Lia Habel

“Ready to meet my best friend, then?"I clipped my vest together in front and smiled tightly. "Should I bring a bottle of wine? Any taboo topics? Politics, life after death?""Yeah, just stay away from that one entirely.”

“We adhere to the principle 'what they don't know won't hurt them.”

“Merry Christmas, Medication for all!"”

“All of our lives suck right now, okay? You might think yours is an extra special sparkly rainbow unicorn fart type of suck, but it’s not. Just get on with it!”

“It was the pot of weapon at the end of the rainbow.”

“What the hell was that?!" Tom asked, fighting his way to his feet."That..was not normal," Bram said, gripping the wheel like he was afraid to let go."I modified the engine somewhat," Renfield confessed. That grin started sneaking back onto his face."Modifications?" Gram asked. He slowly released his death grip on the steering wheel and turned around to look at Ren. "What modifications?""Modification." Ren really stressed the shun at the end of the word. "I just removed the governor. I told you some parts needed to come out. You were there when I did it!""The what?" I asked.Bram stared at Renfield, his expression going completely slack. "You did what? I didn't see you...You did what?""What's a governor?""You didn't," Tom said, voice filled with awe. "You are not telling me that you left a piece of the engine behind on the ground. "Renfield sighed and turned to address me, waving a hand casually. "The governor, on an airship engine, caps the maximum speed the engine can achieve. So,by taking the governor off, I've allowed us to go much faster.""And then we'll blow up!" Bram yelled. "Because you took a safety valve off!""You've turned the ship into a freaking death trap!" Tom shouted. "It isn't critical. We just have to be mindful of the engine pressure ourselves, that's all! Trust me, she can take it!”

“Michael gave her the five-sentence rundown. "A fluid-borne disease made the dead come back to life. They like to attack the living. There are hundreds of them out there. The only way to kill them is to get them in the head with a weapon. There's a good chance we're all going to die."Vespertine was quiet for a moment before saying, with her usual coolness, "That will be engraved on a plaque someday, sir.I vote you Poet Laureate of the Undebuted Set.”

“Once more Isambard looked completely terrified. Twice in one night! This was going to be a diary entry for the ages.”

“Vespertine Mink? Is that you?"The girl on the roof opposite lowered her lanterns and called back, "Pamela Roe?""Yeah, let's both let that sink in for a minute, it's a doozy!”

“Issy, nobody invited you along. You don't get a vote. Mostly becuae you're an idiot.""A total idiot," he said. "Look, right now I am completely in agreement with you. I am an idiot of legendary proportions. But I'm an idiot who wants to live, thank you. Besides, you told Nora we'd wait right here! What if he can't find us?""The idiot has a point," Michael allowed.”

“I killed one! I stabbed it in the head with a parasol."Even Nora couldn't find words for this revelation. Renfield was the first to comment. "I can't tell if that's the most inspiring thing I've ever heard of the most horrifying.”

“Chalk one up to ingenuity.”

“Why didn't you go with your parents?" I shouted at Michael."Because I knew they were all right!" he shouted back, fixing his eyes on me. "I wasn't so sure about you! I couldn't call on you after your arrest. All I could do was vouch for you."I blinked. "You vouched for me?" New Victorians charged with crimes could get out of paying bail or remaining imprisoned if they had someone powerful and aristocratic enough to speak on their behalf."Yes! Didn't you parents tell you? I met them at the courthouse the day your counsel summoned them."I shook my head, and committed a note to memory: If parents survive, kill them.”

“If I'd let you go and I'd gotten caught, my head would currently be decorating a tree somewhere, done up like an extremely morbid bird feeder...Here we go. And here's the moment where the rules fly out the window for all of us.”

“At the end Nora swayed in my arms to something slow and very old, after being convinced that, yes, this is how we slow-dance behind Punk lines, and no, I'm not telling you that just so I can hold you.”

“I really sucked at this whole "I am very attracted to you and would like to demonstrate this to you via attention and creative uses of my disposable income" thing.”

“You killed me, you lose!" -Coalhouse"It was an accident." - Tome..."You killed me me! That's not something you can ever apologize for!""Well, then, I'm not sorry.""You son of a -""Hey, you leave her out of this.”

