Harvest Moon (31 page)

“It's not sexual. It's therapeutic.”

“It's not very therapeutic, either, because it's never going to happen. What else you got?”

“You can pick up my dry cleaning.”

“You live in a Zenith.”

“For the moment. When I gain my freedom, I'll be able to take physical form. I prefer my shirts starched and pressed.”

“Okay, I can do that.”

“Then we have a—”

“Wait! I'll pick up your dry cleaning
once
.” Like a wireless provider, Mr. Clean is always angling to trap me in an open-ended service agreement.

Mr. Clean grunted. “What I've already told you is worth more than that. You will perform this service ten times, at my request.”

“Three.”

“Ten.”

“Five.”

“Ten.”

“Done,” I said, thankful there were no witnesses to my negotiating skills. “Give it to me. What is Sam?”

“His real name is Samael.”

“Never heard of him.”

“The Angel of Death.”

I'd been wisecracking with the “life of my firstborn” bit, but it turned out I was right on the money. “Benny Ben-Reuven called in a fucking angel to hit me? He doesn't have the juice…didn't have the juice…whatever.”

Mr. Clean shrugged. “Your victim believed this entity was Samael, the Angel of Death. Whether it actually is that being, or whether any such being actually exists…there may be a definitive answer to this question, but it is not one that hairless apes are given to know, even those who play at magic tricks.”

“That was an insult, wasn't it?”

“Yeah.”

“Sticks and stones, Smokey. Your theory still doesn't explain how Benny was able to bring in that kind of hitter. He wasn't much of a sorcerer. He tried to cap me, for fuck's sake. With a gun.”

“This was a death curse.”

“Yeah?”

“You were in the process of murdering this man. You were taking all he was and all he would ever be. That's a lot of juice, even for one with little talent for sorcery. He took that power, before you could, and he used it to summon this being.”

“Damn, I need something like that.”

“I could teach you a death curse. It would be costly.”

“How costly?”

“The massage would have a Happy Ending.”

“Oh, hell, no. Tell me how I get out from under this thing.”

“You don't.”

“I don't?”

“No. You can't weasel your way out of it. The contract was paid in blood. Ben-Reuven purchased your death with his own.”

“What an asshole.”

“You're hardly in a position to throw stones.” Mr. Clean shrugged. “All's fair in love and black magic.”

“Okay, I can't get away from the contract. What are my other options, assuming I'm not interested in dying?”

“What do you offer for this knowledge?”

“I'm already picking up your laundry five times.”

“It's ten, and anyway, that was payment for the identity of your assassin. If you would know how to stop Samael, you must offer some further service. It had better be good.”

My life was on the line and I figured it was time to make the jinn my best offer. “Rashan runs some massage parlors,” I said, choking down the nausea that rose in my stomach. “I'll hook you up.” The parlors were
juice boxes, arcane dens fronting for sex-magic rituals. But despite this secret purpose—or rather because of it—they were also the place to go in L.A. for a world-class rub-and-tug.

“Done!” Mr. Clean said with an unwholesome gleam in his eye.

“Okay, Desperado, make with the knowledge. How do I stop Samael?”

“If this entity truly is Samael, the Angel of Death, you're boned, to use the popular vernacular.”

“That vernacular really isn't popular anymore.”

“Do you want to hear this?”

“Yeah.”

“You do not have the power to defeat one of the Host, and Samael—the real Samael—is a badass even by the standards of the Seraphim.”

“What if he's not a real angel?”

“Then you can simply kill him.”

“But if he is a real angel, he'll wipe the floor with me.”

Mr. Clean glowered. “Your surfeit of intellectual capacity is truly remarkable.”

“I was smart enough to put you in that box.”

“The point is,” Mr. Clean growled, “if this entity is truly Samael, he must follow the rules. He will not take your life until three days have passed. Even if you try to kill him.”

“So I get a free shot at him,” I said, nodding. “If he's a poseur, maybe I take him out. If he's the real deal, no harm no foul. He still has to wait until the stars are right.”

