Velveteen (9 page)

Quiet.

Except for the nurse, who had started hacking up a lung.

That’s the trouble with the living. When one needs a little peace and quiet, they’re buzzing about like flies over a dead cow, but when, like Velvet, you’re in need of a quick body for thieving, there are so few about, or they have issues, painful sciatica, meddlesome tumors, or worse, a prosthetic leg.

No worms, though. Thankfully.

She was damn happy not to be an undertaker like Quentin.

Velvet trailed her finger along a mortar line in the building as she strode toward the woman, steeling herself—thievery required preparation, after all, especially when one’s target was a human body. But with Velvet’s second step, the woman jumped and fanned away the cloud of smoke, glaring into the night.

“Who’s there?” the nurse spat.

Velvet stopped dead in her tracks. She supposed it were possible the woman had heard her, that she’d somehow, through some phantom exertion, forced a pebble to scuttle across the sidewalk. Highly unlikely, but possible. Thankfully, very few living people honed the skills necessary to detect the dead among them—maybe a couple hundred on the whole planet. She eyed the awning of Madame Despot’s Fortunes and Favors not a block away and shook off the possibility that two such people would inhabit the same short distance.

Velvet was so sure, she even spoke, “Just your run-of-the-mill wandering spirit, lady. Nothing to see here.”

The woman continued to stare, looking past Velvet into the darkness, and then shook off the moment. She hadn’t heard or seen a thing. Déjà vu, she would be thinking, perhaps a rat scurrying from the back of the nearby Jewel of Marrakech restaurant, anything but the thing that was actually approaching.

Velvet noted the time on a clock hanging above a jewelry shop—2:20 a.m. She had to hurry. Quentin would be well on his way to securing his own body, disgusting as it might be, and Madame Despot wasn’t getting any less evil the longer it took to get their mission underway.

Velvet sprinted the last few yards and threw herself at the nurse, crossing the clammy chasm of air between them and slamming into the skin of her torso, slipping straight through the flesh, and wrapping her fingers around the woman’s spinal cord as though she were swinging around a pole in the schoolyard. She steadied herself, filling into the
woman’s frame and forming the link. These were subtle manipulations. Velvet’s thoughts played across the nurse’s nerve endings like fingers on piano keys. She imagined them coiling and sparking, the woman’s control being turned over, her mind shutting itself away in a tiny little box.

Safe and quiet and relaxed.

Velvet repeated those words in her mind like a mantra. It slowed her machinations, helped her to focus on the woman’s nervous system, made her be extra careful and do no harm.

To the woman, the whole thing felt like a soft breeze chilling her flesh, right before the lights went out and she fell into slumber. The headache afterward would be a bitch, but that was none of Velvet’s concern. The body was doing a public service, as far as she saw it.

Velvet peered from the nurse’s eyes, glanced at the cigarette between her slender fingers, looked both ways down the street, and then took a quick drag. The smoke went down hot and ashy, and she coughed an unexpected phlegm globber onto the back of the nurse’s teeth.

“Nasty!” She spat it out and tossed the butt to the ground, grinding the filter into a twisted ball. “I can’t believe I did that.”

And did it she had, more than once, but that was beside the point.

The door squeaked open behind her. “Antoinette?”

Velvet startled and spun around. “Ye-yeah?” she stuttered.

Another woman, eyes as dark and saggy as a pair of wet
tea bags, peeked out. “Delores wants you on the floor in five minutes,” she said through a pinched nose, so the words sounded like the squelch of air escaping a balloon. “You know how she is, Antoinette.”

Velvet didn’t, of course, but she nodded anyway.

V
elvet heard the shuffling of calloused feet against concrete moments before the corpse stumbled into the column of streetlight, withered and muddy, its clothes tattered and hanging off the front of its body like an untied hospital gown. As if sensing her presence, it lurched in her direction, reaching for her with twisted fingers worn down to the dusty ivory of exposed bone. Its jaw creaked open, and a low groan escaped its shriveled mouth, a whisper at first, the last hiss of air bellowing from the dead thing’s dry lungs. But as it shambled forward, the sound grew in volume and malevolence, beseeching.

Hungry.

