by Rob Cornell
“Wow,” Odi said when she opened the door. If he’d been standing next to me instead of a step behind, I would have elbowed him in the ribs.
Green’s Mom smiled and winked at Odi.
Oh, brother.
I quickly introduced myself and Odi and asked for Green.
She guided us down into the basement, said, “Have fun, kids,” then jogged back upstairs.
I felt like I was fifteen all over again.
The condo’s small basement was finished, the walls a clean white, though some of the tiles on the drop ceiling directly above a leather sofa had yellowed. Besides the sofa, the room had a TV with three different video game systems tucked in the stand underneath. A half dozen video game controllers sat in a pile on one end of the sofa. Another couple of remotes for the TV and the stereo system lay among them as well. He had the stereo set up for surround sound, with speakers mounted in all four corners of the room.
A short hall led to what I assumed was a bathroom, but otherwise the space was a single room. Green had it set up like a studio apartment, his bed against the wall furthest from the stairs.
Green lay on his back on the bed, snoring. A joint in an ashtray on his nightstand still smoldered. The whole room reeked of marijuana. A can of cheese balls sat pinned between Green’s arm and his side. The plastic lid lay on the floor. When I moved in close, I could see his fingertips coated with fake cheese. A streak of that same cheese ran across the front of his Red Wings jersey.
There were only a few balls left in the can. I contemplated dropping one into Green’s gaping mouth. I wondered if he would eat it in his sleep.
“Wow,” Odi said for the second time, his tone entirely different this time.
“Wow is right,” I said.
Odi bent down to peer into an orange lava lamp on an end table by the couch. He tapped the glass with a finger. “Groovy, man.”
A sudden explosion of techno music thundered from above. Between frantic drum beats, I caught an insistent motivational voice common to the stars of workout videos advertised in infomercials. Then came the thump of sneakered feet hitting the floor in rhythm to the music.
Mom was doing some late night cardio.
I knew from Sly that Green’s father was out of the picture. I thought I suspected why. These two were a unique pair.
But as I looked down at Green, it struck me that he didn’t know about Sly’s condition. As far as he knew, Sly was fine and still working to rebuild the shop. Green used to work for Sly at the shop, but after getting hit hard with the paranormal reality first hand, he spent less time around Sly. Couldn’t say as I blamed him.
Now I felt bad about mentally poking fun at Green and his mom.
I gave Green a gentle shove to rouse him.
He blurted one last snore, then he opened his eyes and blinked at me standing over him. He worked his chubby mouth as if trying to speak without much control over his lips. He groaned something that might have been a couple words, but I couldn’t translate.
“Green,” I said. “You need to wake up.”
Odi stepped up beside me. Now we both looked down at Green in bed like a terminal patient on his death bed. Green seemed to get that same vibe. He scrunched up his face and scooted backward until he sat up with his back against the headboard.
“Wha…?”
“Snap out of it, dude,” Odi said.
Green turned his gaze to Odi, and his eyes went wide. “Nuh, nuh, nuh-uh. No. You’re…”
Odi waggled his eyebrows. “A vampire.” He said it with Bela Lagosi flair. “But I don’t vant to suck your bluuud.”
That didn’t seem to comfort Green one bit. I shooed Odi away then leaned toward Green. “We need your help,” I said. “It’s about Sly.”
Green squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head as if jostling the rocks out, then opened his eyes and nodded. “You know where he is?”
I felt my shoulders sag under two tons of I don’t wanna. Delivering bad news about a sick relative sucked. But I didn’t have time to pussy foot. “He’s in the hospital,” I said. “He’s damn sick.”
“Sick from what?”
“Magic.”
He rubbed hard at his mouth and groaned softly against his palm. “I had a bad feeling. I knew…” He pointed a finger at me. “This is your fault. Has to be.”
I stepped back to give him some space. “We don’t know what’s going on.”
