On a table, there’s a crystal dish full of dried rose petals. I dump them on the floor and light up a Sherman, flicking the ashes into the dish. Candy taught me that kind of civilized behavior. I might still be a monster, but I can be a tidy one.
I’VE KILLED THE whole pack of Shermans by the time I hear the front door open and close. There are a few tentative footsteps into the store.
“Hello?” says Rose.
It’s after nine o’clock and I swear I can feel my body starting to curdle. It puts me in a bad mood. I have the light on in his office, so that he’ll know exactly where I am.
“All that cigarette smoke. I can smell you back there,” he says. “I’m calling the police.”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Atticus.”
He doesn’t say anything. I know he’s dialing. I go to the door of his office and bark some hoodoo. The phone is up next to his face when it bursts into a mass of shattered plastic and electric sparks. Rose staggers back. Half turns away from me. When he turns back, he has a little pistol in his hand. I step out of the way while barking more hoodoo. He flies back a few feet and the gun goes spinning into some dark corner of the store. When I approach him, Rose doesn’t move, but lies there trying to catch his breath. I pull him to his feet and shove him toward his office.
I have hold of the back of his jacket and say, “I want to see your workshop.”
“What workshop?” he says. “I send all of my merchandise out for repairs.”
“Not that workshop. I mean your Tick-Tock Man lair.”
He grabs on to a heavy armoire so I have to stop to keep from running him over.
“How do you know about that?”
“I know all about you, Atticus. I chased you underground once. Make me chase you again and the only underground you’ll see is me shoveling dirt on you in your grave.”
He whirls around and looks at me. Stares at me hard.
“I don’t know you. What kind of shakedown is this? Do you know who I work for?”
“Sorry. That was rude of me,” I say as I let the glamour fade.
“Stark?” he gasps. “You’re dead.”
“People keep saying that, but here I am. And yes, I know who your bosses are. That’s why I’m here. I want to know where to find them.”
He gets a funny look on his face. Half snarl and half smile.
“You’re out of your mind.”
I slap him and shove him against the armoire. Go through his pockets to make sure he doesn’t have any more surprises. There’s nothing interesting. Keys. Wallet. A pocket watch. Some cash. I throw it all on the floor.
“Show me your workshop.”
“No.”
“Do it or I’m going to start breaking your fingers so they never heal right. Then try staying in the Tick-Tock business.”
“Go ahead,” he says. “It will hurt, yes. I might even break down and cry. But Wormwood works with some of the most important Sub Rosa in town. They’ll perform a healing spell and I’ll be working again tomorrow.”
“Not if I break them with Hellion hoodoo. Trust me, Atticus. Those posh Bel-Air magicians have never seen the kind of Baleful magic I know.”
He nervously rubs his hands together.
“I … I can’t.”
“I’m on kind of a tight schedule here, Atticus. So let’s start with something easy: take me to your workshop now.”
He croaks, “I can’t.”
“Okay. Let’s do it my way.”
I bark some Hellion and one of the walls collapses, crushing the furniture and statues underneath.
“Not through there I guess.”
I pull down another wall. This one shatters some very old-looking stained glass windows hanging from the ceiling.
“Stop it,” he says. “How do I know you won’t kill me?”
“Play nice and I’ll let you go. It’s your bosses I want. And like I said, I’m in a bit of a rush.”
He points back to his office.
“The floor in front. Step on the three floorboards nearest the office twice. Then the two next to them three times.”
“I’m not in a dancing mood. You do it.” I put the black blade into his back and say, “Just don’t do anything dumb.”
He nods abruptly. Steps on some boards I would have never found. The first twice. The second set, three times. A trapdoor in his office floor opens.
“Lead the way,” I say.
There’s a short staircase down to a large workshop below the store. It’s a chaotic zoo of half-constructed mechanical animals. Some are as small as hummingbirds and some as large as tigers. There are snakes and lizards on one table. Cats, dogs, and candy-colored parakeets on another, some limbless, some with no head. A tank nearby is filled with skinless mechanical fish, all graceful silver muscles and tiny, intricate gears.
Really, it’s beautiful. A crazed Santa’s workshop full of sinister puppets that will one day be familiars to a horde of upper-crust bastards. If I let Rose live that long.
I push him against one of the tables and pick up what looks like a finished red squirrel. I hold it out to him.
“How do you turn it on?”
He gives me a look like I’m an idiot.
“It’s not a fucking Furby. You don’t turn it on. Its energy sublimes from a small crystal where the animal’s heart would normally be.”
“How do I sublime it?”
“Talk to it,” he says. “Gently. Like waking a friend.”
“Are you fucking with me?”
He reaches for it.
“Give it to me.”
He cradles the squirrel in his arm and rubs its small chest with his index finger, all the while cooing at it like it’s a baby.
A minute or so later, the squirrel’s eyes flutter open. Its paws begin to move. It sits up and looks around. Climbs Rose’s arm and perches on his shoulder.
“That’s amazing,” I say.
