Trickster (21 page)

I thought of Daryl and reminded myself that we were going to let him off the hook in a few hours.

I looked over at the kid. He was standing a few feet from Claire, hands jammed into his pockets, his face dark and pensive as he stole glances at her. He
looked fourteen. Like he was at that first high school dance again, awkward and terrified and angry all at the same time, because the cute girls were ignoring him. I thought there was a fifty-fifty chance he would end the day in tears.

“If I wanted to come back here tonight,” Claire said in a low, flat voice, “and burn this fucking place down, would you help?”

She meant it. I remembered the detectives’ car, back in New York, fishtailing, the brake lights dancing. She would do it.

I heard the Head Freak behind me. “Mr. Vonnegan,” he said. “Master Gottschalk welcomes you. Please, follow me.”

I turned around to find him smiling, and he beckoned to us. Using my name was a cheap trick, but I appreciate cheap tricks.

I turned and leaned into Daryl. “Claire wants you to wait here with the truck. Don’t let anyone steal it.”

He frowned. “I want to stick by her. Keep her safe.”

“Claire wants you to stay with the truck.”

After a second, he looked at Claire. Stared at her until she finally sighed unhappily and looked back at him.

“Stay with the goddamn truck,” she said. Paused a heartbeat. “Please.”

He shrugged, suddenly nonchalant. “Sure, okay.”

We followed the Head Freak into the house. It smelled like cat piss and rot. The first was explained immediately, as Gottschalk had about a hundred cats
in the place, running free. They all looked fat and imperious, and only a couple scampered away when we trooped in. Most of them just sat there eyeing us coolly. One fat black-and-white one rubbed up against me as we picked our way carefully through what had once been a dining room, and I reached down to scratch his ears as I passed.

Gottschalk was in the master suite of the house, way in the back. He was fat. Not circus fat, just fleshy and jowly, sitting up in a huge bed piled high with pillows and blankets and cats, a dozen or so of which were curled up on him, against him, around him. He was about eighty years old and hadn’t wasted any blood on making himself look younger. There was a stale smell in the air, which I chose not to examine too closely. The room was dim and stuffy, overcrowded, the bed immense. It must have been delivered in pieces and assembled in the room, it was so large.

The sheets looked yellow and stiff. I made a sudden heartfelt vow to never voluntarily touch them.

Gottschalk himself was dissipated: too fat, but saggy, as if he’d been fatter not too long ago. His hair was patchy, three or four sprouts of it surrounded by peeling pink scalp. His eyes were watery, his lips wet. His hands trembled as he flashed them about. Two of his acolytes stood silent and still in each corner, like furniture.

“Ah! A Fellow Traveler,” he drawled, his accent a strange combination of Texan and German. “Mr.
Vonnegan, I find it fascinating that Hiram sent you to me, as Hiram Bosch is now dead.” His watery eyes moved past me and he sat up a little. “Oh! What is this! Come here, my dear. Let me
look
at you.”

“Hiram called it
Biludha-tah-namus,
” I offered helpfully as Claire stepped forward, arms still wrapped closely around herself.

“Do not
speak
!” Gottschalk suddenly thundered, shooting me a red-faced expression of fury. “Speak when I speak
to
you, boy!”

I shut my mouth, judged how quickly I could get to the old bastard and put my hands around his neck, and decided I could stay cool. Gottschalk would change his tune when he knew what was happening. But now I knew where Hiram had gotten his bedside manner, and felt a pang of sadness that I’d never be able to tease him about it.

Claire walked over to the old man without hesitation. Her hands were in her pockets now, and the right one was curled into a fist, a lump under the fabric. Curled around something, a weapon. A roll of quarters, a small knife—something, I knew. Gottschalk might be able to strike her dead with five words and a slash from one of his Bleeders, but he was going to have to be awfully quick. We had a saying you picked up when you started hanging around magicians:
You can’t speak yourself out of a bullet.