“The moon, actually.”

“That's actually pretty clever, Snowball.”

“It goes without saying.”

“Fine, next time I won't say it. So what's my first move?”

Mr. Clean's eyes grew wide momentarily, and then he sighed. “I suggest you develop a plan of attack on your own. It would be a tactical error for me to advise you on this.”

“Why's that? You want your Happy Ending or not?”

Sam's head popped up behind Mr. Clean and he grinned at me over the jinn's shoulder. “Because if you keep running that pretty mouth, I'll know exactly what you're planning to do.”

 

I switched off the Zenith and unplugged it for good measure, and then I went into the bathroom to grab a shower. I didn't like the idea of Sam popping in for one of his unannounced visits, but I also didn't like the idea of spending the next three days with that not-so-fresh feeling. Besides, I do some of my best thinking in the shower.

Sam's appearance in Mr. Clean's TV didn't exactly inspire confidence in my plan. If nothing else, the stunt made it clear that even if he wasn't a real angel, Sam might still be able to take me to school. Hell, maybe he already had taken me to school when he introduced himself out in the desert. My circle hadn't seemed to bother him much. The truth was, I didn't know a lot about spirits or what they were capable of. I'd only ever summoned the one, Mr. Clean, and that had mostly been an accident. And besides, so far the results of that play were decidedly mixed.

Other than the jinn, I'd never given much thought to spirits. For that matter, even my own sorcery didn't
involve a lot of knowledge. I'd always been able to use magic, and even though Rashan had showed me how to improve my command of it back in the day, I didn't really know how or why it worked. For a sorcerer, I knew fuck-all about the supernatural.

I did have my spellcraft, though, and I knew a fair amount of necromancy, including the spell that would return a dead soul to the Beyond, the one I'd used to deal with the pedophile I'd killed when I was a girl. Problem was, I didn't think Sam was a spirit of the dead. Whatever he was—assuming he wasn't the Angel of Death, I mean—he was probably something more akin to Mr. Clean.

I was a gangster, so I did know a thing or two about doing a hit. The key to doing it right was control. You control the situation, the environment, and the timing, and you control the target. Everything that happens or doesn't happen, it's because that's the way you want it. No surprises, no loose ends. The trick was going to be achieving that level of control when I didn't know exactly what Sam was or what he could do. They say a player can only play the cards she's dealt.

They only say that because they don't know how to cheat.

 

When I showed up at the shop, my mechanic told me he couldn't find anything wrong with the Lincoln. I paid him for his trouble, made a couple stops, and then drove east out of the city as the sun set in my rearview mirror.

If there's a list of common mistakes criminals make, returning to the scene of the crime is probably at the top of it. Right up there with leaving your wallet under
the body. Still, I had work to do and you could say I was up against a deadline. The cops had a hard-on for me about Mark of Mark's Garage out of Palm Springs, but I doubted they knew anything about the late Benny Ben-Reuven. At least, I hoped Samael hadn't gotten around to telling them about it yet.

The Angel of Death—or whatever he was—joined me in the passenger seat after about an hour of highway time.

“This isn't going to work,” he said.

“What isn't going to work?”

Samael turned around and looked at the TV sitting on the backseat. He grabbed the plastic bag and removed the item I'd picked up from the dollar store. It was a plastic angel statuette.

“This doesn't look anything like me,” Samael said. The plastic angel had long blond hair, molded wings, white robes, and a yellow harp and halo.

“Why should it? That's an angel. You're just some wannabe bogeyman Benny juiced up out of the desert.”

“Why do you need your pet devil?” Samael asked, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

“Mr. Clean's not a devil. He's just some wannabe bogeyman
I
juiced up out of the desert.”

Samael chuckled. “You're sure about that?”

“He's a jinn.”

“You say jinn, I say devil…” Samael shrugged.

“Well, if you think he's a devil, I'll count that as a point in his favor.”

