Henchman: A Novel

By Apollo Villa-Real

In the Vegas Underworld, magic is money and henchmen wield magic. H is a mob enforcer for the highest-ranking capo in the Vegas Underworld–a city that coexists in a parallel plane with Las Vegas and where dead casinos experience a magical rebirth. He's one of the few wielders with the natural ability to manipulate new magic, a mysterious avant-garde energy allowing him to marry techware with ancient magic. At the start of the annual magic convention in Las Vegas, a sinister mage assassinates a wielder with the potential to represent an unknown benevolent being. The killer pins the murder on the Syndicate, the governing magical body of the Vegas Underworld. The Syndicate belongs to a society of Chambers hailing from all over the world. They have kept the peace among all members through contractual obligations negotiated every 75 years during a magic convention. This uneasy alliance is threatened by the demise of the wielder. To stave off a Chamber war, H's boss sends him on a mission to clear the Syndicate's name or an all-out war will drown the Vegas Underworld in blood.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 2, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543900545

Book preview

go…

Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah. Zip-A-Dee-A. My oh my, what a shitty day.

Alright, I veered from the original verse, but a helluva day’s now butting heads with a hellacious night. While a gazillion things shellacked my mind, a thought wormed its way into the repeat mix. Thanks to Ol’ Blue Eyes, people presumed luck is a lady. Now the jury’s still out and for sure she wasn’t pretty, but man what I wouldn’t give for a date with her right now.

Forecast called for a gentle breeze between five and ten miles per hour. Nothing gentle about what howled like a crazed wolf out here. Thing of it is, the gale was just a part of what really roto-rootered my insides free of that turkey club I scarfed for lunch. I traipsed eleven hundred feet up the Stratosphere at Vegas Topside on the outside looking in, thanks to a vig who didn’t pay up. Me and heights had a love/hate relationship. I only hated heights if the odds favored me having a face-to-splat with oblivion.

The Stratosphere exemplified a mammoth concrete fountain in the heart of the desert with a needle perched at its apex, a sneering middle finger aimed at the heavens. Tonight, the heavens took some offense. It felt like a funnel as I clung near the top of the needle. Screams pierced the air, only they weren’t the kind borne out of terror. They were thrill screams. Right below me was the Big Shot. No, not that Big Shot. Somebody had an epiphany to build a ride up here. You could strap sixteen people around a contraption that’s rung around the base of the needle, with legs dangling, and shoot them up the tower’s mast at a little over a thousand feet high before getting pulled back down to the platform. While the thrill’s still steep, they’d get catapulted back up. They met four Gs on the way up and negative Gs on the way down. Hence, the Big Shot, and I teetered right above it.

My legs stiffened at the constant strain I imposed on them. I kept picturing how I might look from the streets below. Tourists with zoom cams focusing in on me in my Armani pinstripe black slacks, a pinstripe blazer, dark gray shirt, and black Allen-Edmonds shoes making like a kite stuck in a very, very tall tree. My silk black tie flapped about and slapped my face. You moron. Why’d you get us in a tight spot like this? My slicked back black hair, well, a hurricane couldn’t blast my locks out of place. Nothing beat my Brylcreem.

Damn it, Seevers was going to cough up the magic for all the trouble I barreled through just to bring him back. Speaking of which, I peered up and found the little weasel at the top of the needle where I chased him to, posed like a poor man’s as a man thinketh statue, or in his case, a poor ghost’s as a ghost thinketh weasel. His gaze lasered holes through my hazel browns, probably scheming about how he’d get rid of me and all his debts with one big cheating hand. That’s Seevers for you. The crudest, meanest cowboy in the afterlife. At least, that was how he saw his transparent ass.

Seevers wore a clamping red vest over a white mason shirt. Black pants, brown leather boots, and a coffee-colored hat completed his whole look at me I’m a cowboy look.

This is a bit over the top, I called out to Seevers. Even for you.

Hah. Top. Good one, but you ain’t seen over the top yet! Seevers harped. He grinned, specks of plasma drool spraying every which way. Uggh. I hated dealing with ghosts. Odds favored you’d get slimed. It didn’t reek diddly on them, but it stuck like skunk in the form of a semiliquid state on you. And boy did it fight and claw to stay in the physical realm.

You welshed on La Russo’s vig, I yelled. The Drags are fire breathing down his neck for their favors, and he can’t pay up because you didn’t pay up!

More screams erupted from the Big Shot joy riders. Damn it, my head began to throb.

