different,” he murmured acidly.
‘Miguel Caradura’ stood, and his coat and shirt rotted away to reveal a muscular torso. He donned a ludicrous, floppy top hat and pumped his fist to a house beat that seamlessly supplanted the 20s-era jazz. Even the crowd changed around them, into rave kids with light sticks and water bottles clutched in their hands. Blacklight- reactive bodypaint designs appeared all over Nyx and Lyssa’s glistening flesh, like luminescent tattoos.
Mickey grinned. “Yes?” he asked. “No. A bit past your time, isn’t this, my love? How about this, then? Any better?”
Even as he spoke the music changed to disco and Mickey’s clothes grew back into an outfit Tony Montana might’ve worn to a cockfight: an awful leisure suit in a shiny white synthetic fabric. Only his garland of eyeballs remained unchanged, while styles all around them morphed over into Afros, miniskirts, and paisley polyester.
“Mickey, stop,” Ingrid said. “It doesn’t matter.”
“But I will have failed as a host if I cannot please you.”
Ingrid sighed. There was no talking to him about things like this. “Ago, then,” she suggested. “Can we try that?”
Mickey looked displeased, but he waved a hand and the restaurant, the crowd, and the band all vanished around them on the wind. Everything and everyone except for Lyssa and Nyx, who retained their stupid 70s outfits even out here on the chaparral plain, under the flat gray sky.
Mickey himself was now the Aztec king in every detail, down to an owl-feather headdress, golden ornaments on his arms, and an abbreviated loincloth that tied in the front, one woven from coarse but colorful threads.
“Happy now?” he asked.
“You know I didn’t come to play,” Ingrid said.
“Time was you wouldn’t come for any other reason.”
“Times change, Mickey.”
“So I hear,” the King said wistfully, looking off toward the horizon. “So I hear…”
Lyssa twirled away from them, dancing to a tune only she could hear. Nyx lay on the ground, rolling around and stretching her limbs out sensually.
Ingrid eyed them, nonplussed. Turning to Mickey, she said: “Your new witch took the bait. I’m certain she did. So can you please just tell me now, are we square?”
Mickey shrugged. “When
“But that isn’t fair,” Ingrid protested. “I’ve done my part.”
The King, however, could not have cared less. He smiled, watching his concubines cavort in the near distance. Ingrid had to struggle not to get shrill. He was trying to goad her into losing her composure, and she knew it. These were the games he played.
“He’ll go to the girl first,” she said. “You know that’s how this has to work. She could be anywhere in the city, and it’s not my fault if your… your
“Not your fault, no,” Mickey said calmly. “But still your problem.”
Ingrid was angry enough to cry, as he knew she would be. She clenched her jaw and stayed silent.
Mickey, pleased with her show of resolve, turned and put his hands on her shoulders. “Be soothed, my love,” he said. “My living soldiers search for them even now, and my Tzitzimime will soon rejoin the hunt.”
Ingrid looked away. “Wonderful. The ignorant backed by the incompetent. My fate’s never felt more secure.”
The King let her go and stepped back, looking irritated. “You make a point,” he said. He considered for another moment, then turned and clapped his hands for his concubines. “Lyssa!” he called. “Nyx!”
They vanished from where they were and reappeared right before him, submissive and attentive, with their 1970s attire now abandoned in favor of simple linen shifts and pulled-back hair.
“You are to go and lead my Tzitzimime in their task,” he told them. “Yes?”
They answered in unison: “As you would have it, Mictlantecuhtli.”
They vanished again, and this time they didn’t reappear.
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Ingrid asked, folding her arms once they were gone.
“It should, I think, yes,” Mickey said. He grinned in a way that chilled Ingrid’s blood. “Madness and Darkness, Lyssa and Nyx,” he continued, looking off to the horizon again, as he was wont to do. “If he’s above ground, those two will have him.”
Chapter Nine
Lia picked up the lighter she’d found the night before from its new resting place on her bookshelf. She noted the burnt spot beneath it with a frown. But no matter. She turned, holding up the Zippo as a skeleton who dressed like a detective from a black- amp;-white movie came climbing down the tube ladder and into her underground home. Graves’ bony, segmented fingers clicked and rang against the ladder’s metal rungs. Hannah descended after him. Black Tom was down here already, projected from his catbody and appearing human again to Lia (although he remained invisible to everybody else). He kept one censorious eyebrow arched in the undead thing’s direction, but Mr. Graves’ courteous attitude was so different from that of the Tzitzimime that it was hard for Lia to believe he might be in league with them, despite the probable origin that his raw-boned appearance hinted at.
Whatever he was and wherever he’d come from, all he really seemed interested in was finding his cigarette lighter.
“Is this it?” Lia asked.
The skeleton raced over and snatched the Zippo from her hand, Smeagol-like, as soon as his shoeless, skinless feet hit the concrete floor. “
He became aware of the strange looks the women were giving him and straightened up to recover his dignity. “Uh… yeah,” he said. “Sorry. I’m not, y’know, section eight or nothin.’”
“I’d never think it,” Lia said.
“It’s just got personal meaning for me, this thing,” Graves explained, contemplating the tarnished old lighter.
“Then I’m glad I can give it back to you.”
She meant it, too. The raggedly dressed skeleton looked up at her and seemed in a way to see her for the very first time. It was hard to tell without facial expressions, but she thought he looked surprised, and maybe even humbled.
Then his swagger reasserted itself. Grinning (again, insofar as that could be done without facial muscles or lips-it was mostly a matter of skull positioning), he sauntered over to take Lia’s hand, clearly and perversely attempting to charm her pants off. That he now conspicuously lacked the endowments needed to follow through on his compulsion didn’t seem to faze him at all.
“Well, listen, dollface,” he drawled. “I am in your debt here, so if there’s anything, and I do mean
Lia recoiled when Graves took her hand and attempted to kiss it, jerking it away and shying back with a startled hiss.
It made for an awkward moment between them, to say the least.
Lia regretted her reaction as soon as she sensed Hannah’s mounting alarm over it. If Lia turned frightened of this thing that called itself Dexter Graves, then Mrs. Potter might well freak out. And who’d be able to blame her?
Graves looked down at his own fleshless phalanges. “I keep forgettin’ I’m not as pretty as I used to be,” he said quietly, by way of apology.
Lia felt guilty enough about her discourtesy to a guest that she began to protest automatically, in spite of her genuine consternation. “No, no, it isn’t that,” she said, groping for words even though she wasn’t sure what she
