Kill The Dead Part 3

"If I take up knitting, think the rest will go away?"

"Louie Toadvine is one of them, which is funny because I owe him money."

Carlos pours himself a gla.s.s of seltzer and drops in some of the lime wedges he was cutting.

"Your friend Candy was in here last night."

I dig into the tamales.

"Good for her."

I haven't seen or spoken to Candy more than three times since we saved a bunch of about-to-be-sacrificed angels on New Year's. We killed a lot of people that night, but none who didn't deserve it.

"She's a pretty girl."

"Is she? I don't entirely remember."

Since then I'd only seen her a couple of times with Vidocq and once when I got Doc Kinski to drain the venom from my arm after a Naga purse s.n.a.t.c.her went king cobra on me. Kinski is the medical man for a lot of Sub Rosa and Lurkers. Most people think being a doctor is a big deal, but Kinski used to be an archangel, so for him, being a doctor is sort of like flipping burgers at McDonald's after you were president.

"Candy's nice. Asked about business. How is it dealing with the Sub Rosa? When am I ever going to get some new tunes on the jukebox?"

"What do I care about any of this?"

He shrugs.

"I thought you two were friends. More than friends maybe."

"Where'd you hear that?"

Carlos holds up his hands.

"Sorry, man. I didn't mean nothing. It's just something I heard. Anyway, she said she and Kinski had been moving around a lot. That's why she hasn't been around. She's heading back out to wherever he is."

"Did she mention where?"

"Nope."

"She was sick for a while after Avila. It isn't good for her to be around all that blood. It affects her funny."

Candy's a Jade, which is kind of like a vampire only worse. She's trying to lay off the people eating, but dragging her up to a ma.s.sacre pushed her over the edge and she fell off the wagon for a while.

"I didn't get the feeling she was in here to talk to me. She asked when you usually came in. I had to tell her you come and go and don't keep regular hours."

Was Candy looking for me? It's funny she'd come to Bamboo House. I'd thought about waiting out in the strip mall by Kinski's clinic, but that felt more stalkerish than friendly.

"I'm glad she's feeling better."

"Is she why you're hitting the red stuff?"

"I'm drinking it because you have it. Do you know how rare Aqua Regia is? Rare isn't even the word. It doesn't exist anywhere outside of h.e.l.l. I'm going to have to thank Muninn the next time I see him."

"I don't know that it comes from Muninn."

"Who sends it?"

"I don't know. A bottle just shows up every now and then. First time I found one by the door, I tasted it. It's disgusting and you're one sick little pinche for drinking it. And you drink too much of it."

"Sometimes it's nice to know I'm not crazy. You know when you wake up and for a minute you don't know where you are and aren't sure if you're awake or still dreaming? This reminds me what's real. Who I am. Where I've been. How I got these scars. Living up here, sometimes I need that."

"It also gets you hammered fast."

"And it reminds me of ... Never mind."

Carlos stabs a finger at me.

"Say it. I've been waiting to hear you say something like that. Go ahead. Say it out loud so everyone can hear you. This poison that comes from h.e.l.l reminds you of home. That's what was about to come out of your mouth, wasn't it? Think about that for a minute. How f.u.c.ked up that is."

"Excuse me. I'm sorry to interrupt. One of those men over there said that you were the gentleman they call Sandman Slim."

Carlos doesn't miss a beat.

"Now, why would a nice lady like you be looking for a bad man like that?"

It's so obvious even Carlos, the most unmagic uber-civilian of all time, can see it. The woman isn't Sub Rosa. She's around fifty-five, but picked up a beauty allurement potion so she can tell people she's thirty. She dressed up to come here. She's wearing an expensive Hillary Clinton pantsuit, but it's a little off. The symmetry isn't quite right, but not in a way most civilians could see. It's probably from an outlet mall and it's brand-new.

"He's not Sandman Slim?"

"I didn't say that."

Carlos points to one of the bar stools. The woman sits.

"Would you like some coffee?"

She has dark, pretty gray eyes. Her pupils are pinpoints. This bar isn't where she wants to be.

I push the tamales and rice away. After Ziggy's anger, being jolted by her fear has ruined my appet.i.te. I half turn and do a quick scan of the faces in the room. It's ninety-nine percent Sub Rosa, with a few civilian hangers-on and groupies. If she found me here, she must have asked questions in places she wouldn't normally go. And when she finally heard about Bamboo House of Dolls, people would have told her what happens to strangers who come here to bug me. But she did it anyway.

Good for her.

"Call me Stark. No one calls me that other name."

"I'm sorry. It's the only one I knew."

"No problem. Why are you looking for me?"

She takes a picture from her purse and sets it in front of me. It's a young man, about my age when I went Downtown. He's broad across the shoulders, like a football player. He has her eyes.

