“Even if you’re right, he won’t play you. This whole thing is to show me up.”
“I’ll play him,” says Mason.
The fucker always did have good hearing.
“I mean, if you’re incapacitated. Besides, the game is almost over. There’s just a few more hands.”
“Let me finish,” says the Shonin.
He takes a step toward the table and his legs give out. I grab him by the shoulders and lift him up. He’s just bones and robes. He weighs nothing. By the time I have him up, the cell door is open and guards are coming in, their guns drawn.
The Shonin punches me in the shoulder. It’s so feeble I wouldn’t have known it happened if I hadn’t seen it.
“Put me down.”
I set him on his feet.
“I’ll finish with the book,” he says. “I’m learning great things. But you must play the game. I can’t do both.”
“Go and lie down, old man. Let me handle this.”
The guards help the Shonin out, locking the door behind him.
“That was dramatic,” says Mason. “He’s even more pathetic than you and Muninn. Always running to help the older gents. Those daddy issues run deep.”
“You know if you call the Angra, they’ll kill you too.”
“All those L.A. good vibes you’ve picked up have made you afraid of death. But death is what you and I do.”
There’s only one thing I haven’t tried.
“Forget it. I quit. You win.”
Mason cocks his head like he’s waiting for me to say something else. He sighs and pushes his cards away.
“I admit. That’s the last thing I expected from you.”
“Then I did win after all.”
He smiles.
“No, but you fooled me. And you played horribly, even for you,” he says. “I tell you what. I’ll give you something anyway.”
“You’ll give me something even though I lost? Why?”
“Because I want you to come back and play some more.”
“Okay. What will you give me?”
Mason thinks for a minute.
“You already controlled the Qomrama when you used it to remove the demon from one of my bodies. But you don’t know how you did it?”
“No.”
“The Qomrama likes you. It wants to please you. But remember that it’s transdimensional. Your desires for it must also be transdimensional.”
“What does that mean?”
He leans back in his chair.
“It means if you can’t play the game, you can’t control the Qomrama.”
“If you know how to use it why haven’t you?”
“Because you have it.”
I sit back down at the table.
“I took it so the 8 Ball is mine. Possession is the key to controlling it, isn’t it?”
He nods.
“That’s why Aelita had it hidden in the palace.”
“All I have to do is play with it long enough and I’ll figure it out without you.”
“The world is falling apart, Jimbo, and it’s going to get worse. By the time you get the keys in the ignition, there might not be much left to save.”
I look back at the cell door. I know Wells is on the other side shitting fried green tomatoes, waiting for me to get more information, but I’m lucky Mason gave me this much.
“Thanks for the freebie.”
Mason nods.
“Of course, I’m still going to hurt you.”
I put my Kissi hand on the table and take off the glove.
“I owe you a finger. Take it.”
He looks at it like a chef would look at rat shit in a Dumpster.
“I don’t think I want it anymore. I’ll have to hurt you some other way.”
“I’m ready.”
He shakes his head.
“Later. We’re done for now. Come back around dinnertime for tomorrow’s game. I have some preparations to make.”
I put the glove back on, happy my hand was too ugly for even Mason to want it.
“Tomorrow then?” he says.
I think for a minute.
“Forget the Infinite Game. I’ll play you Russian roulette again. This time by your rules.”
He looks right through me.
“I’ll watch, but that’s your game. I want to play mine.”
He gathers up the cards from the table.
“Send in the guards on the way out. I want to get started on the new game right away.”
After checking on the Shonin and translating as much as I can remember of the conversation in Mason’s cell into English, I head home. Vidocq calls about an hour later.
“I thought you’d want to know. They burned the clinic.”
“Allegra’s? Who did it?”
“Men have been hanging around for the last few days. They park across the street or up the block. Nothing has happened until tonight.”
“Did you call the cops?”
There’s a pause.
“A few came. They say harboring Lurkers is now a crime in Los Angeles. They arrested poor Fairuza.”
I know what this is. I should have let him take my finger. Instead I gave Mason the perfect opening to hurt me through someone else. I practically handed Mason Allegra and Fairuza on a platter.
I go to Vidocq and Allegra’s apartment. Not through a shadow. I ride the Hellion hog so I can feel the rain for a while. Vidocq stays with Allegra as she cries in the bedroom. I spend the night, listening for sounds at the door. I have a lot of guns with me.
DURING THE NIGHT, I go out through a shadow to see the clinic. The whole mall is gone. Just burned timbers, broken glass, and collapsed roofs. I don’t mention it to either one of them.
There are bottles and packages scattered over Vidocq’s worktable. It’s too haphazard to be his stuff. I pick up a small bundle of yellow herbs and give it a sniff. They stink of smoke. These few things are what Allegra managed to grab from the clinic before she had to run. Bottles of rare potions and plants. A -couple of old handwritten books. Probably Doc Kinski’s personal medical notes. A chunk of blue amber. Some red mercury. Carefully wrapped in silk are the two pieces of divine light glass that heal most injuries. There are a -couple of small vials on the end that I don’t recognize.
“They’re potions for Candy. Allegra made them fresh herself, so there’s no chance of them being poisoned,” says Vidocq.
I didn’t hear him come in.
“How’s Allegra doing?”
He shrugs.
“Badly. But it could be worse. Thank you for coming over.”
“Anytime. What else can I do?”
He drops down onto the old couch. Rubs his eyes.
“Nothing. She’s asleep now. I think when she wakes she’d like to be alone for a while to collect her thoughts.”
“Sure. I’ll take off.”
“I don’t mean to throw you out.”
“Don’t worry about it. But there’s one thing,” I say.
I set down a Desert Eagle .50 that some Satanists gave me a while back.
“That will shoot through a wall and still kill anything on the other side. Don’t be shy about using it.”
Vidocq picks up the gun and weighs it in his hand. Sights down the barrel. He nods.
“I don’t like these things, but times like this force us to reconsider our prejudices.”
“Call me if you need anything.”
“Thank you.”
“I know it will sound lame, but tell Allegra I’m sorry and I’ll try to find out who did it.”
“I’ll tell her.”
I ride the hog home. It’s morning, but no brighter than it was the night before. I change my route when I see a -couple of patrol cars in the distance. A big vehicle—-maybe one of the Vigil’s ASVs—-shoots across Hollywood near Western.
I park the bike next to Max Overdrive and go in the side door.
Kasabian is hiding in his room. Delivery food boxes and beer bottles are piled up outside his door. Money is the magic anyone can do, and Kasabian always has a little stashed away no matter how broke he claims to be. Only he could find someone still delivering food. I wonder how much a burger costs these days.
When Howard Hughes went crazy, he locked himself in a room and watched Ice Station Zebra on a loop. With Candy it’s Spirited Away. Kasabian has the original Dawn of the Dead going in his room. The jagged Goblin sound track fills the whole first floor. I go upstairs and close the door.
I wonder about the cops that watched Allegra’s clinic burn. Was that official policy or hillbilly street justice? Maybe the cops and the arsonists were working together to take out a Lurker safe haven. That’s just with the city needs. A bunch of righ-teous vigilantes.