Back From the Undead (16 page)

“Hemo,” I tell Gretch. “That’s the name of the business Stoker gave me. He says it’s connected to the disappearance of the pire kids.”

Gretch sounds concerned. “Do you think there’s any credence to his story? Considering how he used you?”

“At this point I don’t know what to think. He claims he isn’t even working with the Free Human Resistance anymore, but clearly at least some of his goals haven’t changed.”

“Mmm. Well, shutting down an operation like that is a good thing, Jace. If nothing else, at least that’s done.”

“Yeah. But that’s not the only surprise that popped up.” I tell her about Tanaka, and why he’s here.

“I’ll try to confirm that with our Japanese counterparts, though they haven’t been exactly forthcoming since the Ghatanothoa debacle. I’ll let you know what I find out when I ring you back with the Hemo data.”

She hangs up. I knock on Charlie’s door, tell him and Eisfanger I’m going to have a long bath and go to bed.

Most people have baths to relax, but I find I can often do some good brainstorming while surrounded by hot water and suds. My bathroom holds stacks of water-stained notebooks as opposed to candles, and I prefer a nice cold scotch on the rocks to a glass of wine. I fill up the tub, ease myself in, close my eyes, and start to think.

The first question nagging at me is
What did Stoker give Zevon in return for our freedom?
Maybe he offered to kill someone—he’s very good at that, after all.

Or maybe the whole thing was an elaborate con, designed to make me think I owe Stoker a favor. That doesn’t really ring true, though—too much work for too little payoff. I mean, if he’d really gone to that much trouble to trap me in a Japanese Hell, I doubt he’d let me go that easily.

And what am I going to do about Tanaka? My imagination throws out a few interesting possibilities, which I hastily suppress. If there’s one thing I can rely on, it’s my own brain’s ability to screw up my love life. I think it’s in cahoots with a number of my glands, too.

With an effort, I push myself into a more business-like frame of mind. The pire kids. If they
are
disappearing, who’s taking them, and why?

Maybe it has something to do with the whole time-debt issue. The kids aren’t aging—but maybe they’d like to. That could make attractive bait for a childnapper.

Is it actually possible? I know another pire can volunteer to share the time-debt, like Cassius did with Anna after her father was killed, but who would do that for a stranger?

The solution, when it pops up, seems blindingly obvious. Another pire kid, of course. Normally the time-debt is shared between the parents, who each age at half speed, but it’s entirely possible to do it with one taking on the whole load. I reach out, find my phone on the counter, and call Eisfanger. He answers on the third ring.

“Jace? What’s up?”

I ask him about my theory. He disappoints me. “Sorry, but that wouldn’t work. You need at least one parent in the loop—the debt can be shared, but not transferred entirely.”

“Okay, thanks.” I sigh and hang up.

Well, if it’s being used as bait, it doesn’t have to work—you just have to convince the kids it does. The real question is, what are the kids being used for?

I know it doesn’t have to be anything sorcerous. It could be as simple and ugly as it appears, that the kids are being abused or killed or both. If they’re being murdered, I’m probably hunting a pire; serial killers tend to stay within their own race. But if I’m after a child molester, that broadens my parameters by an order of magnitude; they can come from any walk of life, be any age, any race. About the only factor I could rely on was that they’d probably be male, and even that wasn’t guaranteed.

The phone rings. I wipe my hand dry on a towel and answer it.

It’s Gretch. “Mr. Tanaka has indeed left the employ of the NSIB. Hemo is the name of a corporation that specializes in blood products; specifically, they import and distribute a number of products from Japan—a popular drink called Gorilla Happiness Plus is their big seller. And yes, it does contain actual primate blood, though most of it comes from macaque or green monkeys.”

“The Japanese blood trade. Interesting.”

“My sources say they have definite ties to the Yakuza, though Hemo has never been directly implicated in any criminal activity. What
is
interesting, though, is the fact that a great deal of their annual budget goes into research and development.”

“Trying to build a juicier monkey?”

“That would make sense—but no. They seem to spend it all on computer equipment and experts in machine code.”

I frown. “What for?”

“I have no idea. Perhaps you could ask them, when you speak to their CEO.”

