Page 13 of Reaper
No, and I left the key with Rachelle, but I told her to let him sweat for a bit before she lets him out.He could use a few minutes to sit there and think about his bad decisions.
Damn, girl.Sometimes I wonder which one of us is the meanest.
Oh, it’s definitely me,Becks sent with a mental grin.You make the biggest messes, but I’m way more dangerous.
I could not disagree with her, not even a little bit.
* * *
Camp North End is a bunch of old warehouses and basically abandoned real estate reclaimed and converted into artsy spaces, trendy restaurants, clubs, overpriced apartments made to look old and weatherbeaten but actually newly built with state of the art everything, all nestled in what used to be a decent place to score drugs twenty years ago.I mean, I’m pretty sure you could still find almost any drug you wanted, but you’d have to look a lot harder, you’d pay a lot more, and you were more likely to be scoring off some hedge fund douche named Chad than a biker named Little Jimmy.In short, I liked it better when it was more dangerous.But if that’s where I needed to go to find a bunch of rats, I was willing to make a few sacrifices.
At least there was decent beer.Some faux-German beer garden (of course, spelled biergarten because it would have to be to justify their prices) had good dunkelweizen, so I grabbed a pint and a pretzel as Becks and I wandered the area looking for shifters.I kept my Sight overlaid on top of my normal vision, which meant I was more prone than normal to bumping into shit.Looking at the mundane world through the magical spectrum is like staring at the sun through a tie-dyed shirt.Everything is bright colors and shifting blobs of energy, and the occasional supernatural being pops out like a beacon in the night.
Only problem with that was that Camp North End attracted a lot of freaks and weirdos, and that means it also attracted a lot of faeries, witches, and other paranormal beings.So by the time I got my belly full of dark beery goodness, I needed what little refuge alcohol could provide from the sensory overload I was experiencing.
See anything?Becks asked.
No.Well, more like I see too much, but I can’t pick out any shifters that might be rats.I saw a couple walking back there near the gelato stand, but they were too muscular.Most lycanthropes share physical characteristics with the animals they turn into.Most aren’t as blatant as the buck-toothed were-rabbit back at Mort’s, but it would be very unlikely if the pair of buff guys I spotted as weres were anything other than predators.They had the thickly muscled frames of lions or wolves, not the narrow faces and twitchy postures typical of rodents.
You okay?Becks asked.
Yeah, I’m fine.Just a lot of mojo floating around this place.I think we might be better off trying to find them without my Sight.I’m gonna get a lot of interference with all these paras around.
“Okay,” Flynn said, pulling out a chair and taking a seat at a round cafe table.“Then what’s the plan?”
“Well, rats are natural scavengers, and the Arboretum kids said they liked to go dumpster diving after the clubs close, so why don’t we just hang out for a while and see what we see when the crowd thins out?”
I could tell from the wrinkled-up nose that she didn’t like this idea.Becks might be the only person I know who hates sitting around doing nothing more than me.“Why don’t we see if we can spot them a little earlier?”
“You got a plan?”I asked.I knew the answer was yes because the corner of her mouth twitched up like it does when she gets a good idea.
“Rats are scavengers, but scavengers are often also thieves, aren’t they?Why don’t we make ourselves appealing targets for pickpockets and see who takes the bait?”
10
And that’s how I ended up with beer spilled all down the front of my favorite Waylon Jennings shirt, staggering around the edges of the dance floor in a club playing music I’d never heard of, hoping a rat would try to pick my pocket.I love my fiancée, but sometimes I hate her “brilliant” ideas.
The lights were loud, the music was bright, and I know exactly how that sounds.But the sensory overload was so intense that I experienced a kind of synesthesia, where I could almost taste the colors.It transported me back to the 70s, Studio 54, and incredible amounts of hallucinogens.But I tried to keep my head on a swivel and my eyes peeled for scruffy shifters trying to lift my wallet.The small binding spell I cast on my pants would help with that because no matter if I somehow managed to get blackout drunk, my cash would stay put.Unless the thief was also a wizard, but lycanthropes don’t usually have the ability to call magic, or the patience to learn how.
I stuck to the edges of the dance floor, shuffling along like the sad old man at the club, bumping up on the odd attractive man or woman.I didn’t discriminate, and there were a lot of pretty people around, so I managed to annoy at least a dozen in the first hour I was there.I’d apparently gotten irritating enough that a bouncer came over, tapped me on the shoulder, and invited me to step into the office for a conversation about my behavior.I demurred, but he insisted, and rather than blow the roof off the club (in a far more literal sense than the sound system was capable of), I let him guide me by the elbow into a dark hallway.
“What the fuck are you doing?”the massive bald man hissed at me once we were off the floor.“The boss doesn’t like surprises, and you seriously surprised him.”
His tone made me think he was way more familiar with me than I was with him, so I dropped my drunk act and looked up at him.He was nearly seven feet tall and built like the proverbial brick shithouse, but he didn’t seem particularly angry, just annoyed.“Sorry, pal.I have no fucking clue who you are or who your boss is.So why don’t you just take me to your leader or whatever you were going to do anyway?”
He gave me a look like I was the stupidest thing he’d seen all night, which was a high bar in a nightclub, and let go of my arm.“Last door on the right.I’m going back to work.”Then he just turned and left me standing there gawking after him.
Not wanting to violate the exceptional amount of trust bestowed upon me, I proceeded down the hall.Okay, yeah, I was really fucking curious now, so I went to the door he indicated and knocked.
“Enter,” came a familiar voice, and I pushed into an office that looked like it was decorated entirely off the set of a Universal monster movie.
And standing in the center of the room was the primo monster himself, my uncle, Count Fucking Dracula.He turned, because of course he was facing away when I came into the room for greater effect, and I saw that not only was Luke apparently the owner of the bar, but he’d brought my goddamned cat to the bar as well.Nameless was curled up in the crook of his elbow, glaring at me with his yellow eyes.
“Quincy, what in all the gods’ names are you doing here?”Luke asked.
I looked around the office, all mahogany and red velvet, and spotted the thing I needed most in the world at that moment—the wet bar.I poured myself a healthy slug of Macallan 18, knocked it back, poured myself another, then decided “fuck it,” and took the bottle with me to sit on the long leather sofa under a painting of the London Bridge.“Why don’t you sit down and answer the same fucking question for me, Uncle?And why is my cat here?All the noise can’t be good for him.”
“Cats go where cats want to go, and after I realized that I was incapable of leaving him behind if he did not want to remain in my apartment, I had custom earplugs made for him.”He turned Nameless so that I could see the little pieces of red molded plastic with strings hanging from the cat’s ears.
