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“No. The one sticking out of my ass, stupid.”
I touch the plate and the panel lights up. I feel a gentle vibration as a light inside runs across my hand. A second later, a panel above the scanner lights up.
ENTRY.
The door buzzes. I push and it opens. I’m pissed off until I get inside and see why they put on the extra security.
The Qomrama Om Ya sits in the far corner of the room. It floats, suspended in a magnetic field, spinning slowly, changing shape as it moves.
“You’re in the big time now,” says the Shonin.
“I wasn’t before?”
“Bigger. You get to play with the expensive toys.”
“I found the damned toy.”
“Yeah, but you gave it to the Vigil, so it’s here’s now, isn’t it?”
The fucker is right. I did give it to them. And I guess it’s as safe here as anywhere on Earth. And if I hid it in the Room, where no one could get at it, we’d never figure out how to use it.
The Shonin comes over to where I’m standing and looks at the 8 Ball.
I say, “How did the Vigil get my prints?”
“Have you ever touched anything?”
“Here?”
“Anywhere.”
“I see your point.”
The Shonin goes back to his worktable, piled high musty books marked with highlighters and Post-its. There’s an old
box on the table with about a hundred little cubbyholes, each holding a potion in a small vial. If Vidocq was here he could probably tell me what they were. Maybe the bag of bones gets tuckered out and needs mummy Adderall to study for his finals.
“I have a present for you,” I say, and hand the Shonin the dead Goth kid’s phone.
“I already have an iPhone. And this piece of shit is cracked,” he says.
“Fuck you. I got this off a dead kid. He was possessed and I got a call from some really annoying people in Hell on it. I thought maybe you could do some hoodoo on it and learn something.”
He looks at the phone. Presses it to his chest like he’s listening for something.
“I hate this kind of technology. Old stuff. Wood. Fabric. Stone. Metal. It holds pieces of the spirits that move through it. This stuff,” he says, tossing the phone onto the table with his books. “This stuff is empty. It beeps. It plays music. But it has no life.”
“Can you do anything with it?”
“Me? No. But maybe one of Wells’s machine fuckers. Boys and girls love staring at the screens. They think I don’t see them jerking around, playing World of Warcraft. Planning attacks when they should be saving the world.”
“Everyone needs to blow off steam.”
I can’t believe I have to defend federal geeks to a dead man.
“Tell it to Lamia or Zhuyigdanatha. Think they’re blowing off steam?”
The Shonin stops for a second. Stares off into space, then grabs a pen and scribbles something on a yellow legal pad.
