I figured one of the grotesque goodies in my bag would help me narrow down the search for the girl. First, I needed to check out her place, which Burris had assured me had not been altered in any significant way since her vanishing act in 2009. I unlaced and kicked off my steel-toed boots, fell back onto the bed, and was asleep in short order. I awoke with the knight standing over me, jabbing a finger into my chest.
“Dinner,” Burris said and walked through the open door. He didn’t bother to close it. I rolled off the bed, shut the door, and grabbed a quick shower. I finally changed out of the Houston clothes and traded them for a Rick and Morty T-shirt and jeans. As I sat at the edge of the bed and slipped on my boots, I thought about the problem of ditching my asshole chaperone. I retrieved a little something from my bag and headed down to eat.
The spread was as top shelf as everything else had been. I pushed some food around my plate and had a few glasses of wine. Burris ate sparingly and narrowed his eyes at me across the table. “Yes, I’ll eat my veggies,” I said, draining my glass of wine. The knight sighed and sipped his beer.
“You’re a waste of time and money,” he said. “Fortunately, Ankou has plenty of both.”
“Never ‘Mr. Ankou,’” I said, pouring myself another glass, “it’s always just ‘Ankou.’ Why don’t you kiss your boss’s ass like all of his other drones, Burris? Burris … what the hell is your first name, anyway? Did they give you one when they grew you in the lab?”
The edges of Burris’s lips curled a millimeter. “Vigil,” he said. A hint of northern street accent slipped out as he continued. “My grandma told me my mamma named me that because it was a long, hard labor, and Mom and I both kept vigil. I’m loyal to my house. I’m willing to take a bullet for Ankou; I’m not here to prop up his ego. That’s enough.”
It was my turn to give him a smile. “Maybe you’re not as big a tool as I thought you were, Vigil.” I palmed the small bottle that I had taken out of my bag from my jeans pocket, hiding it with my linen napkin. I allowed my hand to pass over my wineglass, and a few drops of liquid from the bottle fell into my wine as I raised the napkin to dab my lips. I raised my glass with my free hand to toast as I put the napkin and bottle back under the table. Vigil raised his bottle of Mythos beer, in kind. “Dulcis Bacchus sanguinem et sanguinem, Gaia, sensus vestri: ut mulgeatis mea implebitur. Hoc donum tibi.”
“Odd toast,” Vigil said. “Sounds like a spell.” I shrugged and drained my glass.
“It was on a little bottle I saw once. It was supposed to hold some of the god Bacchus’s blood. I always thought it was like a prayer to the Greek god of partying.”
“Well, no partying tonight,” Burris said. “Tomorrow morning, we drive into the city and go over Caern’s apartment. I want you straight. Time to start earning your pay, Ballard.”
“I need to go over the place alone,” I said, refilling my glass and gesturing to one of the servants with the empty wine bottle. The guy took the bottle, nodded, and went around the corner. “I’m good at doing this, but I have my own way of going about it, and my way is a solo act.”
“It isn’t now,” Vigil said. I started to reply. Instead I drained another glass of wine.
“Whatever you say, partner,” I said as they returned with another bottle of wine.
We retreated to the den. I made a play for the remote, but Burris snagged it first. I figured I was doomed to an evening of watching ESPN, but to my surprise, he stopped when he spotted Reservoir Dogs. “I love this movie,” he said, stretching out on one of the couches with his second beer. “I’ve seen it a hundred times.”
“Same,” I said. An odd question tumbled into my brain. “So who do you think is the good guy in this? The cop or the thief?”
“Both,” Vigil said, “and neither. They both have a code and they both honored it. Sometimes a code is all you have to keep you human, keep you standing upright and breathing.”
“And sometimes it gets your ass killed,” I said. A weariness settled over me and I realized how many oaths I had broken, how many promises I had failed or threw away on an altar of selfishness and self-aggrandizement. I knew who I was dealing with now and it made me a little sadder. I had hoped Vigil was an idiot, a drone. He wasn’t.
Vigil glanced over to me on my couch, nodded at the screen where Harvey Keitel was being a total badass. “It ain’t no Pulp Fiction, but this cool?”
“Yeah,” I said, “cool.”
I downed two more bottles of wine, a bottle of Sans Rival ouzo, and a few beers. Vigil stopped watching the flat screen, which was the size of a small movie theater screen. He looked at me,
