The Getaway God (26 page)

“Not well. She feels responsible for both the poisoned potion and Candy's escape.”

“I still think there's an Angra mole in the Vigil. Could there be one at the clinic?”

“The only ­people who work there regularly are Allegra, Fairuza, Rinko, and sometimes Candy. But patients go in and out all day. I suppose one of them could have done it.”

“We're not going to figure anything out tonight. I'm getting out of here.”

“Rest easy, my friend.”

“Next lifetime.”

Later, when I'm asleep, I don't dream about Candy. I dream about the Angra. I'm back in the cavern, but it's not like the last time. Ten Thousand Shadows doesn't talk to me. I just see the meat chapel and hear something faint and faraway, like noise from an old sitcom. The sound of someone laughing at me.

I
'M TEMPTED TO
go and see Mason early in the day, but I want him to stew for a while, so I stay in bed and don't go in until nearly two. Kasabian has his door propped up over the entrance to his rooms. He's built a little barricade around it with boxes of discs. A nine-­year-­old could get through it, but I guess it makes him feel better, so I don't say anything.

I step through a shadow and come out in Vigil headquarters and head straight for Mason's cell.

This time, before letting me in, a guard goes over me with a metal detector. It must be some special Vigil tech because not only do they find the Colt, but they spot the black bone blade. I don't want to waste time arguing, so I hand over my weapons. It's not like I can't snap Mason's neck with my hands, but it feels weird. I've hardly been without a weapon for going on twelve years. I feel a tad underdressed. Heading inside to see Mason, I'm feeling already a little fucked with.

He's at the table again. This time he's cuffed, but his hands aren't bolted down. ­People know I'm here to play games with the psycho.

I look back at the door and see Wells watching us. No pressure, kids.

Mason smiles at me, but doesn't speak. I pull up a chair and sit down across from him.

“What's the game today? Old Maid? Crazy Eights?”

“It's still the Infinite Game. If you keep thinking we're playing different games, you're going to lose.”

“You never said where you learned the Infinite Game.”

He looks away, like he's thinking.

“You'd be surprised what you hear when you're alone long enough in Tartarus. I knew I was going to be rescued before it happened because they told me.”

“The Angra?”

“Yes.”

“I don't believe you.”

“Someone in Hell sent them to me because they knew I could help their cause.”

“Stop. I can't deal with your bullshit without a drink. What's today's game?”

“Billy Flinch.”

Billy Flinch is a favorite game among the highly intoxicated and the clinically insane. It's William Tell, only you play it by yourself. Take potshots at the far wall and try to ricochet a bullet so that it breaks the glass on your head. Most ­people only play Billy Flinch once. It doesn't have an Old-­Timers League.

“They took away my gun, so forget it.”

“That's disappointing,” he says.

As hard as Mason is to read, this time his pupils constrict a millimeter or two, so I know he's lying. He wants to play something else.

Two upside-­down plastic cups sit on his side of the table. He pushes them into the middle and lifts them. A ­couple of scorpions make a break for it, but he corrals them back under the cups, laughing as he does it.

I look at him.

“Where the hell did you get scorpions?”

“What's the scarier answer? That I had them all along or that someone snuck them in to me?”

Neither one's a comfort, but this is Mason. Nothing about him is comfortable.

“What are we playing?”

“Lady Sonqah's Wedding Night. Have you heard of it? The Luderes can't get enough of it.”

“I've seen them playing at Bamboo House of Dolls. I don't know how it works.”

“Give me your hand.”

I put out my right hand. Mason bites off part of the scab over the sigil he cut into his hand yesterday. He squeezes his palm so that a few drops of blood fall onto my fingers.

“I'm glad this isn't our first date,” I say. “What's the blood for?”

“It excites the scorpions.”

“There's still time to switch to Candy Land. I'll even let you go first.”

“Maybe next time.”

