Killing Pretty

  Candy pats me on the shoulder.

  “You’re clever. You’ll think of something.”

  “Thank you for your misplaced confidence.”

  Our phones go off at almost the same time. I pull it out and look at the number. The screen doesn’t show a number or BLOCKED. It reads ANSWER ME. I’ve never seen that before. I figure anyone who can do that must be at least a little interesting, so I answer.

  “Who is this?”

  “Stark?” comes a woman’s voice. “It’s Tuatha Fortune. How are you?”

  “Hi. I’m fine,” I say, wanting to hang up but sober enough to know that it would be a bad idea.

  Tuatha Fortune is the wife of the previous Augur, Saragossa Blackburn. Widow actually. He died while in office. I have it on good authority he was dismembered and flushed out the pipes with the garbage. Not a pretty way to go.

  “How are you, Ms. Fortune?”

  “Lovely, my dear. Let me guess. You received the current Augur’s invitation, but decided to ignore it?”

  “Not exactly. I threw it away. I was sure the name was a misprint.”

  She laughs quietly.

  “He said you’d do that. Tommy is a fine scryer.”

  Scryer is a fancy word for fortune-­teller. They use their hoodoo to get glimpses of the future. All Augurs are scryers. It makes the Sub Rosa rabble feel more secure.

  “Did he see that you’d call me and I’d come?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “Why does he think that would work?”

  “Because it’s me asking you. Not him. This is an anxious time for everyone, and Saragossa was always sorry that you were so estranged from the Sub Rosa family. He would have wanted you to give the new Augur a chance. I’d like that too. And remember: you’re responsible for me.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You saved my life. Remember? That makes you responsible for me. Isn’t that how the old saying goes?”

  “And if I say no, he’ll send someone less pleasant to ask next time.”

  “That’s not how he works,” she says. “But it would do you and everyone else a great favor if you met him.”

  “You’re very sweet, Ms. Fortune, but however you put it, this is still an order from on high, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, dear. I’m afraid it is.”

  I want to tell her to fuck off. I want to tell the Augur too. But I don’t need trouble right now. I have a new job and the store is just getting back on its feet. And I’m not as strong as I once was. Just a few weeks ago, I could walk anywhere I wanted, to Lucifer’s palace or the Augur’s office, and put a knife to their throat. I can’t do that anymore. I’m vulnerable, which makes Candy and everyone else vulnerable. I need to figure out how to get around without the Room. I don’t like feeling weak and I don’t like driving a Crown Vic.

  “All right. When does he want to see me?”

  “Right now, dear.”

  “Give me the address.”

  She does. I put it into a map app. The address is all the way across town. It will take an hour to get there driving.

  “It was a nasty trick, him sending you to talk me into seeing him.”

  “Not really. It was how things were always going to happen. Just as it was fated that you’d say yes.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Tommy told me you’d agree. As I said, he’s a clever Augur. See you soon, my dear.”

  “Not that soon. I’m stuck in a car these days.”

  “How charming for you,” she says, and hangs up.

  I look at Candy—­she’s deep in her own phone conversation. After another minute, she finishes and hangs up.

  “Who was your call?” she says.

  “The Augur. Who was yours?”

  “How fancy. Julie called. She wants me to come in and go over some of the photos with her. She thinks I caught some interesting stuff.”

  “When does she want you?”

  “Now. How about the Augur?”

  “Now.”

  “We’re like a ­couple of school kids being summoned home.”

  “For an egg-­salad lunch.”

  “I like egg salad.”

  “You could have kept that ugly secret to yourself.”

  “I know, but I don’t want any secrets between us. I love egg salad. It’s my boyfriend.”

  “Stop. I have to go see fucking Sauron. I don’t need images of you with egg-­salad teeth swimming in my head.”

  “Where are my brass knuckles?”

  “Carried away by flying monkeys.”

  “Then you better get working on that banana gun.”

  We gather up the paint thinner, rags, and cleaning supplies.

