“Okay. Thanks for the spook story. I’ll swing by the Chateau Marmont when I’m done making Cabal cry.”
I hang up and push open the wall to Uncle Cabal’s Haunted Mansion ride.
I don’t get more than a few steps inside the front room when my heart is broken. I’m not going to make Cabal cry. Someone has beaten me to it.
Cabal’s body is scattered in about fifty pieces around the table where Brigitte and I first talked to him. If Drifters didn’t do it, then it was someone doing an A-plus impression. I follow a trail of bones and splintered furniture through the curtain and into the room where Cabal’s party guests had been asleep the last time I was here.
It’s the same story. Shredded bodies spread across the floor and furniture and splattered up the walls. There’s one Drifter left. A female at the back of the room. She’s hunched over the body of a naked boy. His chest is cracked open and someone has been gnawing on his exposed ribs. The female has the boy’s heart in her hands and she’s working on it hard, trying to bite through the tough muscle. A couple of her teeth are embedded in the shiny meat. It’s a good few seconds before she sees me and gets up to attack. That’s when I see her face. It’s Cosima. I hoodoo her back against the far wall and pull out her spine fast with the na’at. Even though I never really knew Cosima, ripping apart someone whose face you recognize isn’t as much fun as gutting a stranger. Go figure.
Bottles are scattered around the furniture and bodies. I rescue an unopened bottle of Jack Daniel’s from the depths of a beanbag chair and a bottle of wine from a moldering stack of Italian Vogues. Go back to the room where Cabal lies in peace. He was nice enough to die on the other side of the room and not get blood or meat all over my chair.
Stark and not-Stark are going at it inside my skull. Jack Daniel’s versus no-name wine. Stark is too weak. Wine wins. I slice off the top of the bottle with the black blade and drink a toast to my dead host.
“You were a prick and a crook, but no one deserves to go out the way you went. I hope it was over quick and that you tasted like ass all the way down. Amen.”
So much for suspect number one. Under other circumstances, I might think Cabal ending up a Hot Pocket was just a case of bad juju or karma coming home to roost, but he was too good a magician to let some dumb Drifters wander in here. And he just came into a load of money, which sounds like he’d done some iffy magic for someone. I’m sure he’s the one who sold the glamour to Rainier, which makes him suspect number one in Cabal’s death.
But Cabal isn’t the only Sub Rosa who’s been fucked by Drifters. Someone let loose a roomful of eaters on Enoch Springheel. The Vigil sent two after me. I bet whoever sicced them on Cabal and Springheel rented Aelita my pair.
Then there’s poor Titus. The guy never hurt anyone. The worst thing Titus ever did was pad his hours when his client had money. And he was small-time. He never had a big-time or dangerous case in his life. He was just doing a back-of-the-milk-carton job. He must have seen something he wasn’t supposed to. What was it? Maybe whoever has the local zombie franchise? And now every flavor of Drifter is running—well, stumbling—down every street in the city. Was that the plan all along or is someone making a bigger mess to cover up the mess that Titus found?
Why would anyone bother to kill a loser like Enoch Springheel? And—sorry, Cabal—take out another loser like Cabal? Cabal might mix a good glamour cocktail, but he can’t be the only Sub Rosa in town who could do that. Vidocq could do it in his sleep. There have to be others as good as Cabal and more reliable. So, the glamour might have been only half the reason the buyer came to Cabal.
What did Cabal Ash and Enoch Springheel have in common? Nothing except that they were the heads of two important Sub Rosa families. But who fucking cares about that? No wonder Sherlock Holmes did all that coke. Math is hard.
I get out my cell and call Kasabian.
“Listen, is there anything online or in the Codex about old Sub Rosa families?”
“Yeah. What do you need?”
“Spencer Church. Are the Churches a big deal? In the history of L.A.?”
“Wait.”
The line goes quiet. I can hear typing and low voices.
“Yeah. The Churches were one of the first four families in the area.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“What are you looking for?”
“Connections. Cabal is dead. So’s Springheel. Church went missing and then turned up dead and hungry at Bamboo House. What do they have in common? They’re all from heavyweight households. Someone is using Drifters to go after all the original families.”
“Why?”
“A grudge? Social climbing? I don’t know how those people think. But if I’m right, it means that the Geistwalds could be next. Hell, even without Drifters they’re in trouble. It looks like their son is an impostor. A con man. He might be the one behind this whole ballistic cluster fuck.”
“You know, sometimes I’m glad I never leave this room.”
“I’m going to stop by the Chateau before heading over to the Geistwalds’.”
“Don’t get eaten, man. Your friends are nice, but they’ve never even heard of Once Upon a Time in the West or Le Samourai.”
“I make no promises.”
I GO OUT through the broken front doors. There are no shadows and no decent wheels to steal, so I head back toward the city lights on foot. How do regular people ever get anywhere?