“Maybe not so tight as all that. Some of the potions I sold him, when combined with other more common ingredients, could be used to create a very powerful disguise, more powerful than your average young Sub Rosa could conjure up with simple spoken magic.”
“I’m going to need to talk to him and Cabal. Making glamour for a con man sounds exactly like the kind of job Cabal would be good for. If he paid you off, he’s done some work for someone and it sounds like the fake Rainier has some coin to spare.”
Muninn laughs quietly to himself.
“You’re becoming quite the gumshoe, aren’t you? When Eugène first introduced you, I thought you’d only be good for walking through walls and punching people very hard, but here you are puzzling through clues like a champion. If we were drinking tea, we’d practically be Holmes and Watson.”
“I feel like both these days. I had a kind of accident recently, and there’s a couple of different me’s punching it out in my head. Sometimes it’s me and sometimes it’s this better, stronger, smarter me, but even more pissed off and with a massive stick up its ass.”
“And which one of you am I speaking to now?”
“I’m not always sure, but I’m pretty sure it’s not the Stark me putting all these clues together because whenever it starts, I sort of go out for a mental cigarette and let not-Stark talk.”
“Fascinating.”
There’s a loud crash behind us.
“Sorry,” says Johnny.
“You know if you break the Holy Grail, you have to pay for it, right?”
“Don’t be too hard on him. He’s a lovely boy. Much more interesting than the tall, dark, silent types in the tunnels.”
“What’s driving me crazy is that none of this feels like any of it is getting me any closer to helping Brigitte.”
Johnny asks, “Is she the one you said was bitten?”
“That’s her.”
“Why don’t you just cure her?”
“There isn’t a cure. You told me so yourself.”
Johnny turns and gives me a puzzled look.
“Did I? Wow. I must have really been out of it.”
“You’re saying there’s a cure for a zombie bite?”
“Sure. It’s simple. It’s my blood. Well, any Savant’s blood.”
“What do you do with it?”
Johnny drops a papier-mâché devil’s head he’d been holding and comes to the table.
“It’s super easy. You just mix my blood with a little Spiritus Dei and goofer dust—graveyard dirt—and boil it over a fire made from white oak. Scoop off the clear liquid that floats to the top and inject it into her heart.”
“Johnny, can I have some of your blood?”
He looks at Muninn and me.
“Sure. I’m not using it.”
“I’ll get you a jar,” says Muninn, heading for the shelves. “I believe you have your own knife.”
I get up and let Johnny have the chair. He examines the Visible Man model while I get out the black blade.
“You probably want to cut the femoral artery up here near the thigh.”