“I know.”
He shook his head. “You are the most important piece in all this. So you have to take care of yourself and that means wiping me—”
“Dr. Manello! Dr. Manello—you okay?”
Payne glanced over her shoulder. The first human male they had seen at the desk inside was running across the lawn in a panic.
“Do it,” Manuel said. “And I’ll figure something out—”
As the scampering guard came up to them, Payne faced the new arrival.
“I was on my rounds,” the man said, “and when I was checking the offices at the other end of the building, I saw you through the window—I ran as fast as I could!”
“We are fine,” she said to the guard. “But would you look at something for me?”
“Of course! Have the police been called?”
“Yes.” She touched below her right eye. “Look at me, please.”
He was already locked on her face, and the extra focus just made her work easier; all she had to do was open the way into his brain and put a mental patch over everything that pertained to her.
As far as the human knew, her surgeon had come and gone alone.
She kept the man in a trance, and turned to Manuel. “You need not worry. His memories are so short-term, he will be fine.”
From far off, a howling sound rang out, high-pitched and urgent.
“That’s the police,” Manuel said.
“Then I shall go.”
“How will you get home?”
“In the same manner as I got out of your car.”
She waited for him to reach for her . . . or say something . . . or . . . But he just stood there with the cold, silent night air between them.
“Are you going to lie to them?” he asked. “And tell them that you scrubbed me?”
“I do not know.”
“Well, in case you need to come back to do that, I’m at—”
“Good night, Manuel. Please be safe.”
With that, she raised her hand and quietly, inexorably disappeared.
FORTY-THREE
As tricks went, this one was fucking weird. “So where’s your friend at?”
Karrie Ravisc, a.k.a. Kandy on the streets, had been doing the whore thing proper for about nine months so she’d seen a lot of shit. But this . . .
The huge man by the motel room’s door spoke softly. “He’s coming.”
Karrie took another toke and thought, Well, at least the one in front of her was hot. And he’d also paid her five hundred and set her up in this room. Still . . . there was something off here.
Weird accent. Weird eyes. Weird ideas.