Ain’t my problem no more. Seevers stood up and swiveled enough to where I got a good view of the right side of his head. Honestly, it couldn’t really be called the right side of his head since technically it was the middle part. Picture his noggin as a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Now picture it with the right side carved out. That was how Seevers looked in purgatory. That and the left half of a Wild Bill Hickok-style mustache. Back in his flesh days circa 1876, his gang of outlaws got sick and tired bailing him out of gambling debts. One night they took a vote and got vicious with him. Smith & Wesson blew him a kiss and designated him left-brain dominant. His ghostly version still sported everything he had on right down to the shaving nick the barber gave him that morning.

La Russo knew the score. I was denied land living privileges, and he still spotted me the favors to get topside. He’s just getting it in the neck, Seevers said. Can you just back down?

He sprinkled plasma on my hair and suit. Again screams from below. Missing the point here, I said. I was sent to take you back down. I’m not a negotiator.

Got that right. Still sniffing the Big Bug’s ass, I see. Seevers grinned, white teeth glowing; about the only things still intact in his head.

Don’t go there, Seevers.

What is it with the Big Bug, anyway? I’m a speck to him. What the hell does he care if I go off and have myself a hog-killin’ time up in this burg?

You welshed on La Russo and Big Bu—Giordano offered him protection. I’m bringing you in. One way or another.

Seevers stood there all silent and foreboding. I couldn’t tell what thoughts pervaded that half a head of his. A sudden gust forced me to readjust my grip. He paid no mind to the winds because he wasn’t in any danger of getting blown off. Unlike me. Screams cried out from below again. I envied the riders’ ignorance to my matter at hand. Of course, their ignorance stemmed from the cloaking jinx I’d cast before I climbed up the needle. Limiting the involvement of orfs in Syndicate matters was always a prudent course of action.

Another, Seevers finally said. He slid his hands down to twin holsters hanging from both sides of his hips. Crap, I didn’t notice them before. He coolly pulled out twin Colt .45 Peacemakers and aimed them right between my eyes.

Oh fudgesicles. Now here’s the sitch when it came to ghosts. There were frighteners who could thump a few chandeliers and maybe make the bed shake a bit on call. I referred to them as special effects phantoms. They scared the hell out of unsuspecting orfs, but that’s where their oomph ended. Then you had transcenders. These yahoos transcended … yeah, I know … the boundaries between the spirit world, life in-between, and the physical plane, except they had the ability to scrape up energy from each level of existence. It was akin to a serrated spear piercing through skin, slicing through bone, and stabbing into vital organs. And that was only the initial damage. Once the spear was pulled back, it’d yank innards out the entry wound. A little bit of something gutted from the body. I referred to them as pains in the ass. Seevers was a transcender. His ghostly Colts could blow holes through me just as easily as real ones. Maybe with a lot more punch.

Rebecca and Lucy’d like you to reconsider your offer. Seevers thumbed back the hammers. You’re ace-high in my book. Hate to end you before your time, partner.

I stared up the barrels and at Seevers for a good three seconds. His index fingers twitched back against the triggers. He wasn’t going to extend me a fourth.

All right, all right, Seevers. Geez. You off me and the whole Syndicate’s gunning for you.

Yup. But it’d buy me some time to play the tables and whore this burg a bit. Meantime, you’d be dead as a doornail. Seevers snorted at the cliché. Well, it probably wasn’t a cliché to him. Plasma flicked from his nose and caught me in the coif.

I hated cocky bastards, especially when they messed with my hair.

Point, I said and raised my open right palm. You’ve made a persuasive point.

Another gust nearly slapped me off, but my left hand managed to keep a grip on the metal tower. Screams erupted from the ride once more.

Get a wiggle on! I ain’t got all night, Seevers waved his Colts at me.

I nodded and took a step down when Staying Alive rang out from my cell phone. I squinted at Seevers. Can I take that?

Are you tipped? Answer it when you get downside! he said.

I should’ve checked in an hour ago. If I don’t take this, Giordano’ll think you iced me, and he will come after you, magic unleashed.

Seevers got quiet real fast. Hard to figure out what a ghost missing half his brain was thinking. And I probably shouldn’t have done it, but I found myself ticking my head to Barry Gibb when he got to the Feel the city breakin’ and ev’rybody shakin’ part. Yeah, Seevers could have slugged me a third eye, but man I dug the Bee Gees.

What’ll it be, Seevers? Slime oozed from his exposed brain.

The ghost motioned both guns at me. Go on!

