The Zombie Whisperer (Living With the Dead) (22 page)

“Bitch,” she muttered under her breath.

Kai didn’t react except for a tight, expectant smile. There was clearly no getting out of this, so Natalie hauled herself to her feet. She shuffled those same feet in complete discomfort and started to speak.

“Hello, my name is Natalie and I’m a”—like Kai, she glanced over her shoulder to make sure the door was shut—“Frankenstein’s Monster. It’s been . . . um . . . sixty years or so since anyone last discovered my true identity.”

“Hi, Natalie,” the group droned in sync like a bunch of zombies. God, she had always hated that term . . . zombie, it hit way too close to home.

She sat down with another glare for Kai, one which was ignored, of course, and watched as the older man in the cape next to her stood up.

“Hello, my name is Dracula, though I’m forced to go by Drake in this city.” He folded his arms. “I hate that name. Why I cannot simply be called by my real moniker—”

“We’ve gone over this before,” Alec interrupted with a roll of his eyes. “Dracula attracts a lot of attention. And ridicule. You’d be a joke. A bigger one than you already are with that cape.”

“Alec,” Kai interrupted, her tone sharp and frustrated. “Your circle etiquette. Let him finish.” She glared at Drake. “But hurry it up, we don’t have a century for you to drone on with one of your monologues. It’s not the 1500s anymore. People have places to go and things to do.”

Drake scowled. “I am a vampire and it’s been twenty years since anyone last discovered my true identity.” He hesitated, then added, “But those sparkling whippersnappers running around out in the open aren’t helping. They whine and go out in the sun. Are they trying to get themselves killed? Don’t they know they’re attracting the wrong kind of attention by mooning all over the place, over some silly little girl who-”

Kai squeezed her eyes shut. “Drake, we’ve gone over this in several meetings. Those ‘sparkling vampires’ aren’t real. They’re from a movie. You must know what a movie is, you’ve been around for, like, a thousand years.”

Drake opened his mouth to argue, but before he could, the shaggy guy leapt up and started talking. “Hi, I’m Alec. I’m a werewolf. It’s been seventy years since someone last discovered my true identity.”

As the rest of the group said hi, Natalie watched Alec. Sheesh, he was good. With all that scruff and the literally puppy-dog eyes that he could make so forlorn, he pretty much got laid all the time. He even winked at her as he sat down.

“I’m Linda,” said the nervous woman who had been picking at her hand. “I’m a Swamp Dweller.”

Before she could continue, the bonding adhesive that had been used to hold her fake skin on her hands loosened and a chunk of skin dropped away, revealing dark green scales beneath.

“Oh shit,” she said as she dropped down to grab for it. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“It’s okay,” Kai said, but her tone was less than soothing and she barely spared Linda more than an eye roll. Not that Natalie could blame her. Linda was a bit . . . needy; the constant attention and comfort she required did get a bit old.

Still, it was hard not to feel sorry for her. Like all of them, Linda had to constantly battle to keep the monstrous parts of her appearance from becoming too obvious. Being part amphibian, part human, meant extensive makeup, constantly watery eyes (which Linda exacerbated with her emotional outbursts), and gills that only Blob had ever seen.

Natalie could sympathize. For her it was the scars all over her body, the fact that she was super-tall, and the slightly different skin tone of one leg versus the other. There was a reason she never wore skirts. But at least she didn’t have green skin or bolts sticking out of her neck. Stupid movies.

Linda knelt on the floor and tried to force her skin back on with the now-dingy adhesive. “It’s really not okay.”

Kai sighed. “Oh my God, Fishlady, chill out.”

Linda shot Kai a look. “Don’t call me Fishlady. And Bob wouldn’t have said ‘chill out.’”

“Well, I’m not Bob, thank God . . .” Kai sighed. “Next.”

The next man stood up and said, “I’m Dr. Henry Jekyll—”

As if about to hiccup, he shut his mouth and paused. After a moment, he opened his mouth to continue—but before he could speak, he tensed, his body twitching like he was having a seizure. Of course, no one moved to assist. It wasn’t like they hadn’t seen this before. Kai did rush over to the door and stood in front of it to block what was about to happen from unexpected passersby.

