Spooky. How about a Mediterranean cruise? Alice could give us a recommendation.”
“Let’s just start with tonight,” she said, with that tone in her voice, the one I could never resist . . . not when she’d been alive, not now that she was a ghost.
“Where would you like to go?”
She practically shimmered, and her blue eyes were intense. “How about upstairs? I got something for us, if you’re ready for a little adventure. Did you know the adult novelty shop is open again? They have some very interesting merchandise.”
I had no idea what a ghost and a zombie might actually do, since we could have no physical contact, but Sheyenne had my attention. All of it.
Upstairs, the door creaked open from long disuse. My room was dim and musty, with a distinct hint of mold. Some unnaturals preferred that for the ambience; in my case, it was strictly due to neglect. The dirty dishes in the sink had now become archaeological artifacts. The bed looked lonely and abandoned, and I realized that I should try to get rest more often. Even a zombie can’t keep going and going without a little shut-eye.
“Let me slip into something more comfortable,” Sheyenne said. “I want to make this a special night for us.”
She flitted out of the small bedroom and passed directly through the door of my closet. I could hear her rustling around inside.
I went to sit down on the bed and noticed a plastic wrapper that had been wadded up and stuffed behind the nightstand—a bright label, a small zippered bag. So Sheyenne must have been planning this.
I heard her bumping and moving among the clothes in my closet, and I picked up the package she had been trying to hide, something she’d bought from the Unnatural Acts novelty store: Inflatable Female Companion for the Lonely Gentleman. The description insisted it was 100% Vinyl, and So Lifelike!
“Spooky, I don’t—” I said, but then the closet door opened, and she emerged in flesh-colored plastic. Sheyenne’s ghostly image was superimposed upon it, and if I concentrated properly, I could see her and nothing else.
She moved forward jerkily and sat down beside me.
“I’m still getting used to this,” she said. “It’s like the glove I wore at Macbeth. This is just a doll, an inanimate object, a suit—I can move in it, live in it, but it takes a great deal of concentration. I don’t know how long I can manage this.” She lifted a hand and touched the side of my face. I saw her fuzzy spectral features. “It’s fully functional, I think.”
“I don’t need that, Spooky. I just—” But it was good to feel her touch. The fingers were fake, the hands and arms just plastic, but the pressure and the presence behind it, those were real. “We don’t need to see how functional it is,” I said. I wrapped my arms around her, pulled her down onto the sheets.
It felt so good to relax, to be comfortable, to be beside her. The spectral image was smiling, and I saw translucent tears in her eyes. She was soft, squishy, rubbery . . . but it was Sheyenne. And it felt wonderful to hold her.
“This is nice,” I said.
“Yes,” Sheyenne said. “Yes, it is.”
Don’t miss Kevin J. Anderson’s next
hilarious novel starring
Dan Shamble, Zombie PI
HAIR RAISING
Coming from Kensington Publishing Corp. in May 2013!
Turn the page to read an irresistible preview excerpt....
CHAPTER 1
I’ve always been baffled by the things people do to amuse themselves, but this illegal cockatrice fighting ring was more bizarre than most.
Rusty, the full-furred werewolf who raised the hideous creatures and pitted them against each other in the ring, had hired me to watch out for “suspicious behavior.” So, there I was in a crowd of unnaturals who gathered in an empty warehouse, laying down bets to watch chicken-dragon-viper monstrosities tear each other apart. What could possibly be suspicious?
No case was too strange for Chambeaux & Deyer Investigations, so I agreed to keep my eyes open. “You’ll have a great time, Mr. Shamble,” Rusty growled. “Tonight is family night.”
“It’s Chambeaux,” I corrected him, though the mispronunciation may have been the result of him talking through all those teeth in his mouth rather than not actually knowing my name.
Rusty was a gruff, barrel-chested werewolf with a full head—and I mean a full head—of bristling reddish fur that stuck out in all directions. He raised cockatrices in backyard coops in a run-down neighborhood at the edge of town. He wore bib overalls and sported