Chapter 17 – Jack #2
“I don’t know. I assume everyone in the supernatural community, such as it is, already knows that Rosalie’s dead.” But when I thought back on what kind of life Luna must have led, at Rosalie’s beck and call . . . “She probably knows where a lot of bodies are buried. Literally.”
“But why wouldn’t they just kill her where she was? Break her neck and make it look like an accident?” Paco guessed, looking around the strange car we were in. “I assumed Betty was totaled?”
“Yeah,” I said. “And so was I.” I put a hand to my skull where I’d taken the worst of it, hitting my steering wheel.
A flickering frown crossed his face, I saw it in the rearview, but I wasn’t sure I could safely associate it with any positive emotion.
“When I woke up, it was pushing dawn, and she was gone.”
“And when was that?”
“Just this morning.” I skimmed everything else, and told him about finding Sam on my couch, and what I’d traded her for the little bone weapon, then wrung the steering wheel as I took the exit for Vermillion.
“And if I knew anyone else who could help me, I promise I would’ve used them first. It’s just that there’s no one else—and you’re you. ”
“Yeah,” he said, drumming his fingers on the passenger door’s windowsill. “I guess now I’m me,” he said, as I put the car into park.
I tried not to notice the way he slammed the door behind himself—and I cursed when I realized how full the parking lot was. It was early in the night, and Vermillion was warming up.
But Maya’s trusty bouncer noticed me and waved us right on through, and a girl came up to get us shortly—Zevvi, again, in a red pleather bustier she was about to fall out of and black shorts so short they showed the luscious lower curves of her ass.
“I’m still mad at you,” she told me, while indicating that we should follow her.
“Join the club,” I told her, while Paco gave us both dark looks.
She led us back to Rosalie’s old office, which made my hackles rise, until I realized Maya had entirely redone the place—it wouldn’t have been out of place in a Forbes magazine.
“Welcome,” she said, waving us both in, sitting down herself across from us behind a desk, in a plush leather chair that looked like a throne, all the more so because she was in a slinky evening gown and her long red hair was done up.
“I didn’t think I’d see you again here in this lifetime,” she said to Paco.
“Me either,” he agreed, then chose the seat that had its back to the wall, not the door.
I didn’t care about being in danger at the moment. If someone killed me right now, they might be doing me a favor.
“All right,” I said, slumping down into the third chair. “You said you could help if I brought him. He’s here, so let’s go.” I dragged my chair up.
“Right to business as usual,” she said, trailing fingertips across the top of her desk. “There’s just the small matter of my fee from the both of you.”
“Fucking hell, Maya,” I said, while Paco leaned forward with a snort, putting his elbows on his knees in a business-like fashion.
“We do outnumber you currently,” he pointed out.
“In here, maybe. But not outside,” she said with a wide fake smile. “Plus, you two are hampered by morals and compunction. My lot are . . . not.”
Paco eyed her, his gaze as steady and unreadable as a snake’s. “I don’t think you know shit about my morals, lady.”
Her lips pursed a little. “That might actually be true. Still, though,” she said, tapping long painted nails against her cheek as she squinted at him. “Magic always costs something.”
“You want my firstborn or my kidney?” I said, trying to interrupt their standoff, as my phone buzzed. I whipped it out and found a text from Sam.
Seeing some strange Rojo behavior in the field here.
I put my phone on Maya’s desk and shoved it over, screen up so she could see. “Whether you like it or not, I think this problem still concerns you.”
Maya gave a beleaguered sigh, and said “Fine, fuck it” before jerking her chin at Paco. “He’ll pay.”
“Why not me?” I protested.
“Because if you die doing dumb shit, me holding your punch card’s no good.
” I inhaled to protest as she continued.
“Right now you look like you need to concentrate on breathing, Jack, and I should make you wear a bag when you get escorted back out, so you don’t scare off customers.
” She ripped open a desk drawer and started rummaging inside, then pulled up a chain with a dangling green gemstone, beginning to offer it over, before taking it back.
“You’d better return this when you’re through.
It’s worth more than your”—she scanned us both, before settling her eyes on Paco’s wrist—“watch. And more than anything you possibly own,” she told me, with an eyeroll.
“Thank you,” I said dryly, and snatched it up from her. “How do we make it work?”