Velvet stepped out onto the sidewalk and planted a hand on her hip. “What are you doing? You want to call attention to yourself? You better not screw this up, Quentin.”

The moan turned into a chuckle, and the zombie shrugged its shoulders. “I was just messin’ with you, Velvet.”

The corpse’s lip clung to its desiccated gums in an Elvis sneer, hideous and rotten. Velvet smiled at the creature, ran up, and gave it a careful punch.

“I know you were. And it was scary. Really. Quite frightening,” she said sarcastically.

He cocked the thing’s eyebrow.

Velvet scanned the windows across the street. Most were dark, but others fluxed with the movement of tenants, employees, and other nosy parkers, as her grandfather used to say. She pushed the corpse inside the small entry alcove of the next shop, pressing him deep into the shadows.

A glint of moonlight caught on his bare teeth, and for a moment Velvet felt the familiar tinges of a freak-out creeping into her skull. She realized her hands were lingering on his torso, and the imagery of the old woman and the zombie standing in the secluded spot caused a raucous shudder to roll through her. She jerked her hands away.

“Just stay put,” she barked.

Quentin continued to grin. It was unfortunate that his fear of girls didn’t seem to include her—not that she thought he was interested in her, at least in
that
way—as fear was an important part of any manager-employee relationship. It kept up the status quo.

She’d have to work on that.

Velvet glanced up and down the street. In the distance, she could see the mist swirling around the light above the clinic door. She turned back to Madame Despot’s, rapped
three times, and waited. When she didn’t hear a sound from behind the tall door—she’d never been accused of being a quitter—she hammered at it some more and harder, until she did hear something. Humming and the soft whisper of slippers against floor. She had to hand it to the nurse; despite her age, her ears worked great.

She glanced to her left. Quentin had lost a good chunk of his body’s forearm, and he was busily trying to pack the squishy flesh back around the exposed bone. He grinned nervously. Then again, corpses always look like they’re grinning—it’s the lips; they have a tendency to shrivel back from the gums.

It’s never pretty.

“Gross,” Velvet said. “Can you just stay out of sight for a sec?”

His eyes were mournful.

Quentin shuffled backward, and when he did, his left ear slid down his head. It tumbled off his shoulder with a wet plopping sound. He fumbled it between his fingers, popping it into the air like a hot potato and then missing it as it fell with a splat between his feet.

“Really?” Velvet rolled her eyes.

“Sooooorrrryyyyyy,” he moaned, as zombies have a tendency to do. It’s not nearly as endearing as you might expect. Or funny.

A series of metal clicks sounded from the door. Velvet shushed and waved frantically for Quentin to shut up and quit flapping about, making squishy noises. He pressed himself flat against the wall. Velvet reminded herself to squint
as best she could to keep her glow from spilling out of the nurse’s eyes—difficult, as she’d still need to be able to see. She found it was reasonable to let a crack of glow show. Anyone who saw it would immediately rationalize it away as a simple reflection off a tearful eye, for instance. Anyone human, that is.

The latch on the door clicked, and it squeaked open, with such obvious creepiness that Velvet rolled her eyes again—Madame Despot probably wet the hinges every night to get the effect.

Silhouetted by the hall light, the shop’s namesake cast a big lumpy shadow that swept out onto the sidewalk and over Velvet. Velvet had to squint to make out the woman’s massive nose and the odd, bulky turban coiled atop her head like a dollop of whipped cream. The woman wore sunglasses at the tip of her nose, not unlike a pair of reading glasses, but so large and dark that her eyes remained completely hidden.

Blind?
Velvet wondered.
Hungover?

Either seemed a possible explanation for wearing sunglasses at night, or possibly a nod to crappy eighties songs. Velvet sensed a tinge of something sinister about the woman at that very moment—something evil, like when she saw people wearing fur or gushing over the excruciatingly awesome talents of
American Idol
winners. It was more than just a possibility that the fortune-teller was in possession of a little dark magic.

Or a lot.

But Madame Despot stilled Velvet’s suspicion with a curt jab from the wet end of a fat brown cigar. “Well-come, then,
Doctor. Get on in here.” Her voice was higher than Velvet had expected, whiny, and it bore an accent steeped in the Deep South. “It’s terrible cold tonight. Just terrible.”

