substance could get. It plopped against the steel, slid down less than an inch, and turned into a rust-colored lump.
Slamming his door shut after hopping into the car, Cole tried not to look at the old man yelling at him from the other side of the street. “I just thought of something. Are we coming back to clean this stuff off?”
“No, why?”
“First of all, it’s gross. Second, it’ll just keep attracting Half Breeds, won’t it?”
“Nah,” Paige replied. “It stops smelling in about twelve hours. By tomorrow it’ll have dried up and blown away like any other glob of snot.”
Cole held the bottle up next to his face. “Eco friendly and full of fiber. Operators standing by.”
Paige was still shaking her head when her phone rang. Digging it out of her pocket, she looked at the screen and then flipped it open. “Yeah?” After a few seconds she shook her head even harder. “I don’t need to hear this right now.” She listened and furrowed her brow. “If you don’t have anything specific, save it for later. This isn’t the time for half-assed predictions.”
“Who is it?” Cole asked.
Paige looked over and mouthed the word
Sensing the approach of a hang-up, Cole asked, “What’s going on?”
“Here, talk to Cole. I’m driving.” With that, Paige slapped the phone against his chest.
He took it from her and was instantly bombarded by the loud thumping of dated techno music pounding through the phone’s little speaker. “Walter?” Cole shouted. “Are you there? Can you hear me?”
“Yeah, Cole. I can hear you. Hey, after the hell we went through in Wisconsin, you can call me Prophet. What’s up?”
“Where are you?”
“Some little place outside of Minneapolis.”
A chorus of whoops and hollers came through the connection after a DJ announced that someone named Candy Mounds was coming to the main stage. That gave Cole a pretty good idea what sort of place it was. Actually, he wouldn’t expect much else. “Another strip bar, huh? How’s the buffet?”
“Actually, damn good,” the bounty hunter replied. “It’s all Chinese food. I don’t know if it’s always like this or if I just lucked out.”
“Don’t try to get too lucky,” Cole warned. “You might get arrested. Are you on a job or just trying to unload a bunch of folded dollar bills?”
“Little bit of both. Remember Shimmy’s?”
That one word was enough to bring a smile to Cole’s face. “Whenever I can.”
“Little purple A-frame in the middle of nowhere, right? Guess what this place looks like?”
“Purple A-frame?”
“Yeah! You know what’s even weirder?” Walter asked.
“The fact that you care about the food they serve?”
“No, there’s a nymph working here too. Three of them, actually. I think it’s some sort of nationwide organization or something. It covers a few states at least. This is the fifth strip club I found in a purple A-frame, so I’ll be sure to call when I got more to report.”
“That’s great. Now, what did you do to piss Paige off so bad?”
“Considering how that last batch of lottery numbers hit, she shouldn’t yell at me like that.”
“What big hit? The last one I got was just over twenty bucks!”
“Ask your partner about it,” Prophet told him. “She’s the one handling the money in Chicago. While you’re at it, remind her that I know what the hell I’m talking about. The dream I had was one of the good ones, but she still doesn’t wanna hear about it.”
Candy Mounds must have done something extraordinary because the noise from the crowd became loud enough to drown out the thumping music accompanying her. Cupping his hand around the phone, Cole shouted, “What dream?”
“That stuff going on in Kansas City. Have you heard about it?”
“Yes.”
“There’s more than just some people getting killed. I think there’s something more like what we saw in Janesville. You know, like that big werewolf?”
“I know, Prophet,” Cole sighed. “You’re a little late on that prediction.”
“Well, I’ve been busy. Also, tell Paige to keep a good eye on that little bald guy.”
“You mean Daniels?”
“I don’t know his name,” Prophet said. “She needs to watch him close so he can finish. Or maybe he wants to finish something. I don’t know much more than that, but they were both in a hell of a bad spot.”
Suddenly, Cole knew why Paige had been close to hanging up. Although Walter Nash’s psychic talents were good enough to earn him his nickname, they weren’t one hundred percent. If they were, Prophet’s lottery predictions would allow the Skinners to travel in something a lot classier than a piece-of-crap Chevy. “All right, then. Anything else?”
Prophet’s voice came through, but was intended for whoever was on stage. Finally, he asked, “Did you say something?”
“No. Talk to you later.”
“Sure. ’Bye.”
Paige pulled in a deep breath and let it out with a hiss. Having just turned onto a dumpy two-lane road headed north, she pulled over next to a gas station that looked like it had nothing but dust in the cashier’s booth and rainwater in the pumps. “I don’t want to hear any more of whatever he was babbling about. Give me the phone.” After Cole handed it over, she told him, “Now slap some bait on the side of that building. Use a lot. We want the scent to carry.”
“The scent from this crap could carry this whole freaking car into Kansas.”
“Just go.”
Having already squeezed some of the disgusting paste to the top of the bottle, Cole stepped outside, flung the clump toward the roof, and heard it slap against the wall. Paige barely waited for his butt to hit the seat before pulling away and heading north.
“What did Prophet say?” she asked.
“Something about Daniels being in trouble and you screaming at him to finish.”
“I’ve only been screaming at him to finish that damn ink for a week, and if he’d called us about that
“He did say there could be a group using nymphs to lure people into a trap or something.”
Rolling her eyes, Paige groaned, “The purple A-frame theory again? I swear that guy only comes up with that shit to justify hanging out at those bars. If he thinks he’s luring me to another one of those dives, he’s got another thing coming.”
“Shimmy’s wasn’t a dive,” Cole pointed out.
“Tell you what. Survive the next few nights and I’ll let you stuff your money into some g-strings with Walter. Okay?”
“I can taste the Chinese buffet already.”
“Prophet found a strip bar that serves Chinese food? Good Lord, what has this world come to?”
Paige glanced back and forth between Cole and the back road she was using. It was getting close to eight o’clock, so there wasn’t a lot of traffic to get in her way. There also weren’t a lot of cops along that route to prevent her from introducing the gas pedal to the floor of the Cav. After steering off the main road in favor of an even smaller one, she said, “We need to clear out as many of these Half Breeds as we can tonight. So far, there’s only been a dozen or so deaths. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less.”
“‘Only’ a dozen or so?”
“As the rest of those things get strong enough to come out of their dens and hunt, they’ll shred through entire neighborhoods before anyone puts them down. Plus, you’ve gotta think about the panic that will cause. Enough people are already carrying guns around here. What’s going to happen once they have a reason to twitch at every