"This is my son. His name is Aki. It's Finnish, like his father."

"He's a nice-looking kid. But I don't know him, if that's why you're here."

"You don't know him, but he knows you. Your kind, I mean. He's Sub Rosa, just like my husband's family. Eighteen years ago we lived here, but we moved to my mother's property in Lawrence, Kansas, when Aki was born. We weren't sure we wanted him growing up here ..."

She trails off and looks around the room. A bald man in a white silk suit takes what looks like a whiskey flask from his pocket and snaps it open. Inside is damp soil and pale, gray worms. He picks a worm up by its head and blows on it. The bug straightens, and when it's rigid, the man lights one end with a cigarette lighter and smokes it.

"Aki just had his eighteenth birthday and wanted to come back to where he was born. Alone, of course. A young man wants to feel independent. How could we say no?"

A corn-fed Kansas farm boy full of b.u.mpkin magic loose in L.A., what could possibly go wrong with that?

"My husband still knows people, Sub Rosa, in the area. He asked them to keep an eye on Aki, but it's a big city. We haven't heard from him in weeks. I know he knew people out here. He was corresponding with a Sub Rosa girl. I forget her name."

"Do you have the letters with you?"

"No. They're gone. He must have taken them with him."

"Have you talked to your husband's friends?"

"None of them knows anything."

"Why are you coming to me about this?"

"I have a feeling something has happened to my son. I heard that you do things other people can't or don't want to do. There was a crime in the city earlier this year. I believe a cult was planning on sacrificing a group of kidnapped women. You stopped it."

Is that what the tabloids are saying happened now? It's annoyingly close to the truth. Couldn't they have worked in some ETs?

"Listen, Evelyn."

"How did you know my name was Evelyn?"

"Listen, Evelyn, I know you need help, but not from me. I'm not what you think I am."

"What are you?"

"I'm a monster."

I let that sink in for a second. She's a nice woman, but Ziggy really fouled my mood. I kill off the tumbler of Aqua Regia.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but if your husband really is Sub Rosa, why isn't he out here with you doing locator spells? Or echo tracing? Sloppy teenybopper magic usually leaves a fat shiny trail of residue all over the aether. Easy to follow."

"My husband is dead. It was very recent and sudden. That's why I was trying to get in touch with Aki. Now I might have lost both of them."

She looks down at the coffee cup. Her heart is slowing, but not because she's any more relaxed. My blackened arm is starting to heal. It burns and itches. I can't help this woman. I don't want to be here.

Carlos says, "I think you're getting a little ahead of yourself. Why don't you go to the cops or hire yourself a private investigator? You don't need magic for this kind of thing. And from what I've seen around here, magic doesn't really help anything. It just makes everything more confusing."

She puts her hand on my arm.

"You saved all those people. Why won't you help me?"

"Carlos is right. You need to go to the cops or hire yourself a detective. I'm not Sam Spade. That's not what I do."

"But you saved all those people."

"I didn't save anyone. I just killed the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who needed killing. Get it? I don't save good people. I murder bad ones." I wish I was saying this quietly and reasonably, but really, I'm way too loud.

Evelyn straightens and turns to ice. She puts her kid's photo back in her bag and gets up.

"I'm sorry to have taken up your valuable time."

"Wait a minute."

This time I grab her arm. I look around for someone who was here a minute ago.

"t.i.tus. Come on over here."

A whippet-thin black guy in a purple velvet suit and gla.s.ses with round, yellow-tinted lenses walks cautiously to the bar. I hold a hand out at Evelyn.

"t.i.tus, this is Evelyn. Evelyn, this is t.i.tus Eshu. t.i.tus is a Fiddler. Do you know what that is?"

"He reads objects by handling them."

"Right. He plays around with things, then tells you all about the owner. He can even use them like a divining rod. Do you have any of your son's things?"

"I have his high school cla.s.s ring."

I look at t.i.tus.

"That good enough?"

t.i.tus nods.

"It's a good start," he says to Evelyn. To me he says, "And after I do this, you're going to owe me a favor, right?"

"Right."

He smiles, takes Evelyn by the elbow, and leads her to his table.

"This way, ma'am. Let's see if we can track down your wayward child."

Carlos says, "You were a real world-cla.s.s p.r.i.c.k there for a minute. Then you turned it around right at the last second and came out sort of looking like a person."

"I've gotta get out of here."

"I'm kidding, man. You did fine with the old lady."

"No, I didn't. This is my punishment for not killing Mason. I don't know what I'm doing anymore. There's no reason for me to exist. I kill things I don't care about for people I hate. I yell at old ladies. And now I'm going to owe G.o.dd.a.m.n t.i.tus a favor."

"I'm going to wrap up this food so you can take it home with you."