“No one is going to kill you.”
She puts her hands in her pockets.
“You’re going to send me back to Hell then.”
“Nope. Worse. I’m going to let you go.”
Marcella frowns and half turns away.
She whispers, “I don’t think they’d like that upstairs.”
“Fuck upstairs. Once I get my treatment, you Wormwood people can kill each other off however you want.”
She nods at the paper.
“That’s my ticket out of here?”
“First class and all the cocktails you can drink.”
She puts her hand out. Looks at the list, wads it up, and throws it away.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” she says.
“I just want to know where they are.”
“Forget it. Kill me now. It’s better than what they’ll do to me.”
“Listen—”
“Besides, that list is a joke. Those idiots were big-time in Wormwood one point oh. They’re not the ones who run the new Wormwood.”
I sit down at the scoring table, hoping that will relax her. She sits down across from me.
“Fine—who does run it? One name. And a location.”
“No,” she says. “You don’t know what they’re like. They might kill me just for losing you. At least right now they’ll do it fast.”
I look at her eyes and listen to her heart. Check the microtremors around her mouth. She isn’t playing. She’s genuinely scared.
“One name,” I say. “One name and not only will I let you go, I’ll do it anywhere in the world. The way I pulled you through a shadow yesterday? I can take you anywhere you want to go.”
“Unless you can get me to Mars, forget it.”
I sit back and look at her. Without torturing her for real, she’s not go
ing to give me anything. She’s Wormwood scum, but torture is something those creeps upstairs would do and I’m not going to become them. Instead, I reach into my back pocket and take out the scroll. Set it on the scoring table.
I say, “What’s that?”
“Fuck!” she says, and jumps up from the table.
I hold up the scroll.
“What’s on here? Your credit rating? It can’t be any worse than mine.”
“Have you touched it? Do you know what it’s written on?”
“Yeah. Vellum.”