The bounty hunter blinked, looked around, pulled in a breath and let it out.
“Thought there’d be more, right?” Cole asked.
Nodding like a kid who just realized the toy he’d been longing for was nothing but a set of molded plastic pieces, Prophet asked, “So where to now?”
The temple was located in a small room inside a club that wasn’t quite as large as Pinups. A large green sign on one wall spelled out the words THE EMERALD in neon handwriting over the bar. Since Rico was nowhere to be found, Cole took his phone from his pocket and headed for another table. “We wait for our ride. There’s another buffet over there.”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
Twenty minutes after making his call, a dark-haired woman drifted toward them in a swirl of purple silk and a scent that reached down to stroke the core of a mortal’s libido. “If there’s anywhere else you need to go, I’m sure I can arrange to have you sent there.”
“Hey, Tristan.”
Prophet shot up from his chair so quickly that he nearly dumped his plate of tuna casserole and crab Rangoon onto the floor. “Tristan! You’re working here? What happened to Wisconsin?”
“Hello, Walter,” she said while touching his cheek. “Wisconsin’s fine. I move around a lot, especially now that we don’t have to lay quite as low. Off to St. Louis with Cole?”
“Yeah, Stanley wants to hear about what’s going on with the Nymar.”
Cole took his eyes completely away from the phone in his hand for the first time since he’d picked up the Wi-Fi signal. “What?”
Wincing as though he’d temporarily lost custody of his mouth, Walter replied, “You remember my boss. Stanley Velasco? Paige still owes him for springing you out of that jail in St. Lou.”
“Sure you can’t stay here with me?” Tristan purred.
Walter’s temptation was so great that the conflicting gears grinding within his head almost started smoking. Finally he said, “No, I really need to see what these guys are up to. Unlike Cole and the rest of the dudes with sticks, I got a real job that needs to be looked after.”
“Every man’s got a stick that needs looking after,” she said.
Cole laughed and rubbed her shoulder as he stood up. “You’re usually a little classier than that, Tristan.”
“Water seeks its own level. Looks like your friend is here. You two be good.”
Rico stood in the doorway leading to the small room where cover charges were collected. The big man gave them a quick upward nod and waited impatiently as Prophet and Cole met him at the exit.
Once outside, Cole got a cool and damp welcome to East St. Louis. A light mist spattered across his face, but there was still an underlying heat that he’d come to believe was permanently soaked into the Missouri air. Rico climbed into an SUV and had the engine going by the time Cole and Prophet joined him. His bristly, graying hair was flattened on one side and slightly bloodied on the other. The dark circles under his eyes and the rumpled state of his clothes made it even tougher for Cole to tell whether Rico had just gotten out of a fight or climbed out of bed.
“What’s the good word?” the big man asked as he pulled on a heavy leather jacket made from patchwork sections of tanned shapeshifter hide interspersed with narrow strips of thick canvas. The jacket was laced up both sides, sported more than a few shallow battle scars, and smelled like cigarette smoke.
“Shampoo,” Cole replied.
Rico looked over at him and then to Prophet. “Hey there, Walter. You got something to say that ain’t frickin’ crazy?” After a small amount of consideration, Prophet replied, “Nah.”
“Make that two words,” Cole added. “Shampoo banana.”
Rico’s face barely changed. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“Paige told me to tell you that. Actually,” Cole said, “she told me to tell you to tell me about shampoo banana.”
“Give him some time, big man,” Prophet told Rico. “There was a fire. He inhaled a lot of smoke. There was a fight. You know, the usual shit. He’s rattled.”
Rico’s hardened expression remained, but he shifted his face toward the road ahead. “Lots of fires popping up lately. Lots of fighting going on. Plenty of dying too. The usual shit. That don’t give us permission to slip into bouts of nostalgia.”
“Nostalgia?” Cole grunted. “Try psychobabble! I have no idea what’s going on anymore. Just when I think I’m getting a handle on this Skinner crap, everything gets tossed out the window! Paige takes off, insists on me coming here and passing off some kind of goddamn fruity hair care product as a password.”
“Did she also tell you about the notebook?”
“Yeah. A hound dog notebook.”
Rico nodded and turned onto the highway that led out of Sauget, Illinois, and into St. Louis. “Tell me about what happened in Chicago, and when we get back to Ned’s house I’ll fill you in on shampoo banana.”
“Could you two please stop saying that?” Walter pleaded. “It makes me feel like I’m stuck in some kind of shitty kid’s show.”
For the first time since they’d left the Emerald, Rico grinned. It was an ugly display of large, blocky teeth, but went a long way in easing the confused tension that had filled the SUV. Cole and Prophet told him about the fire and ensuing fight while Rico drove down Interstate 40 and into the Central West End.
The driveway they pulled into was a short walk from Dressel’s Pub, a place that served a plethora of beers and some of the best homemade potato chips Cole had ever tasted. The house connected to that driveway was a charming, if slightly run-down old home filled with crooked shelves piled high with obscure books and pieces of junk that could very well have been collected from some of the most twisted garage sales in the world. The walls were marked with runes meant to protect the inhabitants from harm. Too bad they hadn’t been able to stretch their influence far enough to keep the house’s previous owner alive.
When Rico walked in, he peeled off his jacket and tossed it across the room, where it landed on a slump-backed couch in front of a good-sized TV. Despite all the additional shelves, jars of bits and pieces collected from creatures thought to be extinct or impossible, and weapons belonging to the Skinners who’d come and gone through that building, Cole’s eyes were drawn to one thing: a chipped cement frog sitting on the edge of one shelf, dangling its skinny crossed legs over the side. The paint was faded to a sea-foam green and the eyes were obviously cheap marbles. Cole patted the frog’s knee and thought back to the grizzled old Skinner that had paid good money for the ugly knickknack. “I miss Ned.”
“Yeah, me too,” Rico said as he pounded up the stairs to one of the equally cluttered bedrooms.
A set of pans were on the dining room table. They were the kind used for paint rollers and had been in the same spot the last time Cole was there. As before, they contained a small amount of silvery liquid that looked as if it was just on the verge of hardening into a solid. All he had to do was step up close enough to smell the stuff to know it was the new varnish Daniels had created using melted chips from the Blood Blade. On the other side of the pans, previously hidden from his view, were a few .45 caliber rounds with the same metallic sheen worked into four veins that ran along the lead tip. Cole picked up the bullet, held it up to the light and muttered, “I’ll be damned. Took all this time for one of us to make a silver bullet. Does it work?”