Hold Me Closer, Necromancer - Lish McBride [35]
“I’m not about to hand over my entire client list to you, Sam.”
“That wasn’t a no.”
“Drop it.”
I shook my head. “You don’t have Hitler in your basement or anything, do you? Tabloids are always claiming he’s still alive. Him and Elvis. Because I can’t condone that sort of thing. The Hitler thing, not Elvis. I’ve got nothing against the King.”
Douglas slammed a fist against the wooden barrier keeping us from panda country. His nostrils flared slightly before he regained his composure. “This isn’t a joke.”
Sadly, I didn’t think it was, either. “Despite your behavior,” he said, “the offer still stands.” Before the zoo, I thought Douglas was a run-of-the-mill psychotic. I was wrong. The guy must have been completely bat-shit nuts. The bad thing was, I believed him. And the even worse thing was, I was beginning to believe what he’d said about me.
“You.” I stopped and licked my lips, trying to get a handle on my anger. Count to ten. Screw it. “You killed my friend, and now you want me to work with you?” My words came out in a whisper.
“I had to get your attention,” he said.
“You want my attention, hire a skywriter. Send a candy-gram. Don’t decapitate people.”
Douglas shrugged, like all of my options were the same.
“Think of her as your first lesson,” he said.
“Her name is Brooke.”
Not even a shrug this time. “I will keep this simple for you, Sam. Join me and live. Defy me, and I will take you, your friends, and your family down one by one. I will twist and mold the facts until the Council turns against you. I will slaughter you, exterminate everyone you love, and get the Council to sanction the whole thing. No recourse, just death.”
“What Council?” I asked, exasperation leaking into my voice.
“You have a week. Use it wisely.” And he left. The psycho just walked off.
A week to figure everything out. That didn’t seem like a lot of time. Especially if the week was anything like the last twenty-four hours. My system couldn’t keep taking shocks like that.
I leaned down and folded my arms on the wooden rails, resting my chin on top of them. I watched the pandas and tried to see them as I did before, like I hadn’t looked at them in my head, but it didn’t work. My eyes kept being drawn to that third panda in the corner. Ling Tsu now had two handfuls of bamboo, one in each paw. His eyes moved back and forth between them before he threw them down in what I imagined was the panda equivalent of disgust. When your whole life was eating bamboo and suddenly that was taken away from you, what did you have? Ling Tsu couldn’t eat, and his fellow pandas wouldn’t go near him. He was alone, and I couldn’t help but think that he would have preferred to go back to that great bamboo forest in the sky. I didn’t care how much money whoever had thrown at Douglas, this felt wrong. Unlike Ling Tsu, Brooke understood what had happened. I didn’t know if that made her existence better or worse.
I threw away my cotton candy and headed out before I broke down and started crying in front of the panda exhibit. I could at least wait until I got to the car.
9
The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades
I got back to my apartment in time to see Mrs. Winalski fishing around for her keys.
“Looks like I’m not the only one out on the prowl,” she said. She waggled her eyebrows at me suggestively.
“I just got back from the zoo.”
“You disappoint me, Sam.”
I did my best to look apologetic as I opened my door. I like Mrs. W, I really do, but I didn’t feel like talking. All I wanted was to go into my quiet apartment, sit down, and try to sort everything out.
Mrs. W gave me a parting wave, and I slunk into my dim living room. Brooke looked asleep. Did she still need to sleep? Frank had positioned her as best he could in the chair, wrapping a T-shirt around her neck for added balance. I tried not to imagine her stump of a neck or that clean, sharp cut that looked like it’d been made with a hot knife. Too late. Already the vision of it surfaced in my mind.
I didn’t bother to turn on any lights. Instead, I eased down onto my couch, careful of my