My laughter didn’t last long. It only took a few moments before a terrible lonely silence came over me. I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling overhead. It would be full dark soon. Maybe I could shut my eyes and sleep on the concrete.
I stood and walked out into the center of the circle. My feet scuffed against the concrete. A sudden bout of vertigo made me stagger, as if one misstep would topple me into the void after my friends.
But of course that wasn’t going to happen. The hole had sealed over and they were gone. Arne, Ty, Robbie, Summer, Bud, and, oh God, Melly … They had all gone down into a grave as deep as the universe, into a darkness where I could never follow, and I was left standing there breathing parched air and squinting against the light of the setting sun. The ground beneath me was unyielding, and I was alone.
Wandering through the building, I found, among other things, a suitcase with a bunch of clean unfolded laundry inside and a case of bottled water—Arne’s jump bag? I stripped off my pants and tossed them aside in favor of a pair of long plaid surfer shorts. They looked stupid, but they didn’t have Wally’s predator puke all over them.
I rinsed the ghost knife with a couple of bottles of water. The green goop stuck to the plastic, but I managed to wipe it off on a clean spot of my ruined pants. When that was done, I tossed my pants into the oil Arne had spilled.
Arne had said he’d run out of time to finish what he had to do, and now he was dead. I walked around the building to the digger and started it up. I had no idea how to use it, but a little trial and error made the basics clear.
I lurched the machine around to the back of the building and spent the next half hour scraping loose dirt out of the berm over Francois’s body. It was hard going at first, but I managed to finish just before sundown. It wouldn’t fool the cops if they decided to search, of course, but I thought it would pass a casual inspection.
The building was metal and concrete; I couldn’t exactly burn it down the way Annalise always did. Sure, there were plenty of flammable liquids, and cars burn real nice, but it wouldn’t totally wreck the place. It would, however, draw firefighters and cops.
I found an oil pan and slid it beneath the Audi, then cut the brake line and collected the dripping fluid.
There was a shop broom by the front door. I dipped the bristles into the brake fluid and scraped it over the painted floor. While I couldn’t burn the place down, I didn’t have to leave a functioning circle. I scraped at it until it was nothing but faint smears of red. Then I threw a bunch of Arne’s old clothes onto the floor and pushed them around with the broom until they were ruined and the circle was barely visible.
After that, I swept the spilled oil from the barrel across the floor until it washed around the green glop Wally had puked on himself. Cement building or not, that crap would have to burn. I tossed my ruined pants into the pile.
What was left?
Nothing. Nothing was left.
I went outside. The sun was well below the horizon by now. Only a faint red glow in the west remained, but the moon was overhead, and its dim white light was soothing.
I didn’t want to take Francois’s SUV back into town. The bodyguards who’d fled the house should have notified the police hours ago, and I didn’t want to be caught in his car. Arne’s Land Rover was there, and so were Fidel’s and Summer’s cars. There were no keys, though; those would have been in their pockets when they fell into the Empty Spaces.
The Dodge Viper, however, had the keys inside. I got behind the wheel and drove it out of the building. I siphoned enough gas from Arne’s SUV to fill the tank halfway. Once I got back to the city, I’d ditch it somewhere. The cops would return it to the guy Arne stole it from—hell, I’d be doing someone a favor.
I took the coffee thermos from Francois’s vehicle. The Book of Oceans was still in the bottom, but I didn’t look at it very long. I wasn’t ready for another “dream.”
I tore the boning knife off the shovel and dropped it into the oil. Then I set fire to the oil and shut the huge doors. The building wasn’t visible from the highway, and the darkness would hide whatever smoke the oil gave off. Sure, the smell would be strong, but the wind seemed to be in my favor.
Not that it mattered. The last of the green crap would be burned up by then. The rest was just details.
I drove the Viper along the gravel bed back to the highway, wondering how Arne had managed to steal gravel.
