The moment we let go of each other, a geyser of black sludge erupted from the kitchen sink.
Straight on till Morning
The goop rained down on us like black gold, Texas tea.
I swiped it out of my eyes and hurried to see if Chuch was all right. “Should we call an ambulance? Does anyone know CPR?”
“I’m certified.” Saldana knelt beside Eva. “Does he need resuscitation?”
As if in answer, Chuch fell out of his chair and hit the floor with a thump, but Eva shooed us away as she felt for a pulse. “I think he’s okay. He’s just out. What the hell happened?”
“An excellent question.” I raised a brow at Jesse. He was either unspeakably clever for sabotaging things this way or a careless idiot in this instance. “You brought someone else’s diaphragm? How many do you have lying around?”
”Just the one! I really thought it was hers.”
Eva glared. “Never mind that. Can you two help me get him in the shower?”
I assumed she was talking to Chance and Saldana, so I got out of the way. Dolores sighed, looking around the filthy kitchen. “No ice cream, huh? I’m going home to take a shower. This was not the most fun I ever had.”
“It was nice meeting you.” That sounded lame, even to me.
Dolores rinsed her hands and then snagged the carton of Cookies ’n’ Cream as she headed out. I didn’t blame her. If I wasn’t covered head to toe in this gunk, I could use some ice cream therapy myself.
The two guys grunted as they carted Chuch down the hall to the bathroom and dropped him in the tub fully clothed. He came to a few minutes later with the water beating down on him. “What the f**k . . . ?” The mechanic tried to scramble up, slid back against the shower wall. “Shit, that hurt worse than the time the Chevy fell on me.”
“Shhh.” Eva brushed the wet hair away from his face. “I’m so sorry, mi vida. I didn’t know it would be like that.”
“Something’s very wrong,” Chance said. “They were still able to hurt her after death, and through her, you.”
“It has to be a warlock with a flair for necromancy. Who else could work a sending, summon shadows like Maris described, and torture her spirit after death?” Saldana’s mouth compressed, and he looked at me. “They did something to her so she couldn’t talk, and if we don’t free her, she’ll go mad. Look, I know you’re searching for his mother”—he glanced at me, inclining his head toward Chance—“but I’d consider it a personal favor if you’d help me with Maris along the way. We can’t leave her like that.”
I agreed, but I hoped it wouldn’t come to a choice between sparing a dead woman from an eternity of torment and freeing Min. We had limited time and manpower. Maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t him. Maybe Saldana was being straight with us.
Or maybe he’d been ordered to get inside. I wished I didn’t like him so much.
“Go see if Booke’s still awake.” Chuch sounded hoarse from all the screaming.
We filed out of the bathroom, letting Eva take care of her husband. Jesse caught my arm. “I’m heading home. Need anything else tonight, sugar?”
“No,” I said first. And then I thought of something. “Could you do me a favor?”
Saldana raised a brow, and I sensed more than saw the sharpening of Chance’s attention. “Probably. Maybe,” he amended, having some experience now with my requests.
“Run Kel Ferguson and Clayton Mann for me? They’re a couple of a**holes with a score to settle. I’m not sure they’re smart enough to do it through a third party like Min, but make sure they’re still in jail, okay? I want to rule out their involvement in this mess.”
“Sure.” Jesse nodded. “That I can do. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“All right. Thanks.”
Once Saldana left, Chance murmured, “Good use of him.”
After I got a towel from the linen closet, I went to the computer. I found the IM icon without too much trouble and managed to say Hi to Booke in the little window. He answered right away, even though it had to be close to two a.m. there, if not later.
Hello, Chuch. How are you? he replied.
It’s not Chuch. This is Corine. Can we talk? I don’t type very fast. That was an understatement, as it took me about five minutes to get that written.
Absolutely. I’ll call. Just click the accept button.
I could handle that, I hoped. As Booke said, it was just that simple. His voice came out of the speakers sitting to either side of the monitor. “Hello, can you hear me? Is everything all right?”
“No, not really.” I outlined the evening’s events for him as succinctly as I could. “Chuch thought you might be able to help.”
“I miss everything,” Booke said, sounding disgruntled. “This is what I get for living in Stoke. All we have is pottery.”
My geography sucked. I couldn’t even imagine where in Great Britain that was, not that it mattered. “Anyway, what’re your thoughts?”
“Well, your friend is right.” I heard pages rustling. “There’s a spell known to practitioners as spirit wrack. It’s quite dangerous as it bonds the life force of the warlock to his undead minions. Very few will risk it, as a sudden termination of the link may result in an excruciating death for the practitioner. It offers control over them, however, even in the afterlife. In this way, the departed can be bound to objects, forced to serve as oracles or—”
I interjected, “Could it be used to torture spirits? Prevent them from telling someone what they know?”
