closed doors where the two zombie girls were currently occupied. “Come on, we gotta go!”
Aubrey’s muffled voice came from behind the door. “Just about finished!”
I looked at my watch, saw it was almost midnight—happy hour, the busiest time at the Full Moon. Someone had planned this well.
“We can’t risk searching the place,” I said to Neffi. “Get everyone out into the street. It’s too dangerous.”
“Fifteen minutes is fifteen minutes, if the timer is accurate,” Neffi insisted. “We’re going to look, and you’re going to help me. Girls, all of you—search your boudoirs for anything that looks like a bomb.”
None of us was an expert in explosives, but I hoped a ticking time bomb would be obvious. We yanked red velvet cushions off the sofas, looked in the drawers of the front desk.
Ruth and Sheyenne went together to search the back rooms. The two zombie girls poked their heads out of their rooms upstairs. “Nothing here—all clear.”
“It could have been a prank call to disrupt our business,” Neffi said. “That’d be par for the course for Senator Balfour.”
“Can’t risk it.” I looked at the madam. “How could someone get in here and plant a bomb?”
“We had a big night, more customers than ever before. Too many people to watch every minute.” Neffi overturned a wastebasket, looked behind a potted cactus. “But you can ask the girls—everyone who came in tonight left a satisfied customer. Do you think Balfour’s fanatics would go that deep undercover?”
I admitted it didn’t seem likely. Considering how much they despised monsters of all kinds, posing—and performing—as a randy client with one of the unnatural ladies did not seem like their style.
A few minutes later, Sheyenne appeared before me, her face urgent. “I hear a ticking sound—it’s coming from back there!”
We turned toward Neffi’s office and the bedroom beyond. “That’s just my grandfather clock,” the madam said. “Wait . . . that stopped a year ago.”
“No, this is something else,” Sheyenne insisted. “I can hear it.”
I did mention that she has good hearing for a ghost.
We followed her into the office, past the metal file cabinet, past the fish tank with dead fish, the silent grandfather clock, and into the old mummy’s bedchamber. Sheyenne circled the room, pausing at the bulky gold-encrusted sarcophagus where Neffi slept, the rocking chair, and finally she zeroed in on the last intact cat-sized sarcophagus.
“It’s here! And it’s ticking.”
“That’s Whiskers,” Neffi said. “Whiskers doesn’t tick.”
Then I spotted the yellowed package of a withered mummified cat tossed unceremoniously behind the rocking chair. “I think that’s Whiskers.”
Sheyenne slowly opened the cat coffin to reveal a small bundle of dynamite sticks wrapped with wires and duct tape, fastened to an old windup alarm clock. The hands were only a few minutes away from midnight.
Mike the golem stepped up to the office door, and as soon as Sheyenne revealed the bomb, he clomped forward and picked up the bundle of dynamite. “Let me take that. I’m just a golem.” He plodded away, carrying the bomb as it ticked inexorably toward its midnight detonation.
I ran after him. “Wait, Mike—when that explodes, it’ll destroy you.”
“That’s my job. Better me than anyone else.” He stepped out the door to where the other four golem guards had taken position, keeping customers from entering.
“I’ve got a better idea.” Sheyenne swooped after him and snatched the bomb out of the golem’s arms. “A simple explosion isn’t going to hurt a ghost at all.”
Before I could argue with her (not that I had much of an argument to make), Sheyenne dashed through the open front door and rose into the air. I’d never seen her move that fast, but she was unfettered and motivated.
“That was nice of her,” the golem said as we all stepped out into the night to watch where Sheyenne had gone.
Ruth came up beside me, looking into the sky with admiration. Sheyenne had vanished with the bomb, swooping over the building tops. “Good thing your girlfriend was around.”
Neffi agreed. “We don’t get many ghosts at the Full Moon. Can’t provide services for intangibles, other than as spectators.”
The succubus looked away. “I think it’s best if I take this opportunity to leave. I’ll go to the Hellhound bus station, take the red-eye out of town, and ride wherever the ticket takes me. Thank you for everything you’ve done, Dan, but I don’t want to cause any more trouble. I told Sheyenne what a nice guy you are . . . but if I’m around, she’ll always have her doubts.” With that,