“What’s that? You don’t need money. Near as I can tell, you don’t need anything. You’re supposed to be past needing.”
“You never get past needing, Miss Riley. You see, I’m not on some mad, eternal quest to fulfill my life’s mission. It’s my wife. She’s out here somewhere, lost amidst the thousands, millions of ghosts that wander this city. Every night, I look for her. I will keep looking for her until I find her or until the last shred of my will falls to dust as my body did more than a century ago. La Calavera claims to know where she is, Miss Riley. She says she will take me to my wife.”
“She hasn’t, though, has she? You took the Xolos and handed them over to her, but she hasn’t kept her part of the bargain.”
Abe laughed bitterly. “Honestly, Miss Riley, I’m not at all sure she even knows. She says I haven’t yet completed my service. I think she just wants to keep me on the string. But I haven’t lost hope. Not yet.”
“I understand you must have loved your wife, Abe, but why do you have to find her? How do you even know she’s out here? She could be waiting for you on the other side.”
“I know because I killed her, Miss Riley. I put her here. She can’t rest until she has her revenge and I mean to give it to her.”
“Why did you kill her?”
“‘Suffer not a witch to live,’ Miss Riley.”
“She was a witch?”
“Not a powerful one, and in the end, it was that lack of power that corrupted her. She started with small things, little charms and spells meant to ease people’s lives. But she was so frustrated with her limitations, so angry that she couldn’t do more. In those times, things were different and even a little power was hard to come by. She pursued that power into ever more esoteric arts and her magic became blacker and blacker.” Abe blinked and cleared his throat. “Well, the darkness was stronger than she was, Miss Riley.”
“Where is La Calavera holding the dogfights?”
“I don’t know. The Mocambo club is the center of her empire.”
“Wait, I’ve heard of that place-it was famous back in the day. But it closed a long time ago. It used to be over where Sunset Plaza is now.”
“Yes, I believe the site is a parking lot,” Abe said. “The club was torn down in the mortal world, Miss Riley, but it wasn’t torn down here.”
“Okay, how often does she have the dogfights?”
“There is no set schedule. I’ve heard she holds them a couple times a week. They aren’t widely advertised. Only the Mocambo crowd hears about them, and I’m told invitations are exclusive.”
“Does she keep the dogs at the club?”
“I don’t know that, either.”
“How can you not know where the dogs are kept or where she holds the fights? You’re stealing the Xolos for her.”
“I do not run with that crowd, Miss Riley. I deliver the dogs to a secluded overlook in the hills. I hand them over to her thugs. Then I leave. I do not know where they are taken after that.”
“Okay, that’s a soft spot in her racket, then. Here’s the plan. You set up a meet. When the mooks show up, we ambush them and get the Xolos’ location out of them.”
“There will be no more meets, Miss Riley. I have already explained to La Calavera that there are no more Xolos for me to bring her. You understand, only the psychopomps are able to enter the Between.”
“Yeah, I get that,” I said, thinking of Caesar. “Still, you could tell her you missed one. The thugs wouldn’t know we were hustling them until it was too late. It could work.”
“It would not. It would be…irregular. In addition to being a very old spirit, La Calavera is a gang boss. She does not like irregularities. She sees them as potential threats, because they almost always are. She would sniff out your trap before you even had a chance to spring it.”
I wasn’t exactly on a roll as far as traps were concerned, so I was willing to take Abe’s word for it. “How do we find the Xolos, then?”
“Perhaps you could track them the way you tracked me,”
Abe suggested.
“You can’t keep using the changeling’s glamour, Domino,”
Adan said. “Especially for shapeshifting. It will kill you-it’s only a question of when.”
I nodded at Abe. “Yeah, I could probably track a Xolo if I could get a good whiff of one. But it doesn’t help me much if I have to find them before I can find them.”
“If the shapeshifting magic is a danger to you, perhaps it will not be necessary,” Abe said. He glanced at Adan and then back at me. “You must secure an invitation to the dogfights. If you were to infiltrate La Calavera’s inner circle, you will learn where the fights are held and you may be able to discover where the Xolos are kept. If not, you will have an opportunity to catch their scent so you can track them as a last resort.”
“That’s not bad, Abe. Not bad at all.” I looked at Adan and cocked an eyebrow. He nodded. “So how do I infiltrate La Calavera’s inner circle?”
“You’re going to need an introduction,” the ghost-hunter said, “someone with enough juice to get you by security at the Mocambo.”
I knew just the person. The only question was how much it would cost me. eight
The piskies escorted Mrs. Dawson back to the condo. Adan and I went to call on the Burning Man at his warehouse in Van Nuys. The shapeshifting and other shenanigans had taken their toll and I desperately wanted sleep. But I wasn’t sure how long it would take the Burning Man to get me in at the Mocambo club, and in the meantime, my city was being overrun by zombies. Like the man said, I’ll sleep when I’m dead.
We let Abe go. Even if I’d had a mind to punish him, I couldn’t think of anything I could do to him that he hadn’t already done to himself.
Adan’s relationship with the Seelie Court meant he had contacts in the Between, but none of them were likely on good terms with La Calavera. So it was the Burning Man or bust. We walked into the mist in the cemetery. When we came out in Van Nuys, it was full daylight-granted that “full daylight” in the Between amounted to a dim yellow illumination that suffused the air like pollution. The warehouse looked exactly as it had the last time I visited, when I’d purchased Ned from the Burning Man. The Asian gangbanger who’d been standing guard out front had been replaced by a Latino gangbanger. The AK slung over his shoulder looked about the same. There was no challenge this time-the kid opened the office door as we approached. “Go on up,” he said in Spanish.
A small group of thugs lounged on battered vintage office furniture watching the Stooges on an old black- and-white TV. They didn’t acknowledge our presence and I didn’t see any reason to interrupt their show. We crossed the small room and climbed the metal staircase set into the far wall.
When we reached the upstairs office, the Burning Man was fully combusted, a human torch standing behind an ornate wooden desk. Greasy smoke twined from the curled strips of burnt flesh that still clung to his bones. He smiled as we entered, and a little tongue of flame escaped between his blackened teeth. We shook hands and the fire caused me no more discomfort than it did the Burning Man.
“You’re looking fit as ever,” I said, as we took our seats in front of the desk. The Burning Man grinned wider and a thin clump of burning hair and skin fell from his scalp and drifted slowly down to rest on the desk. He brushed it aside.
“Domino Riley,” he said, “it’s a pleasure as always. And Adan Rashan-it’s an honor to finally make your acquaintance. Tell me, Miss Riley. I’ve learned of your promotion, of course. How goes the war?”
I shrugged. “Same as it ever was.”
“Yes, well, that’s not what my sources tell me. The dead walking the earth, demons on the rampage-it all sounds positively delightful. In wartime, of course, one must assure that one’s army is well armed. What is an army without arms, after all?” The spirit laughed, belching smoke. “I see you still carry Mr. Earp’s Peacemaker… I trust you haven’t forgotten our arrangement?”
“No, you’re still my supplier for weapons in the Between,” I said. “I just haven’t had occasion to call upon your assistance yet.”
“Until now,” said the Burning Man.
“Right, except I’m not in need of hardware at the moment. I came to see you about another matter.”
The Burning Man was whole again. He smoothed the lapels of his dark gray suit and shot the cuffs. He
