Bedford Tyler gave me a look that said he could talk himself into forgetting I enjoyed another vampire’s benison. But I wouldn’t have been so bold if I hadn’t been sitting next to Dora. She let out a snort. Vampires don’t show they’re amused much: they aren’t amused much. She was this time, though. She let Tyler know it, too.

  If he’d been a live man, he would have turned red. Vampires don’t work that way. Don’t ask me why; I don’t know. All I know is, they don’t. He made some kind of excuse and went away. I didn’t miss him a bit.

  “He had that coming,” she said.

  “Yeah, he did.” I nodded. “But how’s he going to pay me back for giving it to him?”

  “We do play the game of revenge,” she said thoughtfully. “Sometimes for years, decades, centuries. Time does not matter to us, and the game helps hold boredom at bay. That alone makes it worth playing.”

  Time does not matter to us. There it was, out in the open, and it pierced me worse than her teeth did when we made love. Like a polite cat, she knew how to hold back even if she didn’t have to. “Time matters to me, though,” I said. “If he tries getting back at me in the twenty-third century, I won’t be around to worry about it.”

  “This is the main reason we seldom play the game against living people,” she answered. “Seldom, but not never. The Seleucids should have beaten Rome. If the grandfather of the king who left the dynasty his name had not given a vampire to the White Fire, that vampire’s half sister would not have worked so hard or so long or so hard to make sure they failed. Or I could speak of the Plantagenets, and of Richard III in particular.”

  My jaw dropped, and not just because I imagined all my descendants three hundred years from now coming to grief at once and never understanding why. That was part of it, but not all. Oh, no, not all.

  “How do you know that?” I asked, trying to sound less mind-boggled than I was. “I don’t think any live people who write history do. In fact, some live people say Richard III was a vampire himself.”

  Dora showed her own pointed teeth in an epic sneer. “They are mistaken. He was not.” Her voice brooked no argument. She continued, “We have our own historians and chroniclers. Like reading, writing is a medicament for ennui. Their works do not circulate widely among the living. The reasons for that should be clear enough.”

  Not as if she were wrong. Live people already had, or imagined they had, plenty of reasons for pogroms against bloodsuckers. If they thought vampires were fiddling with who won and who lost in the live world, they’d want to make sure it never happened again. If they had to finish every last vampire to do that, how much would they care?

  I did my best to seem sly when I said, “So you didn’t watch this vampire go after the old Greeks yourself? Or the one who had a grudge against the Plantagenets?” I’d never dared ask her, How old are you? I was scared she might tell me. This let me nibble around the edges of the question, anyhow.

  “I never said that.” She smiled once more, none too pleasantly. I’d managed to amuse her again, so she’d alarmed me again. The way vampires think, that must have seemed a fair exchange to her.

  The longer I stayed in Vampire Village, the more my own habits went vampirish, if that’s a word. No, I didn’t get a yen for raw blood. But I started sleeping during the day and getting up about the time the sun sank into the Pacific. I liked Dora’s company every way you can like it. If she kept those hours, I would, too.

  That also meant I wasn’t in my office much during the ordinary business day. Old Man Mose didn’t care what time of day I fed him, as long as I did. I wasn’t so busy on things that I missed a lot of calls. I could take care of the ones that did come in in the early evening.

  And staying away from the office during the day made me less likely to get cooked if a salamander torched the place. Or I could hope so. Sergeant Elmer V. Jackson didn’t come by to grill me, either.

  “You know what zombies are, right?” I asked Mose one night.

  “Sure. They’re revolting. They’re more revolting than vampires, and you like vampires.” The cat made it sound like a horrible perversion. To him, I guess it was.

  I didn’t argue with him. Arguing with a cat only wastes your time. I said, “I’m looking for somebody who may have got made into a zombie.”

  “That Sebestyen thing? You should have found him by now.”

  “Thanks a lot,” I said. Old Man Mose really knew how to hurt a guy. I didn’t let him get me mad. I tried not to, anyhow. I went on, “No, not him. The fellow who works at the US Rubber plant.”