About forty feet from the shoulder of the highway, I waited until I couldn’t see any headlights in either direction, then pulled out. In no time, I was up to sixty, headed back to L.A.
I went to Violet’s place, partly because I didn’t want to see anyone from the society right away, and partly because I wanted to see what I’d done to her life. The building was still there, and it still had a gaping hole in the side, as though a giant had put a fist through the wall.
Violet was there, too. She was leaning against the hood of her own car, smoking and staring up at the ruined apartment. I parked at the end of the block and walked up to her.
Her cigarette smelled rank, so I walked to her upwind side. “You okay?” I asked. “Where’s Jasmin?”
“With my mom. They’re hiding with a friend of a friend of a friend. I don’t even know where they are.”
“I’m glad they’re okay.” It was a stupid thing to say, but it felt like an obligation.
She threw her half-finished cigarette away as though it wasn’t doing what she wanted. “Mom said she asked you to find Mouse.”
“We shouldn’t talk about it here.”
She got into her car and I got into mine. I followed her out to Cahuenga Pass. In one of the sharpest bends of the road, she swerved up someone’s driveway. I thought she’d jumped the curb for a moment, until she parked. I pulled in beside her. Lino’s thermos stayed in the cup holder, but I got out.
Vi held a package under her arm as she led me inside.
The house was small but tasteful—wood paneling, dark couches made of fake leather, and hunting rifles on the wall. Very male. As I followed her into the kitchen I wondered whose place this was. New boyfriend? I realized I didn’t care.
Then I laid my hand on the couch and realized that the leather wasn’t fake.
Violet dropped the package onto the counter. “Come here,” she said, and led me to the bathroom. “Get yourself showered up. I’ll get you some clean clothes.” She shut the door.
I showered in a stranger’s tiny tiled bathroom. I lathered up with translucent blue soap and dried off with rough white towels. The clothes were too big for me, but there was a belt, too.
Violet was in the kitchen when I returned. There was a lot of glassware and copper. She opened the fridge, took out two beer bottles, and popped the caps on them. She set one on the counter for me.
I walked close to the package to examine it. It was a brown leather folder with a black ribbon tied around it. SHIMMERMAN & PENOBSCOTT had been printed in gold leaf along the edge. I didn’t touch it.
“Whose place is this?” I asked.
“Mine, if you can believe it. Arne gave it to me this afternoon.” She held up her bottle. We clinked them together and drank.
“He did, huh?” My brain was racing through the events of the previous few days. Arne had a house? Like this? I never would have guessed.
“He really fixed it up. He got it from a guy who owed him money. That was right before I got the court order. Did you know I had a restraining order against him?” Violet’s voice was soft. “He kicked my door down once, the second time I broke up with him. The cops came and everything. All those crimes he did, over all those years, and he’d never been picked up by the cops before. He was furious with me, as though it was my fault he had a record.”
“He was always careful.”
“I always thought he was too careful.” She took a long pull. “And I thought he should grow up and get something legit. But he used to laugh at that.”
“Why did he give you the house?”
“The guy explained it to me. Penobscott, although I think it was Penobscott’s kid, really, not the one with his name in gold. Arne said he was going away, shedding all his worldly possessions and simplifying. He was going to find himself. It’s all in a trust or something. I don’t know. This snotty-faced kid was sitting behind a big desk in a suit that cost more than I earn in a month, and he’s telling me all about the terms of the trust and what I have to do to maintain it for Jasmin. But I couldn’t hear a thing he said. We must have talked for half an hour, and I walked out of there like I’d been hypnotized to forget it all. But Arne left me and Jazzy a bunch of offshore accounts, properties, and stocks.”
I had no idea how to respond to that. I’d been living above my aunt’s garage carrying rocks down a hill, and Arne had been squirreling it all away.
I wondered how much he’d gotten from Francois before he killed him.
“Vi, how long has the Bigfoot Room been at the Roasted Seal? When was the last time he moved it?”
