Dead Things (16 page)

“You feel that?” she says.

“No, but I can see it and that’s bad enough. Get that thing away from my eyeball.”

She discards the syringe into a plastic container she pulls from the case and pushes the whole thing aside.

“Okay,” she says. “This part’s going to feel a little weird. So just relax and breathe through your mouth.”

“Like I could breathe out of my nose at this point. Jesus Christ that hurt.”

“Oh, quit your whining. You big baby.”

She slides up to my chest, looks down at me. She’s so light. We used to sleep with her on my chest, curled up like a cat. I’d barely notice.

“Close your eyes.” I do and I feel her cool hands resting lightly on my cheekbones. Through my eyelids I can see a glow and her hands become warm. I hear her hands molding the putty, feel a gentle tugging on my nose that doesn’t hurt and then another. And then a monster wrench and my whole face feels like it’s being twisted the same way the putty is.

“Keep breathing,” she says. “Told you this would feel a little weird.”

“Didn’t think you were going to go yanking my nose around like it’s Stretch Armstrong.”

“I’m almost done.” The wrenching and tugging have subsided and her hands have cooled.

“Try breathing through your nose.” I do and it’s great. Easy. Better than before.

I touch it. Still can’t feel my face. “That’s great,” I say. “I think I’m breathing better, actually.”

“You are. I fixed your deviated septum and shaved some space into the nasal cavity. Should help your snoring, too.”

“I don’t snore.”

“You sure as hell did when we were together.” I think about it, concede the point.

“Thanks,” I say.

“You’re welcome.” I open my eyes and Vivian is right there. Inches from my face, still straddling my chest, fingers still on my face. She moves a finger up and brushes a stray hair away from my eye.

I lean my face in a little, she does, too. Our eyes are locked. Another inch and I can kiss her. It’ll be just like before. Just like home.

She jerks back upright, slides off my chest and stands up. “Hey, you need to get something in you besides whisky. I’ll get you some juice and cookies. Like giving blood that way. When’s the last time you had a real meal?”

Like that the moment’s gone. And with it the feeling that home was just around the corner.

Chapter 14

Vivian orders delivery Persian food from a 24-hour place down on Westwood. I’m wolfing down my second kabob before I realize how hungry I was.

“Good stuff,” I say. “Thanks.”

She grunts something like “You’re welcome” through a mouthful of koobideh. We’ve moved back to our respective corners, the gulf between us bigger than the coffee table could ever fit. I’m sipping grape juice. The tape is off my nose and the anesthetic is starting to wear off, but besides it being a little tender my nose feels fine.

“Tabitha came back to the club after she dropped you off,” Vivian says. “About three hours after. She seemed happy. Bubbly even.” Vivian raises an eyebrow.

“She’s a positive gal.”

“I just wonder what she did in the time it took between dropping you off and her coming back. What do you think she did?”

She’s trying to pass it off as cute and it’s just irritating. It’s none of her fucking business.

“Couldn’t tell ya,” I say.

“Really? And what were you doing?”

“Called up some dead folk. We had a party. I was looking for Ellis.”

She perks up. “Did you find him?”

“Oh, yeah. And then some.” I tell her about the spell that Ellis had cast that ultimately led to his burnout. And what it means if it works and I didn’t do a thorough enough job.

“What exactly did you do to him? Boudreau? I know he died. How?”

“In a very unpleasant way. Do you really want to know?”

“Yes.”

I tell her. I tell her about taking him to the other side, about bleeding him and feeding his body to the ghosts. About his screams and the way I watched him shrivel and shrink in on himself. How he died. How I laughed. How it wasn’t nearly enough.

Her eyes go inward and she doesn’t say anything for a long time. Then, more to herself it seems than to me, she says, “Okay.” She looks at me, as though seeing me for the first time. I know I’ve lost something.

“I wish you hadn’t asked me that,” I say.

“Me, too. You’re sure you got all of him?”

“I did. There wasn’t a scrap left when they were through with him. No body, no ghost, no Boudreau. But I have to be sure.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“Try to summon him at the place he died. His old warehouse down in the harbor. Nothing’s going to come of it, I know. But I have to try. Otherwise I’ll have this nagging at me.”

“You can’t do it somewhere safer?”

