“Where the hell were you? I looked everywhere for you before I left,” I said, the slightest hint of aggravation in my voice.

The ghoul looked sheepish. “New Jersey.”

“New Jersey?!” I hit myself in the head. “What the fuck is in New Jersey?!”

The ghoul walked away without answering and opened the back of the truck. The back was loaded with all of my crap, every last little scrap of paper I’d left behind. He’d even packed the rotten food from the kitchen and the trash from my office wastebasket. Stupid ghoul.

We got the truck unpacked pretty quickly. It soon became clear just how alike Sam and I were: the house now had two desks, two pairs of filing cabinets, two couches, and so on. We had double loser supplies.

As we emptied the last load, I looked up the street and saw Benito and his pals. They waved at me. I waved back. Then I spotted a large figure walking up the sidewalk toward the house. It was Emek, the ghoul who’d helped me out with the wolf-boy.

Mo’Lock looked at the approaching ghoul. “Who’s that?”

“Emek. He’s cool.”

“He’s undead.”

I winked at Mo’Lock. “Jealous?”

Emek walked up to us, stopped, and stood silent before us, a living corpse. His posture gave the appearance of a loosely dangling marionette. He was shorter than Mo’Lock by a foot and had light, close-cut hair. There was a lonely quality about him that surprised me. Ghouls back east are pretty social. They don’t have much to do with the living, but they interact with each other quite a bit.

Emek looked nervous. You don’t see this much with the dead. When you do, it usually means trouble.

I introduced him to Mo’Lock and they exchanged undead pleasantries in a babbling mish-mash of English spoken at a superhuman rate. I figured they were comparing notes on undead life on the east versus the west.

Emek’s nervousness set me on edge. But he’d saved my sorry ass, so I’d hear him out, if the two ghouls ever decided to shut up. I broke up the chat and invited them both into the house. As we walked to the front door, both ghouls looked at the grassless yard with the huge grooves gouged into the yard.

“Nice lawn,” Mo’Lock said. I told him to fuck off and pushed him into the house. It was good to see the stupid fucking ghoul.

“So what’s up?” I asked Emek. “Speak to me.”

I was sitting on Sam’s couch. Mo’Lock stood near the window, eyeing the new ghoul with a suspicion I’d never seen in him before. His entire stance was rigid and stand-offish, so Emek lingered awkwardly near the door. Ghouls always preferred to stand. Again, I don’t know why. They’re a mysterious bunch.

Emek’s eyes were wide, like those fucking awful paintings my grandmother had an overzealous affinity for: those doe-eyed punks with flowers and puppies. His teeth were tight together, pale lips parted as though he was freezing to death.