Kill the Dead (Sandman Slim 2)

“Do you?”

“Unless you knew what was inside that building.”

Wells stops and looks at me.

“Come again?”

“Unless you knew there was a pod in there, but sent me in looking for one inexperienced girl. Isn’t that exactly the kind of thing you’d tell someone if you were setting them up?”

“Are you asking me or telling me?”

“How’s your lady friend downstairs?”

“Don’t talk about her like that.”

Wells gets a little defensive whenever I mention Aelita. He’s got a thing for her but an angel is just a little out of his league.

“Okay. How is Miss Aelita? Healthy? Happy? I haven’t seen her since right after Avila.”

Aelita is a kind of drill sergeant angel. She runs the Golden Vigil, Heaven’s Pinkertons. She knows I’m a nephilim and has a cute nickname for me: “The Abomination.” I’m pretty sure she’d like to see me dead.

“Did you send candy and flowers on Valentine’s Day, Wells? It’s okay, you know. He was a saint.”

His phone goes off. He walks away and speaks quietly into the receiver. I think an angel’s ears are burning.

Wells nods and pockets the phone.

“You get a twenty percent bonus added on to your next check.”

“Twenty percent? What am I, your waiter? I got you five vampires, not a BLT.”

“Twenty percent is what I’ve been authorized. Take it or leave it.”

“I’ll take it.”

He takes a white business envelope from his jacket and hands it to me. The check for my last Vigil hit. A bunch of suburban Druids in Pomona were trying to resurrect the In-vidia, a gaggle of transdimensional chaos deities. The Druids were hilarious. They looked like extras from The Andy Griffith Show trying to call up the devil in matching white housedresses. What’s even funnier was that their plan almost worked. Their scrawny Barney Fife leader was one murdered infant away from annihilating Southern California.

I wonder if I’d just held back a little and Barney did get to unleash the Invidia, would we really be able to tell the difference?

I look at the check and then at Wells.

“Why do you always pull this shit?”

“Do what? Obey the law?”

“I’m a freelancer and you’re deducting things like taxes and Social Security.”

“You don’t strike me as the type who files his taxes on time. I’m doing you a favor.”

“I don’t pay taxes because I don’t exist. You think I’m going to apply for Social Security when I’m sixty-five?”

“You’re going to want to wait until you’re seventy. The extra benefits are worth it.”

“I’m not waiting for anything. I’m legally dead. Why am I paying any of this bullshit?”

“I told you to watch your language.”

“Fuck you, Miss Manners. You get me to kill for you and then you screw me out of my money.”