Gottschalk reached up his hands toward her as she got close, but she stopped a foot and a half away and he made no effort to compel or cajole her to come
closer. He studied her with a curious expression on his slack, wrinkled face, some bizarre combination of revulsion and admiration.

“I have never seen such intricate marking,” he muttered. “Yes, yes, I see the pattern. Intricate, intricate. You are the keystone, here. There is a lot of static energy bottled up behind you, my dear.
Tah-namus,
he said. My goodness, the intricacy—” He blinked his watery eyes and snatched his hands back. “
Tah-namus
.” He looked at me, sitting forward slightly. “
Biludha-tah-namus!
Are you certain?”

I shook my head, but he was already looking at Claire again. Claire stood there ramrod straight, ass in and tits out, eyes locked on Gottschalk. She looked ready to launch herself at him.

“It fits, though, it fits,” he muttered. He frowned at her. “Who marked you thus, child?”

“
Child
is fucking creepy,” she said. “I don’t know—”

“Mika Renar,” I said over her. “Or maybe the little prince, Cal Amir.”

“Renar. Devious little bitch.” Gottschalk looked at me and smiled. His teeth were yellow and chipped and looked more like fangs. His gums were bright red, making it look like his mouth was bleeding every time he opened it. Like he was chewing off his own lips as he spoke. “This cannot be allowed to pass. The
Tah-namus
! She will destroy us all.”

He clapped his hands. “Thomas!” Struggling mightily, he pushed himself up higher against the pillows, panting. “You will stay with me until we resolve
this. I must research the glyphs and seek counsel with others—we must be careful! Exceedingly careful!”

The Head Freak reentered the bedroom, smiling like a dope, hands clasped in front of him. “Yes, Master?”

I looked at him. “What’d he give
you
? A piece of broken glass?”

“Thomas, these three will be our guests for a few days. Please see them to the guest suite and see that their needs are attended to. Bring me the telephone and send in Carol and David. Thank you.”

Claire sank back toward me. “I do
not
want to stay here,” she whispered.

“You
must,
child,” Gottschalk said fiercely. “You are too dangerous to be walking about free. You are the linchpin to the end of the world! More important, you are the linchpin to the end of
me
.”

“Well,” Claire said in a reasonable, almost conciliatory tone, “fuck you, then.”

She turned to leave.

“
Anschlag!
Thomas!”

The Head Freak appeared in the doorway, already slashing his own arm with a large, fancy-looking blade. Behind me, Gottschalk spoke three syllables, and Claire froze on the spot.

“Whoa!” I shouted, throwing my arms out like an asshole. But Gottschalk spoke Asshole, and I needed to be clear. “No need for this! We came here for your help, Mr. Gottschalk.”

I was standing right next to her. She moved her eyes to me.

She was finally afraid.

“You understand,” Gottschalk wheezed, sounding like a little shouting had strained the paper-thin walls of every one of his organs. “
You,
yes. Hiram was not a very good student. He had no ability. A plodder. But he respected our traditions, and I believe he has imbued you with similar respect. But
her
. This bitch is not one of us—she is chattel, so marked. I cannot take chances.” He offered me those horrible teeth again. “You have a cow, you do not let it roam free. You pen it. Make sure its milk is for you alone.”

I looked at Claire again. Her eyes were locked on me. Pleading. She looked young suddenly. The way she was perfectly still with just her eyes moving, she was just like my girl, the first girl, standing there in front of Hiram, shivering so subtly you had to stare at her to be aware of it.

“I vouch for her,” I said slowly, my eyes on hers. This was a bad move. I could feel it in my bones. I pictured Hiram’s empty bathroom window.

Gottschalk thought it over. I admired Claire’s eyes, bright green. The door and hallway outside the bedroom were crowded with Gottschalk’s morons. An army of them.

“Very well, Mr. Vonnegan,” he said. “Her behavior is your concern, then.”