Good call. I slowly reached inside the right outside pocket of my jacket and pulled out my cell phone. It was a beaut, if I did say so myself, that took some heavy-duty time and effort to construct. An amalgam of tech and magic all integrated into fancy, thin, and intelligent. Two of three sexy traits I found in my women. I swiped the screen before popping the phone up to my ear. All the while, Seevers locked me in his cold sights.

Hey, I answered before falling into a long pause. Yeah, I know. Except I’ve run into a bit of a snag.

Seevers spat out a wad of green slime that barely missed me.

No, no, I continued. We’re handling it. But … well … I rolled my eyes and shook my head at Seevers. By this time, he shot me an impatient glare.

Okay, okay, I said. I offered my phone up to Seevers. It’s for you.

Me? Seevers wondered. What the hell would I want to talk to the Big Bug for?

I shrugged. Fresh offer’s on the table.

Nobody bulldozes me, he harped.

It’s no strong arm, Seevers. You’re not getting deader if you take a second to listen to the proposal. I kept the phone raised. You hate what you hear, you can always hang up.

Seevers’s jaw clenched, teeth gritting but unable to prevent a river of green slime from dribbling out the side of his mouth and down his chin. Finally, he slid Rebecca into his left holster. Ya’ll better not be chiselin’ me.

Seevers climbed down the needle. Really, though, he could’ve just Caspered his way over to me, but part of being a ghost was having a semi-mental block they weren’t living anymore. I mean, they knew they were dead, except natural acts sometimes felt more reassuring to them than performing a bunch of supernatural feats such as walking through walls and flying. Doc Sig once explained it all to me over a night of brews, only it got real tough hanging out with him for any length of time because guess what natural acts occupied his brain?

I kept my phone propped up to Seevers while he kept Lucy aimed at my forehead. He stopped right above me, his foot practically over my head. Seevers bent down and reached for my phone without realizing that other than his feet, he wasn’t holding onto the needle anymore. Before he could snag my phone, the wind whistled a symphony and knocked me a little off balance again.

Well, hold still now, will you! Seevers spat some plasma the consistency of a loogie onto my hair. A stifled giggle that reminded me of a fat guy sitting on a metal chair and sliding it across the floor galloped out of his throat. I held up my arm stiffly, offered Seevers my phone once more, and politely smiled.

This time, he grabbed my phone and asked, How the hell do you use this contraption again?

I motioned to my ear. Stick it by your ear and say hello.

Seevers nestled my cell to his right ear. Hello?

His body froze. What the hell—

The crazed cowboy shattered into itty bitty pieces as my cell’s receiver sucked him into my phone, which fell into my waiting hand.

I stared at my phone’s display screen, Seevers’s pissed off eyeball cursing at me. Trapped in my little ghostnapper, he shot off Rebecca and Lucy with no effect on me.

I scrolled left, right, up, down, and all around, sliding him all over my screen. Yeah, Seevers, ghost busting, there’s an app for that.

I didn’t normally get this worked up while on a job, but the ghost messed with my coif, and nobody messes with my coif. Payback was an angry old hag. Or in my case, a royally ticked off henchman for the Vegas Underworld. Not that underworld … the under underworld.

I always gained access through the Charleston underpass entrance. It’s a little bit nostalgia and a whole lot more strategic positioning. In fact, it could just be the earliest existing avenue into the Vegas Underworld, but a lot of orfs and outsiders weren’t aware of it, and that suited me just fine. In my racket, the less potential threats knew about the lay of the land, the less chance somebody’d get the drop on me and set either me or my employer on a premature date with some daisies.

I whirled Sly through an enveloping pitch-black void. I mean, it was so dark I couldn’t even make out the dashboard. The void carried a second effect. A numbing absence of sound. Not that I’d ever gone space walking, but I figured this to be a similar experience, minus the suffocation and death by freezing. Probably why I’d never gone floating around in space. My headlights did the only illuminating, casting a flood of light a mere seven, maybe ten feet ahead. The brilliance sliced up the darkness into inky blotches that swirled away as if in water. I had laced Sly’s headlights with algae bits scraped from the rim of the well of lights, the same stuff I illumined into my cell phone’s bright screen. It was the only thing capable of piercing through the dark energy buffering Vegas Topside from Vegas Underworld. Too bad it proved ineffective against the silence. I could handle being temporarily deaf, except what really sucked eggs was no Bee Gees in this neck of the woods.