Samael nodded. “So what's he for?”

“He keeps me company.”

“You didn't need his company before, when you brought Benny out here to murder him.”

“Well, I had Benny to keep me company that time, didn't I?”

“Only on the trip out,” said Samael. “Speaking of Benny, who takes over his crew now that you've killed him?”

“I've got someone in mind. Don't worry your pretty little head about it.”

“Carmen Leeds? You were planning to bring her in from Amy Chen's crew, weren't you?”

I looked over at Samael and scowled. “Like I said, don't worry about it.”

“Thing is, I don't think that's going to work out.” The frown of mock concern on his face made me want to shoot him. “See, someone must have tipped off Benny's crew, and I guess they didn't like the idea too much. Seems Jefferson Alexander figured he was next in line.”

Jefferson Alexander was something of a minority in the underworld, in the sense that he wasn't a minority. He was a waspy Pasadena kid from old money—at least old by Southern California standards. People from privileged backgrounds didn't usually find their way into the underworld. I had no reason to think rich white kids couldn't have juice—it seemed to be completely random. But magic happened on the margins of society, and privilege had a way of keeping you safely away from the margins.

Whatever the case, Alexander had the sense of entitlement common to his ilk, so it didn't surprise me he felt he deserved a bump. The truth was, though, while he probably had at least as much juice as Benny, he didn't have much of a way with people. The guys in the outfit couldn't stand him, and that included most of his own crew. It also included me.

“Alexander maybe won't like it, but he'll accept it when I tell him how it is.” I wasn't sure if I was saying this for Samael's benefit or my own.

“You think so? Then why did he put a bullet in Leeds's ear and leave her duct taped to an office chair in that chop shop on Edgehill?”

I slammed on the brakes and jerked the car to the side of the road. The Lincoln's tires squealed and it overshot the shoulder, raising a cloud of dust as it shuddered to a halt.

I turned and grabbed Samael by the throat. “What did you do, motherfucker?”

Samael grinned and didn't even try to escape my grip. “I didn't have to do much,” he said. “Honestly, I could have done it myself and made it look like Alexander's work, but that wasn't necessary. He really wanted to do it. Ugly business. Murder comes so easily to you people.”

I released my hold on Samael, for the time being, and called Chavez. This time, I got a signal. He hadn't heard anything about Leeds, so I told him to send some of his soldiers to the chop shop. Then I turned back to Samael. He'd gone back into the plastic bag and pulled out the book I'd bought at an occult store in Hollywood. It was titled
The Angel of Death
, by Friedrich von Junzt.

“You picked up a biography,” he said, flipping through the pages. “I didn't know you were such a fan.”

“Before, I was just planning to smoke you,” I said. “But I can do a lot worse. If you've done something to Leeds, I'm going to let my imagination run wild.”

Samael laughed. “What are you going to do? Put me in a TV and make me answer stupid questions?”

That hit a little too close to the mark. I slammed the
car into gear and left some rubber on the shoulder as I pulled back onto the highway.

“So what did you read about me?” Samael asked.

“Nothing much. Sometimes I have trouble falling asleep.”

“Nightmares? I suppose that's one of the hazards of your line of work.”

I wasn't real interested in therapy, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to see if I could get some information. Samael seemed like the kind of guy who wanted to talk about himself.

“Actually, I learned a lot. Too much. Seems there are a lot of contradictory stories about Samael.”

“Such as?”

“Okay, so maybe he's the Angel of Death. But maybe he's Satan. Or maybe an archangel. Or a fallen angel, or…what was it you called Mr. Clean? Oh, yeah, a devil. Maybe he's just another small-time devil. Seems the ancient world was lousy with them.”

Samael grinned. “And what's your theory?”

“In the stories, there's a lot of different takes on what he is. Sometimes good, sometimes evil, but always a pain in the ass.”

“I've gotta be me.”

“And the way I see it, none of it really matters. Whatever you are—whether or not you're really this cat in the stories—I'm still going to put you down.”