They left me in the middle of nowhere. It took hours to walk to the nearest train, and the sun was already well into the sky by the time I got home. I was exhausted. I turned the corner to my street, anticipating the most powerful of power naps, when I noticed the black limo waiting for me in the morning sun. It sat across the street from my flat, all sleek and curvy, like a reef shark. I slurped the last dribbles of the smoothie I’d bought to silence my stomach and tossed the cup into a trash can before passing the rear of the vehicle on the driver’s side.
Bouncerman rolled the window down.
“Mr. Rottheim has heard nothing from you.”
“I mailed him a full report,” I said without stopping. “Typed and double-spaced with proper margins and everything. Mrs. Cho would be very proud. He should have it tomorrow.”
“He gave you a lot of money. He expects results.”
“Well, I tell you what.” I started walking backward across the street. “If I don’t deliver, I promise I won’t ask for more. How’s that?”
“He’s wondering if you require additional motivation.”
I stopped. It was the way he said it. Made me wanna kick him in the balls.
“Is that a threat?”
Bouncerman got out and held the door. “He would like a word.”
I’d already been ditched on the side of the road and made to wait forever for a cab. I really didn’t want to spend another hour in the car to wait an unspecified period of time to get yelled at by a guy who was maybe ten years older than me, at most.
“We all want things.” I turned for the door.
“Ms. Song,” he called insistently.
I didn’t stop.
“Cerise!”
It was Luke’s voice—sounding like my dad yelling at me to stop putting noodles in my little cousin’s hair. His head was poking from the back of the limo. I shit you not, he was in the douche uniform: khakis and a striped polo under a white cardigan with a colorful border.
“I’m working on it,” I called. I waggled my hand to shoo him away. “Go foreclose on people’s homes or inflate the price of lifesaving medicines or whatever gets you off at the club.”
“Do we have to shout?” He looked around. “Can you get in the car? Please?”
I sighed and walked back to the limo. Bouncerman shut the door behind me and walked around to the other side. It was very quiet. I was facing Luke, who looked like he’d taken a turn. His eyes were dark and I got the sense he’d been coughing, which was maybe why Bouncerman had stepped out first. Boss hadn’t been able to speak. Sideburns, the black guy with the long face who’d searched my loft, was in the driver’s seat, glowering menacingly through the rear-view mirror.
“Hey,” I said to him as his partner got back in the car.
Luke checked his very expensive watch. “$800,000,” he said. “And counting. Some of your competitors have some very promising leads.”
“Good for them.”
“They send me daily reports. Some, hourly.”
“You mentioned that. Sounds like a complete waste of valuable time to me, but you know, whatever makes them feel like they’re doing a good job.”
Luke coughed. For a moment, it seemed like it would pass. Then he started coughing more. It was deep, like from his lungs. He spit. Bouncerman handed him a fresh silk handkerchief from a stack, but he waved it off. He cleared his throat and composed himself again.
“Do you have any idea what it’s like?” he asked weakly. His hand was shaking. There was an edge to his voice that hadn’t been there before. It seemed as though his night had been even worse than mine.
“No,” I said softly. “And I’m sorry for the attitude. I just—” I turned toward Bouncerman to explain, not that it would help my case. “I’m working on it. I found the boyfriend.”
They all looked to each other, like that had some hidden significance.
“More joking.” He sighed.
“No, I—”
“Ms. Song, I’m tired of this. Tired of feeling sick. Tired of the excuses. Yours. Everyone’s.”
“Dude, he was at this roving market thing. I saw him last night. He doesn’t know where she is either. He didn’t even know she was pregnant.”
“And you believed him?”
“Well—” I stammered. “Of course not. At first. But then these guys showed up and—”
“What guys?”
“I dunno. Guys.”
“What did they look like?” he insisted.
“Well . . . I mean, I didn’t actually see them. There was a lot of running and screaming and . . .”
Luke waited for me to finish my increasingly lame explanation for how I had probably just gotten played.
Bastien totally ditched me. And I bought it.
My face flushed.
“I can find it again,” I said finally.
Luke stared at me like I was an idiot. “And you really think he’s going to be there, waiting for you to show up?”
I had to admit, the answer to that was probably a big negativo.
My foot was bouncing. He looked at it. I stopped.
“I gave you ten thousand dollars,” he said. He cleared some mucus from his throat.
