Death Warmed Over - By Kevin J. Anderson Page 0,36

and gab and explain every little bit about his dastardly plan. No, this time it was just the gun, then the bang....

Now, as I stood in front of her desk reminiscing, Sheyenne crumpled the chemical analysis report and tossed it across the room with a swirling breeze of ghostly annoyance. “So much for sticking it to JLPN. I was so sure there’d be some contaminant or hazardous component, something that was a factor in my poisoning. But I know the lab guy, and this is for real.” She looked fiercely determined. “I have half a mind to manifest before Brondon Morris, chew him out, and give him a wedgie in front of his zombie ladyfriends.”

“You’re a ghost,” I said. “He knows you can’t touch him.”

“Oh, I can still make him miserable.”

No doubt she was right. “I really think I could have loved you, Spooky,” I said, startling her.

“Oh, Beaux, under normal circumstances you would have forgotten about me in a few weeks,” she teased.

I didn’t think so at all, but maybe Sheyenne needed to say that just to make the regrets glide down easier, like a $300 bottle of wine. Maybe I’d be smart to do the same thing, but it was damned hard to see that beautiful woman in my office every single day and never be able to touch her....

CHAPTER 15

Lunchtime. I’ve never been, nor do I intend to become, one of those disgusting ambulatory corpses with a sweet tooth for brains. Even though I don’t need to eat as often as before—undead metabolism is all out of whack—lunch isn’t something a man should give up. I liked to do things out of habit just to pretend that my life was normal.

The big sign in the front window of Ghoul’s Diner, my favorite lunch counter, said in bright orange letters: YES, WE SERVE HUMANS! The diner was a warm and cheery place, crowded with unnaturals who liked to sit in the booths or take a stool up at the counter with elbows propped on the speckled Formica.

At the grill in back stood a sweaty grayish creature who looked decidedly unwell. Albert Gould, the proprietor, had skin with the sheen and consistency of sliced ham left too long in the sun. I had talked with him face-to-face a few times. Albert could be an unsettling fellow for anyone with a queasy stomach. Cockroaches scuttled around in his spiky hair, and thin whitish things dripped in and out of his nostrils as he inhaled and exhaled. At first I thought they were boogers; then I realized they were maggots.

Albert concocted variations of the daily special, catering to different types of clientele. Zombie special, vampire special, werewolf special, human special (although the humans who dared to eat there rarely became repeat customers). He served platters of sliced, discolored mystery meat, sometimes on a bun with all the condiments, other times spread out on a blue plate pooled in gelatinous gravy made from a mucus roux.

The smells inside Ghoul’s Diner were rich and ripe. Conversation buzzed among the booths; a cash register rang up sales. From the back, a gush of steam and spray of water rose from where a reptile-skinned dishwasher blasted globs of food off the plates, then stacked them back on the shelves.

Esther, the diner’s lone waitress—a harpy who never provided good service, but always received excellent tips because the customers were afraid to annoy her—chatted with two necromancers in a corner booth. She seemed to have no interest in her other customers.

I took a seat at the counter beside a bespectacled hunchback who was poring over stock listings in the newspaper. The folded front page had a headline story, ELVIS FOUND!

I’d heard the story on the radio: A zombie came back to life, insisting he was Elvis Presley. Over the years, there had been many Elvis sightings, people who claimed the King had never died. This one was different, because the guy was unquestionably dead, and he had submitted flesh scrapings for DNA testing to verify his identity.

“Can I borrow the front section?” I asked.

The hunchback shrugged, a languorous rolling movement that made me a bit seasick. “Help yourself.”

I turned to page two, found a story about the previous night’s art auction, in which the Ricketts zombie puppies painting sold to a private collector for two hundred thousand dollars. Sheyenne had received the call that morning while I was at the Hope & Salvation mission; she calculated that Chambeaux & Deyer’s one-third commission would be enough to pay