Tribute glanced up, as if feeling the pressure of the American’s gaze, and smiled. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your lady friend?”
The Russian, Through the Looking-Glass.
Somewhere in Las Vegas. Summer. 2002.
A brief acquaintance was all it took to prove Jackie’s partner like nothing the Russian had expected. He’d seen Jackie’s naïve charm, his brashness, his determination, his loyalty, and a certain street-tough grit and expedience that didn’t do much to conceal Las Vegas’s childish delight in excitement and attention, its basic decency on an individual level, and its unconcern for problems as they applied to people as classes. And the Russian hadn’t expected this peculiar child-man’s lover to be . . .
To be as he was. Flamboyant, teasing, sharp-eyed, dressed like a latter-day Rebel Without a Cause, with the minor addition of black tooled-leather cowboy boots. He hadn’t expected extravagant, flaming,
camp
homosexuality coupled with the cool steely-eyed courage it took to step in front of a loaded gun.
Stewart was obviously the brains of the pair.
He was still contemplating that last—and watching Jackie with his arm around Stewart’s shoulder like he’d never let go again—when he became aware of two sets of approaching footsteps, matched unevenly to three approaching people.
Tribute was forgetting to pass for human; he didn’t walk, but
drifted
beside the American and a shapely brunette with a sharp-edged red spot darkening along one cheekbone.
The Russian blinked. And then felt his cheeks tug his mouth into a broad, welcoming grin that converted into a wince when it reached his nose. He pounced—brushing aside the American’s restraining hand—and grabbed the widow by her upper arms, swinging her into the light.
“It’s you!” She didn’t flinch from the dried and still-wet blood splotching his face. Instead she swung with him, as if they were dancing, and planted a warm, uncompromising kiss on his mouth. Over her shoulder, the Russian read thwarted possessiveness in the American’s glare. It delighted him, and he kissed the widow back.
“I’m overjoyed you came along.” He stepped back, gave her arms one more hard squeeze. “And that you’re in better health than reports had indicated.”
Her smile tilted one side of her mouth higher than the other. “Dear thing. Shall we vacate the premises?”
The Russian glanced at Jackie, but it was Stewart who stepped in. “We need to get under cover now.”
“I have a keycard for the California,” Tribute said. “We can get cleaned up there.”
The Russian felt his partner come alongside, and shot him a glance that probably wasn’t reassuring, through streaks of blood. He looked back in time to see Jackie give the vampire a soft, level look with six inches of steel wrapped up in it. “Where’d the key card come from, Tribute?”
“I picked it up after dinner. Look, do you want to argue with me, or with Metro?”
Blunt, but it worked. Jackie turned in place, one sharp twist of his leather-clad legs, and stalked off, Stewart sticking beside him like a shadow. The widow hustled in pursuit, easy strides in her heeled boots bringing her abreast. She grinned over her shoulder at the Russian, who winked in return and felt the American stiffen.
The Russian leaned close and whispered in the American’s ear. “Jealous? I
did
say I got the pretty girl this time—“
“You did,” the American murmured, with ill grace. “You didn’t say the girl would be quite so pretty. What do you think of Jackie’s . . . boyfriend?”
“We don’t look
that
much alike.”
“Nobody looks at anything but the hair. That’s why you should get it cut.”
“I don’t get it cut,” the Russian answered, with infinite dignity, “because nobody looks at anything but the hair.”
“Speaking of looking. Here, let me look at your nose.”
“I don’t trust you just to look,” the Russian said.
The American placed two fingers on either side of the damaged appurtenance and pressed sharply; the Russian gasped, his vision shot through with green and white streaks, and ringed in black. He took a deep breath as the American stepped back, and smiled. “Hey. You got it straighter this time.”
Some time later, clean and safely ensconced on the seventh floor of the California—an irony apparently not lost on Jackie—the Russian charged water glasses from a bottle of room-service Canadian Club and handed them around. Tribute took a glass, but declined to drink.
“Pour some of that on the floor,” Jackie said, without making any effort to rise from the armchair he was sharing with Stewart. “Some people will appreciate the gesture.”
The Russian raised an eyebrow, but obeyed. The whiskey splashed on the carpet and evaporated, center drying out to the edges. The Russian watched, intrigued. “There are ghosts and there are ghosts.”