“Your watch cost five times—”
“And you think that gives you an excuse to take my money?” he yelled.
“I didn’t say that. I’m just saying, comparatively, it’s not that—”
“We are talking about my LEGACY! And you sit there making ridiculous—”
He started coughing again. This time, he couldn’t stop and waved for the hankie. It lasted a while, and I sat there awkwardly, feeling Bouncerman burning a hole in my head with his eyes.
“I think,” Luke began. Then he coughed again. “I think maybe you should have a taste of what it’s like. Then maybe you will take this matter, and my property, more seriously.”
I didn’t know what he meant at first. Then he nodded to William and my eyes got big. I reached for the door but Sideburns locked it from the front. I turned and saw Bouncerman pull the brass vajra from its holster. He moved it and I punched myself. With my own fist. Like, hard. Harder than I’ve ever punched anyone. Right in the nose. My head flew back and bounced off the window. I swear it must’ve cracked. I never saw it, but I heard the noise.
“Owww . . .”
I didn’t know whether to grab the back of my head or the front. My wrist was screaming. My nose was running blood. My eye was hot and already starting to swell. I was gonna get a fat shiner.
“What the hell . . .” I breathed.
Out of some juvenile desire for revenge, I kicked weakly but blindly, with my hand still in front of my face, and wound up hitting the sick guy.
Everyone froze.
“Oh, shit . . . That was a mist—”
William grabbed my arm. I made a fist and tried to fight him, but the fucker was strong and he worked my thumb free. I scratched his face with my free hand. It was a reflex. I think I got his eye. He screamed, raised his elbow, and jammed me hard. He was stronger than I was and it hurt even more than the punch. I crumpled to the floor, which is where I was when the door opened. Sideburns the driver dragged me from the limo and dropped me right on the road. My phone had come free in the fall and Luke tossed it into the street. It bounced on the asphalt and slid.
I picked it up. The screen was cracked. “Fucking dick!”
“Do your job. Next time there will be consequences.”
The door shut and the limo pulled away, almost running over my foot, which I yanked out of the way at the last second. I tried to kick the car but missed by a mile.
“Asshole!”
I tongued the inside of my lip. The back of my head stung. My eye throbbed. And I was pretty sure I was going to have a fat, tender bruise on my chest from where dickless elbowed me. I sat up on the pavement in the middle of the road and sniffed blood. My eyes were watering. I ran the back of my hand across my nose and saw a streak of red. I had almost forgotten what getting your ass kicked felt like. It had been a few years, not since I was arrested for brawling on the street. Some drunk lesbians were yelling gay slurs at Shanna, who was super skinny back then and didn’t have her boobs. She was just coming into herself and was nothing like the diva I knew. She slunk to leave. I saw it, all drunk and high, and words got said, words you can’t take back. Things got out of hand very quickly after that. I don’t think any of us intended to fight. All I remember is being so angry at them. They were lesbians. They were supposed to know better!
The fight was epic. Punching. Screaming. Kicking. Even some good wrestling-style headlocks and hair pulling. The works. The police came and broke it up. They handcuffed us and put us all in a line with our backs to the wall. I looked like shit. Hair a mess. Cuts and bruises everywhere. Spots of blood on my clothes—mostly mine. I was totally outnumbered and got my ass stomped. But I don’t think I ever felt so alive. I remember sitting there like a darkening bruise as the police processed the lesbian gang. I had stood up for someone and was feeling good. I was soaking in it like a hot bath and didn’t want to do anything to break the spell.
After that, I couldn’t have gotten rid of Shanna if I tried.
Sitting in the road in front of my apartment, all I could think was that I would’ve killed to hit a bong just then.
A car screeched to a halt behind me and honked. The dude got out barely a second later and started yelling at me to get out of the road. He was dressed like a Serbian pimp.
“Girlie!” he yelled. “Get out of the road!”
Didn’t move.
“Do you understand English?”
“Is that what you call it?” His accent was so thick he was damned near unintelligible. I sniffed and wiped again.
He moved toward me, like he might drag me out of the way or something.
“Touch me and I’ll eat your balls.”
He was about to retort when a white turd landed on his cheek. Seriously. It was poop. He wiped it and looked at his hand.
“What the . . .”
We both looked up.
Birds. Hundreds, at least. They moved in a deranged flock over the building and descended, angry and quarreling, to land on rooftops and traffic lights and street signs and cars and railings and everything. There was chirping and cawing and flapping—so many wings that they actually stirred the air. Amid the constant agitated shuffle, a crow dive-bombed the pimp, then another, like they wanted his bald head for a perch.