“Have loverboy there bleed some on it, and then think about Luna real hard. Without puking,” she added cattily. “It should swing in her direction—it’s got a dowsing spell embedded in it.”
“And the cost?” Paco asked.
“Just a simple ceremony we’ll have to perform together in the future, to juice it back up again.”
“Which will involve?” he pressed, far better at doing contract negotiation than I ever was.
“You and me in a dark room, forty or so candles, a bottle of lube, and a penchant for experimentation.”
“I don’t sleep with women,” Paco growled.
Maya gave him a slightly baffled look, clearly playing the innocent ingenue that the men in the strip club beyond wanted to see. “Who said anything about sleeping?”
I watched Paco’s jaw ground, and assumed this entire plan was crashing and burning, but then he surprised me by enunciating “Fuck. The both. Of you” very clearly, and before biting his own thumb to blood.
The scent of his blood was still familiar to me, and it made me salivate without thinking. Even though my hunger knew we couldn’t feed from Paco now, he was still him, and years of Pavlovian training wouldn’t go away overnight.
I handed the gemstone over, and he milked a few drops onto its faceted surface, which the stone seemed to absorb, going cloudy inside.
He put his still-bleeding thumb to his mouth after that, such a human gesture it made me ache, and swung the stone by its chain in his free hand.
It spiraled in the air and then pulled ever so slightly east, just a centimeter off from center, back to the center of town.
“Ta-dah!” Maya announced, standing up. “All right, then. I’d wish you all good luck, but I honestly don’t care what the fuck happens to that bitch, other than a bit of morbid yet entirely professional curiosity.
Report back, and even if that thing only leads you to her corpse, remember that you owe me,” she said brightly, before giving Paco fraternity bro-style finger guns with a wink. “No take backs!”
He didn’t deign to answer her as he stood back up.
Paco pocketed the gemstone, and I followed him outside, where we found ourselves chased down by Zevvi. “Hey! My keys!” she said, trotting after us in entirely precipitous heels.
I groaned. “Please, Zevvi?” I asked her, but her full red lips pulled into a frowning pout.
“No, Jack, I’m sorry. You’re going to go get into trouble.
I’ve been doing this long enough; I’ve got a second sense about these sorts of things,” she said, twirling a hand around her head and indicating Vermillion’s well-lit sign behind her.
“I already need to get your blood out of the upholstery from this morning, most likely.”
“I was pretty done bleeding by then,” I muttered—but she probably wasn’t wrong, and she’d already helped enough. I handed her keys over, letting them drop into her waiting hand.
“Thanks,” she said, smiling tightly. “Whatever it is you’re off to do, stay safe, all right?” she asked, backing up. She pointed between us. “That goes for both of you.”
“We’ll try,” I said, waving her off.
Paco and I both watched her go back into Vermillion, and then he eyed me coolly. “You realize I had a car at the club I was at, right?” he asked.
“Yeah, no,” I said with a shrug, pulling my phone out to summon us up a ride.
“We’re going to go defeat evil in an Uber, is what you’re saying?”
I summoned up the dregs of my strength to give him a winning smile. “Apparently.”
He blew air through pursed lips at me and rolled his eyes.
Another long uncomfortable silence passed between us, while I watched our upcoming driver and their Kia Sorrento cruise closer on the map.
He pulled the stone back out, and while it swayed slightly when he shifted his stance, it stayed pulling to one side.
“So that was your blood I smelled in the Volvo earlier then?”
I shrugged without answering. “I wasn’t aware you knew the scent.”
“This week’s been full of a lot of firsts for me.”
“I bet,” I said, then more foolishly added, “The Faithful told me you’d been living clean.”
His eyes narrowed again at that. “You’ve been spying on me?”
“Settle the fuck down, they spy on everyone. I think.” I turned towards him. “Although, yeah, it would’ve been nice to know, well, anything. I was worried about you.”
“I should’ve sent you a picture postcard? From the other side of town?” he asked, as his eyebrows shot up. “Hi Jack, having fun fucking without you, glad you’re not here?”
“Fuck,” I cursed, stepping forward to impale myself on whatever argument was seemingly required for us to possibly achieve sanity on the other side of it. But then my screen flashed and the driver was near.
The man looked between the two of us, me sitting in the front seat, and Paco in the back, and the place he’d picked us up. “Short night out, eh?” he asked.
“Not short enough,” Paco said, and fastened his seatbelt.