Description: DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED U.S. PAT. AND TM. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES --MARCA REGISTRADA HECHO EN U.S.A. 1 Idon''t have anything against the dead--not as long as they stay dead. It''s when they get reanimated that I become hostile. Also scared, creeped out, and nauseated, as well as violent if the occasion calls for it--which it usually does when you''re being confronted by a frisky corpse. In the normal course of events, obviously, the deceased do stay that way. But mystical Evil loves to mess with the mundane, and there are any number of dark forces that can make death less decisive than you''d think. So when I got a phone call from an undertaker telling me that the departed had departed--as in, got out of the coffin and walked away--I didn''t dismiss this news as drunken delusion or a dumb prank. I know that the unbelievable can happen because I''ve seen it with my own eyes. Besides, John Chen wasn''t a drunk or a prankster. He was a serious, credible person--as well as a graduate student at NYU pursuing a doctoral degree in biochemistry. So I didn''t doubt his strange story when I heard it. John also worked part-time at his family''s funeral home in Chinatown, which is how he came into contact with corpses, animated or otherwise. I had met John via his side job, a temporary gig doing hair and make-up for ABC, an indie film set in his neighborhood and written, produced, and directed by his old school friend, Ted Yee. I had been cast as an insensitive uptown white girl whom the ABC (American Born Chinese) hero of the film dates for a while before realizing that his soul mate is actually a hardworking young woman who''s lately immigrated from China. Unfortunately, Ted Yee told me earlier today that he was calling a halt to the film. I mean that this was unfortunate for me, not for audiences who would now be spared the prospect of suffering through Ted''s clumsy, clich-ridden, low-budget melodrama. I''d had a difficult winter so far, and Ted''s film was the only real work that had come my way since November. By "real work," I mean acting--that''s my profession. When I''m not acting, I''m doing whatever work I can find that will pay the rent--which, even in a rent-controlled apartment like mine, is extortionate in New York City. So to make ends meet after the Off-Broadway show I was in this past autumn finished its limited run around Thanksgiving, I had taken a job as Dreidel, Santa''s singing-and-dancing Jewish elf, at Fenster & Co., the famous Manhattan department store that was probably destined to go bankrupt soon, what with mismanagement, truck hijackings, attempted murder, and the recent conjuring of a solstice demon that wanted to eat Manhattan. I have had more demeaning and humiliating jobs than being a retail elf, but not many. After Christmas (and also after whole portions of Fenster''s had been destroyed in confrontations between Good and Evil, as well as between criminals and the NYPD), I returned to my usual between-roles job of waiting tables at Bella Stella, a tourist trap and mob hangout in Little Italy. I liked my job there as a singing waitress, and the owner, Stella Butera, was a fair employer. But she was also allegedly laundering money for the Gambello crime family. So the cops raided the restaurant on New Year''s Eve, closed the place down, and arrested a number of the people present--including me. (In my case, the charges were dropped. The other arrestees were now awaiting trial.) After that fiasco, I was unemployed and couldn''t find another job. I was down to my last few dollars in the world by the time I got cast in Ted Yee''s low-budget Chinatown film, and I was very glad to have income and acting work again, even if the script was lame and the pay was modest. But now that Ted had decided to quit the film and shut down production, I was out of work once again and already worrying about how to pay my rent. I knew that Ted was a dabbler, prone to embracing new artistic interests with great enthusiasm and then dropping them before long. So although I was disappointed by this turn of events, I wasn''t exactly surprised. And to be fair, even a completely committed and disciplined writer/director/producer might well throw in the towel on this project, after everything that had happened. Ted''s first backer had died. So he found another backer--and that one died, too. Then he learned that his manipulative mother and controlling sister were responsible for those deaths, as well as for the nasty mishaps which had befallen other people involved in the film. In a nutshell, they were murderously meddling because they feared Ted''s project would embarrass the family; and, in any case, filmmaking wasn''t what they wanted Ted to do with his life. His sister Susan''s obsession with preventing him from making ABC had even led her to attempt to murder an NYPD detective and try to shoot John