“How did you know?”
“I heard it from an old Gypsy once.” He smiled, a controlled twist of his lips, and saw the widow smirk at him from where she leaned in the corner. Her eyes crinkled at the corners. He held her gaze for a moment before he glanced away. “Ghosts are thirsty. Are you going to introduce us to your friends, Jackie?”
Jackie grunted. “It’s Doc Holliday, and John Henry the steel-driving man. You can’t see or hear them, I presume, but Doc just tipped his hat and John Henry said he was pleased to meet you.”
The American made about half an inch of bad whiskey vanish as effortlessly as the ghosts had. “Where’d they come from?”
“I called them up on purpose,” Jackie said. “About the same time I apparently called everyone else up sort of on accident. Except it seems maybe I didn’t call you up after all. If I understand correctly what was going on out in that parking lot.” He cocked his head sideways, listening to something the Russian couldn’t hear. “And maybe your problems intersect with mine.”
“It seems that they might.” The Russian tasted his whiskey. He didn’t think much of the aroma or the flavor, but it set the right kind of fire going down his throat. He glanced from the American to the widow, waiting for one of them to shake him off.
“We’re being hunted,” the Russian said when neither moved.
“Or more precisely,
he
is being hunted.” The American leaned forward on the edge of the bed, his glass dangling between his knees, and nodded toward the Russian. “Him and the widow, and the scholar. The rest of us are just—”
“On the menu,” the widow supplied, eyes sparkling and the curled ends of her shoulder-brushing bob swinging forward. She stared at the American through her lashes. He blushed, the Russian noted with delight.
“On the menu,” Tribute said. He’d been silent, his hands folded over one knee and his blue eyes half-lidded under his bangs. “Interesting way of putting it. One might argue that Jackie and Stewart here are on Angel’s menu as well. I got the impression, though, that Stewart knew a little more than that.”
He didn’t drop his eyes from Stewart’s when Stewart leaned forward, his thigh pressed against Jackie’s in a manner the Russian found a little indiscreet. Jackie let go of his partner to permit the movement. He seemed unhappy about it, though, rubbing his right hand over and over the blue and black and red abstract tattoo swirling like a cross between a tornado and a tsunami up his own left shoulder. The Russian could pick out stylized hearts and spades and clubs and diamonds worked into the pattern, small enough to resemble rattlesnake scales more than playing card suits.
“I know a lot more than that,” Stewart said. “Is your nemesis a tall Brit with black hair and cold eyes, by chance?”
“You know it,” the American said. “Keep talking.”
The Russian leaned back, arms crossed. If his partner was engaged,
his
work was done.
Stewart cleared his throat. “He’s working with Angel. And I know exactly what they’re trying to do.”
The Russian loved dramatic silences. On his personal meter, this one ranked an eight point six. He traded a significant smirk with the American, waiting for Jackie to provoke Stewart to continue.
But Tribute issued the nudge. “Are you going to make us wait until after the revolution?”
“Funny you should put it that way,” Stewart said, batting his eyelashes at the vampire. By the speed with which Tribute glanced down, he would have been blushing if he were mortal. “A revolution is exactly what they have in mind.”
Tribute in Observation.
Las Vegas. Summer, 2002.
I flicked a few more drops of whiskey on the rug and watched, amused, as they vanished without a trace. The ghost of Doc Holliday tipped his hat at me and smiled. John Henry didn’t seem to be drinking.
The American was, though. I got the feeling he wasn’t exactly comfortable about something in the room, but whether it was the thoughtful looks his partner kept shooting toward the widow as she idled with her glass, or the way Stewart sprawled across Jackie’s lap, I wasn’t quite sure.
Stewart was looking at me, so I looked right back. So did the Russian, leaning forward with his elbows braced on his knees. But Jackie spoke, tightening the arm he had clamped around Stewart.
“They want Las Vegas,” Jackie said. “They tried to buy Stewart and me, and then they tried to threaten us, and now—”
Stewart turned to him and nodded. “It’s worse than that. They’ve moved beyond coercion, and into necromancy.”
“Oh,” Jackie said, and blinked. He looked down and then quickly back up again. “
Oh
! Goddess?”
“I don’t know,” Stewart said. “Somebody. I didn’t . . . that is, they couldn’t make me.”
