On the plus side, people are opening their homes to displaced strangers, blood donations are up, people are generally being nicer to each other. There is surprisingly little looting. Nothing beats horrible, gut-wrenching tragedy to bring a city together.
I dial up Letitia. She answers right before it goes to voicemail and the first thing I hear is someone, presumably her wife, yelling, “Don’t you turn your back on me!” in the background.
“Hey,” Letitia says. She sounds ground down.
“Bad time?”
“These days I don’t know if there’s such a thing as a good time.”
“Have you had The Talk?” I say.
“God, no. And I’m not talking anymore about this. What do you want?”
“I’m heading over to Chu’s. He’s got that fundraiser going on. I figured I’d go surprise him with a little present.”
“You found a sp—You found one?”
“Yep. Thought he should get a chance to see it before I hunt down a god with it.”
“Jesus, that’s the first good news I’ve heard.”
“Head over to Chu’s. We’ll talk more then.”
“Uh . . .” I hear glass crashing in the background. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
“If you don’t get out of there and let things calm down, eventually she’s gonna nail you with one of those glasses she’s throwing. And I don’t think either one of you is going to like the result. Trust me on this one.”
“Speaking from experience?”
“You have to ask?”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Think fast,” I say. “The more she throws, the more you’re looking at stitches and sending your wife to jail for a domestic.”
“Don’t even fucking joke about that,” she says. “Look, I’ll try to get over there. But no promises.”
“That’ll have to do. See you then. And good luck.” I hang up to the sound of another glass shattering. Though I want to, I don’t entirely trust Letitia. I really don’t trust Chu and his lapdog. I want her there to see how she reacts to the fireworks once I’ve got everybody where I want them.
The inside of the motel room is hot, and that’s with air conditioning. It’s nothing compared to the temperatures outside. Nobody’s predicting a break from the heat for the next few days. Then it might drop a degree or two. The car, the same Corolla I stole last night, is a piece of crap, but whoever owns it really took care of the A/C. It’s like stepping into a pizza oven at first, but cools down by the time I’m heading up the hill toward the Valley.
Though the greenery in the hills of southern Encino has a cooling effect, the temperatures are soaring. As I get closer to Chu’s place, I start seeing more and more expensive cars parked along the side of the road. Of course. He has a lot of parking in that driveway, but he’s the political hotshot right now. This fundraiser is a big deal and it attracts a lot of attention.
I get up to Chu’s place and sit in line as the valet guys park the Maseratis, Ferraris, Mercedes, and BMWs in front of me. When it comes to a twenty-year-old Corolla, they stare at it a minute before one of them, a sweaty, pimply-faced Asian kid, comes up to take my keys.
He takes them but I don’t let go. “This is a very valuable piece of antique machinery that’s worth more than all of these cars combined,” I say, face serious. “Less than a hundred of these prototypes were made. I don’t want to see a goddamn scratch on this car when I come back. Do you understand me?”
“Uh, sir, there are a lot of—”
“Do. You. Understand. Me?” Tabitha told me I could do the black eyes trick whenever I wanted, so I give it a whirl. From the kid’s own widening eyes and stammer, I’d say it worked. “Well?”
“I—I understand,” he says, shaking. I let my eyes go back to normal. He calms a little, but just about runs once I let him have the keys.
That was mean. And he’s got a shitty job. Parking cars in this weather for these assholes? But I guarantee I won’t be the biggest dick at this party, and if I can get some kid to say “fuck this job” and not be here when things go bad, I’ll have done my good deed for the year.
“Hey,” I say and he freezes in place. I storm up to him. He’s shaking so hard he almost drops my keys. I shove a wad of hundred dollar bills in his vest pocket. I lean in, voice barely a whisper. “When the shit hits the fan,” I say, “you run. Got me?”
“I—what?”
“Trust me, you’ll know it when it happens.” I leave him staring at my back as I head to the door where an attractive young lady and an intimidatingly muscular gentleman check invites and let people inside.
The looks on their faces when I step up are dubious at best. The way I look, bandages, bruises, my messenger bag slung over one shoulder, a thick metal briefcase in my hand—I’d look at me funny, too.
The woman recovers first. “Good evening, sir,” she says. “May I see your invitation?”
“Don’t have one, sorry. But I am wearing a tie. And I’m kind of a dick. That’s gotta put me into the same category as at least some of these people.”
I can feel magic on both of them. She’s got some sort of protective charms, and his feel like they might make him bulletproof. From the look of them, stance, posture, they both have some military training and combat expertise. Gotta hand it to him, Chu does know how to recruit good people.
“Then I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” the young man says, stepping forward.
“Tell Councilman Chu—or since he’s probably busy, that puppy that keeps following him around and shitting on the carpet, Peter something—that I’m here and I have the thing he asked me about.”
“Sir,” the woman starts.
“Tell him it’s Eric Carter.” They both take an involuntary step back, eyes widening a fraction. Is my reputation that scary?
“I thought you’d be bigger,” the man says.
