Caleb refused to elaborate.
Bubba got in and drove over to the Orleans Parish intake and lockup. Nick fel quiet as old memories surged of the handful of times he’d visited his dad—not here, but prison, which was basical y the same thing.
“You keep that brat away from me, Cherise. I don’t even want to look at his ugly face. Don’t bring him up here anymore to see me.”
Love you, too, Dad.
Nick stil had no idea how his beautiful, kind mother had hooked up with such a monster. It didn’t make any sense.
She’d told him once that she liked bad boys. But there was a difference between a guy like him who had attitude and a guy like his dad who had mental damage.
Why did women and girls find psychos so desirable? Even at his school, it was the vicious loons like Stone who got al the girls while nice guys like him only got the finger when he asked them out. He’d never understand it.
Of course, in his case, his mother’s insistence on him wearing these foul y ugly shirts didn’t help.
Whatever.
He just hoped that with his DNA linking him to the psycho kil er that he never ended up inside something like this. That was the one promise he’d made to his mother he never wanted to break.
Bubba pul ed around back and parked under a streetlight.
“What now?” he asked Caleb.
“We wait on Virgil.”
“How wil he know which car’s ours?” Mark asked.
Before Caleb could answer, someone knocked on the window next to Bubba. Bubba jumped a foot in panic. “What the hel ?”
Caleb inclined his head to the …
Nick scowled as his gaze focused on his friend.
Virgil looked nothing like what he’d expected. A little over six feet tal , he couldn’t be any older than sixteen or seventeen.
Even though he was in a suit and dressed like an attorney, he looked like a teenager going to a funeral.
Surely he wasn’t a real lawyer. …
Was he?
And as Nick watched him, something odd happened. Virgil suddenly looked older. Like he was in his late twenties. Nick looked around the truck, but no one else seemed to notice.
Caleb opened his door and got out to talk to him. “Hey, Virg.”
Virgil eyebal ed them while they stayed in the car. There was an insidious air about him … but that could just be the evil lawyer funk. “What exactly do you need me to do?” Caleb glanced at Nick before he answered. “You know the kid who tried to eat his classmate this morning at St.
Richard’s?”
“Yeah?”
“We need you to shock him with a cattle prod and tel us what happens.”
Keeping his lips closed, Virgil laughed—until he realized Caleb wasn’t joking. He sobered instantly. “Why?”
“We think we have a cure for his zombie programming.” Virgil’s face went through a myriad of emotions.
Astonishment, puzzlement, and final y an expression that said he thought they were al short a few monkeys in their cage.
“You’re out of your mind, aren’t you?”
“No, seriously. The kid who programmed the game that turned him into a zombie is in the car.” Caleb pointed at Madaug, who waved at Virgil.
Virgil frowned at Caleb. “It’s a program that turned him? Not magick?”
“Nope, not magick.”
“Too bad. There are a lot of people out there who would’ve kil ed for a potion. I could have made you rich.” Caleb shrugged. “They’l have to find another way to make living zombies. In the meantime, we want to make sure that the ones we’ve turned back to human actual y had direct contact with the game. The only one the kid knows played it for sure is the one sitting in jail right now. We gotta make sure this works.” He passed the cattle prod to Virgil. “Warning, don’t touch yourself with it. It’s not low voltage like it’s supposed to be. Bubba rigged it so that it actual y lets loose over a mil ion volts.”
“Al right,” Virgil said slowly. “Let me make sure I have this straight. … The award-winning plan of intel igence that al ye brainiacs came up with is that I take an il egal, modified cattle prod into parish lockup, past the people armed with guns who are trained to kil , find a kid who’s waiting to be arraigned for an attempted murder trial, and shock him until he turns normal again. Anything else?”
“Nope. That’l do it.”
Virgil let out a slow breath as he eyed the cattle prod with a doubtful stare. “You seriously owe me.”
“I know.”
Without another word, Virgil headed for the front of the building.
Nick was dying to see this miracle up close and personal.
“Hey, Bubba? Can you unlock the door? I need a rest stop.”
“Sure.”
Nick slid out of the SUV and made his way to the building to scope things out. Inside it, there were cops everywhere. No duh. Right? But what stood out most was the metal detectors.
There was no way Virgil was going to get through al that without getting shot.