“Shut the fuck up,” Leon said, conversationally. “You one small step from being sent to face Judgment, Trader. Got that?”
No flush crept up through Irene’s sick pallor, but a greenish tinge bloomed along her cheeks. Her jaw worked, her gaze shivering back and forth between Leon and me, but otherwise not a muscle flickered. She nodded, and my fingers eased off the gun butt. My gun remained in its holster. Why would a Trader help Carp? There must be an advantage in it for her. Of course, not having me kill her is an advantage. Am I really that scary?
When he peeled the knife away, an angry line of blisters boiled through her skin. They weren’t reddened either, but tainted with green like the pale underside of a poison-bearing frog. I wondered if she would bleed green, and didn’t want to find out. What had she bargained for, to end up like this?
Not your problem, Jill.
I could sense no sorcery hanging on her, and she didn’t appear to have much in the way of invulnerability or superstrength. Of course, I hadn’t tried to kill her yet, so that didn’t mean much. “Sutures, Connie. And move it along, I’m on a schedule here.”
“Si, señora.” Concepcion didn’t waste further time arguing, just brushed past me and pushed the curtain aside.
“Jill?” Carp sounded even more dreamy and disconnected. It was a bad sign.
“Right here.” I did something that surprised me—I picked up his hand where it lay discarded against the remains of his slacks. Whatever had made the hole in his leg had chewed right through his clothes; thank God it hadn’t hit the femoral artery.
His fingers were limp, cold and clammy. I squeezed them. “What were you doing there, Carper?”
“Waitress. The waitress.” His eyes rolled up into his head and he shivered. “Teeth. They all had teeth.”
No shit, Carp. They all do. My pager went off, the slight soundless buzz against my hip a reminder of how vulnerable I was. I fished it out of its padded pocket with my free hand and glanced at the number. It was familiar. Someone paging me from my own house, most probably Theron. He was likely to be climbing the walls by now.
Concepcion reappeared with handfuls of medical supplies. “I should not do this, señora. He needs to be admitted.”
“He’ll be admitted all right, Connie. Suture him up and give us a few cc’s of adrenaline in case he goes under, and something for the pain.”
“There are more policia here,” she whispered, shoving the crackling plastic into my hands. Sterile packaging, each tool in its own little pouch. “They are asking if any of their kind has been admitted. Go.”
“Oh, Christ. ” Would this ever end? “All right. We’ll go out the back. Don’t worry, I’m not going to let your patient die.”
She shrugged. “Tonight I have many patients, not just one.”
“And you can’t remember this particular one, right?” I handed over a fifty-dollar bill—hey, she had kids to feed, I knew that much—and nodded to Leon, shoving the packets in assorted pockets of my trenchcoat.
“Help him. I’ll watch the Trader.” A few moments’ work had a tourniquet above the hole in Carp’s leg. He wasn’t bleeding badly but moving wasn’t going to be a fun experience for him. Leon got him up off the bed, and I heard raised voices toward the Admissions section of the ER.
The Trader stared at me, her lips parted. All of her had a matte finish except her lips and the dark holes of her eyes. In dim light, or nightclub shine and flicker, she was probably a sight to behold. Here under the fluorescent wash, she just looked tubercular, but with a green undertone instead of consumptive flush.
“Get moving.” I pointed. “You’re still alive because you brought him here. Don’t make me reconsider.”
20
Where have you been? ” Galina got that much out before she saw Carp, who was pale as death and hanging onto Leon like a shipwrecked man clinging to drifting wood. His injured leg wouldn’t work quite right. She moved forward to help him without missing a beat. “Goddammit, Jill, you just missed Theron.”
Dammit. I made another one of those gut-wrenching physical efforts, trying to prioritize. There were too many things to do. “Is he okay?”
“He said something about your house infected with hellbreed—oh, my goodness. Hello, Leon. Get him in here, lay him on the table. Open up that cupboard on the left—”
I started unpacking medical supplies from my pockets. “Infected with hellbreed?”
