Checking over my shoulder to see how much of a head start I had, I jogged uphill toward our neighboring town houses. Trying not to panic, I determinedly clung to my moment of joy and triumph. After all these years of hardship, I deserved a celebration for achieving my goal of being able to
Well, for the moment, I was merely a law clerk, but I was finally on the straight-and-narrow, doing-it-by- the-book path. Law libraries, not planets, ruled my world these days.
I would not let a bilious green cloud extinguish the sweet future I had planned.
Except, instead of calling 911, I was obeying Andre’s orders. Not out of habit, mind you, but because what happened in the Zone stayed in the Zone. Police hated melting their tires on our tar, and if officialdom came down here too often, they’d eventually realize the whole slum needed to be bulldozed instead of just the harbor.
Or if the wrong people saw shrieking gargoyles, we could be turned into a freak circus. Some of our community members would take umbrage at that, and mayhem would be the least that ensued. There was safety only in privacy. Gas clouds were problematic for their ability to both hurt us and reveal us.
I glanced back again, in some vague hope that the cloud would dissipate. Instead, it had all but obliterated any sight of the far end of town. I assumed the lighted windows meant someone at Acme had called for help, but one never knew.
I tried my el-cheapo cell to warn my friend Cora and reached a Greek restaurant—in Athens, if the language was any indicator. The Zone was perpetually hungry, and cell phones were unreliable at best down here.
As I tucked my phone away, one of the homeless bums from the encampment along the water darted out from between two buildings. He looked a little moon-mad with his gray hair straggling to his shoulders and his shadowed eyes darting from side to side. I intelligently halted—until he brandished a knife and shouted incomprehensibly in my direction.
Mostly, the weird ones never gave me any trouble. This one ran straight at me, slashing the air in large strokes as if he carried a sword. What was it with old guys tonight?
Fear robbed me of caution. I kicked high and connected with his wrist.
The knife flew into the street. The bum stopped, blinked in astonishment, then slowly crumpled to the broken pavement, just as Nancy Rose had.
Damn, I hadn’t hit him that hard! The bum’s belly alone was twice my size. Hauling him off the street was out of the question.
I almost panicked, but Bill, the giant who operated the bar and grill down the street, lumbered out and noticed my predicament. “I’ll handle it,” he called. “Get out of here and warn the others.”
I liked Bill for a lot of reasons.
Checking the progress of the gas cloud, I sprinted faster. A street light pole twisted as if watching me run. I’d had some time to grow accustomed to aberrancy, but I still despised being spied on. Swiveling lights were a nasty reminder of the bad old days when I had snoops on my tail every minute.
My apartment was in a Victorian row house a few blocks beyond the Zone on the south end of the harbor, half a mile or more away from Acme’s perch to the north. I could hope the gas didn’t reach this far. The gray flicker of TVs lit some of the windows, but none shone in the darkness of my building. Inside, I pounded on my landlady’s apartment door to wake her up, yelling at her to get to the basement. Then I ran up the stairs for my tufted-eared miniature bobcat. He’d grown too large to be called a Manx kitty.
Milo raced to greet me, dragging the messenger bag I used as a carryall. He had a bad habit of running toward trouble, so I didn’t see this as a good sign. Before I could scoop him up, he dashed into the second-floor hall and raced up the stairs to the top floor. Shit. Running up into a sky full of gas didn’t seem to be the wisest course of action.
Just as Milo reached the landing, heavy feet lumbered down. Milo turned, jumped past the bottom two steps, sped by me, and threw himself at the door of the apartment across the hall from mine.
I had lived here only a few months. Caught up in study, exams, two jobs, and the tracking of a murderer, I hadn’t had time to make the acquaintance of any of the other tenants.
That was about to change.
“Basement,” a voice rusty from disuse called from above. A pair of shabby brown corduroys appeared on the stairs above me.
I recognized the crazy inventor who occasionally stopped at Chesty’s. The waitresses fed him gratis, and I’d assumed he was homeless. His graying chestnut hair fell lankly to his shoulders, and his lined and bearded face was nearly as wrinkled and faded as his corduroys.
I’d been told that once upon a time, he’d been a renowned research scientist at Acme Chemical, which is owned by the Vanderventers, his wealthy, powerful family. After the disastrous flood, he’d fallen apart. From the looks of him now, he had deteriorated even more since I’d seen him last. He might not have taken the death of his nephew—my boyfriend Max—in a fiery car crash too well. Especially since Paddy’s son, Dane Vanderventer, had died shortly after, because of little old me.
Well, sort of died. I had sent Dane’s wicked soul to hell for cutting Max’s brake lines, so in a strange twist of fate, Max’s soul now inhabited Senator Dane Vanderventer’s body.
This caused a number of problems, but the point is I was a wee bit hesitant to tell Paddy about the Dane/Max
Right now didn’t seem an appropriate time to strike up
“Basement,” Paddy repeated, taking the next flight of stairs. “I’ll get Pearl.”
Pearl Bodine was our elderly landlady. I grabbed Milo before he could take out the door with his scratching, pounded on the old oak panel as hard as I could, and shouted, “Gas attack!”
The heavy panel swung open to reveal a blurry-eyed Lieutenant Schwartz—in his knit boxers and nothing else.
My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, and I gaped at ripped abdominals and bulging pectorals. This was what the good detective hid behind rumpled suits and uniforms? By all that was holy . . .
Milo leapt from my arms and bolted down the stairs after Paddy.
“Gas?” Schwartz asked, sniffing the air.
“Acme. I think there’s been an explosion. Paddy says to get to the basement.”
“Just a matter of time,” he said fatalistically. “Be right there.”
I rushed after Milo.
Paddy was already assisting a chattering Mrs. Bodine down the cellar stairs. I wasn’t entirely certain following a crazy scientist into the basement was the wisest means of avoiding a gas attack. If the cloud hadn’t spread, we had time to get the hell out of Dodge. My Miata could hold us, barely. Besides, Pearl had cobwebs on her chandeliers. I didn’t want to imagine what her basement was like.
I waited to see what the good detective intended to do.
Milo yowled and flung himself at the front door, disturbing my fuzzy internal debate. The appletinis hadn’t completely dissipated.
“You can’t attack gas, you idiot.” I scooped him up again, but he jumped off my chest to the top of an ornate armoire, putting him in reach of the open transom of the aging town house.
“Milo!” I screamed as my cat disappeared out the opening. Damned cat, if the leap to the porch didn’t kill him, the gas would. He’d pretty much used up half his nine lives already.
Torn between the desire to protect myself and the urge to find my cat, I lingered long enough to hear Schwartz clattering down the stairs. Clattering? What was he wearing, a suit of armor?
Not waiting to find out, I raced after Milo.
If I died rescuing a cat, maybe I wouldn’t go to hell for all my vigilante justice after all. Although right about now, I was thinking the Zone was pretty close to hell on earth. All we needed was the stench of sulfur. I took a second to sniff the air, but other than the usual fishy odor from the harbor, I only detected a faint whiff of burned ozone. A few freaked-out gargoyles could still be heard.
Milo leaped from the porch rail to the railing of the next town house, skipping stairs and the yellow jacket nest in the bushes. Feeling plucky, I followed suit, but landed with a thud far less graceful than my kitty’s feline pounce.
“Milo, my white-knight cat.” With renewed urgency, I shoved him in my messenger bag before he could run