  All we got off the windows is ER. Now the front of the store reads KILL. That ought to really bring in the customers.

  THE 405 FREEWAY is the yellow brick road after the apocalypse. A winding stretch of paved bullshit choked with bumper-­to-­bumper demon drivers and banshee kids wailing away for the SpongeBob juice box Mommy and Daddy left on the kitchen counter. Road rage was invented along this cursed road. Murders and suicides are planned in the stinking miasma of stalled trucks and overheating Hondas, enough to fill all the graveyards in California and more. The 405 is one breakdown away from turning into the Donner Party. Starvation and cannibalism. Movie producers gnawing on starlets’ severed legs. School-­bus Little League teams crunching on the coach’s skull. All I want to do is get to Marina del fucking Rey. Or die quick right here and now. I don’t really care which anymore.

  A century or two later, I dump the Crown Vic in a parking lot near the Basin E harbor. The dock number Tuatha gave me isn’t hard to find, but it’s behind a locked gate. I jam the black blade into the lock and it pops right open. The walkway is lined with pristine boats like floating palaces. I don’t have to look for a slip number to find the boat Tuatha described. It stands out like a rotting pig carcass in a butcher-­shop window. It just goes to show you how much pull the Sub Rosa has, parking this junk heap among the seafaring mansions.

  You have to understand something about Sub Rosa aesthetics. While civilian blue bloods flaunt their inheritances buying the biggest, gaudiest Xanadus they can afford, the Sub Rosa go the other way. Their wealth and status get displayed by fronting their estates with hovels. Collapsed warehouses. Ransacked crack dens. Abandoned hotels. The current Augur has taken things a step further. His manor looks like the only things that are keeping it afloat are strong ropes and good wishes.

  I don’t know shit about boats, but this looks like it was once a nice one, and fast. Maybe it was a fishing boat that took tourists out to catch whatever kind of fish sporty types like to kill and varnish for the den. It looks like it could hold a dozen ­people easy. Main deck, lower deck, and a raised area where the captain could pilot the thing like Ahab on coke and Red Bull. It was clearly very pretty at one point. Very sunny and merry. I can almost smell the white wine and gourmet box lunches. Just being here makes me miserable.

  It looks like an engine fire took the boat out of commission. The lower deck and captain’s area are black, wood-­charred, and plastic-­melted into long brittle ribbons. I put one foot on the deck, not sure if the french-­fried shit box will hold my weight. It does. Too bad. Now I don’t have an excuse to leave.

  I look around for any nosy neighbors, don’t see any, so I duck down and climb into the burned-­out lower deck.

  And come out on the deck of a ship that would make Howard Hughes blush.

  A spotless deck. Polished oak and gold fixtures. Also, a group of bodyguards. Big boys, puffed up on steroids and protein powder. I wonder why the Sub Rosa’s King Tut is working with civilian muscle and what kind of charms they’re carrying that would stop any self-­respecting magician with ill intent from blasting them to charcoal briquettes? They’re probably p
art of an addled outreach program. The Augur’s office throwing a bone to a local security company, sealing some kind of mutual aid pact between the Sub Rosa and civilian worlds. Hey, we’re not better than you. We’ll let you into the Augur’s place, as long as you make sure the riffraff don’t drop any cigarette butts on the deck. They’re glorified hall monitors. Still, I’m not here to hassle anyone, so when one of the meatballs gets up, I stay calm and cool. Instead of coming for me, the flank steak slides open a glass door to an even lower deck.

  “Welcome, Mr. Stark. Mr. Abbot is expecting you,” he says.

  I wait a second to see if it’s a gag and someone is going to laugh. When no one does, I head for the open door. But I keep a hand in my pocket where I’ve stashed my na’at, my favorite weapon from when I was in the arena in Hell.

