would be any more natural, do you? I went through that. It was a different kind of hell. This is the best I can do with a bad situation.”

I wasn’t sure who my parents were or where they were from. Someone had found me wandering around the lake with some flowers in my hand. I was about two years old. There were no relatives or friends to take me in—no one had any idea who I was or where I belonged.

After that came a succession of foster homes where people meant well, in some cases, but things didn’t always work out. At least Kate had a mostly normal life with two members of her family.

She sighed. “I’m sorry. I feel like I didn’t help any by dying. What was I thinking?”

“You were very sick for a long time. You held on as long as you could.”

“Not long enough.” Her facial features were blurred, but I could see the stiffening of her lips, just like when she was alive and had disapproved of something me and Jacob were doing.

“There’s no point in going over this again.” I looked up from the clean counter. “We’ve both done the best we could for Kate. Let’s just hold on to that, shall we?”

 Kate rejoined us with her book bag. “Am I taking the bus home from school today?”

“If you’re not, I’ll be there. You know how this works.”

“I’ll see you both later.” Addie handed Kate her lunchbox. “I hate this half-life. Nothing to do but stare out the windows all day. I thought canning jelly was bad.”

Kate and I were regularly treated to Addie’s regrets about being dead. We both kept moving toward the door.

“And don’t forget to eat the carrots.” Addie called out to Kate.

“I won’t, Grandma.”

Addie was watching us out the back window as we left. The van was still a little warm. I was glad that Kate didn’t have to get into a cold vehicle.

“Have you ever thought about being a police officer again?” she asked as we left the inn.

That was unexpected. “No. Not really. Why?”

She tugged at her burgundy skirt with her black leggings under it. “We’re having parent career day. I thought you might be able to come.”

“And talk about being a cop?” I glanced at her pretty face. She looked like Jacob with her big eyes and sweet lips. Lucky she didn’t resemble me.

“Yeah. You know about it. No one else in class has a parent who even
used
to be a cop. Janie’s dad is a dentist. That’s about as exciting as it gets.”

I laughed at her droll voice. “I’ll see what I can do. What day is it?”

“Tomorrow. Two p.m. May I plan on you?”

“Yes, please. Plan on me.” I pulled into the line of cars at the school. “I would be happy to be your career parent.”

“Why did you stop being a police officer anyway?”

How do you tell a seven-year-old that her mother’s life ended on a warm summer night when she, and your father, both died?

“It was time for me to move on.” I settled on that answer. I could tell her more when there was a remote chance that she’d understand it.  “It’s time for you to go to school. See you later.”

“Bye, Mommy.”

Kate scooted out of the van, hefted her book bag with a grunt, and was gone.

Her question raised more panic in my mind than all the runaway zombies could have. What if she started wondering what happened to me? What if she started asking questions? Addie was right—it was an unnatural life for a child—living with a zombie for a mother and a ghost for a caregiver.

I was interrupted from wallowing in it by a call from Abe. He wanted to see me at his place right away. It sounded bad.

Chapter Four

Abraham Lincoln Jones was born in 1863 on the day after the Emancipation Proclamation had freed all slaves. His mother had named him after the president who was responsible for her son’s new freedom.

After that, he’d remained in the South following the Civil War, and his mother’s death. He ended up in New Orleans where he fell in love with a witch, or a voodoo priestess—depending on who was telling the story. She loved him too, and wanted to keep him with her forever. She accomplished this by making him her zombie slave.

The tale continued that she killed him, and then brought him back to life. He’d served her for a hundred years, doing all kinds of unspeakable things to her enemies.

One day, he got tired of being her slave, (or he found her with another zombie?) and he killed her. He put his big hands around her throat and squeezed. When she was gone, she had no hold over him.

I should mention that Abe has never told me this story. Supposedly, bits and pieces of it have filtered out through the years and been passed down by the people he rescued from death to serve him.

I admit that it sounds a little fantastic. But I can’t question Abe’s power, or his magic. One minute, I was lying in a hospital bed, broken so badly that the doctors said I couldn’t be fixed. Abe put his tattoo on the heel of my foot—after I’d signed his service agreement for twenty years—and I got up and went home.

You’d think, after being alive so long, that Abe would have ended up in some dark underground spot in New York or Paris. It seemed more fitting than Nashville to me. I’d heard him speak of living all over the southern U.S. Maybe he couldn’t bring himself to live in colder, northern lands.

Instead, he hung out at a tattoo place called Devil’s Ink. He lived upstairs in the old, two-story brick building. When I was a kid, there’d been a dress shop downstairs. I remember shopping there with one of my foster moms.

I had never been upstairs where Abe lived. He had an office behind the tattoo area where he talked to his zombies, and sent them out on assignments. Most of the time he used his favorite possession—his cell phone. Sometimes I didn’t have to go in for a month.

The front space was always full of zombies and humans, getting tattoos and showing off the ones they had. That day was no different. It didn’t seem to matter what time of the day or night I went there, the front area was always full.

Besides the tattoo on my heel, I wasn’t interested. I admit that the colorful dragons and symbols were impressive. It just wasn’t something I wanted to do.

“Hey.” Rocky nodded at me. He was a big man with hundreds of tattoos all over him. He was a zombie too. It seemed that his service was putting tattoos on people for Abe. I always wondered if he’d been the one who tattooed my foot. I couldn’t really remember.

“Abe here?”

He puffed on a cigarette, and pointed toward the back office. “I think he’s waiting for you.”

“What did you do this time, Skye?” Dex, a zombie with bad hair, taunted.

“Probably more than you can imagine.” I smiled, and headed toward the back.

Dex and Rocky had some other stupid remarks they hurled at me. I didn’t care. I’d heard much worse. Sometimes I wished I could knock their heads together because they were annoying as all get-out. Mostly I repeated my mantra:
keep a low profile, do your job, and go home.

There were other men—some good-looking and muscular—sitting around. Their eyes suggestively followed me. Maybe all the things I’d been through in the last two years had left their mark on me. I never thought about whether or not I was attractive anymore, or thought about taking a lover.

The men, and zombies, were never my type. I wasn’t really sure anymore if I
had
a type. I hadn’t felt anything for anyone but Kate since Jacob had died. It was possible I was incapable of it, like not feeling cold and not sleeping. The only passion I had was for my job and my daughter.

I opened the last door in the back hallway. Abe was at his desk, like always, a mound of paperwork and magical charms stacked in front of him.

 “There you are.” He pyramided his hands together, and grinned at me. “I told Dex this morning that you do such a wonderful job for me. I appreciate you, Skye.”

His voice was as dark and deep as his skin. I’d never seen him angry. He was as likely to grin when you told him a zombie had escaped from you as if you’d told him the job went perfectly fine.

I hoped never to see Abe angry. He exuded power. I didn’t know if it was magic since I’d never seen
real
magic besides his. Abe was frightening without doing a thing.