“James?” I asked, while the newly christened spy was nodding to John Henry.
Stewart leaned against me and sighed, gritty, sweat-damp, and a bit wrinkled, but the most welcome thing I’d touched in a long time. “All Brits are named James if they’re not named John, right? And we’ve got enough goddamned Johns for a quorum.”
“Well,” I said, as deadpan as I could manage, “that should keep Angel busy for a while anyway.”
He coughed laughter. “I don’t think she does that kind of work any more—”
“Mmm.” I gave him one hard squeeze and stepped away. “You gonna introduce the rest of the gang?”
“Right,” he said, and looked from John Henry to the remaining spies. “This is Nikita,” he said of the Russian and then introduced the American as Sebastian.
“Sebastian?” John Henry asked, eyebrows rising as he settled the bandanna back over his close-shaved scalp.
Sebastian stuck his hand out and then pulled it back quickly, embarrassed at having forgotten John Henry’s immateriality. “I didn’t pick it out,” he said with a little-boy shrug, and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “So tell us what you’ve got, Mr. Steel-Driving Man. Have you and Doc come up with a way to get Tribute out of jail yet, pass go, collect two hundred dollars?”
“That’s Atlantic City, not Vegas,” the Russian said, helpfully, and Sebastian shot him a dirty look.
“No,” John Henry answered, squaring his immaterial shoulders.
“No, but you’ve some information?” James, his arms folded and his weight canted on one hip, watching with birdy intensity.
“Tribute bought a little something,” John Henry said, obviously uncomfortable.
James seemed about to jump back in, but I brushed his sleeve with the back of my hand and he settled down on his heels, planted and solid. The quizzical look hadn’t left his face, but I got the feeling it was a brushed-on thing, a mask concealing deep, implacable rage.
“Go on, John. What did he buy?”
And what the
hell
did he pay for it?
But
that
question could wait. For a while, at least.
“Some information about the, the Kennedy brothers?” Nikita’s intake of breath was sharp, but other than glancing his way, John Henry gave no indication it meant anything to him. The big ghost kept talking. “Some boys the assassin is supposed to have killed about forty years back?”
“Just a president,” Sebastian said, his flat Midwestern accent gone a little flatter. “And a presidential candidate.”
“Brothers?” John Henry asked, and I heard Stewart, and Sebastian say “Oh,” on a range of tones, simultaneously.
I turned around and looked at them, and Stewart held up two fingers.
Two
. Sets of two—
“Oh,” I said, and looked at the Russian. At Nikita, I mean. Christ, this was going to take a while. Still, it was faster than translating for John Henry. “Another matched set.”
“It’s fucking thematic,” Stewart started, and then settled back.
The Englishman, James, was very still, just waiting and watching, his eyes never leaving John Henry’s face.
John Henry, who sighed and twirled the haft of his hammer between his hands and frowned. “Mister Holliday said to tell y’all we may have to do something about Tribute when this is done. He said to tell you Tribute knows it, and he don’t mind.”
King, what are you doing?
But there weren’t any answers forthcoming, and weren’t likely to be for a while. “Right,” I said. “What did he say about—”
“Tribute figured out how to let him overhear a conversation Tribute had with the assassin.” John Henry rubbed the back of his hand across his lips. “Tricked him into thinking Tribute was on his side. And Mister Holliday says the assassin says it was about Camelot. That it’s an old rivalry, old feud.”
I think I was the only one who caught Stewart glancing off toward the graves. And then I caught Nikita looking at my partner, and re-assessed. No, somebody knew.
I sucked my teeth. Well, all right. “Media rivalry?” I asked John Henry.
John Henry shrugged. “Tribute and Mister Holliday said tell you that the ghost of Bugsy is mixed up in it and the suit, Felix, takes a lot of cell calls. Is that right? Cell calls?”
“Yes.” Biting back the itch that wanted to demand answers now. He really was doing the best he could.
“Anyway. Mister Holliday says the assassin said the brothers died because of Camelot, because they were a challenge to Luray’s people. Because there was only room for one set of myths. He says Monroe died for them too. President Monroe?” John Henry said, hopefully.
“Marilyn Monroe,” Sebastian answered, between gritted teeth. “That’s so—”
“—fucking—” Stewart supplied.
