“Just a few more feet,” I said, turning over that priest angle in my mind. Why would a man of the cloth do something like that? It was probably just me looking for any thread, even a crazy one like that.

  When we got to the front door, it was wide open.

  And completely dark inside.

  “Etta?”

  No answer. I started to fear the worst. A break-in, a robbery, Etta dead on the floor. Traci Ann was almost a dead weight herself now, falling back to sleep. I found my way in the dark to the sofa and got Traci Ann situated there. Then I went to flick on a light. Found the lamp by the sofa and turned it on.

  Etta’s walker was in the middle of the living room. With something taped to one of the arms. A piece of paper.

  A note.

  I grabbed it. It was written in ink by an artistic hand.

  Life for life.

  As the owl flies.

  The first part was evident. They, whoever they were, had taken Etta, taken her because Traci Ann had been taken away from them.

  The owl reference was something else. Meant for me, like a riddle.

  I went to Traci Ann, jostled her.

  “Mmm?”

  “Traci Ann, listen. I have to go.”

  “Mm-hm.”

  “Do you hear me?”

  “Mm-hm.”

  I threw the little sofa blanket over her, locked the door, and left. Then found myself driving like a maniac toward the Hollywood Hills.

  Stranger than that, I heard myself praying.

  CHAPTER 36

  When I got to the driveway at Minerva’s place, the night was as dark as any I’d ever seen in L.A. Even the lights of Hollywood seemed to creep halfway up the hill and fall flat in the dirt, as if afraid to show their luminescent tails. A warm wind blew around me as I got out of Geraldine, and I smelled laurel and sage and the faint odor of barbecue. Somebody was cooking meat. But it wasn’t human, so it held nothing for me.

  I went right up to the intercom on the driveway, but before I pushed the button, the chauffeur whom I’d met the first time stepped out from a shadow. Or maybe he was the shadow.

  He said, “We’ve been waiting for you.”

  “You? I thought you didn’t work here anymore.”

  “Don’t believe everything you hear in court,” he said, smiling.

  “Bring me Etta Johnson. The cops are on their way, so you better hand her over.”

  “You didn’t call the authorities. You know that wouldn’t be wise. Why don’t you come on up to the house and we’ll discuss things?”

  “Why don’t you just bring her down here and we’ll have our little talk right out in the open?”

  “You don’t want that poor old woman becoming the undead, now do you? Your bargaining position is very slight. But it’s your choice.”

  “Open the gate.”

  “Don’t try anything,” he said. “This time we are prepared for you.”

  “You’re just cute enough to eat,” I said. “Open up.”

  He clicked something and the gate swung open with an eerie creak. If Vincent Price himself had been directing this scene, he couldn’t have done it any better.

  G Dog led me up the hill. Somewhere deep in the valley a girl screamed. It was either laughter or terror. It echoed over us like the cry of an albatross. I wondered if it was going to be the last sound outside these walls I would ever hear. If it was, so be it. I wouldn’t go quietly, that was for sure.

  G Dog pushed the door open, again with the creak. “A little WD-40 would work wonders for you people,” I said.

  G Dog said nothing and waited for me to walk past him into the dark house. Which I did. The door slammed behind me. I didn’t see if it was the chauffeur, the wind, or one of those horror movie ghosts who did it. Not that it mattered. I was in the belly of the beast now. Alone.

  Or maybe not completely. I had this feeling that I wasn’t truly by myself. Maybe it was just me hoping. But it was there, and for some reason it gave me courage.

  Then the eyeballs came at me.

  I was in a dark hallway. Little lights like fireflies appeared in front of me, then started swirling toward me. When they got closer, I saw that they were illuminated eyeballs, floating around in the air in pairs.

  I didn’t feel afraid. This whole eyeball shtick was intended to shake me up, and had been that way ever since I was a little girl. But I was no more afraid of it than I would’ve been at something at Disney’s Haunted Mansion.

