“A few try. I have a service for that. A team of Guatemalan witches comes by once a month and touches up the spirit barriers. They’ve been dealing with Mayan ghosts for five hundred years, so I think they know what they’re doing. I love my ghosts, but like the family cats, they’re outside, not inside friends.”
“How many dead friends live here with you?”
“I have no idea. Would you like a tour?”
“Why not?”
He looks relieved that he can finally get me back outside.
We walk around the front of the house to where a pristine golf cart is parked in the shade. I slide in next to Teddy and we head out into the wilds of his estate. I’m wearing the same shirt I had on when Amanda was over. I hope it’s dark enough to keep light from glinting off the armor. I don’t want to have to explain it to Teddy. Though I shouldn’t have to explain anything to a guy who uses skeletons like model kits. It’s a funny hobby for someone who comes off so reverential when talking about the dead.
“Amanda tells me you’re a high roller in the local temple. How’s that working out for you?”
Teddy shakes his head.
“Dear Amanda. She has all these fantasies about getting my little clan involved in the day-to-day drudgery of it all again.”
He turns to me quickly.
“I hope I’m not being offensive, you being from a temple yourself.”
“No. God’s a drag. The Devil’s a bore. The only people worse are the ones who run the temples. They think everyone should be on their hands and knees scrubbing the floors right along with them.”
“Well put,” says Teddy.
I wonder how Deumos is doing. Has anyone murdered her yet? I don’t know how long it will take Buer to design and build her temple but I bet it won’t be fast. Merihim and his crew will sabotage the project. Someone might blow the whole thing up the day it opens. That’s all Hell needs. Another martyr. I wonder if Deumos is counting on her fairy goddess godmother to protect her. That’s not a bet I’d take but then I’m surprised she and her church have lasted this long. Maybe they’ve got some angels on their side that don’t have horns and tails.
There’s a crowded subdivision of stone minimansions up ahead. A metal gate out front just says PARISH. Which parish it is fell off a long time ago. It’s an old New Orleans cemetery with its aboveground tombs hauled all the way up this hill like Fitzcarraldo hauled his boat.
“So you didn’t spend your summers at Satan sleepaway camp burning Bibles and pissing on crucifixes?”
Now that we’re on his turf, Teddy seems more relaxed. He takes out a black Sobranie cigarette, puts it in his mouth, then takes it out again without lighting it.
“I spent my summers here or with my father or grandfather scouting new haunted places in need of protecting. I’m polite to Amanda and her crowd but I haven’t been to one of their meetings in years. No one in the family has taken them all that seriously since Grandfather.”
Teddy gestures toward graveyards in the distance, using the cigarette like a pointer.
“He collected our first cemeteries around the same time he struck it rich in silver mining. He believed these two events were inextricably linked, so he saw it as his duty to create a haven for ghosts. He joined Lucifer’s temple because the political connections made it easier for him to shave the taxes on the silver income and to bring in foreign graves.”
“A lot of ghosts seem to stay here. You don’t try to keep them earthbound?”
Teddy shakes his head.
“My charges stay or go as they please. Perhaps if God presented Himself more readily, they wouldn’t be so afraid of what awaited them when they finally crossed over.”
“I can’t argue with that.”
Teddy’s unlit cigarette is driving me crazy. I still don’t have any Maledictions.
“Mind if I have one of those?”
“Not at all.”
He holds out the pack to me. I take one, break off the filter, and toss it on his lawn. Teddy doesn’t flinch but he saw the butt fall and knows exactly where it is. He’ll be out here with tweezers and bleach later to clean up my mess.
I light the cigarette with Mason’s lighter. Without the filter, the smoke is rough and rich, like a three-hundred-pound nurse giving me CPR.
There are acres of land below us carved up and divided between several graveyards. It’s a whole housing development for the dead.