I drove around fifty-five miles an hour, imagining the steady drone of my engine to keep the cashews from overrunning my brain. My ride, on the other hand … way different story. It was sit back and relax time because he enjoyed pretty much any drive as long as he was vrooming along. Sly was my black-and-silver, although he preferred ebon-hoary, ’67 Sunbeam Tiger I discovered rotting in a junkyard. A wiseguy with no wisdom for wheels and no respect for Maxwell Smart gutted Sly to pay off an overdue debt and left him for dead. After I found him, it took me a year of hobby time to restore him to vintage and then some. Sly already resonated character. That’s what living in a garbage can did for you. I needed him to be pretty except tough enough to look like my ride, so I got smart, buffed away his red coat, polished him in black with silver trim, and emblazoned his moniker above his model name. Dominoes leathered his seats while his dash shone brighter than Galahad’s nuts. I liked it, but more importantly, he loved it. That’s the story of me and Sly. Orf men had best friends. Me? I had Sly.

About half an hour in, the blackness finally dissipated and pinholes passing for twinkling stars began perforating the sky. A ringing in my ears gradually grew louder, culminating in a clang of cymbals that heralded the return of my hearing. Whew. Another reason why I spun this route was the crappy atmosphere. You had to be pretty damn desperate or insane to want to trudge through all the dark muck just to bag somebody. I’m neither, as far as I could tell, but my reasons sometimes called for desperate or insane.

With the void at my rearview, I found myself zipping through a desert of sorts. I used the term sorts because all sorts of deserts made up this region. Saguaros in all their profane glory mixed in with pious Joshua trees, acacia shrubs, and sand dunes. A grayish-brown, yellow-eyed elf owl perched on one of the Saguaros and stared at a howling coyote with the same expression I would’ve given him, a shut the hell up I’m trying to enjoy the view kind of look. Mountains flanked a sea of salty sand where winds sneezed and blasted the granules through the air. If I parked Sly off to the gutter, I could easily take in the resplendent view, sip a few of my handcrafted brew, and knock back a ham sub or two. Yeah, it all looked delightfully breathtaking and all, but one thing I knew it wasn’t … was natural. The whole thing was piecemeal. A jigsaw puzzle of what someone thought a desert should look like. I really didn’t have the foggiest who played exterior decorator with magical energy, only that this section of the underworld was alive long before me.

The road snaked along for a few miles, but I already spotted a glowing halo above the horizon. It seemed as if I were still about thirty miles out. In the physical sense I was. In the magical, the veil lifted in nothing flat, and I had to swerve sharply to the left to avoid plastering a cherry red Magnum PI Ferrari. A couple of panicky honks from oncoming traffic jarred me back over to my lane. It took me a second until my faculties realigned and discovered I was cruising the downtown strip of the Vegas Underworld. Almost immediately, I sensed the allure of the high-rise casinos lifting their neon-light skirts and batting their glittering eyes while beckoning spells enticed me with offers to patronize their local establishments. Magical marketing at its finest.

The Vegas Underworld was an interesting mishmash. It mirrored Vegas Topside, for sure, except the casinos populating it stretched across the eras from the thirties all the way to whatever cut the edge. It had something for the customer stuck in Bugsy’s heyday to whatever the trendy sushi crowd explored as debauchery. The one thing they all shared, though, was the aroma of new magic. Hints and slivers really, but present just the same. This was weird in itself because no one here could actually manipulate the stuff. New magic was relatively new. Yeah, yeah. Accounts of it first surfaced around the 1870s, twenty or so years after the Industrial Revolution. Leopold, one of the more scholarly wielders of the era, wrote in his journals of a new rhythm suddenly permeating what was with an energetic sensation distinct and unnatural. Is this meant to constrict or evolve us? That Leopold, big on the big words with just the right prophetic question to pump a little fear or hope in the hearts of the masses, depending on which point of view was taken. Up until that time, old magic, which was entrenched in the elements of earth, fire, wind, and water, ruled the four corners.

Traditionalists, the majority of wielders, grudgingly referred to new magic as the stench of usurping magic because it threatened to undermine the natural world with the integration of technology. Me? I thought of it as an alliance between tech and the forces of nature. Of course, it might be a bit of bias on my part since I could actually manipulate the stuff. My use of a cell phone testified to that fact. Now, I wasn’t always this way. I conjured traditionally until, well, honestly I couldn’t say for sure, but by the time I hooked up with the Syndicate, I was pretty adept with it. And I was one of the rare ones, too. Come to think of it, I didn’t know anyone else out there who could control it like I did.

