The Getaway God (21 page)

Wells goes around his desk and sits in his leather executive chair. I'm betting he's not getting comfortable, but positioning himself so he's in reaching distance of his Glock.

“Based on what evidence?”

“Don't talk to me like you don't know Stark. Living in Hell. Playing the Devil. It's driven him insane. Don't forget that a few months ago he broke into the Augur's home and threatened him.”

I look at Ishii.

“And I saved his wife and him from Aelita. How did he die?”

Ishii raises a righ­teous finger.

“Don't play detective, like you're investigating a crime you don't know about. It was a Saint Nick killing. You have a history of cutting ­people up, don't you? Story is, you cut off a friend's head and still have it in your house.”

Wells picks up a pen and puts it back in the holder on the edge of his desk.

“We know all about his relationship with Aldous Kasabian. Do you have any actual evidence that Stark was at the murder scene?”

Ishii takes a plastic evidence bag from his pocket and drops it on the desk.

“We found this.”

Wells has a look and hands it to me. It's the torn edge of a receipt from Max Overdrive. There's a mark on it like it was stuck to the bottom of someone's shoe. Or marked to look that way.

I say, “Seriously? You think I wouldn't check myself over before running off to kill the king of the Sub Rosa?”

“Blackburn told me that he was afraid for his family's safety,” says Ishii. “He invited you over and a ­couple of days later he's dead and this is at the scene. You can't dismiss that.”

I look at Wells. He's the sphinx. I don't get anything from him at all.

“I was there for him to offer me your job, asshole,” I say, and wait for Wells to reprimand me. He's doesn't, which can't mean anything good. “What does Tuatha think? Does she think I'm Saint Nick?”

Ishii takes back his evidence bag.

“She's distraught. She doesn't know what to think.”

“Meaning she doesn't think it was me. You've always had it in for me and now's your chance to prove you're the investigator to the stars.”

Wells looks at me, then at Ishii.

“Is it true that Blackburn offered Stark a job?”

“According to him.”

“Ask Tuatha,” I say. “She was there.”

“Where did the murder take place?” says Wells.

“In his office at home,” Ishii says.

“What time?”

Ishii pulls out his phone and checks a note.

“The doctors say yesterday between eight and eleven. The necromancers say closer to ten.”

Wells shakes his head. Leans back in his chair.

“Then it wasn't Stark. He was with my team on official Vigil business all morning. Sorry, Mr. Ishii, but you're looking at the wrong man.”

Ishii closes in on Wells's desk, stabbing the top with his finger.

“No, I'm not. Saint Nick is clearly working with powerful magic forces. Stark is an accomplished magician. He could be fooling all of us. Played with time. Killed from a distance. Or possessed someone to kill for him.”

Wells leans forward, glancing at the fingerprints Ishii left on his pristine desk.

“I have a dozen accomplished magicians on my staff. Not all of them are pleasant ­people. Personality defects seem endemic among the Sub Rosa. But it doesn't make them killers.”

“Maybe it was you, Audsley,” I say. “You knew your days with Blackburn were numbered, so you flipped out and killed him by mistake. Maybe you're the thing that was making him nervous for his safety. Then you go Jack the Ripper on the corpse to make it look like Saint Nick.”

“That's an interesting point,” says Wells. “Blackburn was a scryer. Why wouldn't he have seen who was coming after him or the time of the attack?”

Ishii gives me a look.

“More proof that it would take a very powerful magician to hide both his identity and his intentions from the Augur.”

Wells nods.

“And you just said that Saint Nick was a powerful magician.”

Now Ishii shoots Wells a death-­beam look.

“I have the entire Sub Rosa board on my side. If you don't arrest Stark right now, I can't guarantee his safety.”

Wells stands up and comes around his desk.

“You let me worry about his safety. And his criminal tendencies. Now, if you'll excuse us, we have a lot of work to do.”

He goes to the door and holds it open. Ishii doesn't move.

“The chief of police is with us, Stark. There's nowhere you can hide in L.A.”

