Ding! We had a winner.
I bellied up to the bar.
“What can I get you?” Kyle said.
“My girlfriend and I were just out and about.” Oot and aboot. I laid my Canadiana on thick. “Someone told us there’s a Cold Beer and Wine place where I could get a two-four.” A twenty-four pack of beer. “But I think they was shittin’ me, eh.”
“Where you here from?”
“Guess.”
When his first three guesses were all Saskatchewan based, I told him I was from Regina and was rewarded with a “Me too, eh!” Rapport established, I tried to further our connection with some lies about going to the University of Regina but this guy went to U.B.C. and was working here because the tips were good and the owner didn’t care if he studied while the bar was slow.
I asked to bum a dart off him—a smoke—before I went back to my friend. This wasn’t any great deduction on my part. He had the baked-in nicotine funk of a committed two-pack-a-day man. For the record, I’d Googled that inane slang term because we didn’t use it here on the West Coast.
He replied that he was going on a smoke break and I should come.
I followed him into the surprisingly clean alley, where he immediately bolted.
“Running north toward Alexandra,” I said into the tiny mic that Leo had provided. “Demon.”
By the time I caught up to Kyle, Rohan had him pinned to an alley wall.
“Don’t kill me. I’m just a student. I’ve never hurt anyone.”
“Shut up, demon,” Drio said.
“Only a quarter.” Kyle struggled hard, but Ro and Drio held him tight.
I showed Kyle the matchbook. “How do you know Dr. Markovic?”
His pupils went so dilated with fear that only the thinnest sliver of green showed.
“Hey, look at me. It’s okay.” Leo stepped directly in front of the quarter-demon. “I’m half. Answer the questions, and you’ll be fine.”
“What are you?” he asked.
“Redcap goblin. You?”
“Lesny. But I’m not like them. I wouldn’t. I’m human.” He clutched Rohan’s sleeve. “You have to believe me.”
“I do,” Rohan said.
Leo flashed him a grateful smile before turning back to Kyle. “Your mom is a half-lesny? I didn’t think there were females of those.”
Kyle slumped against the wall. “You really didn’t know? You didn’t hurt him?”
“What are you talking about?” Rohan said.
“My mom is human.”
Drio edged in close to Kyle’s face. “You’re lying. He would have disappeared when he died. That was a human body we found.”
Kyle notched his chin up and met Drio’s eyes. “No. It wasn’t.”
I wrapped my arms around myself, rocking back on my heels, while Leo clapped a hand over her mouth. We’d found what appeared to be a human body because Dr. Markovic hadn’t been dead when we found him.
Ro released Kyle, his expression stricken. “We didn’t know.”
“My cousin…” Kyle started shaking.
Drio flashed out, returning a moment later with a new bottle of bourbon he’d swiped from somewhere. He cracked the cap and pressed it into Kyle’s hand. “Drink.”
Leo sucked on her lip, watching Drio through narrowed eyes.
Kyle took a few swigs and wiped his mouth with his hand. “The blood runs through my cousin as well. He had to… put my father to rest.”
“Oh fuck,” Ro said.
My ignorance didn’t excuse that I’d left Kyle’s father suffering in terrible agony and compounded things by making Kyle fear for his own life now. I wanted to apologize profusely and leave him to his grief, but Josip had sent us to him and we still needed answers. I just didn’t know how to broach the topic with Kyle standing there crushed by loss, his gaze vacant.
Leo snatched the precariously dangling bottle away from him.
“Kyle. Listen to me.” Drio gripped his shoulders. “I know who killed your dad. She killed my girlfriend. His cousin.”
Kyle looked to Rohan who nodded.
“I swear to you that we will find her and destroy her, but you have to help us. Do you know anything about Hybris?”
Kyle’s face crumpled. He took off his ballcap, squeezing the brim tightly. “No. Nothing about her. All I know is the message Otac gave me.”
“Tell us,” Leo said. “Please.”
“May the…” Kyle waited expectantly.
The rest of us exchanged puzzled glances.