“Who is?”

“Robert Mizagi. You have an appointment to see him today at four.”

I groan. “I’m guessing that’s
AM
?”

“He
is
a pire.”

“Suppose I should try to get a few hours of sleep, then.”

Yeah, that would be a good idea. Unfortunately—even after the bath and getting beneath the covers—I’m too wound up to find the offramp to dreamland. And if I had, the phone would have woken me up anyway.

The screen tells me it’s an unknown caller. “Hello?”

“It’s Stoker. Sorry if I woke you.”

“Don’t worry about it. You have another wild goose for me to chase, or is this call more about my chain and the method you’re going to use to yank it?”

“I’ve got what you asked for. Sending you some pictures now.”

And he does—half a dozen photos, it looks like. “Before I look at these, what are they?”

“Evidence. Have you checked out Hemo yet?”

“I have someone working on that, yes. They’re a Yak front. So?”

“So I tracked down a homeless thrope kid who not only saw one of his pire friends get into a car, he snapped a few shots with his phone.”

“He get a plate number?”

“Better. He went half-were and followed the vehicle until it pulled into the secured lot of a building. Guess which one?”

“The same one I’m visiting tomorrow?”

“Good luck.” He hangs up.

I study the photos. None of them is very good—they’re all either blurred, taken from a bad angle, or both—but I can plainly see what looks like a pre-adolescent girl getting into the back of a black sedan. Plates aren’t visible in any of the shots, but I can’t blame the cameraman for that—he was busy chasing a car through city traffic while running at full speed.

There’s one photo that’s better than the others, though. I can see a hand reaching out of the backseat, helping the child in, and on one finger is a very distinctive ring. Carved jade in a gold setting, looks like, though I can’t make out much detail. I send the photos to Gretch—she’ll do a much better job at analyzing them.

Now I’m thoroughly awake. I decide to clean my gun, a ritual I’ve used before to calm myself. I know it sounds a little weird, but there’s a peaceful, Zen quality to doing something purely physical that you’ve done a thousand times before.

I get out the gun and my cleaning kit. I lay out a fresh, clean white cloth on the bed and start taking the Ruger apart. I fall into a familiar rhythm and it feels good.

At first.

But then something happens. Something that’s never, ever happened before.

It starts as I’m cleaning and oiling each individual component: a feeling that something’s wrong. That something’s, I don’t know,
missing
. I make sure there’s nothing on the floor or under the bed, some little part I might have dropped. Nothing there.

But the feeling gets stronger. You know how you can forget something, and the only piece of information left in your brain is a little scrap of paper with the words
YOU FORGOT SOMETHING, DUMBASS
written on it? It’s like that, only stronger. Insistent, nagging. It’s driving me crazy, but no matter how hard I try my memory just sits there with an idiot grin on its face, drooling and picking its nose. I finally give up and return to the task at hand, hoping the routine will relax me enough that whatever it is will surface on its own.

And that’s when it hits me.

I have no idea how to put the Ruger back together again.

*   *   *

“Damon!”
Pound pound pound.
“WAKE UP!”

The door rips open. A snarling, snow-white, six-foot werewolf glares at me with ice-blue eyes. He’s wearing pajama bottoms with little puppies on them.

“It’s affecting me!” I blurt. “The spell!”

His snarl droops, then turns into a yawn. He signs
What spell?
with furry white hands.

I storm into his room as he shifts—a lot slower this time—back into human form. “You know, the spell! I took it apart and now I can’t put it back together!”

“Can’t put
what
back together?”

“My—my Splatter!”

“Your what now?”

I groan in exasperation. I’m having trouble even remembering what the damn thing is called. “That’s what the Stanley Park pack called it. The Splatter. I guess because it makes things go splat.”

“Oh. You mean your gun.”

“Yes! Yes, my gun! Gun, gun,
gun
!”

“Just take it easy, okay?” He pads over to the bed in his bare feet and slips into a fluffy hotel robe like the one I’ve got on. Even the hair on his chest is white. “You took your gun apart? Why?”

“Maintenance. It’s something I do on a regular basis. Dismantle, clean, oil, reassemble. But this time I got halfway through and just blanked.”