With a lot of groaning and grunting, Jekyll staggered forward. There was a sound of rending flesh and he groaned in pain. His body tensed and he arched backward with another half roar, half whine.

Slowly, his body separated in half, the back of him staying put as the front pulled free. And suddenly a second man stood in the middle of their group. One who was almost a mirror image of Jekyll except for the wicked gleam in his eye and the disheveled quality of his appearance.

As Jekyll bent over at the waist, panting with the exertion of what he’d just done, the twin version of him said, “And I am Edward Hyde. It’s been four weeks since someone last discovered our true identities.” He smiled, thin and unpleasant. “Although they won’t be speaking about it.”

Natalie shivered. Of all the members of their meeting group, Hyde was the only one she thought of as a “monster.” He actually liked being what he was, liked being some kind of weird twin who had never been fully separated from his brother.

The two men shared a face, but Hyde had gotten all the wicked impulses, the frightening desires, and Jekyll all the ability to control those things. When they were formed as one person, it was fine. Jekyll had the control and could rein his brother in. But when they weren’t . . .

It was creepy. Partly because the more evil he was allowed to be, the more twisted and ugly, the more monstrous in form, Hyde became.

Jekyll reached forward to grab for Hyde and re-form as one . . . entity, but Kai slammed a fist down on the podium before her and shook her head. “Oh, no, no, no! If you two are going to rejoin, do it in the bathroom. No one here wants to see it.”

The rest of the group nodded with various expressions of boredom and disgust. Seeing the two men go through what they called the “Bonding Ritual” was pretty troubling. There was lots of coughing and growling and sometimes even screaming and blood . . . Not good.

Jekyll frowned, though he did as he’d been asked and stepped away from Hyde. “You know we can only stay like this for a short time.”

“An hour,” Kai snapped. “Enough time to get yourselves into trouble on a regular basis, so don’t give me the you’re-threatening-my-existence speech.”

“Excellent.” Hyde laughed as he took the seat the two had once occupied as one person. “I’ve wanted some fresh air for days.”

He folded one leg over the other and smiled at the group. Jekyll turned and realized his . . . brother, for lack of a better term, had taken his spot. The doctor let out a heavy, put-upon sigh as he stomped across the room to grab another folding chair from the corner and added it to the circle beside Hyde. The two exchanged a glance before Jekyll folded his arms and turned his face.

“Okay,” Kai said. “That leaves me—”

Linda had collected her skin and climbed back in her chair with a glare for Kai. “Unless Ellis is here.”

Kai shut her eyes with a groan. “Oh, right, that asshole.” She looked around. “Ellis, are you here?”

There was no answer, but that didn’t mean anything. As the Invisible Man, Ellis often liked to play tricks. He hid right out in the open (often giggling like an idiot), followed people home to play tricks on them, and God knew what else. Natalie had heard he’d once watched Kai get undressed, but she’d caught him and beaten the snot out of him for it.

"Ellis . . . ?"

But despite . . . or perhaps because of his invisibility, he also loved attention. He was obsessed with being on the stage, with being seen. No discouragement from the group kept him from regularly going out on casting calls for Broadway and commercials. He never got any parts, but he kept trying, certain he’d win a Tony if “they” would just recognize his talent.

“I’ve never known him to be quiet for more than five minutes,” Natalie pointed out. “Maybe he had an audition.”

Drake nodded. “He was rambling on about that the other night when he called my new smartphone. What do they call it? An Ephone? Aphone? Some vowel with phone after it. . .”

Natalie turned on the man beside her with a blank stare. “You have a cell, a six hundred dollar cell, but you think sparkling vampires are real?”

Kai bit back a laugh. “Okay, we’ll just assume he isn’t here, because if he is, ignoring him will drive him crazy.”

Alec let out a burst of laughter. “I like that idea.”

Kai tilted her head. “And I guess we are back to me for introductions. So I’m Kai. I am a mummy, reincarnated by some idiot archaeologists in 1922.”

“That makes you the oldest and the youngest of our group,” Alec pointed out, just as he did at every meeting.

