Speakeasy Dead: a P.G. Wodehouse-Inspired Romantic Zombie Comedy (Hellfire Universe Historicals) (12 page)

I slumped back weakly, breathing hard. He had both knife and hair, I saw, a fist-sized chunk, yanked from my scalp. But on the bright side, I still had both ears.

“For two cents, I’d kill you now and give that uppity cousin your head.”

Stoneface reached in his pocket and found a penny.

“Just
one
cent. Huh.” His punch exploded in my gut. “Must be your lucky day.”

The world slid down toward darkness.

I sighed.

About damn time
.

X: Stumbling All Around

Most people are no crueler than they need to be to get what they want. It’s the same with demons; they simply want more.
—The Girl’s Guide to Demons

Clara:

IN THE END, Beau didn’t let George Junior rip me to pieces—just gnaw a couple of chunks out of my shoulder. I’m not sure why. Maybe he wasn’t angry enough to watch a seventeen-year-old girl bleed to death in front of his eyes. Maybe being my zombie meant he couldn’t kill me. Or maybe he wanted to keep my brains fresh until he was hungry again. Possibly I won him over because I didn’t cry.

Whatever reason, about one minute into the struggle, Beau wrapped his arms around George’s shuddering body and carted him the rest of the way upstairs from the landing.

Fortunately Bernie and I both keep clothes at the Fellowship, I because the Woodson homestead is five miles away, and Bernie because he wrecks his clothes on a regular basis and doesn’t like to go home mussed. I stuffed my ruined dress behind a bookcase, used a drop of hellfire to heal myself—it was an awful waste, but I couldn’t think of anything else to get rid of the gore—lingered thirty seconds over the beautifully shear, beaded dancing gown that had been my graduation present from Luella, and then pulled on a dowdy, green Chelsea-collared frock that left me looking like
Tess of the Storm Country
.

At least my hair looked good. Priscilla had rag-rolled it two nights before, and a touch of Vaseline freshened the curls. I’m not vain about my hair…well…maybe I am, a little, but it’s also my best disguise. Ladies pet it, gentlemen melt before it, and as long as the locks are clean, curled, and free of cobwebs, my sisters mistakenly assume that I’ve been keeping out of trouble.

“All right, hang on,” I called into the bathroom where Beau was holding George. “I’ll be right back.”

I slipped down to the first floor, sidled up to Priscilla, and sneaked the key ring out of her apron pocket. Then I dashed back upstairs and washed and bandaged George’s arm while Beau held him. The cut looked almost like a bite mark, and I spent a shuddering minute watching George foam at the mouth, convincing myself it wasn’t rabies.

George was drunk. He had to be! Luella had gotten him drunk, and he would absolutely die of shame if we let anyone see him. The best thing to do was let him sleep it off and hope he forgot all about how violent he’d been.

Fortunately, the Fellowship keeps guest bedrooms for coven members who have business with demons or just want to spend the night in town. The rooms are well insulated, practically soundproof, and the deterrent spell on the staircases keeps out unescorted guests. We shoved George into a bedroom with a pitcher of water and locked the door.

“Come on.” The drop of hellfire I’d swallowed had given me a boost of energy. “I need to double-check my reference on zombies.” I’d combed through the
Girl’s Guide
this morning, but that was before Beau had eaten Mr. Vargas.

I dragged Beau up the back stairs to the attic and climbed the ladder that leads to the widow’s walk on top of the Fellowship’s roof, taking a minute to blink in the sun. There’s a terrific view up there of the San Francisco mountains to the north and the seven-story Hollywood Grand across the street. I’d spent a lot of the last year wrapped in blankets, watching the building take shape. But today, I wasn’t interested in hotels.

I hiked myself over the iron guardrail that surrounds the widow’s walk and onto the gently sloping slate roof, crouched low, and reached as far as I could under the platform. There, hidden behind a piece of slate, wrapped in three layers of oilcloth, was my copy of
The Girl’s Guide to Demons
—or rather the copy I’d discovered six years ago in our attic at home. The copy I’d never shown anyone, not even Bernie, although Luella knew something about it.

The book was old. Thirty or forty years, with the silver leaf almost worn off the binding and so many notes and scribbled drawings, it could be hard to read the printed text.

