“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” She waves him off. “Smart money says, if I come at you, you’ll break me in half like a frozen candy bar. And if you come at me…”

He shrugs. “Lemme guess: you’ll cut my nuts off.”

Another wink. “You sure know the sweetest things to say. Gets my panties damp, big fella.”

He grunts. Is that him blushing? Score one for Skelly. That gives her a thrill.

“How do we get in there?” she asks.

“Like this.” Mookie kicks the fence. It rattles a mighty racket – bones against bones, bones against metal: an unholy cacophony like a symphony from the Devil’s own orchestra.

Then they wait.

Doesn’t take long before the gates shudder and start to drift open.

Inside the open gates stands an old woman – an old very dead woman, her desiccated flesh like dry, mouse-chewed leather against her bones, all of it ill-concealed behind a diaphanous gown that, once white, is now tobacco-brown.

Her eyes are like rotting grapes, rotating in their sockets until eventually they point their mushy pin-prick pupils toward the two of them.

Skelly suppresses a shiver. She’s a tough cookie, or likes to think she is, but the Underworld… this place… all this death. Gets under her skin.

“Mookie Pearl,” the old woman rasps. She coughs a few times. A clot of pillbugs tumble into her bird-claw hands. She tilts the hand, and the bugs fall to the ground. “You’re a sight for sore eyes.”

“Mother Cougar,” he says, nodding.

“I mean that literally, by the way. My eyes are sore as stubbed toes. When I blink it’s like I’m blinking past broken glass. Eyes’re too dry, too dry. You got any Visine?”

“No. But I could get you some if you give me a day or two.”

“Day or two? Heck, by then they might shrivel up and fall out of my fool head. I may just need you to lick ’em or something.” Breath whistles through nostrils shriveled tight to her face. The undead – those whose bodies still contain the specters of the former inhabitants – don’t need to do things like eat, breathe, or shit, but they often still do, if only out of habit. Or to make other people sick. “Whatchoo doing here, anyway? And who’s the girlie with the hair?”

“This is my friend, Skelly. I’m here looking for someone.”

“Who isn’t? Well, come on in, then. We don’t get many visitors of you blood-pumper types. You’ll have to pay the toll, though.”

Mookie nods. Comes up through the gates, waves Skelly on through.

As she steps up, Mookie opens his mouth. Stoops over. The old woman hobbles her gangly, poorly-held-together frame over. Leans in, sticks that rotten nose right up to his mouth. Skelly knows she’s staring, but she can’t help it.

“Go on,” the old dead woman whispers. “Blow it on me.”

He breathes. Slow and hot.