Chen for helping Ted with the movie. As a direct result of recently getting to know Ted''s dreadful family, I made a solemn vow to be more patient with my own. They have their faults, God knows, but they don''t inflict deadly curses on my colleagues. They are also safely distant from me, all residing in the Midwest, which makes patience a little easier. But Ted, the poor fool, lived with his family--well, until now. Barely an hour ago, his sister had been arrested in the act of trying to murder John Chen in front of witnesses, so she seemed unlikely to return home for 20-to-life. And I had a feeling that Ted and his mother would soon be parting company, too. Lily Yee''s mystical crimes couldn''t be proven under the limitations of mundane law, but she had confessed them to Ted, and her inflicting such damage on his friends and colleagues in order to control his life seemed to be (understandably) the last straw for him. Those dangerous and deadly curses were why I was in Chinatown now, making my way through the frigid, icy, and densely crowded streets while firecrackers exploded noisily and drumbeats echoed all around me. It was the first day of the Chinese New Year, the day of the firecracker festival and the lion dance. Having discovered that Ted''s family members were responsible for the mysterious mayhem menacing Chinatown, I had come here today (in the company of my friend Max, an expert in such matters) to stop them--on what happened to be one of the most crowded days of the year in these narrow, bustling streets. The rhythmic pounding of drums and cymbals were the traditional accompaniment to the colorful, athletic lion dancers who were still roaming the neighborhood, though it was late afternoon now. Each time I saw one of these creatures bobbing, bounding, and leaping around gracefully, it was easy to forget that the giant lion was a two-man puppet (one man was the head, and one was the body) rather than an enchanted four-legged beast. Each lion''s massive, dragon-like head was decorated with fur, fringe, and sparkly designs, and they all batted their long eyelashes coquettishly at the various spectators and passersby. Snow, ice, and slush covered the streets, along with confetti from the celebrations today. Hours into the festivities, people were still following the many roaming lion dancers around Chinatown, watching them engage in the ritual of collecting red envelopes of "lucky money" from shopkeepers in exchange for their dance, then "chewing" up fresh green heads of cabbage and "spitting" the mangled leaves onto people as a blessing, to ensure an abundant New Year. We passed a cheerfully regurgitating red lion, and I brushed limp bits of cabbage out of my hair without slowing my pace, navigating my way through the thick crowd of laughing, smiling people. It was overcast now, the gunmetal-gray sky threatening to drop more sleet and snow on the city. The light faded quickly at this time of year, and I sensed darkness encroaching already. "You missed some." Lucky, my companion, brushed at my wind-snarled brown hair to remove a few stray bits of leafy greens. "Aren''t your hands cold?" I asked, realizing for the first time that he wasn''t wearing gloves. "Freezing," he admitted. "Here, I''ll take Nelli." I was sensibly dressed for being outside in late January. But Alberto "Lucky Bastard" Battistuzzi had rushed out of the Chen family''s funeral home on short notice today, after being alerted that John''s life was in danger. "Give me the leash, Lucky." The old hit man handed over the dog without protest and stuffed his hands into his pockets, shivering a little. Lucky had earned his nickname by surviving two separate attempts on his life because--both times--the gun that was pointed at him with deadly intent had jammed. (In fact, I had witnessed a third such incident the previous year, when a ruthless killer stuck a gun in Lucky''s face, pulled the trigger--and nothing happened. He really was lucky.) A semi-retired hitter for the Gambello family, he was a valued advisor to the capo di famiglia, Victor Gambello, aka the Shy Don. In the strange twists and turns of fate that so often characterize life, Lucky was also my trusted friend. And in a relationship that originated with the previous generation, Lucky was a silent partner in the Chens'' funeral business, as well as a close friend to the family. John called him "Uncle Lucky," and there was very little that the normally law-abiding Chens wouldn''t do to protect him. Lucky, whose own relationship with the law was habitually adversarial, was equally loyal to them. So when I had phoned him earlier to warn him that John was in danger, he had risked his life and liberty without hesitation in a headlong rush to help save the young man. He had also brought Nelli with him. A mystical canine familiar who had entered this dimension to confront Evil (with a capita

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