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Last week we announced that E. Van Lowe’s YA Paranormal Novel The Zombie Always Knocks Twice (Hollyweird) is our Kids Corner Book of the Week and the sponsor of our student reviews and of thousands of great bargains in the Kids Book category: over 250 free titles, over 500 quality 99-centers, and hundreds more that you can read for free through the Kindle Lending Library if you have Amazon Prime!
Now we’re back to offer a free Kids Corner excerpt, and if you aren’t among those who have downloaded this one already, you’re in for a treat!
The Zombie Always Knocks Twice (Hollyweird)
by E. Van Lowe
And here, for your reading pleasure, is our free excerpt:
CHAPTER 1
“So you don’t like musicals.”
The little person in the expensive suit sat at the counter across from me. He pointed to his cup, and I poured him another free cup of coffee. His third.
“If I’m going to audition for a musical, shouldn’t I at least be partial to them?” I asked.
“Normally, I’d say yes. But we need to keep our eye on the prize here.” When he spoke, he gestured with childlike, neatly manicured hands.
“The prize? Are you referring to my big break?” I said, my eyes widening.
“Kill the sarcasm, Kris. You’re going to thank me for this one day.”
“Sure I am.”
My sarcasm was due to the fact that I wasn’t looking for a big break. While I may have been born and raised in Hollywood, California, and have lived here my entire fifteen-and-a-half years of life, I am not an actress and have never wanted to be an actress, a singer or have anything to do with show business. So there’s really no reason for me to even have an agent. But try telling that to Artie Tullman—my agent.
Artie was one of Hollywood’s most successful teen talent agents. Being a little person hadn’t kept him from rising to the top. He got 10 percent for every job he booked. Judging from the fine clothes he wore and the fine car he drove, Artie got his fair share of 10 percents, although that didn’t stop him from mooching free coffee from our family diner.
“Have you considered that I can’t sing?” I hoped that would put an end to me going on an audition for a musical.
“She’s right,” my father called from the kitchen, where he manned the grill. “I’ve heard her. Sounds like a moose.”
“Cut it, Dad. I’m not that bad.”
“Yeah, you are.” He dipped a batch of fries into the deep fryer.
“Kris, babe,” Artie called, dragging the conversation back to him. Agents do that a lot. “You’re fifteen and you’ve got the ‘look.’ That’s all that matters to these people. So you don’t like music. Who cares? Music schmusic. This is Hollywood. First you get the part, then you get them to change it.” He winked.
The ‘look’ Artie was referring to was me being biracial. The way Artie had put it, casting directors would find me ‘interesting,‘ whatever that was supposed to mean. All I know is, the ‘look’ has never worked on any of the cute guys at school. Judging from the blank stares on their faces when I walked down the halls, the ‘look’ has made me invisible.
“Not interested, Artie,” I replied. “But thanks for thinking of me.”
I’d been coaxed into going on exactly two auditions in the two years Artie had been my agent. Two! You’d think he’d give up already. But a good agent can’t take no for an answer. I guess that’s what keeps Artie coming back, along with all the free coffee.
“I always thought she’d follow in my footsteps,” my father called, sighing wistfully.
“Don’t give up on her yet. There’s still hope for her,” Artie called back.
“Excuse me, Dad, but I am following in your footsteps. I work here, don’t I?”
“Ooh! Sucker punch.” Dad clutched at his stomach and cried out in mock pain. “Okay, okay. I owe you for that one. When you least expect it,” he added, wagging a playful finger through the cutout window.
Jack Golden was the best dad a girl could have. He’d once played the sidekick on a TV cop show back in the seventies called Baker’s Dozen. He was one of the dozen. He had a bushy mustache and mutton chops back then and was always saying things like, “They’re dead meat, boss,” in a scratchy Clint Eastwood-like voice. He was supposed to be badass, which, if you know my father, is hysterical.
That show was his only claim to Hollywood fame, but if it bothered him that his acting career had gone no further, I couldn’t tell. Truth is, if I didn’t love the man so much, I never would have agreed to even having an agent. But I’d never promised to go on auditions.
“Burger up,” Dad called, tapping the little annoying-as-hell bell that sat by the cutout window between the kitchen and the dining room. He’d rung the bell even though he’d just told me the burger was up. I hated that little bell. One day that little bell was going to do a disappearing act.
“Be right back,” I said to Artie.
“Before you go…” He pointed to his empty coffee cup.
“Dude, are you paying for this joe?”
“I’m insulted. Here I am trying to get you a paid acting gig and you’re going to charge me for coffee?”
“This is your last cup, Artie,” I told him as I poured.