“Thank you. The small ones are my favorites. They’re the most work but are endlessly charming.”
“Does it bite?”
“Never.”
“Let me hold it.”
I take it off his shoulder and it runs down my arm. I let it hop onto the table where I found it. In the funny herky-jerky way that squirrels move, it sniffs and touches some of the other half-finished familiars. While it’s sniffing a nightingale, I pick up a hammer and smash the squirrel to pieces. Gears, fur, and claws fly across the table and onto the floor.
I hold the hammer out to Rose.
“That’s you in about thirty seconds. Give me a name and a location.”
He stares down at the remains of his adorable red rat.
“Look at me. A name.”
“I can’t. No matter what you do to me, they’ll do worse.” I smash the hammer on the table.
“I’m so tired of hearing that from you faction people. Don’t tell me they’ll do worse because you don’t know what I’ll do unless I get a name quick.”
He looks at me.
“You are on a schedule, aren’t you? How interesting.”
I smash a raven and a rattlesnake.
He puts his hands on the table behind him and leans back.
“The answer is still no.”
Rose doesn’t just manufacture animals. The last time I ran into him, he’d even created a few pretend humans. They hurt people. They killed them. I don’t like him for it.
I bring the hammer down hard on his left hand.
He screams and cradles his crushed mitt to his chest.
“You bastard,” he says. “You fucking animal.”
I point to him with the hammer.
“That hand they can fix in the hospital. The next one I’ll smash with hoodoo and you’ll never use it again.”
He half-walks, half-stumbles down the rows of tables. I follow him, resting the hammer on my shoulder.
He stops at a table set off by itself against the far wall.
“Do any of these look familiar?” he sa
ys.
The creatures on this table aren’t like the others. None of them are from this world; they come from other dimensional planes of existence. Most I’ve only seen in drawings.
When he sees me staring, Rose says, “These are my most prized creations. Not even captains of industry or the governor could afford one. These go to heads of state.”
I tap the hammer in my hand.
“Or heads of Wormwood.”
“Exactly,” he says.
There’s a scaly, white boa constrictor with a face like a boiled baby’s. A beautiful bare-breasted sphinx. With her eyes closed, it looks like she’s asleep. At the far end of the table is a small manticore. You see them all over Hell, although they’re usually bigger. It has a craggy humanlike head, the body of a lion, and a thick scorpion tail.
I rest the hammer on the table near the sphinx.
“What if I smash every one of these? It won’t just be money you’re out, will it? Important people are waiting for these.”
“Very important,” he says. “Very dangerous.”
I hold the head of the hammer and use the wooden butt to push the sphinx slowly to the edge of the table.
Rose smiles nervously at me.
“Please don’t.”
One more push. The sphinx falls and explodes. It’s a terrible sight. It really was lovely.
Rose puts his good hand to his mouth. I think he’s on the verge of tears. His legs are shaking. He leans his back against the wall.
“What time is it?” he says. “You took my watch.”
“I don’t have one either.”
He leans his head against the wall. Stares at the ceiling, thinking.
“Well, I came in around nine and you’ve been manhandling me for, what, half an hour?”
“Something like that.”
“In that case, I will give you a name,” he says.
“What is it?”
“Bruno Morrell. Do you know him?”
“Should I?”
He lowers his head and looks at me. If he was tearing up before, he’s calm now.
“If you work for the false Wormwood you must know Eva Sandoval.”
“Know her and hate her. Why?”
“Because by now, there’s nothing you can do to keep Bruno from killing the bitch.”
There’s a ball-peen hammer that I missed down at his end of the table. Before I know what he’s doing, he uses it to smash the manticore’s human head. The creature jerks once, and the scorpion tail snaps out—burying itself in Rose’s heart. He’s dead before he hits the floor.
There isn’t a single decent shadow on this side of the room. I sprint past the birds and cats and dive into a good one near the stairs.
I COME OUT in Sandoval’s office, but it’s empty. I run out into the shot-up foyer, but it’s empty too. Voices drift from a room on my right. I pull the Glock and hold it by my side. Listen for another second, then head in.
All of them are there—Sandoval and Sinclair, Howard, and the roaches. They’re drinking coffee and eating croissants in a kitchen as large as the whole main floor of Max Overdrive. Everyone looks up when I burst in. Everyone is chatting, except for Sandoval, who’s looking at papers spread out over a comically large cutting board. Sinclair is on one side of her and on the other side is a younger man. He’s clean-cut and drably handsome, like a TV game show host. He must be one of the roaches, but I’m not sure. Aside from Sandra, I never paid enough attention to them to tell them apart. I stand there by the door looking stupid.
Sandoval looks up at me.
“Why can’t you ever enter a room like a normal person? Did you do what I asked?”
I ignore her. Grab a croissant from the table and throw it at the crowd on the other side.
“Catch, Bruno.”
