“I always wonder what really happened when they come out with surrealist shit like that,” Ingrid said.
Mickey frowned, and Ingrid instantly regretted having spoken her mind. “Do you say their descriptions are not accurate?” the King queried. “They do not illustrate the events of the actualworld?”
“They tend to be… colorful, let’s say,” Ingrid said. “That’s all.”
“Foreigners,” the King spat, sneering down at his kneebound concubine. “I wasted my efforts when I conquered your sphere, Nyx. But you were weak and it was easy, so I figured ‘what the hell?’”
“I apologize, Mictlantecuhtli,” Nyx said, without raising her eyes. Ingrid actually felt a little bit bad for her. “I will free my sister-daughter at dusk, if it pleases you.”
“Yes, yes,” Mickey said dismissively. “Now leave me. It will please me more not to look upon you for a while.”
“Yes, Mictlantecuhtli,” Nyx said, and vanished.
The King turned to Ingrid. “Did I use that right?” he asked. “A ‘while?’ The vocabulary of time remains academic for me.”
“It was perfect, Mickey,” Ingrid said. “Spot on.”
“Like an incarnation would say it? An actualperson, not a nonbody pretending?”
“Exactly like.”
“It wasn’t ‘colorful?’”
“Mickey…” Ingrid had to make an effort not to get frustrated with him. “It was just right. Do I have to drop to my knees in admiration before you believe me?”
She illustrated by doing so, at a distance from his pelvis that was far more suggestive than it was respectful. She looked up the silk-suited front of him, batting her lashes and making her blue eyes as large and innocent as she possibly could. “Does this make you happy?”
“Stand up, Ingrid Redstone,” the King said, sounding stern and not at all amused. “Those games ended between us when you elected not to become my Queen.”
“Yes, Mictlantecuhtli,” Ingrid said, in perfect imitation of Nyx and Lyssa’s fawning subservience.
“Stop it.” Mickey shook his head, looking disgusted. “Foreign women,” he mused aloud. “I should never have strayed beyond the ministrations of my Tzitzimime.”
“Sure, if you like handjobs,” Ingrid said, getting to her feet and brushing off her knees. “Plenty of extra limbs. I’d steer clear of those mandibles though, if I were you.”
“Do not forget your place, Ingrid Redstone,” the King murmured. “Do not insult my sphere or those native to it. You are a foreigner in this land as well.”
“As if I could ever forget it,” Ingrid said.
That seemed to give Mickey an idea. He paced, thinking aloud. “And yet you are a native of the actual,” he said. “One not hampered by the necessary ignorance that blinds my living soldiers…”
“What’s your point?” Ingrid asked, leading him a little, but not too much. She had to play this very carefully now. He would never send her on this errand if he had any inkling that she wanted to go.
“You could get them,” the King said. “Find them, bring them. You could do this, my love.”
“Do I look like a bounty hunter to you?” Ingrid sat back against her cushions and spread her white arms out across the back of the red velvet sofa. “Don’t act desperate, Mickey. It’s unattractive.”
“You may command my mercenaries,” he told her. “I’ve got all the human beings you can use.”
“I don’t know, though…” Ingrid said, feigning a frown and hoping she wasn’t hamming it up too much. Not that a nuanced performance wouldn’t be lost on Mickey Hardface anyway. “It’s kind of a tall order. What can I do that all of your bugbabes and moonmaidens couldn’t?”
“Walk the actual with some understanding of its habits and its ways, apparently,” was Caradura’s considered thought on the matter. “You will do this, Ingrid Redstone,” he decreed. “You will do this, or you will become my Queen, regardless of your wishes in this matter, and we’ll try this all again!”
Before Ingrid could respond, Mickey snapped his fingers.
She woke up on the floor outside his office within the Silent Tower. In the very place where Dexter Graves had died, in fact. Died by her hand… sort of. She had managed to bind a tiny spark of him to the lighter he’d dropped, the last object he’d touched, right before he passed on into darkness.
She sat up, looked around, and smoothed her hair. The hall was a lightless ruin once again, with no red carpet rolled out for her now.
“My gods, that took long enough,” she muttered. She looked back at the closed door with Miguel Caradura’s name stenciled on it, and allowed herself a slight, sly smile.
Ahh, Mickey, she thought to herself. Still handsome, ruthless, and stupid. Just the way I like you.
She got up and hurried off, down the decaying hallway, headed toward the stairs.
When Ingrid stepped out onto the street, she found thirteen new gangsters already waiting for her, with six new black cars at their disposal. These guys were younger, rougher, more tattooed and less experienced than the last bunch had been. They mostly wore hooded sweatshirts and dark jeans-a distinct step down from the ugly suits the previous, more competent-looking minions had worn.
They all fell silent upon seeing Ingrid. ‘Rapt’ seemed like the appropriate word. She figured her gown was probably decades out of style (her clothes often were), but it was low-cut and form-fitting, and she didn’t think the men were staring because it looked anachronistic. Her curves and her vibrant red hair never failed to make an impression.
The gang’s defacto leader, a mean-looking, baldheaded bastard in sunglasses, stepped forward. “You ‘Lady Redstone,’ then, lady?” he asked.
“I am,” Ingrid said.
“Yeah, well,” the wiry man with the impenetrable black glasses continued, “I’m Xavier, okay? Miguelito Hardface says we gotta do whatever you say and guard your safety with our lives. That’s the way his boy Winston said it exactly. Guard your safety with our lives, and do anything you say.”
“And report to him my every move, I’m sure,” Ingrid added in a pretty singsong voice, keeping it light so her words wouldn’t sound like too direct a challenge.
Xavier said nothing. Ingrid nodded as if he’d answered, though.
“Very well,” she said, starting down the building’s front steps and heading toward the cars, parting the crowd effortlessly before her. “Allons-y, boys. Let’s go.”
Ingrid motioned for everyone to come along as she padded over to the back of the nearest vehicle on the balls of her still-bare feet. She hadn’t thought to ask Mickey to replace her shoes, but she was still taller than most of her men, even without high heels. She opened her own door and slid into the car’s back seat. Xavier closed the door for her, like a good underling should, and then went around the front to drive.
The engines started up. Ingrid’s car led the pack when they pulled away from the curb, one by one, turning left onto Fountain at the end of the second block.
She thought for a while as prison-tattooed Xavier drove west toward Santa Monica, his eyes hidden behind those imposing black sunglasses. He turned right at Highland, a street name that hadn’t changed in a very long time.
“Uh… Mrs. Redstone?” the unlikely chauffer said, after a few blocks worth of northbound travel, up past Labaig Avenue. “Lady? Where do you want us to, like, take you?”
Ingrid, in the back seat, continued to gaze out her window, in no apparent hurry to answer.
“We could go out to that plant place in the Valley,” Xavier offered. “Where that chick’s supposed to, like, work or something? Winston says he still got three guys out there, so we got a street address now, but I guess they say it don’t look like nobody’s comin’ back there anytime soon.”
“No, I don’t expect they would, would they?” Ingrid said, almost to herself. “But let’s head out there anyway. Maybe I can figure her out by seeing where she operates.”