Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7

Junk Jim traveled from market to market selling human trash to Lost Ones. We'd first met when he'd sold me a broken Tom Collins unit, and we'd then reconnected when Zee and I had questioned him about where those Tom Collins units had come from. Turned out the fae syndicate were involved, which led us to a fae named Kris, who had ultimately been working for Agatha, a fae boss lady, and eventually, all roads led back to Gideon Cain—but Jim hadn't known that.

He'd been helpful, and might be again, but tracking him down was the tricky part, especially without Victor's software.

Zee made a few calls from outside the hotel wards—which had now stretched way down the street, if the distance he'd had to walk from the porch was any indication. Victor remained in the bar, offering to clean up the cake and keep an eye on Little Jimmy.

With a few minutes to myself, I sat on the hotel steps, watching the sun go down while Zee paced and chatted on his phone. He looked good—like he always did—wearing torn, baggy denim pants, paired with a figure-hugging red top that simply said Babe, in fun cursive swirls.

I was definitely not using all of this—the gremlins, summoning Jimmy etc.—as a delaying tactic for not telling Zee about myself and the Lost Ones prophecy. Once the hotel was free of critters, then we'd have The Talk . We should probably also deal with the portal, and the body up a chimney. After all that, we'd definitely have The Talk .

Zee came striding back, boots striking the sidewalk, a sassy sway on his hips that travelled through his body and made his wings bounce. "What do ya know, Karaoke Kris has been asking after me, saying he'd do anything if I remove the viral video of him getting his Rick Astley funk on. He was more than happy to give me the address for Junk Jim. Don't you fucking love me?"

I really did. Squinting into the sun behind him, I shielded my eyes. I couldn't let him down by being a loser who was too scared to save the world. "You're amazing."

"I am." He posed, planting a booted foot on the bottom step. His gold horn-ring glinted in the sunlight, shining like his grin.

"And humble."

"Right. So fucking humble—wait, what's humble?"

I chuckled, and we laughed together.

"I didn't agree to never upload the video again." Zee's smile held a sly tease. "Just that I'd take it down for now ." He tucked his phone away and glanced behind me at the hotel's main entrance. "Where's Fancy Fangs?"

"He said he'd join us later. Honestly, I think he's having a hard time of it, and the cake... That was the final blow."

"The cake finished him off? It was my cake Jimmy destroyed. Pixies are dicks."

A cool evening breeze whisked up some dried leaves, making them dance around us. It was time to get going, but I was enjoying just sitting and being with him too much to end it. "I think, maybe, your reaction to him giving you the cake was the final blow, not so much the carnage after."

"Moi?" Zee recoiled. "What the fuck did I do?"

"Well, you kinda accused him of attempting to poison you."

Zee nodded. "A legitimate concern. He is a vampire. I am a demon. We are mortal enemies. Vampires don't buy demons cake unless it's poisoned. Why are you looking at me like I'm the bad guy here?"

"Well, anyway, he's bowed out and said we can take the car, while he still has use of it."

Zee huffed, and fluttered his wings, doing that thing he did where he got all uppity because he knew he was in the wrong. "What is this sinking feeling in my chest? Because I know it cannot be guilt. It's not my fault he let Gideon Cain and Princess Buffy yank his company out from under him, or that a pixie tried to kill him and then destroyed his cake. Those are his poor life choices."

"Maybe he's sad because he felt rejected? You could have thanked him properly?"

He rolled his head in one of those eye rolls that went all the way from his horns down to his heels. "Ugh." A thought occurred to him, one that stopped all other thoughts. "Wait. With a finger up the ass? That kind of thank you?"

"Probably more of a genuine thank you, instead of whatever that weird handshake was back there. I'm not sure he's in the mood for anything more intimate."

"And that's where he's going wrong. You know what he should do? Get fucking wasted. Now that, I'd pay to see. Do you think he's a happy drunk or a grumpy drunk?"

"Can vampires get drunk?" One of Reynard's vampire sedans turned into the street and pulled up against the curb. I pushed to my feet. We had a lot to do, and not a lot of daylight left to do it in.

"I've no idea. Probably not. I bet he's a miserable drunk."

"He's only grumpy around you, which is so weird. Right?"

