“Vishnu’s discus,” she said. “These last two years have felt like ten. I don’t suppose you have American citizenship through the Secret Eyes.”
“Not even a green card,” I said.
THE PLACE HAD possibilities, no question. But at the moment, Mason Mastiff was playing checkers with some very expensive chess pieces, moving his queen like a pawn while his bishops sat back tossing off.
“This weekend will be better,” Mastiff insisted, as we talked over the dismal dinner service. “I’ve something special to celebrate the rebirth of the Skyline.” Mastiff let out a titter.
I HAD TO ride and think this through.
In all my travels I’ve yet to find a perfume sweeter than horse lather, and, given my nature, I doubt I ever will.
I found a small farmette surrounded by promising, moonlit fields. Their stable, under a buzzing incandescent floodlight coated in spiderwebs, didn’t even have a lock. Inside a chestnut mare dozed.
Her ears pricked up as I touched her nose. In Wales and Ireland the legends say that the horses fear us; that’s why they run so hard while we’re astride. The truth is our scent excites them as much as their sweat pleases us.
I led her out, grasped two handfuls of thick mane, and swung up onto the beast’s back. Muscles quivered between my thighs as I removed the tight restraining tie from my hair. I kicked her on. The mare galloped off into the night, accepted the challenge of the three-rail fence, and we were in the dark, free and away at last.
The pounding hooves soothed me and the fresh night air cleared my head, even if it came at the price of a swallowed bug or two. I’d return the mare, sweaty and trembling, by morning. A steamy mystery for whoever came first into the barn. For now, I’d give her the ride of her life.
THE NEXT MORNING I forced Mastiff to show me his surprise for the weekend.
I found him in his office. Megha had arrived early, or perhaps had never left, and was sorting bills into three piles: Delay, Delay Some More, and Final Notice.
“You’ve been hinting at some special cuisine for this weekend. I was hoping for some input on preparation,” I said.
He winked and took me down to the kitchen. The zombies were taking turns working the mop back and forth—Buck would hand it to Tooth, who’d wring it out and hand it back to Buck, who’d wring it again and pass it back, without mop head coming into contact with the floor—as the golem slumbered in a corner, gently ticking and shifting like a refuse pile with a rat exploring within.
We passed through what served as an office and into the old dairy storage tank room. He’d converted the two tanks into cells, after a fashion, by installing reinforcing-rod grills over the cleaning hatches.
A white-painted dungeon. It smelled faintly of bleach and mice.
“Only one’s occupied. Take a look.”
“HELP ME! OH GOD, HELP MEEE!” a voice pleaded from within.
I hazarded a look. An attractive, tan, college-age human with bruises up and down her forearms and fists shot toward the hatch like an electrified cat.
“Help . . . out . . . please,” she burbled.
It came to me. I’d seen the face on the airport news. The Stensgaard disappearance. The girl had vanished from the U.S. Virgin Islands while on spring break from her college in Syracuse.
She fit the profile for a missing woman the cable media would obsess over: upper middle class, attractive, a white girl-next-door with just enough body to warrant a second look—perhaps a third if she was in her swimsuit.
“Oh, this one was expensive,” Mastiff said. “Very expensive indeed.”
Idiot. He’d probably paid two or three hundred dollars a pound, plus finder’s fees. He could have snatched a local Iowa high-school dropout for a tenth of that price.
Beyond cost, there was the danger that always came with a big media case. If word got out, it wouldn’t be just a quiet little Templar raid—they’d call in Shaolin monks and Aborigine animist spirit men. One of the rules of the long war since the rift was to keep humanity only vaguely aware of the translife world. Rouse the superstitious, ignorant masses and you get inquisitions and jihads and pogroms that hurt both sides.
“This guy’s crazy, you’ve got to listen!” she cried, white fingers gripping the bars.
“I’m inclined to agree with you,” I told her, storming out of the storage room.
We returned to the office and I asked Megha to give us a moment.
“Are you mad? A big media kidnapping victim?” I asked.
“I thought it would create a buzz. I was in Europe last fall for the yearly declarations of the Secret Eyes, and no one had even heard of the Skyline.”
“You’re not just playing with your own safety, it’s everyone who works for you. Me, too, while I’m here.”
“Oh, come come, my dear. What’s she going to do, chew through wrought iron or riveted tanks built to hold a thousand gallons of milk? Once she’s on the table and surrounded by parsnips, your worries will be over—and at the plate cost I’m charging, I’ll have a chance to put this month in the black.”
“You’re straining at a camel and can’t even swallow a fly, Mastiff. You’ve got a six-armed demon on payroll who isn’t being used to near her capacity, pouring with one hand, working her cell with another, and picking her bum with the other four.”
“I will admit Megha’s been a disappointment. Cold fish, my dear.”
“Arse-over, more like. Quit looking at the two really great tits and think about those six arms and the creativity in the brain behind, right? You should put her in the kitchen, instead of that slow-motion junkyard.”
“Then I’d have to find another bartender. I’d rather spend what cash I have left for a dazzling display of fresh food. That’ll get them over from Europe.”
Last person to try to blow this much smoke up my ass was a loquacious demon in San Juan.
“Fresh food! You’re taking the piss, aren’t you? Serving up one truly high-end dish surrounded by lashings of garbage that would choke a hellhound. Customers know a dodge when they see one. You’re from here, Mason, yet your mindset’s with those knobs in Marseilles and Prague who won’t see beyond the tip of their cardamom-dusted noses. Your locals deserve better. Let’s start with giving them your respect, right?”
“The locals! Depressed St. Louis vampires and Minneapolis ghouls. That’s not why I went into this business.”
Well, so Wisconsin grows a few snobs, too. Interesting. Still, I had to talk sense into him, or at least try.
“Forget about the fancy, high-concept menu items. You have great local sourcing, if you just think about it. In the summer, there’s enough prospects on the waterways to keep three translife restaurants going. Drunken ski-boaters, sclerotic fishermen, college girls looking for a secluded stretch of beach where they can take their tops off without getting leered at, backpackers. In the fall, you have hunting season. Talk about a buffet! There are hundreds of different ways a couple of beered-up rednecks hunting out of their camouflage-painted truck might disappear. In the winter, just snatch someone off their snowmobile and then sink it in one of the lakes, or wait for a storm and go knocking on isolated ice-shack doors. In the spring, you have teens jaunting off into the woods for the first outdoor shag of the season. And all the bird-watchers. Bird-watchers are hardly ever missed by anyone.”
“Have you ever eaten one of these good-ol’-boy deer hunters? They wouldn’t be caught serving one of them in Paris.”
“Listen, Mastiff, in Paris I could get twenty servings out of a fat old Normandy fisherman, skin salt-tanned right into a boot heel. Twenty servings at three hundred a diner, maybe thirty euros to find and haul him.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“It’s in the cooking, mate, it’s not the quality of the cut. Your infatuation with college girls—Pilates classes and whole-wheat biscuits don’t give you much flesh or any marbling. Your average Wisconsin plumber makes better grilling. Give me a braising pan and I’ll make the most leathery old stream fisherman taste like sea turtle.