Eisfanger blinks at me sleepily. “Sounds like a real crisis. Can we talk about this in the morning?”

“No! Don’t you get it? I thought I was immune to the spell because I’m from another reality, but I’ve been here long enough that it’s starting to take hold. Right now I’m all worked up, but by the morning I might not even be able to
care
. You know, I’ll be all like
What did I ever see in that thing anyway?
”

“Well, now that you bring it up—”

“No! Don’t you
dare
take its side! That’s what it
wants
you to do!”

“Okay, okay, I won’t. But I have to say, you’re sounding a little paranoid.”

“Of course I’m sounding paranoid! An ancient enchantment cast by an immortal serial killer is trying to
eat my brain
!”

“Oh. Well, when you put it that way…” He yawns again, then holds his hands up in self-defense when he sees the look on my face. “Sorry, sorry—I’m tired, not bored. I’m taking your problem
very
seriously, all right? What do you want me to do?”

“
Fix
it!”

“Umm. Right. Well, I’ll try.” He frowns. “Let’s see. The spell doesn’t let anyone take your gun seriously, me included. But I did manage to build a silencer for you.”

“Yeah, you did. How’d you manage that, anyway?”

“I thought of it as a challenge in acoustic design. You know, isolated the engineering aspects of one specific effect and worked on that.”

“Maybe you can do that again.” I rub the palms of my hands against my forehead. “Ahh! This is going to be tricky. The spell is layered, and the second layer tells you to ignore any logical discrepancies the first layer might cause.”

“What logical discrepancies?”

I glare at him, but he’s not trying to be funny. “Never mind. Let’s try to focus on one particular problem: how to reassemble my gun.”

“I—no, that wouldn’t work.”

“Tell me!”

“No, it’s
ridiculous
…”

I swallow. “Damon. Right now, I could really use a good laugh.
Really
. So please,
please
tell me your completely useless, stupid,
moronic
idea.”

He looks hesitant, but then shrugs. “Well, this’ll
never
work, but—we could look at some footage I have from when you first showed up. You remember? I took your gun apart, piece by piece, and recorded it.”

I sigh. “What can I say? You’re right. That
is
completely useless to me right now, seeing as how my gun is
already
in pieces.”

“I know—but I was thinking maybe we could play the footage backward.”

I goggle at him. Even though I know it’s the spell screwing with my judgment, I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. “Yes. Get it, get it
now
.”

“Sure, I’ve got it archived on my laptop.”

“Bring it to my room.” I don’t want to risk moving the disassembled gun, afraid I’ll do something insane like throw the parts out a window.

Eisfanger grabs his laptop. A minute later, we’re studying digital footage that’s moving in reverse. I take a deep breath, grab the same two pieces that Damon’s holding in the video, and fit them together. The
click
they make is the most reassuring sound I’ve heard all week.

I don’t think about what I’m doing or why, I just focus on repeating the steps I’m watching on the laptop. It goes smoothly; once I’ve recaptured the rhythm my own muscle memory takes over. I even finish the last step on my own, without looking at the video.

I collapse backward on the bed, heaving a sigh of relief. “Okay. Don’t want to go through
that
again.”

“Glad I could help,” Eisfanger says. He’s perched on the room’s single chair. “Though I still can’t believe that worked.” He gets up and reaches for his laptop.

I sit up abruptly and stop him. “Wait. We have to
do
something about this.”

“Uh—we did. Just now. Remember?”

“We threw a bucket of water on a fire, Eisfanger. But it’s not out. We need to find a way to get this damn spell out of my head.
Fast
.”

He frowns and sits down on the bed next to his computer. “Yeah. Well, the problem with a spell like this—ancient, global, and self-masking—is that you need something equally old and powerful to counter it. I’m just a forensics shaman; I can’t beat something like this on its own terms.”

He sees the look of despair on my face and holds up one thick finger. “But. I don’t
need
to fight it toe-to-toe; all I have to do is convince the spell that you’re outside its parameters. That’s why it didn’t affect you when you first got here: it wasn’t designed to work on natives of another reality.”