From the outside, I’m sure you’d say I have a life that even George Bailey would call wonderful. George Bailey. That’s a character from an old movie, It’s A Wonderful Life. We do that out here in Hollywood, call up movies as if everyone’s supposed to know what the hell we’re talking about. I can movie namedrop with the best of them, so bear with me.
Anyway, from the outside, I have to admit, my life looks pretty good for a fifteen-and-a-half-year-old. I have a part-time after-school job at a time when jobs are hard to come by. A loving relationship with my father. An agent who’s dying to put me in movies or on TV. And to top it all off, I live in Hollywood.
However, upon closer inspection, you can’t help but notice the warts that cover my life. And trust me, my life has more warts than the Wicked Witch of the West. That’s a reference from The Wizard Of Oz, in case you missed it.
Wart number one: my after-school job is at The Disco Diva’s Diner, a diner that happens to be co-owned by my father, which means I earn minimum wage the weeks he decides to pay me.
Wart number two: sure, my dad loves me. He loves me so much he smothers me. I can’t be out of his sight for more than two hours before the man starts making frantic phone calls to me and all my friends. You can imagine what a pleasure that must be.
Wart number three: who wants an agent who badgers them regularly about going on auditions he knows good and well they don’t want to go on? I’m sorry, but I don’t see myself as the next Dakota Fanning or Angelina Jolie, although I’d love to have her lips. Angelina’s, that is.
Wart number four: the Hollywood I live in is not the picture-perfect Hollywood you see on TV. Far from it. My Hollywood is a shambling, decrepit town where dreams come to die. Where everything comes to die. No way am I going to kill off my dream before I even have one.
Wart number five: I’m failing Algebra II.
And the final wart, the really ugly one that sits right at the tip of my nose: I don’t have a boyfriend.
Not that having a boyfriend is the be-all and end-all of a girl’s existence. I know it isn’t. But I’m fifteen and a half years old and have never had a boyfriend. Not even the kind girls have in the first grade, where a boy walks up to you, punches you in the arm and then runs away. I went through the entire first, second and third grades totally unpunched.
I set the burger and the condiment tray in front of a frumpy-looking guy in a grease-stained jumpsuit. “Will that be all, sir?” I said in my most professional voice.
He nibbled a fry. “These fries are crispy. I like mine a little soft. I told you that when I put in my order.” He glared at me with accusing eyes.
“Yes, you did, sir.” I reached onto his plate and picked up a fry. It hung limp between my fingers like a piece of spaghetti. “I think you grabbed the only crispy one on the plate, sir.” My voice was filled with professional cheer. “See? The remaining ones are soft like this.”
The man’s mouth dropped open. “Did you just stick your hand in my plate?”
“Um, I apologize for that, sir. I was just trying to make a point.”
He shoved his plate away. “You don’t manhandle people’s food like that. I don’t know where your hands have been.”
“I know, sir. I’m sorry.” I envisioned my entire week’s paycheck winging its way out of the diner, through the overcrowded parking lot and up into Beachwood Canyon, never to be heard from again.
Suddenly, my father was by my side. “I got this one, dimples.” He eased me away from the table. “Why don’t you grab a menu for the young lady who just sat down over there?”
I took several deep breaths as I moved away. I knew better than to touch the customers’ food. Customers do not like it when the waitress goes rummaging around in their plates. This was going to cost me.
As I whizzed by to grab a menu, Artie tugged at my sleeve. “One of the great things about being a TV star is, you stick your hand in people’s plates, they thank you for it.” He winked. Artie was a big winker.
“Food for thought,” I replied.
I grabbed a menu off the stack and approached the girl seated in the booth by the door. She was about my age and tiny, but with an athletic build like a gymnast. She had a close haircut, the kind most girls my age would think too daring to try. Her eyes were concealed behind expensive, oversized dark sunglasses.
She was also dead.
My breath caught in my throat when I realized it. She looked at me and her shades slipped down the bridge of her nose, revealing gray-green eyes slowly filling with rage. I put on a smile, but she knew I’d spotted her.
“Hi, there,” I said.
She stood up and inched toward the door.
“Don’t go,” I said. “We serve breakfast all day.”
She took off out the front door, moving with the speed and grace of a gazelle.
Oh yeah, there’s one more wart on my life I neglected to mention. I’m a necromancer. Roughly speaking, that means I have some kind of special relationship with all things dead. I can spot the dead walking among us, raise the dead and have a sworn duty to help lay the risen dead back to rest. Bully for me.
CHAPTER 2
Just my luck. My second customer of the afternoon was a deadie.
I took off after her.
She headed north on Highland toward the 101 freeway. She was wearing Ugg boots, but they didn’t slow her down. I had to run to keep from losing her. I hate running.
The dead often have heightened senses and certain heightened abilities as well, like smell, strength, vision. It varies from deadie to deadie.
