I choose to go back to my hotel room. When it comes to dealing with werewolves who want to tear your throat out, it's always better to return to home base.

Someone's nailed a napkin to the door when I arrive. A cursive GET OUT in suspicious red liquid drips down the wood and seeps into the carpet.

I'm not paying for this.

I call Reception about it after I take it down and toss it to Petey who's waking like the Steroid'd Dead.

"Of course," comes the receptionist's dulcet customer service voice from over the phone. Petey's undead stomach gives a rabid gurgle. I toss the bags to him, leaving Petey to discover all the specific snacks chosen to ruin his diet. "Roderigo will inspect the damage once his shift is over. Will you be available in-room in an hour for him to ask questions?"

I turn a deaf ear to the large burst of outrage coming from my friendly neighbourhood severed-man. "Roder-who-go?"

Leslie sighs. "Not Hugo. The bellboy. His name is Roderigo."

"Oh. Yeah, he can go--uh, come up. If I'm not here, Petey'll be here. Thanks." Once I hang up, I look to Petey, who, in quick turnaround, seems to have decided he is going to eat the snacks anyway. "In this town, who's got a bone to pick with you? That you can remember?"

"Well, I died. That usually resets all the grudges," Petey says. He looks very snide for someone stuffing his face with chips. After a swig of pop, he burps out carbonated gas and farts. I love it. There is nothing like a snobby corpse who can expel gas from both holes at the same time. Petey makes a face. "Of course, assuming it has anything to do with me at all."

"It was nailed to your hotel room door."

"I didn't book the room."

"You're decomposing in it. Same difference. What's the situation with the blood?"

In the Clan, the Clan, the Necromancer Clan, we have a plan. That is to say, every one of us has a special skillset aside from raising the dead. Mine happens to be dead people vengeance. Petey's happens to be dead people blood reading.

Petey lifts the napkin. He wears the resigned stone-faced look of a man who has come too far to regret his career choices. His butt toots, spreading his anal perfume into the air.

I look to the ceiling. It takes the count of ten before he can speak again and I stop laughing.

"Whoever wrote this was still alive to do it. Good news: They don't hate you enough to inflict centuries of curses. Bad news: It's dead human's blood. It's gotta be aimed at you, since dead-on-dead cancels out."

"Are you kidding me? They went full on Decorating Class and used a piping bag too." I point to the still damp napkin with its Hipster Script Pro Deluxe available for a licensing fee. "Religious organizations hate me. Vengeful disciples of ancient gods hate me. Demanders of the available supply of quantifiable sacrifices hate me. But typographers for blood notes?"

"The blood's from a human with nothing special about them," Petey, the resident blood expert, says. He throws the warning some poor non-flatulent corpse had to bleed for in the trash. "What on earth did you do out there?"

I immediately think about Cheekbones's pliable mouth. I wouldn't mind kissing him again. "Got a lead. Did you know this town's werewolves don't believe in interspecies romance?"

Petey looks at me. "You didn't."

"Yeah, I didn't. How'd you know? One second I'm minding my own business when I meet--"

Petey pinches the bridge of his nose. "Don't tell me a werewolf."

I mime zipping my lips.

Petey closes his other hand into a fist. "You do realize that werewolves and necromancers are enemies, right? They dig up our graves and urinate in them, so we reanimate their fallen and have them skeleton hump? You did pass history class, right?"

"Listen, Petey, this isn't high school revenge tactics. We've long since graduated. This is the real life. He's hot. Hot people move fast. And werewolves, with a statistically higher body temperature than human beings, are the hottest--"

"Are you- Are you listening to yourself?"

"--if he hadn't, the throat thing would've clued me in real fast. How big of an erogenous zone is that for them? Do you have any tips?"

Petey looks ready to brain me with a lamp. He shoves a handful of chips into his mouth instead. "Tell me you at least took the cross-cultural sensitivity classes."

I blink. "We have one for hooking up with werewolves?"

"No!" Petey roars, spitting out half-masticated chips. "No!" He throws the chip bag at me. "Absolutely not!" He hurls the finished and unfinished bottles of carbonated drinks at me. If the bed wasn't bolted to the floor, he'd throw that too. "We are. Not here. In town. For you to hook up with werewolves! We are here for you to find out who killed me!"

I duck the plastic bag full of silver nails. Half of me wonders if I can get away with telling Leslie the inside room damage isn't my fault either. "I thought you didn't care!"

"Well, now I do!" Petey breathes, chest heaving. He points one finger at me. "Go get my autopsy report. As of this moment, your star-crossed lovers relationship ends here. This is an order."

"But--" At his glare, I sigh and reach into my pocket. "I'm family. Can't you trust me?" I pull out a fifty and slide it over. "Can't you reconsider?"

Petey's face softens at either my sulk or his sudden material enlightenment. "I'm trying to look out for you. Interracial relationships never end well when we work with the dead. Or," he stuffs the bill into his pocket, "become dead. You know the Clan's all we got. What they've given us..."

"I got it, I got it. I have responsibilities as a communal immortal with a terms of conditions and expiry date." I throw another fifty at him to get him to leave me alone. It's not like it's my money anyway. I looted it out of Petey's pockets before I'd raised him from the dead. "I'll drop it if I see him again."

A small decorated book on the table catches my eye. Flipping it open reveals a very ornate logo and gold leaf bordering a menu.

I lift up the book to where Petey can see it and pluck the phone out of the cradle to my ear. "You want some room service pizza before Roderigo the Bellboy with a Shotgun gets here?"

Petey's sphincter whistles. "Sure," he says with a straight face.