“She’s a killer. She’ll pull through.”>He holds up the bottle to the light and shakes it. He gives me a doubtful look when he can’t see anything inside.
“Did you think you could shake up a soul and see it like salad dressing?” I say.
“What do I do with it?”
“First off, don’t lose it. Then keep it with you. When you die, your old soul will go in one direction, but you can ride this new one somewhere else. That’s assuming you don’t go completely Jeffrey Dahmer and stink the thing up. Do that and you’re on your own, man.”
“Thanks,” he says, still doubtful. But he puts it in his pocket.
“Forget it. Fixing up Kasabian so he quits whining about every little thing is doing me more of a favor than him.”
“I’ll come by with the truck tomorrow.”
“Park it by the garage entrance. I don’t want to carry the hound through the lobby.”
“See you tomorrow.”
After Godzilla, we move on to Rodan. Not one of my favorites, but there aren’t that many giant, supersonic flying lizard monsters around, so you settle for what you can get. I have my share of Aqua Regia and Candy settles into some red wine. Kasabian sticks to his beer, leaving crushed cans like autumn leaves all over the floor.
Sometime after midnight I hear someone or something scratching at the grandfather-clock door. I get a gun and go over to check it out. Find a folded piece of paper in hotel stationery lying on the floor. I bring it back to the sofa and set down the gun.
“Fan mail from some flounder?” says Candy.
I read it a couple of times to make sure I have it right.
“We’re being evicted.”
That gets everyone’s immediate and sober attention. Kasabian turns down the sound on the movie. He doesn’t turn it off, of course. That would be sacrilegious.
I read out loud, “ ‘The standing account for Mr. Macheath has been closed permanently. Please vacate the premises no later than noon today. There may be charges applied for each subsequent hour that the room is still occupied,’ blah, blah.”
Kasabian finishes his beer and throws the can at the flat-screen.
“I knew this was too good to be true. Is there anything we can do? What I really mean is, you do something.”
I hand the letter to Candy. She reads it over.
“I guess Mr. Muninn knows about the jailbreak,” I say.
“You do keep things interesting,” Candy says. “I never got the bum’s rush from a deity before.”
“How do you know?”
“Good point.”
“Where are we going to go?” says Kasabian.
“Where do you think?”
“Back to Max Overdrive? I can’t go back to that dump after tasting paradise. Besides, the upstairs is too small for three people. Hell, it was too small for two.”
“We’ll fix the place up. Did you really manage to scam two hundred grand of the vampire cash?”
Kasabian looks away, then back at me.
“I might have exaggerated a little. It’s more like fifty.”
“That’s enough to get started. Bag everything up and I’ll take it to Max through the Room. That way we won’t have to perp-walk through the lobby in front of everyone.”