Zoey woke up and for a blissful moment thought she was back home, and was waking up from an exceptionally weird dream. Then she realized she was in some kind of strange bed that she could actually roll over in without running into either a wall or a hot-water heater. Then the dead silence registered, that eerie feeling like she was the last human on earth. Nobody arguing outside, not even the sound of her mom clanking pans around in the kitchen. There could be a war raging outside the gates of the estate and not a peep would reach Zoey’s bedroom.
She had forgotten about the talking toilet, and the startled fart she gave when it spoke up was interpreted as consent to show her the morning’s alarming news. The lead story was the terror threats surrounding the upcoming memorial service in Tabula Ra$a, showing video of the city’s park, where crews were already setting up for what looked less like a funeral service and more like a massive winter music festival. Were they inflating a bouncy castle out there?
The next story was new to Zoey. A ten-foot-tall bronze statue of Arthur Livingston had been stolen from its perch in front of an art gallery (accepting a gaudy statue was apparently the cost of taking a large donation from the man) by a pair of muscular men with some kind of flying apparatus on their backs—neither of them were Molech, but there was no doubt who they worked for. The statue was hauled a few blocks away to the financial district, where there sat a life-size bronze statue of a bull. The two men spent the next hour using blasts of electricity to weld the Livingston statue to the bull, in a position that made it appear he was having interspecies relations with it. The task took much longer than necessary because both men couldn’t stop giggling, or pausing every five minutes to flex for the crowd. Finally, their work done, the men had stuck their arms in the air and zipped off into the sky, trailing tails of electric blue light. One second later, they both went spiraling off in different directions and crashed into nearby buildings. Zoey assumed that hadn’t been part of the plan.
She turned it off, and when she wandered out of the guest room she was immediately accosted by Carlton, asking to make her breakfast. Her stomach was in knots, so instead she handed off to him the job of feeding Stench Machine. If Carlton considered this task below him, he showed no sign. They headed down the grand staircase and at the bottom Zoey found Armando, who was sitting in the lotus position on the floor, cleaning a gun he had taken apart and spread on a dirty towel. There seemed to be a ritualistic aspect to what he was doing, a ceremony to calm the nerves. Zoey didn’t bother him.
She wandered into the kitchen where there was a brown paper package sitting on the bar—the delivery of freshly roasted espresso beans Arthur had flown in every week. Zoey smelled them, swooned, and headed over to the kitchen’s coffee bar and dumped them in a grinder. She didn’t even want espresso, she just wanted to go through the process of making it. She started grinding beans and asked Carlton if he wanted something. He declined, because accepting such a thing from his employer would probably violate some sacred code of his profession. She yelled the same offer to Armando and he said yes, which almost made Zoey giddy. She started warming up the machine.
Armando strode into the kitchen and Zoey asked him, “How many people are going to be there? At the memorial?”
He shrugged. “Over the course of the night, maybe a hundred thousand? It’s open to the public, crowds will wash in and out of the park all night. And a Livingston Drop party has a way of spilling out across the city.”
“A what party?”
“It’s a city-wide festival Arthur would throw whenever he could invent a suitable excuse. It shuts down the whole downtown area, traffic is always a disaster.”
“Still, sounds pretty cool as far as funerals go.”
“Unless you are trying to organize security around a known assassination target, in which case it becomes a logistical nightmare.”
Zoey poured steamed milk into Armando’s drink, drew a dragon into the foam (with the nozzle of the steamer, not a toothpick—she didn’t cheat) and slid the mug over to him.
“There, try that.”
He took a sip, completely failing to noticed the design she had etched into it, and said, “Oh, wow. That’s has a … kick.”
“It’s a café mocha with cinnamon and a dash of cayenne pepper. The liquor is right over there if you want to Irish it up.” She started wiping down the equipment when she had a thought. “I wonder if I should call in for work on Monday.”
Armando said, “Work?”