“HEY!”
He barely had time to duck before another came. He crouched to the street, where I was already thankfully planted. One of the smaller birds brushed my hair as it flew by, which gave me the willies, and I shook my hands around my head like a bug had flown into it. Another came. And another. And another. Crows started landing on the pavement, inching closer and closer to us like we were roadkill.
Then WHOOSH! Thousands of wing beats scattered the strange flock in all directions.
Pimp guy had his head craned to the sky. “Da fuck was that?” There was a tiny wet spot on his crotch. “What da hell was that?”
“A murder,” a man said behind me.
I was still sitting on the ground, and I dropped my head back and looked at him upside down. He stood with his hands in his fantastic coat.
“Oh. Hey. It’s you.”
By tilting my head back, I got dizzy. Too dizzy, really. Like something was wrong. I collapsed to the side.
“You are bleeding.” The man in the coat whipped a handkerchief from his pocket like a stage magician.
“Thanks. I’m okay. My flat’s right here.”
“Please, you may keep it.”
“Um.” Blood was definitely running. I felt a drop escape my upper lip. “Thanks.”
The hankie had the initials H.H. embroidered in the corner. I got up and pressed it to my nostril.
“Finally!” The pimp raised his arms as if to praise Allah that I’d gotten out of his way. A car honked behind him and he told them what he felt about it in colorful language.
“May I have a moment?” bald guy asked.
“Uhhh . . .” I backed to the door, a little unsteady. “To be honest, now’s not really the best time. Sorry.”
“I would like to hire you,” he said.
“Hire me? For wha—Oh. You think I’m a PI or something.”
“You are working for Luke Rottheim, are you not?”
“That’s . . . different. Good luck, though.”
I walked up the stairs and to the bathroom where I was washing my face when I heard the front door creak.
“Jesus, I need to fix that lock.” I walked out. “Hello?”
It was the dude in the strange coat.
“Didn’t we just say goodbye?” I asked.
He turned for the stairs like he wasn’t sure if we had or not and looking back would remind him.
I sighed. “Can’t you, like, make an appointment with my secretary or something?”
“I’m afraid there is not time.”
His eyes moved over the couch and the floor and the little kitchen nook. Daria had cleaned my place again, but since she didn’t know where most of my stuff went, she’d put like with like on the couch. There were crumpled socks and an open box of tampons and art supplies and shoes and everything.
“Shit.” I gave up. “Well, now that you’ve successfully invaded my privacy, what is it that you want, Mister . . . ?”
“Étranger.”
The name got me. “Have we met? Before the other day, I mean.”
“I don’t think so. I would have remembered.”
I’m not sure if he was complimenting me or his memory.
He handed me a card. “Perhaps you have been to my restaurant.”
Bistro Indigenes. With the name in print, it all came back. I held up the card. “Mory.” I nodded.
“Excuse me?”
“Dr. Sandoval. He was my aesthetics professor. He used to rave about you.”
I loved that class. It was the only one I attended regularly. Professor Sandoval was this funny little Puerto Rican Jew with a thick Brooklyn accent. He’d go off on Kant and baseball in the same sentence. He loved Étranger’s food—his art—but could rarely afford it on a teacher’s salary. I remember he told us about the Eros Gastronomique, part of this food art series Étranger did. It wasn’t just a dinner. It was a complete sensual experience that “penetrated a wet cave,” an ocean grotto exposed by the tides, with a stunning view of a red-hued sunset over the Indian Ocean. There were candles and lights strung overhead, and the courses were served with an increasing urgency as the tide returned over the duration of the meal, thrusting in and out. Dr. Sandoval said the diners swayed, not just with the waves but in tension between the desire to savor and the desire to hurry and finish before the waters returned and drowned them. As he told us the story, he stood on stage with his eyes closed making this face. I swear he was going to pop in his shorts right in front of the class.
“Holy shit—excuse me.” I covered my dirty mouth with the card. “He’d freak.”
Flustered, I motioned to offer my guest a seat, but it was covered with all my crap.
“Sorry.”
I pulled it all down and slid some of it out of the way with my foot. My colored pencils rolled and stopped at a pair of panties, which I kicked away.
