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I drop the last half inch of the Malediction into a cup full of cold tea.
“What exactly were you trying over there?”
“Anything,” he says. “This is an Angra construct. I thought bringing it in close proximity to the Qomrama might have some effect on it.”
“I didn’t see anything happening.”
“Neither did I.”
“How long have you been trying?”
He glances up at a Naval Clock on the wall.
“All night apparently. Ever since the marshals brought the bodies back.”
He leans back and pulls a loose strip of dried black skin from the back of his hand and drops it on the floor. It’s not the only skin down there. I wonder if it’s something to do with the poison book. First Candy and now him. Is everyone getting sick?
“What have you learned about the 8 Ball from your killer book?”
He flips through a notebook covered with long scribbled lines of kanji.
“Lots and lots. But the book is philosophical and theoretical. Not geared toward practicality. I can tell you the Qomrama’s history, but not how to use it to attack or summon.”
“Your book doesn’t sound like it’s worth a damn.”
“It hasn’t all been bad.”
He looks at the 8 Ball rotating in the magnetic field.
“I got it to reverse direction for a few seconds once.”
“I for one feel better knowing that you might have the power to make the Angra dizzy.”
He flips through pages of his notebook.
“What am I not seeing?”
“That poison book is probably fucking with your mind. If it hasn’t told you anything useful by now, why don’t you stop drinking it?”
“Because what if it reveals something tomorrow? The answers we need might be in the next bottle. Or the one after that.”
I walk over to the 8 Ball. Mr. Chop Shop bares his teeth at me. I want to knock them out.
“You keep drinking that stuff and the gristle holding you together is going to fall off. You know the old joke, a guy goes into his doctor’s office and says, ‘Doc, it hurts when I do this,’ and the doctor says, ‘So don’t do that.’ That’s you. Stop doing that.”
The Shonin sits up.
“That’s your way,” he says. “You can’t conquer it with your fists or your gun, you give up. I meditated in my tomb for centuries. I will find the answer.”
“We don’t have centuries, Jack Skellington. We need something now.”
“Do you have any suggestions?”
I touch the glass chamber where the 8 Ball floats.
“You’re trying to use all these potions and rituals, but the only time I saw the 8 Ball do anything is when someone was touching it.”
The Shonin sets down his notebook.