I look at him for a minute.

“What size uniform do you wear? After your bang-­up job protecting Blackburn, I'm picturing your next gig as a rent-­a-­cop guarding a Denny's in Fresno.”

“That's it,” says Wells. “Stark, you shut up. Mr. Ishii, thank you for the sad news about the Augur's passing and your concerns about his death. The Vigil will do whatever it can to aid in the investigation.”

I know Ishii wants to say something more, but Wells looks like he's one deep breath from pepper-­spraying the guy. Ishii turns and leaves.

Wells goes back to his desk. Takes out a handkerchief and wipes off Ishii's prints.

I say, “You finally convinced I'm not Saint Nick?”

“Not by that scene,” Wells says.

He takes a print out from a manila envelope on his desk. It's a drawing. A crude map.

“Washington convinced me you're innocent. Their psychics are sure they've tracked down Saint Nick and he's not where you're standing.”

“Where is he?”

Wells turns the drawing around. I was right. It's a map, probably drawn by one of the psychics. A long street dotted with what look like office towers.

“He's in the Pickman Building on Wilshire. They don't know if he's a guest or a prisoner, but they're sure he's there on the top floor.”

He points to a building marked with a crude star, like something someone would draw while in a trance.

“You're going to go and get him,” says Wells.

I look at the map. The mark looks like it's around the corner of Wilshire and South Robertson.

“Why me?”

“Because you're good at getting in and out of places. You're going to use that power for something useful and end this maniac's run once and for all.”

“Do you have anything more than this map? It's pretty, but office buildings tend to have a lot of rooms in them.”

Wells shows me another drawing with a room marked on the top floor of a ten-­story building.

“We know right where he is. And you won't be going in alone. An agent from our special operations team will be going with you.”

“I'm not Saint Nick, but you still don't trust me.”

“You're right, I don't,” he says. “But this isn't a matter of trust. It's a matter of skills, which the agent has. Also, it's a matter of judgment. Like what happened in the Shonin's room today.”

I push the drawing back across the table.

“Do I get to meet Derek Flint before the job?”

“You already know her,” says Wells. “Julie Sola. Why do you think I wanted her back on the team? She was just a rookie in the ser­vice, but she was experienced in special operations for an agency you don't need to know about.”

So that's why she was with Vidocq. Probably picking up a few last minutes of B&E tips.

“When do we leave?”

“Tonight. Marshal Sola has sketched out a good plan. She'll get you up to speed later.”

“Shouldn't we go over things now?”

“She has work to do first. And nothing you're doing is complicated. You're just there to get her through any doors she can't breach herself.”

“I can probably do this whole thing myself in ten minutes.”

“Or blow it in one. The plan is already in motion. Be back here at midnight.”

I leave Wells's office and walk around looking for Sola and Vidocq, but can't find them. Not a bad day all in all. I saw Ishii tossed out on his ass. I'm cleared of being Saint Nick. And I got to sucker-­punch a demon.

Armed guards stand around the entrance to the Shonin's room as movers take out the wrecked furniture and bring in new. I've always been in such a hurry to get inside I never noticed that he's hung mistletoe over the door.

I
RIDE THE
Hellion hog home from the Vigil compound through wet, empty streets. The rain beats down hard today. Fat drops the size of quarters. I rev the engine and speed the hog down Hollywood Boulevard, sending mini-tidal waves onto the sidewalk.

Under a dead streetlight, someone has broken the front windows of a Gap store. A few kids run away with jeans and a ­couple of cops load armfuls of stuff into the back of their squad car. A whole deserted city for the taking and they're stealing Dockers.