“Can I offer you anything?” I asked in my best hostess voice. “I’m afraid the only soft drink I have is water. And Red Bull. But you don’t look like a Red Bull man.”
He sat on the edge of the couch with perfect posture. “The club you visited.”
“You know about that, huh? Don’t tell me you’re on the board as well.”
“What do you know of it?”
“Well, they’ve certainly put a lot of thought into how not to get arrested for prostitution.”
“Of course. What else?”
I thought for a moment. Then I shook my head. “Nothing really. One of the girls is missing, but that’s hardly Movietone News. Why? Don’t tell me. You got her pregnant, too.”
“It holds a very dark secret.”
“Naw, man, just some light bondage. I actually knew a guy who could stick a—”
“A coven,” he clarified.
“Coven?” I laughed. “What, like witches?”
“Warlocks.”
“Warlocks . . .” That got me. “I dunno. I think maybe you need to meet Randy. I really don’t think he’s a—”
“The coven is hidden among the rest.”
“Hidden? You already have to pay like 80 grand or something to get into that place.”
“Tell me,” he said, “where is the best place to hide something?”
I shrugged. “In plain sight? Isn’t that what they say?”
“No. Inside something that is already hidden. If you hear a rumor of a secret club, and then you find one, you don’t keep looking, do you?”
I thought for a moment. “Okay . . . Fair enough. But—”
“Ms. Song, I have been tracking the seekers of the dark for a very long time. Longer than you have been alive.”
“Am I supposed to know what that is?”
“The man you work for comes from a very, very old family. A pair, actually. He represents their union and was conceived for one reason and one reason only: to be a king. And yet, now he lays dying. Cursed.”
I squinted. “He mentioned something about lineage.”
“Indeed. His mother was a Scandinavian witch of some renown. His father is descended from a line of Persian viziers. Their union was arranged. It had no purpose but to conceive a son who would join two great houses, both imperiled.”
“Imperiled? By what?”
“The Lord of Shadows.”
I froze. “What?”
“He has opened the door to his gods, and while they gather their armies, they whisper to him.” He held a hand to his ear. “He is consolidating his power and will soon take control of the stone table. When he does, all covens will bow in united purpose.”
I rubbed my eyes. I was tired. And had a throbbing headache.
“Okay . . . Umm . . . That’s very interesting, but I’ve been awake all night and I just accidentally punched myself in the face, so—”
“You signed a contract,” he said. “Didn’t you?”
He saw the look on my face. He stood and stepped closer.
“Did you read it?”
“Ahhhh . . . Most of it?”
He looked at me with concern. “That is how they are able to manipulate you. There must be stipulations for failure.”
“Failure?” I started to feel sick.
“The pallor of death hangs over you,” he said softly. “Are you certain you do not require medical attention?”
“Death? It’s just a bruise, man.”
I touched my eye and flinched. It felt flushed and tender. I was going to have a helluva bruise. That really pissed me off. I yanked the hankie from my nose. It was soaked in red. I walked to the kitchen for a drink of water.
“I’m very sorry,” I called back to him. “I’m not usually in the habit of getting my ass kicked in front of total strangers. I usually reserve that honor for my close friends. It’s just been a really . . . strange few days.”
“I suspect it will get stranger,” he said.
“Listen, man . . .” I sighed. “I don’t wanna be rude, but can you peddle crazy somewhere else? I am legit full-up. You know, or come back next week or something.”
I started feeling queasy, like genuinely bad. The sensation wasn’t pleasant. I just wanted to sit. Since he vacated it, I plopped down on the couch.
“It is imperative that I speak with Lykke Rottheim as soon as possible.”
“So speak. He’s got a house on the Upper East Side. Big bay window. Can’t miss it. Oh, wait. You were there.”
“It would be better if he did not know I was coming.”
“You want me to help ambush him? Wow. Look. Dude. I really don’t wanna get in the middle of a rich gangsta turf war or whatever the fuck this is.”
I covered my eyes. A dull throb resounded in my head. It bounced back and forth like a wave between the walls of my skull.
“A visit to the hospital would be wise,” he suggested, leaning toward me slightly. “It appears you have a concussion.”
I shook my head, which hurt, and I stopped. “I don’t have insurance. It’s fine. I’m fine. Look, if you’re not gonna threaten me or have your bodyguards beat the crap out of me or whatever, then can you get the hell outta my flat?”
He said something to me then, like gibberish, but I passed out.