“—fucking,” Sebastian said, gratefully, “perfect. And it confirms my theory from the dam.”
“Your theory?” Nikita, ever so mild.
“We’ve wandered into the middle of a war,” Sebastian said.
“No.” That was the Englishman, quietly, his head bent under the bowler as he checked the load in his confiscated gun. “We were soldiers before we knew it. All of us. Bred to it.”
“Winner take all,” Sebastian answered. “A war of symbols.”
“And Las Vegas,” Stewart said, not to be outdone, “is the central symbol. The key. Every continent rolled into one city that’s under the sway of L.A. Sympathetic magic at its finest.”
“Damn,” I said, and tried to think it through. “So the Kennedys and Marilyn were killed before they could take control away from the Prometheans. And now the Magi are gone, and Felix wants everything that’s left.”
John Henry cleared his throat, obviously embarrassed to interrupt. The whole group fell silent, though, the way a group will when a quiet man wants to talk. “The assassin told Tribute they’d be going someplace for a ceremony, after he did what the assassin wanted him to.”
“What did the assassin want him to do?” Sebastian asked, just as I said, “Where are they taking him?”
“They want him to kill Angel,” John Henry said. “Kill her and drink her blood.”
He swept his translucent bandanna off, and twisted it in enormous hands. Stewart took a step away from him, a step closer to me, and I slid an arm around his shoulders.
“And they said they were going to take him to Saint Thomas, where-ever that is. And meet Luray there. I dunno where Saint Thomas is.”
The steel-driver stared at me, and I nodded,
okay
.
I knew. I knew just fine.
James tipped his bowler back. “And Mr. Luray is the . . . ”
“The puppetmaster?” Sebastian shoved hands into pockets.
“Or at least a pretty big string. I don’t think Bugsy is in any more control than Angel is, no matter what he thinks.” I paused for a breath, and no one spoke. They just let the silence hang there until I uncrossed my arms. “Wow. Seventy years of sympathetic magic. All right here.”
“Pretty intense, huh?” Stewart asked.
“Yes,” Nikita said. “And it’s all my fault. I fell for Oswald, the red herring. And the assassin got through.”
James frowned, thinking, and turned to Nikita. “But I don’t understand. You were supposed to
stop
Oswald?”
Nikita coughed. “You think we wanted Johnson as president?”
“Good point. Okay, so when the assassin killed JFK, if you were there, why didn’t you tell somebody? I can’t imagine the Soviets wouldn’t have wanted to throw a cog in the British-American alliance—” with an apologetic gesture at James.
Nikita smiled. It was almost as unsettling as Tribute’s smile, and it showed a hell of a lot fewer teeth. “Because a Russian sniper’s word would be so much more creditable than that of a decorated British officer?”
“Oh,” Sebastian said, and glanced down at his shoes. “And it was classified anyway, wasn’t it?”
Nikita said, “It still is.”
Which was all nice, but didn’t touch on the big thing. “Right,” I said. “So how does this help us get Tribute back?”
“That’s the problem,” Sebastian said. “It doesn’t.”
“No.” James slid the magazine back into his captured pistol, and tucked the reassembled gun into his pocket. “But it does tell us who the enemy is. So, I say we go back into the dam, and this time we get Tribute out. And do what we can about the assassin and Felix Luray in the process.”
Nikita frowned at me. “I don’t suppose you’ve had any brilliant ideas about how we get back in the dam?”
Sure. Ask the guy with no experience and no clue. “Shit,” I said. “You guys are the spies. You figure something out.”
“What will you be doing?” James asked.
I wished it didn’t hurt so much to smile. “I’m going to be figuring out how to keep that mage Luray from kicking us from here to Salt Lake.”
The argument lasted hours. I’d come up with my plan long before they were done hashing theirs out, and was pacing the edge of the circle of protection Stewart and Nikita had inscribed when the tone of the argument changed and I wandered back—a few hours before sunrise.
When Sebastian looked at Stewart and said, “Then we blow a hole in the dam,” I was past being surprised.
“Breach
Hoover Dam
?” Stewart, incredulous. “The good people of California will thank you not to flood their homes and businesses, and the good people of Nevada and Arizona will thank you not to destroy their source of drinking water, I suspect.”
Nikita glanced over at his partner, and said, “What if we only breach the
ghost
dam?”