I run the bike into the alley behind Max Overdrive and throw the cover on top, though I'm not sure why at this point. What's to keep dry anymore? We're living in an open-­air aquarium. Everyone and everything is wet inside and out. Soon we'll grow gills and fins. We'll swim out into the California Current and let it carry us down to Baja, where we'll live off cheap cerveza and krill. Until someone decides our bones make good soup. Then we'll head out to sea, into the deep, deep water where transparent creatures, so long in the dark they're born blind, skulk along the ocean floor waiting for us to tire out or die or just give up. We'll drift down to the bottom of the world, food for things that have never dreamed of land or humans or the Angra. Will we be happy then? Primordial shit in a volcanic trench older than God's jodhpurs? I doubt it. We'll just get absorbed by something else and fed up the food chain again until we're back on land, food for the God or Gods that marooned us here in the first place. And we'll start the whole thing again. Our only consolation is that maybe in the new world, the studios will have more sense and no one will green-­light
Battlefield Earth
. That would be worth coming back for.

I go in through the side door. I can feel the wrongness of the place even before I see it. Discs are scattered all over the floor. A display case is knocked over and another one is torn to pieces. Kasabian's door looks like it was ripped off its hinges. Screams come from his room.

The lights are off, but I can see someone on top of him. I grab whoever it is by the collar and throw them as hard as I can out the door. They slam into the floor, slide, and bang into the far wall hard enough to leave a dent.

It isn't until she gets to her knees that I recognize her. It's Candy. She's gone full Jade. I've never seen her so far gone before. Her skin has gone almost obsidian and her nails are curved back into claws. She growls, showing a mouthful of white shark teeth. Her eyes are red slits in black ice. She's sweating and blood drips from her mouth where she bit herself.

I shout, “Candy. It's me. Stop.”

She charges and hits me square in the chest, knocking me onto my back. She's ridiculously strong in this form, and as vicious as an Eater. All teeth and madness. Candy's teeth are bad enough, but then she stretches her mouth open like a snake, exposing needle-­thin fangs she uses to inject the Jades' necrotizing poison.

Candy's my girl, but I don't want to die and I don't want anyone drinking me when I do. But this isn't her fault. She's fucked up and I don't want to punch her out.

I bark some Hellion and she flies off me like ghosts playing horseshoes. She's up a second later and charging me again.

I grab her, wrapping my arms and legs around her. Still, it's all I can do to hold on. I bark a sleeping hex into her ear. She slows down. Her eyes close. Then I feel her body tense again as she fights her way through it, snarling and clawing at me again.

She braces her feet on the ground and pushes back against me, freeing one leg. It's enough to wriggle a leg, then a hand free. She drags her claws down my arm, shredding my coat and skin.

I yell, “Candy. Stop.”

She bites my wrist down to the bone. I grab her again and shout more Hellion. Something harder and worse than sleep.

She lets go of my wrist, shaking violently. Every muscle in her body going rigid. Her eyes go wide and her lips draw back from her teeth in a painful grimace. She's having a seizure. A kind of hoodoo epilepsy. But even with every muscle in her body locked in place, she's still fighting. I push her off me, but hold on to her.

“Kasabian. You all right?”

He comes to his door like a groundhog afraid of the light.

“I'm okay. What the fuck is going on?”

“I'll tell you when I know.”

I pick her up, slipping in some blood from my wrist. When I get my footing, I carry her through a shadow to the clinic.

The clinic is as empty as the streets. Fairuza sees us coming and yells for Allegra. She comes out of the exam room.

“My God. What's wrong?”

“Look at her. She's full Jade.”

Allegra comes over and looks at Candy. Checks her forehead. Pushes up her eyelids.

“This doesn't make sense. I just gave her the potion.”

I carry Candy into the exam room and put her on the table.

“Could something be wrong with it?”

“I made it myself.”

“Check it anyway.”

Allegra calls to Fairuza.

“Get me the skullcap sedative.”

Fairuza opens a cabinet and paws through bottles. When she finds the sedative, she hands it to Allegra. I'll give Allegra points for brave. She sticks her hand into Candy's mouth and pries her jaws open enough to pour the potion into. It's green and smells of licorice like it has an absinthe base.

When Candy starts to relax, I speak Hellion to clear the hex. Her muscles unknot and her jaw drops open. In less than a minute, she's back to being Candy.

Allegra looks at me.

“We're going to have to restrain her until we know what's happened.”