Jackie squeezed Stewart hard. “It’s okay. If you had . . . ”
“If I had,” Stewart said, “I wouldn’t be here, I think. Once they’d bound Las Vegas to Los Angeles through me, they—”
“Excuse me.” The American, fixing Stewart with a bright-eyed look.
I hid my sigh of relief; I’d been afraid that I was going to have to ask. Much better to let one of the media ghosts look ignorant.
The American said, “I’m feeling a bit as if I walked in during the intermission, here. Let me see if I’ve got this straight. Now, Las Vegas is bound to L.A. in some sort of indenture arrangement?”
“You could say that, yes.” Jackie smiled, not at the American, but because he had also seen Doc turn his head and spit impotently on the floor.
I flicked more liquor on the rug, without looking away.
Jackie said, “Las Vegas is, it’s in L.A.’s shadow. It’s sympathetic magic; power from other cities the world around—Venice, Paris, whatever—is drawn here, filtered, and then, through Hoover, metered out to Hollywood and L.A.”
“Whoa,” the American said. “Can we have that in English, please?”
The widow twirled a strand of hair around her forefinger. “That was English,” she said, the rise of a sculpted eyebrow wrinkling her brow. “Would you prefer it in American?”
“You understood that?”
“Plainly.” She let her hand fall to her lap and glanced at Jackie through her hair. “Correct me if I’m wrong. What Jackie—may I call you Jackie?—what Jackie is saying is that Los Angeles uses Las Vegas as a dumping ground for negative energy, meanwhile drawing metaphysical energy from other cities, using the themed casinos as the device to do so. Yes?”
“Precisely,” Jackie said warmly. The widow sat back, not without a wink aimed at the American, who frowned.
I had to ask. “And Stewart, you suspect they want a bit more than that now?”
I’m not sure anyone else noticed the look the Russian shared with his partner. Lancing realization, and then the Russian looked down at the drink in his hands and smiled.
“Age of globalization, man,” he said, with a wryness that made me think he was quoting someone. “Tribute—” without looking at me.
“Yes?”
“—is there still talk abroad of ‘American Cultural Imperialism?’ as exported by Hollywood?”
“It’s not so much talk anymore as a fact,” the widow said, breaking her amused silence. She let her glass click on the end table as she set it down, and pushed her hair behind her ear. “There’s some pretty strident opposition to it, too.”
She chuckled.
The American glanced up, not understanding the humor.
“First we take Las Vegas,” I said, shaking my head. “Then we take Berlin.”
“Something like that,” the Russian said, obviously opaque to the reference, and gestured to his partner.
Continue.
“Okay,” the American said. “Now, my partner and I and our friends”—a nod to the widow, who tilted her head in acknowledgement—“are here because the assassin has been trying to consume
us
to make
himself
more powerful. That’s the simple form. Needless to say, we’re, ah, not particularly in agreement as to his methods. Now, if I understand you right, Stewart, this Angel, this avatar—”
“—genius—”
“—
genius
of Los Angeles intends to do much the same thing to Las Vegas. And the assassin is working with her.”
“Right,” Stewart said. “And I think you just gave me the puzzle piece I didn’t have.” He extended his hands and then pulled them toward his chest as if raking up piles of chips.
“Okay,” the American said. He leaned back and crossed his ankle over his knee, showing a bit of white sock between cuff and shoe. Not the world’s most fashion-conscious spy, apparently. “Now tell me about necromancy.”
“That consuming thing you just talked about?” Stewart’s brows went up, his hands spiraling in front of him as he leaned forward in Jackie’s lap.
“Uh huh?”
“Well, if I’d done what Angel wanted me to do, I’d be making Los Angeles a part of me. Linking L.A. and Vegas that much more tightly. Sympathetic magic.”
“Right.”
John Henry looked up and ran a thick-ridged thumbnail across the head of his hammer. He didn’t speak, just watched.
“Well,” Stewart said, quickly, without flinching, “then if the assassin, say, were to kill and eat
me
, he’d become both a little bit of Las Vegas, and a little bit of L.A.” He squeezed Jackie’s hand lightly, quickly, and let his own hand fall into his lap. “And then if he were to become real enough—that is to say, more real than a media ghost—” He shrugged apologetically, mostly in the direction of the Russian, “—and then if he and Angel could get rid of Jackie—”