I bypassed the strip and whipped a right turn on Virgil Street. Beaten path didn’t do this road justice. I went from glitz and glamour to a hazy fog that paid homage to limbo. Gravel replaced paved black street as Sly crunched and kicked loose pebble around until I spotted a sign up ahead, towering above the haze. Two forty-foot taupe poles held up a rectangular white fluorescent sign with crimson lettering that read, Cattleman’s Steakhouse. I pulled into the parking lot clogged with anything from buggies and muscle cars to carriages and limos from varied decades. This restaurant hopped for a joint crafted solely from timber and a good distance from the action of the strip. It bore more than a passing resemblance to the Cartwrights’ ranch house in the Ponderosa. I wedged Sly between two angry monster trucks and layered my car with a ding spell once I got out. Yahoos these days didn’t respect a man’s ride to begin with. When they got a load of Sly, they presumed they could pick on him on account of his slight frame. Funny thing, though, I never latched the spell for Sly’s protection. I did it because he gets a bit sensitive, and when he got sensitive, he could get downright mean.

A line of customers, human and otherworldly, weaved from the Cattleman’s entrance and curved around a wooden farm fence outlining the perimeter. I sidestepped all that hoopla and strutted into the mobbed lobby with a rhythm I perfected listening to my Bee Gees. A painting of Big Tony, a little Italian guy with round-rimmed glasses and gray hair peeking from a bulky black cowboy hat threatening to swallow him whole, greeted me with a heartfelt grin. Big Tony was the owner who hailed from the old country and loved spaghetti westerns and cooking, in probably that order. Once he made the trek down here, he traded in capo lineage for Wild West culinary ambitions. Good choice since he grilled the best damn butter-drenched steaks underside or topside. Above Big Tony’s picture hung Rashaki’s horns. Barbed wires sprinkled with Arctic dust held the bull’s stickers frozen in several existences. The cocky beast lost them in a duel with Big Tony back in the twenties and instructed his horns to escape first chance they got. Big Tony needed to conjure up a jinx capable of manacling the horns to his restaurant across four different planes. They’d been reluctant trophies ever since.

I nodded at the brunette hostess wearing a willow green Homestead dress that covered her up from neck to boots. Without breaking stride, she flashed me a curt smile, motioned me into the dining room, and went right back to reading off guest reservations. She knew the drill.

My footsteps clunked on wooden floorboards as I popped into the main dining room. Oak tables and benches were spread across a lower deck while curled red vinyl booths hugged the walls. I headed to one at the rear of the restaurant, somewhat isolated from the rest of the place. A man with stitched black leather gloves attired in a smoky velveteen jacket draped over a black V-neck satin shirt relaxed at the center of the booth. A glass of red Nebbiolo simmered by a half-eaten T-bone steak with all the fixings already mauled beyond recognition. As long as I’ve known Giordano, or Giordi as he allowed his friends to call him, Nebbiolo had been his only wine of choice. T-bone dinner, though, meant something perturbed him this evening. Giordi didn’t carry that stereotypical godfather look about him. Thick, dark brown hair, shorter on the sides, above the collar, and slicked forward with an upward curl over his forehead gave him a contemporary style, and he held the countenance of youth … rare for a don of the underworld. He won his position early, taking out his predecessor only when the Syndicate lost their faith in his mentor Don Mancini, and he needed to maintain the peace, or bloodshed would have painted Vegas in Hawaiian punch. That whole ordeal flavored a taste so damn caustic in Giordi’s mouth he refused to stick the title of don in front of his name. Yeah, it was just a title, but it was his way of respecting Don Mancini. Giordi played by Syndicate rules when it came to the letter of the law only to stretch them every now and again so the powers that be knew exactly who controlled the entire outfit.

Even before I got to his table, Giordi began to rise to his feet to greet me. Like I said, he wasn’t your typical boss.

Don’t get up on my account, Giordi, I said, sliding into his booth.

Giordi clutched the sides of my face and kissed both my cheeks. It was all traditional stuff, but it wasn’t a comfortable custom for me. Let’s just say he’s the only guy I’d ever permit to plant some wet ones on my personage.

And you let the little things bother you too much, Giordi said. He pointed at a waiter garbed in a white dress shirt, blue jeans, and cowboy boots about five tables down. The waiter bolted to our table with that sparse talent of attentive speed minus the fidgety fear and overzealousness.

Your poison, H? Giordi asked.

