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"I was hiding. I used to live up on Mulholland with this old lady; let me stay for a good price if I did a little bit of cooking and washing when I wasn't at the studio."
"Is that how you met Tom Mason?" I asked.
She bit her lip, nodding.
/> "Unfortunately. I was just a wardrobe girl. I thought he wouldn't even notice me. But he kept showing up when I was by myself, and then he followed me home, and I just . . ." She sucked in a shaky breath. "He said he had a taste for dark meat. I hit him. The next day, I went to work, and that son of a bitch Louie Montrose told me to clean up my worktable and get out."
Her jaw ticked, and I was suddenly awful glad I'd given Tom Mason that bottle of morphine after all. Sad I didn't follow it with a swift kick to the nuts.
"Marie must have promised him something," Constance said. "She's good at telling folks whatever they need to hear to get what she wants."
Like "Help me find my missing sister, the vulnerable ingenue actress." Had a much nicer ring than "Help me track down my streetwise tough-nut sister who clearly wishes I'd go play in traffic."
"One of the day players works the Deluxe, and she let me stay," Constance said. "But Marie found me, and she always makes me do it. Then it got out of control, and . . ." A shudder passed through her whole body. "Everyone there is dead, aren't they?"
"More or less," I said. She swiped at her face again and then looked up at me, twisting the rag tight in her fists.
"All this must seem incredible to you."
"Not so," I said. The coffee bubbled and I turned off the flame, pouring two mugs. I added some good Kentucky bourbon Louie had pressed on me when in a generous mood. "If you were watching me at the Deluxe, you saw my scars," I said. "I've seen the dead walk before." I took a sip, let the warmth tickle all the way down. "Hell," I said. "I'm one of them."
Constance blinked warily at me, and I waited. I was drunker than I'd realized, to be blabbing about this stuff.
"Marie's a warlock?" I said, to fill the hole. She nodded. "So what about you? You get in touch with the unseen world as well? They say it runs in families."
"The dead," she muttered. "I touch them, and they're not so dead anymore."
That made me set my cup down. "Raising zombies without any blood conjuring is a pretty good trick."
"It just happens," Constance said. "Any time I touch them. They're so hungry, so vicious. Much worse than normal zombies. The first was our father. Marie has been trying to use me ever since."
She gulped the last of her coffee and looked at me, steadier now. "I don't know about you being dead, but I know what you are. One of you killed my grandmother."
I readied myself to move, in case she lunged at me. "Sorry to hear that."
"Don't be." She shrugged. "She was an evil old devil woman; probably had it coming a mile away."
"I haven't done that sort of work in a lot of years," I offered. Constance looked at me steadily.
"Well, you better start again, Lee, if you want either of us to live past tonight."
Finding the hellhound again was the easy part--they never give up once a warlock's debt to their demon comes due. All I had to do was put the word out with a few lowlife warlocks and vampires working the bars up on Sunset and wait for a phone call.
I arranged to meet Ava out at the Palisades, the wild cliffs that overlooked the Pacific, a place where we could have a quiet meeting and nobody would hear any screams.
I got Constance some clothes out of the garage and put in the call to Tom Mason.
"I hate this," Constance said as we bounced over the rutted track above the Palisades. "I never asked to do what I can do. Not like Marie."
I didn't answer as we pulled into the turnoff. Marie and Tom were waiting already, Mason swaying in the wind and Marie standing straight. I didn't answer, but I could have. I never wanted this, either. I wanted to be what Constance had thought I was when she saw my scars--a man gifted at hunting monsters. Not a man who became one.
"Thank goodness. I was so worried--" Marie began.
"You can cut the shit," I said. Behind Marie, in the scrubby little trees, bent double, I saw a four-legged shape move. "So what, you post up with the guy who's obsessed with your poor sister, and when he can't track her down, you get him to make a ruckus at the studio and wait for some of Montrose's hired help to track her down?"
"No," Marie said icily. "I wait for the idiot who can't be killed to show up and go into a hotel full of zombies instead of me."
"Constance," Mason started. "I got clean for you! I love you, baby--"