“Force be with you?” Rohan said.
Kyle jammed the ballcap on his head.
“I have to go back to work,” he muttered and loped off.
What was the rest of the phrase? Would my mom know?
Mom. Of course.
I cut across the street, slamming the hood of the car who braked hard, and darted inside the club.
Kyle was behind the bar, slicing limes on a cutting board.
“May the flop be with you,” I said.
“Flop?” Leo was right behind me, with Ro and Drio on her heels.
“It’s a Texas Hold’em thing. Mom and Dad used to play it all the time when I was younger and Mom played it with her colleagues at conferences. Right?”
“Right,” he confirmed.
“Was that the message?” Rohan asked.
“No.” Kyle swept the limes into a small bowl. “‘The End Zone.’”
“Like a hockey reference?” I said.
“Or football?” Rohan said.
“A place, maybe?” Leo pulled out her phone. “Damn. There’re tons of them. All sports bars.”
“Does it mean anything to you?” I said.
Kyle shook his head. “But it’s important. Otac got really excited about something a couple of months ago. He wouldn’t say what, then he started getting paranoid about others finding out. When I spoke to him right before he…” Kyle swallowed. “He was burning his research on whatever he’d learned.” Kyle lowered his voice, even though the bar was mostly-empty. “He told me to give you that message because he trusted your mother.”
Kyle lined up five shot glasses on the bar, expertly filling each with a shot of whiskey. “You’ll get Hybris?”
“One hundred percent,” Drio said.
Kyle nodded and held up his glass. “To my father.”
We clinked glasses, echoing the toast, and shot back our drinks.
“Who’s the executor of your dad’s estate?” Drio said.
“I am. There’s not really any money.”
“Not for that,” Drio said. “Hybris has been after this ring for a while. She might have approached him before this. Maybe there’s something in a calendar or his papers about her. Something that wasn’t directly connected to the research he burned but would still provide a lead.”
Kyle gave permission for Drio and Ro to go to Josip’s place in Dubrovnik.
I was turning The End Zone problem over and coming up blank. “Anything else you can tell us about the Ring of Solomon? Like, have you ever heard of Gog and Magog? Can the ring bind them?”
Kyle removed the empty shot glasses. “The boogeymen locked up behind the gates? No idea if the ring could control them.”
“You know about the gates?” Drio said.
“They’re like the demon version of the haunted house on the hill. You know, demons dare each other to touch it, but no one has the guts to actually go inside. Or in this case, cross the many wards that have all but buried the gates.”
“How come you know about this and I don’t?” Leo huffed.
“Because I lived near them. Count yourself lucky you never had to,” Kyle said. “That place isn’t kind to people like us.”
“What place?” I asked.
“The demon realm.”
17
All of us were subdued as we walked back to Leo’s car. I was busy assembling a list of questions for Malik. If the demons kept the Gates of Alexander sealed behind wards, Mandelbaum would have his work
cut out for him finding and opening them. Unless he made a deal with the devil.
Oy vey.
“Portal us to Markovic’s apartment,” Drio demanded.
“I’m wrung out and starving,” I said.
“You can eat after.”
I’d dealt with Malik, learned my beloved Rabbi A had been memory wiped, and that we’d left Dr. Markovic alive and suffering because we hadn’t recognized that he was a half-demon. I swallowed the bile at the back of my throat.
“I’m not your fucking Uber, Drio. I’m done for today.”
“We could all do with a change of scenery,” Rohan said.
“Sure. Take a night off,” Drio said. “What does Asha matter?”
Ro slammed Drio up against the side of Leo’s car, his blade to Drio’s throat. “Say that again.”
I muscled in between them. “How about we grab a bite, decompress from the constant nightmare of the past couple days, and relax?”
“Great idea!” Leo’s voice was chirpy, but she was white-knuckling the strap of her purse. “What did you have in mind?”
“The Richmond Night Market. Largest night market in North America, bitches! Fun times ahead.” I man-handled Drio into the car.
