“It’s metaphorically mine. Putting it there was just a bit of fun. Give you a clue as to who Saint Nick might be.”
“It’s fucking hysterical. Who did you shoot in the head to make your joke?”
“No one. The skull is sugar, like one of those Día de los Muertos candy skulls. Der Zorn Götter had some local artisan make it and then put it in that lovely reliquary.”
“Just to fuck with us?”
“Just to fuck with you.”
“And to make you out as a saint.”
He moves his hands in the sign of the cross.
“Santa Muerte.”
“You’re having such a good time.”
“I am. Shall we add up the scores?”
I hold up my brutalized hands.
“Why bother? You didn’t get stung once. You’ve already won.”
“Not necessarily. A black dot on the paper is an automatic loss. Who knows what I drew?”
Mason opens his paper. Printed on it is the number ten.
“See? Ten points,” he says. “You were only stung, what, six times? You’re in the lead.”
I unfold my paper. It’s a black dot. Mason tsks.
“You lost even before the first sting. What a shame.”
“Fuck you.”
I can feel my pulse in my swollen fingers.
Mason says, “We’re just about done for today. You don’t get any information. Ready for your spanking?”
“You already got me half stung to death. You going to set my hair on fire too?”
“Don’t give me ideas. Here’s what you get for losing: the poison Candy drank has a side effect. Like liquor, it’s a disinhibitor, meaning people will say and do things on it they wouldn’t normally do when they’re in control. You understand what I’m getting at?”
I lean back and cross my arms.
“You mean that whatever Candy says through the poison is the truth. I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t have to lie. You talked to her. Did she seem woozy or drugged? You know I’m not lying. Like your hand, it stings, doesn’t it?”
“Let’s play another game.”
“When you win you can decide when we play, but you lost, so go away until tomorrow.”
I slam my fist down on the table hard enough that I knock over the cups. They’re empty. The scorpions are gone.
“There’s no time to fuck around like this.”
Mason stacks one cup inside the other and pushes them to the side of the table.
“Fucking around is part of the game, or haven’t you figured that out by now?”
“Who poisoned Candy’s medicine?”
“You’re being boring, James. Keep it up and I’ll hurt you again. Do it twice and there won’t be any game at all tomorrow.”
Were the scorpions phantoms? A hoodoo hallucination? I look at my hand. Whatever just happened in here, my fingers really are swollen and they really hurt. I go over and knock on the cell door. It opens and a guard lets me out.
“Where’s my gear?” I say.
He hands me the Colt and my knife.
“I unloaded the pistol. It’s an unauthorized weapon. Rules.”
I put it in the waistband at my back and put the blade in my coat.
“I want to see Candy.”
“I’m not authorized to let anybody into those cells.”
I look at him. His heartbeat goes up. I’m tempted to lean on him. Or I can go into the cellblock through a shadow. But they’ll have surveillance in there. If I go breaking the rules it could mean they’ll move Candy somewhere I can’t find her. I could try taking her out of here, but with the mood she’s in, who knows if she’d go with me?
Wells comes out of an office and walks over to me. He’s the last person I want to talk to.
I say, “Where did you go?”
“I had to deal with a phone call from Washington. How did it go in there?”
I hold up my swollen hand.
“We played. I lost. He didn’t tell me a goddamn thing.”
“Language. What happened to your hand?”
“Scorpions. I think. You might want to be careful who deals with Mason. He had two of them. Or maybe I just imagined it.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I lost and I have to come back and do this all again tomorrow.”
“Didn’t he tell you anything?”
“Yeah.”
“What?”
“It’s good to be king.”
I go straight home. In the end, it doesn’t matter if those scorpions were real or not. I just had my ass handed to me on a silver platter. A wasted day means I brought the Angra one step closer to Earth. I look out the window. I swear the rain is coming down harder than ever.
I TRY SOME healing hoodoo from the arena days, but I’ve always been better at breaking things than fixing them, so my improvised spells don’t work. Between the swelling from the scorpion and the last ragged remains of the scab from where I punched out the van window, my hand looks like I stuck it in a wood chipper and set it on frappé. I go downstairs to see if Kasabian has any aspirin.
He and Fairuza are sitting on some of the boxes outside his room, sipping beers. She sets hers down when she sees me.
“How’s Candy?”
I shake my head.
“Everything’s fucked. Candy’s crazy and I’m playing Chinese checkers with a psycho. Oh, Kas, you’ll be amused to know. Mason Faim is back from Hell.”
His beer goes down the wrong way. He coughs and it takes him a minute to catch his breath.
“Mason? I thought you buried him under the floorboards.”
“He’s a roach. He got out.”
Kasabian gets up and starts for his room.
“Bye.”
“Who’s Mason Faim?” says Fairuza.
“I’ll tell you about him from my fallout shelter.”
“Calm down,” I say.
Kasabian points his beer at me.
“I’ve got some good news for you too. Someone just took a potshot at one of the God brothers.”
“Muninn?”
“No. One of the others. I can’t remember which is which.”
“Is he alive?”
“The rain’s messed up all kinds of stuff down there. I can’t see everything.”
“I might have to go Downtown. Maybe Muninn will have some ideas on dealing with Mason.”
Kasabian disappears into his room.
“Good luck with that. If you don’t see me for a while, I’ll be in here having a stroke.”
“You could come to my place,” says Fairuza.
I shake my head.
“No, he can’t. And don’t let anyone know you’re hanging around with Prince Valiant over there. If Mason finds out, he might send someone after you.”
“Who the hell is Mason Faim?” says Fairuza.
“You know all that stuff I told you about Stark?” says Kasabian. “Mason is worse. One time when he was still in school he used magic to blow the top off a mountain in Thailand, all to get back at a magic man that did him wrong. He killed a whole village. All the men, women, and kiddies and didn’t blink an eye. That’s who Mason is. And on a personal note, Mason is the guy who killed me.”
“I thought Stark cut your head off.”
“Yeah, but that was just my head. He didn’t, like, kill me. That was Mason.”
Fairuza picks up her bag and gets her raincoat off the peg by the door.
“I’m sorry. I’m leaving.”
“No. Wait,” says Kasabian.
She holds up a silencing finger.
“Listen. I could maybe deal with the robot thing, but more crazy killers from Hell? Forget it. Sorry, Kas. I’ll see you around.”
She goes out into the rain. The wind slams the door behind her.
“You happy?” says Kasabian. “Fairuza was as close to a love life as I was ever going to have.”
“Relax. She’s just freaked out. Give her some time to calm down.”
“You just told her not to have anything to do with me.”
“Until things settle down. Then go and bring her flowers and chocolates or drumsticks and scorpions, whatever it is she’d like. It’ll work itself out.”
“Nothing’s going to work itself out as long as Mason is back. And what the hell happened to your hand?”
“Nothing. It’s just a paper cut.”