“I could try, but if Ellis is right and Boudreau’s still around it means he’s different. Doing it from my hotel room might be safer, but it might not work. I want to be sure.”

“What will you do if he shows up?”

“I’m more likely to get a blowjob from the President.”

“Eric, seriously. If Boudreau is really out there and he was able to kill Lucy like that, he’s not someone to fuck around with.”

“If he killed Lucy he had to have possessed someone. Whoever was there was alive. If he shows up he’s still dead. He can’t do fuck all as long as I’m on my side and he’s on his.”

“I’m coming with you,” she says.

“Viv, you don’t need to do that. I’ll be fine.” I wiggle my nose a little with my finger. “See, new nose and everything.”

“I’m serious. You know as well as I do that shit happens, and you might need a hand. I know I’m not as powerful as you, but you’re not the only one who’s learned a thing or two over the years.”

“Okay.” I stand up, it’s after two in the morning and I’m too tired to fight her about it. “Tomorrow, eight sharp. I’ll pick you up.”

She walks me to the door. “Eight a.m.?” she says. “You still don’t sleep much, do you?”

I keep waiting to say she’ll call Alex and have him come along, but she doesn’t. I hope she’ll ask me to stay, but know she won’t.

“Sleep is for the weak. Earlier I get this handled the better.”

“I’ll be ready,” she says. She stops at the threshold. “It’s good to see you, Eric. I’ve missed you.”

“Missed you, too, Viv. Get some sleep. I’ll see you in a few hours.”

—

Vivian balks when she sees the Eldorado. She’s wearing Doc Martens, loose jeans, a t-shirt with a denim button-down shirt left open over it, sunglasses, a red and blue Angels cap.

“Is it safe?”

“Hey. This is Detroit ingenuity. We’re talking tons of good, old American steel in this thing. Get your ass in there.”

She slides into the passenger seat looking overwhelmed. The only thing keeping her from sliding across the seat to my side is the small, fold-down armrest. She taps it, pushes it a little.

“You got life preservers? I feel like I’m on a boat.”

“Everybody’s a fucking critic. Here.” I hand her a cup of coffee I stood in line twenty minutes for. “I don’t know if you’re still into lattes. Two sugars, right? With cinnamon?” Everything else has changed, why not that?

She takes a sip. I can see her trying not to make a face. “This is great, thanks.”

“Sure.” Probably drinking soy milk now.

I pull the car out onto the parking lot that is Wilshire Boulevard. Drum my fingers on the steering wheel. I should say something. About last night. About my leaving. About her and Alex. I don’t.

“You like doing the doctor thing?” I say.

“Yeah,” she says. “Makes me feel like I’m doing something. Making things better. How many of us do that?”

“By us do you mean people in general or people like you and me?”

“You and me. Alex. Magic doesn’t make it better. It makes us lazy and selfish.”

“We’re not that bad,” I say, for some reason feeling defensive. “Not all of us.”

She looks at the Caddy’s empty ignition slot. I pulled the screwdriver out the night before. “When’s the last time you saw the key for this monster?”

“Never. Stole it from a guy I killed in Texas last week.” I sit there slack-jawed for a second. Did I just say that out loud? Vivian stares at me in horror, pulls back in on herself.

“It’s not like that,” I say. “He was a really bad man. Really. He was kidnapping children and doing really nasty things to them. Honest.” I leave out the fact that they weren’t human. Or strictly alive.

“Children?”

“It’s a long story,” I say.

“I don’t want to hear it.” She’s shaken, but she doesn’t push.

I try to get the conversation back on track. “I just made your point for you, didn’t I? About magic.”

“A little more extremely than I’d meant, but kind of, yeah.”

“Okay, what about Alex? Does it make him lazy and selfish, too?”

She looks away out the window. “That’s different.”

“Different? He runs a bar and sells bottled demon piss. You honestly think he’s selling that stuff to philanthropists?”

“Okay. Yes, he makes my point, too. But he’s a good guy. He takes care of his employees. He took care of Lucy.”

My fingers tighten on the steering wheel. “Yeah. I heard.” We drive in silence for a few minutes.

“Before I left,” I say, “Alex was running short cons at gas stations and doing street magic to gather a crowd so he could lift people’s wallets. What happened?”