Fun suffered a bigtime setback right off the bat. My brilliant proposal to share local culture and cuisine had failed to account for an accident on the Oak Street Bridge that doubled our journey time from about half an hour to just over an hour.
Leo’s half-demon metabolism required constant food, which we didn’t have, and her hunger levels were becoming dangerous to those of us trapped in this vehicle with her.
Drio bitched about my stupid ideas and Rohan told him to back off and lose the attitude. That escalated to Drio elaborating on all the ways Rohan was now pussy-whipped, while Rohan stared out the window, refusing to engage, which goaded Drio more.
From my vantage point in the backseat with him, Ro was barely holding himself in check. His fingers were digging into his thighs, his lips pressed together.
Leo and Drio might as well have been in separate cars for their pointed lack of interaction.
My stomach was a twisted mess. Just as I was considering portalling out and everyone else be damned, we hit the line-up for the turn-off onto the road to the parking lot. Not even the parking lot itself.
The car came to a complete stop.
Leo lasted all of five minutes before she pulled an impressive U-Turn, barely missing plowing into a truck hauling Porta-Potties. Yelling at me to find another way in or the nearest SkyTrain, she rage-drove through the streets of Richmond.
Flustered, I attempted to find the nearest SkyTrain station on my phone. My first three attempts led us back to that same turn-off, Leo’s driving becoming more and more aggressive, and Drio’s muttered sniping and Rohan’s pointed disinterest fraying my last nerves.
We pulled into the Aberdeen Mall with its awesomely cheesy musical fountain, excellent Japanese dollar store, and enormous Asian food court. I’d have gladly eaten there, but all the stalls were already closed. Google Maps showed me a twenty-minute walk back to the Night Market, which I gamely shared with Leo, aware I was taking my life into my hands.
She snapped a “fine” at me, but luckily, about a block away from our parking spot, we found a SkyTrain station.
We stood in separate spots on the platform. Leo was starving and homicidal, while Drio shot daggers at Ro whose “I’m so unaffected” smirk was so irritating that even I was tempted to wipe it off his face. Mostly, I tried to make myself invisible.
None of us spoke for the one-stop ride to the market.
We stepped out of the train car with the rest of the market-bound crowd, making our way along the final two blocks. The trip was still salvageable. It was a beautiful September night and good food beckoned.
A drop of rain hit my face. I stepped up my pace and hoped the others hadn’t noticed.
Once past the casino, the approach to the market was through an enormous dirt parking lot. Scratchy loudspeakers hawked all the fabulous wares that we absolutely had to check out, while smoke and the smell of grilled seafood hung over everything.
The rain picked up. By the time we’d made it through the winding dirt path for the line-up and in through the front gates, my hair was plastered to my scalp and water was running down my back.
People were squished five-deep in the open mouth (complete with pointy teeth) of the life-sized plastic T-Rex head that was a selfie spot, trying to stay dry. A growl worthy of any demon rolled out of that bunch when we got too close seeking shelter.
Why did the Night Market have a dinosaur theme? Why had it had a duck pirate theme in previous years? It was the Night Market. You rolled with it.
A gust of wind lashed the rain across our faces.
“Great idea,” Drio snarked. “I’m feeling so relaxed right now. We should have done the downpour tour weeks ago.”
“Fuck off.” I jumped a puddle, hurrying after Leo who looked like she might eat someone.
We passed the myriad of stalls selling socks, cell phone cases, plush onesies, beauty products, cheaply produced T-shirts with images of celebs like Justin Timberlake, Trump, Obama, or Taylor Swift, and the military surplus booth selling knives and bear spray.
After we cleared the retail area, we arrived at the food stalls.
Fake palm trees with fronds outlined in neon green and pink LEDs winked in the rain, and a sad bouncy castle quietly deflated in one corner, brought low by the deluge.
I followed Leo past dessert stands with fried dough, cinnamon, and sugar in various forms and cut-fruit kebabs, impressed by the hardcore determination of the soaked crowd to get their Asian food fix.
