“Look, why don’t you hang with me for a while. We can grab a bite, maybe smoke a little griff; no one will bother us.”
“Why are you being so nice to us?” Em said.
“I don’t really have much else to do today.” For just a moment, Carson’s confident élan fell away, and Sam caught a shade of loneliness. He was probably a skilled enough performer that he could draw on that aspect for breakup songs, but it seemed authentic enough.
Carson’s winning smile returned. “But it’s not like you’re my hostages. I can let you out wherever you want.”
Sam and Em exchanged a look. Carson had money, access, and shelter.
Best of all, he had a boat.
“I guess we can hang for a while,” Sam said.
* * *
Carson kept rooms at the Beverly Hills Hotel, a complex of pink Mediterranean bungalows and birds of paradise and attractive invasive plant species and a swimming pool filled with water the color of blue mouthwash.
“I’m renovating my house,” he explained, leading the way down a red carpet flanked by potted palms to the main building. “I can’t create with hammers banging in my skull, so I come here to relax when I’m in town. I just finished up my Asian tour, and before that was Oceania, and before that was South America, so I need a lot of relaxing. God, São Paolo.”
Sam shook his head in commiseration. “São Paolo.”
The only thing Sam knew about São Paolo was that a lot of Andean wolf bone got trafficked through there.
Carson hadn’t gotten more than three steps into the lobby before a managerial type in a good suit rushed out to greet him. He nodded graciously at Sam and Em without registering visible distaste or disapproval, but he was clearly dazzled by Carson’s glamorous photons.
Sam had stayed in plenty of motels. He had cataloged sixteen distinct shades of mysterious brown stains peculiar to such places. He doubted he’d find any brown stains here. When the manager opened the door to Carson’s room, the very first thing Sam noticed was the baby grand piano. Sam had never before seen a baby grand piano, much less one in a living room. Some distance from the piano was a marble fireplace. There were couches that looked like Greek monuments outfitted with pillows. There were tables that existed only to support a single statue or bouquet of flowers. There were chairs placed throughout the room, presumably in case you wanted to sit next to the wall, far away from other people.
Carson asked for a tray of “snacks and drinks and stuff” and passed the manager some paper money in a secret handshake.
“Where do you sleep?” Daniel asked after the manager left. “Do the couches fold out?”
Carson gave him a curious look. “I’ve got three bedrooms here. Plus a kitchen, two bathrooms, and a powder room. It’s a suite, you know? The Hierarch’s Suite.”
Sam pretended to be very interested in an abstract painting next to the fireplace. “The Hierarch’s Suite? Does that mean the Hierarch stayed here?”
“Nah. Lord Verridan owns the hotel. I think this is just his way of saying he’s going to be the next Hierarch. Verridan also owns the Dragon Pearl Hotel downtown, and they’ve got a Hierarch’s Suite, too. Not as nice as this one.”
Carson went to the piano. Standing, he played a few nimble one-handed runs. “I wrote ‘She Stopped Dancing’ on this thing. Kind of my good luck charm.”
A bellhop brought up a tray of chocolate, caviar, oysters, and sandwiches filled with exotic lettuces, along with fresh-squeezed orange juice and champagne. Em and Sam nibbled pricey delicacies while Carson played a medley of his greatest hits in an effort to impress Em. Her head swayed gently with Carson’s sappy ballads of love gone wrong, and her knee bounced along with the up-tempo parts. Carson addressed the more suggestive lyrics to the piano keyboard and looked Em in the eye for the goopy, heartfelt parts.
She did a good job of pretending to be impressed.
At least Sam hoped she was pretending.
For his own part, as he tried to figure out what advantage he could draw from Carson’s acquaintance, Sam felt as though he were pretending, too. Here he was, in all his grubby glory, squatting in this chamber of riches with a member of Los Angeles aristocracy. How old was Carson, anyway? Nineteen? Twenty? Not much older than Sam. And he didn’t fear cops.
