He's been doing more with the Kissi than exchanging sea stories and brownie recipes. He slips his hand through my body and right into my chest. Instantly I'm cold and nauseous, remembering what it was like in Josef's office. With every wave of pain and sickness, I twist the knife deeper into him.
The mansion walls are dust and the floor is sagging under our weight. A great, black dome of nothingness hangs over our heads. Then even the floor is gone and we're in the dark, surrounded by the chittering, scuttling noises of the Kissi, the only reminder that we haven't fallen out of the universe completely.
I shout Hellion control curses and poison hexes into Mason's ear. He digs his hand into my chest and gets his fingers around the key. The whole universe shifts, like a car sliding on black ice. I drag the black blade between Mason's ribs. Throw attack spells. Mason chatters in Kissi, trying to fill my head with dread and confusion. Luckily, I'm already confused and full of dread, so the spell is kind of redundant.
The darkness shreds around us. Streaks of something leak through the opaque wall of nothing. A billion Kissi scream as light burns into their hiding place.>When I start walking, the wall of Kissi bodies parts like the Red Sea, then closes in behind me.
I'm moving just to move. Standing still feels like asking for trouble. But every direction looks exactly the same to me. I can't tell if I'm walking on something solid or just the idea of something. One minute, it feels like I'm on hard-packed dirt, then the next, I'm sinking into sponge cake. I don't stop or slow down. I keep walking, like I know exactly where I'm going.
A Kissi puts its glowing hand on my arm. I look at it like I talk to zombie angels every day. Its face is half-baked dough. I can't quite bring it into focus.
"I told you we'd meet again."
The Kissi's face rearranges itself for a second. Turns into Josef's Aryan poster-boy mug. "He's waiting for you. Straight ahead. We've all been so looking forward to this."
"Hang around, ugly. When I'm done with Mason, the two of us can get some dim sum before I kill you again."
Josef laughs, turns his sluglike head, and dissolves into the writhing mass of Kissi bodies. They pick up his laugh and it spreads out across the colony, so that in just a few seconds the sound surrounds me. Thunders down on me from a billion throats like a storm. It rattles every molecule in my body. I'm being mugged with sound. I turn and shove the lighter straight into the heart of the closest group of Kissi. They shriek and scatter. Shove the lighter in another group. And another. They still surround me, but they're not laughing anymore. And they keep their distance.
Straight ahead is the Faim family's Beverly Hills mansion, a Tudor playhouse standing in a universe of nothing. I don't bother knocking.
Head straight downstairs to the basement. Mason's magic room. The room where he sent me to Hell and where I found the lighter.
I open the door at the bottom of the stairs and, like that, it's eleven years ago.
The room is exactly the way I remember it. Even the circle drawn on the floor in lead is the same. I never figured Mason for the nostalgic type.
"I know you're not going to believe me, but it's really good to see you, Jimmy."
Mason sounds exactly the same. He looks the same, too. I can't tell if he's keeping himself young with magic or if time works differently here.
"When you've spent as many years as I have with no one to talk to but Parker or the Kissi, it's a real thrill to run into someone with some brains. Who isn't here to kiss my ass or be my Renfield."
"That's funny. I always thought you and Parker were best buds. Not Vlad and Renfield."
"You used to call him my attack dog. Maybe that's a better way of putting it. A dog is man's best friend, but it doesn't mean you're going to talk to it about anything important. You pet a dog. You feed a dog. You put it out back to guard the henhouse. Reward it when it's been good. Punish it when it's been bad. That's pretty much it."
"Your plan is working out great, if your plan was to sit out here in an empty house in the middle of fuck-all, surrounded by talking army ants. Wow. You really are a genius. I never saw that one coming."
"You see? Anyone else, I'd want to strangle by now. But noise like that. Criticism. It's all right coming from you. Because I respect you. You really are the only other Sub Rosa I thought had any real talent and style."
"That's why you had to kill me."
"I didn't kill you, did I? I could have and you wouldn't have seen it coming any more than the other thing."
"You can't even say it? You sent me to Hell. Say it."
"I don't want to reopen old wounds. That's not why I brought you here. And before you tell me that you found me on your own, we both know that I made sure that Kasabian knew just enough about where we were to help you finally figure it out."
"If you wanted me here so bad, why didn't you just send up a flare or have one of your Kissi forward me a Google map link?"
"Because I had to know that you could do it. I haven't seen you in eleven years. Maybe the air in Hell or all those knocks on the head in the arena turned your brains to butterscotch pudding. I had to see you work it out and here you are. And since you got rid of Parker, I have a staff opening right now. A nice midlevel executive job. Good hours. Terrific benefits. Possible deification. Interested?"
"Keep talking. The more you yammer, the more I want to kill you. That's the only reason I'm here, in case you forgot about what you did to me and Alice."
"Alice was Parker's thing. I just wanted to make sure she wasn't going to make too much of a fuss after you were gone. He took it too far."
"He was your dog. You sent him out to hunt. Your responsibility."