Killing Pretty. Richard Kadrey

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      “Yeah. I wonder if there’s a statute of limitations or anything on assault. Maybe I don’t have to hide forever.”

      “I don’t know. I’ll ask Julie. But, you know, the law might not be the same for Lurkers. The government was already throwing you in internment camps. I don’t think forgiveness is high on their agenda.”

      She slips on the glasses. Does an unhappy half smile.

      “Then, I’m Chihiro forever.”

      “We don’t know that. I’ll see what I can find out.”

      “Okay.”

      “I should get going. I don’t want to leave you alone with that guy any longer than I have to.”

      “Don’t rush. The way he looks, if I speak harshly he’ll faint.”

      “I won’t be long. I’ve just got to find a car.”

      “Don’t steal anything boring,” she says as I start away.

      “I just need to find something with an engine that didn’t die in the flood.”

      She points to Hollywood Boulevard.

      “There’s a Range Rover around the corner. It might work.”

      “Thanks. I’ll look for it.”

      “I’m going to get drunk with Kasabian.”

      “I’ll join you when I get back.”

      I head down the street, but she yells after me.

      “Where can I get brass knuckles?”

      “Why?”

      “I want a set.”

      “Why? You don’t need them.”

      She runs a hand through her short hair.

      “Candy doesn’t need them. I think Chihiro would look fetching with a pair.”

      “Christmas is over, you know.”

      “It’s the first I’m hearing of it. Maybe they should be pink to match my hair.”

      “No. They’ll be brass or black.”

      She opens the door to Max Overdrive.

      “If you love me you’ll find me a pair.”

      “I think regular ­people refer to this as emotional blackmail.”

      She starts inside.

      “I can’t hear you. I’m going now.”

      “You’re a horrible person.”

      “Find me a pair or learn to love fucking your hand.”

      I walk down to the boulevard, and sure enough, there’s a Range Rover Defender near the end of the block. I slip the black blade into the driver’s-­side lock and the door pops open. When I jam the blade into the ignition, the Rover starts on the first try. I pull out into the sparse traffic wondering who I know who deals in knuckle-­dusters.

      I GET ON the 101 south to the 10, get off and head north on Crenshaw to Venice Boulevard, and pull up by an old battleship of a building. They used to manufacture safes inside, back when there were only three TV channels and everyone dreamed of L.A. in black and white.

      I go inside and take the battered industrial elevator up to the third floor. I lived here twelve years ago, before Mason sent me Downtown and Alice was still alive. Vidocq took over the apartment after I disappeared. Used some of his alchemical tricks to make the door invisible and, better yet, make everyone in the building forget there was ever an apartment here. He’s lived in the place rent free ever since.

      I knock on the door and Allegra opens it, hugs me, and invites me inside. Vidocq smiles from his worktable. He’s in a stained lab coat, boiling red gunk in a beaker so that it condenses and trickles down a glass tube and drips into another beaker, clear now and full of what look like small spiny fish swimming around in slow circles. It looks like he’s either just created life or is making dinner. He’s well preserved for two hundred (though he doesn’t like to admit to being over a hundred and fifty). Close-­cropped salt-­and-­pepper hair, nice clothes, and a trimmed beard. A mad scientist by way of GQ.

      “How’s life without whooshing in and out of shadows?” says Allegra.

      “Slow. Terrifying. I’m more like regular ­people every day. I’m going to end up wearing Costco suits and going to cupcake stores.”

      Allegra’s hair is jet black and shorter than Chihiro’s. Her café au lait skin is paler than when we first met. She’s spent a lot of the last year indoors at the clinic looking after sick and injured assholes like me.

      “You could do with a little more real life in your life,” Allegra says.

      “As long as I don’t need an accountant or a résumé.”

      Vidocq leaves his hoodoo table and goes into the kitchen.

      “Your scars are your résumé,” he says. “What sensible employer would ask you for more?”

      It’s the truth. After eleven years in the arena in Hell my body looks like it was run through a wood chipper and put back together with a hot glue gun.

      “Would you like some coffee?” Vidocq says. “I just made it.”

      “It doesn’t have little fish swimming around inside, does it?”

      He glances back at his worktable.

      “That’s an interesting project. I’m experimenting with blood and blue amber to reanimate fossilized animals.”

      “Whose blood?”

      “Mine, of course.”

      “Why?”

      “To understand life, why else?”

      “I’m not sure it’s working that well.”

      Allegra goes over and stares into the beaker.

      “He’s right. Your critters have refossilized.”

      Vidocq sighs.

      “We learn as much from our failures as our success.”

      “Then I’m a goddamn Rhodes scholar.”

      I take the coffee he offers. He hands the other cup to Allegra.

      “You inspired the experiment, you know. Or your guest did,” she says. “Ever since he showed up it’s life this and the nature-­of-­death that.”

      “What about you? He set off any new thoughts for you?”

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