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“Nothing.”
Marlowe holds up his glass for another drink.
“Listen, I know buyers with way too much money on their hands. I won’t charge for the reading if you tell me where you got the knife.”
“Sure. From a murder scene.”
He shakes his head.
“It doesn’t make sense. That’s the first thing I would have felt.”
“But you didn’t and that’s all I need to know for now.”
“If you find out who hexed the knife, I’ll pay you for the name.”
“Maybe. I do enjoy the company of money.”
Carlos sets the martini down in front of Marlowe.
When he reaches for it, his hand goes limp. He knocks the glass over. It falls to the floor and he goes down with it, his body rigid and convulsing.
I remember something about turning choking people on their sides, so I roll him over. Carlos comes around the bar and hands me a small blue bottle.
“Get that down his throat,” he says.
I roll Marlowe onto his back and pry his jaws apart enough to pour in a syrupy orange potion that smells like cat piss and bubble gum.
It takes a minute for the convulsing to stop. I roll him back onto his side and soon he’s breathing normally.
He opens his eyes and looks around, realizes he’s on the floor, and sits up.
“What happened?”
“You dosed yourself, jackass, when you licked the knife.”
“I take back the offer. Keep that thing away from me.”
I get his shoulders and wrestle him to his feet. There’s a crowd around us, but Carlos gets them back to their tables and drinking again. I set Marlowe on a bar stool. Carlos gives him a glass of water and he gulps it down. I wait for him to finish.
“Did you see anything when you were unconscious?”
He takes a long breath and lets it out.
“Yeah,” he says. “It felt like I was dying and someone was coming for me.”
“You mean, like Death?”
He rolls the glass between his hands.
“That’s the weird part. I knew it should be, I felt like it, but it wasn’t Death. It was someone else.”
“You mean ‘something.’ ”
“No. Someone.”
I take the glass out of his hands and set it on the bar.
“You should go home.”
