I hadn’t bothered to replace the lock I’d broken on the brothel door—with nothing to steal and Nellie’s creepy presence, no one came in here—so I just pushed the door open and fished a camping lantern out of my bag, keeping it away from the boarded-up windows. The strong white light only seemed to make the shadows longer, putting an unnerving emphasis on the grime and spider webs. I swallowed and ordered myself not to get creeped out.
Then, inches from my ear, a female voice exploded. “Finally!”
I jumped, whirling around to see Nellie Evans right behind me.
The last time I’d seen her, Nellie had looked bright and vivid, even though it was the middle of the day. But I’d later learned that her strong presence was a side effect of Morgan Pellar’s spell to boost the area ley lines. This time, there was no mistaking Nellie for anything but ghost. She was slightly faded, and there was a wrinkle of concentration on her forehead, as if it took just a little effort to keep herself visible, the same way I’d need a little effort to stand on my tiptoes.
If she hadn’t been a boundary witch in life, Nellie’s ghost would just be a repeating fragment of herself, an afterimage. But Nellie’s connection to death kept her sentient. And her personality was very much intact, for better or worse.
“Where have ye been?” she demanded, pouting at me. “I thought you’d ’a been back months ago, and me sitting around waiting every day like a damned fool girl with a beau . . .” Her footsteps made no noise on the hardwood floors as she stomped back and forth, shouting at me. The tantrum was a little funny, given her appearance. Nellie was dressed as I’d seen her last: in short-shorts, a polka-dotted tied-off top, and chunky high heels like a thirties pinup girl. She had obviously been pretty once, but she’d lived hard, and it still showed in death. She appeared to be in her midforties, although she’d probably died younger than that.
I waited until Nellie’s ranting wore itself out. When she devolved to mumbling under her breath, I said, “Hi, Nellie, how have you been? I see your TV’s still working.” I nodded toward the television I’d set up in the main entryway.
She glared at me. “Aye, yes, the television. It does work, but it’s been stuck on the same damned channel since you plugged it in! Have you heard of these things, re-runs?” She pronounced it carefully, like she was trying to speak Chinese. “They show the same programs over and over! And the children’s shows, argh!” She stomped a silent foot and began to pace again, then slowed and tilted her head to reconsider. “Although that red childish monster, he gives me a good laugh,” she allowed. “And the wee monkey who’s always creating messes, he reminds me of one of my trollops; she was so clumsy—”
And she was off again. I’d forgotten about Nellie’s loopy speech patterns: when she was excited, her diction and vocabulary ran up and down the socioeconomic spectrum and switched back and forth between now and a hundred and fifty years ago. Although I suspected she was always excited. It was like she’d been carefully hoarding decades of conversation for the first person who could see her. “Nellie,” I interrupted. “I need your help again.”
She’d been at the far end of her pacing, but she whirled back around. “Well, of course you do,” she snapped. “You wouldn’t-a come back to visit me otherwise, would you? Would you?”
I winced. “I was working up to it.”
She glared at me, but made a little impatient gesture for me to continue.
“What do you know about belladonna?” I asked.
That brought her up short. For a moment her face was blank. “Why are ye asking me?” she said suspiciously. “Dinna your people explain all this?”
I sighed. Sam and I had been adopted by the Luthers when we were babies, so we had grown up firmly outside the Old World, but Nellie seemed to have forgotten. “No, Nellie. I don’t know my people, remember?” I didn’t mention that I was also trying not to involve the local witch clan this time around. The less Nellie knew about current Old World politics, the less she could use them to manipulate me.
“Ah, yes. Sorry, Lex-girl.” Her face relaxed, but in just a second the distrustful look was back. “Did Pale Jennie send you then?”
Pale Jennie was actually Maven, and she had killed Nellie back in the nineteenth century—but in all fairness, only after Nellie had “killed” her first. That’s what happens when you try to backstab a friend who’s secretly a vampire. “Yes. She asked me to come here and beg for your advice.” That wasn’t exactly accurate, but Nellie had responded well to flattery before. “She thought you’d know all about belladonna and the other herbs.”
Nellie puffed up a little with pride. “I bet she did. Those herbs were one thing I always played close to my chest, even with Jennie. The grist a’ magic, my Ma used to call them.”
“Is that how you learned how to use them? From your mother?”
“Aye. She grew them in her own garden. That was how Ma was able to feed and clothe my brother and me, selling the seeds to anyone with a grudge against something magical.” She scowled. “Colorado weren’t so regulated then. We had no vampire tyrant telling us what we could or could not grow on our own property.”
“Okay,” I said slowly, parsing that for useful information. “So can you tell me if belladonna poisoning has a cure?”
“Aye, I could tell you,” Nellie replied, her eyes glinting with greed. “But I’d need something in return, of course.”