LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

They’d either hired the laziest contractors possible or real style visionaries because they’d left the orange shag carpet on the floor and the glitter stucco on all the walls.

      Allegra’s keys are in her pocket. She’s walking now, but kind of clumsy. I pickpocket her keys, open the door, and find the light switch. There’s a dark green sofa against one wall. She walks over on her own and flops down, leaning her head back against the wall.

      “You want anything? Water? Coffee? A drink?”

      She shakes her head. I want a cigarette, badly, but the room reeks of fresh air and nonsmoking vibes. I give up and sit down next to her on the sofa.

      “You said I’d be safe if I stayed.”

      “I thought you would,” I tell her. “You should have been. I fucked up.”

      I’d meant to get Vidocq to splash around some of his voodoo water and slap a protection charm around the place. But I got so caught up with hunting Mason that I forgot. Simple as that. I let down my guard with Mason before and Alice got killed. Now I’m sitting next to another woman I’ve let down.

      “It’s my fault.” Now I really want a cigarette or ten. “Sorry.”

      She closes her eyes and seems to drift away, still flying high on whatever Kinski slipped her in that dried fruit. Her breathing becomes shallow. Her heart slows down. Then it blasts from around sixty up to a hundred and twenty. She looks at me and starts yelling. “My boss’s head was talking to me without a body. But when I told you, you didn’t even seem surprised. What the fuck is going on?”

      “Yeah, that.” Suddenly I’m a single dad about to explain the birds and the bees to his kid. “Do you believe in God?”

      “Damn. First you say you’re an ex-con, now you’re Jerry Falwell. Who are you really?”

      “Do you believe in God? Lucifer? The afterlife. Any of that?”

      “I don’t know. My mother used to take me to church when I was little.”

      “Remember the stories about miracles? Water into wine? Plagues of locusts?”

      “’Course. Everyone remembers that. About when all the rules and commandments got boring, someone would walk on water or turn a city into salt. It was cool. So what?”

      “What’s a miracle but another word for magic?”

      “Don’t quiz me. Just say what you want to say.”

      “Magic. I’m talking about magic.”

      “Oh, man.” She stands up, walks across the room, and drops into a beanbag chair held together at the seams with duct tape. “You know, when I first met you, the ex-con thing aside, I thought you might be all right. But you really are just another snake, aren’t you? I mean, either you’re here to scam me or fuck me while I’m high, or you’re just plain crazy. Any way you cut it, goddamn. Me and men.” Her voice trails off and she sinks into the chair, nervously rubbing at the bruise over her left eye.

      “You just told me that the decapitated head of your dead boss was talking to you tonight. What do you call that?”

      “How do you know so much about that stuff?”

      “I do magic. Not Vegas magic. The real stuff.”

      “You’re like a witch or a wizard or something?”

      “Harry Potter’s a wizard. I do magic. I’m a magician.”

      “This is a really strange night.”

      “Wait. It gets better. Kasabian’s a magician, too. So is Parker. He’s the guy I’m pretty sure attacked you tonight.”

      She sits up and looks at me hard. “Do something. Show me some magic.”

      “What do you want to see? What will convince you?”

      “Blow my mind. Make that table float in the air.”

      “I’m not a floater. I used to be able to do the cute stuff, but most of the magic I’m good at now isn’t furniture-friendly.”

      “So, what can you do?”

      I think for a minute and pull Azazel’s knife from my jacket. Allegra’s pupils dilate a fraction of a millimeter. I’m getting used to seeing these things.

      “Here. It’s for you.” I hold the knife out to her, hilt first. She takes it tentatively, holding it with both hands like it weighs fifty pounds.

      “What am I supposed to do with this?”

      I go over to her walking on my knees, like a kid. Staying lower than the eye level of an opponent often has a calming effect on them. Maybe it will work on a nervous friend.

      When I’m at the foot of the beanbag chair, I hold up my left hand and say, “Try to stab me.”

      She cocks her head to the side like she’s trying to figure out if her cat suddenly started speaking French. “No, I don’t think I’m going to do that.”

      “It’s okay. Don’t hold back. I know you’re pissed at me. Let me have it.”

      She just stares down at the knife in her hands. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe the knee walk made me look too silly to stab. There’s a way to fix that.

      I lean right into her face and scream, “Stab me, dammit!” as loud as I can. She lunges. And jabs the knife all the way through my left hand.

      “Oh my God! I’m so sorry!” she says, covering her mouth with her hands.

      What most people don’t understand about being hard to kill is that just because getting shot or stabbed or set on fire doesn’t kill you, it doesn’t mean that you don’t feel it. When someone shoves a big knife through my hand, it feels like anybody else’s hand getting stabbed. This is a nice way of saying that when Allegra pigsticks me with the bone blade, I want to scream like a little French girl and roll around on my back demanding a thousand cc of Jack Daniel’s, stat. But I don’t do any of that. I calmly pull the knife out of my hand. I wipe the blood off on my pants leg. I don’t want to piss her off more by bleeding on her carpet.

      Allegra finds a couple of paper napkins next to a half-eaten sandwich on a plate on the floor. She presses the napkins hard against the hole in my hand.

      “Thanks. You’re being nice for someone who thinks I’m crazy or a snake.”

      “Shut up. Now I know you’re too dumb to be a snake. You’re probably too stupid to be crazy. I don’t know what you are.”

      “I’m magic,” I say. I pull the napkins away from my hand and wipe off the last of the blood. The wound is already closed.

      She shrugs. “That just makes you a freak, not the Wizard of Oz. Or maybe it was a trick knife.”

      Tough crowd at the Angels’ Hideaway. “Go get one of yours.”

      She goes to the kitchen, rattles some drawers, and comes back with a hefty butcher knife. Nice. She’s getting into the spirit of things.

      “Now what?” she asks.

      “Try to stab me again.”

      “What is wrong with you? If you want a girl to hurt you, there’s professionals for that in the phone book.”

      I hold up the hand she just stabbed. “One more time. Come on. Have fun with it. Most people don’t live long enough to do this twice.”

      I don’t have to shout this time. She shoves the blade straight into my hand. But it sticks there, only about an eighth of an inch into the skin. There’s no blood at all. She keeps trying to push the knife through. Really starts leaning on it. I have to take the knife out of her hand and set it on the floor. She takes my hand and examines it, looking for blood or a new wound. All she finds is a fresh red scar from where she stabbed me a couple of minutes ago.

      “My

Скачать книгу