Forsaken (The Netherworlde Series) (18 page)

“Jason,” she gasped, wide-eyed, looking stricken. From his seat behind the desk, Pops had already opened his fly all the way, exposing himself, the swollen girth of a pretty massive hard-on.

“You blind, asshole?” Pops snapped, startled at first, then angry as he shoved himself swiftly, unceremoniously back into his pants. “It says
PRIVATE
right there in great big letters on the door. Get out.”

“Forget it.” He didn’t even realize he’d pulled out his pistol until he found himself staring down the barrel into Pops’s enormous, rheumy eyes. Again, drawing the Beretta had been something instinctive to him, integral to his nature, leaving him to momentarily wonder,
What the fuck did I do for the five years I was gone?

“I don’t want to see your face in here again, Mei,” Pops told her, keeping his hands raised. “You hear me, you crazy bitch? Get out of my bar and stay out.”

Mei bristled at this, tensing beside Jason. “Yeah? Well, fuck you too, Pops,” she snapped. “You and this dump! Like I can’t go out and find another job shaking my tits for watered-down drinks and spare change. Fuck you!”

She shot him the bird, then turned, storming toward the exit. Jason kept the gun leveled at Pops’s nose for a long, lingering moment. Though his expression remained defiant and furious, the old man was afraid. It hung heavily in the air between them like something thick, pungent and nearly palpable. More than just attracted to the sensation, the Eidolon felt
aroused
by it, stronger than Jason had ever felt within him to that moment. His mind remained his own, yet somehow not, and he could feel the icy sentience of the Eidolon inside him. It didn’t as much wrestle control away from him as coax it, a strange but comfortable symbiotic shift as Jason gave himself over to its impulses and desires.

The shadow reached for Pops, shooting across the dingy carpet, spearing around and beneath and over his beat-up steel desk, not creeping this time or moving with any semblance of hesitation. The Eidolon struck like a spider darting deftly across the fibers of a carefully crafted web, and as it struck the shadow beneath Pops’s chair, Jason felt a surge of something powerful shuddering through him. If the Eidolon merging with Dean’s shadow at Sam’s apartment had felt akin to an introduction to fellatio, this sensation was nearly orgasmic. Jason gasped, the gun wavering then lowering in his hand, his head rocking back on his neck, his voice escaping him in a soft, breathless sound.

Man, that feels good,
he thought in a daze as the Eidolon fed on Pops’s fear. It sounded ridiculous, but there was no other way Jason could explain what was happening to him, what the Eidolon might be doing. It was summoning some sort of strength from the fusing of its shadow with Pops’s, and as Jason watched, he could see that whatever exchange was taking place, the old man could feel it too. Pops’s complexion had drained to ashen, his hands had drooped from midair to his lap and he’d sagged in his seat like a hot air balloon slowly deflating. He began to blink sleepily, a thin, silvery line of drool sliding down his chin, escaping from the corner of his mouth.

“Jason,” he heard Mei call from behind him in the dance hall, her voice uncertain again, verging on fright. It was all that was needed to snap Jason from the reverie the Eidolon had brought upon him, like a rough shake to rouse him abruptly from a doze. He shook his head, watching as the Eidolon’s shadowy tendrils retreated back toward his feet as swiftly as they’d extended, snapping like the length of a tape measure whipping back into its case. Despite this break in contact, he could still feel it inside him, not as much the Eidolon itself now as whatever energy it had drained from Pops’s body and infused in his own.

His fear. It ate his fear, just swallowed it up, and it made it stronger somehow, made
me
stronger.

Pops looked at him, his eyes glazed, his facial expression lax, as if he’d suffered a stroke. That thread of saliva snaking down his chin now dripped onto his shirt, while the cigarette he’d dropped to the floor when his hands had gone limp singed enough of the thin carpet to raise an acrid stink. Pops didn’t react to this at all, or to the dim film of smoke that rose from the smoldering patch beneath him. He said nothing and didn’t move, didn’t even blink as he watched Jason turn to follow Mei out the door.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“Come on.” Outside the strip bar, Mei had lit up another smoke, and she puffed sharply on it now as she marched down the street. “I’ll let you buy me breakfast.”