  Tuatha is in a leather easy chair across from an annoyingly handsome guy. Sandy-­blond hair, all-­American-­boy face with a movie-­star nose idiots in Beverly Hills would pay a small fortune for. He looks young. The youngest Augur I’ve ever seen. He’s wearing jeans and a yellow polo shirt with expensive-­looking deck shoes. Captain America at the yacht club. He jumps up when he sees me and puts out his hand.

  “Stark—­that’s what you go by, right?—­it’s great to finally meet you.”

  I shake Abbot’s hand and he hits me with a high-­watt Cary Grant smile that could melt the polar ice cap.

  “Nice to meet you too,” I lie.

  When he lets go, I put my hand out to Tuatha. She takes it in a more placid way. Not ladylike really, but in a “there’s nothing you can do about the situation, so sit back and enjoy the show” kind of way. She’s still wearing mourning black.

  “Hi, Ms. Fortune. Good to see you.”

  “And you. I’m glad we could finally get you boys together.”

  “Me too,” says Abbot.

  “Then let me make it official,” she says. “Mr. James Stark, I’m happy to introduce you to our new Augur, Mr. Thomas Abbot.”

  “Ta-­da,” he says, holding up his hands.

  They both laugh lightly. I don’t.

  “Please sit down, Stark.”

  He points to another leather chair that’s probably worth more than most of the boats in the harbor.

  “Would you like a drink?”

  I debate getting out my flask and asking for a glass or being polite. I’m in unknown territory, so polite wins.

  “I’ll have what you’re having,” I say.

  “We’re having margaritas,” he says.

  “In that case, I’ll have a whiskey, if you have it.”

  He gets up.

  “Jack Daniel’s, right? I got in some Gentleman Jack just yesterday.”

  I’m not surprised when he pours me the drink himself. It’s the perfect move in whatever man-­of-­the-­­people charm offensive he has planned. Only one question bothers me. What if the fucker is on the level? Tuatha seems to trust him and she’s far from stupid. That’s something I hadn’t considered until now. Charles Foster Kane I can fight. I’m not so sure about Mr. Rogers.

  “Ice?” he says.

  “No thanks. I’ll have it neat.”

  “Of course.”

  He brings me the glass, then settles back down in his seat.

  “I understand you knew Saragossa Blackburn pretty well,” he says.

  I look at Tuatha.

  “I don’t know. Did I?”

  “In your own way,” she says. “You helped him in ways others couldn’t or wouldn’t. He liked that you were so straightforward. He trusted you and it upset him that he could never get you to trust him.”

  “I always respected the fact he didn’t have me bumped off. On that account, he was my favorite king ever.”

  “Is that how you see the Augur? As a king?” says Abbot.

  “How else should I see him? I don’t know any other Sub Rosa who could, say, hex the governor out of office, take over, and no one would bat an eye.”

  “That’s the kind of misperception I want to clear up. You see this relationship as one side holding all the cards and the other—­”

  “Holding shit and high hopes he lives another day.”

  Abbot sets down his glass and leans forward with his hands on his knees, going for deep sincerity.

  “That’s exactly what I want to change. This antagonistic attitude. We shouldn’t be adversaries. I know what you’ve done for the city. Hell, the world. When others ran, you stayed behind and fought the Angra Om Ya on your own. If you ask me, those are the actions of a hero.”

  “You admire me for that? Let me ask you a question . . .”

  “Call me Tommy. That’s what my friends call me.”

  “Okay, Tommy. If you admire what I did so much, where were you when it all went down? I could have used some help, if not fighting the Angra then in getting LAPD off my fucking back.”

  He nods.

  “For one thing, I knew you’d win. I foresaw it and didn’t want to get in the way.”

  “That’s a bullshit answer and you know it.”

  He leans back, steepling his fingers.

  “You’re right, it is. As far as the police are concerned, I wasn’t Augur yet, so I didn’t have the power to deal with them. And as for the fight, I’ll admit it in front of both of you. I was scared. Mad gods. Other dimensions. It’s a bit out of my experience. But not yours, and when it came time to stand up, you did. I want to acknowledge that. I want to reward that.”