“If
you
made me into a zombie,” Beau asked conversationally, “and I made the janitor into a zombie, does that make Mr. Vargas our son?” He’d been falling-down drunk a little while ago. Now he seemed perfectly sober as he leaned against the railing and gazed at the view.

“Of course not.” I glanced up and froze, breath strangling in my throat. Silhouetted against the afternoon sky, looking into the distance, Beau’s perfect profile had an ethereal glow, an otherworldly beauty, as if a broad-shouldered angel had settled on our rooftop. While I watched, he slipped out of his dinner jacket and stood, oblivious, in his blazing white shirt and waistcoat, staring into the distance.

I shivered, hypnotized, unable to move. For a minute, I wondered if this was what had happened to George Junior, if I’d caught rabies when he’d bitten me. But I was suffering from a different sickness altogether.

The Girl’s Guide
slipped and thudded on the rooftop with a bang.

Beau turned and raised a mocking eyebrow that seemed to pull my insides into his long fingers and tie them into knots. I fumbled for the book, dropped it, picked it up again and then plopped myself down on the slate, blushing furiously, putting my back to the railing, making a mental note never again to fall in love with a beautiful man.

“And if you and I,” Beau continued with a hint of laughter, “made Mr. Vargas into a zombie, and Mr. Vargas transformed George, does that make us his grandma and grandpa?”

“George Junior is not a zombie.”

I opened the
Guide
and thumbed through carefully, trying to concentrate on the text. I had a deal with a demon. I had missing booze, a missing cousin, and…practically speaking…a missing genie as well. I had a zombie, a
real
one,
on my hands, a dance contest to run, a dead janitor, and a half-sister who might, at any moment, wise up and pull the rug out from under me.

On top of all that, I’d just imprisoned a member of a prominent family that, in a certain light, might be viewed as my own family’s arch-rivals. No amount of supernatural etiquette or best-friendship with Luella was going to save my neck if something bad happened to George.

All those problems demanded my attention as I skimmed the pages of the
Girl’s Guide to Demons
. And yet all I could think about was how handsome Beau looked in his waistcoat.

What was wrong with me? I banged my fist into my head.

Hadn’t I seen Bernie in all sorts of states of half dress?

Hadn’t I been about to kiss Ned Aimsley thirty minutes ago?

I had things to achieve. Goals to accomplish.

Beau vaulted the railing and landed lightly by my side. He sat down and draped one arm around my shoulders, and all my goals flew off the roof in a rush. Muscles rippled behind my back. I’d never realized, on screen, that he was so well defined. His scent was masculine, faintly musty, as if he spent his days deep in books.

“Ah.” My chest tightened. “Ah.” I felt a fleck of drool on my lips.

Maybe I had caught rabies after all.

“If we’re going to make baby zombies,” Beau said, squeezing me lightly, “I can think of more pleasurable ways.”

“Ah.” There was a spooky connection when we touched. A tingling closeness that had nothing to do with dress shirts and broad shoulders, and everything to do with the fact this man had become my supernatural minion.

“Clara.” He tipped my chin up. “Clara, look at me.”

His eyes were ocean blue, almost gray, and as compelling as the sea itself.

“So young.” Beau stroked my lips with his thumb. “So very innocent.”

My heart fluttered. “Ah, Beau?”

“When I look at you, Clara, I see the lost light of my youth.”

“Yes, but—”

“When I touch your golden locks….” He threaded fingertips into the curls. “A thousand butterflies tremble in my soul.”

I knew what he meant about the butterflies, although mine were someplace else. The attraction of being held, of being admired by this man, was overwhelming.

“I don’t think—” I began.

“Touch me, Clara.” Beau pulled my hand up to his cheek. “Make me real.”

He slid my fingers over his face, part invitation, part command, and things lit inside me that I couldn’t name.

“Um…?” Elegant cheekbones seared my fingertips.

Beau kissed my palm. Liquid warmth rippled along my skin. “Look at me, Clara.” He touched my chin again. “Gaze into my eyes.”

The last time we’d done this, he’d called me a rotten louse.

“What are you doing, Beau?” I asked gently. “I know you don’t care for me.”

“You’re wrong.” His eyes sharpened. “You’re all I care for in the living world. You have control of me. You burn inside me like a goddess. When I can’t think, when I’m in total darkness, your face floats like a beacon. Your command, your slightest word, carves bleeding rivulets into my soul.”

