Part 21 (1/2)
I made Sunny cocoa, since I'd finally run out of that hideous jasmine-wheatgra.s.s-whatsit tea that she kept around, and told her the short version of my dilemma, leaving out me wanting to beat Irina about the head with a meat tenderizer until she resembled filet mignon more than a prime choice.
Sunny bit her lip. ”Luna, why do you do things like this?”
”I was naked and about to be eaten, Sunny. Not a whole lot of choices.”
”Well, couldn't you have offered them money, or negotiable commodities instead of some phantom cure? Gold. I hear gold is very big on the Russian black market.”
”First of all,” I said, ”the Redbacks are Ukrainian. Secondly, you're not helping.”
”Well, what do you want from me?” she exclaimed. ”I can't magick up a potion to cure daemon poison!”
I had sort of been hoping it would be that easy, but knowing it wouldn't be. ”Is there anything anything we can do, Sunny?” we can do, Sunny?”
She thought for a long time and then shook her head. ”I'm sorry.” She was nice enough not to point out that there was really no ”we” in this mess-if I didn't come up with a cure, Sunny would continue as normal, albeit less one impulsive, angry, Internet-shopping-addicted cousin.
I pressed my hands over my eyes. They burned, reminding me I hadn't slept in at least twenty-four hours. ”Hex it. That's all, then. I'm screwed.”
”Only daemon magick can reverse daemon contamination,” said Sunny. ”So unless you can summon one up with a quick blood working ...”
We weren't going down that road, no matter how many angry weres were on my a.s.s about this. Besides, I got the feeling Asmodeus didn't exactly come when called. Figured, when I needed the guy he was nowhere in sight. Maybe I could get some sort of special daemon whistle.
”Thanks for your help,” I muttered to Sunny, laying my head down on the table. I just wanted to sleep, for about a month, and have the world make sense again.
Sunny stood and patted my back. ”Don't worry, Luna. We'll think of something. I'll do research.”
”I'll burn a card catalog in offering to the research G.o.ds,” I mumbled from my p.r.o.ne position.
After I heard Sunny's convertible drive away, I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Dmitri from memory. I'd deleted him from my caller ID and scrubbed the single e-mail from my laptop's hard drive in that fit of post-cheating rage every woman goes through. Unfortunately, my memory wasn't so easy.
The first time, I didn't even let the phone ring before I slapped it shut. Then I took a deep breath, reminded myself that he had to be told what was going on, and redialed. This time I made it to two rings.
”You're not in seventh grade,” I muttered as I dialed and listened to the phone ring before Dmitri answered groggily.
” 'Lo?”
I sat there, trying to think of what to say. Hey, your new f.u.c.ktoy came by and threatened my life, so now I have to cure you. Hi, there, remember that daemon bite you got from Stephen Duncan? h.e.l.lo, Dmitri, this is your insane ex Luna calling to tell you that I have to cure you, or I'm werefood. Hey, your new f.u.c.ktoy came by and threatened my life, so now I have to cure you. Hi, there, remember that daemon bite you got from Stephen Duncan? h.e.l.lo, Dmitri, this is your insane ex Luna calling to tell you that I have to cure you, or I'm werefood.
”Luna, I know that's you. I have caller ID,” said Dmitri. Face flaming, I shut my phone. I couldn't do it. Everything we'd shared and I couldn't think of one solitary word to say to Dmitri right then. There was no way to explain what had happened with Irina, or why I had really made the deal.
I didn't care about my life one way or the other- h.e.l.l, I prodded dead people and faced down armed psychotics for a living. Self-preservation was not in the equation.
But I did care about Dmitri. Still. Hex it, I was a pathetic excuse for a grown woman. I got the scotch, and a clean gla.s.s, and proceeded to get royally hammered, something that hadn't happened since my days in uniform. I had hoped the alcohol would paint me in a better light with myself, but I still held the same opinion when I staggered upstairs and pa.s.sed out. In love. In danger of losing my job and my life. Pathetic.
CHAPTER 24.
I woke up to a percussive beat, and after a confused second realized it was my heart beating a tattoo against the inside of my aching skull. The sun was down and after a consultation with my alarm clock I discovered I'd slept an entire day away.
Bang-up way to use precious time I could be using to find a cure for Dmitri or collecting any of the many loose threads of Vincent Blackburn's case.