  “You can stop with the eyeballs now,” I said. “It doesn’t do a thing for me. Whoever you are, take your eyes back and keep them to yourself before I go all Moe Howard on you.”

  The eyeballs still swirled. A couple of sets blinked. One of them came right up to my face. I made a V out of two fingers and jabbed them.

  They popped like soap bubbles. I heard some kind of moan. Then all of them disappeared.

  “You’re going to regret that,” G Dog said.

  “Get on with it. Where am I going?”

  “To hell,” he said.

  Minerva was sitting on her throne in the middle of the great room. She had her hands spread out on the arms of the great chair.

  “And now who is bowing to whom?” she said.

  I looked around the chamber, then back at Minerva. “My knees are straight,” I said.

  “They will not be. Soon, they will not be!”

  “Where is she?” I said.

  “Not so fast. First you will show your intentions. You will apologize to me for your disrespect.”

  “We’re a long way from that,” I said, trying to figure out how to keep her talking. I still had no idea what she had in mind, except that little phrase kept going back and forth in my head: Life for life. “Somebody coached you for the trial,” I said. “This was a setup from the start. You said you saw Traci Ann turn into a coyote. Since she wasn’t there, somebody told you that’s what you should say.”

  “Silence!”

  Minerva was unnerved.

  “Who was it, Minnie? Who is behind this whole setup? Who put the frame on Traci Ann?”

  “This is more outrage from you!” Minerva said. “And you will pay!” She nodded to G Dog. He went out of the room for a moment, then wheeled in Etta Johnson, gagged, tied to a wheelchair. Her eyes were red and wide.

  “Okay,” I said. “Just let her go. You and I, we’ll talk. But let her go.”

  Minerva pursed her lips and thrust out her hand like a wicked witch, pointing her craggy fingers at me. I half expected little lightning bolts to come flying out, but nothing happened.

  What came flying out was an owl. It screeched and flapped its wings and landed on Minerva’s throne, just over her right shoulder. Where it stared at me with its ugly face.

  Man, I was getting tired of owls. “Is that it?” I said. “Another one of your rat catchers? What is it with you and these flying uglies?”

  The owl hissed at me.

  Hissing. Demons. With names.

  To the owl, I said, “What is your name!”

  “No!” Minerva shouted.

  “What is your name!” I said again.

  The owl puffed up, spread its wings. It actually expanded.

  Larger, larger, an owl the size of a refrigerator. And from it came the smell of wet feathers and sulfur. Its big eyes were like lemon pies with black Necco Wafers in the middle.

  And then those black irises filled the eyes, until all the color was gone. The overspilling black continued beyond the eyes, to the facial disk and then the whole head, down and out to the wings, the body. The whole bird looked as if it had been dipped in tar.

  The sulfur smell was overpowering.

  The supersized owl hovered a moment, then began to change shape.

  Minerva, by this time, was hiding her face. I glanced over at G Dog. He was on his face on the floor.

  The shift continued, into the form of a woman. A woman in great shape.

  Slowly, color came back to the woman. Features. Long hair, golden. Eyes, luminescent red. Skin, alabaster.

  Body, naked.

  But not completely. Two big, fat, emerald-scaled snakes slithered across each breast, their tails covering her lower body.

  This chick was wearing a serpentine thong.

  But it was the eyes most of all that I was drawn to. It was as if the fires of the sun were behind rubies, set in a face of utmost beauty.

  And that scared me more than anything. It was a face that could melt you, hold you, mesmerize you.

  Control you.

  I fought back with my will. But it was like punching a fifty-foot wave as it breaks over you.

  “I am Lilith,” the snake woman said. “And you are mine.”

  CHAPTER 37

  My undead bones went cold inside me. “You want to run that by me again?” I said, fighting for bravado.

