Fancy-Ass Concierge, unless you can tell me how somebody got in my room last night.
You ever wake up somewhere and don’t remember where you are? For me, it comes from living out of a suitcase too long—every hotel room starts to look the same. Doesn’t matter where I go—Jakarta, Kigali, Los Angeles—one hotel runs into another, so that after awhile you begin to think the whole world is one big lousy Continental Breakfast—all stale rolls and bad coffee.
Until the night you wake up next to a werewolf.
It’s not like I’m a stranger to spooky shit—in fact I was born into it. Trust me, I come from a whole family of death-worshipping freaks, so you can hardly blame me for being like I am. How do you think you’d have turned out if both your parents were brutally murdered by their own kin—and your grandparents too? Don’t worry, I’m not gonna start sobbing or anything; I’m over it. Killing each other is practically a tradition in my family, so as far as I’m concerned they deserved what they got. As do most of us. Some a bit more than others…which is where I come in.
You might say I’m here on family business. But I suppose you know that, right? I didn’t exactly come here for the scenic attractions; as you may imagine, I’m not really a fun-in-the-sun type. I’m more of a night person—which is why it’s usually very hard to catch me snoozing on the job.
My only excuse for last night is that I was drugged. I’m thinking it was the room service I ordered—probably the coffee, because you can hide anything in crappy coffee, and I drink a lot of crappy coffee. Whatever, it comes down to your responsibility, Sam—the buck stops with you, buddy, you’re the go-to guy for this joint, so you’re the man who is going to tell me why I woke up tied to my bed with a fright-masked psycho bitch next to me. That’s bitch in the literal sense; I’m no sexist. But seriously, what the hell was that all about? I mean, no one puts out the DO NOT DISTURB sign expecting to be disturbed, especially by some kind of fucked-up female laughing hyena; it’ll mess with your faith in the basic tenets of Western Civilization.
Here’s the kicker: “Welcome home, Peter,” she screeches in my ear. “Long time no see.”
Peter, she sez. You get that? There aren’t too many people alive on this Earth who know me by that name, and I prefer it that way. So while I was trying to guess how I’m acquainted with Miss Nude She-Wolf, I notice that there’s another person in the room, a really big dude sitting in an armchair at the foot of the bed. I couldn’t lift my head long enough to get a good look at him, but he’s a real piece of work, a tattooed Goliath with the face of a wild boar. No bullshit, I’m talking tusks and all. I’m not a skinny guy, but this pig-faced motherfucker made me feel malnourished.
“Peter,” he sez to me, he sez, “you’ve changed.”
I was still doped up, so for a second I wondered if I was hallucinating the whole sick scenario. “Buddy, you mutht have the wrong room,” I said, slurring a little like Mike Tyson. “The cothtume party ith down the hall.”
“Listen to me carefully, Peter,” sez the pig-man. “We know why you’re here, and we want to help you.”
The she-wolf nuzzles my ear and coos, “We’ve been expecting you.”
I’m not gonna tell you what they did to me next, but suffice to say it was nonconsensual. At some point I passed out, only to wake up this morning as if it never happened. But I know it did, and furthermore I think you know it did. So what I need from you right now is everything you know about this—and I mean everything. Because if I find out later that you were lying to me about any little detail, no matter how small and insignificant, we will have a problem. My method of attacking problems is with a pair of pliers, like these here. Let me give you a small demonstration of exactly what I mean.
Say ahhhhh.
* * *
“Mom! Lookit that!”
“I know.”
“Lookit that!”
“I know, I know.”
“Lookit that!”
“I know.”
When Henry and his mother first saw the Avalon waterfront, the whole place seemed exotic, magical. It was everything he ever dreamed of in one place: a carnival midway surrounded by aquarium-clear waters—an island, so