“Affirmative,” Grinner said. “Whatever you need, Ballard, it’s already gonna cost you double, ’cause it’s you.”
“Oh come on, really?”
“After how you did Magdalena dirty, you’re lucky I’m taking your calls at all,” Grinner said. “She was the best fucking thing to happen to your miserable ass, and you pissed it away.”
“Look, that was almost a year ago,” I said. “Give it a fucking rest.”
“Double,” he said.
“Well lucky for me I got the money to handle that,” I said.
“Yeah, this week,” Grinner said. “You still owe me thirty K for debugging that shitty Herobrine thing that was killing people. I got mouths to feed, motherfucker.”
“Calm your tits, Grinner,” I said. “Add the thirty thou to my bill for this one; I’ll wire you the money when we land. Okay?”
“What idiot is giving you his ATM card?” Grinner asked.
“The idiot I want you to dig up everything on,” I said. “His name is Theodore Ankou.”
“The fucking alien mobster!” Grinner said. “Have you lost your fucking mind, dealing with those ass-probing motherfuckers?”
“He’s not an alien,” I said, “he’s Fae … okay, well, they’re kind of like aliens … but not exactly.” Grinner made a whistling flying saucer sound, like something from a fifties monster movie. “Knock that shit off,” I said. “I want everything on him, his business, and his family, especially his daughter, Caern. She’s been in the wind since 2009.”
“Oh, don’t make it too easy for me, Ballard,” Grinner said. “Okay, fifty large plus the thirty you owe me. Hell, let’s just go ahead and round that to a nice, even hundred thousand for that ‘tits’ comment … and how you walked out on Magdalena.” I sighed.
“You’re a fucking brigand,” I said. “If I didn’t know it was going to the baby and Christine, I’d tell you to piss off. How is your beautiful wife and little Laytham?”
“In your fucking dreams.” Grinner chuckled. “Little Turing is doing great. His mom is still a fucking smoking-hot sexy kitten MILF, and for some god-awful reason she still loves the hell out of you, hillbilly.”
I heard Christine shout out in the background, “Hi, Ballard! Thanks for paying for Turing’s college!” I laughed.
“Better than you deserve, asshole,” I said to Grinner, “both of them.”
“Got that right,” he said. “Okay, man, I’ll get on it once I see the digits in my account. Try not to have a close encounter with a rectal probe if you can help it.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I said, “I’ll send pictures. Talk soon.”
“Out,” Grinner said, and I was listening to flat, dead silence over the line. I called one of Ankou’s people on the number he had given me and arranged for the money to be wired to Grinner’s dummy account du jour. I asked one of the nice attendants for another drink and snuggled up across the aisle from my new bestest buddy. A few benzos from the bottle in my pocket, some more scotch, and I tiptoed past the sandman into the realm of drugged, dreamless sleep.
* * *
We landed at the Athens International Airport. It was pretty much like every other major airport I’d ever been through, a bland cross between a shopping mall and a subway station. It did my heart good to know that the birthplace of western civilization had three frozen yogurt kiosks. From here we’d take a hovercraft over to the island of Spetses, where the super-rich played, while the folks here on the mainland watched their life savings crumble like a temple to Apollo.
I made a quick stop at one of my drops in an airport locker here. I grabbed a few useful odds and ends, some of my clothes, fake IDs, and a fresh burner cell phone. I stashed a hunk of the cash Ankou had given me for a rainy day. Other people had houses, bedrooms, closets. I had dead drops: bus, rail, and plane lockers, and bolt holes. There was a photo of me and August Hyde taped to the door of the locker. We were laughing, sitting in a cafe in Rio. For a second, all the years folded like a paper fan, and I was beside him in that Thule bunker in the Argentinian jungle. His rune-covered Browning Hi-Power blasting away at the rustling things that had once been men, coming out of every shadow. I heard his voice, calm, like a teacher instructing a pupil, which I guess in a way he was: “Grab the brain slides, Laytham! Get the brain and go for the stairs, boy!” I pulled the picture off the locker door, crumpled it, and dropped it in a trash can alongside greasy Sbarro boxes and discarded luggage claim tickets. I wish memories were as disposable.
There was a bulletproof luxury SUV waiting for us on the tarmac. As we drove into airport traffic, Burris and the driver spoke softly in Greek. The knight leaned back to talk to me from the front passenger seat.
“They told me they have a boat waiting to take us over to the island. The Ankou family has a house overlooking a private beach on the northwest side of Spetses. We’ll be staying there. Caern’s apartment is in the city on the eastern side of the island.”
“Yeah, I caught some of that,” I said. “My Greek’s not as good as my Latin, but it will do. Kind of weird for a thirteen-year-old kid to have her own place in the middle of party central, ain’t it?”
“Not if you’re this kind of rich,” Burris said. “Caern was a very independent kid after her mother passed away.”
“What was your read on her?” I asked. The driver had turned onto a congested central street. Thousands of protesters were clogging the entrance to a large skyscraper that was corporate headquarters to one of the nation’s banks. The protest had spilled out onto the street, and cars were honking, drivers shouting and gesturing angrily as traffic had slowed to a crawl through the chanting, equally angry mob. Our driver swore under his breath.
“My opinions are