  She floated toward me, then around my body as if to observe me from all points. She seemed to be flesh, but also without physical constraint. “You will be my slave,” she said as she returned to hovering in front of me. “You will do what I bid you to do. Just like Minerva. She has been my slave for almost forty years.”

  Minerva groaned.

  “Why should I agree to that?” I said.

  “You want us to let the grandmother go? No harm will come to her. The cost is you.”

  “Life for life?”

  Lilith nodded.

  I looked at Etta. She was shaking her head at me. She was scared to death.

  “That’s fine talk,” I said. “But how can I trust you? What makes me think you won’t to go after her another time?”

  “You have already seen the girl you took from me, your client. You have protected her, according to the instructions of that vile priest. So long as both of them wear the icons that I cannot bring myself to mention, they cannot be touched.”

  “And all I have to do is . . . what?”

  “Of your own free will place yourself in subjection to me.”

  I had been fighting subjection for as long as I had been reanimated. Every day was a struggle. Now maybe it was time to give in.

  I had no idea what this would do to me. But the deal was saving a life, and maybe I figured that’s the best I could do under the circumstances. Maybe somewhere somebody would see it and give me a little credit. Or I could just spend my days trapped in this body and doing the will of somebody else, maybe forever. That was what it was, what I hated most. I was giving up my own will. The one thing that sustained me through all the darkness and all the doubts and all the attempts to control me. I would be giving that up once and for all.

  But Etta and Traci Ann would be together, and maybe that was the best thing this zombie could ever hope to accomplish.

  “It’s a deal,” I said. “As soon as I get her home and situated, we can complete the transaction.”

  Lilith puffed herself up. “No lawyer tricks from you. You will swear your oath now, and then I will let her go.”

  “Now hold on,” I said. “This contract is conditional. My oath will not go into effect until Etta is safe at home.”

  “No,” Lilith said.

  “Then it’s no deal.” A bit of bluffing, a bit of swagger. You have to know when to pull those out.

  Lilith paused. Her snakes hissed. “Very well. You now swear fealty to me. You place your will into my keeping. You’ll swear to this.”

  I took a long breath. “I swear, subject to Etta being placed in my care.”

  “You have twenty-four hours. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  “You will return here in twenty-four hours and begin your service.”

  “Anything else?”

  Lilith smiled. I could already feel my will draining out of me. I hung on to it with all my might.

  “Have a nice night,” Lilith said.

  Etta cried all the way home.

  “I did not want you to do this,” she said.

  I kept patting her on the shoulder. “No more of that. I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself. You take care of Traci Ann. You keep her covered with the cross, and you, too. As long as you are covered, you’re safe.”

  “But what will happen to you?”

  “You promise me. Promise me you’ll do as I say.”

  Etta sobbed.

  “Etta? Promise me. If you do that, all will be well.”

  “I promise,” she said.

  It was after midnight when I got back to my loft.

  I was hungry. I needed to eat.

  I didn’t do it, though. I didn’t go out. I kept Amanda all locked up.

  I didn’t know how long I could fight it, the hunger, but I was in a fighting mood. I wouldn’t be doing much fighting later, once I placed myself in bondage to Lilith.

  And I wondered if I’d be wearing snakes. Boas for the well-dressed zombie.

  CHAPTER 38

  The next morning I was a wreck. My stomach growled as I got to the office. I couldn’t concentrate on anything. My whole body was crying out for human flesh. But I didn’t want to satisfy it. If I was going to give myself up anyway, why make things worse?

  This is what a heroin addict must feel like. I charged outside. Walked down Broadway, maybe for the last time. I wondered if I could make it to tonight without eating. Just go to my doom and that’d be the end of it.

  But the fight was on, and it was, I thought, what a raging alcoholic must go through when slapped into treatment.

  I kept passing by my lunch.

  A Hispanic family—man, woman, child—as a main course.

  An Asian skateboarder for dessert.

