The driver dropped me off in one of Ashland’s seedier downtown neighborhoods, ten blocks from my actual destination. Storefronts advertising cheap liquor and cheaper peep shows lined the cracked sidewalk. Groups of young black, white, and Hispanic men wearing baggy clothes eyed each other from opposite sides and ends of the block, forming a triangle of potential trouble.
An Air elemental begged on the corner and promised to make it rain for whoever would give him enough money to buy a bottle of whiskey. Another sad example of the fact that elementals weren’t immune to social problems like homelessness, alcoholism, and addiction. We all had our weaknesses and caught bad breaks in life, even the magic users. It was what folks did afterward that determined whether or not they ended up on the street like this poor bum. I gave him a twenty and walked on by.
Hookers also ambled down the street like worn-out soldiers forced into another tour of duty by their general pimps. Most of the prostitutes were vampires, and their yellow teeth gleamed like dull bits of topaz underneath the flickering streetlights. Sex was just as stimulating to some vamps as drinking blood. It gave them a great high and let them fuel their bodies just as well as a nice, cold glass of A-positive, which is why so many of them were hookers. Besides, it was the world’s oldest profession. Barring your normal traumatic, life-threatening injuries, vamps could live a long time — several hundred years. It was always good to have a skill that would never go out of style.
A few of the vampire whores called out to me, but one look at the hard set of my mouth sent them scurrying on in search of easier, more profitable prospects.
I walked two blocks before ditching the glasses in a Dumpster next to a Chinese restaurant. The metal container reeked of soy sauce and week-old fried rice. The baseball hat and fleece jacket got left on top of a homeless woman’s shopping cart. From the threadbare condition of her own green army jacket, she could use it. If she came out of her rambling, drunken binge long enough to notice they were even there.
The neighborhood got a little better the more blocks I walked, going from drug-using, gang-banging, white trash to blue-collar redneck and working poor. Tattoo parlors and check-cashing joints replaced the liquor stores and peep shows. The few prostitutes who trolled these streets looked cleaner and better fed than their tired, gaunt brothers and sisters to the south. More of them were human, too.
With the pieces of my disguise disposed of, I slowed my pace and strolled the rest of the way, enjoying the crisp fall air. I couldn’t get enough of it, even if it was tinged with burned tobacco. Several good ole boys chain-smoked and knocked back beers on their front stoops, while inside, their wives hurried to put dinner on the table in time to avoid getting a fresh shiner.
Thirty minutes later I reached my destination — the Pork Pit.
The Pit, as locals called it, was nothing more than a hole-in-the-wall, but it had the best barbecue in Ashland. Hell, the whole South. The outline of a multicolored, neon pig holding a full platter of food burned over the faded blue awning. I trailed my fingers over the battered brick that outlined the front door. The stone vibrated with muted, clogged contentment, like the stomachs and arteries of so many after eating here.
The sign in the front window read Closed, but I pushed the door open and stepped inside. Old-fashioned, pink and blue vinyl booths crouched in front of the windows. A counter with matching stools ran along the back wall, where patrons could sit and watch cooks on the far side dish up plates of barbecue beef and pork. Even though the grill had been closed for at least an hour, the smell of charred meat, smoke, and spices hung heavy in the air, a cloud of aroma almost thick enough to eat. Pink and blue pig tracks done in peeling paint covered the floor, leading, respectively, to the women’s and men’s restrooms.
My gray eyes focused on the cash register perched on the right side of the counter. A lone man sat next to it, reading a tattered paperback copy of Where the Red Fern Grows and sipping a cup of chicory coffee. An old man, late seventies, with a wispy thatch of white hair that covered his mottled, brown scalp. A grease-stained apron hung off his thin neck and trailed down his blue work shirt and pants.
The bell over the door chimed when I entered, but the man didn’t look up from his paperback.
“You’re late, Gin,” he said.
“Sorry. I was busy talking about my feelings and killing people.”
“You were supposed to be here an hour ago.”
“Why, Fletcher, it almost sounds like you were worried about me.”
Fletcher glanced up from his book. His rheumy eyes resembled the dull green glass of a soda pop bottle. “Me? Worry? Don’t be silly.”
“Never.”
Fletcher Lane was my go-between. The cutout who made the appointments with potential clients, took the money, and set up my assignments. The middleman who got his hands dirty — for a substantial fee. He’d taken me in off the streets seventeen years ago and had taught me everything I knew about being an assassin. The good, the bad, the ugly. He was also one of only a few people I trusted — another being his son, Finnegan, who was just as greedy as the old man was and not afraid to show it.
Fletcher set his book aside. “Hungry?”
“I’ve been pushing peas around a plastic plate for the better part of a week. What do you think?”
I settled myself at the counter, while Fletcher went to work behind it. The old man clunked down a glass of tart lemonade filled with blackberries in front of me.
I tasted it and grimaced. “It’s lukewarm.”
“All the ice is in the freezer for the night. Cool it yourself.”
In addition to being a Stone elemental, I also had the rare gift of being able to control another element — Ice, though my magic in that area was far weaker. I put my hand on the glass and concentrated, reaching for the cool power that lay deep inside me. Snowflake-shaped Ice crystals spread out from my palm and fingertips. They frosted up the side of the glass, arced over the lip, and ran down into the beverage below. I held my hand palm up over the glass and reached for my magic again. A cold, silver light flickered there, centered in the spider rune scar. I concentrated, and the light coalesced into a square Ice cube. I tipped it into the yellow liquid, then formed a few more and dropped them in as well.
I tasted the lemonade again. “Much better.”
The next thing Fletcher set on the counter was a half pound hamburger dripping with mayonnaise and piled high with smoked Swiss cheese, sweet butter-leaf lettuce, a juicy tomato slice, and a thick slab of red onion. A bowl of spicy baked beans followed, along with a saucer of carrot-laced coleslaw.
I dug into the food, relishing the play of sweet and spice, salt and vinegar, on my tongue. I swallowed a spoonful of the warm beans and focused on the sauce that coated them, trying to isolate the many flavors.
The Pork Pit was famous for its barbecue sauce, which Fletcher whipped up in secret in the back of the restaurant. People bought gallons of it at a time. Over the years, I’d tried to discover Fletcher’s secret recipe. But no matter what I attempted, no matter how many batches of the stuff I made, my sauce just never tasted the same as his. Fletcher claimed there was one secret ingredient that gave the sauce its spicy kick. But the gruff old man wouldn’t tell me what it was or how much of it he used.
“Are you ever going to tell me what’s in the barbecue sauce?” I asked.