“Yes, I expect it could.”
“How do we stop something like that? Assuming we can find the one responsible.”
More noise, as he rummaged for answers. I imagined an old-fashioned library spilling over with musty tomes. “He’ll have charms to represent each spirit under his control. Sometimes they use figurines, sometimes gems. I’ve encountered a few who wear them on their person for peace of mind. If they’ve bound many servants to feed their power, this results in a shocking display of personal adornment.”
So we might be looking for a pimped-out warlock.
“Smashing the figurines or gems would do the trick?”
“Yes, if they’re breakable. You might have to melt them down if he’s used iron or steel for durability.”
I sighed. “Great. So to free poor Maris, all we need to do is track down a warlock, steal his charms, and destroy them. Somehow. How do you know all this anyway?”
“I blame my father,” he said with a low laugh. “Isn’t that cliché? But he specialized in the work of Aleister Crowley, the Golden Dawn, and that sort of thing. He wrote more than one scholarly treatise on the subject. After he died, I took his studies in a more . . . arcane direction.”
“Ah, well, thanks for your help. It’s been invaluable.”
Booke spoke in a warning tone. “This is a serious player we’re talking about, Corine. You’ll have to get through wards, possibly guardians, and the warlock himself. It’ll likely mean killing someone. Are you prepared for that?”
“I am.” Chance had come into the office in his bare feet. Maybe it was a strange thing to notice, but he had beautiful feet, perfectly arched and elegant.
“Oh, hello. Chance?” Booke sounded almost disappointed that our tête-à-tête had been interrupted.
I was a sucker for voices, so his rich, smooth accent provided me an awful lot of fantasy material. In real life he was probably sixty-seven, had bad teeth and no ass, but not in my head, dammit. In my head he was the suave, sensitive Englishman from black-and-white movies who, for reasons inexplicable to me, lost the girl to Humphrey Bogart.
“Yes. And I know it’s going to get rough. It already is, in fact. That’s why I want Corine out of here,” he added pointedly.
I laughed at the idea of him enlisting a virtual stranger to his cause. My respect for Booke went up a notch when he answered, “She strikes me as a smart, capable woman.”
Maybe he had nothing to base it on, but that was nice to hear. I mean, damn, I drove from Shreveport to Mexico City all by myself and managed to get myself a shop on a shoestring budget. So yeah, I felt like I could take care of myself, but I understood Chance’s concern. This wasn’t a typical situation.
That didn’t mean I intended to abandon him to it.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said to Booke. “I may be in over my head, but I’ll swim.”
“Or drown,” Chance muttered.
I ignored that because I heard the frustrated concern lacing his words. He carried a lot of guilt about the Mann incident, and I’d made it worse.
“Thanks,” I said. “How come you’re up at this time of night anyway?”
“Insomnia. Hope I helped a bit. Let me know how it turns out, and . . . thanks for keeping me company a little while.” The software chimed as Booke disconnected.
After easing to my feet, I stretched. “We should go clean up the kitchen.”
Chance sighed but he didn’t argue. “That’s the least we can do.”
“Agreed.”
When I faced him fully, I tried not to laugh. I’d seldom seen him looking less than pristine, and there he stood, spattered in black slime. He swiped a hand across his cheek in a boyish gesture and succeeded in smearing the stuff down his jaw. My expression must have given me away.
“I know, I know. Come on, you.” He started for the kitchen.
“Shit.”
Chance stopped in the doorway, offering an impatient glance over his shoulder. “What’s the matter now?”
“We ruined Chuch’s new rug after all.”
I hadn’t heard him laugh like that in so long.
Before I followed him into the kitchen, I went back to the computer. The idea that Min had ties to Boys Town had been working on me quietly ever since we found the link in Saldana’s office. So I hesitated, hands on the keyboard. Did I really want to do this? Yesterday I’d wondered whether she’d been a working girl. Would learning that change how Chance felt about her, about the mystique surrounding his conception?
He wouldn’t pursue this angle. I knew that. With a sigh, I typed, “Asian prostitutes Nuevo Laredo Boys Town” into the search field. Google rewarded me with close to two thousand hits, foremost a mention of the infamous donkey shows. But the third hit offered me a picture of an Asian themed brothel that resembled a red pagoda.
I stared for a moment in silence, wondering about the link. Where did the women come from who worked there? How did Min get out of Korea?
Well, if we knew that, we might have the answers we needed to find her.
So I simplified my search criteria to “Korean prostitutes in Mexico,” hoping for a wider result. That time I got nearly 87,000 hits. My stomach twisted in knots as I read the headlines of various articles:
PROSTITUTION RINGS ON RISE
THIRTEEN CHARGED IN GANG IMPORTING
PROSTITUTES
HUMAN TRAFFICKING & MODERN-DAY SLAVERY