Charlie Huston - Already Dead

– OK. Did you bring a picture?

– Yes.

She lifts a pocketbook that matches her suit from the floor, finds the picture and passes it to me.

Her mother's eyes and neck, but the resemblance stops there. The girl in the photo is decked out in head-to-toe black with white pancake makeup on her face, hair dyed black, black lipstick, black eye shadow and black nail polish. Jesus fuck, she's a goth. Marilee sees something in my face.

– Yes, Amanda does have something of a fascination with the undead. So really, Joseph, you can see why it is I called you.

I look up from the photo, and Marilee smiles ever so sweetly.

I've been outed. Dexter Predo has outed me.

It's a given that a woman like Marilee has some sense of how things work, the exchanges that take place behind, beneath and above the scenes in Manhattan, the give and take of power. It is for that kind of favor brokering that the Coalition is known to a select few outside the Clans. But the fact that I have been outed by Predo indicates that she is operating at a much higher level of awareness, a level of knowledge at which most people are murdered to keep them silent.

There are people that know about us. But they are few and most play a specific role. There are the Van Helsings, the righteous who stumble upon us and make it their mission to hunt us down. The Renfields like Philip, who glom on to us, half servile and half envious. The Lucys, both male and female, who have romanticized the whole vampire myth and dote over us like groupies. And the Minas, the ones who know the truth and don't care, the ones who fall in love. Van Helsings are killed, we use the Renfields and the Lucys to serve us and insulate us from the world. Minas are rare and precious beyond value. There is only one way to know if you have a true Mina: tell her or him what you are and what you do to stay alive. Not many make that final cut.

Then there are the few men and women with true power and influence who know us. These are the ones to be feared. These are the ones the Coalition deals with and the Society hopes to sway. But the Society's goals will never be realized. We will never live in the open unless it is as freaks or prey. The people who might guide us out of obscure myth will never risk their positions and reputations to say to the world, Hey, look, vampires are real!

And Marilee is one of them, a person who knows, and knows I know she knows. And so on. And here she is in the Cole having a drink with me in public. And if I had any doubts before, I now know for certain that if I ever have the opportunity to drag Dexter Predo into the sun, I will do so gleefully.

She fishes an ice cube out of her drink, pops it in her mouth and crunches it.

– You see, Joseph, I know what you are, but I'm still not certain what it is you do. Are you a detective of some kind?

I'm still the deer in the headlights, just staring at her as she chews on ice.

– Joseph?

I blink once, slowly.

– I'm a man, does things, gets things done. I'm a handyman. Someone has a problem they maybe call me and I maybe help to take care of the problem. Sometimes that means I'm a detective, I guess, but I don't have a license or an office or anything.

She nods.

– What about a gun, do you carry a gun?

– Sometimes.

– Now?

– No.

– And what about the other things you do? I know about them in theory, but details are hard to come by. Mr. Predo and the few other Coalition members we have met are so circumspect. I stare at her.

– What about those other things, Joseph?

– We can't talk about that here.

She inhales deeply, exhales.

– It's just that one hears the most fascinating stories. Is it true for instance about your sense of smell? Is it as acute as a dog's? Can you, for instance, tell what scent I used this morning?

– I can smell it.

– Do you know the brand?

– No. But it's lavender oil.

– You'd recognize it if you smelled it again?

– Yeah.

– Hmm.

– If you don't mind, Ms. Horde, I'm not very good at parlor tricks.

– We should talk about these things sometime, we really should.

– Ms. Horde.

– Yes?

– Your daughter?

– What about her?

– She's missing.

– Yes, she is.

– What did you mean that she is fascinated with the undead?

She takes another cube of ice from her drink, just sucking it this time.

– Just that. She is somewhat fascinated by the undead, and the dead for that matter. You have eyes, she's a goth. She and her friends, they are all interested in anything macabre.

– But when you say undead, do you mean in the abstract or in a literal sense? What I mean is…

– How much does she know?

– -Yes.

– Nothing. I don't know what you're accustomed to, Joseph, but it's not as if I make a habit of meeting with… your people. This is an aberration. Dale and I and some others in our circle know, but we would hardly go about sharing that information. It would tend to brand us as something rather more than eccentric.

She smiles and licks the ice in her fingers. I can't quite get her. She's no Van Helsing, definitely not a Renfield, and lacks the proper sluttishness to be a Lucy. But she's something, she is definitely something. I slug down the last of my drink.

– Two more things.

– Of course.

– The name of the PI that found her last time?

– Chester Dobbs.

– Huh.

– You know him?

– Of him. Why didn't you call him again?

– To be honest, we did. He said he would look into it, but then called back the next evening and told us that his caseload was simply too great.

I try to feature a PI turning down a case from a cash cow as fat as the Hordes. I fail.

She's watching me.

– And the other?

– Hmm?

– The other of the two things?

– Oh, where did he find her the first time?

She finally bites down on the cube she's been sucking.

– Some abandoned building, a school I think it was, around Avenue B and Ninth Street. She was squatting in the basement with some other kids.

She looks at my face, which I'm sure looks like I just got kicked in the gut.

– Are you all right, Joseph? Is there something wrong?

I don't shake hands. I don't say goodbye. I take a pass on all the social niceties and get the hell out of there and into a downtown cab.

It's not her. I take a closer look at the picture while I ride the cab downtown, and I'm sure Amanda Horde is not the shambler chick I took care of the other night. Thanks for small blessings.

The school is as it was last night. Cop car parked out front on freak watch, police barricade across the entrance. I go in the same way as before. The wall is a little tougher this time with my ribs still healing from Hurley's beating. The roof door I left open last night is still ajar. I go in. Same graffiti, same rats, same breeze, same smells. I reach the ground floor and go to the killing room.

The scents are slightly faded, but essentially unchanged except for the additions of Hurley's and Tom's. The absences I had been so focused on when I got coldcocked have been lost as the other odors have drifted and diffused within the room. But the musk is still there, that disturbing sweaty aroma with its hint of sex and desiccation. But I'm not here for that. I'm here for the girl.

I leave the room and hunt around until I find a door leading down to the basement. It's black down there. I close my eyes tight and feel my pupils expand in response to the lack of light. I open my eyes and walk down the stairs into the complicated shadows below.

The smells are different here. Dust and damp concrete dominate with an undertone of heating oil, and rank human sweat laced throughout. A thin stream of light trickles in from the door above. Rough shapes emerge from the gloom. I skirt a pile of rotting cardboard boxes stuffed with molding textbooks, turn a corner and pass the open door of what was once the boiler room from which the oil smell creeps out. There are human smells here in thick, stale profusion. Some may be recent, but the chaos of odor keeps me from sorting them. The sweat stink I smelled on the stairs intensifies as I open a door into what used to be the boys' locker room. Most of the lockers have been removed, but in a corner I make out a dingy pile of what smells like cast-off jockstraps.