With a few muttered syllables, Claire snapped into motion. She’d been straining against the spell,
trying to launch herself free, and crashed into me. I hugged her to me for a second, in case she had any wild ideas.

“We need him,” I whispered to her. “You want those marks off. I kind of want the world not to end. We stick.”

She turned her head and whispered into my ear. “That motherfucker puts a hand on me, Chief, I’m going to collect that bill from you.”

“You say things like that, Claire, and just make me love you.” I’d made it flippant, but I regretted it immediately. Claire Mannice was the type of girl, I thought, who’d had soft guys like me following her around, being mopey, her whole life. I didn’t want to be just another one.

We followed the Head Freak down the length of the house to a narrow set of stairs. Down to the basement. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like a damn thing about it the moment I saw it. The stairs were old and unsteady, rattling under us. The basement was cold and damp, and had been clumsily subdivided with a cheap, thin wall with a single cheap door set into the middle. The Head Freak—Thomas—opened the door and gestured us through, beaming.

The rooms behind the door could be called rooms in only the most generous usage of the term. They had walls. They had floors. There was no line of sight. They were three connected spaces defined by thin, uninsulated drywall, lit by bare bulbs, and lacking finished floors—the grit of concrete dust bit under my shoes.
They
had
been furnished, the first room sporting two sagging, dispirited couches and a coffee table that had recently been used as a chew toy.

“Anything you require?” Thomas asked pleasantly.

“Better rooms,” Claire said. “Now get the fuck out.”

C
laire was talking about her sister. That was nice.

Dinner was nice, too. A lot nicer than I would have expected when Tom the Head Freak had arrived downstairs, politely inviting us to share a meal with Master Gottschalk. As the only edible things we’d found in the basement were water bugs, millipedes, and roaches, we accepted.

It was nice to be invited.

The Dining Room was nice. Impressive. A long, polished table set with silver and china, candelabras and flowers, light dancing around us in glittery clouds that burst as you moved your head and then reformed. The white tablecloth gleamed, brighter white than I’d ever seen before, the thread count pulsing at me, the weave so fine it danced away from your eyes, bending the light. The smell in the air made me dizzy. It was animal fat and seasoning and butter and a million other things that had me salivating, desperate.

Gottschalk was already seated as we entered. He’d changed, and now wore an old-fashioned dinner jacket, complete with bow tie, his soured white hair slicked back. He looked nice. Six of his “followers” waited behind chairs, hands clasped in front of them. They all had twitchy little smiles, like they couldn’t believe their good luck in being chosen.

The room itself was nice. Wood paneling, with oil paintings hung on the walls depicting wildflowers in bloom. The carpet was dark green and thick, swallowing my feet as I floated over to a chair. It was a nice chair. Sturdy, but beautiful. With delicate hand-carved reliefs and soft red satin cushions. It was pulled out from under the table by Gottschalk’s Sucker as I approached, and slid under my ass as I sat. All very nice.

Mags was seated to my right, with Gottschalk at the head of the table to my left. Claire drifted around to the other side and wound up sitting across from me, right next to Gottschalk. We were all still wearing our grungy clothes, which made me feel stupid and self-conscious, but Claire looked clean and fresh, like she’d steamed herself in some hidden shower, her face pinked up with excitement, her hair soft and bouncy. She looked like she’d shed five years. She was ÜberClaire. She smiled at me. That was nice.

“Mr. Vonnegan,” Gottschalk said as his white-robed freaks fluttered around us, pouring ruby-red wine into silver-rimmed glasses, a subtle red wine, fruity and tart. The room was too small, I thought, for
all these people, yet somehow didn’t feel like it, even as Gottschalk’s robed minions shoved me this way and that as they struggled around us, serving and clearing. “I am glad you have decided to join me. We should talk, you and I. I have much to teach you. And first, we should each raise a glass in honor of your
gasam,
my student.” He picked up his glass and held it as we followed. “To Hiram Bosch: a middling student, someone we both knew.”