  “How?”

  “I want to offer you a seat on my advisory council. You’d have an important voice in shaping policy where it comes to both the Sub Rosa world and how we interface with the civilian population.”

  Okay. He got that punch by me. I was looking for a right cross and he hit me with a body shot. The nicer this guy gets, the less I want to trust him. He oozes sincerity, but so do cave birds Downtown. They look like cute little sparrows. They’ll perch in your hand and cuddle right up. Then the stinger comes out and they get you with one of the most noxious poisons in Hell. Lucifer kept a cageful of cave birds in his palace. He’d dip his royal dagger in their poison every morning before staff meetings. Everyone knew it and no one caused trouble. So the question is: Is Abbot the old Lucifer or Samael, the reformed and less homicidal Devil? What if I guess wrong? I want to get out of here, but the whiskey is good. Trust isn’t my greatest virtue, but it might be interesting to see how the other half lives. I might be able to get something out of it.

  “Does it pay anything?”

  “It could. I know you’ve had some financial problems. I could authorize you a stipend. Say, a hundred thousand a year? It would be steady money to give you breathing room. You wouldn’t have to give up the store or your other job.”

  So he has been keeping tabs on me. At least he’s honest about it.

  All this honesty is giving me a migraine.

  “What do you know about my job?”

  “I know you’re working with a respected ex-­member of the Golden Vigil. If she can trust you I think I can too.”

  “What if she’s wrong?”

  “I told you he’d say something like that,” says Tuatha.

  Abbot nods at her and looks back at me.

  “She’s not wrong, Stark, and all three of us in here know it. You come on like you’re still the monster you were when you came back from Hell. And I don’t use the word ‘monster’ lightly. You were a menace. Out of control. But you’re not that person anymore, just as I’m not the person I was when I hid from the Angra Om Ya when I should have been right there beside you.”

  “What’s changed?”

  “You. The idea that you might work with us. With your experience and knowledge of the dangers plaguing both civilians and the Sub Rosa, I think we could accomplish great things together.”

  “You know, Audsley Isshi
i still has a hit out on me.”

  Isshii had been Blackburn’s security chief. When Blackburn was murdered, Isshii decided I did it. He’s been after me ever since.

  “I do know about that and I want you to know that we’re dealing with it. I guarantee you we will find him. In fact, if you wanted, I could assign you and your friends their own security teams.”

  “That’s very generous of you.”

  “It’s just partial payment for all you’ve done for us.”

  I look down at my glass and finish the drink.

  “I like your whiskey,” I tell him, trying to deflect his bruising sincerity with some of my own.

  Abbot gets up, goes to the liquor cabinet, and comes back with an unopened bottle of Gentleman Jack.

  “Take it. Please.”

  “Thanks.”

  I take the bottle and set it on the floor next to my chair. If it’s a bomb, I want it out in the open where it will kill all of us when it goes off.

  Abbot settles back down into his chair.

  “I don’t expect you to decide right now. But at least tell me you’ll think about it.”

  I tap the bottle with my boot. It doesn’t explode.

  “Sure. Why not?”

  Abbot flashes me a Mount Rushmore–size smile.

  “That’s terrific news.”

  He gets a business card from his pocket and hands it to me.

  “This has my private number on it. You can call anytime. If you need anything or just want to talk.”

  I put the card in an inner pocket of my coat.

  It feels like the end of the audience, so I get up. Abbot and Tuatha stand too. It’s handshakes all around, a little awkward and self-­conscious, like the end of a mediocre job interview.

  “Don’t forget your bottle,” Abbot says.

  I pick up the Jack and cradle it in my arms like a newborn.

  Tuatha says, “I’ll see him out, Tommy.”

  He nods and sits back down.

  “It was great meeting you, Stark.”

  “Yeah. You too.”

  With a light touch on my arm, Tuatha steers me outside. We walk to the far end of the boat.

  “Thank you for coming and for listening. I know this kind of thing is hard for you.”