  “Okay. So?” Mose yawned. If it didn’t involve food or scritchies, he didn’t care what people did.

  “So I’m going down to a place near the factory that turns people into zombies.” I don’t know why I talk to a cat like that. I have to talk to somebody. Everybody has to, I guess.

  “What happens if they do that to you?”

  It was a better question than I wished it were. What I planned on doing had names. Breaking and entering. Burglary. Being a private eye lets me bend the law sometimes. It doesn’t let me break it.

  I wished I could bring Old Man Mose along. He’s a lot smaller and sneakier than I am. He could prowl into storerooms and take files out of drawers for me.

  He could … if he could read. But cats don’t. So I’d have to do it myself. You don’t always look forward to what you’ve got to do. If you do it anyhow, the people who know you are glad they do.

  I wasn’t thrilled, in other words, but I was braced. With a sigh, I answered, “Chance I take. If it goes wrong, you already told me you know about other suckers who’ll keep you in chow.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” He waved that aside with a flick of the tail. “If you have to run around with a bloodsucker, you should at least get some use out of her. Why don’t you bring her along?”

  I opened my mouth. Then I closed it again. That was why I talked with Old Man Mose. He can’t read, but he’s liable to be smarter than I am anyway. He sure was then. Taking Dora with me hadn’t even crossed my mind. That was partly because we were lovers, I know. But it was also partly because her case had nothing to do with Frank Jethroe’s.

  Only what if it did? Who could say how vepratoga hit vampires? What it did to live people wasn’t just like zombifying them, but it wasn’t so far away, either. If Sebestyen had got his hands on some and then fallen in with a zombie dealer …

  “I owe you some salmon,” I told Mose.

  “I’ll take it,” he answered. Cats don’t get gratitude. Pay for services rendered? They understand that just fine.

  So instead of heading down to PERSONAL ASSISTANCE, PERSONAL ASSISTANTS, I went back to VV. And that meant I wasted the rest of the night, because Dora wasn’t in her apartment or in the building. I waited for a while. I started a book about the Dutch wars against the Spanish Empire. After a chapter or two, I couldn’t hold my eyes open any more. I put the book back, lay down, and went to sleep. It would have been about two in the morning—early for me lately.

  When I woke up, light was leaking into the bedroom. Daytime, sure as hell. I yawned and got out of bed. The coffin in the front room was closed. Dora wouldn’t stir till sunset. I fixed myself some instant coffee. It was the same kind of powdered mud they’d given us in our K-rats. It tasted the way it looked, too. But it’d help me get going.

  I had to leave Vampire Village to find a place that served the kind of food a live person craved. Then I went to the zombie dealer on Avalon near Wrigley Field. Sharp-dressed Mr. Renfroe stood behind the counter, same as he had the last time I came in. Oscar’s eyes flicked up from the Racing Form. When he recognized me, he went back to it.

  “Hello, Mister Mitchell. What is it today?” Renfroe said.

  “Do you know of a zombie dealership down on Jellison, near the great big US Rubber factory?”

  He just stood there. When I put a portrait of Abe Lincoln down in front of him, though, he pocketed it like a pro. “I have heard of that establishment, yes,” he said, his tone precise enough to have made Deacon Washington smile.

  “What do you hear about them? Are they ethical?” I asked.

  “We stopped dealing with them a few weeks after the war ended. I don’t care to talk about why, but the fact speaks for itself, doesn’t it?”

  Oscar looked up from the horses again. “Them fellas, they’d goofer up their own mamas if they seen fifteen cents in it.”

  Mr. Renfroe eyed me. “You never heard that here, you understand.”

  I cupped one hand behind my ear. “Never heard what?” Tipping my hat to Renfroe and to the guard, I left. If other zombie dealers want nothing to do with you, you might not be the salt of the earth.