“He barely got out in time. Says there’s at least six there. And they’ve found more scurf—” Galina’s eyes widened as she took in the Trader, but she didn’t mention it, just helped Leon get Carp onto a table in the small room off the main showroom of her store. The table, an old butcher-block number matching the one upstairs in her kitchen, had legs carved with the winged serpent of the Sancs and a system of straps that could hold down a pain-maddened hunter or a dangerous, untreated victim of a Possessor. The old thick leather straps also sheathed thin flexible silver wires, blessed and knotted specifically to constrain harm and evil. Coupled with a Sanc’s traditional protections in the house walls, this was an excellent place for stopgap exorcisms, interrogating reticent Traders, or engaging in a little trauma surgery when a hunter’s life gets interesting.
Though not as interesting as it is right this second. “Scurf? Where?”
“Near the river. The 3700 block of Cherry, he says you’ll know when and if you get there. Good God, what happened to this guy? Who is he?”
“Homicide detective. Name’s Carper. Keep him here, and keep him alive for me. This Trader stays here too, I need her in one piece and available. You.” I pointed at Irene, who jumped as if pinched. “You come with me into the other room, I’ve got a few questions. Leon, we’re going scurf hunting in a few minutes. Stock up on ammo and whatever else we need.”
Some days it’s nice being the resident hunter. It means some decisions are just not consensus. Leon nodded and sidled against the wall. Galina hunched over Carp and kept working to patch him up.
“The ammo is in that cabinet there. Take what you need,” Galina said as I left the room. The Trader followed me out into the darkened front room, the walls humming and alive with Sanctuary shielding. Crystal balls in the glassed-in case under the counter sparked, swirling softly with golden light. The stock rustled, books and materials all alive in their own specific ways in a store that has the advantage of being completely useful—unlike a few other occult shops I’ve had the bad luck to try to supply myself from. Sometimes I wonder what hunters do without Sancs in their territories. Santa Luz is lucky to have Galina.
“All right. Start talking.” I rested one hand on my bullwhip, the other on a gun butt. If it made her nervous, she didn’t show it.
Much. Her eyes were wide. The dim light was kind to her, making her bloody hair a river of softness and her shell-like hips curves of delight. The stain on her lips made her look just-kissed. She must have been pretty in her own way, while human. “I’m allowed to talk now?”
“Don’t get cute. Carper had a lead in the organ-theft case, and it was you. You have exactly thirty seconds to tell me what you know, everything you know, leaving nothing out, or we learn if you bleed green too.” I didn’t even have to snarl, the flat matter-of-factness in my tone was more chilling than ranting and raving would be.
I was too tired to rant and rave. The successive shocks were beginning to wear on me. Get over it, Jill. Focus.
“Organ theft.” Did she sound relieved? She nodded, and a curl fell forward, sweetly and fetchingly, into her face. A shadow of hardness in her eyes told me the attractiveness was only skin-deep. There was something else under that thin crust.
“And dirty cops. Start talking.” I kept one eye on the clock.
“Oh, that. It wasn’t even work, just something I learned on a house call.” When I gave her a blank look, she smiled, a thin tight curve of lips that brought the hardness out and made her look a lot less sex-kitten. “I’m one of Shen’s dogs, hunter. We’re available for reason
able rates if you have… desires, and the money to pay for them.”
That was nothing new. And neither was the way her face changed. Even paranormal hookers learn how to calculate, and they learn how to try and hide that calculation. She wasn’t very good at it. Maybe she hadn’t had a lot of practice yet.
“About two weeks ago I had a client, a police officer. Normally run-of-the-mill detectives can’t afford us, you know. It’s mostly the brass we service, and the politicos. But this one was flush, I guess, and paid up front.”
A gleam touched her eyes at the mention of money—a ratty little gleam I wasn’t sure I liked.
“How much?”
“Seven thousand to secure the appointment, another five for the standard consultation, and four for…
extras.” Faint dislike tinted her voice, swirled away. She shifted her weight, licked her lips again. Those heels must be murder. I waited for the rest of it.
