“For destroy her,” said Oxana. She didn’t sound like she was kidding.
“Okay,” I said. “We do have a few things to talk about, don’t we?”
• • •
Later, after they had given me a bit more background about themselves and what they knew about the Black Sun, I asked them, “So how long have you two been living here in this building? Have you been watching me long?”
“Watching you?” said Halyna. She frowned. “No, watching for you. To make sure they did not take the treasure from you.”
“But I don’t have it.”
“Now we know,” said Oxana. She was eyeing the last, uneaten piece of the apple pie. “Not know when we start.”
“Four weeks ago,” Halyna explained. “Some people move out, apartment is open. We come in then, tell manager of apartment we are waitresses. Waitresses come in and out, all time, late hours all normal, you see? Nobody notice.”
I waved to Oxana to eat my share of the pie. She did, quickly, as if worried I might change my mind. “I noticed you two,” I said, “but I certainly wouldn’t have guessed you were anything more unusual than foreign. But if you were throwing this stuff around in here, all these weapons and weights, sparring and spear-fighting and whatnot, I’m surprised your neighbors didn’t have a fit. The people in the apartment above me bang on the floor every time I make a noise.” Although they hadn’t made a peep today while I was chasing the swastikid all around the place, knocking over furniture, which was a bit odd.
Halyna looked puzzled. “Nobody is above you.”
“What do you mean? Jeez, I’ve heard them pounding away up there like Max Roach having a seizure.”
She shook her head. “Nobody. We ask manager because we think it will be best place to listen, maybe.” Here she actually blushed a little, only visible because her skin was so pale. “Maybe put a listening machine. Device. You know. But manager say empty, yes, but going to be painted soon, nobody rent.”
“Nobody come in since then,” Oxana said. “We watch everything so close.”
“We’re talking about the same apartment? The one directly above mine?”
They both nodded. I wondered for a moment if painters, who in my experience usually had loud boomboxes playing Lynyrd Skynyrd and liked to play catch with aluminum ladders, would knock on the floor to complain about noise below. I suddenly had a bad feeling.
“Wait here,” I said. “I’m going to my apartment to get something. Back in a minute.”
I went home and picked up my lock-picking tools, my gun, and of course my phone, because in my business an obscenely early hour of the morning is no defense against the call of duty, or more specifically, the call of Alice. Then I invited the Amazons to come upstairs with me. Halyna clothed herself in jeans and a jacket, which made it a lot easier for me to concentrate. We went quietly up the stairs—nobody else seemed to be awake yet—and I put my ear to the door of the apartment just above mine, third floor, second apartment from the stairwell. Nothing. I knocked, and we waited. Still nothing, but I thought the echo had a slightly hollow sound. So I went to work.
Twenty-five seconds later or so—most apartment locks are absolute shit—I carefully pushed open the door while standing with the Amazons to one side in case somebody started shooting. Still nothing but silence, so I ducked my head and went in, gun in hand.
It was silent but for the buzzing of flies, and it smelled like death—not the recent kind, salty with spilled human fluids, but like an unplugged refrigerator someone forgot to empty. It was also dark. The light switch didn’t work, but there was enough gray dawn light leaking in through the blinds to show that the apartment was indeed empty. I could, however, see a few signs of recent occupation. Apparently the last tenants had been a family. Either the Mansons or the Addamses, to be specific.
The beige walls were scrawled with painted symbols—I hoped it was paint, but a lot of it looked like dried blood. None were in any language or alphabet I recognized. The carpet had been cut to ribbons and folded back, and someone had made a kind of campfire out of an iron pot set in the middle of the room. Ashes and pieces of burnt wood still half-filled it, and the pot itself sat at the middle of a crude version of the Black Sun symbol, drawn on the wooden floor with what looked like smears of gleaming fat. The flies that had risen into the air at our entrance now settled back down onto the sticky scrawl and continued with the business of being flies.
Oxana was holding her nose. Halyna had pulled the neck of her t-shirt up over hers. “Foo!” said Oxana. “Very bad!”
“You damn bet this is very bad. These fuckers have been living right over me, probably since before you moved in. No wonder my apartment is haunted!”
As we stared at the ghastly scene something vibrated my pocket. I looked at my phone. It was Alice. “I have to take this,” I said and stepped into the hall.
It was a client, of course. Heart attack at a gym over in Mayfield.
“Sorry,” I told the women. “I have to go. Business. We’ll talk later, right? Tonight?”
Halyna and Oxana nodded. They were looking at the wall inscriptions with carefully noncommittal expressions, but Oxana was still holding her nose.
“Just close this apartment up and stay away. And please don’t move out of your place before I get back, okay? We still have a lot to talk about.”
“This was meant to send death,” said Halyna, frowning. She kneeled beside the iron pot, then lifted out one of the chunks of pale, burnt wood. “This not wood. This is a bone. Children’s bone. They try to kill you.”
“Then they’re going to have to send more than one inky-dinky spider,” I said. But I wished she hadn’t told me. Because I was pretty sure she was right.
On the way out I called somebody I knew to send over a cleanup crew, the kind of angels who make unpleasant messes disappear. There was no way I was coming back to my apartment knowing all of that was still spoiling in an empty room upstairs.
• • •
It’s pretty depressing dealing with a forty-something guy who just keeled over dead on the elliptical machine, leaving behind a wife and kids he loves, even if he gets a heavenly invitation at the end of it. I mean, I know that’s good, but even if his family believes in an afterlife, they’re still going to miss him. Anyway, the job kept me occupied until later in the morning, at which point I grabbed some breakfast at a coffee shop and drove around for a while, trying to figure out what to do now. This new stuff was crazier than the old stuff, and the old stuff had already been pretty crazy. Neo-Nazis sending headless spiders with children’s hands after me. Angels who were ancient goddesses and still the subject of grudges thousands of years old. Real live Amazons. I mean, if weird was money, I’d be Bobby Million Bucks, not just plain old Dollar.
The Black Sun wouldn’t come back, of course, at least not to that room, especially since the cleanup crew had been and gone while I was out. I took a brief, nose-clamped look just to check, but the place looked clean and ready for occupation. I unclamped. It smelled like it had just been painted. Yes, some of Heaven’s employees are a lot faster and more efficient than Yours Truly. Still, when I let myself into my own place, I couldn’t help feeling like I could still smell decay from upstairs wafting through my air vents. I also knew there were going to be questions from Heaven about what the cleaners had been getting rid of, and why I knew about it.