“We can’t afford to let the authorities find the haints,” Jonah said. “Imagine the havoc of discovering zombies exist. The haints can’t drown, can’t really die, since their souls aren’t attached.”
“Well, they still aren’t junk,” Nim said hotly.
Jonah turned from the shelves to study her.
She shifted uneasily. “I don’t really care. But I’m just saying, you don’t get to judge somebody like that. Even if they don’t have a soul.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t say they were junk.” He held up the VCR, cables dangling. “I found what we need.”
She was silent as he hooked up the VCR to a television in the conference room and slid the tape in. He stood in front of the set with his finger on the button and rewound past the images of the two of them hovering over the display cases, past the clerk closing up shop for the night, past a couple kids with a stack of video-game cartridges. A few more unlikely figures sped past the camera. Jonah paused when the clerk opened the jewelry case for a woman, but she walked out empty-handed.
Nim shifted as the tape whirred. “I don’t think we’re going to—Wait. Go back. I mean forward.” She edged up beside him. Her bare arm brushed his as she put her finger on the screen. “That guy. Did you see him take that funny step? I avoided that spot because of the malice sign on the floor.”
“Most people don’t see etheric emanations.” He leaned away from her, crossing the hook over his body, where it wouldn’t accidentally touch her.
“He saw it.”
Jonah grunted. “It doesn’t show up on regular recording equipment.”
“I remember stepping over it. Freeze-frame where the clerk pulls out the tray.”
“Those were just watches.”
“Look. When the clerk gets the second tray . . .”
“Did the guy just reach into the case?”
“It’s hard to see from this angle. But I think that’s who has my anklet. How nice that he stole it. We can take it back, guilt free.”
She jostled his arm and shot him a wide, wicked grin.
“Now,” she said, “how do we find him?”
CHAPTER 7
“ ‘Wait in the car,’ he says. ‘I won’t be long,’ he says. And since when do I believe anything a man tells me?”
Down the far end of the street, morning sun glared off the blank windows of the warehouse where Jonah had disappeared.
“Nobody’d leave a dog in a car on a day like today,” she grumbled.
There’d been some truck traffic earlier, but that had ended after the first fleet wave. A few dark, older-model sedans had ghosted past before that and disappeared down the alley that led behind the row of buildings.
Which, now that she thought about it, was kind of peculiar.
She drummed her fingers on the dashboard, the charcoal plastic—as nondescript as the cars that had passed—already hot under her hand. The problem with running around at night was that it was easy to forget the sunglasses. She squinted and concentrated this time. “Turn down the glare, demon.”
Nothing. Maybe the unholy powers of darkness worked only at night.
Much like the dour vehicles returning to this particular roost.
She got out of the car.
Jonah had said there were people here who might be able to help track down the man on the tape. Now she was thinking it was people like them. People he didn’t want her to meet.
Well, fuck that. What had he said about nothing getting between them? Nothing except his pride, apparently.
She gave her shirt a tug and marched toward the warehouse.
“At-One Salvage,” she murmured as she ran her finger over the palm-sized sign above a pass-card reader. The sign was so small, just big enough for the logo—@1. No wonder business sucked.
Although if their business really was fighting evil, maybe business was booming.
She’d told herself no more alleys, but she followed the path the small fleet of cars had taken behind the buildings. The cars were parked in a cramped, fenced lot topped with barbed wire. The rolling gate was padlocked.
“What? No welcome mat?”
She prowled the perimeter, came around the edge of a Dumpster, and stopped abruptly at the sight of a large—very large—man lounging on the other side of the fence where a docking bay door was half-open.
He was wearing the sunglasses she wished she had—impenetrable, wraparound, probably better trade-in value than any of the crap cars in the lot around him. Smoke curled from his lips, and the smell of cloves drifted toward her. Under that was the smell of something much worse.
She blinked and caught a glimpse of glow-in-the-dark spatter on his boots before the sunny glare made her narrow her eyes again.
Without removing the clove cigarette, he rumbled, “You lost, little girl?”
Ah, he was one of those. “You the bouncer?”
Thick leather gauntlets embraced both his forearms. Metal blades emerged from under the layers of black gore—ichor—and glinted in the sun when he finally plucked out the cigarette. “You did most of the bouncing on the walk over here.”
Dull heat burned in her cheeks. Sunburn from standing out here talking to this asshole. Deliberately, she put one hand on her cocked hip, her knee thrust out. The effect was somewhat diminished by the sneakers, and she wished she’d worn her work heels. That always did the trick with bouncer types. “Jonah’s looking for me. Let me in.”
“Somehow, I’m doubting the pray-and-slay missionary man is really looking at you. Might just set his eyeballs aflame if he did.”
“That why you’re wearing those pimp-daddy shades?”
“Sugar, I’d known you were coming, I woulda worn my SPF forty-five.”
She smiled at him. He smiled back. She rolled her shoulder. “So, you gonna let me in?”
“Not a chance.”
She ground her teeth. “Jonah will be pissed.” Pray and slay, indeed. Did missionaries get pissed?
“That, sugar, is exactly what I’m hoping.”
Probably they only got mad at sinners, though. Just her luck. “Damn it.”
“That too.”
“Did I say ‘asshole’ aloud yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Consider it done.” She yanked her skirt down and stepped out of the little puddle of denim around her ankles.
The man straightened abruptly. “Uh.”
Once again, her slutty wardrobe instincts weren’t helping her out any. She walked to the fence, jammed her sneaker toes into the chain-link and hefted herself up. She tossed the skirt over the barbed wire and chinned the top of the fence.
The man tossed his cig down. “Okay, just wait a minute, now.”
She didn’t. The denim was tough enough to protect her hands, but not quite wide enough—she had a nicely toned dancer’s ass, after all—to spare her thighs as she clambered over the barbs. She hissed at the sting, wavered a moment, balanced with one foot on either side of the fence.
Big hands yanked her from her perch.
“Asshole,” she said.
“Crazy bitch.” The man plunked her on her feet, not gently.
“Ecco, what are you doing out here?” Ducking under the docking bay door, Jonah appeared. “Nim?”
“Whoa,” said the man, gripping her. “Who turned up the AC?”
She yanked free of his hands still on her hips. The Chicago August morning was suddenly cooler. Maybe it was her extra-bare flesh. Or maybe just that bare flesh with Jonah’s chilly gaze on it.
She tugged her skirt off the barbed wire and swore under her breath when she heard the rip. “I got tired of sitting in the car.”
“You left her in the car?” The man behind her—No wonder his name is Ecco, she thought with annoyance—laughed. “You thought that would save her from us?”