In another version of the world, Carson wasn’t Sam’s patron, or even his peer. Especially not in a suite named for the Hierarch. In another version of the world, people like Carson groveled before Sam.
Carson finished a song with the inspiring chorus of “Yeah, girl, yeah, girl, girl, girl” and bashfully accepted Em’s applause. Sam clapped with as much enthusiasm as he could muster.
“So,” Carson said, “you wanna smoke a little griff? No pressure if it’s not your thing, but I hope you don’t mind if I partake. I’m always wiped by the end of a tour. Griff helps me feel human again. But I can go in the powder room if it bothers you.”
Eat when you can. Sleep when you can. Take magic when you can.
“I don’t mind.”
They moved to one of the couches. Carson filled a pipe with a pinch of powdered griffin bone, lit it with a platinum lighter, and took a deep, slow puff. He blinked a few times and shuddered. Griffin transferred properties of strength and energy. People of Carson’s socioeconomic class used it as an eye-poppingly expensive pick-me-up.
“Em?” Carson offered the pipe to her.
“No, thanks,” was all she said, and Carson didn’t push.
“Sam?”
Sam accepted the pipe. He took a deep puff and closed his eyes. His body already contained essences of sixteen distinct griffin species, including the one he was now smoking. This was Colombian griffin, specimen 623.B, extracted from a single femur taken from the La Brea Tar Pits in 1948.
There was no way he should know that. This sort of finely tuned feel for osteomancy was in Daniel’s bag of tricks, but had never been in Sam’s.
Maybe Em was right about Daniel siphoning off his osteomancy, and the longer he was away from him, the closer to the surface Sam’s magic rose. But he also suspected something else was at work. This was Los Angeles, the Hierarch’s home. The Hierarch had worked magic here for almost a century. He’d fed magic to his people. They’d breathed magic, sweated magic, pissed magic into the water, and when they died, their bodies were burned and their magic entered the air, or they were buried, and the earth drank their magic. Los Angeles was the Hierarch’s great cauldron. Maybe Sam was finally getting his due.
He held his breath and let the osteomancy stew in his lungs and soak into his cells. His bones grew restless.
He passed back the pipe. “Nice stuff.”
“So, Carson, tell us,” Em said. “What were you going to do tonight if you hadn’t rescued us from the cops?”
Carson settled back on the couch. “I was just going to go to the pleasure barge, but I don’t know. It’s getting a little boring. Unless … Yeah, hey, you guys wanna come with me? I can totally get you in. I mean, I know I just said it’s boring, but that depends on who you’re with.”
“What’s the barge?” she asked.
“It’s a floating club, three miles off the coast. It’s pretty cool.” He said cool as if “cool” wasn’t necessarily something to be desired. “Hollywood stuff, all the glitter and plastic. But if you know the right people, you can get good magic. I mean, really good magic. Even unicorn. And tonight’s Tuesday.”
“What’s special about Tuesday?”
“That’s when El Tiburón shows up in his submarine.”
Em leaned forward, enraptured. “Submarine?”
And Carson talked.
The barge was a floating party for the frothy cream of LA. It was owned by the Duchess of San Pedro, who partnered with the Baja cartel and let them use it as a delivery stop for their magic trafficking. Sam gathered that getting invited should make him feel like Cinderella. What excited him, though, was the cartel’s mode of transport—a garage-built submarine, designed to get through Mexi
can and Californian security and rival cartels’ obstructions. As one of the cartel’s best customers, Carson claimed to have actually been given a tour of the sub. He said it was primitive, using a lot of off-the-shelf gear, but that the superstructure was the fossilized rib cage of a sea serpent. Likely a gunakadeit, from his description.
In the hotel suite’s powder room a few hours later, Sam wrestled his arms into a suit jacket and regarded himself in the mirror. He felt constricted, but the shoulder padding and taper of the jacket made him look better than the sweatshirts and T-shirts that comprised his usual wardrobe.
He put the tie up to his chest and understood that there was no magic in the world that would help him figure out how to put it on, so he stuffed it in his pocket and unbuttoned his shirt collar.