  As long as I was out and about by daylight, I got a little salmon filet at a place called YOU BUY, WE FRY! When I headed out, the gal who sold it to me said, “Bet your life we’ll fix it up better’n you can. Only a dime extra. C’mon!”

  “It’s not for me. It’s for an accomplice,” I said. I don’t know what she made of that. I know what Old Man Mose made of the salmon, though. He liked it.

  Then I went back to Dora’s apartment and waited for the sun to set. The year had turned, but sunset still came before five. I was trying to make headway with the Dutch and the Spaniards again when I heard hinges creak as she pushed up the lid.

  “Good evening,” she said when she saw me. Yeah, same accent as Bela’s, though it sounded better from her. She was just stepping out of the coffin. She looked ready for whatever might happen. I’d never known her not to.

  “Hi, honey,” I said.

  Her eyes told me I’d stepped in it. “Do not call me that,” she said in a voice that would have frozen a steam engine solid. “I am not your girlfriend, to be sweetened so.”

  “If you aren’t my girlfriend, what am I doing in your apartment? Why do we use the bed when I’m not sleeping in it?” I thought they were reasonable questions.

  She didn’t look any happier. She said something in Magyar that should have wilted the flowers on the wallpaper.

  “What does that mean?” I asked, more in admiration than anything else.

  “A horse’s cock up your arse,” she translated with clinical precision. A moment later, she added, “Hungarians were a nomad folk. Some of our curses still hark back to the steppe.”

  “Okay. I learned something today. Now I’ve got a question for you—did Rudolf Sebestyen ever go down around the tire factory on Scrying Crystal Road? You know the one I mean—the one where the Assyrian kings and god-things on the walls don’t look like they’re just carved there.”

  “That place.” She knew it, all right. “I fly around it, never over it. If I were to go over it, something might catch me. I am not the only one who fears this—I have heard others of my kind say the same thing.” Then she seemed to remember what I’d asked her. “As for my half brother … I do not know that he did, but I also do not know how much of his affairs I do not know. Why do you want to know?”

  So I told her about Frank Jethroe, and about the zombie dealer on Jellison. “They’re hiding something. I was going down there to see if I could find out what it was—”

  “You were going to break in,” she broke in.

  “That’s right,” I admitted. I couldn’t very well deny it. “And somebody said it would be good if I had the kind of help I couldn’t get from a live person.”

  I didn’t name Mose. I didn’t have to. Dora knew me and my cat too well. “I need to have some words with that furry fleabag,” she said.

  “I’ll go by myself if you don’t want to come along,” I said. “I know there’s no evidence this place has anything to do with Sebestyen.”

  “You are brave. You are also less stupid than you make yourself out to be. I am your friend, even if I am not someone you should call honey. I will go with you. Have you eaten? Or shall we leave now?”

  “I need to grab some food, yeah. Are you all right?”

  “I can do what I need to do.”

  “I want to try later, though. I don’t know how late they stay open. I want to go in when everything’s quiet and at a low ebb.”

  “Live people always think that time is the middle of the night,” Dora said. “Since you are dealing with live people, you may be right. But do not take it for granted.”

  I’d long since given up on taking anything for granted. That’s part of the reason I still am a live person. And one of the things I didn’t take for granted was riding the Red Line with a vampire. Not many folks of any kind riding, not at that time of night.

  One tough guy looked at me when he got on, sizing up his chances. He didn’t know how bad they really were—I sat by the window, so Dora’s not reflecting would be less obvious. But I just looked back at him. He sat down and didn’t bother us. That was fine.

  She and I were the only ones on the bus that stopped by the factory. We got off one stop before that; I didn’t want the god-things noticing me. There were no streetlights. Dora guided me down to Jellison. She saw in the dark at least as well as Old Man Mose.

  PERSONAL ASSISTANCE, PERSONAL ASSISTANTS—red neon shone in the window, but the place was closed. “Zombies!” Dora’s lip curled so I could see a fang. In the bloody glow from the sign, it looked especially alarming. “Not alive at all but still moving!” She shook her head. Too many people, of course, feel that way about vampires.

