"Split up?" Helena asked.
"Why not?"
She had changed to jeans, a sweater and a thin wind-breaker; now, she pulled the jacket's nylon collar up around her neck. "We're in an alien graveyard at two o'clock in the morning, planning to dig up a corpse," she said. "That's why I don't want to split up."
"Be reasonable, Helena," Jessie said. "We can get done three times faster if—"
"I'm being perfectly reasonable," she said. "I was more than reasonable in agreeing to come at all. I'm your Girl Friday, not your partner."
"You're not going to leave, are you?" Jessie asked. "Look, Helena, I need your help. Brutus has a powerful set of claws on him, but he can hardly help me dig open a grave. You're a big, strong girl, and you can take the shovel, at least a little bit, to give me some rest."
"If that's all I'm needed for," she said, "you could have brought the company robot."
"And have him store the whole illegal affair in his microdot memories? Besides, he'd have made a hell of a clanking racket coming over the wall."
"Well, if you need me so badly," Helena said, "you'll just have to give up the idea that I'm going to go off, in here, by myself and prowl around a bunch of tombstones."
"Look," Brutus said, "nothing can happen to you in here, Blue Eyes."
"Don't be condescending with me," Helena snapped. "I'm not fearful simply because I need to play any female role. I'm just being sensible. How can you know what sort of — thing may be lurking about?" She studied the trees, the larger stones, anything that might be large enough to conceal a dangerous adversary.
Jessie said, "If you encounter a vampire, it has to read your bill of rights and question you according to the Kolchak-Bliss Decision, and it has to gain your explicit approval of the bite. Pretty much the same thing goes for a werewolf. And most other creatures are required to provide you with a contract… In short, you aren't going to be attacked, ruthlessly, as you might have been in the old days."
Helena switched on her flashlight and pointed it at the nearest stone, played the beam quickly along a row of markers, the splash of yellow luminescence flitting here and there like an agitated specter moving with the currents of the night air.
All was still.
And quiet.
Not even a drying palm frond rattled in the gentle stir of air.
"I've made up my mind," she said.
The detective sighed and said, "Okay, Helena. Brutus will take one row by himself, while you and I look at the second."
"That's better," she said.
"Let's get going," the hound growled.
The moon went behind a dense expanse of clouds; both Jessie and the woman used their flashlights as they started down the avenue of monuments, reading the names.
"This one's blank," she said, pointing at the fourth stone. "Why would they put up a blank stone?"
"The plot's being rented by a vampire who likes his privacy," Jessie said. "Look. Stand back a minute."
When she stepped aside, Jessie searched the base of the tombstone until he found a switch, which he threw.
The sod in front of the stone lifted up, smoothly, silently, revealing a fancy metal coffin in an open grave. "When he goes inside there, during the day," the detective said, "he'll lock this outer door to keep any playful kids from letting the sunlight in on him."
Helena shuddered. "Close it, Jessie, please."
The detective pushed the switch back the other way and watched as the slab of hand-sewn sod moved into place once more, leaving a smooth expanse of wiry grass and no evidence at all of the hollow spot that lay directly underneath.
"I don't think it'd be a bad way of life, really," he said.
"You can't be serious."
"Well, it is eternal, barring a stake through the heart or an unexpected exposure to sunlight. And the whole vampire lifestyle is a sensuous one. It's better than some other things I can think of."
"For instance?"
"Well, I don't think I'd want to die and take the chance of coming back as a ghost, a spiritual gumshoe haunting the offices of Hell Hound for a couple of hundred years, moaning about all the cases I've handled, sitting in my old chair… That would be pretty grim."
"I guess it would," she said.
"When I get near my time," Jessie said, "I'm not going to wait around to die and take my chances. I'm going to find me a cute little vampiress with a nice body, and I'm going to shack up with her for a few days, until I've been converted." He looked at Helena and said, "What about you? What are you going to do, if you've got warning that death is coming?"
"I haven't thought about it," Helena said.
"Oh, but you should!" Jessie said. "It's as important as preparing a will — more important, actually."
"I suppose it is," she said. "I'll give it some thought."
Brutus came back from checking the first row of tombstones, and he stared hard at both Helena and Jessie, his red eyes unable to shield his vexation with them.
"Is this all the two of you have accomplished?" he growled, lowering his burly head.
"Well—"
"What have you been doing, screwing between the tombstones?"
"We got to talking," Jessie said.
"Well, we aren't here to talk," the hell hound said. "We're here to rob a goddamned grave," he snorted with disgust. A veil of ectoplasm exploded from his wet, black nostrils, rose over his head and floated away across the cemetery, slowly dissolving.
"I'm sorry," Helena said. "It was my fault."
"Let's get going," the hell hound said. "I'll finish this row while the two of you start on a third."
They worked their way slowly along the crest of the hillock, toward the deeply shadowed ravine, reading the names on the stones, few of which they had ever heard of, some of which — in the cases when they were maseni — they could not even pronounce.
The moon came out again for a short while, shedding cold light upon the yard. Then, before long, it was concealed again by clouds, thick and purple-black.
"I have the feeling we're being watched," Helena said, as they looked at the stones in the ninth row.
"Watched?"
"I don't see anyone," the woman said, "but I sure do feel as if—"
Brutus, two rows of tombstones out in front of them, interrupted her with a long, mournful howl.
"He's found Tesserax's grave," Jessie said. "Come on!"
Chapter Eleven
Jessie gave Helena a hand, pulled her out of the grave and hunkered down to help her brush the wet clumps of earth from her jeans, taking an especially long time to brush off her round little rump, though the seat of her pants was not anywhere so dirty as the knees or the cuffs or the hips.
"Well," he said, "that ought to be the last time that you'll have to spell me."
She sat down by the hole and dangled her legs over the edge, put her arm around the hell hound, who had been watching the two of them take turns in the open grave. She said, "I'm going to be the only well-stacked girl I know who has huge, muscular arms."
"You'll be able to scare away unwanted suitors with them," Jessie suggested. "Just flex your biceps a few times, and you'll terrorize any would-be rapist."
"It isn't funny," she said, feeling her biceps through her sweater and jacket, as if they might already have begun to swell.
Jessie jumped into the grave and picked up the collapsible shovel he had brought along in the tool satchel with the flashlights. "We're down to almost four feet," he said. "And that's about as deep as they bury them around here. So—"
As he stamped the spade into the hard-packed earth, it rang against a large, metal object.