Mason doesn't wipe the blood off his own hand, so if the game is what he says it is, at least so far he's playing fair.

He lifts one of the cups, but before the scorpion can run out, he recites some hoodoo and it freezes in place.

“As you see, I've tied a slip of paper to this scorpion's tail. The other one has a similar note. Your job is to get the note off your scorpion without getting stung. Each time you're stung you get a point. At the end, we add up the points. Low score wins.”

Mason snaps his fingers, releasing the scorpion from the hex. He puts the cup down over the bug and pushes it to my side of the table. I tap the cup with my finger, listening to the scorpion scrabble around inside.

“What if I just squash the damned thing and take the note when it's dead?”

“That's an automatic loss and I get to hurt you.”

“Who poisoned Candy?”

“Shouldn't you be asking about the Angra instead of trying to fix your love life?”

When I don't make to pick up the cup, Mason reaches across the table and raises it.

“You might want to concentrate on the game.”

The scorpion sits there for a minute, looking as pissed as I feel.

“You made her crazy and almost got some poor street slob killed for nothing.”

“I got a lot more than nothing out of it. I got you to play with me. Just like old times. Your little friend is moving. Play or forfeit.”

Now that the scorpion has decided to move, it's all over the place. Darting in one direction, then another. I try to follow it, but it never goes in a straight line for very long. Finally, I catch the rhythm of its turns. Get my hand hovering right over its stinger. I'm fast when I want to be. I snap my hand down to the bug, then back again before it can sting me. But I miss the paper. I do it again. And miss again. The third time I come really close, but still miss.

I see the problem. While I'm fast enough to outrun the scorpion, if I go full speed I'm going too fast to grab the paper. The trick is to slow down. Feel the bug's rhythm and move in at just the right moment.

Which is exactly what I don't do. The fucker stings me on my first try. I always heard that scorpion stings feel like bee stings. Whoever said that never met this particular scorpion because this thing stings like a hornet with a blowtorch.

I pull back my hand and try to shake some of the pain out of my fingers.

“Will Candy recover?”

“Jades are sturdy beasts,” says Mason. “I'm sure she'll be fine.”

I go for another try. And get stung again. I slow my breathing. I'm rushing things. Mason didn't say anything about a time limit on the game. I'm going to follow the scorpion and wait for just the right moment.

“Still, attempted murder,” he says. “That's the kind of thing that sticks to a person. Even if the Vigil ever releases her, which they won't, there won't be many places she'll be able to show her face in L.A.”

I get stung again.

“Maybe you two can get a little cabin in the woods. Take up a trade. Pig farming. She can cook biscuits and you can learn to whittle.”

Okay. I admit it. My concentration really is shot. I'm worried about Candy and so fucking mad at having to be here I want to get my knife and take out Mason's tongue and feed it to him.

I get stung three more times before I get the goddamned paper off the goddamn bug and corral the thing back under its cup. Welts are coming up all over my fingers. Mason didn't say it, but I have a feeling that healing hoodoo is against the rules, and I'm not about to ask and admit that his little pincered fucker hurt me.

I think when I cut off Mason's head I'll put it in a bowling bag and drop him back in Tartarus. Maybe collapse the joint on top of him so no one will ever find him. Let him talk to ghosts all he wants down there.

“So, who poisoned her?”

“Now it's my turn,” Mason says.

With his cuffed hands, he knocks over his cup and lets his scorpion loose. Like mine, it looks confused and after a few seconds starts running randomly across the table.

He waits, tracking the scorpion's moves, trying to figure out the best moment to strike. He takes his sweet fucking time about it.

“Before Christmas, please.”

When he moves, it's fast. He pins the scorpion's tail with the cuffs, and before it can rear back and get him with its pincers, he grabs the paper. Then slams the cup down on top of it.

“What the fuck, man? You cheated.”

He sets the paper down between us.

“What was it you said when I complained about you putting a bullet in my head? My game. My rules.”

“We're even now, asshole.”