“He wanted the usual, and my specialty. Most of all, though, he wanted to talk. His conscience was bothering him. That’s what I do, I provide… discipline.”
I got the feeling she wanted to call it something else. That gleam in her eye turned into a hard little diamond, assessing how much of her story I was buying. I still waited. Silence is the best weapon in conversations like this.
“Anyway,” she continued, “he was really upset. Kept repeating that he hadn’t signed on for murder. He’d just wanted to make some money, some of the money he was spending on me. It was getting too big. He wanted out, but couldn’t see any way out. I just gave him the usual and left. I didn’t tell Shen about it—it didn’t seem important, the man wasn’t Trade material. Too guilt-ridden.” Her shrug was soft poetry, like a Venus flytrap just waiting to close. “Anyway, tonight this detective shows up and asks for me. He stinks of human and doesn’t seem to notice the place isn’t safe for him. Turns out he had access to my client’s credit card statements and traced me from there. We’re independent contractors, you see, and—”
“Names. Your client, anyone else he mentioned.”
Her eyes flickered from side to side, and a pale tongue-tip crept out, touched her glossy lower lip. “I don’t know, the confidentiality—”
For fuck’s sake, what are you, a psychiatrist? “I don’t give a shit about confidentiality, I want names. That table in there can hold a Trader down, you know. You’ve been cooperative so far, I’d hate to have to convince you to give me what I need.”
She shrugged again, satiny flesh moving against the velvet of her gown, and I had one of those irrelevant flashes of memory that happen when you’ve been going for too long on not enough rest. I’d been idly trying to figure out who she was dressed to resemble, and I had it now. She looked just like Jessica Rabbit in real life, right down to the high wide forehead.
I hadn’t seen that movie in forever.
“It doesn’t make much difference. Shen will kill me anyway.” Her gloved hand flicked nervously and produced a long thin brown cigarette with a gold band. The pulse ran high and hard in her throat, despite her show of indifference. “The name on his credit card was Alfred Bernardino. Italian, greasy, built wide and hairy. Do you want to know what he wanted me to do?”
Bernardino? Why does that sound familiar? Most cops’ names do sound familiar, since I put every rookie through the obligatory orientation class. But this sounded more than familiar—it sounded like I’d heard it in the past couple days.
My memory’s normally like a steel trap; I only have to concentrate for a second or two to make a connection. The tip-of-my-brain feeling around the name hovered and, maddeningly, retreated. Shit. Goddammit. “I don’t much care. What did he tell you about the organ trade? Is Shen involved?”
“All I know is that they’re getting them somehow. There’s a buyer from out of state, they pack them up and send them in shipments from a private airfield out of town. There are lists, you know, people too rich to stand in line like the rest of us.” Another shrug. Her voice quivered, but I didn’t blame her. Facing down a hunter in a bad mood should give anyone the shakes. Especially a Trader with something to hide. And she was most definitely hiding something.
Jesus. “What do the cops do?” I should have dug harder to find the clients that Sorrows bitch was shipping organs to. I should have kept an eye on Sullivan and the Badger and their case, too. God dam mit. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, but no hunter likes that sort of vision.
“They find the donors and cover everything up. It’s just under the table, he said. Like hiring illegals for yard work.”
What a lovely way to look at it. “He told you all this?”
“He had a lot on his mind.” She waved the cigarette. “Can I get a light?”
“No. Galina doesn’t like people smoking in here, and you’re not going outside. At least, not until I know you’re telling me the whole truth.” This is a nice neat little story, but something’s off. It just doesn’t make enough sense.
“Come on. Shen’s going to kill me, this is the only chance I’ve got. I’m trading this for some kind of protection. They say you’re fair.”
Goddamn Traders. “Who says?”
“They. You know, them. Everyone.”
“They say I’m fair?” Now that’s news. Traders saying I’m fair?
“Mostly. I’ll tell you something else if you protect me.”