Sebastian blinked. And looked at me. “Can we do that?”
John Henry said slowly, “I reckon I could.”
We all turned to him, and watched as he swung his hammer up onto his shoulder. The ghost dam was as real as the real dam, and it was where the power was. And judging by what Goddess snarked at me, not very long ago at all, it was the second sigil—the one buried in the heart of the dam—that directed the power of the spell.
Break the ghost sigil, break the power of the ghost dam.
It was just a matter of getting there.
James looked right at me. “John Henry won’t do us much good if Bugsy or Luray is there to stop him, if I understand the way these things work.”
“You understand aright,” John Henry said, slow and steady. He didn’t look worried. He was about the only one.
James nodded. “What did you decide about Luray, Jackie?”
I didn’t like what I’d decided. But there it was, and I didn’t have anything better. “We meet him at Saint Thomas. We stop him, and we get Tribute back.”
“What about Tribute?” Nikita. Ever so softly. Without looking at me. Almost as if he cared.
“Whatever I have to,” I said, and they would have to be satisfied with that. It got real quiet then, and if we hadn’t been in the middle of the fucking desert, you might have heard the drone of flies. Instead, there was just the swish of headlights, as another late-night commuter hurried past. It wasn’t the answer I wanted to give. But if it came down to Tribute or Stewart—
No contest, man.
“Right,” I said, because everybody—even the Englishman—was looking at me. “Let’s get started, then.”
And John Henry hefted his hammer, and smiled like he was never going to stop.
Tribute and the Hollywood Waltz.
Hoover Dam. Summer, 2002.
By mutual arrangement, I let the assassin put another bullet through me before he called Angel back down. Which is to say, I couldn’t have stopped him anyway, and he aimed for the glancing shot rather than center of mass.
That trench coat was really taking a beating. Black fluid stained it front and back, and this time, the wound wasn’t healing as quickly as before. I could feel the torn flesh creeping together, amoeba fingers of skin knotting and tugging, a sharp itching tickle. I leaned against the rail, wishing there was a wall on my island because I would have liked to prop myself against it, even if the fluids leaking down my back would have smeared it black in Rorschach blots.
Distantly, I wondered what vampire blood would do to the Promethean design under my feet. The Masonic symbols amused me, but the modern Magi are big believers in appropriating symbology. Symbology and appropriation; that pretty much sums up how their magic works, as I understand it.
Of course, I’m not a Promethean Mage. But then, I didn’t think anybody was, any more. Just goes to show you how reliable my information is.
So I waited, and I bled, the blood—or what passed for it—wicking through the fibers of my shirt, adhering to the leather jacket. My skin felt like wax, and old brittle wax at that. If I curled my fingers too abruptly, I could crack the flesh across my knuckles and show dark meat within. The flesh was drawing back from the beds of my nails, and I imagined it was taut across my cheekbones, drawn tight and seamed as a mummy’s. The corners of my mouth were starting to split; the shoulders of my trench coat were dusted with strands of sandy hair. It shed down my arms when I moved.
I tested my clawed hands on the railing. Hollow steel gave under the pressure. I felt
strong
. Strong enough to break the chain that bound me to the wall with a single hard yank.
Of course, that wouldn’t help me get across the water. And that was still the major problem. I was going to have to wait for them to carry me out like they had carried me in.
I smelled her coming before the elevator door opened. The vibration of the motor and the creak of the cable seemed louder. Sharp set, yes. Like a hawk. The doors scraped as they opened; it sounded like the scrape of broken bones in my chest. I caught myself humming a Frank Zappa tune under my breath, and made it stop, tried to look fragile, tried to look broken. Slumped, head down on my hands, clinging to the railing. Dropped one knee.
Doc
, I said,
I don’t want any witnesses.
I felt his disapproval, but he went.
I dripped black blood on the tile and lifted my head only a little as she came over, a beaten man. Judging by the curl of Angel’s beautiful lip, it was working.
She was clean, bathed, dressed in fresh clothing. Her glossy chestnut hair bounced against her shoulders when she turned her head to smile promise at the assassin as she walked past him. He lifted his chin and watched her go, lips pursed as if he was biting back a smile. The face was perfect: calm, proprietary pride as she crossed the cement floor and paused on the other side of the water.