  And then a little girl, only twelve or so, who looked like a scrumptious hors d’oeuvre. That’s when I was filled with such self-loathing I didn’t care what happened to me. Let it end here, now, on the street somehow.

  So when the Voice came, this time I did not resist.

  Come! It said.

  “Where?” I said.

  Long silence. Are you kidding?

  “Just tell me where, pal,” I said.

  I am pleased. Keep walking. Keep listening.

  I did.

  It was way down where Main runs into Olympic that the Voice guided me. And then into an office and apartment building that, from the outside, looked like it dated from the 1930s. There are many of these downtown, but this was one I couldn’t remember seeing before.

  The Voice told me to go in the front and take the elevator to the top floor. I did. And then upstairs to the roof.

  There was a garden area here, with some white plastic chairs scattered around. The garden consisted of a few scrubby plants I could not name. It was like an outpost of the French Foreign Legion in the desert. The rest of the roof was hot and empty.

  From this vantage point I had a good view of lower downtown. The Eastern Columbia building dominated, with its turquoise art deco exterior and big clock. Reminded me that time was not only of the essence, but also running out on me.

  Scanning a little more, my gaze fell on the big red JESUS SAVES sign that used to top the Church of the Open Door on Hope Street. They demolished the church years ago, but somebody saved the sign and there it was, though not as high as it used to be. It was street level now.

  That was somehow fitting. Satan and Jesus duking it out on the street over the future of L.A.

  I saw something flit off to the side, and saw a humming bird winging toward some sort of trumpet flower in the garden. Somebody had brought a little natural color to this patio, and nature had brought this little bird to get some nourishment. I watched as it inserted its bill into the trumpet. And for one moment I felt something I hadn’t in a long time. I don’t know what you’d call it. A sense of beauty maybe?

  I didn’t have time to analyze, because I heard the hard fluttering of wings. Instinctively, I ducked. Predatory birds were becoming a fixture in my life.

  Indeed, I was right. Another owl!

  The little hummingbird beat it out of there like a bullet. The owl came to rest on the ledge. And I was mad. I didn’t hesitate. In one flowing move I grabbed a plastic chair, spun like a discus thrower, and flung chair as hard as I could at the bird.

  Almost got it. It would have been a beautiful hit, too. But at the last moment the owl jumped to the side and shouted, “Hey! What is it with you, with the throwing and the flinging? You’re like to kill somebody.”

  The voice sounded oddly ethnic. Sort of Lower East Side Jewish from the 1920s. But I wasn’t going to wait around and analyze. I figured this was just another demon so I commanded, “What is your name?”

  “Say, what are you pulling that stuff for?” the owl said. “Worries you don’t need. Not from Max.”

  I shook my head. “Max? What kind of a demon name is that?”

  “What are you talking, with the demon? I’m one of the good guys.”

  “Good guys?”

  If an owl can sigh, this one did. “Listen, kid, you got your demons, and you got your good guys. You got your wicked dead walking around, and you also got the good ones keeping up with them. The demons, they want to hurt people. It is our assignment to watch and help.”

  “Are you trying to tell me all this time, you were helping me?”

  “Now she gets it! She with the Hawaii Five-O music already!”

  I looked around to make sure no one was there, listening to me being insane. “I don’t know what I get,” I said. “You were a human at one time?”

  “Lady, not only was I human, I did three shows a night for eighteen straight years. Let me tell you, the Catskills is no picnic. You don’t make the people laugh, they don’t tip.”

  “You were a Catskills comedian?”

  “Slapsie Maxie Green. One shot on the Sullivan show. 1956. I ate some bad shellfish. Food poisoning right in the middle of my act. Let me tell you, suicide was on the table. But somebody very good got me over it, and I started looking for God. It’s a long story after that, but it comes right up to here. Me, looking out for you.”

  I was still skeptical. “Why should I believe you?”

  “I haven’t got much time. You want to waste it with credentials?”

  “I’m not convinced I need to listen to you yet.”

 

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