“That had to cost a fortune.”

“Oh it did.” Jim nodded.

“So let me get this straight. Chad Toole owns a strip club. He gets in trouble, hires John Abbot to represent him and turns the club over to him as payment for legal services. Chad goes to prison and dies. John Abbot’s firm divides the club into five shops and sells it as retail space?”

“Looks that way.”

“I am confused. If John Abbot sold the club, what’s the point of paying for the permit?” I thought out loud. “Permits are tied to the address. John Abbot must’ve only sold four shops and held on to one. He still owns a chunk of the original building. That’s the only way his permit would be valid.”

Jim grinned. “Exactly. There is more. The club also has an up-to-date liquor permit, paid in full again by John Abbot.”

He looked at me.

“Why is that significant?” I asked.

“Because it is illegal for a full-nude bar to serve alcohol in Atlanta’s city limits. Topless bars can serve it, but the dancers have to wear a G-string.”

I crossed my arms. “How do you know that?”

Jim gave me a look. “It’s my business to know.”

Aha. “So if it’s illegal . . .”

“It’s not. This law was relaxed after the Shift and then tightened again, but Dirty Martini must’ve been grandfathered in. It is the only wet full-nudity strip club in Atlanta. In the right hands, it would be a gold mine.”

“But the club doesn’t exist anymore,” I said.

“As long as the permits are on file and the physical location is unchanged, I don’t know that the city would care.”

I leaned against the island. “Okay. John Abbot, the lawyer, secretly owns one of the five shops. He decides he wants to bring back the club. He tries to buy out the other four shop owners, so he can reopen Dirty Martini and make a fortune. Except they don’t want to sell, so he gets them cursed to get them out of the building? This John Abbot was willing to kill five people over a strip club?”

“People killed for less,” Jim said.

“I don’t suppose there is a picture of John Abbot or an address?” I asked.

“The address is the same as the former strip club. He also could hire someone to manage one of the shops for him.”

I ran through the list of shop owners in my head. “I think we can eliminate Eyang Ida and Vasil Dobrev,” I said. “They were targeted.”

“We can eliminate them because they were personally in danger. We can probably eliminate the chiropractor, even. I saw her face. She loves her son. But we can’t discount Cole,” Jim said.

“You think he could try to kill his own son?”

“People are fucked-up,” Jim said.

I couldn’t argue with him there. “So we have Cole, the kids from the comic book shop, and Steven. All of them seemed harmless.” The kids were probably too young to be involved, but we couldn’t discount them based on their appearance alone. Magic Atlanta did all sorts of fun things with people’s age and looks.

“We haven’t met the second kid,” Jim said.

“That’s true. We can go there and meet him now.”

“Good idea.” Jim got up. “I’ll drive.”

I just laughed and got my keys.

• • •

I was two blocks away from the shopping center when I saw a man running full speed down the street. He was wearing a T-shirt with a Hulk’s fist smashing the ground and glasses, and he carried two identical toddlers.

Behind him two teenage boys tore down the street, their faces blanched with fear.

“Step on it,” Jim said.

I pressed the gas pedal and Pooki shot forward. In two breaths we saw the building. People were running from Eleventh Planet, scattering in all directions. A crowd blocked the door of the comic book store, pounding with their fists on the door.

What in blazes was going on?

In front of us a woman stood in torn clothes, her head oddly indented. She turned to look at us. A raw, red wound gaped where the left half of her face used to be. She screeched and reached for our car with gnarled fingers.

The hair on my arms rose. Someone in Eleventh Planet was afraid of zombies.

“Not worth damaging the car,” Jim said.

I stood on the brakes. Pooki screeched, slowing down. Before he rolled to a stop, Jim leaped out and pounced on the zombie. The knife flashed in his hand and the zombie woman’s head rolled off her shoulders. Jim caught it. So gross. So, so gross.

The woman’s body toppled.

I jumped out of Pooki. He threw the head at me. I grabbed it. Rotten magic touched my fingers and recoiled. The head melted, the skin and muscle dripping off it, turned to white ash, and disappeared.

Ha! Unclean. My magic worked on it. There were no such thing as zombies in our world, but whatever these things were, I could purge them.

Jim pulled a second knife from the sheath at the small of his back. His eyes shone with green. “Let’s do this.”

We walked to the crowd of zombies blocking the comic book shop. I never felt so badass and completely terrified at the same time in my whole entire life. There were so many . . . If my magic failed, they would rip me apart with their rotten teeth. For some reason the image of yellow rotting teeth stuck with me. I shivered and glanced at Jim. He just kept walking, like he had no doubt I would lay waste to the whole horde of zombies.

The zombies moaned at the comic book store, oblivious to us.

“Hey!” Jim roared, his voice deep and laced with a snarl.

They turned and looked at him.

“Fresh meat,” Jim said.

The mass of undead turned and ran for us, gnashing their rotten teeth, their hands stretched for us like claws. Jim spun like a dervish, his knives out. Heads rolled.

I took a deep breath, stepped next to him, and walked into the crowd. My magic waited for my orders.

I am the White Tiger. An invisible aura flared around me.

A huge zombie with half of his guts hanging out was running straight at me.

What if it didn’t work? A pang of panic shot through me. No, can’t think like that. I focused on the zombie. He was over six feet tall, arms like tree trunks.

You are an aberration. You skew the balance.

The zombie spread his arms, moaning, ready to crush me with his bulk.

I will restore the balance. I will purify this land.