She shrugged. “Years. A few weeks after your sentencing, actually. When you were busted, he pulled up stakes and didn’t set them down again until he was sure you were going to do the time without naming him.”
“He didn’t pull up stakes when Mouse disappeared, though, right?”
“Right. Now, what about him? Where is Mouse?”
“In the properties Arne just gave you, is one of them out near the Mohave? A little patch of desert and rock, maybe, with a prefab building on it? A place called Quakewater.”
“Maybe,” she said. “I think … maybe.”
“Don’t go out there, understand? Not if you want to keep what Arne left for you and your daughter.”
She set the bottle down and picked it up again. In one long pull, she drained it. She understood what I meant, and she wasn’t surprised. “Oh, God, Ray,” she said, her shoulders slumped and her head bowed. “What did I do?”
I went around the counter and put my arms around her. She cried against my chest, soaking Arne’s shirt with her tears. When she was done, she grabbed a fistful of his shirt and pulled me into the bedroom.
Arne’s bedroom, and it hadn’t even been five hours since I’d put a bullet through his brain. I kissed her, then she pulled his clothes off me. Arne was dead and gone, and there was nothing left of him but memories and a lot of expensive crap. Violet and I were still alive, and together again.
Whatever she and I had was in the past; this was something new. Everything between us was different except the sounds she made. It felt like new life, and a new chance at happiness.
But when we both had finished and she lay against my shoulder, I knew I was not about to get a new life. I had a life already, and it was inescapable. A few moments later, when Vi rolled away from me, I didn’t try to draw her back.
“I think I’m going to move away,” she said. “I think I’m going to meet with that guy in the suit again, get him to explain everything again, and then get the fuck out of here.”
“You want to leave L.A.?” I was surprised to hear it. People leave the city all the time, of course, but I didn’t think Vi would be one of them.
“I mean leave America. I’ve never met any of my mother’s family in Oaxaca. I could …” Her voice trailed off. I waited for her, and eventually she said, “Better yet, we could go to Canada. They let you in if you have enough money, right? Live up in Canada with all that cold, clean snow.”
Something about the way she said that made me think that we didn’t include me. I rolled out of bed and began to dress again. They were Arne’s clothes, and she was the mother of his child, but I’d never had any qualms about stealing things before.
“Ray …,” she said, as though she was about to make a confession.
“I already know,” I said as I pulled on the shirt.
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do.” I sat in a little cloth chair in the corner and put on my socks. “You’re the one who connected Wally with Arne, and with Caramella and Luther and Fidel and the rest. Wally wouldn’t have known about the Bigfoot Room or about Arne, but he would have been able to find you, the girl I was living with when I was busted. You’re the one who told him how to find the Bigfoot Room.”
Violet pulled the blankets off the bed and wrapped them around herself. She didn’t turn toward me.
“Wally as much as told me so himself,” I continued. “He was disappointed by our waitress at the Sugar Shaker. He wanted to sit in your section. I’ll bet he was, actually, and you asked the other girl to take his order, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Wally wanted me to know he was connected to you. And Arne … well, Arne moved the Bigfoot Room when I went to prison because he was afraid I’d turn him in. He didn’t move when Mouse disappeared, though, did he? You knew your brother was dead. You didn’t exactly gasp in surprise in the other room when I told you. I think I must be the only idiot who didn’t realized that Arne had a place to dump the bodies of people who were dangerous to him. That’s why Fidel tried to have him killed before striking out on his own; Arne didn’t like the idea of his crew getting busted for stupid jobs and easing their sentences by naming him.
“So, Wally must have looked you up. You didn’t know him, but anyone who took one look would know the guy was trouble. You thought about your missing brother, and your suspicions about what happened to him, and you pointed Wally King straight at—”
“Do you think Arne knew what I did?” she asked, breaking in as if she couldn’t stand to listen anymore.
