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Kasabian takes a step, teeters, and plants his ass on the side of the table to keep from falling.
Mike slumps into a desk chair. Wipes his face with a dirty rag. It leaves a trail of grease on his forehead and cheek. He wheels himself over and uses a delicate tool that looks like a screwdriver crossed with a spider to make adjustments to Kasabian’s legs.
Mike is a Tick-Tock Man. He builds mechanical spirit familiars for the Sub Rosa chic set. He might be a drunk and nutty and a little suicidal, but he knows his way around machines. He also owes the Devil a favor. The idiot sold his soul a few years back. Now he wants it back. He still thinks I’m Lucifer, so I’m making him work off the debt by fixing up Kasabian.
While Mike works on him, I show Kasabian the dead man’s bloody photo on my phone.
“Friend of yours?” Kasabian says.
“He missed, if that’s what you mean.”
“And now you feel guilty for offing him.”
“That’s the problem. I didn’t. He did it to himself. And I want to know why.”
I flip to the guy’s driver’s license. Kasabian squints at it.
“Trevor Moseley. When did he die?”
“Just now,” I say. “Like twenty minutes ago.”
He shakes his head.
“I won’t see him for a day or so. They’re not exactly state-of-the-art when it comes to sorting out the new meat Downtown.”
Kasabian has a few useful skills. He’s a passable computer hacker, he has good taste in movies—he once ran a choice indie video-rental place in Hollywood. Also, he can see into Hell. It’s a gruesome little trick, but gruesome describes 99 percent of his life, so what’s one more percent between friends?
The trick works like this: when I came back from Hell, I brought a jar of peepers with me. Peepers are eyeballs a lot like ours (no, I don’t know where they come from and I don’t want to know), only they work like surveillance cameras. I scattered dozens of them around Hell. Between the peepers and his ability to peek into Downtown through the Daimonion Codex, Kasabian can spyglass a good chunk of Hell. Entrepreneur that he is, he’s even turning his deadeye trick into a business. Setting himself up as an online psychic. When it’s up and running, he’ll track down any of your dead relatives and report back on them—as long as they’re in Hell. Seeing as how that’s where most suckers are headed, he should be in business until the sun turns this rock into one big overcooked s’more.
“Let me know when you spot him. I might just go down and ask Mr. Moseley a few questions.”
Candy says, “Can I go too?”
I should have been ready for that.
“I don’t know,” I say.
Candy tosses down the magazine she was thumbing through.
“We talked about this. If you leave me here and disappear down there again, you better stay down there because I swear I’ll salt your skull and drink you like a daiquiri.”
Candy isn’t exactly human. She’s a Jade. That’s sort of like being a vampire, only Jades dissolve your insides and drink you, kind of like a spider. I know it sounds bad, but she’s off the people juice these days. And it’s kind of sexy when she lets the monster out. I just have to be around to make sure it goes back in.
“What’s the difference between true love and a murder spree?” says Kasabian.
“I don’t know. What?”
He shrugs.
“I don’t know. I was hoping you lovebirds would have a clue.”
He smiles, pleased with his half-assed joke.
I say, “Go bite a mailman, Old Yeller.”
Mike lets go of Kasabian’s leg. He flexes it and it looks like it’s working all right. Mike goes to work on the other one.
“Well?” says Candy. She’s right beside me, her hands balled into fists. She’s not backing down on this.