“I don’t care. You’ve brought Uncle Sly nuthin’ but shit. All this…” He waved his hands around. “This woowoo. He doesn’t need it.”
I wrinkled my brow. “You know he’s an alchemist, right? All this woowoo,” I imitated his hand gestures, “is part of his life.”
Green threw a deep-browed glare Odi’s way. “Vampires? He never had anything to do with vampires before. He just mixed weird stuff up.”
“I thought you knew about the paranormal. Sly filled you in before you started working for him.”
“Yeah, but…” He shook a fat finger at Odi. “Vampires!”
“Hey, dude,” Odi said. “Chill.”
Green’s reaction wasn’t irrational. Even if someone told you about the supernatural world among us, seeing it was a whole other deal. I needed him to get over it, though. Fast.
I snapped my fingers in Green’s face to get his attention back on me. “Sly is dying,” I said. “Now, you can either whine about vampires and woowoo, or you can shut up and help us. Got it?”
Green stared at me, mouth hanging open. Then he looked down. His can of cheeseballs had tipped over and spilled a few onto the bed. He picked one up, rolled it between his cheesy fingertips, then pinched it between thumb and index finger, crushing it to cheese dust.
“What do you want?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Odi and Green sat on the sofa. I was too wired to sit. I paced.
“You can’t think of anyone?” I asked.
Green had a joint pinched between his fingers. He stared at the burning tip with bloodshot eyes. Slowly, she shook his head. “Nah, man. Except maybe vampires.”
His vampire fixation had yet to let up. But at least he wasn’t freaking out about it anymore. I’m pretty sure the pot helped with that.
“Sly’s never had a heated argument with anyone? Hasn’t pissed anybody off? Maybe one of his customers?”
Green tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling as he sucked another hit off his joint. Odi watched him with some fascination. I thought he might want to try a toke. I wasn’t sure what kind of effect it would have on a vampire. I knew Toft used to keep himself buzzed on martinis. If alcohol worked in a vamp’s bloodstream, maybe pot would, too.
But I didn’t need a high vampire on my hands. I squinted at him and shook my head.
He held out his hands, a picture of innocence. “What?”
I had stopped pacing without realizing. My legs itched to start again. I held fast and waited on an answer from Green.
Green blew a few smoke rings, then said, “I already told you. I…” He raised his head and peered at me through the haze of smoke surrounding him. “Did you say something about a customer?”
“I did.”
He nodded slowly. “There was this dude.”
I waited. He didn’t say anything else.
“I need more than dude, Green.”
His blurry gaze floated away to some distant place over my shoulder. “Super tall guy. Super skinny. Like a walking tree. He had all these tats on his arms and up his neck. Weird symbols, most of them.”
I could think of a couple kinds of practitioners who used tattoos to fuel their magic. Weird symbols could mean runes or old religious icons. “They got in some kind of argument?”
“Yeah. Sly said something like, ‘No can do,’ or, ‘No sir,’ or maybe both. I wasn’t really paying attention. I was behind the register.”
And Green spent most of his time behind the register as high as the Goodyear Blimp during the Super Bowl. This made his info somewhat unreliable. But
despite Green’s general dopiness, he wasn’t an idiot. I could probably trust the gist of his story, even if he got a few details wrong.
“Anything else you remember?”
Green started to bring his joint to his mouth and paused. “Sly took the guy in back. I heard them shouting. Yeah. I remember thinking I’d never heard Uncle Sly scream like that.”
Sly was a mellow guy, but I’d heard him angry before. I knew he could shout just fine. But scream? Not so much.
“Then the skinny guy comes flying out the back, and Sly shouts after him, ‘You make me sick.’ And the guy stops and is like, ready to punch my uncle. I thought they might actually throw down. But then the guy just stormed out.”
You make me sick.
A common phrase. But the choice of words felt significant. Or maybe I was trying to make something more out of pure coincidence.
“Did Sly say anything to you about it?”
