I’m skipping town now anyway, so you should deal with the, uh, drapes. We’ll see each other again.” He laid a couple of bills on the table. It was more than enough to cover the check. “And I wish Curly-Head had waited on us. That was supposed to be part of the plan.”
Damn. He was leaving, and I hadn’t gotten anything truly useful out of him. “Wally, at least tell me how to stop the drapes.”
He snorted. “Is that how you’ve been doing it?
I stood out of my chair and turned toward him. He stepped back, looking up at me in surprise and delight as though I was a plot twist in an exciting TV show. I reached into my pocket for my ghost knife.
But Wally had already placed his fingers in his mouth. He pulled out something small, wet, and red as blood. It was round like a Ping-Pong ball and gleamed like metal. Then it unfolded legs as long and slender as needles.
Wally tossed it over the counter into the kitchen. “Choices, choices,” he said and took one step backward. He passed through the wall like a phantom.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Damn. I was tempted to run out the front door after him, but a scream from the kitchen changed my mind. I vaulted over the counter.
The tile on the other side hadn’t been mopped recently. I landed on grease and nearly fell on my ass. I heard a clatter of shell on stone and a man’s cry of fear and disgust from the kitchen. I pushed through the door into the back.
It was a kitchen much like any restaurant kitchen. Everything was stainless steel, and the three Hispanic men at the stove were dressed in white with black hairnets. The tallest of them shrieked like a little girl and staggered back, away from the creature that was scuttling across the floor at him.
A short man snatched a huge pot of water off the stove and dropped it onto the creature. Boiling water splashed into the air, and the heavy pot clanged like a muffled bell.
Then it fell on its side. Steaming water rushed at me, and I jumped back too slowly. It sloshed through the fabric of my shoes, scalding my feet.
The little predator wasn’t affected. It charged at the man who’d dropped a pot on it and jumped onto his leg. Then it began to dig.
The man screamed and grabbed a ladle. He hit the predator with all his strength, trying to knock it away, but the ladle crumpled and the predator didn’t move an inch.
Blood splashed onto the floor and the predator burrowed deep into his flesh. The man fell, screaming full- throated now. His co-workers backed away in terror, screaming themselves.
I charged through the scalding water, grabbed the cook’s torn pants, and ripped them up to his thigh. The predator was visible as a bulge moving under his skin. I took my ghost knife and slashed through it.
My spell passed through the man’s flesh without damaging it, but the creature inside him was another matter. It exploded into a fireball as large as a basketball.
The cook, mercifully, fainted. I snatched a pot off a hook and filled it at the sink. Then I poured it over his burning clothes. The other cooks stared at me, dumbfounded. I said: “What do you think? Ambulance?” One of them blinked and lunged for a phone.
Wally’s waitress was standing at the edge of the kitchen, her body hunched in shock, her mouth hanging open. Behind her, also dressed in a waitress uniform, was Violet. “Vi, check your voice mail!”
I didn’t wait for a response. I ran out the back door into the parking lot, desperate to find Wally again.
I sprinted to the side of the building where Wally would have come through the wall, but there was no sign of him. I scanned the area, looking for a blob of a man in green. Nothing. The predator he’d thrown into the kitchen had distracted me, but not for more than a minute or so. I didn’t think he’d had enough time to get into a car and get away.
Unless he’d brought a driver. That would have been a smart play, but I didn’t believe for a moment that Wally had a friend in the whole world. Which would mean he was still on foot. Was he in one of the other stores, watching me? Was he walking through them, building after building, wall after wall, down the entire block in a place I couldn’t see him?
Violet came outside and edged toward me. She looked afraid of me. “Ray, what the hell is going on?”
“How well do you know the guy I was sitting with?”
Under other circumstances, she would have snapped at me for answering a question with another question. I wondered what my expression looked like. “Not at all,” she said. “He’s just a creep who’s been coming around lately.”
She was lying again, but I didn’t have time to press her on it. “All right. Listen: I think he’s still nearby, watching. I think he’s going to make sure he lost me before he goes back to wherever he’s staying. So I’m going to walk away, and you’re going to stand in the window of the cafe and watch for him. Understand? I’ll be back in five minutes or so.”
“What happened to my apartment, Ray?”
“I’ll explain what I know later, but I can’t let this guy get away.” She didn’t look convinced. “Vi, all you have to do is stand in the window and watch.”
I could see she didn’t want to do it. She didn’t want anything to do with Wally King at all, and I didn’t blame her. But then she nodded and looked away from me. Thank God.
I ran to the sidewalk. If Wally had kept going in a straight line, he would have gone back toward Vi’s apartment and my car. After one quick look around, just in case I got lucky, I headed in the opposite direction.
I wasn’t sure how far I should go. I wanted Wally to have enough time to feel safe and hit the sidewalk again, but not so long that I couldn’t catch up to him. As long as he didn’t have a car stashed nearby … I didn’t want to
