Just Kill Me (25 page)

“No, I'm being totally literal,” he says with a smile. “About a block from here is a building that has the clubhouse for the Adventurers Club on the sixth or seventh floor, and they've got the world's largest private collection of shrunken heads. My buddy's a member, so I can get us in if anyone's there.”

“This sounds like the opening of a ghost story,” I say. “Flimflam man meets pretty girl in a library, offers to take her to see a dead body, next thing you know I'm the new head in the collection, right?”

He laughs again. With his curly mustache, his beard, and the twinkle in his eye, he seems like a jolly old elf.

I take out my phone and pretend like I'm answering a text, but really I'm looking up the Adventurers Club. From a quick glance on Google I can see that they do have shrunken heads in their clubhouse. Real ones.

Every cell in my brain tells me that I should turn him down, but how the fuck can I say no to the chance to see the world's largest private collection of shrunken heads? I'm not
that
kind of girl.

“All right,” I say. “Lead the way.”

The half-block area around the library used to be called Hell's Half-Acre. At one time it was home to something like four dozen whiskey bars, three dozen pawn shops, two dozen
brothels, and a couple opium dens. People could rob you here with something close to immunity because they knew you would never go to the police and admit you'd been in the neighborhood after dark in the first place.

Somewhere along the line, though, it was gentrified. Now it's mostly yuppies.

Plus a clubhouse full of shrunken heads.

And, according to some website, a preserved whale dick.

Oh, the possibilities.

“What sort of group is the Adventurers Club?” I ask.

“Guys who climb Mount Everest and go on safari and stuff.”

“Bunch of lumberjack-looking white guys. Got it.”

He laughs. “I know at least one Asian woman who's in it, so it's not all white guys. It's officially members-only, and I doubt you qualify, but I'll do my best to get you inside.”

“Hey,” I say. “I've been on Space Mountain sixteen times.”

“I don't know if that counts, but I guess you do go on tours with Cyn and Ricardo. That's adventurous. I don't know how much you know about Cynthia Fargon. Where'd she find you?”

“She was my babysitter one summer when I was a kid.”

We step into the lobby of a building with a bookshop on the first floor, and he hits a buzzer next to a label that says “Adventurers Club.” So far, at least, his story checks out. He isn't just taking me to his lair or whatever.

There's no answer, so he hits it again. Still silence.

“Rats,” he says. “Must be empty today. I don't have a key, personally.”

“So no shrunken heads?” I ask.

“Sorry. But while I've got you here, I do need to talk to you about something.”

“As long as it's not something in your pants.”

“I'm being serious. Listen. You should really be careful of Cynthia.”

I notice that the traveling-salesman glimmer in his eye is gone, and his face has fallen. This is the kind of face and tone people get when they're ready to say, “Enough small talk about how great my dead brother was. What's the absolute least I can spend on the funeral?”

“Cyn's one of the best friends I've ever had,” I say.

“Did she ever say anything to you about some secret way to turn people into ghosts?”

I shake my head, telling myself it isn't lying if I don't say anything.

“Well, there's a technique that about six people know, and I think Cynthia is one of them.”

“How would she know about it?” I ask.

“I don't know. That's a mystery I'm still working on, just like you're working on Lillian Collier. But I've been in the business long enough to have heard about it, and I'm afraid there may be a chance that Cynthia's not only learned it,
she's planning on having you turn into Lillian's ghost.”

I let that hang in the air and stare at Edward Tweed. If he's just trying to freak me out, he's doing a good job. This feels like a serious warning.

“If you died and your ghost started haunting someplace she was associated with, she could say that it was Lillian's ghost,” he explains. “You'd look close enough.”

When I just stare at him without saying anything, he goes on.

“I mean, your hair's not quite right, but I don't think that technique makes ghosts distinct enough to see those kinds of details.”

When I can finally talk, all I say is “She wouldn't do that.”

“Think about it,” he says. “Did you have any experience in running tours? Public speaking? Acting? Anything like that?”

“I was in some plays in high school. She saw me in one.”

“I don't want to put you down, because I know you're a great guide, but it sounds to me like she hand-picked you without caring whether you were any good or not just because she knew you had the right look.”

I shrug. “She knew I could do research well and I have a good head for this kind of work. I'm a funeral-home kid.”

“Ah.” He chuckles a bit, hits the buzzer again, and says, “Well, I don't know how much you trust her, but I really recommend you reconsider. Keep your eyes open. Especially if she suggests you start dressing more like Lillian or something.”

I can't help but think of her suggestion that I let her bob my hair.

“I trust her.”

He leans back against the wall, then idly hits the buzzer yet again as he gives me a look over the top of his glasses.

