The Getaway God (Sandman Slim 6)

His crew gets out of the way so I can roll the bike to the curb and heel down the kickstand.

Getting off, I say, “Your problem, Ishii, is that you like playing protector of the realm for the Augur because it gives you a power hard-­on. But you really don’t respect the man. I mean, he peeks into the future. He probably knew exactly what you were going to do before you did. The only reason he waited this long to do anything about it is he wanted to give you a chance to pull your head out of your ass.”

Ishii looks at his watch, waves his ­people back to their posts. He doesn’t want to look at me.

“Stop talking, Stark. And go inside before my gun goes off by accident.”

“Have fun with the fishes, Noah.”

The door is open for me when I reach the hotel.

The outside of Blackburn’s house might be a wreck, but the inside is something else. The inner sanctum is a Victorian fever dream of potted palms, gaslights, silk settees, and arsenic-­green walls. You half expect to see Dickens and Queen Victoria sipping laudanum in the living room. I know the layout, so I stroll through the place to the parlor, where Blackburn has his office.

The Augur is a scryer. A seer. All Augurs are scryers and Blackburn is supposed to be a good one. He’s an okay guy in an executive kind of way. His suit looks like it was cut by God’s tailor. His graying temples make him look like he’s in his late forties, but I know that he’s well over a hundred. The rich are different. He comes around from his desk and puts out his hand. I shake it.

“Thank you for coming,” he says, and gestures to a chair before going back to the iron th

rone.

“I don’t know why I’m here, so I’ll say ‘you’re welcome.’ For the moment.”

Blackburn’s heart beats faster than a powerful politician’s heart ought to. He’s nervous, but good at not showing it. He picks up a pen and sets it at a right angle to his papers.

“I asked you here in hopes of clearing up any differences there might be between us. In times like this, I don’t want us to be enemies.”

“I didn’t know we were enemies.”

“You know what I mean.”

“No. I don’t. I saved your wife’s soul and got treated like a rabid dog.”

“You did break in here and terrorize my guests during your time as Lucifer.”

“I was just back from Hell and having a bad day.”

“You have a lot of those,” he says.

“You try coming back from Hell feeling springtime fresh.”

Blackburn pours himself a drink of something brown and whiskey-­smelling from a crystal decanter. Holds up the bottle toward me and raises his eyebrows.

“Sure,” I say, figuring he has easier ways of killing me than poison. I take a sip and it takes me a minute to recognize it. A kind of rye called Angel’s Envy. There are whiskey-­colored wings on the bottle and everything. The stuff is aged in rum barrels and has about twelve different tastes going down. It’s not Aqua Regia, but it will do.

I say, “Nasrudin Hodja sent a car full of punks after me a while back. They shot up the street and nearly killed a friend of mine. Were you in on that?”

He sets down his drink.

“No. I give you my word.”

His heartbeat doesn’t change. He’s not sweating. He’s telling the truth.

Tuatha Fortune, his wife, comes in. Perches on the edge of Blackburn’s desk. She’s in a white silk blouse and black pants. Old-­money modest.

“He’s not lying,” she says. “I was there during the discussion.”

“He didn’t try to have me killed. He just talked about it. I’m all relieved now.”

“Nasrudin came to me and asked permission to right the insult after you tortured his nephews in that bar.”