Chapter 23

She refused to let him distract her. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, ma'am." A little show of respect always went a long way in soothing her.

She sighed. "Then I guess there's no harm. But you did scare me, Nick. I just want you to know that."

"Sorry, Ma. By the way, Bubba said he'd walk me over to the club."

"That's mighty nice of him." Her voice was finally back to normal and not the l-want-your-butt-on-a-platter tone it'd been a few minutes ago. "Tell him I said thanks."

"I will. Is it okay if we stop for something to eat too?"

Her tone turned sharp again like she was accusing him of something. "I thought you ate at Mr. Hunter's?"

"I did. But I'm hungry again."

"Oh." She went from angry to calm so fast that he wondered if she wasn't the Ferrari of moms. Her top speed had to be .65 nanoseconds. Maybe less. "You must be growing again. You want to come get some money?"

"Nah, Mr. Hunter gave me some earlier."

"Why?" Boom! Her anger returned. Granted it was tinged with something he thought might be fear or suspicion, but the primary tone was definitely anger.

"Taxi money in case I needed it to get to work or home. He didn't want me on the streetcar after dark 'cause he said he didn't want me to get hurt." Which, when combined with what Mr. Poitiers had given him, was close to a hundred bucks. They kept this up and he might actually start making some progress on his ever-pathetic college fund.

"I don't know what I think about that, Nick."

What was there to think about? From his point of view if they were willing to throw money at him and he didn't have to do anything for it, he was more than willing to take it. "Well, while you figure that out, can I eat?"

She made a sound of aggravation. "I swear you're the lippiest child on the planet. Yes, Nicky, grab something to eat and I'll see you within the hour or I will come and get you myself. Do you understand? And you will be a very sorry young man if I do."

"Yes, ma'am."

"I love you, baby." Must be some mutant form of maternal bipolar disorder. There was no other explanation for the frightening mood swings.

"I love you, too, Mom, and I really am sorry I worried you."

"It's all right. It's what you're best at anyway. Remember to eat some vegetables, and neither french fries nor ketchup count."

"Yes, ma'am." Nick hung up the phone and dressed in his jeans and the Triple B big balls and brains T-shirt Bubba had loaned him. The best part of it was Bubba's logo on the back that featured a photo of Bubba holding a shotgun over his shoulder as he leaned up against an oversized computer that had smoke coming out of the top of it and a bunch of bullet holes in the monitor. It read:

Computer Problems? Dial 1-888-Ca-Bubba If I can't take care of your problems one way ... I'll take care of them anotha'

And in small print under it, it read: We tend all manner of ills for you. Zombies, rodents, and vampires. If you got a pest, we got a cure. Just call us now We will believe you.

Yeah, Bubba really wasn't right in the head, but Nick loved the commercials he and Mark filmed for the store. They were hilarious. And always ended with that slogan. "Ca' Bubba."

Sad thing was, he knew for a fact that Bubba had used a few people's computers for target practice, and he didn't want to think about Mark and the anti-zombie duck urine.

Shaking his head, he toweled off his hair and went downstairs to where Bubba, Mark, Simi, Caleb, and Madaug were discussing the great jailbreak.

They are so going to get me arrested and my mom w'll kill me for it.

Simi pointed to the schematic Bubba had produced from memory of what he liked to call the numerous "unfortunate incarcerations" he'd had at the parish lockup. "See, now the Simi can napalm that and—"

"That might kill them, Simi," Nick pointed out.

She looked up innocently. "Your point?"

Nick was too stunned to answer her honest question.

So Madaug answered for him. "We need Brian alive to test him."

"Well, poo." Simi crossed her arms over her chest and pouted. "You just take all the fun out of it then. You sure you don't know my akri?"

They ignored her.

Caleb leaned back in his chair to study them. "Can't a lawyer get in to see him?"

Bubba nodded as he studied his diagram. "Well, yeah, but a lawyer ain't going to spring him."

Caleb smirked. "Depends on the lawyer."

Bubba looked up with a scowl. "How you mean?"

