“I was wondering when you were going to come and see me. Where have you been?”
“I saw you right after they brought you in.”
“Really? That’s nice, but I don’t remember.”
“It’s okay. You look a lot better today.”
“I feel like something floated up out of the sewer. They say I tried to kill someone.”
“That’s what they say.”
“Is it true?”
She nervously twines her fingers in the netting threaded around the cell bars.
“I don’t know. I didn’t see the guy or anything, but Julie Sola told me about it and I trust her.”
Candy looks at the cellblock door.
“They’re never going to let me out of here, are they?”
“Why do you say that?”
“I hear the guards talking. They’re not big fans of Jades. Or any Lurkers.”
“Point them out and I’ll have a word with them.”
She shakes her head. Her shaggy hair is a mess, tangled and pressed down on one side.
“Don’t do that. I don’t want any more trouble. I just want to know what happened.”
“You were poisoned. Someone spiked your Jade potion. You had a relapse and it affected your mind.”
She looks at her twining fingers.
“Relapse. That’s a funny word.”
“What do you mean?”
“Relapse for me means going back to my true nature. Like you think who I am is a disease.”
“Yeah. You said something like that when they brought you in, only louder.”
“Did I? It’s all such a blur.”
She lets go of the net and takes a small step backward. Looks up at me.
“Is that what you think?” she says quietly. “That I’m just some kind of disease?”
I take a breath. This is why I drank too much last night. To blot out all of this. Shit like this moment.
“I shouldn’t have said ‘relapse.’ That was stupid. I just mean -people like us, we’re always fighting some part of our own nature. You don’t think I want to kill every one of the fuckers who roughed you up? Or that lots of days I wouldn’t mind seeing the whole world go up in flames? When I got back from Hell, all I could think about was hurting as many -people and destroying as much of this place as I could. I still have to fight that feeling sometimes. I always will. We’re not like the -people running this place. We’re monsters to them. That’s all we’ll ever be and I’m okay with that.”
“But you’re out there and I’m in here.”
“I’ll get you out. I’ll make a deal with Wells. He needs me to work the 8 Ball. I’ll blackmail him to Hell and back if I have to, to get you out.”
She smiles faintly.
“That’s sweet.”
I want to ask her about some of the other things she said the other night. Cursing Doc. Cursing me. But I don’t want to hear any of it again right now. We’re having a not--totally--fucked--up moment and it feels so fragile. One wrong word could blow it away and I don’t want to do that.
“I’m going to figure this out.”
“I heard someone say Mason Faim is back.”
“Ain’t life grand?”
“At least he’s locked up too. I’d be a little distressed if I was in a cell and they’d put him up in our room at the Chateau Marmont.”
She comes back to the bars.
“Well, he doesn’t look so good right now. He tripped and fell into a wall a -couple of times.”
She smiles and wraps her arms around herself.
“Did I say something wrong the other night? I can’t remember and you’re acting funny. What happened?”
I shake my head.
“You didn’t say anything. I’m just worried is all.”
“If I said anything to hurt you, I didn’t mean it.”
“I know.”
“You forgive me?”
“There’s nothing to forgive.”
“You’re lying, but that’s okay. Us jailbirds need the occasional hopeful lie.”
She puts her hand up against the net and holds it there. I reach out for her.
The cellblock door slides open and I pull my hand back.
“Stark,” says Julie. “It’s time to go.”
“Thanks for coming to see me,” says Candy.
“I’ll be back soon.”
“If I’m not out by Christmas, bake me a gingerbread man with a file in it.”
“Baby, I’ll bake you a neutron bomb.”
She stands at the bars watching until the door closes.
I walk with Julie back to the empty office.
“Thanks for letting me see her.”
“Just remember. If anyone asks, you were talking to her about Mason.”
“They really think she’s working with Mason?”
“All Lurkers are suspect right now. If you’re not human, you might as well be an Angra.”
“If any of those fuckers tries to hurt her . . .”
