I felt I needed to do something right away, something good, for a person who didn’t have anybody else helping her.
I went to the safe in the wall behind Sheyenne’s desk. It took me three tries with clumsy fingers (I think one was broken) to get the combination right. I withdrew a stack of bills, most of our petty cash fund. “There’s something I need to do.”
“Where are you going?” Sheyenne asked.
I pocketed the wad of bills. “To the Full Moon.” Presumably for the last time. I was already down the stairs and out on the street before I realized what a stupid thing that was to say to Sheyenne.
It was nearly midnight when I arrived, and Mike the door golem let me into the parlor and took my hat. Due in part to a massive coupon mailing Neffi had launched, the place was hopping: half a dozen natural and unnatural clients making nervous chitchat with the ladies. Two of the doors upstairs were closed.
Neffi seemed pleased and relieved that business had returned to normal. The withered unwrapped mummy languidly leaned against the door to her office and bedroom. “No waiting over here, boys, if you’re looking for someone with experience.”
Conversation in the parlor paused for an instant before everyone went back to talking with the other girls.
Neffi saw me enter. “Mr. Chambeaux, you certainly are a frequent sight, though not much of a customer. Is that about to change tonight? Treat yourself?” She eyed me up and down with her burnt-ember eyes. “You look like you’ve had a rough day at the office.”
“Not just at the office. I’d like to see Ruth, please.”
The stretched, petrified brown skin covering Neffi’s skull bent back in a smile. “It’s about time you made up your mind. This is Ruth’s last night.”
“Has she found another job?”
“Don’t know, don’t care, but she’s on her own as of dawn.” She whistled a piercing note, like a hyperactive kid tooting on a broken flute. Ruth came out of the back room, looking small and defeated. She’d been crying, though her green eyes still caught the attention of everyone in the room. When she saw me, she brightened.
I pulled the wad of bills from my pocket. “I’ve got something for you.”
Naturally, that was the exact moment Sheyenne’s ghost drifted through the door, her face already angry and hurt. She took in the scene with a glance. “Why couldn’t you be honest with me, Beaux? You’re worse than Travis. At least his lies are so clumsy he might as well not even try.”
Before she could flit away, I said, “Wait, Spooky! I want you to see this.”
She hovered, held there by a thread of feelings for me, a thin thread that was likely to snap like a cobweb any second.
Ruth withdrew quickly, confused. “I don’t want to cause any trouble. I’ve already—”
I handed her the bills. “This money is for you to take a bus out of town. Leave the Full Moon, set up a new life for yourself. I want you to have a clean slate.” I turned to Sheyenne. “She didn’t mean to hurt your brother.”
“I never blamed her for Travis,” Sheyenne said. “He’s always been his own worst enemy. But you . . . you keep coming here.”
“Chambeaux may keep coming here, but he never does any . . . coming here.” Neffi cackled. “Never once hired any of my ladies. He might as well be a piece of furniture, like Mike over there.”
The golem’s clay face formed itself into a grin as he stood holding my hat over one upraised hand.
“It’s the truth,” I said. “Cross my heart.”
At that moment, somebody called in a bomb threat, which distracted us all.
Cinnamon had taken a break between clients. She answered the phone, then sat staring and growling until she slowly hung up. “There’s a bomb in the brothel—and it’s set to go off in fifteen minutes.”
“A bomb?” Neffi demanded. “Which one of you brought a bomb in here?”
“I didn’t,” said a hunchback and a ghoul in unison.
Cinnamon’s fur stood on end. “The caller said he was sending a warning from Senator Balfour—out of the goodness of his rotten little Grinch heart.”
Already skittish from being in the unnatural brothel in the first place, the human customers bolted out the door as Mike waved a polite farewell.
I started yelling. “Everybody evacuate! We need to clear the building.”
The mummy madam was enraged. “If there’s a bomb here, we need to find it right now!”