“Not even close.”

He reaches for his paper, but I put my hand over it.

“Before we count up the points, tell me this. Whose skull is that in the cavern?”

“Mine, of course.”

“I burned your body after I chucked your soul into Tartarus, so unless there's a rewind button on your bones, that skull isn't yours.”

I lift up my hand and he slides the paper back to his side of the table.

“It's metaphorically mine. Putting it there was just a bit of fun. Give you a clue as to who Saint Nick might be.”

“It's fucking hysterical. Who did you shoot in the head to make your joke?”

“No one. The skull is sugar, like one of those Día de los Muertos candy skulls.
Der Zorn Götter
had some local artisan make it and then put it in that lovely reliquary.”

“Just to fuck with us?”

“Just to fuck with you.”

“And to make you out as a saint.”

He moves his hands in the sign of the cross.

“Santa Muerte.”

“You're having such a good time.”

“I am. Shall we add up the scores?”

I hold up my brutalized hands.

“Why bother? You didn't get stung once. You've already won.”

“Not necessarily. A black dot on the paper is an automatic loss. Who knows what I drew?”

Mason opens his paper. Printed on it is the number ten.

“See? Ten points,” he says. “You were only stung, what, six times? You're in the lead.”

I unfold my paper. It's a black dot. Mason tsks.

“You lost even before the first sting. What a shame.”

“Fuck you.”

I can feel my pulse in my swollen fingers.

Mason says, “We're just about done for today. You don't get any information. Ready for your spanking?”

“You already got me half stung to death. You going to set my hair on fire too?”

“Don't give me ideas. Here's what you get for losing: the poison Candy drank has a side effect. Like liquor, it's a disinhibitor, meaning ­people will say and do things on it they wouldn't normally do when they're in control. You understand what I'm getting at?”

I lean back and cross my arms.

“You mean that whatever Candy says through the poison is the truth. I don't believe you.”

“I don't have to lie. You talked to her. Did she seem woozy or drugged? You know I'm not lying. Like your hand, it stings, doesn't it?”

“Let's play another game.”

“When you win you can decide when we play, but you lost, so go away until tomorrow.”

I slam my fist down on the table hard enough that I knock over the cups. They're empty. The scorpions are gone.

“There's no time to fuck around like this.”

Mason stacks one cup inside the other and pushes them to the side of the table.

“Fucking around is part of the game, or haven't you figured that out by now?”

“Who poisoned Candy's medicine?”

“You're being boring, James. Keep it up and I'll hurt you again. Do it twice and there won't be any game at all tomorrow.”

Were the scorpions phantoms? A hoodoo hallucination? I look at my hand. Whatever just happened in here, my fingers really are swollen and they really hurt. I go over and knock on the cell door. It opens and a guard lets me out.

“Where's my gear?” I say.

He hands me the Colt and my knife.

“I unloaded the pistol. It's an unauthorized weapon. Rules.”

I put it in the waistband at my back and put the blade in my coat.

“I want to see Candy.”

“I'm not authorized to let anybody into those cells.”

I look at him. His heartbeat goes up. I'm tempted to lean on him. Or I can go into the cellblock through a shadow. But they'll have surveillance in there. If I go breaking the rules it could mean they'll move Candy somewhere I can't find her. I could try taking her out of here, but with the mood she's in, who knows if she'd go with me?

Wells comes out of an office and walks over to me. He's the last person I want to talk to.

I say, “Where did you go?”

“I had to deal with a phone call from Washington. How did it go in there?”

I hold up my swollen hand.

“We played. I lost. He didn't tell me a goddamn thing.”

“Language. What happened to your hand?”

“Scorpions. I think. You might want to be careful who deals with Mason. He had two of them. Or maybe I just imagined it.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I lost and I have to come back and do this all again tomorrow.”

“Didn't he tell you anything?”

“Yeah.”

“What?”

“It's good to be king.”