would be admitting he bit off more than he can chew. Here on in, it’s a CEO family or nothing. You’d better watch your back, señor.”
“I doubt he’ll jump to an adult while he still has a decent pool of teenage victims to choose from. He’s striking at young people for a reason, and not just because they’re easier targets.”
“He wants it to hurt,” Esus said. “Your man is hurting because of something the Cabals did, and he wants to hurt them back.”
Lucas prodded Esus with more specific questions about the date and times of phone calls, et cetera, then we gave him his final half-pint, and bade him farewell.
Go-between
IF ESUS HADN’T INSISTED ON LUCAS’S BLOOD, I’D HAVE gladly given the second half-pint, for reasons both personal and practical. On the practical side, we had no food or drink to boost Lucas’s blood sugar after his “donation,” and he had to navigate the boat back to the dock. Though I couldn’t drive a boat, I could drive a car, and insisted on doing so from the dock to the edge of Miami, where Jaime removed her blindfold and took over. We managed to stay awake until about two seconds after we collapsed into bed at a little past four.
Since it was so late when we’d returned to the hotel, Jaime slept on our hotel room sofa. When I awoke late the next morning, I found a note from Lucas. He hoped to find some tangible evidence connecting Weber to the killer, either in his phone records or personal effects, the latter of which had been shipped by the crateload to Miami for pretrial searching.
Beside the note, Lucas had left a glass of water, two painkillers, and the ingredients for a fresh poultice for my stomach. Though I hated to admit it, I needed that…otherwise, I don’t think I’d have been able to climb out of bed that morning. As it was, I still had to lie in bed for twenty minutes, waiting for the pills and the tertiary healing spell to take effect. Once I could move, I showered, dressed, then slipped into the sitting area of our suite, expecting Jaime to still be asleep. Instead, she was reading a magazine on the sofa.
“Good, you’re up,” she said. “Let’s go grab something to eat.”
“Fuel up before you head back on the road? Good idea.”
“Uh, right.” She grabbed her brush, leaned over, and began sweeping it through the underside of her hair. “You like Cuban?”
“Not sure I’ve ever had it.”
“You can’t leave Miami without trying some. I saw this funky little place near the clinic.”
“The clinic?”
“You know, where Dana is.”
Jaime continued to brush her hair from the bottom, which effectively covered her face and any untoward gleam in her eye. She started to work on a nonexistent tangle. I waited. I gave her ten seconds. She only took four.
“Oh, and since we’ll be in the neighborhood, we can stop in and see how Dana’s doing. Maybe try contacting her again.”
Jaime tossed her hair back and brushed the top, allowing her to slant a glance my way, and gauge my reaction. I’d wondered what had driven her back to us. Somehow I doubted she’d really heard the news about Weber and thought “Oh, I should rush back to Miami and help out.” Last night she’d mentioned wanting to contact Dana, and now I realized this was probably the real reason she’d returned, that she felt guilty over having misled Dana and wanted to talk to her again. This couldn’t help the case, but if it would help put Dana’s—and Jaime’s—soul at peace, well, there was little I could do here until Lucas came back. So I placed my eleven o’clock phone call to Elena, then left with Jaime.
“She’s not there,” Jaime said, tossing down her amulet beside Dana’s still form. “Goddamn orientation training.”
“Orientation?” I said.
“That’s what I call it. Other necros have fancier terms. Gotta make it sound all mystical, you know.” Jaime rubbed the back of her neck. “After a spirit crosses over, you have a day or two, sometimes three, to contact them, then the ghost Welcome Wagon snatches them up and shows them the ropes. During that period, the spirit is on hiatus. Some kind of psychic door slams and you can scream your lungs out, but they can’t hear you.”
“I’ve heard of that,” I said. “Then, afterward, you can contact them, but it’s harder than it would be in the first couple of days.”