  “Let’s see if there’s an alley behind this block,” I said. “Nobody’s around now, but I don’t want to break in right here on the street unless I have to. I should’ve checked when I was down here before, but I didn’t. Sorry.”

  “We will find out. It will be as it is, and we will do what we must do.”

  There was an alley. She took the lead as we walked along it. A couple of times, she kept me from stumbling into trash cans I didn’t see soon enough. That would’ve been good, wouldn’t it? Nothing like kicking galvanized iron to let the world know you’re there.

  No neon sign on the back door. I had lockpicks and enough unofficial practice to know what to do with them. Dora put her ear to the door before I started. I knew she heard better than I did, too. “It seems quiet,” she said. “Quiet as the tomb.”

  I got to work. The lock was a good Yale. Two pins were easy, two were hard, and one … one didn’t want to go up for anything. I muttered under my breath, both because I was having trouble and because I was scared to trip an alarm.

  “Would you like me to try?” Dora asked.

  “You know how?” I whispered back. She nodded. I stepped aside. “Hope you have more luck than I did.”

  It wasn’t luck. It was technique. I don’t know where she learned it, but she had it and then some. The door swung open less than a minute later. We slipped inside. I slid a rubber wedge under the door to keep it from closing when we didn’t want it to.

  “Old blood. Stale blood. Foul blood,” she said, and then more in Magyar. We found our way to a door. She read what was written on it: “Assistants.” No, people who deal in zombies don’t like calling them zombies.

  I tried the knob. It turned. We went in. I snapped on a little flashlight. I wished I hadn’t. Standing bodies, row on row of them. I’d seen it before, but it was even worse in near darkness.

  Faces. Dead faces, white and black. Eyes open. Eyes closed. Eyes halfway in between. Eyes however they’d been when zombification hit. The zombies didn’t care, not now they didn’t. The ones with closed eyes would be ordered to open them when they went into service so they could see what they needed to see to do what they had to do. They wouldn’t care about that, either.

  Smells of stale sweat, stale tobacco, stale booze. Some smells nastier than that. I’d smelled those smells in Italy—fear’ll make anybody unpucker. Some of these ex-people had been that afraid when they went in to sell their souls and wills. But they’d done it no matter how scared they were.

  Pupils in open eyes didn’t shrink when my light touched them. Nothing but disconnected numbers on those switchboards. Dora and I went along the rows, she looking for Rudolf Sebestyen, I for Frank Jethroe. When we got to the back, I felt more hemmed in than I had in the tightest foxhole south of Milan. I don’t know if she did; I was too nervous to ask.

  She sounded calm enough when she asked me, “Did you see the man you were looking for?”

  “Unh-unh,” I managed. I needed another inhale before I could come out with, “Did you?”

  “No. I wish I had, but no,” she said. “What now?”

  “Now we see what kind of files they’ve got,” I answered. “They have to keep records for the county and for the state.” How much truth lay in those records was liable to be a different story, but all you can do is all you can do.

  I was never so glad to get out of anywhere as I was to escape that storeroom. If a zombie had reached out a hand and set it on my shoulder, I would have filled my pants and screamed so shrill, only dogs could hear it. No zombie did. They aren’t supposed to be able to do anything like that. They mostly don’t. But I know a couple of guys who lived through the Denver Zombie Riots. They’ll tell you mostly isn’t always.

  We found two rooms that I figured would hold files. Dora could read the door labels in the darkness. One said CLIENTS—A-T; the other, CLIENTS—U-Z. That was an odd place to break the alphabet. Also, the door with A-T behind it was open, but the one that held U-Z was locked. U, it occurred to me, was the first letter of US Rubber. Maybe that signified, maybe it didn’t.

  I squatted down and got to work on the lock. Sometimes you have the feel. I did then, the way I did when I was fourteen and knew I was gonna hit one out. I got us into that room as fast as I would have with a key.