Deadtown

surreal for a while.

Tina laughed. “Strange? Are you kidding? This has been the strangest night ever.” She held her arms straight out in front of her, pretending she was turning a steering wheel. “Even sitting on this side of the car is kinda weird.”

We rode in my baby, a 1964 E-type Jaguar in classic racing green. My father had shipped it across the Atlantic when he moved here from Wales in 1975. Because of its right-hand drive, I sometimes got puzzled looks from other drivers. But Dad had taught me to drive in this car, and I loved it.

“I don’t mean ordinary strange,” I said. “I mean, did you feel anything creepy right before we left?”

“I can’t think of anything creepier than Georgie-poo asking you out on a date. He had snot in his moustache —did you see? Eww.”

If Tina had felt the force that swept through that bedroom, she wouldn’t be thinking about George Funderburk’s snotty moustache. Whatever it was had felt—there was only one word for it— evil.

But Tina hadn’t noticed. George hadn’t seemed to, either. I relaxed a little, feeling like I’d been holding my breath since Concord. I rubbed the tingling spot on my arm. The sensation was fading. It must’ve been the aftereffect of spending all that time in George’s dreamscape; I’d never been inside someone’s dreams for so long.

“So anyway,” Tina asked, “what happened in the big top after I got out of Weirdoland? I mean, you came through the portal looking like the third runner-up in a wet T-shirt contest.”

I ignored the third-runner-up crack. So what if Tina, zombified at fifteen, had a couple cup sizes on me? Slender but strong—that was how I liked to think of myself. Besides, it was time to tell her off for the trouble she’d caused.

“I had to extinguish the fire you started, remember?”

“Yeah, right. Uh-huh.” Tina’s smirk was just visible in the light from the dashboard. “You sure lit Georgie’s fire. Burn, baby, burn.” She launched into “Disco Inferno” in an earsplitting soprano.

Was I going to have to spend the entire night listening to Disco’s Greatest Hits for the Tone- Deaf ? I clicked on the radio, set to my favorite classic rock station, and turned it up loud. “Born to Run” blared from the speakers. No way Tina could compete with The Boss at full volume. After a minute of trying, she shut up. I reached over and turned the volume back to a level that didn’t threaten hearing damage.

“So when’s our next job?” Tina asked.

“Our next job? Let me see. That’d be when hell freezes over or snow falls in July. Take your pick.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means there is no ‘next job.’ I’m not taking you with me again.”

“But—”

“But nothing. You ignored everything I said and acted like Mr. Funderburk’s dreamscape was your personal playground. That man hired me to kill his demons, not to cause permanent psychological damage—which you almost did. You blasted his mother with a flamethrower, for God’s sake.”

Tina didn’t answer. She folded her arms and slouched in her seat. As much as a zombie can slouch.

“I said you could come with me tonight as research for your school project.” Zombies had only recently gotten a school of their own. Tina had been in tenth grade when she died. Three years later, she was finally getting the chance to go back to high school. “I never said we were going into business together.”

“But . . . you told me you had more work than you could handle.”

It was true; I had said that. I was the only professional demon exterminator in Boston, and in the past year there’d been a spike in personal demon attacks. Not that I was complaining. The money was good, and I loved my work, being on the side of the forces of good and all that. It was just that sometimes I wouldn’t mind a little help.

But not from Tina. She’d ignored my instructions by jumping into George’s dream in the first place; once there, she made the proverbial bull in a china shop seem like some prim old lady at a tea party.

“Sorry, Tina. I’m not cut out for a partner. I work best alone.”

She started arguing, and I turned up the radio again to tune her out.

Up ahead on the right was a 24/7 Donuts. At the moment, coffee seemed like a wonderful idea. I pulled into the lot. Tina sat up, then pumped her fist in the air and shouted “Yes!”

“Nothing like a little snack to lift your mood, huh?”

“Hey, zombies eat. It’s what we do.”

“Yeah, but all that sugar?” I chose a space and shifted into Park. “You ate enough back at Mr. Funderburk’s to give an entire kindergarten class a week-long sugar rush.”

“I could eat every donut in that shop and I wouldn’t gain an ounce,” she said, getting out of the car. “It’s the only thing that doesn’t suck about being reanimated.”

The donut shop was typical of the kind you find in Boston—bright pinks and purples splashed across the walls and table-tops, long rows of donuts climbing the wall behind the counter. A fiftyish woman stood behind the cash register, her scowl clashing with her perky pink uniform. She held out her hand like a traffic cop.

“You got a permit for that thing?”

It took me a second to realize she was talking about Tina. Legally, restaurants couldn’t refuse to serve a zombie unless the zombie had left Deadtown—the nickname for Designated Area 1, the part of Boston where all of us monsters had to live—without a permit. In that case, most humans would call the Removal Squad. And when that crew removed a zombie, the zombie never came back.

I slapped the permit on the counter. “My friend’s name,” I said, “is Tina. Not That Thing. Tina. Got it? And if you refuse to serve her, I’ll have this place shut down so fast it’ll make the cockroaches’ heads spin.” I could do it, too. That’s what workaholic werewolf lawyer kinda-sorta boyfriends were for.

Gloria—that’s what the woman’s name tag said—gave me a look that I hoped she didn’t use on the coffee. It’d be way too bitter. “What can I get you?” she growled.

“How about a new attitude?”

“Look, you wanna order something or are you just gonna stand there? We don’t allow loitering, you know.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder at a sign that hung behind her. Sure enough, its big red letters proclaimed NO LOITERING.

I was half ready to turn around and walk out, but that would’ve made Gloria’s day. So instead I smiled sweetly. “Ask Tina.”

“Huh?”

“She’s your customer. Ask her what she wants.”

Clearly, Gloria did not want to ask Tina. She didn’t even want to look at her. Suddenly, the woman seemed fascinated by the way her own fingers drummed the countertop. I hated that kind of attitude. Tina could have been Gloria’s grand-daughter. It was just chance—being in the very wrong place at the very wrong time—that had killed and reanimated the kid. Not to mention a couple thousand other Bostonians just like her.

“Are you refusing to serve my friend?”

Gloria mumbled something.

Tina stepped forward. “Did you say something, ma’am? I couldn’t hear you.”

“Whaddaya want?”

Tina looked up, down, and around, whistling. Then she turned to me. “I don’t know who she’s talking to, do you?”

“Yeah, you know, it’s pretty confusing.” There was nobody besides the three of us in the place. “I guess Gloria ought to use the name of the person she’s talking to.”

Gloria looked like she was ready to explode. “Goddamn it,” she muttered under her breath. Then she looked Tina in the eye and said, “Whaddaya want, Tina?”

Tina bounced up and down on the balls of her feet. “Gee, Gloria, I thought you’d never ask. I’ll take a dozen donuts. For starters.”

Gloria whipped a box into shape, then Tina put her through a whole aerobics routine, bending and stretching and running back and forth as she hurried to retrieve the donuts Tina called out in rapid-fire succession: “A Boston