I surmised that this girl’s heightened ability was speed.
Another stroke of rotten luck.
A person could get arrested or worse, shot by the cops running through the streets of Hollywood. If the girl I was following got shot, no biggy. She was already dead. However, if I got shot—problem.
Being one of the few humans alive with my special gift, I was compelled to follow her. A chosen one, my mother had called me. Not my choice, trust me on that. Still, I took my sworn duty seriously.
Beneath the rage the girl had displayed back at the diner, I sensed fear. I needed to know why she had returned from the grave, who—if anyone—had helped her and what she was doing in my dad’s diner. I cursed my gift for making me so darned curious.
The deadie never once looked back, yet from the way she was moving I could tell she knew I was behind her. She sidestepped a man in a top hat selling maps to the stars’ homes and dashed across Highland, darting between moving cars and narrowly missing a Starline tour van filled with gawking tourists. She reached the other side safely and headed up Franklin Avenue.
Taking my life in my hands, I zigzagged after her. “Excuse me,” I called when I reached the other side. I was half a block behind her. “I think you dropped this.”
The idea was for her to stop, turn to see what she’d dropped, and I’d be on her. But instead of stopping, she sped up. Cripes! It was a dumb trick, the kind that doesn’t even work on TV. And especially doesn’t work with the dead.
She moved up the block past the Magic Castle. When I was seven, my father had taken my sister and me to there to see his friend Christopher Broughton do close-up magic. What a treat. That was long before I knew I had a magical gift of my own.
The deadie turned down Sycamore, a tiny street of small World War II-era bungalows and cramped apartment buildings. She was getting off the main drag. If she ducked into one of those apartment buildings, I’d lose her for sure.
I was now sprinting, which meant I was going to sweat. I hate sweat. Sweat is high up on my list of hateful things, right next to running. They kinda go hand in hand. When you run, you sweat. At least I was in shape, but the dead don’t get tired. She could go on like this for hours. Perish the thought. I needed this to end now. I had a job to get back to and an algebra exam to study for.
“I think I can help you,” I called.
She stopped in a driveway sandwiched between a pair of two-story stucco apartment buildings. Someone had slapped a fresh coat of paint on the buildings, which did nothing to hide the years of neglect. A sign on the grass proclaimed them to be “Luxurious Hollywood Condos.” Riiight.
At first I thought the girl was waiting for me. Instead she took off up the alley, between the buildings. Perfect. No telling what kind of lowlifes might be lying in wait up a Hollywood alley.
Cool it with the negative thoughts, Kris.
I stopped at the mouth of the alley. I could feel the perspiration pooling in my armpits. Not only does my antiperspirant not stop odor, it doesn’t even stop wetness. Why do I keep slathering the stuff on? It’s not like the boys at school ever get close enough to notice.
I looked up the alley. The girl was moving away from me. I could see that the alley didn’t empty into the next street over, which is the norm. Instead it dead-ended into another apartment building. The girl was trapped. A deadie at a dead end.
She arrived at a nondescript back door covered in sheet metal. She tried it. Locked. She put her shoulder into it a few times. No go.
“Hello,” I called, following her down. I needed to be cautious. I didn’t want the deadie turning on me. She may have been small, but some deadies were known to have incredible strength.
I know, I know. If she’d had incredible strength she would have plowed right through that back door. But I wasn’t thinking clearly. Can you blame me? There was a dead girl standing not ten feet away from me.
“Hi there. My name is Kris Golden. What’s yours?”
She ignored me. Turning to the building to her left, she took a running start and leapt into the Hollywood air. Like a stylized angel in an old black-and-white movie, she drifted up to the rooftop, landing with ballerina grace. Then she shot a quick glance at me down on the ground and disappeared.
Wow. Guess I was wrong about her heightened ability. But I wasn’t wrong about the fact there was a dead fifteen-year-old roaming the streets of Hollywood. I needed to know why.
When I got back to the diner, Artie had vacated, but he’d left a three-page scene, a CD with a music track for me to rehearse to…and a ten-cent tip. Artie had a sense of humor.
I was glad to see that Talia, the other part-timer, had come on. This way I wouldn’t feel guilty about leaving Dad alone when I took off to see if I could find out more about the dead girl.
I was refilling the salt and pepper shakers, getting things ready for the dinner rush, when Dad stepped in from the kitchen.
“What was that about?” A dusting of fear covered his words.
I looked up and gave a slight, woeful shake of my head.
“Oh.” His expression darkened. “The Power, huh?”
I nodded.
My gift, known to my dad only as The Power, had made its first appearance when I was ten. A neighbor’s golden retriever had given birth to a litter of pups, and he’d given one to me and my sister, Anne Marie. We named him Max. Max had too much energy to be living in a cramped apartment in bustling Hollywood, but there was no way I was letting my parents give him away. I loved him fiercely.