“I’m the Hierarch’s kid,” he whispered to himself. “I am a rightful prince of California.” And then he laughed at himself, because the notion was absurd. And then he stopped laughing, because, truthfully, it wasn’t.
The clothes were courtesy of Carson. He wanted to make sure his guests looked good, and with a single phone call, he’d summoned a team of clothiers with trunks and racks. Another phone call brought hair and makeup stylists. Sam didn’t like the suggestion that their appearance lowered property values, but Em told him to think of it as costuming, and that helped him swallow it.
Besides, he did look good. And he felt even better.
He found Em in one of the bedrooms, testing her ability to maneuver in her shoes by vaulting over a dressing table. They were shiny black things with straps, but the heels were low and they actually had some tread.
“They’ll do on the barge,” she said.
She looked spectacular in her little black dress. Sam found himself staring at the curves of her bare shoulders and the slender muscles of her arms until she caught him looking and he had to pretend he was assessing her outfit for practicality.
An hour later, Carson’s stretch catamaran was motoring into black water beneath a star-sprayed sky. His crew included a skipper, a first mate, a bartender, and two bodyguards, all to serve Carson and his two guests. Sam stood at the prow, salt wind in his face. He saw no barge, no lights, nothing but the dim gleam of the catamaran’s running lamps over the waves.
“The barge is painted black,” Carson said, picking up on Sam’s unease. “It doesn’t have windows or exterior lights. And the duchess hires a tug to move it from time to time. If you don’t know where it is, you’ll never find it at night. But don’t worry, we’re really close now.”
“So, the barge is basically illegal,” Em noted.
“Hell, yeah it is.” Carson laughed. “But the duchess is the sheriff’s sister-in-law, and her brother is head of Accountability in the Ministry of Osteomancy. You can have fun tonight and not go to jail, I promise.”
After another half hour, the catamaran drew up alongside a pier jutting from a building so dark it looked like a hole in the world. Carson took them down a gangway to a bald, brawny doorman who stank of cave bear. Refined cave bear tooth was a popular magic fed to soldiers, bodyguards, gladiators, anyone who needed ferocity and speed and strength and had an employer rich enough to provide it.
“I’d tell you everyone you’re going to meet is cool, but that’d make me a liar,” Carson said. He was serious now, not the glib charmer. “If anyone bothers you, you just let one of my security guys know, and it’ll be taken care of. You’re my guests. That means something.”
The bear guy opened a door, like tearing a seam in the darkness, and out spilled hazy light and pummeling music and the smells of cigarette smoke and osteomancy. They entered the noisy miasma.
Sam watched the crowd of perfectly dressed and adorned and coiffed gorgeous people make a path for a smiling Carson, who effortlessly exerted the force of his fame and charisma. Em nudged Sam, and they followed in Carson’s wake.
The club confirmed Sam’s worst fears. It was painfully loud, stuffed with people, and lit with bursts of color. Tanks bubbled with swirling water, like giant cocktails. The chairs and tables looked like extruded, hardened goo. Bare arms glittered with fish scales, rustled with feathers. Faces smiled with predators’ canines and feline eyes. A lot of money and resources were being spent here on cosmetic osteomancy. By tomorrow, the scales would fall off, the feathers would molt, and the teeth would shrink to small, aching, human nubs. But tonight, everyone was magic.
A silver man appeared before Carson: silver hair, light-gray eyes, white suit, preternaturally perfect nails. A host of some kind. Carson exchanged a few words with him, but they were blotted out by the music, and Sam couldn’t hear.
The silver man guided the party up some steps in the middle of the floor to a raised platform outfitted with bloodred sofas and a table already set with hors d’oeuvres, along with champagne in silver ice buckets and a dozen different kinds of bottled drinks.
Em sat and looked like she belonged here, and Sam sat and felt like a donkey in a tutu. They were joined by two raven-haired girls and one raven-haired guy. Sam assumed they were siblings, maybe even triplets. They all had gleaming black talons for fingernails.
