rot.
Naked at my door. If the neighbors were watching I’d never hear the end of it. But I wasn’t done yet. Inside, I gathered my just filled washing urn, a cake of Mama’s flesh-eating lye soap and a rag destined to keep my britches company in the bin.
Then, still nude, I stepped back outside and lathered up Mama’s soap and took the longest, most disgusting bath of my long and sordid life.
I got lye soap in one eye and provided high amusement for a pair of passing ogres. I’ll probably go bald any day now from the caustic soap, but when I was done I was shivering and shaking and absolutely squeaky clean.
Only then did I dress. Only then did I lock the door, open a warm bottle of Bottit’s and sit down to see if I’d shake.
I didn’t. I didn’t sleep, not until nearly sunrise, but I didn’t have the shakes again.
I even did some thinking. Came to some conclusions. Conclusions about Evis and Houses and why Avalante wanted Martha Hoobin home and safe and sound before anyone but finder Markhat discovered a mad, rotted halfdead napping in a shallow grave downtown.
Three-leg Cat poked his head in the office but refused to come near me. I finally dozed off, still at my desk, to the sound of half a dozen dogs outside snarling and tearing at my blood-fouled clothes.
Chapter Seven
I jumped, spilled warm beer and felt my head begin to throb.
Mama’s voice rang out. She tried the latch, cussed and shoved hard at the door.
I threw the bottle in the trash bucket and managed to get out of my chair and to the door before Mama broke it down.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” I said, fumbling with the latch. The daylight through my bubbled-glass door-pane was faint and yellow, more blush of dawn than actual morning.
I yanked the door open. “Damn, Mama, it’s barely daylight-”
She pushed her way in beside me. The look on her face-it’s never a good look, mind you-was worried and grim and if I didn’t know her better I’d say it was frantic.
“Boy,” she said, huffing and puffing. “Boy, where you been?”
I shut the door.
“Right here sleeping. Why? Where’s the fire?”
She fell heavily into my client’s chair, her hands tight around the neck of that big burlap sack she sometimes carries. Once she let a little snake crawl out of it and get loose on my desk. I’d told her to leave it at her place from then on.
“You ain’t been here all night.” She opened the bag and started rummaging around inside it as she spoke, and I got that lifted-hair-on-the-back-of-my-neck feeling I’d always gotten when the Army sorcerer corps had aimed new hexes at us troops.
“Whoa,” I said, harder and louder than I meant to. “You got mojo in that sack, Mama, you’d damn well better leave it there. I took hexes in the Army because I had to, and you’ve slipped a few on me because I didn’t see them coming. But hear this, Mama Hog. No hexes. Not today. Got it?”
She clamped her jaw and met my stare. I could see her hands moving, see the beginning of a word form on her lips.
Then she sagged and let out her breath.
“Wouldn’t do no good anyhow.” She pulled her hands out of the bag and tied it shut with a scrap of twine. “Wouldn’t do no good.”
When she looked back up at me, she had tears in her eyes.
“Mama, I didn’t mean-”
“Ain’t you, boy. Ain’t nothin’ you said. Ain’t nothin’ you done.”
My head pounded. I took a deep breath and ran fingers through my hair, which was wild and stiff and probably bleached white from Mama’s soap.
“What is it, then? What’s got you so upset?”
“I seen something. Last night. I seen something bad.”
“I thought your cards were clueless where Martha was concerned.”
“Wasn’t about Martha.” She wiped her eyes and leaned close. “Was about you.”
“Tell me.”
She shook her head. “No, I can’t tell. Can’t tell ’cause I still can’t see real clear.” She shuffled in her seat, and I knew I’d caught her in a lie.
“Tell me what you can.”
“Cards. Glass. Smoke. Bones. All come up death, boy. I called your name and a whippoorwill answered. I burned your hair and saw the ashes scatter. I caught blood on a silver needle and saw it turn toward your door.” She shivered, and her eyes looked tired. “Ain’t never seen all them things. Not the same night. And then, when I saw them dogs tearin’ at your clothes-well, I thought you was dead for sure.”
“I’m not surprised. I came pretty close, just after midnight. Maybe that’s what you saw.”
She shook her head. “I reckon not. Something still ain’t right about all this, boy. I oughtn’t to be seeing some things I see, and ought to see things I don’t. We got a sayin’ in Pot Lockney-it’s them things under the water what makes the river wild. Somethin’s messing up my sight on this. You reckon you know what it might be?”
I shook my head. I had suspicions, but they weren’t for anyone but Evis to hear.
“I don’t know, Mama, but I will tell you this. The Houses are mixed up in this, somehow.”
She snorted. “Figured that.”
“Maybe not that way. At least not all of them.” I gave her just enough of the night’s festivities to steer the Watch and the Hoobins toward Avalante, should I have a fatal boating accident in the next few days.
None of that helped her state of agitation. “Running around after Curfew with vampires?” she shouted. “Boy, have you hit your fool head?”
I had to agree, at least partly. But I’d lived. Thanks partly to Evis, who was probably pacing anxiously in a well-appointed crypt across the river.
“Look, Mama, I’ve got to go. But there’s something you can do. For me. Maybe for Martha.”
She gave me a sideways look, nodded.
“I’ll need a hex. A paper hex. Something I can tear. Something you’ll know I’ve torn, just as soon as I’ve torn it. From twenty, thirty blocks away. Can you do that?”
She frowned. “I reckon.”
“Good. And I’ll need you to talk to Ethel. I need you to tell him we may need men to get Martha. Men who’ll break Curfew. Men who’ll fight. Men who’ll keep their mouths shut.”
“How many?”
“All you can get.” I was hoping for fifty.
Mama nodded. “You think you know where Martha Hoobin is?”
“Not yet. But when I find out, we won’t have much time. She’s got maybe four days left. That’s all.” A thought struck me, and I held up my hand to silence Mama’s unspoken question. “Humor me, Mama. What’s special about the night four days from now?”
She frowned. “Special what?”
“I mean is it some old rite of spring or solstice or something. Is there going to be an eclipse? Will the skies turn blood red and rain frogs-that kind of thing?”
“Nothing special about it at all. It’s Thursday. There’s a new moon. Might rain.”
“That’s it,” I said, aloud. “New moon. No moon. Darkest night of the month.”
Vampire picnic day.
Mama saw, and the same thought occurred to her.