“Excuse me?” He was still coming down from one hell of a high, light-headed and somewhat dazed. “And what makes you think I’m going to do that?”

Without turning, she said, “You owe me.”

Jason closed the distance between them in three broad strides, his head clearing enough for him to summon some righteous indignation. “I
owe
you? You know, if memory serves, I just saved your ass back there.”

“Puh-lease,” she said.
“For your information, I had everything under control. I didn’t need you.” When he couldn’t help but laugh at this, Mei glowered. “How do you know I wasn’t going bite his dick off? You just got me fired, you asshole. And you said you had money—
if you need it,
you said. Well, I’m hungry and I’ve got no cash, thanks to you. So that means you’re buying me breakfast.”

In addition to some of his clothes, Dean had left an old wallet behind in Sam’s closet. Only an auspicious prick like Dean could tuck a gold American Express card in an old billfold, then forget about it
, and when Jason had ducked out, he’d taken the credit card with him.
My life was worth at least this much, you son of a bitch,
he’d thought.

As Mei continued marching on ahead without him, he shook his head.
What have I gotten myself into?
he thought. “Okay, fine,” he said. “Where would you like to go?”

“The Brinkhaus has a buffet,” she replied primly. “It’s right off the red line. We can catch it a couple blocks up from here.”

The Brinkhaus was one of the older hotels in the city, a landmark for tourists and locals alike. “Humphrey Bogart used to stay there,” Jason’s dad had always told him. “Katherine Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, all those Hollywood types.” The rooms celebrities had favored now bore their names and people paid top dollar to sleep in the same bed Jayne Mansfield had once used, or where Frank Sinatra had once spent the night.

“Don’t you think we’re a bit”—he glanced down at himself—“underdressed for the Brinkhaus?”

“Not if you keep your gun in your pants and stop whipping it out every chance you get.” Mei looked at him and smiled, pinching her cigarette between her fingertip and thumb, flicking it into the gutter. “This is the real world, not a movie. You’re going to wind up with your ass in jail. Now come on. I’m hungry.”

****

“How old are you, anyway?” Jason asked an hour or so later, watching Mei tear into a heaping plateful of scrambled eggs, sausage links and fried potatoes.

As for him, the ibuprofen he’d taken at the clinic had helped ease some of the throbbing pain in his head, but his stomach remained a roiling, hungover mess. He sat across from Mei at a small table no bigger than a TV tray, draped in white linen, adorned with a pair of place settings that each included two forks and other assorted cutlery; salad, bread and dinner plates; wineglass, water glass and coffee cup, plus a heavy cloth napkin folded accordion-style and propped upright against the surface of the dinner plate.

The Brinkhaus buffet offered bagels, muffins, danishesDanishes, cereal, an omelet station, crepe service, fresh fruit, juices, teas and more. At thirty bucks a pop, Jason had forgone food altogether, settling for the five-dollar “endless” cup of coffee, which had turned out to be little more than hot brown water, but he wasn’t complaining.

Mei might have been a petite wisp of a girl, but she could eat like a linebacker. She’d already polished off two plates filled to overflowing and was digging into her third. She hadn’t said as much as a word in between wolfish, eager bites, but when he spoke now, she froze, all eyes like a deer caught in the headlights, a forkful of eggs poised halfway to her mouth.

“What?” she said.

“I asked how old you are,” Jason said. “You’re what? Fifteen? Sixteen?”

“Ha-ha, real funny,” she said, then shoveled in the eggs. “I’m twenty-five, just like you.” When he simply looked at her, his brow raised slightly, her fervent chewing slowed, then stopped. “What?” When he still just held her gaze, twin patches of hot color bloomed in her pale cheeks. “Oh, all right, fine. I’m twenty-one.”

