“Just Rodeo Drive. And it wasn’t my fault. The other guy shot first. Sorry if I messed up any of your friends’ thousand-dollar jeans.”
“Fuck those hausfraus and their witless rent boys. I’m sorry I missed the fun. The next time you’re feeling genocidal, you must call me before acting on it.”
“It’s a date.”
I look at her gold eyes, but I can’t read them. Can’t hear her heart or get a feel for her thoughts either. Some Sub Rosa keep a kind of antihoodoo cloak over their homes. It keeps hexes and general magic mishaps to a minimum. I bet the Geistwalds have it cranked to eleven tonight. The most excitement we can hope for is Cabal getting drunk enough to pick a fight with Bruce Lee’s ghost.
“Here come the boys,” says Koralin. “And they found the little slut. I wonder how many dicks she’s sucked tonight?”
I look at Lucifer, but he’s ignoring me and the remark.
Jan Geistwald is as dark as Koralin is light. He has a dark olive complexion and a deeply lined face like someone who’s spent too much time in the desert squinting at the sun.
Ritchie has his arm around a woman’s shoulder and he’s smiling like he just won the lottery.
The woman is brunette and her dark pupils, within the bright whites of her eyes, look like bullet holes in the snow. She has the perfect bird-bone cheeks you see on French girls, but her non-plastic-surgery nose and full lips look more Italian or Greek.>“That family fell apart and just kept on falling. What a perfect way for the last of them to go.”
“That’s where I was going when I left you at the hotel. I met Wells at the Springheel place to help suss out what happened there.”
“Do you do a lot of magical forensics for the Vigil? Or was it a Homeland Security matter?”
“I don’t know if there’s any difference to Wells. And it was the first time.”
“And you’re sure it was eaters?”
“All the signs were there.”
“Good for you. Congratulations on your new job. I didn’t know you were such an expert on demons.”
“I’m not, but once I started looking, it seemed pretty obvious.”
“Did Wells agree?”
“I think so. It’s hard to tell with him. And his crew were everywhere. It was goddamn Woodstock at five hundred decibels in there. I could hardly think.”
“Sounds like a hard way to work.”
“It was a pain in the ass.”
“Interesting that he’d call you in just to have you working in such terrible circumstances.”
“That’s Wells. It was probably a test. Like he was hazing me.”
“Or distracting you.”
“What?”
“It’s what I’d do if I didn’t want someone to find something. I’d call in someone new and then make it impossible for them to do their job. They’d be flattered I’d asked them and too embarrassed to say anything when they didn’t perform well.”
“Why would Wells do that?”
“I have no idea. I didn’t say he did it. I said it’s what I’d do.”
“You have a lot more to cover up than Wells or the Vigil.”
“Fair enough.”
We come around a bend and up ahead the cavern place opens up into a huge marble room lit with hundreds of torches and candles. A dozen other canals cut through the place and there’s a golem-powered gondola in each one, steering guests under arched stone bridges.