Kill City Blues. Richard Kadrey

on the lump that’s Garrett’s soon-to-be-kicked-around-the-room carcass.

      There’s a gentle knock on the door. I grab the money clip and peel off a twenty.

      A young, freckled woman in a hotel uniform stands in the hall.

      “Mr. Garrett?”

      “Yes. Thanks for bringing it up,” I say through my weak hangover smile.

      “Of course.”

      She hands me the box. There’s nothing on it but a tag for a local courier company.

      “Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?” she asks.

      “No. This is fine,” I say, and hand her the twenty. I didn’t get all the blood off my hands. There’s a line of red along one edge of the bill. But it looks more like ink than anything else. And let’s face it. This is an L.A. hotel. It can’t be the first time someone handed her bloody money.

      “Thank you,” she says, and I close the door. That’s enough social interaction for now. I can feel my side starting to leak through the robe, so I carry the box to a larger table by the wet bar and set it down. I get a new towel from the bathroom and tie it tight around my waist. It burns like a son of a bitch, but it ought to stop all the annoying fucking blood for a while.

      With the black blade I slice open the courier box. Inside is a leather brief bag, something like an oversize attaché case that lawyers carry. There’s another case inside that. Plastic, but heavy and substantial. Almost like a gun case. I slide it out of the brief bag, push that onto the floor, and set down the plastic one. I take a quick peek at Garrett to make sure he’s not going to sneak up on me. The raven is still standing guard over him. I pop the latches on the case and push back the lid.

      Lying packed in a snug black foam liner is the Qomrama Om Ya.

      Color me the luckiest son of a bitch on the planet. I grab it to make sure I’m not seeing things.

      Wait. Keep the son-of-a-bitch part but forget the lucky. The 8 Ball is like the bird. A fake. The real 8 Ball radiates heavy magic that you can feel through your skin. This thing looks good, but it’s as magic as loaded dice.

      Whoever made it isn’t a complete idiot. It gives off some minor hoodoo vibes, enough to feel real if you’ve never handled the real Qomrama. It’s like how Russian gangs sell kindergarten terrorists radioactive junk and tell them it’s plutonium. The morons think they’re going to build a nuke, but all they get is cancer-therapy scrap.

      The only other thing in the case is an old book. It’s full of diagrams of the 8 Ball along with what look like instructions, but it’s in a language I’ve never seen before. I put the book in my back pocket. Father Traven might have some fun with it.

      In the bedroom, the raven squawks and flutters back to the chair. Garrett sits up. His eyes go wide when he sees me with his courier box.

      “That’s not for you!” he yells.

      “Finders keepers.”

      He starts feeling around the bed, knocking his passports and cash onto the floor. He’s looking for the gun, but it’s over on the coffee table. When he can’t find it, he swings his legs onto the floor and stumbles to his feet.

      Just to be a dick about it, I take the fake Qomrama from the case and toss it from hand to hand like a basketball. I don’t see the blinking light right away. It’s down at the bottom of the compartment that held the 8 Ball. When I do notice it I have a pretty good idea what it is and I start running. So does Garrett, but the other way. He makes it to the coffee table, snatches up the pistol, and levels it at me.

      “Give me back my merchandise,” he says.

      I’m halfway into a shadow, bent low, when the bomb goes off. The concussion blasts me the rest of the way out of the room.

      I suppose I could have been a Good Samaritan. Run back for Garrett, knocked the gun out of his hand, and pulled him into the shadow with me. But it hurt when I bent down to steal his money clip and … well, the bastard did shoot me.

      I HATE GOING through the Room straight into the penthouse at the Chateau Marmont. Whatever hoodoo keeps the penthouse hidden from both civilians and Sub Rosa makes me dizzy and nauseous every time I walk through it. That doesn’t matter this time. I’m already dizzy and nauseous.

      I fall near where we keep the food trays lined up buffet style against the wall. At least I don’t have to worry about Candy being concerned about my belly wound. My half-blasted-off clothes will distract her. Plus, I have the cash. And the fake Qomrama.

      I grab the edge of a table and pull myself to my feet with my prosthetic left arm. The explosion must have blown off the glove. The arm is ugly as Hell. It was given to me by a Kissi, an extinct race of mutant angels that lived in the chaos at the edge of the universe. My prosthetic looks like a bug claw crossed with the Terminator, but it handles things like explosions pretty well, so I can use it sometimes when the rest of my body isn’t cooperating.

      Before I know what’s happening, I’m being steered onto one of the leather sofas. I find half a cup of Aqua Regia on the coffee table and gulp it down. When I look up Candy is standing over me. She’s pulling off my shredded shirt, looking scared. And sees the bloody towel. Now her fear is mixed with annoyance.

      “I let you out of my sight for ten fucking minutes,” she says.

      My ears are ringing, so it takes me a second to understand what she said.

      She pulls out the black blade I gave her and cuts off the rest of the shirt and towel. When she sees the bullet wound she looks at me hard.

      Before she can say anything, I hold out the 8 Ball.

      “Look, baby, I brought you a present.”

      Then I pass out.

      I WAKE UP in bed naked and wrapped in a sheet. There’s a stain where my blood and something else has soaked through. Candy sits beside me, playing a game on her pink laptop.

      Vidocq is in a chair nearby, smoking, his feet propped on a corner of the bed. Spirited Away plays on the big screen. It’s what Candy always watches whenever she’s upset. A young girl sits on a train. Some kind of Japanese folk spirit sits beside her. White oval face. All draped in black.

      “Where did that come from?” I say, nodding at the laptop.

      She doesn’t look up from whatever she’s playing. It pings and pops. Plays a silly little tune.

      “I don’t think she’s speaking to you at the moment,” says Vidocq in his smooth French accent.

      I look at her. She doesn’t take her eyes off the screen.

      “I guess not.”

      I’m blistered from the explosion. I lean down and sniff the stain on the sheet. It’s a strange mild acid reek with something sweet. Maybe even a little Spiritus Dei. A complicated potion. I look at Vidocq.

      “One of yours?”

      He smiles and inclines his head in a little bow.

      “Thanks,” I say.

       “De rien.”

      Vidocq is an alchemist and a thief. He’s also a hundred and fifty years old. You’d think after living in this country for a hundred years, he would have lost the accent. I don’t think he wants to. It’s all he has left of France. It’s not like he can ever go back. Where does a hundred-and-fifty-year-old thief and murderer—he killed a couple of guys way back when. Don’t worry. They deserved it—get a birth certificate? A driver’s license? A passport? Yeah, he could get fake documents like Garrett had in his room, but Vidocq is too proud for that. Unless he can go back as himself, I don’t think he’ll ever set foot in the old country again.

      I glance back at Candy. She still won’t look at me. I put a finger on the top of her laptop and start to close it.

      “Don’t,”