Blind God's Bluff A Billy Fox Novel - By Richard Lee Byers Page 0,39

have moved you, or you wouldn’t have healed him. Are you afraid of Timon’s revenge? Because you don’t have to be. If you make a deal with one of the other lords, he’ll protect you.”

“That isn’t it,” I said.

“Then what?

I wasn’t sure I could put it into words that would make any sense. Or that wouldn’t make me sound like a selfish scumbag. So I went a different way.

“Look,” I said, “I get it: Timon’s the devil. But I watched Wotan eat some poor person he murdered. Gimble beat the shit out of Clarence just to make it look like he didn’t stick me on purpose. Leticia messed with my brain just like Timon messed with Rufino’s, and the Pharaoh tried to mangle my soul. Maybe there isn’t any difference.”

A’marie’s eyes kept drilling into me. “You don’t know anything about our world or how we live. All you’ve seen is the lords’ stupid game. So don’t try to tell us you understand them and their ways better than we do!”

“I wasn’t,” I said, although I guessed that really, I had been.

“Please, A’marie,” Mrs. Rufino said, “it’s all right. He’s done so much already. We can’t ask—”

“It’s not all right,” snapped A’marie, “and I can ask! Of course we’re grateful for what he’s already done. But we need him to help everybody, not just one person!” She turned her glare back on me. “If you won’t do it because it’s right, do it because I stopped Leticia from hurting you.”

“And then I stopped her from hurting you,” I said. And was sorry as soon as the words came out of my mouth, since A’marie had only been in trouble because she’d stuck her neck out for me.

I could tell from the way her mouth twisted that she agreed with me that it had been a dick thing to say. “Fine,” she said. “Do what you have to do. Help Timon, take your money, and go away. We’ll fix our own problems.”

With that, she turned and disappeared down the dark hallway. Her spindly goat legs moved in kind of a delicate, mincing way even when she was mad and stamping along.

After that, there wasn’t much to do but ask Rufino and the family if they knew their way out. It turned out they did, so I didn’t have to help them look for it. I borrowed one of the hurricane lanterns—A’marie had taken our candle with her—and climbed the stairs back up to my room to put on fresh clothes.

There was a manila envelope leaning against the bottom of my door. And maybe all the danger and craziness was making me paranoid, but I got a bad feeling as soon as I saw it.

But it probably wasn’t a letter bomb, or the magical equivalent of one, and I couldn’t just stand and stare at it all day. I picked it up, tore open the flap, and dumped out what was inside. It turned out to be a cell phone.

A gift from Timon, to replace the one he’d blown up? I doubted it was his style to be so thoughtful. I flipped it open and checked for stored numbers and messages. I didn’t find either one.

Feeling edgy, I unlocked the door, carried the phone inside, and set it on the table in the middle of the dirty breakfast dishes. I was just pulling on another shirt when it rang, playing a bland little riff of tinny electronic music.

I snatched it up and said, “Hello.”

At first, nobody answered. I wondered if I should throw the phone across the room before something supernatural and nasty jumped through the connection. For all I knew, that kind of thing could happen. Then a girl said, “Billy?” I could tell from the catch in her voice that she’d been crying.

All of a sudden, my throat felt clogged. I was scared in a way I hadn’t been even when all the finhead impersonators were coming at me with their knives. “Vic?” I answered.

“They beat me up,” she whimpered. “And they say they won’t let me go until—” Then she wasn’t there anymore.

“Vic?” I said. “Vic?”

“She’s all right,” Rhonda Sullivan said in her husky four-packs-a-day voice. “But she isn’t going to stay that way unless you bring my money.”

“I’m getting it!” I said. “I just need a little more time!”

“This afternoon,” Rhonda said, and then hung up.

My hands shaking, I hit Redial. My call didn’t go through.

I strained to push panic out of my head and think. None of this