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“Kill him. The moment you see him.”
I crush out the Malediction.
“I need a drink. Do you need a drink?”
He sets down the beer.
“No. And neither do you. Have some coffee. Spend the day with a clear head for once.”
“That sounds incredibly boring.”
“Sit there. I’ll put on a pot.”
He goes to the little kitchen. Starts running water and pawing through the cupboards looking for coffee and mugs.
“When did you learn to do anything, Susie Homemaker?”
“I could do a lot of things before some asshole cut off my head.”
He fills the coffeepot with water. Pours it and some coffee into the top of the maker, then does something mysterious with buttons that turns a red light on. I can survive Hell, but most of the coffee I drink is instant.
“I’m not going to work for a while. Want to watch something?”
“What?”
I pick up a DVD box.
“Candy and I were watching Baron Prásil, that Czech Baron Munchausen movie she borrowed from Brigitte.”
“Is Brigitte in it?”
“No.”
“Is there any nudity?”
“Not so far.”
“Put it on and let’s cross our fingers.”
I WALK INTO Mason’s cell a little after eight. He looks the same as usual. Sitting at his table in a prison jumpsuit, a cat-that-ate-the-canary grin on his face, and his handcuffs secured to the table. There’s a little more slack in the cuffs today. The reason why is spread out in front of me, so big that the sides hang off the ends of the table.
It looks like Mason raided the Vigil’s break room and didn’t leave anything behind. Six or eight game boards—right off, I recognize Monopoly, Go, Risk, and backgammon—are duct-taped together to form a stripped-down version of Metatron’s Cube, the mystical symbol that’s part of the ritual I used to track down the meat-locker asshole, Joseph Hobaica, on his way to Hell. The Cube is a power symbol I used a lot back when Mason and I were in the same Magic Circle. Points to you, Mason, for remembering that.
The game boards are in the shape of a six-pointed star with a circle in the middle containing playing pieces. At the point of each star is another circle. Straight lines cut from a chessboard connect each of these outer circles. I don’t bother asking how he got the boards apart or how he put them back together again because he’ll lie and I don’t need to start off aggravated.
“Did the trash fairy shit on your table for Christmas?”
Mason taps his fingers on the collection of game boards.
“Don’t tell me you don’t appreciate my work. It took me all night and all day to put this together.”
“It’s very pretty in a better-up-the-voltage-on-my-electroshock kind of way. So what’s this mess called?”
He moves his hands forward to touch the edge of the board.
“This is where you truly meet the infinite part of the Infinite Game. And being infinite, it’s also extremely simple. All you have to do is move each of your pieces onto every single space on the board. You can move them in any order and go in any direction. Here’s where things get really interesting. The rules change with each move and how they change depends on the previous move.”