Jason’s brow arched a bit higher. The sign at that nudie bar had said you were
supposed
to be twenty-one to be in there, but considering the fact that the owner, Pops, had apparently harbored no qualms about the decidedly illegal act of forcing prostitution onto those dancers under his employ, Jason doubted he bothered with anything like verifying their ages before hiring them.

The crimp between her brows deepened. “I told you. I’m twenty-one,” she said. “Really.” He didn’t avert his gaze and she slapped her fork against the table. “Really, goddamn it.”

She said this last loud enough that, especially when accompanied by the emphatic slam of her fork, people at neighboring tables and the man in the chef’s uniform at the nearby crepe station turned to her curiously.

Because Jason didn’t say anything, merely took a sip of his coffee, Mei sighed heavily and sat back, crossing her arms. “Fine. I’m sixteen. Are you happy?”

“Don’t call me kiddo,” she growled, snatching up her fork and resuming her feeding frenzy. “Or I’ll call you z
u fu
. That’s Chinese for
grandpa.
”

At this, he laughed, and it occurred to him it was one of the few occasions since the entire nightmare had begun that he’d actually forgotten himself long enough to
feel
like himself, much less like laughing again. It felt good to him, normal somehow.

“So how did you wind up working at that dump?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I have a fake ID. Says I’m twenty-five. They don’t look too close or ask too many questions, as long as they get their forty percent of your nightly take.”

“Forty percent?” He whistled.

“It doesn’t matter. I still made enough.”

“Enough for what?” he asked, and she glanced at him, then away again with a shrug that clearly indicated she wanted to change the subject. “So are you from here in the city?”

Mei shook her head. “I’m from Louisville,” she said. “In Kentucky. You know, home of the Kentucky Derby.” This last she said using finger quotes, a sarcastic smile hooking her mouth.

“How did you wind up all the way out here?”

She shrugged, popping a fat bite of sausage into her mouth and chewing thoughtfully. “Greyhound bus. I went to Reno first, hooked up with the guy I’d met online. He turned out to be a perv, but it got me out of my house at least. So I hung out in Reno until I met this girl who had her own car, and we came out here together six months ago. We lived in her car for a while, panhandled on the streets, then a month ago, she decided to head for LA. I’d hooked up with J-Dog by then, so I stayed behind.”

“J-Dog,” Jason remarked. “The guy who did that”—he tapped his fingertip in the air—“to your neck?”

Mei bristled visibly, then self-consciously tugged at her coarse blond hair, trying to conceal the marks along her throat. “Yeah. We’re not together anymore. I took off last night, ditched his sorry ass.”

“So what will you do now?” he asked. “Go back home?”

At this, she laughed, nearly snorting orange juice out her nose as she took a drink. “Hell, no,” she exclaimed, again drawing disapproving glances from those around them. “Are you kidding? Anyplace is better than there. My mom was always jumping my shit. She and my dad own this little Chinese food place in Louisville, in the middle of this dumpy part of downtown. If I wasn’t in school, she expected me to be there with them, busting my ass mopping floors or pushing pan-fried noodles. Like that’s how I want to spend the rest of my life, never mind my free time.”

“What about your dad?”

Mei uttered a quiet little snort of laughter. “What about him? He doesn’t even understand English, never mind me.
Qing an jing dianr,
that’s all I heard from him.
You be quiet!
or
Rangkai! Wo xian zai hen mang. Go away! I’m busy now.
He was perfectly happy to stay in the back of the restaurant and let my mom deal with me.”

Her gaze grew distant, her expression forlorn. “The only person who ever really gave a shit about me was my
zu mu…
my grandma.”

“Maybe you should call her,” he suggested. “I’m sure she’s worried about you.”

She shot him a look. “Now you sound like Dr. Delgado.” When a waiter walked past them, seeming conspicuously determined not to as much as glance in their direction, Mei caught him by the elbow. “Can I get a box for this?” she asked with a glance down at the remaining contents of her plate. When the waiter simply looked down his nose at her for a moment, she frowned slightly. “
Hui shuo ying yu ma?
”
she asked. “Do you speak English?
A
box.”
”