Caleb's eyes gleamed like a demon eyeing evil. "I know one who owes me a favor."

"You know a lawyer?" Bubba's voice was filled with disbelief.

Caleb rubbed his hands down his shirt. "Hey, beneath these ... well, they're basically crappy clothes." Nick frowned at his choice of words. Only Caleb would consider his nice designer shirt and jeans crappy. "But beneath them beats the heart of someone who knows the right people willing to sometimes do the wrong thing for the right price."

Bubba wasn't completely sold on it and neither was Nick. "Yeah, but we need to do this before anyone else gets killed. We have to know if this is a cure."

Caleb pulled out his cell phone. "Can be arranged. Trust me."

Nick wasn't any more willing to buy into this than Bubba was. Not to mention, there was one really important, as yet unaddressed factor. "How much is this going to cost us?"

Caleb held his hand up. "Hi. This is Malphas calling to talk to Virgil Ward. Is he in?" He gave them a crap-eating grin as he waited.

Nick could hear the tone of a deep voice on the line, but he couldn't make out the words.

"Hey, Virg. Long time." Caleb laughed at something Virgil must have said. "No, it's nothing like that. We rather have a situation where we need to get into jail, not have you get us out."

He paused again to listen. "Yeah, I agree. Stupid is my middle name, you know that. I'm pretty sure you're the one who gave it to me. So can you help a brother out?" He rolled his eyes. "No, you can't have my soul for it. / don't even have my soul. Yeah, I know you're a bloodsucking attorney, but you're going to have to placate yourself with money like the rest of the mundanes."

Nick passed a scowl to Mark, Bubba, and Madaug, who looked as puzzled as he felt. Caleb was definitely an odd duck.

"Is that really what you want as payment?" he flashed another grin at them. "Done. Can you meet us outside the jail in about twenty minutes? Yeah, we'll see you then. Thanks, bud, and yes, I'm well aware of the fact that I owe you." Hanging up the phone, he winked at them. "Let's go stun us a zombie."

Nick couldn't believe Caleb had accomplished it so fast. "I'm impressed."

"Don't be. One of you guys is going to have to feed the vampiric lawyer some blood and it can't be me."

Nick rolled his eyes at Caleb's bizarre humor. "Why? You afraid of a little bite?"

Caleb laughed. "I'm anemic."

"And I'm Catholic. Doesn't that knock me out of the running? Caleb shook his head at Nick.

"The Simi gots some barbecue sauce in her bag. It kind of looks like blood if you squint at it the right way. And it don't coagulate between your teeth like blood or give you them funky burps, not to mention it tastes a lot better too. Especially over that type A stuff. Bleh! I'd rather eat my shoes. But that O-flavored blood ... yum!" She straightened and held one finger up in a gesture that strangely reminded him of Smokeythe Bear. "And just remember, kids, three out of four demons all prefer barbecue sauce over hemoglobin."

"Oookay." Bubba stepped away from her, which said something. When Bubba repudiated you, you knew you were the poster child for weird. "On that note ... I guess we need to get into the truck."

Grabbing his keys and the cattle prod, Bubba led them outside to his giant dark green Armada, which he said he'd bought because it was one of the few things large enough to haul all of his zombie-killing gear.

And it was great for tailgate parties.

Nick cast a doubtful glance at the cattle prod before he got into the back of the truck while the others piled in. "So, out of curiosity... any ideas on how we're going to get a three-foot cattle prod smuggled into jail?"

Caleb buckled himself in. "That's why we need Virgil. He can smuggle in anything."

"You think a lot of him, don't you?"

Caleb shrugged. "I've known him a long time and have seen him do things that would put hair on your chest." "Yeah, like what?" Caleb refused to elaborate.

Bubba got in and drove over to the Orleans Parish intake and lockup. Nick fell quiet as old memories surged of the handful of times he'd visited his dad—not here, but prison, which was basically the same thing.

'You keep that brat away from me, Cheiise. I dont even want to look at his ugly face. Don t bring him up here anymore to see me."