I remembered the expression on his face as we stood out behind the berm. Hell yeah, he knew. “No.”
“Okay,” she said. Vi had always told me I was a terrible liar, but she seemed to believe me now. Maybe she wanted to. She still didn’t turn around. “But what does that make me?”
I almost answered Nothing, but I held it back. She would have misunderstood. “Someone with a secret. A secret you should never ever admit to anyone.”
And that was all we had to say to each other. She was silent and wouldn’t even turn her head to look at me. I finished tying my shoelaces and stood. She slowly tipped sideways until she nestled on the pillow. Maybe she was going to sleep.
I let myself out. The stolen Viper was still parked in her drive, and there were no cops clustered around it, checking the plates. There was only one place to go. The thermos and I went back to the supermarket.
I parked the Viper a block away, making sure I overlapped the marked fire-hydrant zone. The car would collect tickets until someone ran the plates. I tossed the keys under the seat. Even if I couldn’t find Annalise, I didn’t want to drive it again. I didn’t feel sporty.
I wandered out to the bus shelter where I’d called the society and spoken with Mariana. No one was there. I sat on the bench and waited.
It took about five minutes for Annalise to pull up in her van. She must have been nearby, watching for me.
She opened the driver’s door and climbed into the passenger side. I got behind the wheel, adjusted the mirrors and seat, then started the engine. The thermos went into the cup holder beside me.
“Where have you been?” she asked me.
“Finishing a job.”
“Tell me about it when we get onto the freeway.”
“What about Csilla? What about Talbot?”
“Csilla is gone, back to wherever she goes. And we’re not going to see Talbot again. He’s out.”
“Out?” I couldn’t hide my surprise. “I don’t understand. Why is he out? Because he ran?”
“No,” Annalise said. “Because you said he was useless.”
That wasn’t how I remembered it.
I didn’t much like Talbot, but I hoped whoever caught up with him killed him quickly. “I don’t know, boss. The guy probably needs a little training. Hell, he could probably design the training. He might still be useful.”
She grunted as though I’d made a good point. And that was all I could do for Talbot. Maybe she’d send word not to kill him. I hoped so.
Annalise hadn’t told me where to go, so I got on the 10 heading east. She didn’t object. Maybe she didn’t care. As we rolled along with traffic, I told her everything that happened after she went through Lino Vela’s front window. The only thing I left out was finding the Book of Oceans inside the statue, the vision I had, and the fact that it was sitting in the thermos between us.
By the time I’d finished, we were northbound on the 15, heading for Barstow. She told me briefly about her time with the cops. They’d been gentle with her from the first moment they’d fished her out of the bushes. She told them that she was trying to reach Steve Francois to convince him to donate to her foundation, and within half an hour they’d received confirmation that she did exactly that with her time. She gave them a statement and asked to be released. They let her go.
I shook my head in disbelief. Even with her tattoos, she still got the middle-class white-woman treatment. Or did she have help from one of the spells on her body?
“Boss,” I said. “What would you have done if we had found the Book of Motes? Or one of the other original spell books?”
Her response surprised me. She sighed heavily. “That’s a hard question. The long-standing rule of the society is that anyone who finds one of the three original spell books is to bring it to the peers directly without ‘reading’ it first. All the peers would gather together and decide what to do.”
“You wouldn’t want to check it out before you turned it over? Become a primary yourself?” She didn’t answer right away. “Boss?”
“You’re damn right I would. I want to finish the job in Hammer Bay myself. I want to … We’re falling behind in this fight, Ray, because we’re losing focus and power by the year, while the predators are as dangerous as ever. But the peers want to decide as a group who should have access to it.”
“I’m guessing you don’t think they’d let all the peers have a turn.”
“I know they wouldn’t. A few of them don’t even think a woman can become a primary. They’re sure the visions would corrupt her and maybe damage the book. Also, aside from me, one Brazilian, and one Arab, the other peers are all white Europeans; they don’t trust the rest of us with that kind of power.”
