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“Noon, it is.”
Wells is tense. His heart rate is up a little. His pupils are narrow. I head over to Candy.
“Is there something else you have to say? Something you’re not telling me?”
“Yes. Up your game, Stark. These might be the End Times. I don’t want you half-assing your way through them.”
It’s a good party-line statement, but it’s not what he’s thinking about. There’s something else.
“Sure,” I say. Then to the Shonin, “See you around the watercooler, King Tut.”
“Don’t eat too much tonight, fatty. Salads are your friend.”
I grab my coat and Candy and I follow Wells outside. The Shonin stays behind and pours himself some tea.
“What an asshole,” she says.
“He’s just trying to get under my skin. Sounds like he’s getting under yours.”
She shakes her head.
“Maybe. I don’t feel well. I’m going to see Allegra.”
I touch her cheek. It’s cold, but Jades always run a little cool.
“You feel a little colder than usual. Want me to come along?”
“I’ll be fine. I’ll see you at home.”
“At least let me take you through a shadow. It’ll take you forever on the street.”
“I’m fine,” she says. For a second she flashes her Jade face. It’s almost subliminal, like she wasn’t in control. “Stop getting all over me.”
I say, “I’ll see you at home.”
Candy doesn’t say anything. Just walks away.
I remember that she still has my gun and I almost go after her. But I don’t. Maybe some space is what she needs right now. Anyway, whatever’s wrong, Allegra’s clinic will fix her up.
I find a good shadow by the lab door and go through, coming out at home. Maximum Overdrive. The vide
o store I run with a not-quite-dead man named Kasabian.
MAX OVERDRIVE IS located on Las Palmas, right off Hollywood Boulevard. It sits midway between Donut Universe and Bamboo House of Dolls, the only junk-food place and bar that matters in L.A.
Kasabian used to run the store. When I came back from Hell I cut off his head. I might have been a little hasty, but he’d just shot me and I wasn’t feeling entirely reasonable at the time.
The trick with the black blade I used on him is that if you hold it just right it cuts, but it doesn’t kill. And that’s what I did to Kasabian. He’s spent most of the last year as a disembodied head and he hasn’t shut up about it.
Lately I started feeling sorry for him, so I had a Tick Tock Man called Manimal Mike attach Kas to a mechanical hellhound. Now he sort of has a body, even if it’s a little wobbly and whirs like a toy train when he moves.
Some Lurkers are in the store. A young Lyph whose denim jacket looks like it was mugged by a Bedazzler. All rhinestones and shiny bits on the back. Jim Morrison’s face in flames. Underneath it says LIGHT MY FIRE. Lyph have horns and hooves and tails just like Halloween devils, but they’re as sweet as peach ice cream when you get to know them.
A couple of Tykho Moon’s boys are in the shop, dressed to the nines in the best leather and latex you can steal off a dead model.
Tykho is the boss of the Dark Eternal, the biggest, baddest vampire clan in L.A. Yeah, Dark Eternal sounds kind of like an eighties Goth band, but Tykho assures me the name is a lot scarier in Latin. The Eternal have been around for a long time. Tykho’s boys are arguing, bumping shoulders like a couple of young pups, and whispering to each other.
Kasabian isn’t anywhere in sight, which isn’t a big deal. It isn’t like anyone is going to shoplift any of what we carry. Max Overdrive used to be a regular video store. We rented movies, sold new and used discs. In other words, a money pit. BitTorrent and movie streaming were killing us. Thanks to Kasabian’s obsessive collecting, our impressive porn and horror collections kept us afloat for a while, but we were going down fast. Now we’re a boutique shop catering to a select clientele of Sub Rosas, Lurkers, and a few civilians with money and a taste for something special. Mainly, movies that don’t exist.