“I am,” I say, giving him a wink. “Where it counts. Come on. I don’t have an army of the dead in my back pocket to toss at this place. I just need someone to tell Chu that I’m here and—”
Peter comes out the front door, suit immaculate, shoes mirror-polished, nose as brown as you’d expect from the way he shoves it up Chu’s ass. “Mister Carter,” he says, clearly annoyed. This is a side of him I haven’t seen, yet. I wonder how much worse he can get.
I give the door staff my best winning smile. “This is the carpet-shitter I was talking about.”
“Please stop harassing the staff,” Peter says. “They’re specially trained and I would like to continue to use the services of their employers. Did I hear you right that you’ve found something?”
“Yep. Pretty sure it’ll do the trick, too.” He thinks about it, weighs his options. Leave me out here where I can do untold damage to anyone else coming up, or usher me into a side room where I won’t scare the straights, but will be inside along with them. I kind of feel for him. Neither of these are great choices.
He finally comes to a decision and scowls. “All right,” he says. “Come with me. I’m pretty sure he can spare a few minutes for you.”
“You’re kind of an annoying prick, you know that?” I say.
“Yes. That’s why I’ve got this job. Come on. Let’s not make it any easier for David’s guests to see you.”
Oh, we can’t have that. When shit gets heavy I want these people one foot out the door already. The minute we’re inside I veer off and grab a handful of chicken on little toothpicks that a waitress is passing around and a glass of wine from another and start looking for Chu.
The place is balls deep in L.A.’s elite. I recognize faces, but I don’t know most of the names. Politicians, rockers, actors, financiers. This is an industry town, after all, but it’s not always clear what that industry is. I recognize a couple of mages, and apparently they recognize me
, throwing wary glances my way as if I’m going to call up Santa Muerte herself. I give them a big smile as I walk by.
I see Chu in deep conversation with someone who looks pretty important. I’ve seen his face, at least, and at this point I don’t think Chu’d be talking to anybody who wasn’t.
“Davey!” I yell, immediately getting everybody’s attention. I nibble at one of the chicken skewers, bite into some gristle and spit it out over the shoulder of a woman standing next to me. All of the color drains out of his face.
That’s right, Davey boy, I’m your worst drunk uncle flappin’ his penis at the party guests at your senior prom nightmare. Best deal with me quickly.
“Hey, are these canapes?” I say, my voice way too loud. “I’ve never had canapes. Am I pronouncing that right? Oh, hi, how ya doin’?” I toss the chicken skewers aside and stick my greasy hand out to shake the hand of the guy Chu’s been talking to. He stares at it like I’m presenting him a live snake. “Oh, sorry.” I wipe the grease on my pant leg and stick my hand back out.
“Excuse me, Senator,” Chu says. “This is one of my more eccentric donors. Maybe we can pick this up again sometime next week? I’ll have my assistant call your office.” I feel a little magic and the Senator blinks as if in a daze.
“Oh, yes, certainly.” He walks away without even acknowledging me.
“Well, that was rude,” I say.
“The fuck are you doing here?” Chu says, the smile never leaving his face, but the tension in his jaw telling a different story.
“I’ve got the thing you were talking about. Thought you might want to see it in person.”
“The bottle? You found it? I mean, you found one strong enough to hold Quetzalcoatl?”
“And then some. Let’s go find a dark corner someplace and I can show you. Maybe we’ll even start some rumors.”
“Study. Down the hall, second door on the right. I’ll meet you there in a few minutes.” He looks somewhere between giddy and panicked.
“You got it, chief. Don’t keep me waiting.”
Chapter 30
He doesn’t. I’ve only just broken into his liquor cabinet and poured a liberal dose of some Balvenie 17-year-old DoubleWood when he comes in, Peter close at his heels, closing the door quietly behind them.
Legs on his desk, the briefcase next to them. I’ve stuck my messenger bag to the side.
I lift my glass in a toast. “Gentlemen, I drink to my health.” I down the glass.
“Actually, you’ve got that wrong,” Peter says. “It’s ‘I drink—’”
“Shut the fuck up,” Chu says, snarling at him. “Nobody fucking cares, Peter.” He turns back to me. “Where’s the bottle?”
“Oh. I put it back in the cabinet. I didn’t think you’d want any.”
“The spirit bottle,” Chu says, each word coming out like breaking glass. “You cannot be as fucking stupid as the rest of these people.”
“Oh, right,” I say. “That bottle. It’s right here.” I take my legs off his desk and snap open the briefcase, lifting out the glamoured fake.
“One certified, Grade A spirit bottle. Accept no substitutes.” It’s weird holding it. I know what it is, what it really looks like, how heavy it really is, but it feels just like Darius’s bottle. Color me impressed.
Chu almost leaps over the desk to get it, but I pull it out of his reach. “Why, Councilman Chu, you seem awfully eager to get your hands on this. Why might that be?”
“You fuck, I will take that thing off your goddamn corpse.” I’m so focused on Chu that I don’t notice that Peter has come around the edge of the desk until it’s too late.
I get my shield spell up in time to block a bolt of energy, but there’s enough power behind it that I stagger back and drop the bottle. There was something weird about that bolt. And then I realize. It was completely silent. They’ve got a crowd of Senators, celebrities out there. Normals. Whatever they do in here, they have to be quiet about it. I, on the other hand, do not.
