Max leaned against the doorjamb. Like many really tall men, he favored the disarming slump. Tonight, though, he just looked tired, not insouciant.
“I’ve got the best glasses down,” she told him.
He swung through the door, planting the whiskey bottle on a nearby countertop. “We don’t have to drink this.”
She eyed the four inches ebbed in the bottle. “You and Matt did that much damage? I guess I deserve an equal crack at it. You wouldn’t have brought the medicinal stuff if you didn’t think I’d need it.”
“I need it,” he said shortly.
“You don’t ‘need’ anything addictive. Never have.”
“Never have been where I’m standing now.”
“Then sit down. I’ll pour. Neat, I presume, the way the bloody British take it.”
He nodded as he passed her the bottle and she uncapped it, pouring the ruddy-amber whiskey three fingers deep in each elaborately etched glass. It glistened like amber, and Temple supposed that many once-living things had been entombed in more than one glass of hard liquor. Entombed and resurrected.
“How can I sit down?” Max demanded.
She came bearing a glass in each hand, and peered past his indignation-stiffened form to Midnight Louie sprawled like the world’s biggest Rorschach inkblot on her pale sofa.
“We move the cat. He was sitting on the coffee table just a minute ago.”
“He must have known I was coming,” Max complained, taking the glasses as Temple bent to lift Louie in her arms and return him to his tabletop post. “I don’t know if I much like him listening in.”
“It’s not like he cares what we say, Max. He’s a remarkably sensitive animal, but I doubt that English is his second language.”
Max stared silently at Louie in answer. His stare was returned in kind: intense, challenging, immobile.
Temple had the oddest feeling that man and cat could talk to one another, but that the relationship was decidedly wary.
The staring match ended when Louie rose, jumped to the floor, and stalked off into the office.
“He knows when he’s not wanted.” Temple went to the portable stereo to let Leonard Cohen’s monotone bass throb through the room. She shook her head. “If your stare didn’t do it, that music would have. Not exactly anything to cuddle up to.”
Max sat dead center in the sofa and claimed one glass for a hasty sip.
“So how,” Temple asked, sitting beside him, “was Matt?
Is he getting over that poor woman’s death at all?”
“He’s got other things to think about now. So do I.”
“The bad news you said was only half bad.”
“It depends on how happy you are to hear someone is dead.”
“Someone … I know?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Not just Vassar.”
Max shook his head. His hand didn’t shake as he lifted the glass to his lips again, but Temple sensed that it might have if he had allowed such a thing.
“Who? Max, tell me now. I can’t stand this waffling around. It’s so unlike you.”
“She’s gone. Kathleen O’Connor. Dead.”
“Kitty the Cutter dead? Not possible!”
“Believe it. Devine ID’ed her for Molina this morning, and besides, I was there when it happened. She’s in cold storage at the medical examiner’s facility, waiting for next of kin to claim her. There won’t be any. Only enemies.”
“Dead? After making all our lives so miserable? People like that don’t just … die.”
“Effinger did.”
“Yes, but you’re sure it’s her? Both you and Matt? And Molina buys it?”
“The medical examiner buys it. It’s undeniable. Even your Midnight Louie witnessed the accident.”
“Louie! He was out earlier, but … when?”
Max shook his head. “Not today. Two nights ago.”
“And no one told me?”
“Not our fault, Temple.”
“You speaking for Matt now, too? Mr. Zipped Lips?”
“Not our fault,” he repeated. “We had a lot to do. I had to call emergency personnel from a phone that couldn’t be traced to me, dump the Maxima, and stay low. Devine had to answer Molina’ s summons and go stare at the dead body. We haven’t much felt like talking to anyone human in forty-eight hours, or like explaining ourselves.”
“Or how you feel about this,” Temple added shrewdly. “Dead. For you guys it must be like … the twin towers falling. No. More like the upside-down world turned right-side up again, like gravity has reversed itself.”
“Yeah,” Max held the whiskey glass in both hands before his face, as if it were a fire capable of casting warmth and light. “Her evil pull was like some counterforce I was so used to fighting that I’ve lost all energy to stand on my own. She was out there somewhere. I’d sensed her hatred for so long, it almost seems unnatural to live without it in the world.”
“Kind of how Matt felt about his abusive stepfather.”
Max nodded. “Given a nemesis like either one of them, you start to wonder if you don’t deserve it somehow.” Max looked at Temple for the first time, straight on. “He must have thought about killing her, you know. Before he tried Vassar. He knew he could. He had enough martial arts training to do it. And she … was a small woman. Perfectly killable, except you’d become her and then she’d go on anyway, wouldn’t she?”
“Matt? It crossed his mind to kill? How can you be so sure?”
“She threatened everyone he knew and cared about. It crossed his mind. Mine too.”
Temple took a deep breath. “So that’s what you two talked about, your homicidal impulses?”
“We also talked about our mutual guilt.”
“For thinking that way, and then getting your wish?”
“For being that desperate. And then, Fate steps in and kills her for us. And now we’re feeling guilty because Fate had the guts to do what we didn’t.”
“Max, start from the beginning. How did she die, and when, and how on earth was Louie present?”
“It began Sunday night, at Neon Nightmare. I have no idea how or why your cat was there, but he ended up in my car.”
“Your car?”
“Yeah. The backseat. Must have eeled in when I left the club. Anyway, I was being my usual paranoid self, checking for any car that might be following and … thinking of other things, I admit, when that wildcat of yours comes clawing over the leather seat back into the front passenger seat, yowling and generally ripping cowhide.”
“Ooh, your car,” Temple sympathized as only the ownerof a new vehicle with a costly leather interior could. Of course hers had just a little leather because it was just a little car. Call it a Baby Bear car. “Louie knows not to scratch the furniture. I can’t imagine what got into him.”
“It didn’t take imagination. It took glancing into my rearview mirror, which I’d ignored after a few cursory checks because I was busy thinking about something else. There was a motorcycle on my tail.”
“A motorcycle? Wow. A motorcycle? It was Kitty?”
“Apparently. It was dark, the street was She was riding a black Kawasaki Ninja and she wore black leather and a helmet.”
“Then it didn’t have to be her.”
“No, but it made a lot of sense that it was her. I think she made me at Neon Nightmare. I’ve been going there, hanging out.”
“Why? It’s a hot new club, but—”
“It’s where the Synth meets.”
“You’re sure.”
“Sure? I’ve joined them. They welcomed a passé magician like myself into the fold. They assume I’m not working because I can’t, that I despise the likes of the Cloaked Conjuror, who gives away trade secrets. That I’m bitter and washed up by the newest trends in mega-magic, i.e., raise the Titanic on national TV and then make it disappear again, all in an hour minus forty minutes of ads. They may be right.”
“So now you’re mourning your career as well as the death of an enemy.”