Static and a raw-throated howl made Cash jerk his head away from the phone. When he put it back to his ear, Anna-Beth was halfway through forgiving him. More or less.
“… have that than an apology,” she said. “I don’t know his name, though.”
“I’ll pay for what you’ve got,” Cash said. A humorless snigger caught in his throat as it occurred to him that if Anna-Beth gave him the wrong answer, he’d have no one to submit his expenses to. And maybe no need to worry about it, since he wouldn’t have a kid to send to camp. That pinched off the air to the brief, bitter flash of humor. He forced himself to focus. “Did you meet them?”
In the background there was a howl from the audience and an ear-piercing smash of chords. “Hold on,” Anna-Beth said. “Let me get outside. They’re starting to get loud in here.”
Two doors opened and closed, and a brief exchange with the bouncer. Cash chewed the inside of his cheek in impatience.
“Okay, mostly I spoke to him on the phone,” she said. “He was from round your way, sounded like, and a rude bastard. Called himself Mr. Kane, but that was probably an alias. He talked like he thought I gave a fuck who he was.”
Kane. Or Cain, Lilith’s first-born and the monster’s King Arthur. Definitely an alias, but a weird one for a traitor to pick.
“Mostly?”
She sighed. “I paid good money for these tickets, and I’m going to miss them pissing blood on the audience, thanks to you.”
“If you want to go back, talk faster,” Cash said coldly. It was Shanko’s voice, the flat disinterest in courtesy. He didn’t use it often, but it worked when he did. Over the phone, at least. He didn’t have the bones for it face-to-face.
“I met him once, just to feel him out,” Anna-Beth said. “I didn’t want to burn my contact, you know, send him some para-stalker who believes in the secret monster government or something.”
Cash resisted the urge to point out she should have maybe asked him some more questions, then.
“And?” he poked instead.
He could feel her shrug down the phone. “We met at that trailer park on the poor end of the island. I don’t think he lived there, but he had the keys to one of them. Just some old guy in a nice suit, probably an ex-con. He looked like he’d been beat up enough over the years.”
Cash’s throat had gone tight and dry, because heknewhe was on another wild goose chase. He had to be.
“What did he smell like?” he asked anyhow.
It was a question that would have given most people pause. Anna-Beth didn’t hesitate. She answered as if it was a relief he asked. As if it made it less weird that it had stuck with her.
“Likemeat,” she said. “Old meat. Not spoiled, just old.”
“Like a butcher’s shop.”
“Yeah,” she said. “That’s it. You know him?”
“Like you said,” Cash answered her. “He’s from my neck of the woods.”
He hung up, shoved the phone into his pocket, and went back into the great hall. It was hot. The blood of a hundred monsters was up with the thrill of the chase, and it sweated out of them into the air. A banshee, gaunt cheeks and hair the color of crayons, swung on him as he pushed by. Her hand raised to backhand him to the floor, but the fat white thing with her grabbed her arm to pull her back.
“Idiot,” it said, out of a prim, pink mouth. “He’s the Abascal boy’s now….”
The banshee glanced at Cash’s throat and then down to the dull glitter of the ring that was just—even without undoing another button—visible under his shirt. She couldn’t blanch any more—her skin was already the color and texture of old bone—but the blood drained from her eyes.
She opened her mouth, and Cash’s death squealed from her lips—somewhere far, somewhere lonely, somewherewet.“Sorry,” the round white thing translated. “She didn’t recognize you. We are just eager for the chase.”
Her tongue flicked, long and curled as a fly’s nose, from her mouth and then back in. The banshee pushed her hands together in apology and backed away.
Cash didn’t know if it pissed him off more tobelongto the Abascals again in the eyes of the world, or that on some level it felt right. Stupid human heart and asshole monster needs.
He shoved the rest of the way through the crowd to the dais where Donna perched. Her heavy overskirt had been unbuttoned and left in a puddle on the ground, revealing thin legs in tight leather and small split goat hooves instead of feet.
Donna did always leave off the feet if she could get away with it. Stubbed toes were just too much of a ridiculous indignity.
“There he is,” she said, with what might have been mistaken for warmth as Cash scrambled up to join them. “I told you he was fine. Our Casper has always been a survivor, Arkady. Like a handsome little cockroach.”
