“Where do the girls go, when they’re not working?” I asked.
Dead Boy gave me a pitying look. “They’re always working. That’s the point. It’s not like they ever get tired…”
“What do the girls get out of this? The money can’t be that good.”
“It isn’t. But a clever girl can make a lot from tips, and the management guarantees to keep the girls safe from necromancers, plus all the other unsavoury types who use the energies of the departed to fuel their magics. And of course all the girls hope to hook an appreciative customer, turn him into a regular, and milk him for all he’s worth.”
I looked out over the widely spread audience. “Anyone interesting in tonight?”
“A few names, a few faces, no-one you’d know and no-one worth noting. Though we do have several diminutive professors, who claim they’re here researching modern slang. They loved it when I told them this club was licensed to dispense spirits…”
I smiled dutifully. Dead Boy shrugged and took a good slug from his bottle. It was nearly empty.
I watched the ghost girls dance. Putting off the moment when I’d have to tell Dead Boy why I was there. They were currently spinning and gyrating to an old Duran Duran number, “Girls on Film,” and being ghosts they were all supernaturally beautiful, impossible lithe, and utterly glamorous. They danced with implacable grace, stamping their bare feet and jiggling their oversized breasts, rising from the stages to slide and sweep through the smoky air. Those in and among the audience drifted around and sometimes even through the customers, giving them a thrill they wouldn’t find anywhere else. And why not? The steel poles were the only truly solid things on those stages.
“Don’t get tempted,” said Dead Boy, putting down his empty bottle and scraped-clean ice cream tub. “It’s all just a glamour. You wouldn’t want to see what they really look like when they drop their illusions between sets. Unfortunately, being dead I always see them as they really are, which takes a lot of the fun out of this job.”
One girl swayed deliciously down from her stage, seemingly completely solid, until she extended one finger to a chosen customer, and he breathed it in, inhaling it like cigar smoke. The girl’s hand unravelled, disappearing into his mouth and nostrils, until he couldn’t take any more, and let it all back out again in coughs and snorts. The girl giggled as her hand reassembled. Up on one of the stages, a girl suddenly caught fire but kept dancing, unconsumed.
“An old flame of mine,” Dead Boy said solemnly.
There are quite a few clubs in Uptown that cater to the various forms of death fetish, from mummification to premature burial, and some places that would freak out even hard-core Goths; clubs like Peaceful Repose, where you can try out being dead for a while to see what it feels like. Or the brothel where you can pay to have sex with female vampires, ghouls, and zombies. There are always those who like their meat cold, with the taste of formaldehyde on their lips…
I said as much to Dead Boy, who only showed any interest when I got to the brothel. He actually got out a notebook and pencil for the address.
“Trust me,” I said firmly. “You really don’t want to go there. You’ll end up with worms.”
And then one of the ghost dancers caught my attention, as she beckoned coyly to a customer and led him, half-walking and half-swaying, across the gloomy club to one of the private booths at the rear. The customer was tall and skinny, with a furtive air about him. The two of them disappeared into a booth and shut the door firmly behind them. I turned to Dead Boy.
“All right, what’s the point of that? I mean, if she’s not solid enough to touch…”
“Love always finds a way,” said Dead Boy. “Instead of an exchange of fluids, an exchange of energies. All purely consensual, of course. The ghost girl absorbs a little of the customer’s life energy, which I’m told feels very nice, and she becomes a little more solid, so she can… take care of him. A benefit to both sides. The more life energies a girl collects, the more solid and real she can become. Theoretically, she could even become alive again… Sometimes the girls go too far and drain the customer dry. Then we end up with a really pissed off customer ghost haunting the place and acting up dead cranky. Management keeps an exorcism service on speed dial for just such occurrences…”
The door to the private booth opened, and the customer came out again. He hadn’t been in there long. And when he’d gone in he’d been skinny as a whip, but now he was noticeably overweight, with an extensive bulging belly. Dead Boy cursed briefly and pushed himself away from the bar.
“What is it?” I said.
“The bastard’s a soul thief,” Dead Boy said curtly. “He’s inhaled the ghost girl, every last smoky bit of her, and now he’s containing her inside himself, hoping to smuggle her out. Let’s go.”
We headed purposefully across the floor, and the punters hurried to get out of our way. The fat man saw Dead Boy coming, pulled an intricate glass charm out of his pocket, and threw it on the floor. The glass shattered, releasing the pre-prepared spell, and Dead Boy stopped as though he’d run into an invisible wall, his colourless face twisted in a pained grimace.
“It’s an antipossession spell,” he grunted. “Trying to force me out of my body. Stop the bastard, John. Don’t let him get away with the girl.”
I hurried forward to block the fat man’s way. He stopped, studied me cautiously, and reached into his pocket again. I fired up my gift just long enough to locate the spell he was using to contain the ghost within him and ripped it away. I shut down my gift as the fat man convulsed, staggering back and forth as his imposing stomach bulged and rippled like a sheet in the wind. I got behind him, grabbed him in a bear hug, and squeezed with all my strength. Thick streams of smoke came pouring out of his mouth and nostrils, quickly forming into the ghost girl. The bulging stomach flattened under my grip, and the ghost girl stood fuming before us. She solidified one leg just long enough to kick the soul thief really hard in the nuts, then she stalked away. I let go of the soul thief, and he collapsed to the floor, looking very much as though he wished he was dead.
I left him there and went back to Dead Boy, who was looking much better.
“Cheap piece of rubbish spell,” he said cheerfully. “Almost an insult, expecting something like that to take me out. My soul was put back by an expert. Leave the soul thief to me, John. I’ll arrange for something suitably humiliating and nasty to happen to him.”
We strolled back to the bar, where the barmaid had a fresh bottle of whiskey waiting for Dead Boy. He reached for it, then hesitated, and gave me a long, considering look.
“You didn’t come here just to inquire after my nonexistent health, Taylor. What do you want with me?”
“I need your help. My mother is finally back, and the shit is hitting the fan in no uncertain manner.”
“Why is it people only ever come to me when they want something?” Dead Boy said wistfully. “And usually only after everything’s already gone to Hell and worse?”
“I think you just answered your own question,” I said. “That’s what you get, for being such a great back-stop.”
“Give me the details,” said Dead Boy.
I gave him the edited version, but even so he winced several times, and by the end he was shaking his head firmly.
“No. No way. I do not get involved with Old Testament forces. They are too hard-core, even for me.”
“I need your help.”
“Tough.”
“You have to help me, Dead Boy.”
“No I bloody don’t. I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to. Being dead is very liberating that way.”
“My mother is leading an army of Beings from the Street of the Gods. She has to be stopped.”
“Good luck with that, John. Do send me a postcard as to how you got on. I’ll be in the Arctic. Hiding under a polar bear.”
“I have a plan…”
“You always do! The answer’s still no. I do not go up against gods. I know my limitations.”