The woman sounded kind of nice. She even pronounced the word “terrible” in such a way that the first syllable rhymed with “purr.”

Turrible. Just turrible
.

“Thank you. I’m not a doctor, though.” Velvet forced the corners of the nurse’s mouth into a smile and slipped past into the warm parlor, her hand brushing against the rough and staticky polyester of the woman’s muumuu, picking up the charge.

She cringed.

Velvet hated being shocked almost as much as being surprised. Her brothers used to chase her around the living room, shuffling their feet against the carpet and reaching their grubby little sausage fingers for her earlobes. She’d tried to make sense of this incessant behavior by believing she’d been secretly adopted, or transversely, by believing that her parents had won her brothers at some supermarket contest, or perhaps they’d come free with a new bank account. Both had mops of sandy hair, while Velvet’s was jet-black. Also, she could string words together into actual sentences and not just grunt like a couple of cavemen. Adopted cavemen. Regardless, a decade of surprise jolts to her ears had been more than enough to create a nasty little phobia. One that you’d think would be promptly cured upon the occasion of her death.

No such luck.

She drummed her fingers against the scrubs, hoping to discharge the static naturally, quickly.

Madame Despot shut the door behind them—between them and Quentin—and, to Velvet’s dismay, slid every one of the nine bolts into place loudly. She spun and began to sweep past Velvet into the main room of the house. Velvet threw herself against the wall in hopes of avoiding the horrifying arc of electricity that was sure to discharge if the woman touched her again. Velvet sighed with relief as the woman passed and left her unscathed.

Velvet looked around quickly for signs of Logan and Luisa. A smear in the air. A shimmer. Something. The poltergeists needed to be made aware of the locked door situation—if they weren’t already. Someone was going to have to get those locks open if Quentin and his corpse were expected to provide any sort of backup.

“I hope y’all don’t mind the mess,” the woman said in her welcoming drawl. “I haven’t dusted in a good bit.”

Velvet stepped into the room, eyes zooming to grim corners, to spiders building cities of death, plaster gargoyles leering from shelves of dark candles and books with leather spines, and black velvet curtains drawn up in shiny obsidian rope, dripping tassels like wax. A dense cloud of patchouli hung in the air like a concert hangover—thankfully covering up the cigar smoke to a small extent—while monks chanted quietly from a little stereo at Madame Despot’s feet.

Goth heaven.

Velvet had nothing but respect for the decorator, though her choice of music was a tad dramatic. Benedictines were
definitely at the esoteric end of the spectrum. She might have chosen some Sisters of Mercy or Lacuna Coil, but that’s beside the point.

Luisa and Logan weren’t anywhere to be seen.

Where are those ingrates?
she thought.
And why is it I can’t possibly lead a dependable team?

She contemplated a quick jump from the nurse, just long enough to scream for the poltergeists beyond Madame Despot’s auditory range, and then a dive right back in. Unfortunately, some people were really quick to recover, and those few seconds could blow the whole operation. You just could never tell. Velvet had to trust that they’d show up eventually. Also, if Luisa could be counted on for anything, it was to make it known when Velvet was being impolite. And shouting was definitely outside of Miss Manners’s rule book.

“Have a seat, my dear, and tell me what you’ve come to see Madame Despot for.” She puffed away and pointed to a chair on the opposite side of the table as she sank into her own.

Velvet looked at the chair and scowled.

Metal, of course. A scrolled filigree metal-backed chair. Tucked in neatly under the table, too, so she’d have to grab it and pull it back to be able to sit down.

Velvet bit her lip and inched her hand toward the chair, dreading the zap. Then, sure enough, it happened. She swore she could see the blue fiery arc cross the gap and shock the crap out of her fingers. She yelped like one of those yippy little purse dogs, jerked her hand away, and rubbed it against her leg.

“Woohoo. Static got ya, dinnit?” the fortune-teller said, and cackled.

But there was another laughing.

Quiet, childlike giggling echoed from just behind the walls. Luisa and Logan were either amusing themselves while they waited or had peeked into the room at just the right time to see her humiliate herself.

Velvet relaxed a little. Now if they’d just do something about the locks on the door, they could get this show on the road.