And just like at every meeting, Kai pursed her lips in annoyance and continued, “It’s been since . . . I guess 1940 since I was last revealed to anyone, though there were some close calls in the nineties. Stupid mummy movies . . .”

She shook her head and adjusted her suit jacket. Natalie blushed as she caught a glimpse of the white gauze Kai always wore beneath her clothes. She’d once admitted it was a way to keep moisturizer trapped against the dry skin, but Natalie always felt like she was seeing her underwear whenever she caught a glimpse of it.

“Hello, Kai,” half the group droned, while the other half was distracted by other things.

Kai sighed. “Great, so that’s done. Now, does anyone have anything they want to talk about?”

“Ellis might be at an audition, which explains his absence,” Linda whimpered. “But what about Bob?”

Natalie stared at Kai. Yeah, what about Bob? Blob. The Blob. She was kind of wondering that herself.

Hyde snickered. “Perhaps he got stuck on a subway car. Literally. Fat ass.”

Natalie folded her arms. Hyde was a nasty bastard and she refused to encourage him. “Look, the guy might be big, but he’s never missed a meeting in all the years we’ve been doing this. Plus, he runs Overeaters Anonymous in the room after us. I can’t picture him skipping out on two meetings without some kind of notification for someone. It’s just not in his nature. You know he takes this shit super-seriously.”

“Unlike some of us,” Kai said with a pointed glare for Natalie. “All this talk and speculation won’t do us any good until we actually know what’s going on. Has anyone called him?”

Linda nodded her head quickly. “Oh yes. Every day. He didn’t answer this morning.”

Natalie blinked. “You call Blob every day?”

Linda’s green eyes narrowed at Natalie’s tone. “Lay off the attitude, Zombie Girl. I like to check in.”

“Shit.” Alec chuckled. “That might explain it right there. Maybe he just needed a vacation from Linda.”

Kai ignored them all. “Whatever the reason for his absence, can someone do a welfare check on Blob tonight?”

Silence hung heavy over the group. They might meet a couple times a week, brainstorm on how to stay hidden, and keep each other informed about things that might be of interest to the modern monster . . . but none of them had ever been all that big on actually helping each other.

Kai shook her head in disbelief. “Seriously, no one is willing to do this? Drake, you live near him, don’t you?”

“He’s just a few blocks from me.” Drake nodded. When Kai gave him an expectant stare, he sighed heavily. “Fine, I’ll stop by.”

“Great, thank you. Are there any other issues?” Kai asked, though by her terse tone and tapping foot it was clear she was done with all of this.

Alec ignored her signals and waved his hand low at his side. From his grin, Natalie couldn’t help but think he was doing it on purpose just to piss Kai off.

“Yeah,” he said when Kai pointed at him with annoyance. “One. So I actually just got another warning from my nighttime delivery job.”

Drake shook his head. “Young man, you are only drawing attention to yourself.”

Kai nodded in agreement. “For once Drake isn’t wrong. Were you caught stealing razors from shipments again?”

Alec shrugged sheepishly. “Look, you have no idea. I have to shave three times a day to keep from being wolfed out all the damn time. And when it’s this close to a full moon? Forget about it. It’s more like six times a day. And each shave is, like, three or four heavy-duty razors.”

Jekyll tilted his head. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. Why don’t you just buy them?”

Alec glared at him and the teasing in his tone and on his face faded to something a bit darker. Not Hyde dark, but a little monstrous nonetheless. “Not all of us have family money, Doctor. We don’t all live on Park Avenue and wear thousand-dollar suits.”

“Three-thousand,” Hyde said with a thin smile as he smoothed the fine line of the suit he currently wore.

“Hyde,” Jekyll said softly, without looking at Hyde. “You know that isn’t true.”

Hyde shrugged. “Only because you’re cheap. Honestly, a fifteen-hundred-dollar suit is hardly fit for peasants, brother.”

“You think too much about money. Among other things.” Jekyll rolled his eyes, then shook his head apologetically, as if to imply they all knew Hyde. And they did.

“Whatever.” Alec shrugged. “I make, like, fifteen an hour at my job—”

“Fifteen hundred?” Jekyll interrupted with wide eyes as Hyde snorted in amusement at his brother’s inexperience when it came to normal people.