This spell’s more flash than substance, though it’ll slow them down a bit. I open my mouth wide and let loose a Banshee’s wail, the keening shattering glass and knocking Peter to the floor. Before he can get back up, I run over and kick him in the face until he’s puking up blood and teeth.
The spell hit Chu, too, but he only caught the edge of it. It’s shoved him into a corner, knocking him down. He pulls himself up and makes a run for the bottle. I use a pull spell and it springs out of his reach toward me. Mages don’t use that one against each other often, and Chu reminds me why when he throws out one of his own.
The bottle hangs in the air between us. I consider pulling out the Browning and shooting him, but that kind of defeats the purpose here. I’m trying to figure out what to do when the door opens and Letitia rushes into the room. The distraction is all I need. Chu loses his grip on the bottle and it flies into my outstretched hand.
“The hell is going on?” Letitia says. I’m about to explain, but then I don’t have to after Chu uses the same pull spell and yanks Letitia’s Glock out of the holster at the small of her back, pulling her over as he does it.
He points the gun at me. “You’re gonna give me that bottle or I’m gonna put a hole in you big enough to drive a car through.”
“Why do you want it so bad, Councilman? It’s just a bottle to catch Quetzalcoatl in. You’re acting like it’s the Holy Grail.”
“You already know why,” he says, “or you wouldn’t have been acting like an asshole out there, trying to get me in here. That bottle changes everything. What are you going to do with it? Hide it away? Lock it up?”
“David, what the hell are you doing?” Letitia says, voice calm, pitched low. Her stance and movements designed to de-escalate. I don’t think that’s going to work in this situation.
“And you,” he says. “God, you’re an idiot. You don’t get it at all.”
“What don’t I get, David?” she says.
“You were just one more piece of bait,” I say. “We knew each other. He figured since my sister was murdered, the idea that your wife could be killed because of something I had done would make me want to help you.”
“What?”
“Yeah,” I say. “This whole thing’s been a scam to get hold of this bottle, hasn’t it? Stop me if I start to go off track. You found out about it through, what, newspapers? Old stories you wanted to figure out were true or not? You heard about Darius, and Cabrillo, and you run into the story of my grandfather finding something on Catalina. How long ago did you make that connection?”
“Ten years ago,” he says. “Give or take.”
“And then you heard the rumors about my family owning some kind of vault, right? Time goes on and you hear all those weird stories about me and Mictlan, and something about Quetzalcoatl and Darius.”
“You make it sound easy,” he says. “Getting hold of Quetzalcoatl was a pain in the ass, but once I did, everything fell into place. Have him and his pet assassin fuck with you, turn the mage community against you for all those murders. Show you those pictures so you know what you’re up against. I just had to spoon-feed the bullshit to you and you ate it right up. Man, when Werther’s family put that bounty on your head? That was just frosting on the cake.”
“You wanted to push me hard enough that I’d go looking for a powerful spirit bottle, hoping I’d run into this one. You were pretty sure I had it. And that nothing else would have been anywhere near as powerful. How come?”
“Because everyone knows about that vault. It’s an open secret. Everybody knows the Carters hoarded shit, even if they don’t know where they put it. My grandmother helped put the thing together. Fucking bitch wouldn’t tell me where it was before she died. But now it doesn’t matter. Because once I take that bottle off your corpse, not a goddamn thing’s gonna stop me.”
“Then we can’t let that happen, can
we?” Attila Werther steps out of nowhere. One second he isn’t, and the next he is. Chu slams against the far wall, Letitia’s Glock hanging in mid-air where he had been standing a moment ago.
“I believe this is yours,” Werther says, floating the gun over to Letitia, who plucks it out of the air.
“We square?” I say.
“Yes,” Werther says. “I’ve lifted the bounty. You may still get a straggler or two, but I don’t think you’ll have any trouble with them. You haven’t so far.”
He walks over to Chu, looks him up and down like he’s inspecting a bug. “You brought murder into my home. You had the very light of my life killed. What should I do with you?”
“Not that my opinion means much,” I say, “but vengeance hasn’t really worked out well for me.”
“If you can say the same when you’re over two hundred years old, I might take it under advisement. Try as you might, ours is not a world that allows such luxuries as turning the other cheek.”
“You know, things are about to get kinda hairy around here,” I say. “Could use your help.”
Werther laughs. “You would have me stand against a god?”
“Hey, I stood against two of ’em.”
“Yes, and look how that turned out for you. No, Mister Carter, I’m very sorry, but you’re on your own.” He and Chu disappear as quickly and silently as he appeared.
“What the fuck, Eric?” Letitia says. She’s already holstered her weapon, and her stance says she’s ready to face anything, but her face is ashen.
“If I’m right, Chu and Quetzalcoatl are connected, though I doubt Chu knows that. I’m betting everything that just happened here, Q knows about. He’s going to want this bottle and it’s going to get really ugly, really fast.”
“Shit,” she says. “Annie’s out there. I have to get her out.”
“You’re fucking kidding me.”
Fire Season Page 21