“It’s good to be king.”
I go straight home. In the end, it doesn’t matter if those scorpions were real or not. I just had my ass handed to me on a silver platter. A wasted day means I brought the Angra one step closer to Earth. I look out the window. I swear the rain is coming down harder than ever.
I TRY SOME healing hoodoo from the arena days, but I’ve always been better at breaking things than fixing them, so my improvised spells don’t work. Between the swelling from the scorpion and the last ragged remains of the scab from where I punched out the van window, my hand looks like I stuck it in a wood chipper and set it on frappé. I go downstairs to see if Kasabian has any aspirin.
He and Fairuza are sitting on some of the boxes outside his room, sipping beers. She sets hers down when she sees me.
“How’s Candy?”
I shake my head.
“Everything’s fucked. Candy’s crazy and I’m playing Chinese checkers with a psycho. Oh, Kas, you’ll be amused to know. Mason Faim is back from Hell.”
His beer goes down the wrong way. He coughs and it takes him a minute to catch his breath.
“Mason? I thought you buried him under the floorboards.”
“He’s a roach. He got out.”
Kasabian gets up and starts for his room.
“Bye.”
“Who’s Mason Faim?” says Fairuza.
“I’ll tell you about him from my fallout shelter.”
“Calm down,” I say.
Kasabian points his beer at me.
“I’ve got some good news for you too. Someone just took a potshot at one of the God brothers.”
“Muninn?”