away.'
'What was Adan doing when the vampire was nailing you?'
'Making a circle and getting ready, chanting and shit over that motherfucking spook box he had.'
'He was doing magic, Jamal? He isn't a sorcerer.'
Jamal shrugged. 'Yeah, well, tell that to my motherfucking skin, D. He was spinning spells all right.'
I shook my head. 'Maybe it wasn't him. Maybe it was the box.'
'No, girl, it was him. I wasn't in your league, D, but I wasn't no rookie, neither. I know what I saw. He was using the box, but he was flowin' juice all right.' Jamal's skinless brow furrowed in concentration. 'I'll give you this, though, it wasn't normal, like we do it. He was sucking in a lot of juice, but it was different. He wasn't taking it from the street, you know, or tapping a line or a tag or anything like that. He was getting it from somewhere else, D, and it was cold, girl, that motherfucking juice was cold.'
'Where was he getting it?'
'At the time, I didn't know, and anyway, I wasn't thinking too good with fucking railroad spikes in my fucking arms. But now I know.'
I waited.
'He was tapping that shit from the place I been, D. He was getting his juice from the Beyond.'
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. In my defense, they pretty much had to given that a skinless ghost was telling me about some kind of spooky death magic.
'There was something else, D,' Jamal said. 'I think those spikes they nailed me with might have been magic, too. He didn't want to even look at them, let alone touch them. Made the vampire do all the spike work. Maybe those spikes come from the Beyond, too, you know, and that's why only the undead motherfucker could touch them.'
I shook my head. 'Maybe, but they were just spikes when I looked at them. How did they feel?'
'How you think they felt, motherfucker? They felt like fucking spikes!' He showed me the ragged holes they'd left in his wrists and ankles, and I probably shuddered.
'Sorry,' I said. 'I meant, did they feel magic, or, you know, bone-chillingly cold, or anything like that.' I saw the irritated look he was somehow managing despite the lack of a face. 'Okay, never mind.' I considered for a moment. 'The ritual, Jamal,' I said. 'Did he squeeze you?'
'Oh, hell, yeah. He opened up that box on me and I could feel it, you know, stripping away my magic along with my skin.'
'The box…it's called a soul jar. He got it from Papa Danwe.'
Jamal nodded. 'He was talking the whole time it was happening. Said it held the juice of some King Tut motherfuckers back in the day.'
'Yeah,' I said, 'it's like an organ jar. I saw this show on the History Channel. They'd pull a pharaoh's brain out through his nose and put it in a fucking jar. Only this one was made to hold a guy's juice instead of his brain or whatever.'
Jamal rubbed his nose-hole and nodded. 'I ain't got cable, D, but that's what he said, too. I'm just glad they didn't do my brain like that, girl. The whole thing with my skin was enough. When he told me that shit, I thought he was turning me into a fucking mummy.'
'Is it possible that the killer was someone else, someone using a magical disguise to look like Adan?'
Jamal looked thoughtful. 'That don't sound right. We was hanging out for a couple weeks, you know, before. Sometimes I took him home, even chilled in his crib from time to time. That night, when we left the club, he drove. It was his car, you know, that red Porsche. So if it was a disguise, it was someone living in his crib, driving his car and whatnot.'
None of it made any sense. Adan couldn't be the killer. It just wasn't possible. And yet, Jamal was certainly convinced it was him. He wasn't lying. He believed it. He just had to be wrong.
'Okay, what about the vampire? Where is he now?'
'I don't know, Domino. I can't haunt his pasty white ass, I guess 'cause he's already dead.'
'But you can haunt Adan? So that means he's alive. I mean, he's not a vampire or anything like that.'
'Yeah, D, he's alive. He's really alive. Lit up like the motherfucking fire you set off on the playground last night. I figure it's 'cause he murdered my ass.'
'What about the Papa Danwe connection? Did you ever meet Terrence Cole at the club?'
'Some of the Haitian's niggers hung out there, seemed like they knew the vampire. I never saw Terrence there, specifically, but you know, I wasn't there 24/7.'
'Okay, Jamal. I don't know what this means, but I'm going to figure this shit out, man, so you can rest or whatever.'
'Yeah, that's great, D.' He pulled out the knife again. 'In the meantime, I'm gonna go get me some motherfucking skin.'
'Jamal, I can't let you do that. I can't have you interfering in my investigation.'
Jamal laughed. 'You sound like Five-oh, D. Anyway, how you gonna stop me?' He disappeared through the wall of the bathroom and then stepped back through a moment later. 'I'm a ghost!'
I sighed. 'Yeah, Jamal, I know. At first cock-crow the ghosts must go, back to their quiet graves below,' I said, and bound Jamal's shade to the toilet in the corner stall of the bathroom.
'Damn.'
'I'll come back for you when I'm done. Shouldn't be more than a few days. Work on the solidity thing. Maybe practice flushing or something.'
Jamal was cursing me as I unlocked the door and went out to rejoin Adan. I tried to hold up my end of the conversation as best I could while my mind worked over the story Jamal had given me.
Adan was the killer. I repeated it to myself, over and over, trying it out. It just wasn't possible. The killer was a sorcerer. Adan wasn't a sorcerer. Therefore, Adan could not be the killer. I'm no Sherlock Holmes, but that logic seemed locked up pretty tight.
And yet, Jamal had seen him do it. If he believed Adan was the killer, what evidence did I have that he was wrong? He should know, after all. And Jamal hadn't just seen him do it-Adan had been hanging out with him for several days at least, maybe weeks, before he hit Jamal. That ruled out the possibility that the killer was an unknown sorcerer who magically disguised himself as Adan long enough to do the killing. Maybe I could see a way to make that angle work if I twisted it just right, but it would take a lot of twisting.
Leaving aside the impossibility of it all, I tried to reconcile all of this with the man I was sharing dinner with. He was kind, and smart, and funny and honest, and his otherwise hopeful and bright outlook on life was tinged with just a little bit of sadness and loneliness. It made him both strong and vulnerable at the same time. It made him irresistible.
And yet, somehow, it seemed that this same man had murdered at least two people with calculating premeditation in one of the most brutal ways I could imagine. He'd used a death ritual, channeling juice from the Beyond, to take their magic before he'd taken their lives.
I didn't work for the Peace Corps. I'd seen plenty of murders and done some myself. Some of my coworkers were sociopaths. But even in the outfit, there were limits. You just couldn't work with someone who likes to skin and crucify people, any more than you could keep a rabid dog as a pet. I'd heard about guys who went over that line, and they always got put down just like the dog.
This was real evil. If most of my world was shades of gray, this was all the way in the black. But what bothered me most was that I couldn't see even the slightest hint of it in this man.
Given my mood, the conversation wound down before long. We were both stuffed, but Adan insisted on ordering a Washington with cinnamon apples for takeout.
'We can save dessert for the next date,' he said. Despite everything, I caught myself smiling at him and meaning it.
We drove back to his loft and I walked with him up to the door of his building. It was about midnight, and the air was cool. I was wondering if he would try to kiss me. I wasn't sure I didn't want him to kiss me, even with what I suspected.
Adan ended my speculation when he leaned into me and kissed me on the mouth. His lips were soft, and firm and wet against mine. He tasted like garlic and chicken, but that was just the fucking pizza.
I'm weak. I responded before I even realized what I was doing. I pulled him to me and kissed him harder. He