I eyed her in the gloom. The taint of Hell on her aura and that ratlike gleam in her pretty eyes told me not to trust her as far as I could throw her over my shoulder with a broken arm, but I was holding most of the cards here. She was right. Shen An Dua wouldn’t take this Trader back unless it was to make an example of her, both for consorting with me and for being party to Shen’s humiliation.
Which made Irene officially my problem. Except she was a Trader. And there was still a very significant unanswered question.
“Does it have anything to do with one of Shen’s people trying to kill me in my own house?”
For a moment, something hunted flashed in her dark, liquid eyes. She lowered the unlit cigarette. “To kill you?”
Bingo. She knew something about it. This was looking up. “Yeah, a blond scarecrow. I’d be insulted, except it’s easier when they send stupid-ass kids to kill me instead of people I’d have to work up a sweat over.” My fingertips tapped the whip’s handle, a solid comfort. “So, any light you can shed on this?”
“A blond… Fairfax? Why would she…” Now her hands were limp as boned fish at her sides. Her mouth loosened a little, and the shock made her seem more human. “He’s… dead?”
Fairfax? What a name. “I don’t play pattycake when murder comes calling, sweetheart.” It answered a question—Shen had wanted me dead, but not enough to send a ’breed with the balls to do it. Or maybe she just wanted me looking somewhere, and the blond ’breed was supposed to send me in another direction. I hadn’t given him enough time to lie to me.
Irene actually staggered, as if the heels had been too much for her. “He was…” It was a bare whisper. “He wasn’t there to kill you. If he managed to get out he was there to warn you. One of the higher-ups wants you dead for interfering with an experiment.”
Huh? Then why did he jump me? “What kind of experiment, and why would Shen warn me? ”
“Maybe he escaped. But Shen might send him, if she didn’t need him anymore. And she’s got a grudge against the owner of the Monde.”
“Perry?” Well, who else? “He’s involved? What kind of experiment?”
The air swirled with darkness and the scar on my wrist tingled. Irene actually flinched when I said his name. I didn’t blame her one bit.
“I don’t know. Fairfax is dead?” The green tone was back under her paleness, pronounced even in the dark. And the hard, calculating gleam had fled her face. “My God.”
Well, at least that solves one mystery. Why are there other hellbreed at my house, though? “Sorry.” I didn’t feel sorry, but she looked so lost for a moment I almost couldn’t help myself. “Look…?
?? What are you about to do, Jill? This is madness. She’s a Trader, goddammit!
But still, she’d made the right choice, taking Carp to the hospital. Sure, she’d done it because I told her she was next if he died—but still. It had to count for something, didn’t it?
“Do you have what you want?” Her shoulders sagged, she dropped into her heels. “If you do, I’ll be going back to the club.”
What? “What the hell for? You just said Shen’s going to kill you.”
Her shoulders hunched. “If Fax is dead, I don’t care.”
Say what? “Oh, please. We’re talking about a hellbreed, right?” I watched her flinch, dropping her gaze to the floor as her lips twitched. Can it, Jill. Stick to the matter at hand. “What kind of experiment, and who was running it?”
“Fax might have known. I don’t.” She glanced at me sidelong. A bleeding, shifting light had lit far behind her eyes. Did she actually look relieved? “Are you done?”
All my chimes rang at once. Not even close. Not until I’m sure you’re not hiding anything. And not until I’m sure you’re telling the truth. “You’re staying here for the time being. How far is Perry involved in this? Is he the one who wants me dead?”
“No, it’s one of the other higher-ups.” Irene shivered. Now tears glimmered in the corners of her wide eyes. One had even tracked down her cheek, and I couldn’t tell if it was grief or relief, her face was changing so fast. “But if you, say, owed Shen a favor, she could use it to her advantage against the owner of the Monde. She’d like that.”
I eyed her. The idea that she might know a few things about how Perry interacted with the other hellbreed in Santa Luz was… intriguing, to say the least. Not to mention the “higher-ups.” That was worth a good hour or two of hard questioning.