“The Hunter has been taking them. Everyone’s talking about it.”
Oh, hell yeah. “Who is the Hunter, Caesar? A human?”
“A dead one. He takes the ghost walkers when they cross over.”
“The Hunter is a dead human? A ghost? He takes the Xolos when they cross over to the Between?”
“Yes, he’s been doing it for a while. The Xolos try to stay away from him but the Hunter is very sneaky.”
Something was bubbling up from the back of my mind, something I knew, something obvious I couldn’t quite get my mental fingers around. “A ghost called the Hunter is taking the Xolos,” I muttered. “A ghost. Hunter. A ghost-hunter! Son of a bitch!”
“Yes?” asked Caesar.
“Not you, Caesar. I just figured out who the Hunter is. His name’s Abe Warren and I’ve actually met the bastard. In a graveyard. He said he was looking for ghosts.”
“He was probably looking for Xolos,” Caesar said.
“Probably. You have any idea why he’s taking them?”
“No. Not unless he likes the zombies. I don’t like the zombies. They’re smelly.”
“Truth, Caesar. Really smelly.”
“If you want to find the Xolos, you should ask the Hunter. You’ll have to find him first. It won’t be easy-like I said, he’s sneaky.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m going to need some bait.” seven
“I beg your pardon?” said Mrs. Dawson.
“I need a ghost to draw out the ghost-hunter,” I said. “And you’re the only one I know. It’ll be perfectly safe. Trust me.” Mrs. Robert Dawson-Maggie to her friends, Margaret to God-knows-who, and Mrs. Dawson to me-had once lived in my building. Now she unlived in my condo. I hadn’t even known she was there until I learned to cross over to the Between. Then she tried to strangle me. We’d since settled into an uneasy peace-I tried to keep my socks and underwear off the floor and she tried to ignore me.
“I don’t really think it’s any of my concern what you need, Miss Riley.” She was standing by the French doors in my living room-the blue-lit, nighttime Between version of it, anyway-with her stick-figure arms crossed and an expression of stern disapproval on her wrinkled and powdered face. “Ghost-hunters and cemeteries and the like, I’ve never heard of such a thing!”
It was too bad she’d never heard of a cemetery-if she’d been properly introduced to one, maybe she wouldn’t be haunting my condo. “It’s really important, Mrs. Dawson. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t. This ghost-hunter has been bagging our Xolos-Mexican Hairless Dogs-and that’s causing the dead to rise when they, well, die, on account of the Xolos are psychopomps.”
Mrs. Dawson just stared at me as if I were a raving mad-woman. Maybe I hadn’t explained it as clearly as I might, but really, you’d think a ghost would be a little more open-minded where supernatural shit was concerned.
“Okay, look. I know this is a big favor to ask. I’d owe you one.” Somehow I knew if I wanted Mrs. Dawson’s help, I’d end up haggling for it. It always seemed to go down like that in the underworld. Humans may be greedy motherfuckers on the whole, but we’ve got nothing on the not-quite and no-longer human.
Mrs. Dawson eyed me suspiciously. “I’m quite certain there’s nothing you could ‘owe me’ that would convince me to act as your…your…your bait!” She didn’t look certain. Gotcha, Maggie, you cranky old bitch. “Oh,” I said, turning away. “Well, if you’re sure there’s nothing I could possibly do that would be worth a short-and perfectly safe-stroll through a cemetery or two…”
“Move out,” Mrs. Dawson said.
“Dea-” I cut the word off midsyllable and jerked my head back around to peer at her. “What the fuck did you just say?”
“Cursing shows your true color,” she said. Color-not colors. Mrs. Dawson was a bigot from the old school. It was kind of refreshing. “I said, move out. I was here before you. This place belongs to me-what’s left of it. Move out, tonight, and I’ll go with you to the cemetery.”
I laughed. “You want me to move out of my own house?” I let the anger and frustration drain out of my face, and I looked at her like I might look at a guy I’m going to clip. “I’ll move you out first, Maggie. I’ll bind your lily-white ass to a public toilet in Crenshaw. I’ve done it before.” Technically, the toilet hadn’t been public and it hadn’t been in Crenshaw, but I was improvising.
“Go ahead and try it, Riley! I’ll claw your eyes out and grind them into the floorboards if you try to force me from my home.” Mrs. Dawson’s eyes grew large and black, and the spectral flesh began melting away from her face like blood in the rain. Her jaw seemed to protrude from her skull and her bared teeth lengthened as her lips dissolved. She was going full spook on me.
So much for the fucking peace. I held up my hands and backed away. “Chill the fuck out, Mrs. Dawson. I was bluffing. I’m not going to do anything to you.” My calves brushed the edge of the sofa and I sat down on the edge of the seat. And just like that, the harmless little old lady was back. She smoothed the front of her elegant dress with trembling hands, and then crossed her arms again.
Jesus Christ. “Okay, I tell you what, I’ll move out of my bedroom-”
“Done!” said Mrs. Dawson.
“I wasn’t finished!” I protested. “I was saying, I’ll move out of my bedroom for a month.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no? I’m offering to give you the bedroom for a whole month!”
“No.”
“Two months?”
“No.”
“Come on, Mrs. Dawson. Please? The piskies have the second bedroom. I’ll have to sleep on the couch.”
“I’m well aware of that. There’s barely anyplace left in this house for me to have some quiet time to myself. And n-”
“No…yeah, I got it.” I sighed and buried my face in my hands. “Fine,” I mumbled. “You win. I’ll move out of the bedroom.”
“What?” Mrs. Dawson said, cocking an ear my way. “My hearing’s not what it was when I was-”
“When you were alive? Yeah, I guess it wouldn’t be.”
Mrs. Dawson sniffed. “I was going to say, when I was younger.”
“Which century would that have been, exactly?” I dropped the volume and made sure to mumble directly into my palms.
“Insulting me won’t get you what you want, young lady.”
I lifted my head and squinted at her. “How the hell did you hear that, if you’re so deaf?”
Mrs. Dawson sniffed, again. “I didn’t, but I’m not an idiot. I’m no stranger to bad manners and worse breeding, Miss Riley. It was hard to find good help, even in my day.”
I suddenly wondered if the tormented souls of pool boys, groundskeepers and maids were haunting the halls of my building. “Okay, drop it,” I said, shaking my hands in the air as if I could fling the frustration from my fingertips. “Let’s, just, the deal is done…let me get my crew together and we’ll meet you back here.”
“And when will you remove your things from my room?” I was pretty sure I could see a grin tugging at the corner of her withered mouth.
“When we get back,” I said. “I’ll move my shit when we get back.” I pressed my hands against the cushions and bounced up and down a couple times, trying to gauge the comfort level. Never mind that concepts like firmness were of dubious value in the Between. I’d slept on the couch before but only when I was hammered. Doing it sober would take some getting used to, but that went for most things.
Even after we’d reached an agreement in principle, it took us two hours to get Mrs. Dawson out of the house. First she had to do her hair. She was inexplicably unable to locate the brushes and combs she remembered from the early sixties, so this mostly involved a half-hour or so of preening in the mirror and brushing the white tangles with her fingertips. When she was finished, her hair still looked like she’d rolled Phyllis Diller, Albert Einstein and a troll doll for it.
Then she had to select the proper outfit. She accomplished this by disappearing through the living room wall for more than an hour into what must once have been her boudoir. She emerged wearing a combed cotton seersucker suit, white heels, white gloves and a white pillbox hat. I pointed out it was nighttime, we were going to