“Naw, he went in back to fume, I think. When he came out later, it was like it never happened.”
“When was this?”
He made a distasteful face at his joint and set it in a skull shaped ashtray on the coffee table. By this point, the smell of the pot dominated the room. “Before the store got wrecked.” He turned his gaze to Odi. “By vampires.”
“How long before?”
He shrugged his meaty shoulders, blinked slowly. “Not long. No more than a week, I think.”
That was still three months ago. Not exactly recent. Still, those words stuck with me.
You make me sick.
Had the skinny guy with the tats decided to work some magic and make Sly’s metaphorical sickness real?
A buzz ran through me. I had a damn lead to follow. Maybe Mom was right. Sly hadn’t gotten sick after the Maidens used his piece of soul to help her. Maybe their current ritual was the real coincidence.
“Is there anything else you can tell me about the guy? Any idea where he’s from or how Sly knows him?”
“Nope.”
I started to take a deep breath and choked on the weed smoke. The taste of it coated my mouth and clung at the back of my sinuses. So I had to think this through with less clean air than I would have liked. I started pacing again. “Tattoos,” I said.
“Yep,” Green confirmed.
“Real skinny.”
“Super skinny. And tall.”
“And tall.”
I stopped pacing. “That’s a pretty good description.”
Green smiled with half his mouth. “Thanks.”
“Specific,” I said. I approached an idea I didn’t particularly like, but it could give me a chance to follow this lead. “Did you get any other kind of vibe from him?”
Green frowned. “Like what?”
“Did he give you the impression of someone who might have a criminal record?”
His eyes shifted from side to side as he thought it over. “He seemed pretty badass for such a skinny guy. Could have been the tats. But, yeah, I guess so.”
Odi stood, which made Green flinch as if he expected an attack. Odi rolled his eyes and turned to me. “You got something?”
“Not anything for sure. But if this guy’s a practitioner and came into some trouble with the Ministry, I know someone who can help.”
I pointed at Green. “Get your coat. We’re going for a trip.”
Green squinted at his watch. “It’s eleven o’ clock at night.”
I had gotten so used to my flipped circadian rhythm to accommodate Odi, I sometimes forgot not everybody else shared the same schedule. “We’ll grab you a few Red Bulls on the way. Come on.”
He groaned and slowly rose from the couch. “Where are we going?” he whined.
“We’re going to the police.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Besides the headquarters in the Renaissance Center, the Detroit Ministry branch had various satellite offices tucked in and around the city. Among these were law enforcement departments covering their assigned districts, staffed by Ministry guardians, the paranormal world’s police officers.
As a hunter, I had, on occasion, tapped into the guardians’ resources for help tracking bounties, especially the ones with previous charges. A rap sheet could offer a lot of clues if you knew what to look for. My particular contact worked out of the Royal Oak district on Woodward Avenue. It had been a couple years since I last hit him up, so I hoped he still worked in their investigative division. My recent experiences with the Ministry made me hesitant to try connecting with a new source in the department. I was nervous enough heading in there. For all I knew, the conspirators I had thwarted last year had eyes among the guardians. I really didn’t want those eyes on me.
The building looked like any standard office complex, flanked by a trendy thrift shop and a fitness center. It stood three stories high and had plate glass windows all the way around, tinted to hide the goings on inside. There wasn’t any sign naming the place except for the address numbers above the front entrance. A narrow drive on the fitness center’s side led to the small parking lot in back.
At close to midnight, the building looked deserted, as it should have. But I knew it was a complex glamour hiding the twenty-four hour bustle within.
We pulled into the seemingly empty lot, and I took a spot close to the back entrance. Snow covered the asphalt, so I couldn’t see the yellow lines. I took my best guess. I told Odi to stay with the car and took Green with me.
When I got out of the car, the cold air hit my lungs and made my chest ache. The freezer smell of winter made my nostrils tingle. My breath came out in thick plumes.