“I got a demerit, professor." There was a kind of naughty amusement in her eyes that I found myself really liking.I smiled slowly. "Why did you do, Miss Dearly?""She henpecked Elpinoy in a most spectacular fashion," Renfield offered. "I think at one point she was actually hanging on his back." Nora made a sound of annoyance. "Alas, I was looking at a computer screen with Dr. Samedi at the time, and thus I'm afraid that neither of us can vouch for this with certainty."The laughter bubbled out of me before I could hold it back. "Were you?" I asked her."Define 'hanging.'""Bra,." Elpinoy appeared in one of the lab doorways. He gestured to the exterior doors. "Take her out. Now. Never in my life have I encountered such a little-""Lady?" I asked, trying to keep a straight face."Out.""'Phone call,'" Nora said, affecting his tone of voice and looking right at him. "'Let-ter.'""Not until Wolfe orders it!" Elpinoy marched into his lab again and slammed the door behind him.Nora stood up, her skirt bouncing a bit atop its puffy petticoat. "That man is an infuriating ponce.""And you're an excellent judge of character.”

“And Bram?"Panic punched me in the chest. So far today she'd been willing to touch me, laugh with me, confide in me, and now she was wondering if Chas shouldn't go out with me? Had I misread something somewhere?Chas shook her head and grinned. "Nah. Bram's too busy waiting.""Waiting?" Nora didn't take her eyes from me. Maybe she wanted me to answer. "For the right girl," I said curtly. "And he has very specific physical preferences," Chas said. I grabbed her wrist and squeezed. She'd better not.She did. "For some reason, he is terribly attracted to black hair. Tom's a leg man, himself...attached, unattached, doesn't really mtter. But Bram likes the hair."With all the various methods of Chastity Disposal flying through my imagination-should I just shoot her, or should I open her skull and puree her brains with a motorized mixer, or perhaps set her on fire?-It took me a minute to notice me a very shy smile.I dropped Chas's wrist. I almost dropped my machete.Nora looked away and moved a few steps in front of us, leaping into the grass to flatten it for herself as she went."I win," Chas whispered."Smoke all you want," I whispered back.”

“Stop it!" Chas shrieked, stomping her foot. "I will not have my boyfriend fighting if it's not over me! Stop it!""Let's say it's over you!" Tom grunted as he and Coalhouse wrestled with one another. "If he thinks he's gonna finally get a girl, he might grow balls enough to beat me!”

“You killed me! That's not something you can ever apologize for!""Well,then,I'm not sorry.""You son of a-""Hey, you leave her out of this.”

“I was going to have to kill him. It was a crying shame, but I was going to have to. It was a matter of principle.”

“You think so,hmm? It's on, then. Verbal pistols at dawn.”

“Something that chemistry supplies are very good for." When he gave me an odd look, I unwrapped a Bunsen burner and twirled it in the light. "Making bombs.”

“The doc watched her go, and then said, very softly, "don't let it happen.""Sorry?"Samedi yanked his head back on, and once it was in place, looked at me very seriously. "Just...don't let it happen."He shuffled off into the other lab then, leaving me to stew in his words.”

“When either one of us gets an order from Wolfe that isn't mind-bleedingly stupid there will be no way you will miss it, as we will both be leaping up and down and screaming uncontrollably, like adolescent monkeys, in our shock.”

“You have got to be kidding. Where'd they find it?""I like to think it was Santa finally coming through on years of passionate but ignored childhood letters.”

“You get the back of a truck or a blind date with a bullet.”

“Griswold!" a voice bellowed."We'll talk about this later," he said, then climbed to his feet and stood at attention. "Sir!"I turned around, only to be confronted with the largest man I had ever seen in my life.The end was nigh.”

“I want him to explain a few things to me, before I beat the prion-whatevers out of him.”

“Seriously, why do you read that crap?" asked the girl.Book Boy snapped his volume shut and removed his glasses from his nose. "I speak the truth! In all of these books the girls are throwing themselves at the romantic heroes- romantic heroes who are dead, ho drink human blood. Be of good cheer, my brothers, for I tell you there is hope!"One of the other guys, a large black chap, rolled his lone eye. "Okay, you're cut off. Someone get him a cookbook or something.""Or, you know, some fair damsel to seduce," the girl said, looking up from her reflection.”