“I don’t mean to.”

Beau gathered me in his embrace. “I adore and despise you.” Lips touched my neck. “I want to make you scream in pleasure, and hear your cry of anguish when I toss you off the roof.” Kisses traveled toward my ear. “I want you to burn as I burn, suffer as I suffer. I want to carve
my
words into your bleeding soul.”

“Beau, I—”

“Make love to me, Clara.” Beau’s lips brushed my cheek leaving a trail of fire. “Burn me. Be my sun.” He hovered over my mouth.

“No.” I turned my head. “Stop.”

We paused, half a breath apart, while I shivered.

“Back up,” I said. “Give me space.”

Beau had to obey. He pulled away in surprise.

“This is wrong.” It seemed so simple when it happened in the movies. “We can’t make love.”

His eyes widened in astonishment. “Why not?”

“Well, for one thing.” I squirmed upright. “People can see us from the Hollywood Grand.” The hotel’s seven stories towered above the Fellowship’s three. “For another, I’ve got too much on my mind. And…um….”

He might not know the third reason. Or else he might not know I knew.
The Girl’s Guide
was very clear on one point: zombies are not physically capable of the act of love.

“Please sit up, Beau,” I said softly. “Please let go.”

“Is that an order?” He frowned.

“Do women usually have to order you away?”

He put me down and crossed his arms in indignation. “No woman’s ever wanted to.”

“I didn’t say I wanted to. Just….” I touched his knee and felt our connection. “Look, I’ve no intention of ordering you around. Honestly. But if something happens, if I have to give an order, I’ll call you
Ali
.” I picked the nickname from his most famous film. “Like
Ali-Baba-Beau
.”

The man was still scowling, still stunned I’d turned him down. Beau Beauregard might have been raised in Buffalo, but he was all European pride.

“Unless I call you
Ali
,” I continued, “it’s not a real command and you can ignore my words. Okay?”

Beau nodded grudgingly.

“Do I need to order you not to kill me?”

He looked away. “I think we’ve both discovered that I can’t.”

So he had meant to let George Junior do me in. I swallowed hurt feelings. “Okay then. I’d
like
you to help me run the bar and get Ruth through the quarter-finals judging tonight. But your only command, Ali, is to stay on the Fellowship premises and not hurt anyone. Is that clear?”

The gray eyes hooded sullenly. “Woof, woof.”

I rewrapped my book in its oilcloth cover.

Beau waited while I slipped the
Guide
into its hiding place.

“Did you find anything useful?” he asked. “What did your
Girl’s Guide to Demons
say?”

“Just what I already knew.” I frowned; he must have been watching very closely to read the faded name. “Zombies are made with binding spells. You get something personal from the victim.” I blushed; hair and fingernail clippings were not what the guide recommended. “And then you build a pentagram, spend a whole lot of hellfire, and hope your spell doesn’t bounce back. Which it has a chance to do, making the spell-caster into a zombie instead.”

“That’s all?”

I shrugged. “It says that, unlike genies, zombies own their own souls. That they’re bound to their dead bodies. That brains and
karma
—that’s a sort of supernatural account book—will keep the zombie healthy, and that wild zombies who don’t belong to anyone….” I gulped. “Get violent and froth at the mouth.”

“Like George,” Beau suggested gently.

I shook my head.

“Does your book talk about zombie bites? Or say where wild zombies come from?”

“Not a word.” I shook my head again. Could there have been something in the liquor that made George Junior attack me? I’d read that sort of thing in the paper, stories about bootleg booze causing insanity.

“Well, George is safe for now,” Beau said. “He can’t hurt anyone. But Mr. Vargas may be out roaming the town. Perhaps you’d better go find him.”

“Priscilla will kill me if I run off.” Although there wasn’t much happening in the bar during the day. We had a backup band for people who wanted to dance before the quarter-finals judging began at six o’clock, when King Oliver, our big attraction, was scheduled to play.

“Leave your sister to me. I’ll keep her entertained and manage the customers.” Beau bit his lip petulantly. “I wish I hadn’t put on that silly French accent when I met her. But oh well.” He stood and stretched his beautiful shoulders. “Women never stay mad at me. Do they?” Beau flashed a puppy-dog smile and I couldn’t help smiling back. “We’ll simply laugh it off.”