Love you, too, Dad.

Nick still had no idea how his beautiful, kind mother had hooked up with such a monster. It didn't make any sense. She'd told him once that she liked bad boys. But there was a difference between a guy like him who had attitude and a guy like his dad who had mental damage.

Why did women and girls find psychos so desirable? Even at his school, it was the vicious loons like Stone who got all the girls while nice guys like him only got the finger when he asked them out. He'd never understand it.

Of course, in his case, his mother's insistence on him wearing these foully ugly shirts didn't help.

Whatever.

He just hoped that with his DNA linking him to the psycho killer that he never ended up inside something like this. That was the one promise he'd made to his mother he never wanted to break.

Bubba pulled around back and parked under a streetlight. "What now?" he asked Caleb. "We wait on Virgil."

"How will he know which car's ours?" Mark asked.

Before Caleb could answer, someone knocked on the window next to Bubba. Bubba jumped a foot in panic. "What the hell?"

Caleb inclined his head to the ...

Nick scowled as his gaze focused on his friend.

Virgil looked nothing like what he'd expected. A little over six feet tall, he couldn't be any older than sixteen or seventeen. Even though he was in a suit and dressed like an attorney, he looked like a teenager going to a funeral.

Surely he wasn't a real lawyer....

Was he?

And as Nick watched him, something odd happened. Virgil suddenly looked older. Like he was in his late twenties. Nick looked around the truck, but no one else seemed to notice.

Caleb opened his door and got out to talk to him. "Hey, Virg."

Virgil eyeballed them while they stayed in the car. There was an insidious air about him ... but that could just be the evil lawyer funk. "What exactly do you need me to do?"

Caleb glanced at Nick before he answered. "You know the kid who tried to eat his classmate this morning at St. Richard's?"

"Yeah?"

"We need you to shock him with a cattle prod and tell us what happens."

Keeping his lips closed, Virgil laughed—until he realized Caleb wasn't joking. He sobered instantly. "Why?"

"We think we have a cure for his zombie programming."

Virgil's face went through a myriad of emotions. Astonishment, puzzlement, and finally an expression that said he thought they were all short a few monkeys in their cage. "You're out of your mind, aren't you?"

"No, seriously. The kid who programmed the game that turned him into a zombie is in the car." Caleb pointed at Madaug, who waved at Virgil.

Virgil frowned at Caleb. "It's a program that turned him? Not magick?"

"Nope, not magick."

"Too bad. There are a lot of people out there who would've killed for a potion. I could have made you rich."

Caleb shrugged. "They'll have to find another way to make living zombies. In the meantime, we want to make sure that the ones we've turned back to human actually had direct contact with the game. The only one the kid knows played it for sure is the one sitting in jail right now. We gotta make sure this works." He passed the cattle prod to Virgil. "Warning, don't touch yourself with it. It's not low voltage like it's supposed to be. Bubba rigged it so that it actually lets loose over a million volts."

"All right," Virgil said slowly. "Let me make sure I have this straight.... The award-winning plan of intelligence that all ye brainiacs came up with is that I take an illegal, modified cattle prod into parish lockup, past the people armed with guns who are trained to kill, find a kid who's waiting to be arraigned for an attempted murder trial, and shock him until he turns normal again. Anything else?"

"Nope. That'll do it."

Virgil let out a slow breath as he eyed the cattle prod with a doubtful stare. "You seriously owe me." "I know."

Without another word, Virgil headed for the front of the building.

Nick was dying to see this miracle up close and personal. "Hey, Bubba? Can you unlock the door? I need a rest stop." "Sure."

Nick slid out of the SUV and made his way to the building to scope things out. Inside it, there were cops everywhere. No duh. Right? But what stood out most was the metal detectors. There was no way Virgil was going to get through all that without getting shot.

This ought to be entertaining.

Nick had just got into position when Virgil waltzed in like he owned the place. Several officers greeted him and acted as if they didn't see the cattle prod at all. In fact, Virgil fed it through the belt scanner before he walked through the upright one—all the while talking to the officers.