Hangovers disappear fairly quickly with were healing, and I was walking straight by the time I got showered, dressed, and selected my beat-up black Chippewas, ideal footwear for what I had in mind, which was to drive aimlessly around feeling sorry for myself.
I almost missed the blinking message on my land-line phone, but someone had left a voice mail while I was unconscious. Probably someone hideous, like Matilda Morgan or my psychiatrist.
Figuring nothing could be worse than meeting Joshua, I pressed the code to retrieve my messages.
”Detective Wilder, this is Melissa Gordon with the district attorney's office.” She sounded like she'd rather be talking to Charles Manson's voice mail. Not news, considering I'd killed her former boss. ”I'm calling to inform you of a court date to testify against Arthur Samuelson, aka Samael, in the matter of his a.s.sault charges. November twenty-fifth at ten a.m., Nocturne City superior court part forty-three.” She slammed the phone down and my machine bleeped, telling me I had no more messages.
Arthur Samuelson. I knew his real name was something geeky. The only person I knew who had concrete ties to Vincent, who may have seen him the night he was killed. Then I hit on the fact that Samael was facing trial for a.s.saulting a police officer. He was a s.e.x club worker. Even in Nocturne City, it was highly unlikely he'd made bail.
I grabbed my gun and badge and ran to the Fairlane, stopping to a.s.sess the damage from ramming the O'Hallorans' gate. One headlight dangled out of its socket. The chrome b.u.mper, added by me when I'd been promoted out of uniform, was smashed beyond repair. A remarkably symmetrical V creased the hood. All in all, it looked like the type of vehicle a carjacker would back away from in terror.
G.o.ds-d.a.m.ned O'Hallorans. I'd be sending them a bill. The Fairlane looked like c.r.a.p, but it started with a louder-than-usual grumble, the gears. .h.i.tching as I s.h.i.+fted on the beach road. I just prayed it would get me to the Las Rojas county jail.
It was well past normal visiting hours, but at the brandishment of my badge, a disgruntled guard buzzed me in. The county jail was staffed by the Las Rojas Sheriff's Office, not the department of corrections, and I didn't blame them for being surly. The jail sat well outside downtown, on a desolate strip of shale next to the Vortiger River. It had been a brewery owned by the Vortiger family, Germans who followed our founding father Jeremiah Chopin west from St. Louis in the early days of expansion.
The river named after the Vortigers had survived. Their brewery had not, and the city had seized it and decided the logical course would be to turn it into a jail. Maybe they thought the lager-tinged fumes would keep the prisoners calm.
”Who are you here to see, Detective?” said the deputy inside the cage that controlled the ancient iron gates barring the bowels of the jail. Being inside the building always reminded me vaguely of Alcatraz, or Sing-Sing-an old-style sense of punishment, not rehabilitation.
”Arthur Samuelson,” I said. She raised a thick black eyebrow. Her face was squashed, like a bright-eyed bulldog's.
”Sir Samael,” she intoned sarcastically. ”He'll be thrilled. Gun and any metallic objects stay outside the bars.”
I put everything that could be used as a shank in the plastic basket she furnished me and accepted the claim chit. A sickly buzzer sounded far off, and the gate creaked open.
”Make sure you wash your hands after,” said the deputy, going back to her magazine.
I walked down the brick-lined hall to the steel door of the interrogation room. The jail was arranged in a cellular construction, with civilian hallways on one side, interrogation and meeting rooms in the center, and the main cell block on the other side.
Inside, I took a seat and waited seven minutes, by the ancient wall clock, for Samael to be brought in.
He was thinner than I remembered now that he was wearing a loose s.h.i.+rt, his hair free of gel and hanging in his eyes. His posture sagged as the guard chained his shackles to the ring in the floor, but his eyes were the same twin high beams I remembered.
”How's your head?” he asked me after the deputy had shut the door.
”How's jail?” I met him smirk for smirk. In normal light, and the silence of the interrogation room, he wasn't even close to some of the nightmarish things that showed up behind my eyes after dark. It also helped that he wasn't giving me a concussion and throwing me in a cage.
”Fine,” he said smoothly. ”People are easy to control when they're already locked up.”
”You like control,” I stated, and he didn't take it as a question, just smiled like I'd asked if he wanted a candy bar.