The rain was now pelting down so hard, you could taste its electric tang.
We’d lost the guys. I figured they weren’t going to turn Gremlin, so I stayed on Leo. At the first food stand with no line-up, I yanked her up to the cash and ordered squid on a stick. It was literally grilled squid legs sticking out higgledy piggledy from a thin wooden skewer. Higgledy piggledy was not a term I used lightly.
Leo downed it in a blink, followed by an order of takoyaki—octopus balls—which I ordered whenever possible for the name alone. I parked her in a shipping container which housed an ATM and ran over to a Korean fried chicken place where Rohan was in line. We stocked up on the hot nubbins of chili-sweet crispy chicken.
“This is not ideal,” he said. “It’s chaos in here.”
“It’s an adventure.”
That didn’t win me any points.
Hands full of our steam-laden orders, we elbowed our way back into the now-packed shipping container to fall on our chicken like ravenous wolves.
I blew on a nugget before popping it in my mouth. “Any ideas on what End Zone means?”
Neither Leo, now fed and able to think clearly, nor Rohan had any brilliant realizations.
Leo stuck her hand out of the shipping container. “The rain’s let up. Let’s go browse.”
“Sure,” Ro said.
“What about Drio?” I said.
“If you want to find him, feel free,” Leo said, in a tone of voice that made it clear I would totally be taking sides and my betrayal would not be forgotten.
I looked to my boyfriend for help.
“Drio’s being a dick right now.”
Not wrong, but still. He was our dick. I could chase after someone who didn’t even want me around or I could stay with my friends and keep the peace. I rubbed my thumb over the lighter in my pocket. I was a fire-tender, wasn’t I?
And Drio was one of my logs.
Grrr.
I stomped off after the errant Rasha.
There was no sign of Drio anywhere in the food section. Nor was he at the balloon pop and ball toss games attempting to win a knock-off anime character stuffie. Despite everyone being drenched, there was still an oddly festive carnival atmosphere and the rest of the crowd was having a great time.
I found Broody standing under a giant
inflatable crab with about forty other people, listening to tinny K-Pop.
As soon as he saw me, he marched off, but I kept pace.
Impossibly, the sky opened up once more and it rained even harder, dumping down on us.
“Look.” I pointed at the giant plastic balls in a pool of water that people were rolling around in. “We could go in the giant balls.”
“It would be drier.” Drio stepped over a cable lying in a deep puddle. “Hope the electrical is up to code.”
I jumped as the animatronic velociraptor next to me let out an asthmatic wheeze, putting an extra kick in my step to catch up with Drio. I placed my hand on his shoulder. “Remember when we used to be friends?”
“No.”
I steered him toward a covered area with a tropical backdrop and shoved him into one of the two plastic beach chairs set up for selfies. “You risked Mandelbaum to come get me. You totally care about me.”
“You were a necessary evil to get Rohan back.”
I glared at a giggling young couple who were casting meaningful glances at our chairs until they slunk away. “Despite your best efforts, I care about you too, which is why I’m going to give you some tough love.” I boffed the top of his head.
He smacked my hands away. “What is with everyone hitting?”
“You’re hittable. You’re also mad at Rohan because he’s happy and mad at yourself because you’re not.”
“Porco Dio. It’s my turn.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I wrung out my sopping toque and lumberjack shirt, as best I could.
“You gave Kane your little talk and now he and Ari are together. Go natter at Baruch.”
“What am I, nuts? Tree Trunk is very big and he does that scary eye thing. So, you’re the lucky recipient of my wisdom,” I said. “Here goes: you’re allowed to love other people.”
“Great. When I find one I want to love, I’ll send you a postcard.”
“You were awful to Asha, Ro was awful to Asha, and ultimately, neither of you were responsible for her death.” I grabbed his soggy shirtfront. “Even believing it was your fault, you pushed hard for me to treat Rohan right before we were even together, but now that you actually see him being happy, you can’t stand it, and you want to know why?”
Nava Katz Box Set 2 Page 80