“I’ve got some business to do,” Carson said over the din. “My friends are going to keep you company until I get back. Okay?”
Sam gave him a thumbs-up and Em did nothing yet still managed to convey consent, and Carson left them with the talon siblings.
Sam wasn’t happy with this arrangement. Now he and Em would have to find a way to ditch their babysitters. And Sam felt on display. The clubbers below weren’t shy about staring with curiosity at Carson’s new friends. Their attention was probably supposed to be considered some kind of honor.
The talon brother said something in Em’s ear, and Em laughed at what must have been a supergood joke.
One of the sisters cuddled up to Sam. She said something to him, close enough that he felt her warm breath on his cheek. But if there was an osteomantic essence that enabled people to actually have conversations in this fashionable torture chamber, Sam lacked it.
“What?”
“You’re the Hierarch,” she screamed.
Well, this was a nightmare.
Maybe he should pretend he didn’t hear her.
Maybe he should kill her.
He rejoined with, “What?”
Meanwhile, Em and the other two talons were laughing and carrying on like they’d formed a lifelong bond.
The girl took a twenty-crown bill from her handbag and held it up. “See? You look just like the Hierarch.”
“Thanks,” Sam said.
“I mean, not just like him, but you could be his great-grandson.”
She beamed as if she’d just told him something wonderful.
“Thanks,” he said again.
“You must get that a lot. Do you get that a lot?”
“I do,” Sam said. “I get that a lot.”
Em was shouting something at Sam.
“What?”
She shouted again.
Mushroom? Was she shouting “mushroom”? Why was she shouting “mushroom”?
“Bathroom!” she hollered. “You have to go the bathroom!”
“Oh! Right!” He turned to the talon sister. “I have to go to the bathroom!”
“What?” she screamed back at him.
Em pranced down the steps, into the crowd, and Sam fled after her.
They found a little space behind some potted plants that muffled just enough of the music to let them talk as long as they shouted directly in each other’s ears.
“I thought guys like Carson had private rooms at clubs,” Sam said.
“He sings up on stages in front of tens of thousands of shrieking fans. It’s possible he’s an exhibitionist.”
“You seem pretty comfortable here yourself.”
“Are you kidding me? Forget our mission, I want to blow this place up. Let’s find the back access.”
Sam scanned the club floor the way Daniel would do it, looking for opportunity. He s
potted a waiter shouldering through a swinging door.
“That way,” he said.
They followed him into the kitchens and ran into another waiter carrying a silver tray upon which sat a single toothpick. Sam braced himself to get yelled at for trespassing. Instead, the waiter acted like he’d been caught in some heinous act.
“I’m so sorry, sir,” he said. “May I be of assistance?”
Man, it was good to be fake rich and glamorous.
“Our table is out of those swirly cheese things,” Sam said. He only assumed that there must have been some manner of swirly cheese things. “And our waiter just totally disappeared.”
“I’m so sorry, sir. Which table?”
“The elevated one.”
The waiter’s sense of urgency increased, suggesting Sam’s VIP status had climbed even higher in his esteem.
“I’ll get right on it.” He turned to retreat into the depths of the kitchen, but Em held him up.
“You know, it’s pretty stuffy out there. Anywhere we could get some … you know, privacy and fresh air?”
Some sort of understanding passed between Em and the waiter that completely eluded Sam.
“Well, there’s a smoking deck, but it’s kind of employees only.” He looked off in the direction of nothing in particular as Em slipped some cash in his palm. “But if you go through those doors, down the corridor and to the left, you can get out to the loading dock. There’s an old sightseeing crow’s nest on the roof. The ladder’s gone, but if you move some barrels around…”
“He was awfully helpful,” Sam said, suspicious, after the waiter went back to the land of toothpicks and swirly cheese things.
“You owe him big time.”
“What for?” He hurried to keep up with Em as she navigated the barge’s back gangways.
“He thinks he’s helping you have sex with me.”
Sam’s cheeks burned. “I don’t need help.”
“Oh, sweetie,” Em said.
Pacific Fire Page 17
