Living Dead in Dallas

still sitting in my office in the church. That’s how I knew you were loose. I went in my office, smelled your scent. Knew you’d been hurt. So I went outside and scouted around, and when I couldn’t find you, I came back in. We’re damn lucky I had my keys in my pocket.”
    God bless shapeshifters. I felt wistful about the phone, but it couldn’t be helped. I suddenly wondered where my purse was. Probably back in the Fellowship of the Sun office. At least I’d taken all my i.d. out of it.
    “Should we stop at a pay phone, or the police station?”
    “If you call the police, what are they going to do?” asked Luna, in the encouraging voice of someone leading a small child to wisdom.
    “Go to the church?”
    “And what will happen then, girl?”
    “Ah, they’ll ask Steve why he was holding a human prisoner?”
    “Yep. And what will he say?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “He’ll say, ‘We never held her prisoner. She got intosome kind of argument with our employee Gabe, and he ended up dead. Arrest her!’ ”
    “Oh. You think?”
    “Yeah, I think.”
    “What about Farrell?”
    “If the police start coming in, you can better believe they’ve got someone detailed to hustle down to the basement and stake him. By the time the cops get there, no more Farrell. They could do the same to Godfrey, if he wouldn’t back them up. He would probably stand still for it. He wants to die, that Godfrey.”
    “Well, what about Hugo?”
    “You think Hugo is going to explain how come he got locked in a basement there? I don’t know what that jerk would say, but he won’t tell the truth. He’s led a double life for months now, and he can’t say whether his head is on straight or not.”
    “So we can’t call the police. Who can we call?”
    “I got to get you with your people. You don’t need to meet mine. They don’t want to be known, you understand?”
    “Sure.”
    “You have to be something weird yourself, huh? To recognize us.”
    “Yes.”
    “So what are you? Not a vamp, for sure. Not one of us, either.”
    “I’m a telepath.”
    “You are! No shit! Well, woooo woooo,” Luna said, imitating the traditional ghost sound.
    “No more woo woo than you are,” I said, feeling I could be pardoned for sounding a bit testy.
    “Sorry,” she said, not meaning it. “Okay, here’s the plan—”
    But I didn’t get to hear what the plan was, because at that moment we were hit from the rear.
     
    T HE NEXT THING I knew, I was hanging upside down in my seat belt. A hand was reaching in to pull me out. I recognized the fingernails; it was Sarah. I bit her.
    With a shriek, the hand withdrew. “She’s obviously out of it,” I heard Sarah’s sweet voice gabbling to someone else, someone unconnected with the church, I realized, and knew I had to act.
    “Don’t you listen to her. It was her car that hit us,” I called. “Don’t you let her touch me.”
    I looked over at Luna, whose hair now touched the ceiling. She was awake but not talking. She was wriggling around, and I figured she was trying to undo her seat belt.
    There was lots of conversation outside the window, most of it contentious.
    “I tell you, I am her sister, and she is just drunk,” Polly was telling someone.
    “I am not. I demand to have a sobriety test right now,” I said, in as dignified a voice as I could manage, considering that I was shocked silly and hanging upside down. “Call the police immediately, please, and an ambulance.”
    Though Sarah began spluttering, a heavy male voice said, “Lady, doesn’t sound like she wants you around. Sounds like she’s got some good points.”
    A man’s face appeared in the window. He was kneeling and bent sideways to see in. “I’ve called nine-one-one,” the heavy voice said. He was disheveled and stubbly and I thought he was beautiful.
    “Please stay here till they come,” I begged.
    “I will,” he promised, and his face vanished.
    There were more voices now. Sarah and Polly weregetting shrill. They’d hit our car. Several people had witnessed it. Them claiming to be sisters or whatever didn’t go over well with this crowd. Also, I gathered, they had two Fellowship males with them who were being less than endearing.
    “Then we’ll just go,” Polly said, fury in her voice.
    “No, you won’t,” said my wonderful belligerent male. “You gotta trade insurance with them, anyway.”
    “That’s right,” said a much younger male voice. “You just don’t want to pay for