A couple of post lights kept the lot illuminated even after hours. The falling snow looked ethereal in the bluish phosphorescent glow. Between that and the silence, the moment had a surreal sense about it. I felt like I could have been dreaming.
I wished I was dreaming.
I led Green along the short approach to the back entrance, not really paying attention to him because my mind was on what I was going to say once we were inside.
“Holy shit,” he cried.
I spun around, ready for anything. Mostly ready for another hell beast.
Green stood with his back to me, facing the parking lot. He was looking at nothing, because the car had disappeared.
“Easy, buddy. It’s an illusion. The car’s still there.” I didn’t bother telling him there could have been half a dozen other cars parked in the same spot. His poor, pot-addled brain had enough to process without trying to grasp the impossible physics behind that tidbit.
He didn’t move, so I grabbed him by the arm and tugged him my way. His stance was as solid as he looked. He didn’t budge until he was ready to budge. Thankfully he snapped out of his awe and came along willingly.
He muttered under his breath all the way up to the third floor, which housed the Ministry Investigation Division. This district’s MID didn’t have as many guardians staffing it as those in Detroit itself. The further from the metro area you went, the thinner the guardian coverage became. Unlike normal law enforcement, the Ministry guardians didn’t need or want to cover everywhere. Anything beyond the Detroit Ministry’s direct jurisdiction didn’t much interest them.
And the Global Ministry Faction filled in the gaps when necessary.
The desk sergeant downstairs had relieved my worry that my contact could have moved on by letting me know, not only had he stuck with the Royal Oak district, he had risen to second in command of its MID.
The MID offices looked so non-magical it was kind of sad. They had long since abandoned their hooded robes and torch lit catacombs. Now they worked in a cubicle maze with desks, phones, computers, and copy machines. The air smelled of printer toner and burnt coffee. Fluorescent bulbs behind clear plastic tiles in the drop ceiling gave it all a startling sharpness that hurt my eyes.
Matt Pierce welcomed us into his office with a big smile, showing off his nicotine-stained front teeth. He shut the door behind us and ushered us into a couple of chairs in fron
t of his desk. He wore a shirt and tie with the sleeves rolled up. His pink scalp showed through his blond crew cut. He was one of those fair-skinned guys who could go up in smoke if they spent too much time outside during the summer.
He slapped me on the back hard enough to sting. Matt liked to hit. It was his way of showing affection. “Where have you been, mate?” he said in his faded British accent as he rounded his desk and sat. “Besides foolin’ around with vamps, Mr. Unturned.”
I gave him a flat stare. “Not you, too.”
He held up his hands in surrender. “Sorry, but it’s quite a story, right?” He turned his gaze to Green. “Right?”
Green stared, lips slightly parted, breathing through his mouth. “Uhh.”
“This is Green,” I said. “He’s a witness.”
Matt raised his blond eyebrows. “You’re back on the job then? I heard you’d stopped taking contracts.”
For crying out loud, the rumor mill sure did grind in the paranormal community. “This is a special circumstance,” I said, letting him believe this was for a contract without lying to him outright. Asking for MID help for a personal matter wouldn’t have gone over so well. This, at least, gave me an air of legitimacy. “I need him to look through your mug book.”
Matt’s brow wrinkled. “What are you hunting?”
I smirked, trying for cocky. “I’d rather keep it quiet. I don’t need a bunch of other hunters chasing my leads.”
“You think I’d tell, mate? I’m hurt.”
“Just playing it safe.”
He seemed to consider that. Then nodded. “Fair enough. I’ll set you up in a room.”
He led us to a conference room with a long oval table surrounded by office chairs on wheels. Green and I took a seat. Matt asked, “What are your parameters?”
“Skinny, tall, and covered in tattoos,” I said.
“Hm. Should be easy.” He headed out, gently closing the door behind him and cutting off the whir of copiers, trill of phones, and bleep and hum of fax machines.
“What’s going on?” Green asked with a confused frown.