“They’re all too scared of you and Wells to do that, but I won’t lie to you. Her chances of getting out of here get worse every day. Homeland Security is talking about renditioning captured Lurkers to camps out in the deep desert. The only way they won’t come for her is if I can make it look like she’s part of your work.”
“I won’t forget this.”
“I won’t let you forget. You’re going to owe me plenty before this is over.”
“I already do.”
“Just remember that when I reopen my detective agency.”
She opens the attaché case and hands me my gun and other toys.
Would someone be stupid enough to try and rendition Candy? No. That’s not going to happen. I’ll let the Angra in myself before that happens and I’ll go Saint Nick on anyone who gets in my way.
As Julie and I come out of the office, Wells is going by with a gaggle of his pencil pushers. He stops when he sees us.
“Don’t you have somewhere to be, Marshal Sola?”
“Yes, sir,” she says, and disappears like she never saw me.
“How about you, Stark? Shouldn’t you be with Mason doing your job?”
“I was just going in to see him.”
“Did you hear what happened last night?”
“Do tell.”
He hands a thick manila envelope to one of his lackeys.
“It looks like Mason tried to pull some pixie magic. Shut down our surveillance for almost an hour and locked himself in his cell.”
“That naughty boy.”
“That he is. There’s just one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“He wrote a spell in blood, but the only cut we could find on him was a scratch on his little finger. And he had a black eye and some bruised ribs. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
“Maybe he fell off his bunk.”
Wells purses his lips like he’s thinking.
“That’s what he said. I guess accidents happen. We just need to make sure they never happen again or we’ll have to transfer all the other prisoners out of this facility. You understand?”
“Yeah. I get it.”
“Are we done here?”
“I was done five minutes ago.”
Wells takes my arm and leads me aside.
“Go in there and win today. The Shonin isn’t looking so good. He’s drinking that lousy poison book because you’re not coming up with the goods. Get something useful today.”
“I’m working on it.”
“Don’t work on it. Do it.”
He lets go and moves off with his suits. I’ll give him one thing. He’s got quite a grip.
EVERY TIME I walk into Mason’s cell I half expect to see one of the meat cathedrals. Pink light glowing off his smug face. Flayed guards hung upside down in narrow naves. It’s almost disappointing when the door opens and it’s the same flat fluorescent light as always. I think I’d prefer an Angra butcher shop. We’d be somewhere real, where the consequences of our games—-the ones on the table and the ones we’re playing in each other’s head—-are laid out, bare and raw, on cards made of skin and chips carved from bones. But no, we’re in a dismal cell, playing Old Maid like we have all the time in the world.
Mason is at his table, handcuffs secured to the top again. He doesn’t seem to mind. He looks up and smiles when he sees me.
Wells was telling the truth. Mason’s eye is black and the sclera is red from a broken blood vessel. He moves from his shoulders, like he has a stiff back. Well, my hand still itches a little from where I punched out the car window, so in my book we’re even.
There’s a deck of cards on the table.
“More poker?” I say. “I already beat you at that. Wait. I forgot. It’s all the Infinite Game. I’ll have to infinitely beat you again.”
“These cards aren’t exactly what we should be playing with, but we can make them work,” he says. Then his voice goes raspy and guttural. “The game is called Take and Give.”
Mason is speaking Hellion. I forgot that he could do that. Hearing it come out of his mouth brings back bad memories of him running Hell, me chasing Alice’s soul, and losing my arm.
I speak Hellion back to him. Whoever is monitoring the room is scrambling for dictionaries and flipping on supercomputers for voice analysis, but they’re going to be shit out of luck.
“A Hellion game? I never heard of it.”
“Aristocrats played it, but you killed off most of the -people who might’ve taught it to you.”
“How does it work?”
Mason cuts the cards, breaks the deck, and slides half the cards to me.
“I take something from you and then I give you something. A card in this case. Hellion cards are more interesting, but we’ll just have to make do. You take something from me and give me something. The one with the most at the end wins.”