“Well, Dr. Elpinoy will never admit it, but he suffers from performance anxiety-""Oh, shut up, you old cad," Elpinoy said, finally uncrossing his arms.”

“I want to go home," she whispered to me. "Forget that last speech, I want to go home.”

“So, despite the fact that my survival instinct was hollering like a drunk town crier, I started to accept that if I wanted to find out more about my father, I would have to go out and hobnob with the zombies.”

“I would think that the last person you'd want to sass ould be the one who might react by tearing you limb from limb.”

“That would have been the end of it, book Z in the series, nothing left to do but mourn, or curse her into the afterlife.”

“Those were the most tortuous two months of my short and uninteresting life.”

“You're...very resilient, for someone who's dead." Her voice was a little steadier."And I think you're far stronger than any of us were prepared to give you credit for." I kept shooting my mouth off like an idiot, telling her things I'd been ordered not to, and she kept going with it. I was impressed, honestly.”

“I felt like crawling off and finding a way to kick myself in the rear. One twist of the leg, might not be too hard.”

“Now, feel free to call me what I am-call me a corpse, call me dead, call me a killer if you want. I've killed people in battle, I'll admit. But don't call me what I'm not. I am not a freak, and I am not a cannibal, and-"I would have adeed, I'm not a monster, if it hadn't at that moment hit me that I was going all self-righteous on a girl whose world I had just turned upside down.Smooth, Bram. When will you learn to shut up?”

“She tried to compose herself then, with several deep breaths. I gave her as long as she needed, all the while mentally designing my tombstone. R.I.P, Captain Abraham R. Griswold. He was completely useless and made girls cry.”

“If you’re going to need me, even if it’s just to yell at, I’m going to stay right here.”“No, I want to take a shower. I’m not about to if you stay out there.”“Excuse me, but-huh? Then there will be two doors between you and me.”Some of the blood stayed in my cheeks as I found myself spluttering, “But you’ll know I’m taking a shower!”“You just told me you were going to!”

“Marked.” My face was on fire, my limbs shaking. “All of you. I will take all of you out with my own bare hands!”There was laughter building in Bram’s voice as he responded. “As cute as I’m sure that would be, your attempt…if we thought the people who might try to trace that chip could make you absolutely, one hundred percent safe, I would carry you to them and hand you over myself.”I gingerly rested my fingertips against my forehead, breathing deeply, trying to calm myself down.“There are some very bad men out to get you, Miss Dearly.”“You have got to be kidding me.”“By the way, you have quite the vocabulary, for a princess.” He still sounded amused.This statement was random enough to get my attention. “Princess?” I asked, confused.“You know, a princess. A New Victorian girl.”My lips parted to fire off another question before it clicked. “You’re a Punk.”“Born and bred.”“Fantastic.”

“I’d never had the chance to experiment before, but it seemed that irrational screaming was enough to make most people scram. Whodathunk?”

“It was five minutes of screaming, slamming myself against the door, and stamping my feet-and a minute of contemplating the cold, horrible idea that I might have to leave the room to find anyone, and maybe this had been their plan all along, and Oh God, Oh God-before I heard Dr. Elpinoy's nervous voice.”

“In a seperate cloth pouch I found little bottles of shampoo and soap and a toothbrush and the like,as well as a tiny brown glass vial of perfumed oil. It smelled of violets and chocolate.Yeah,like I needed the zombies to find me any more delicious.That'd be like a cow wearing eau de gravy.”

“Tell him what I told the others-that I'm happy to have you watch me, and serve as my assistant, but only on my terms. Or,if you're feeling lucky...you can tell him that Dearly said he can go to hell.”

“I decided that my initial survival strategy would involve declaring my complete ignorance of what was going on. This would not,naturally, be terribly hard to do.”

“The air currents must have steered me wrong, for I ended up far off course, and by "far off course" I mean "headed in the opposite direction entirely.”

“If anyone should talk to her," Renfield piped up, "it should be me. We're the most compatible, culturewise. I'm sure that on top of feeling as if she's been thrust into one of the many levels of Hades, with all of its attendant demons, she feels like a lady wandering, lost, amongst the mannerless cads of the slums."We were all silent for a moment before Tom asked, "You do realize that we're sitting right here, right?""Oh, I am horribly aware of this fact.""Just checking.”