Sarsaparilla. Nuke it for thirty seconds. Whipped cream topped off with a dash of powdered sugar, I said. The waiter gave me the look. I think I lost him at nuke it.

Just tell Pepé. He’ll know, I said. The waiter nodded and left.

Can never order the simple stuff. Giordi grinned and took a sip of his wine.

Life’s complicated. May as well make my drinks complicated, I said as I cased the joint. Giordi quit using bodyguards once he gravitated to his rank. He preferred to limit his associates to a select few because more betrayal opportunities existed when one’s inner circle catered to clutter. Instead, he relied on some wicked guardian spells to protect him at a moment’s notice. For me, though, you can’t ever be too careful, and good old-fashioned once-overs with the naked eyes never hurt anybody.

The old cowboy in the bag? Giordi collected his fork and knife, stabbed his steak like it would have leapt from the table, and sliced off a chunk with one swipe. Just about everything in his demeanor oozed etiquette except for how he cut his meat. He held his fork up, the piece of steak still pronged, red juice trickling back onto his plate.

You can say that. I tapped at my cell phone hiding in my jacket’s inside chest pocket. I’m about to drop him off at the containment fields.

Giordi shook his head. No. No. That can wait. Something’s come up. He slid the sliver of meat into his mouth and closed his eyes when he chewed. Giordi sported a pencil-thin, dark-brown stache and the beginnings of a soul patch speckled in white. The muscles rippled in his square jaw with every chomp and caused the mole nestled above his left cheekbone to dance. When he opened his eyes, a purple haze settled over their natural charcoal hue. He clanked both fork and knife onto his plate and flicked my arm as if trying to get my attention, which he already had in spades.

There was an incident topside. Magic convention, Giordi said.

Incident? What kind of incident? I asked.

Giordi grabbed a napkin sitting on his lap and wiped his mouth. The kind with seismic repercussions.

His lips bulged around as he slid his tongue over his teeth trying to loosen stuck meat.

Okey-dokey, Giordi. Repercussions. Am I supposed to guess what happened here?

Sorry, H. My head’s already trying to figure out all the angles out of this mess. Giordi tossed his napkin onto his plate, got quiet for a few seconds before finally giving me the goods. "Somebody whacked a candidate."

I blinked a couple times. The waiter returned with my drink order. Right on time, too. Not a second after he set it down, I transported the liquid goodness down my throat in one gulp. The waiter eyed me curiously, opened his mouth, and then thought the better of it. He’s earning his dough tonight.

Should’ve seen my first two Nebbiolos, Giordi said.

So I heard you right?

You heard me right. Shame, too. Kid’s nineteenth birthday’s in a couple days. Guess we’ll never know, huh?

I nodded as Giordi’s gaze strayed off to nothing in particular. The whole thing was unheard of. Whacking a candidate? Never been attempted, let alone pulled off. Who would want to, anyway? Three candidates came along once every couple centuries, all born the same year and day, down smack to the exact second. Each carried the potential to be a messenger of an unseen benevolent being. Peace, love, happiness, and all that jazz. Candidates posed no threat to the pecking order of mage business, though some postulated they sometimes influenced certain events bereft of favoritism. Once their nineteenth birthday rounded the clock, one would rise above the other two and fulfill his design.

Yeah. Shame that, I said. Know who done the deed?

If it were a hit on a boss or even a Chamber head honcho, I’d have a laundry list of ideas. But a candidate? Giordi shrugged. Who whacks a candidate?

Where and when did it happen?

Giordi popped me a look I had a hard time dissecting. Sleight of hand exhibit. About three hours ago. He made like he was choking so his overseer Heimliched him, and then— Giordi swiped his wine glass and took a hearty chug. A Jovian lightning orb shot out of his mouth and a second later the crowd was coughing up his ashes.

You sure it was a Jovian—

Hey, I’m just going with my sources here.

And they verified it?

They did the ritual test. You can’t get any more authentic than that, Giordi said.

Geez, I think Pepé needed to fix me a stronger drink. It’s tricky enough business to concoct a lightning orb. But a Jovian lightning orb was damn near impossible without the time, ingredients, some of which I’m not sure even existed anymore, and expertise.

Somebody had to have seen something, I said as a waiter zipped by with somebody’s rack of barbecue ribs. I nabbed a lungful of the savory hickory scent, my mouth watering.

"Yeah, a whole room full of somebodies watched a disintegrating corpse. Giordi’s words skated on a razor. This could go south real quick for us, H. Chamber negotiations in two days. Some of them revere the