Cabal claps his hands in light, quick applause.
“Well said, young lady. You’ve ensnared me in a petite prevarication. Which, unhappily for you, doesn’t alter the fact that I have not consorted with the resurrected, either deliberately or inadvertently, in many, many years.”
I say, “It doesn’t help Regina Maab that it was a long time ago. Eaten is eaten and dead is dead.”
“Regina? What does she have to do with this?”
“Nothing, other than the fact that when she stepped on your toes you sent some Lacunas over with a jar of barbecue sauce and charcoal briquettes.”
His eyes narrow and he sits up. All traces of the drunk act are gone.
“Listen to me closely, young man. That’s not the kind of thing I’ll tolerate being murmured about me, not by you or any other soul in this sunny burg. Regina and I had our differences, yes. And there came a moment when she required the administration of a lesson that she would remember on a molecular level. And yes, I vainly and foolishly employed a gaggle of resurrected in what you might term a professorial manner to deliver said lesson, but when Ms. Maab took leave of Los Angeles, she was most exceedingly and annoyingly alive.”
“Why should I believe you when everyone else is positive you had her snuffed?”
He leans back in his chair and takes a box from his pocket, opens it, and pulls out what looks like a wriggling earthworm.
“Do you have a light?” he asks.
I reach for Mason’s lighter and Cabal picks up the earthworm, running a grimy finger along the length of its body several times. The worm straightens and stiffens until it looks like a pink chopstick. I hold out the lighter and flick it. Cabal leans in, holds my wrist, and puts the worm’s head into the flame. He puffs a few times and the worm catches, the end glowing cherry red. As Cabal smokes, he takes out a small black book and a pencil. He flips through the book, writes something down, and slides the piece of paper across the table to me.
“That is Regina’s number in Mumbai. That’s far away in a country called India. You might have heard of it. If you adjudge to ring her, please give the old girl my best.”
I hand Brigitte the number and she looks it over. I let her hold on to it because her clothes probably don’t get destroyed as often as mine.
“What kind of problem did you have with the Springheels?”
He looks genuinely puzzled by that. It caught him off guard and I can feel the edges of his mind sifting through old memories.
“None. They were like water buffalo shitting in the streets of Kathmandu. Like any lifelong resident of that fair city, they were something I neither noticed nor particularly cared about.”
“They were an important family once.”
“Virgin sacrifice and bloodletting were considered of the utmost importance once, but when they outlived their efficacy they were abandoned along with the other discarded refuse of an earlier, though in some ways more graceful, time.”
“You old Sub Rosa families are pretty concerned about your place in the social pecking order. The Springheels were the first family in America. You didn’t think that kind of history might overshadow you just a little?”
“The Springheels were a dusty diorama. A museum display illustrating Neanderthal man’s first crude efforts to control fire and not shit themselves at every opportunity. The only reason the Springheel family still existed was as a concession to nostalgia and sentimentality. They might have begun their days well in this green and verdant land, but through shrewd planning and incandescent gamesmanship, they managed to metamorphose from ancient royalty into dirt-scrounging hillbillies. They threatened my house as much as this luminous worm.”
He holds up his pink cigarette.
“What happened to them?”
“Time. The world. Charles Springheel, the one who repatriated the family to California, designed and constructed exquisite charms, protective objects, talismans, and the like. He was, at heart, a tinkerer. And a brilliant one, but sitting in your ivory tower fiddling with Lilliputian cogs and thingamabobs is no way to maintain one’s standing in the world. Many of us purchased Charles’s contraptions over the years, both to bolster the old boy’s sense of purpose and to add a bit of lucre to the family’s dwindling fortune. But there’s only so much one can do. A fool determined to saunter off a cliff will find his way around even the most formidable barricades.”
I’m learning to really hate Cabal. I don’t want to believe the words coming out of his skull-white face, but after seeing the pathetic and maybe deliberate death scene at the Springheel house, I can’t argue with what he’s saying about the family.
“Since you’re our resident demon expert, did Enoch Springheel ever ask you for advice on how to summon or control them?”
“Enoch seldom discoursed with anyone. Certainly not with me. The few times a year he would deign to appear at Sub Rosa soirees, he left the distinct impression of a man marooned in the Sahara of his own psyche.”
“Who would we go to if we wanted to learn about Drifters or perhaps hire one?” Brigitte asks.
Cabal shakes his head.
“No one mucks about with the resurrected these days. Too dangerous. You’d be making yourself vulnerable to a veritable avalanche of peril, both from the families and our lovely local Inquisitor, Medea Bava.”
“So, there aren’t any Drifter experts in L.A.?”