One day during a walk, Max and his energy got away from me, and he bounded out into traffic on Hollywood Boulevard. Frightened by all the horns, he darted in front of a FedEx truck and that was all she wrote. At least it should have been all she wrote.
Dad came with the station wagon to bring Max’s dead body back to the apartment to keep until the city could come and haul his remains away. I sat in the back seat of the wagon, rubbing Max’s stiffening body and crying watermelon-sized tears. It had all been my fault. If only I had let them give Max away, he’d still be alive. I rubbed and cried and prayed, and by the time we arrived back home, Max was no longer dead—at least he was no longer acting dead.
I continued pouring salt from the box into a shaker. It was as if I were pouring it on an open wound. My father hated The Power. But it was my sworn duty, not his.
“The girl’s dead, Dad,” I said softly, without looking up. “I followed her, but she got away.”
“And we can’t just leave it at that, can we?”
I shook my head. “You know better than that.”
He blew out a sigh in a slow, low whistle. “You recognize her from school?”
I shook my head again. “I don’t think she goes…um, went to Hollywood Prep.”
“Maybe you’re wrong about this one. Maybe she isn’t…” He left the word dead hanging between us like something…dead.
“Maybe,” I said. I didn’t tell him about the forty-foot leap she’d made to the rooftop of a two-story apartment building. Leave the man some hope.
He nodded. “I’m so sorry, Kris. I wish your life could be normal.”
“We live in Hollyweird, Dad. There is no normal.” I forced a smile.
“Right.” He put on a brave smile of his own and headed back into the kitchen.
Both he and my mother had prayed that my older sister and I wouldn’t be burdened with any kind of paranormal connection. My mother came from a deep-rooted New Orleans family steeped in the powers of juju. When we were small, she regaled us with amazing stories of her great-great-grandparents and granduncles battling evil magicians, guardians of the dead. At the time, they seemed like fairy tales. They weren’t.
The Power always skips a generation, so she was safe from inheriting it, although she had been a gifted psychic and healer in her own right. Psychic abilities were prominent in her family, but nothing like what I got. I got the superfecta of psychic abilities.
My mother had hoped that since she married white, The Power had passed us by completely and that Anne Marie and I wouldn’t have to bear its burden. No such luck. As it turned out, Anne Marie got zits, I got necromancy.
Talia cruised in from the back room. “What’s happening, dimples?”
She got a kick out of teasing me by calling me the nickname only my father was allowed to use.
“Not that lipstick, that’s for sure.” I grinned.
Talia Multisanto was my closest friend. Actually, she was my only friend. She was a part-timer at the restaurant like me, but that was the only thing Talia and I had in common. She was seventeen, but with makeup could easily pass for twenty-one. She had dark-blue eyes and an unnaturally deep, sexy voice that made men swoon. Talia loved making men swoon. I couldn’t even make a high-school boy swoon.
Talia had no use for high-school boys. She dressed in formfitting jeans and tight tees that showed just enough of her pale flesh to drive men wild.
“I found us a party for tonight,” she said, ignoring my insult. “That TV show, The Beloved, is throwing a big birthday bash for one of its stars at that new private club on Sunset. Should be yummy.”
Talia had a nose for trouble, or adventure, as she called it. She enjoyed hanging in dive bars like The Frolic Room or The Woods. Places my father would kill me if I ever went near. I’m sure her name wasn’t even on the party’s guest list. But guest lists have never stopped Talia.
“I can’t tonight, Talia. I’m failing Algebra II and I have a test in the morning. I really need to study.”
She sucked her lips into a pout that I’m sure worked wonders on all the guys. “You need to get out more. You’re starting to become like them.”
“Who’s them?”
“Them are the people nobody wants to be when they grow up.” She nodded toward a booth. An aging couple dined on the early bird special, chicken and dumplings. “That’s you in five years.”
I snorted out a laugh. “They’re at least sixty.”
“Twenty-one. But they never get out,” she added ominously.
I burst out laughing. Talia had that kind of effect on me. “I’ll think about it. But right now I’ve gotta make a run. Do you mind holding down the fort?”
“Is it a guy?”
“Sort of.”
“You gonna tell me about him?”
“In time.”
“Then I don’t mind. But you owe me. You can pay me back by going out tonight.”
I didn’t reply, just hustled out the door and headed for Hollywood Boulevard, where I was hoping an old friend could tell me why a dead girl, roaming around Hollywood, had shown up in my father’s diner.
Click here to buy the book: E. Van Lowe’s The Zombie Always Knocks Twice (Hollyweird)