“What if you read it anyway, then gave it to them?”
She sighed again. “Civil war? Again? The problem is that I believe in the work the Twenty Palace Society does. I couldn’t live with the terrible things I’ve done otherwise. But the society itself has become a nest of serpents. If I could do this work without them, I’d kill them all.”
“I saw the letter you gave to Captain.” Dammit. I didn’t want to go there next, but the words had slipped out.
“Who? Oh, our friend who took us to Canada? Is that why you’ve been such a crabby bastard? The letter was for her protection in case we were arrested, genius.”
“Okay.”
“I know this is leading somewhere, Ray. Get on with it.”
“When I asked you if you wanted to become a primary …” You blinked. I wasn’t sure how to ask Annalise if she was frightened or uncertain, and it turned out I didn’t have to.
“I hesitated. I know. Ray, what was that guy’s name? You know the one I mean.”
I did. “Lino Vela.”
“Lino Vela. As apprentices, we’re trained to attack rogues at the first opportunity. No matter where we are, or who’s in the line of fire, we go. Becoming a primary, having all that power, well, that would make things easier. But there’s a part of me that doesn’t think what happened to Lino Vela should ever be easy.”
Well, damn. I knew she trusted me enough to share information, but not that she was ready to share this.
She kept talking: “So, you asked, and I hesitated. But the answer is always going to be yes, because there’s too much at stake.”
We drove in silence for a while.
I needed to be careful with this next part. “What if we—I mean, just us two—went out to find one of those original spell books? What if you had the visions, and to hell with the society? You’d be a primary, right? Couldn’t you take over? Change the training? Couldn’t you just …” Wipe them out? I couldn’t finish the sentence.
“Fight the whole society? Take on not just all the peers but the allies, too? Plus whatever rogues they decided to point at me? Without support? I don’t know. I don’t think so. And the society has financiers, lawyers, and investigators, too. They can strip away an enemy’s resources before a fight, if they know who they’re targeting, and they know me. I’m not saying it’s a terrible idea. I’d be happy to get my hands on a spell book just to keep it away from assholes like your—like Wally King. But if I became a primary, I think the Twenty Palace Society would kill me—would kill us both. And even if we won the fight, we’d lose the infrastructure of the society. As a primary I’d kick ass, yeah, but I’d need investigators to tell me where to go, and financiers to cover the bills, and so on. If we won, and I doubt we would.”
“What if the peers got their hands on a book?”
“Incredible power for the most vicious serpents in the nest. These aren’t men who worry about the job being easy; it’s already easy for them, because they love it. They love the brutality. They pride themselves on their willingness to kill. With society resources backing them, they’d have the world behind the world under their heel.”
“You’ve thought about this.”
“Of course I have. This is my life and my future. Either the society loses this fight and the world is overrun with predators, or I become a primary and lose a fight with the society, or the assholes become primaries and I get demoted to … what? Wooden man? Errand girl? None of them are good options, but the last one is the least awful.”
“To hell with that.” I picked up the thermos and swirled the liquid. I couldn’t hear it over the rumble of the engine, but I could feel it slosh around. “Boss, here. I found the Book of Oceans.”
She stared at me silently for a moment, trying to judge if I was being serious or if she was going to start breaking my bones for playing a prank. I pushed the thermos at her, and she took it. She screwed off the top.
I laid my hand over the top. “You’re not going to go back on everything you just said, are you?”
She gently moved my hand away and looked into the bottom of the thermos for another few seconds. Then she screwed the cap back on and held the thermos in her lap. “You bastard.” She sounded almost as though she wanted to laugh. “You goddamn son of a bitch. You’re really good at this job, aren’t you?” I shrugged. “Where are you driving us?”
“East,” I said.
We drove to Barstow in the dark, and I switched to the 40. “The Mohave Desert?” Annalise asked.
