Wally watched my face, waiting. For a moment, I thought he might try to sell me something.
I said: “You’re not telling me anything new.”
“You’re the first real threat they’ve been able to put into the field in decades.”
I looked away. Annalise, my boss, was ten times more dangerous than I was. She could tear my head off with one hand, and she wasn’t the most powerful member of the society by any means. I was a guppy in a shark tank. “That’s bullshit and bullshit won’t work on me.”
He laughed. “You would think so, dude, but I’m one hundred percent serious. You killed Ansel Zahn, man!” The rail-thin old woman at the next table looked up from her book at that, but Wally was oblivious. “You killed the last of the Hammers. You took out a whole swarm of cousins, too. And those were just the top-of-the-marquee names. Do you understand how badass that is?”
I glanced at the woman beside us. She watched us warily and looked about to bolt from her seat. “He’s talking about videogames,” I said. She sighed and returned to her book.
Wally grinned at me with his gray smile. “And then there are all the regular folks. I didn’t know you had it in you. I tried to get my hands on the police report—”
“Shut up.”
“No, really! I wanted to find out how many bystanders you killed in Washa—”
“Shut up.” I wanted to hit him so bad I could barely breathe, but I didn’t know what would happen to the people around me. They would be just like the people I’d killed in Washaway, innocent victims—only this time it wouldn’t be self-defense, it would be sloppiness.
Luckily, Wally wasn’t interested in pushing me. “Okay, dude. Be cool. I’m just saying it’s like I went to grade school with the Seahawks’ quarterback. People are talking about you.”
That, I didn’t like. “Tell me about the ‘thing’ Melly was supposed to help you with.”
“Why else would you want an invisible person? I wanted to steal something that’s moderately well guarded.”
“A puzzle,” I prompted. He smiled and shrugged. “But you couldn’t get it.” His gaze became a little distracted, as if I was boring him. Either he didn’t want to talk about it or there wasn’t anything to say. “You’re TheLastKing,’ right? That was you last Christmas in Washaway, right?”
He focused on me. I had his attention again. “I was never in Washaway.”
“But you were the one feeding information to …” The faces of dead people came back to my memory, and I stopped talking. I couldn’t say the names of those dead men out loud.
Wally held up his hand, his thumb and index finger almost touching. “Teeny, teeny bits of information, but it was enough to get them running out there with their checkbooks and shotguns. They didn’t matter, though. Not really. They were in the way.”
“Wally, tell me about the thing you’re planning. What part did Caramella have in it?”
He laughed. “Forget about the thing. I wish I could. Anyway, she already did her part.”
“You …” I’d almost said killed her, but the woman with the book was still too close. “The drape already took her, and it almost got me, too.”
“That’s the risk we face when we call these things,” Wally said, absentmindedly touching a lump on his chin. “But wait, what did you call it?”
I shrugged, feeling vaguely embarrassed. “I had to call them something, so I’ve been thinking of them as drapes.”
“Hah! In the book, they’re called Wings of Air and Hunger, but I like your name better. Less ridiculous.”
The word book pushed one of my buttons. “Wally, I want you to turn over your spell book and all copies—”
“Ray! I can’t believe you’d try that shit with me.”
“Excuse me,” the waitress said. She set a plate in front of Wally and a cup in front of me. “You can’t use that language in here. If you do it again, you’ll have to leave.”
Wally beamed up at her with his sickly face. It was a nasty smile. “I hear you.”
She left. Wally picked up a hard-boiled egg and popped it into his mouth—he didn’t even peel the shell off first—then gulped it down like a snake. “Ray,” he said, as he cut his sausage patties in quarters and stacked them. “Don’t try that ‘turn over your books’ crap with me, okay? It’s insulting. First of all, I’m not one of the power-crazy jagoffs you’re used to dealing with. I’m trying to do some good here.”
“Tell that to Caramella.”
“And her boyfriend, too, probably.” He looked at his watch. “Should have happened for him first. And the rest of them soon enough. But I’m sorry about that. Seriously. I know that drapes are painful, and I’m not looking to cause a lot of pain.”
I laughed at him. He shrugged and looked sheepish. I said: “They’re bringing more of their kind.”
Wally stabbed the stack of sausages with his fork, stuck them into his mouth, and swallowed them all without chewing. I wondered how his throat could squeeze them all down. “Good thing I brought you and your buddies down to take care of it, then.”
“I’m going to take care of you, too.”
The lumps on Wally’s face suddenly shifted position, as though something under his skin was moving around. His body hunched up, bulking around his neck and shoulders.
“Whoa,” he said. “Hold on, let me deal with something.” He closed his eyes and took deep breaths as though fighting the urge to puke. After a few seconds, he smiled again. “My passengers didn’t like that you said that. Don’t, okay? It’d be embarrassing to call you here under a white flag and break the truce myself.”
“Christ, Wally. You have predators inside you.”
“Oh, yeah, Ray. You’d be surprised by how many. I’m a different thing than you’re used to facing. Man, the whole world looks different to me now. Literally. Did you know that some outsiders don’t use light to see? Now I’m sharing that gift, too, and it’s wild.”
“You’re carrying predators for their abilities? Are you fucked in the head? What could be worth that?”
“Oh, well, they let me fly like Superman, and I can hork Chubby Hubby ice cream through my nostrils. Right? Dude. Come on. You expect me to just tell you? We’re not exactly pals—for now, anyway—so I’m not going to tell you everything I can, you know, do. That would be showing my hand.”
“Showing your … Have you looked in a mirror lately? You look like you’re dying right in front of me.”
“Looks bad, feels good; that’s what I say.”
“Christ. You’re so fucking stupid.”
“Hey now,” Wally said. He didn’t seem offended at all. “I have power, Ray. Not Ansel Zahn levels, but I don’t have to take the risks his type takes, either. All I had to do was put a protective spell on myself—a permanent one—and summon a couple something-somethings into myself. I keep them fed, and they share their little tricks with me.”
My hand twitched as I resisted the urge to grab my ghost knife and start cutting. It could destroy the mark that protected Wally from his predators—wherever it was—turning them loose on him.
Except that was absolutely forbidden. No one in the Twenty Palace Society was allowed to feed a predator, ever. When I killed Wally, I was going to have to do it some other way.
He kept talking, oblivious. “Ray, I’m sure you could find a way to kill me if you really tried, but it would not be easy. Then, if you survived, you’d have my little buddies to deal with. But you shouldn’t try. You want to know why?” He gestured toward his face and neck. “Because I’m making sacrifices to do some good here.”