“Your parents happened.”

“Excuse me?”

“Come on, Eric, we don’t have a community. We’re a bunch of selfish, narcissistic assholes. We get a little power and we want more. Fuck the other guy. Your parents weren’t like that. They tried to pull people together, not tear them apart. You were too busy being a self-centered prick to notice. Maybe you didn’t pick up on that lesson, but Alex did.”

“They weren’t saints, Viv,” I say, but my words don’t have much conviction.

“None of us are. But they knew they had power to make a difference. Why do you think Boudreau went after them the way he did? They were a threat to his power base. God, you can be so dense, sometimes.”

“That why you became a doctor?” I say, hoping we can get off this line of discussion. I’ve got enough on my plate without thinking about it.

She snorts a laugh. “Like it’s that simple. No,” she says, “not quite.”

“Okay,” I say after a moment. “I’ll bite. Why then?”

“I was already pretty good at patching you up,” she says. “And I’d been thinking about it a while. But what really cinched it was my mom got brain cancer a couple years after you took off. I couldn’t do anything about it. She was gone in a few months.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. I had no idea and it hadn’t even occurred to me to ask. Vivian’s father had died when she was a kid before I met her. I never got to know her mom very well. But I know they were close.

She waves it off. “That was a long time ago,” she says. I don’t have anything to say to that. We drive the rest of the way in silence.

Chapter 15

The Port of Los Angeles sits on the edge of an industrial pit called Wilmington that stinks of diesel, burnt oil and dead dreams. Everything’s covered in a layer of soot from fuel depots, docking ships and refineries. The roads are pocked with holes like war-torn Europe.

We pull off the 110 at Anaheim and head south to the docks. Outside the gates I pull off a few nametags from the roll in the glovebox and write GRAY HONDA CIVIC TOTALLY NOT A CADILLAC on one, slap it on the outside of the windshield.

Then THE GUY WHO’S SUPPOSED TO BE HERE on another for me and one for Viv that reads HOT, VAGUE LOOKING CHICK WHOSE CHEST YOU KEEP LOOKING AT. She glares at me but puts it on anyway. I say charms over all three and feel the disguises settle over them.

“What are you doing?” she says.

I let my eyes stay firmly fixed to her chest. “Just following instructions.”

She laughs and hits me. “Jackass.”

“Never claimed to be anything but.”

The bored looking security guards wave us through, giving Vivian an appreciative glance that turns into confusion as they can’t quite recall what she looks like. We drive between rows of red and blue shipping containers stacked stories high like city blocks made of Lego bricks, even taller cranes standing above them. We pass trucks, longshoremen loading or unloading them.

The last time I saw the warehouse the front was on fire and I had a car stuck through the doorway. I never got a good look at the inside. Just enough to grab Boudreau and drag his ass outside.

It looks pretty much the same. Long, free-standing building. A few stories high with massive air conditioning machinery on the roof. Stacks of boxcars sit lined up like cordwood along the sides. Waiting to be loaded, unloaded, used all over again.

I pull up behind a stack of shipping containers far enough away to hopefully not grab much attention and close enough to bug out fast if we have to. Then I realize where I’ve parked.

I reach over Vivian, open the glove box. I pull the Browning, try to ignore her stare.

“What the hell is that?” she says.

“It’s a gun.”

“Noticed that,” she says. “Why do you have it?”

“I told you this might be dangerous.”

“I know,” she says. “I just want to get a feel for how dangerous.” She unzips her knapsack, pulls out a holstered SIG Sauer P220 Compact. Racks the slide, thumbs the safety off. It’s a small gun with a lot of punch.

“Alex buy that for you?”

“I bought it myself. Alex hates guns.” She glares at me, throws her door open and gets out. “And fuck you for thinking that.” She slams the door as punctuation.

I follow her out of the car. Was a time she hated guns, too. I suppress the urge to ask her if she knows how to shoot it. She might decide to show me. I turn my attention to the warehouse.

“What?” Vivian says.

“Sorry?”

“You’ve got this look on your face like a dog trying to figure out physics.”

“Just thinking. Looks different in the daytime.” And when it’s not on fire with a burning Toyota jammed through the front.