"Yeah, so what?" she said. And real surprising, she caught his name like as if it was a ball and he'd tossed it to her: Laurent. Now that was a classy name, French sounding.
"Stay right there, Baby Jenks," he said. The accent was French too, probably. "There were three in this coven and two were incinerated. The police can't detect the remains but you will know them if you step on them and you will not like it."
Christ! And he was telling her the truth, 'cause there was one of them right there, no jive, at the back of the hall, and it looked like a half-burnt suit of clothes lying there, kind of vaguely in the outline of a man, and sure thing, she could tell by the smell, there'd been a Dead guy in the clothes, and just the sleeves and the pant legs and shoes were left. In the middle of it all there was a kind of grayish messy stuff, looked more like grease and powder than ashes. Funny the way the shirt sleeve was still neatly sticking out of the coat sleeve. Now that had been a three-piece suit maybe.
She was getting sick. Could you get sick when you were Dead? She wanted to get out of here. What if whatever had done this was coming back? Immortal, tie a can to it!
"Don't move," the Dead guy said to her, "and we'll be leaving together just as soon as we can."
"Like now, OK!" she said. She was shaking, goddamn it. This is what they meant when they said cold sweat!
He'd found a tin box and he was taking all the unburnt money out of it.
"Hey, man, I'm splitting," she said. She could feel something around here, and it had nothing to do with that grease spot on the floor. She was thinking of the burnt-up coven houses in Dallas and Oklahoma City, the way the Fang Gang had vanished on her. He got all that, she could tell. His face got soft, real cute again. He threw down the box and came towards her so fast it scared her worse.
"Yes, ma chere," he said in a real nice voice, "all those coven houses, exactly. The East Coast has been burnt out like a circuit of lights. There is no answer at the coven house in Paris or the coven house in Berlin."
He took her arm as they headed for the front door.
"Who the hell's doing this!" she said.
"Who the hell knows, cherie? It destroys the houses, the vampire bars, whatever rogues it finds. We have got to get out of here. Now make the bike go."
But she had come to a halt. Something out here. She was standing at the edge of the porch. Something. She was as scared to go on as she was to go back in the house.
"What's wrong?" he asked her in a whisper.
How dark this place was with these great big trees and the houses, they all looked haunted, and she could hear something, something real low like... like something's breathing. Something like that.
"Baby Jenks? Move it now!"
"But where are we going?" she asked. This thing, whatever it was, it was almost a sound.
"The only place we can go. To him, darling, to the Vampire Lestat. He is out there in San Francisco waiting, unharmed!"
"Yeah?" she said, staring at the dark street in front of her. "Yeah, right, to the Vampire Lestat." Just ten steps to the bike.
Take it, Baby Jenks. He was about to leave without her. "No, don't you do that, you son of a bitch, don't you touch my bike!"
But it was a sound now, wasn't it? Baby Jenks had never heard anything quite like it. But you hear a lot of things when you're Dead. You hear trains miles away, and people talking on planes over your head.
The Dead guy heard it. No, he heard her hearing it! "What is it?" he whispered. Jesus, he was scared. And now he heard it all by himself too.
He pulled her down the steps. She stumbled and almost fell, but he lifted her off her feet and put her on the bike.
The noise was getting really loud. It was coming in beats like music. And it was so loud now she couldn't even hear what this Dead guy was saying to her. She twisted the key, turned the handles to give the Harley gas, and the Dead guy was on the bike behind her,