“Like you probably trusted her not to tell anyone about Zoey? Or your Disney villain stories?”

The moment he says that, the whole vestibule is bathed in a flash of blue light from a police car zipping by, and I think I hear an explosion in the distance. A second or two goes by that are just lost to me. I think I stare at him. My jaw probably drops. But when those few seconds are gone I don't remember them anymore, like my brain is trying to wipe away the fact that he said that before it can turn into a memory.

It doesn't work.

My vision goes blurry, and all the sound from the street goes silent for a moment. The ding ding ding of the register in the bookstore that stands beside the entryway gets louder, and I stop caring about shrunken heads.

“Where did you hear about that?” I ask.

“Cynthia told me.”

He's making eye contact, but it suddenly feels like I'm naked in front of him, and he's checking out my whole body. Like I'm beyond naked. Like he can see everything, including my internal organs. Like he can see right through me.

Cyn couldn't have told him about Zoey. She wouldn't have told him. Not Tweed. She hates him.

“You're full of shit,” I say. “You must have hacked my computer or something.”

“I'm hopeless with computers,” he says.

“Then you got Saltis to do it for you.”

“He's even worse.”

“Then you've got our bus bugged. You've been spying on us.”

“No. Nothing like that. Cyn told me the other night.”

My stomach twists around, and even though I haven't eaten all day, I feel the bile rising up inside me.

This old man knows about my stories.

This. Old. Creep.

He knows about me. What has he pictured me doing? What is he imagining right now?

Tweed starts to say something else, but I run out of the entryway, through the tiny park next door and around into the nearest alley, where I throw up into a smelly metal dumpster.

“Purgament. Fellowred. Cunnigar.”

I repeat
OED
synonyms for swear words to myself while I zombie-walk my way to a Blue Line stop, trying to calm down. It doesn't work. When a train comes, I find the least-crowded car and curl up into a ball in an empty seat. Fetal position.

Tweed knows about Zoey.

Tweed knows about my stories.

Oh, fuck.

Godemiche. Stercory. Hindwin. Nockhole. Stupid fucking Berkeley Hunt.

As the train starts to move, I wonder if maybe Tweed was Zoey the whole time, an idea that absolutely disgusts me. But that one, at least, doesn't seem plausible. I'd been with Zoey for a while before Ed had any idea who the hell I was.

Either he hacked my computer, he spied on us, or Cyn blabbed.

I don't know which theory I hate most.

If he hacked my computer, he knows everything. What goes on in my stories. Maybe even the stories Zoey didn't get to see. Not to mention that the hard drive contained pictures of me that I sure as hell didn't want him to see. No face in the worst of them, but he'd know it was me.

If Cyn told him, that would be a bit of a relief, in a way, since it meant he only knew what she'd told him about the stories, and that couldn't be too much. I never showed them to her or anything. But that would mean that she stabbed me in the back.

And that she might be planning to
literally
stab me in the back to turn me into a substitute for Lillian Collier's ghost.

The best-case scenario is that he's bugged our bus and has been spying on us.

That's it.

I tell myself that it has to be it.

I get off the train at the Medical District stop to puke again, this time into a garbage can, then wait for another train and ride straight home.

The reeks and fumes of my puddled brain probably leave a ghost behind on the Blue Line.

I
don't leave the house again until the next day, when I have to go run back-to-back tours at seven and ten.

I don't talk to Rick or Cyn during the day; I just stay in my room, trying to get ahold of Zoey and trying to decide whether or not I hope Cyn is planning to turn me into a ghost, if it meant that Edward Tweed hasn't hacked my computer and seen my stories.

None of our “charity work” has led to a ghost so clear anyone could tell who the ghost was, but we aren't exactly using the best candidates. Cyn's always saying so. According to what she'd read in Marjorie's papers, a volunteer would leave a much weaker imprint than someone who wasn't expecting to die that day.

There are lots of X factors. Younger people would leave better imprints than older ones. People who are pregnant or on their period would leave a stronger one, and all of our volunteers are way too old for that sort of thing.

But I'm not.

In fact, I'm a perfect candidate.

So it might work. If Cyn timed things just right, she might be able to make me into a maximum-strength ghost that people could not only see clearly, but might mistake for the ghost of Lillian Collier.

More than once, I remember that she offered to bob my hair and make me look more like Lillian.

And I tell myself that I still trust her.

But I'm glad I'm working with Rick, not her, for my tours tonight.

On Clark Street every tourist seems like a clone of Drunky McLoserbro. Guys in backward baseball caps. Girls wearing Mardi Gras beads even though it's nowhere near Mardi Gras time, or the right city. All visibly drunk at six o'clock.