People are creatures of habit, slaves to their impulses and reflexes. Tell someone it’s raining on a sunny day and ninety-nine times out of a hundred they’ll look at the sky. Tell someone wearing loafers that their shoe’s untied and they still can’t help but look down. No one likes getting hit in the face. Toss something at someone and they’ll try to get out of the way or grab it. Always.
Bruno tries to grab the croissant. He’s the game show host, and too far away for me to grab. I snap the Glock up and fire, but he’s already figured out his mistake and dived behind Sandoval. He gets a choke hold on her and drags her back, grabbing a butcher knife from the counter. He tries to stab her in the side, but Sandoval puts her arm out and the blade goes all the way through. She screams and spins away, exposing just enough of Bruno’s side that I get two good shots off. Both into his stomach. I don’t want him dead yet. I want him alive, awake, and in pain. Panicked and bleeding out, he’s going to tell me what Atticus Rose wouldn’t.
When I get around the table, he’s on the floor oozing blood. Sandoval is next to him. I’m waiting for someone to help her or for her to faint and get out of my way, but she’s no different than Bruno. Sandoval is as much a creature of reflex as him and when a good part of your professional life has been about control, murder, and revenge, you act accordingly. Screaming like an air-raid siren, she yanks the butcher knife from her arm and slams it down into Bruno’s chest.
I yell, “No!” but she doesn’t hear me or doesn’t care. She puts her weight on the blade, driving it in farther. I grab Bruno and shove her away. Howard is on her immediately, wrapping a hand towel around her arm to stanch the bleeding.
I drag Bruno to safety, but it’s already too late. With the bullets in his stomach, a knife was just too much for his system to handle. He’s dead.
It takes me a couple of seconds to clock that Sandoval is shrieking at me.
“What the hell was that?” she says.
Howard holds on to the towel, which is already soaking through with her blood. Everyone else has their phone out, calling whatever passes for 911 in Wormwood world.
I shout back at her.
“Why did you kill him? He had information. Shit you wanted.”
She looks at me hard.
“You haven’t killed them yet, have you? Do you even know where the faction is? What the hell have you been doing all day?”
I drop Bruno on the floor. Once again, I’m covered in another idiot’s blood.
“I’ve been working, not standing around the kitchen having snacks with the enemy. Goddammit. He was my last link to the faction.”
She looks at the wound in her arm and then at Bruno.
“He’s dead?” she says. “Howard, is there anything you can do to revive him?”
He looks at me and Bruno’s blood, spread out like wings around him.
“I’m sorry, Eva. My work takes time and he’s lost so much blood. By the time I could bring him back, his brain would be too damaged to be of use.”
Sandoval looks at me.
“What about you, Stark? You know Hellion tricks. Bring him back.”
I take some paper towels and wipe as much blood off my hands as I can.
The truth is there is something I could do. The Metatron’s Cube ritual. Powerful blood magic. But to do it, I have to come very close to death. This time though there’s a catch: I’m half-dead already. If I slit my wrists and drift even deeper into death, I don’t know if I’ll be able to come back again.
I look at Sandoval.
“No. There’s nothing I can do. There was one chance to find the faction and you fucked it up.”
Even wounded, if Sandoval was a wolverine I can tell that she’d already have one of my legs off and would be working overtime on the second. She’s used to getting what she wants and seeing that she’s not going to this time, she radiates a primal hate so pure that you could bottle it and sell it as napalm.
Sandoval’s towel has soaked through. Sandra hands Howard a fresh one and as he cinches it around Sandoval’s arm, she grits her teeth and winces but refuses to make a sound. When it’s over, she picks up the bloody towel in her good hand and throws it at me.
“You let th
at bastard do this,” she says. “You wanted him to kill me.”
I drop the paper towels on the floor.
“Don’t be stupid. I just saved your life. And I’m still trying to get to the faction and complete our deal.”
“There is no deal!” she screams.
I look at the kitchen clock.
“It’s barely after ten. I have two hours until midnight.”
She looks at me and screams again. “There is no fucking deal. No bank account. No money. No Howard. There’s nothing. You wanted Bruno to kill me, so now I’m going to watch you die.”
I go to Sandoval and stand over her. “That’s a really bad idea, Eva. No one likes a fibber.”
She smiles at Howard, then at me.
“Go on then. Beg me. Beg me for a little more time or another chance. Beg me and I’ll let Howard make your decay easier. From what he tells me, without the right potions the process is pure agony. Hours of it. Beg me, Stark.”
“I have two hours left. You’re not going to cheat me out of them.”
“They’re gone. You forfeited them the moment you let Bruno touch me. For all I know, you were working together.”
“That’s insane. Why would I do that?”
“Because you’re deranged,” she says. “You said it to me in the bowling alley: ‘I thought deranged was why you wanted me.’ I suppose I did at the time. I should have known there was no way to be reasonable with someone like you.”
“Listen—”
“It’s over, Stark. You failed me and yourself, so you’re dead. And when you’re gone and the doctors have stabilized me, I’m going to come home and personally slit the throat of that faction whore downstairs.”
In the distance, there’s the sound of sirens coming up the hill.