“Well I’m supposed to open at the Java Lodge Monday morning. They’re not open on Sunday so if there’s a good chance I’ll get killed tonight that means I need to call today to get somebody to trade with me.”
Armando just stared.
Zoey dug out her phone and dialed. She got the voice mail of her manager, Arya, and said, “Hey, this is Zoey, I’m still in Tabula Rasa for that funeral, and, um, there’s a chance I won’t be in on Monday morning, can you see if Chel can cover for me? Tell her, uh, I’ll give her ten thousand dollars. That’s not a joke, tell her if she gives me her account number I can send the money at any time. Oh, and tell her to remember to change the floor sign, all the holiday flavors go back to regular price this week except for the peppermint. Good-bye.” Zoey hung up, thought for a moment, then said, “I wonder if I should call my mom? Ah, I think it’d just freak her out. I mean how do I say good-bye without scaring her?”
Armando said, “Zoey, we are going to do everything we can to—”
Zoey turned her back to him and said to Carlton, “Will you take care of Stench Machine?”
“I’m sorry?”
“My cat, that’s his name. If I don’t come back from this thing, will you feed him? And find him a home if you don’t want him? Cats were never my mom’s thing.”
“Well, I could—”
“He doesn’t just need a roof, he needs to be with someone who loves him. He’ll want to sleep in the bed with you.”
Before Carlton could formulate a response to this—it was clear that he and Armando both wished they could just flee the room—Budd, Will, and Andre filed in.
Zoey asked, “Where’s Echo?”
Will said, “At the park, installing about seven million dollars’ worth of hardware.”
Zoey asked if they wanted coffee. Will said no. Budd asked for Folgers’ Crystals, black. Andre asked for six shots of espresso with three shots of peanut butter cheesecake syrup, with whip cream and chocolate shavings on top. Zoey got to work.
Will said, “I showed them the video.”
“And?”
Budd said, “Real name is Chet Campbell—”
Zoey said, “Oh, I was so close.”
“Son of Rex Campbell. Arms dealer. I ain’t seen him since he was a boy, but it’s him.”
Armando said, “I’m not familiar.”
Budd said, “Rex was before your time. Douche bag gunrunner from Oregon, used to specialize in makin’ exotic guns and ammo for high-end thugs, gold-plated assault rifles, shotgun shells full of acid, that sort of thing. Crazy survivalist type, came here in the early days to flood the streets with military surplus iron. Wound up skimming from a deal with the Russian mob. They caught him and cut off his head, stuck it on the front of his Marauder four-by-four like a hood ornament. He would have left a nice chunk of change behind for Chet, though. And plenty of connections for him to pick up the family business.”
Will said, “The tech he stole from Arthur will make him more money in five minutes than dear old dad made in his whole gunrunning career.”
Armando said, “Frankly, I am surprised the mob left Chet alive at all. Boys in that situation tend to grow up angry. You would prefer they not appear at your door ten years later.”
Budd said, “Oh, they tried to take him out. Chet couldn’t have been more than twelve at the time. He not only got away but stayed gone. Everybody just assumed they got ’im at some point, but then all these years later, sure enough, we start hearing about a lot of dead Russians with exotic wounds. People start whisperin’ the name ‘Molech.’ Little Chet Campbell, all growed up and makin’ a name for himself.”
Zoey said, “Exotic wounds caused by exotic gadgets that you gave him. I just want to reiterate that this is Arthur Livingston’s mess we’re cleaning up here.”
Will said, “And we will clean it up.”
Budd said, “Even though cleaning up Arthur’s messes is such an unusual and alien experience for all of us.”
“The point,” said Andre, “is that this is what we do.”
Candi appeared in the room and said that there were five men with very large guns at the gate insisting they were associates of Armando Ruiz, along with a flamboyantly dressed man named Tre who insisted that he was Zoey’s personal fashion designer. Zoey wasn’t sure which of those alarmed her more.
Andre clapped his hands, picked up his mug, and said, “All right. Let’s get ready for a funeral.”