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“Ask me when I have to rob a gas station to buy a cup of coffee. I’m living off bribes from gangs and ne’er-do-wells. Did you know that people will pay you cash money not to kill them?”
“We usually get the opposite. ‘I’ll give you my fortune if only you’ll make me immortal.’ ”
“You ever take them up on it?”
“Rarely. Most people who come around begging for it, they’re not the type you want hanging around for the next thousand years.”
“I don’t know if I want to hang around with anyone for a thousand years. Present company excepted, of course.”
She nods at my weak compliment and pours a shot of blood from the heart flask. The stopper in the aorta has a man’s face. I wonder if all the stoppers have the same face or it’s a likeness of the poor slob that donated the organ.
The waiter comes back with my whiskey. Before I sip it, I say, “I assume there’s no blood in this.”
Tykho shakes her head.
“It’s as clean as a virgin’s pussy.”
I raise the glass in a toast and take a sip. Whatever brand it is, it’s smooth and burns just right. I know instinctively it’s nothing I can afford, but I bet the Chateau has some in stock. I’ll have to find out the name.
“Sorry about Phil. Your little ones play hard. I didn’t know we were just roughhousing until it was too late.”
“Yes. They’re all in a time-out. Seeing how Phil is the first Aeternus you’ve killed since poor little Eleanor Vance, I think we can just chalk it up to bad luck and not a break in our truce.”
Eleanor Vance. I try not to think about her. She’s one of the few kills, and definitely the only shroud-eater kill, I regret. She was a teenybopper turned bloodsucker, young and still dumb enough to be reckless. I killed her for the Golden Vigil. I’ll never forgive Marshal Wells and Aelita for sending me after her.
“I wish I could take back Eleanor.”
Tykho runs a dyed-blue fingertip around the rim of her glass.
“It’s the curse of being a predator with a brain. Creatures like you and me, we’re supposed to kill and move on. We’re not supposed to reflect on it. I’d say it’s proof there’s no God, but I know you’d disagree.”
“He’s around. He just has a really fucked-up sense of humor.”
Or it’s another of his screwups. She’s right about predators. Wolves don’t weep when they take down a deer. And don’t tell me regret is all about having a soul. Everybody has regrets, but most people use their souls about as often as they floss, which is usually two days before they go to the dentist.
“Let’s get down to it, shall we?” says Tykho. “I didn’t invite you here to give you money, but despite last night’s unpleasantness, I do have something for you.”
“All right.”
“It’s about the thing you’re looking for. The Qom something?”
“Magic 8 Ball is okay.”
“I know you were getting nowhere finding it, so you started your blitzkrieg through the city. It unsettled everyone and made our hunting harder, so we made our own inquiries using our own methods.”
I don’t want to think about what their methods means.
“And?”
“We think we’ve found something.” She takes a sip of her blood cocktail and goes on. “Your mistake was thinking all the answers lie in threatening the living. We have connections with a lot of L.A.’s nonliving residents.”
“It’s hard to punch a ghost.”
“Lucky ghosts.”
“So, a dead person told you where to find the 8 Ball.”
“A friend of yours, I think. Cherry Moon?”
