The Laughing Corpse by Laurell K. Hamilton Read Free Book Online Page A

waiting.”
    â€œGod forbid,” I said.
    â€œAmen,” he said.
    I stared at him as he rinsed his mug out in the sink. “Do you know something you’re not telling me?”
    â€œNo,” he said.
    I rinsed my own cup, still staring at him. I could feel a suspicious frown between my eyes. “Manny?”
    â€œHonest Mexican, I don’t know nuthin’.”
    â€œThen what’s wrong?”
    â€œYou know I was vaudun before Rosita converted me to pure Christianity.”
    â€œYeah, so?”
    â€œDominga Salvador was not just my priestess. She was my lover.”
    I stared at him for a few heartbeats. “You’re kidding?”
    His face was very serious as he said, “I wouldn’t joke about something like that.”
    I shrugged. People’s choices of lovers never failed to amaze me. “That’s why you could get me a meeting with her on such short notice.”
    He nodded.
    â€œWhy didn’t you tell me before?”
    â€œBecause you might have tried to sneak over there without me.”
    â€œWould that have been so bad?”
    He just stared at me, brown eyes very serious. “Maybe.”
    I got my gun from the table and fitted it to the inter-pants holster. Eight bullets. The Browning could hold fourteen. But let’s get real; if I needed more than eight bullets, I was dead. And so was Manny.
    â€œShit,” I whispered.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI feel like I’m going to visit the bogeyman.”
    Manny made a back and forth motion with his head. “Not a bad analogy.”
    Great, just freaking, bloody great. Why was I doing this? The image of Benjamin Reynolds’s blood-coated teddy bear flashed into my mind. All right, I knew why I was doing it. If there was even a remote chance that the boy could still be alive, I’d go into hell itself—if I stood a chance of coming back out. I didn’t mention this out loud. I did not want to know if hell was a good analogy, too.

5
    T HE NEIGHBORHOOD WAS older houses; fifties, forties. The lawns were dying to brown for lack of water. No sprinklers here. Flowers struggled to survive in beds close to the houses. Mostly petunias, geraniums, a few rosebushes. The streets were clean, neat, and one block over you could get yourself shot for wearing the wrong color of jacket.
    Gang activity stopped at Señora Salvador’s neighborhood. Even teenagers with automatic pistols fear things you can’t stop with bullets no matter how good a shot you are. Silver-plated bullets will harm a vampire, but not kill it. It will kill a lycanthrope, but not a zombie. You can hack the damn things to pieces, and the disconnected body parts will crawl after you. I’ve seen it. It ain’t pretty. The gangs leave the Señora’s turf alone. No violence. It is a place of permanent truce.
    There are stories of one Hispanic gang that thought it had protection against gris-gris. Some people say that the gang’s ex-leader is still down in Dominga’s basement, obeying an occasional order. He was great show-and-tell to any juvenile delinquents who got out of hand.
    Personally, I had never seen her raise a zombie. But then I’d never seen her call the snakes either. I’d just as soon keep it that way.
    Señora Salvador’s two-story house is on about a half acre of land. A nice roomy yard. Bright red geraniums flamed against the whitewashedwalls. Red and white, blood and bone. I was sure the symbolism was not lost on casual passersby. It certainly wasn’t lost on me.
    Manny parked his car in the driveway behind a cream-colored Impala. The two-car garage was painted white to match the house. There was a little girl of about five riding a tricycle furiously up and down the sidewalk. A slightly older pair of boys were sitting on the steps that led up to the porch. They stopped playing and looked at us.
    A man stood on the porch behind them. He was wearing a shoulder holster