“Can you think of a better place to hide the Book of Oceans?”
“Death Valley.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “Don’t be annoying, boss.”
“We’re going to hide it?”
For a moment, she sounded unsure of herself. I hadn’t thought that was possible. “You said it wouldn’t be safe for us to use it, and I sure as hell won’t give it to the serpents. I have a better idea.”
We took the 40 to the 95. The sign said that Las Vegas was 103 miles away. As we passed the freeway entrance sign for the westbound on-ramp, I made note of the odometer. We counted off a random number of miles, then pulled onto the shoulder.
“Shovel’s in back,” Annalise said.
We climbed out into the darkness. I couldn’t see a car in either direction.
There was a shovel mounted on a rack in the back of the van. Only one, though. I knew who would be using it. I took it down and followed Annalise into the desert.
We walked at least a quarter mile away from the asphalt before Annalise pointed at the ground. “Here.”
I dug a shallow hole. She tossed the thermos in without hesitation. It was long life and power beyond anything I could imagine, but I shoveled dirt over it. Annalise picked up a rock as large as a beach ball and set it down to mark the spot. Then she found two more large flat rocks, each the size of a trash-can lid, and laid them beside the beach ball.
“I think we’ll be able to find it now, boss. If we have to.”
She nodded. We started back to the van. No other cars passed by on the road. “Ray, this only works if we trust each other. You understand? Because either one of us could come back later and move that thermos. Either one of us could cut the other out.”
“Boss, if I wanted to cut you out, I wouldn’t have handed you that thermos. The truth is, I need your help. It’s not enough to hide the Book of Oceans from the Wally Kings of the world—or from the other peers, either. There are two more books out there, and I don’t trust anyone with that power—”
“Neither do I.”
“Not even the two of us. I don’t think we’re ready for it.”
Her answer was quieter this time. “Because of what you did in Washaway. And Lino Vela.”
“Yeah. We will be ready for it, someday, but not yet. Like I said, stashing one book isn’t good enough. We need to hunt down the other two.”
“That’s all, huh? Just go out and find them?”
“That’s all.”
“And what then? You and I form a new, kinder, gentler society?”
“Yes. We clean the serpents out of the nest. This whole legion-of-brutal-killers thing isn’t working. It’s a losing strategy. We can do better.”
She didn’t respond, and I couldn’t read her expression in the dark. We returned to the van.
“Ray, this is incredibly dangerous. You don’t even understand how dangerous it is. You’re just my stupid wooden man.”
“All they think about is their limitations,” I said to her.
“Don’t throw my own words in my face—”
“Some things should never be easy.”
“Dammit, Ray! I’m the peer and you’re my wooden man! You belong to me!”
“I know I do, boss. You’re in, though, right?”
“Fuck, yeah.”
I started the engine and pulled onto the highway. It took a long while to get up to speed. “Where to, boss?”
“Straight through to Vegas,” she said. “You look like you could use some sleep. Then we’re headed east. You’re going to the First Palace. The peers want to meet you.”
“Um, really?”
I wasn’t sure if I should be pleased about that or not, so I changed the subject. “Can you convince the society to work with Talbot? He’s an asshole, but he saved my life.”
“I’ll make a call. It probably won’t do any good, but I’ll call.”
“Damn. He was really looking forward to living a century or three.”
“Not everyone earns a golem-flesh spell.”
I turned to her. “What?”
“Not everyone earns that spell,” she snapped, annoyed at having to repeat herself. “Especially in the last few years. Only older peers like Csilla can even manage it anymore.”
I touched the spell Csilla had put under my left arm, the one that healed me when I ate meat. Annalise had called that mark golem flesh.
For once, she understood my expression. “Didn’t I explain that part?”
“Jesus.” I wasn’t sure what to say. I was going to live to be, what? Five hundred? Older? “How long until I talk gibberish like Csilla?”
“Gibberish? She was telling you the secrets of the universe.”