“All right.”
“It’s about the thing you’re looking for. The Qom something?”
“Magic 8 Ball is okay.”
“I know you were getting nowhere finding it, so you started your blitzkrieg through the city. It unsettled everyone and made our hunting harder, so we made our own inquiries using our own methods.”
I don’t want to think about what their methods means.
“And?”
“We think we’ve found something.” She takes a sip of her blood cocktail and goes on. “Your mistake was thinking all the answers lie in threatening the living. We have connections with a lot of L.A.’s nonliving residents.”
“It’s hard to punch a ghost.”
“Lucky ghosts.”
“So, a dead person told you where to find the 8 Ball.”
“A friend of yours, I think. Cherry Moon?”
Cherry is one of the people I came back from Hell to kill, only I didn’t have to. Another old friend, Parker, got to her first. Then I killed Parker. I tried to help out Cherry after she died. Tried to convince her ghost to cross over. No way she’s going to Heaven, but an eternity in limbo has got to be worse than Hell.
“That’s too bad. I’d hoped Cherry would have moved on by now.”
Tykho holds up a finger.
“Was that your suggestion? It seems that she was considering that very thing and talking it over with another ghost. A very old one and a bit mad, according to her, though I’m not sure Cherry is the best judge of crazy. Anyway, she had almost decided to cross over with this odd ghost when he changed his mind at the last minute. She said he claimed to be guarding a great treasure, something both Heaven and Hell would kill to get their hands on and that he couldn’t desert it.”
“Did she see it? Does she know where it is?”
“Calm down, cowboy. You people always want to cut to the chase. Let me drink my drink.”
By “you people” she means mortals. People with a clock ticking and a death sentence hanging over their heads. Immortals love to play this game. And this is also me paying for Phil. Tykho might not send a hit squad after me, but now that she’s got me hooked, she’s going to take her time giving me what I want.
Above the dance floor, boys dance with boys in one go-go cage and a bunch of girls dance together in another. They’re all wearing black vests and have shaved heads. It only takes a second to see why. Invitation to a Gunfighter is playing on flat-screens all over the bar. I have a feeling the movie is a hit less because it’s a decent studio western and more because Yul Brynner looks so good in his bad-guy black hat and vest.
Tykho finishes her drink and wipes her blue lips with a napkin.
“Where was I? Yes. The crazy ghost. He started to take her to it. They got as far as his haunt when he got cold feet. He even had a little breakdown, according to Cherry. He’s supposed to be guarding some Holy Grail–like thing and here he was about to give it up to a pretty face.”
“Can Cherry take me there?”
Tykho shakes her head.
“No. He scared her too much. But she told me where his haunt is. And that he’s guarding the thing for an angel. You’re part angel, I hear. Maybe you could talk him out of it.”
I’m going to shit monkeys if Tykho drags this out much longer.
“Where’s the ghost?”
She smiles. She’s going to drag it out.
“Kill City.”
Now I wish she’d dragged it out a little longer.
“Is she sure?”