"Adam Vex, are you throwing shade my way? How could all this make anyone grumpy?" He swept his hands down himself as we ambled toward the car. "I am a fucking ray of sunshine."

"He's allergic to sunlight."

"Oh. Fuck. I forgot."

We climbed into Reynard's car and headed off to the part of town Zee gave directions to. On the way, we bounced around some theories regarding what a pixie might want, that ranged from cake—turns out they do like sweet treats—to more friends, which seemed a stretch, as we already knew Jimmy had a taste for mass murder.

The sun was low in the sky when Reynard's driver pulled the sleek black car to a stop under a section of raised highway. It was already dark in the shadows. Flames danced from a few burn barrels, like ancient beacons lighting the way into some kind of shanty town.

"Is this right?" I asked Zee.

"Yeah," he replied grimly, then opened the car door and hopped out. "Maybe just drive round and come get us in twenty minutes," Zee told the driver, sending Reynard's flashy car away. "Nobody here will talk to us if they see we've got vampire bling."

We walked between raised highway pillars, and a chill trickled through my bones. I hadn't brought a jacket, but the cold seemed to go deeper, as though sinking under my skin.

Rows of makeshift huts had been nailed together with discarded timber pallets, sheeting, and whatever else these Lost Ones had found. Several gargoyles hunched around the burn barrels. Demons too. They gave us the side-eye as we walked by.

Not every Lost One had been lucky enough to find a purpose, or a home, when the veil tore. Those that hadn't, ended up in ghettos like these.

"Junk Jim lives here?" I asked.

"This is the address Kris passed on."

"Kris also shot you." We walked on some more, past a young demon spit-roasting something that resembled a large rat—or maybe a gremlin. "What if it's a setup? We've had a few of those. And he really doesn't like you since you made him go viral."

"I doubt he'd risk it, but if it is, I'll be ready." Zee's bubbling tone had deepened into Lycian, Scourge of Demios mode. I wasn't the only one feeling vulnerable.

The shanty town narrowed, funneling us toward a makeshift plaza. Zee shrugged his wings away, reducing his size and obviousness. The sun must have set, because the underpass had gotten real dark. Burn barrels cast dancing shadows on the shacks, and made the graffiti on the concrete pillars flicker, as though alive.

Jeering voices and cheers rose up from a section off to the right, coming from inside a crumbling, abandoned building. Zee nodded for us to take a look, and we made our way toward the sounds. Passing through a half-crumbled doorway brought us into a room with no roof, packed full of Lost Ones, and when I managed to get a look around broad shoulders and taller Lost Ones, I could see some kind of roped-off space.

"Want me to put you on my shoulders?" Zee grinned.

"I'm not that short." After elbowing my way forward, the crowd finally spat me out ringside, where within the ring, two enormous, bare-chested gargoyles swung punches at each other. Blood and sweat glistened on their golden skin .

The crowd jeered.

"Is this legal?" I yelled, so Zee would hear me over the ruckus.

"It's not illegal ."

Right. The gargoyle on the right threw a punch that landed on his opponent with a sickening crunch. The recipient of that punch dropped to a knee, so hard it shook the ground.

The crowd lapped it up, wide-eyed and bloodthirsty. A few vampires stood out by not reacting like everyone else. The silver in their predatory eyes swirled though. Bloodlust.

"It's a way to earn money," Zee added. I glanced up at him. "No different from selling yourself by the hour. C'mon, let's go find Junk Jim."

Zee wrestled a path back out of the crumbling building.

As we walked away from the spectacle, a roar thundered, and the sounds of the bloodlust-fueled crowd going wild filled the night. It would have been na?ve to think all of this was harmless fun. There was a reason we'd hired Claymore as a bodyguard. Few dared mess with their strength. It took a lot to drop a gargoyle.

"Do you think Claymore got caught up in something like this?" I asked, as we ambled back toward the plaza.

"Claymore? Nah, that guy scoops up the fuck-off enormous hotel spiders and puts them outside with dead-fly care packages."

"He does?"

Zee snorted. "You hired the softest security guard ever. Didn't you know?"

"He's a gargoyle, I thought . . ."

"Because he's big and scary looking, you thought he'd be a violent psychopath? Adam Vex, that is prejudice."

"No, that's not?— "

"And look at you, with your sunshine-twink energy. But you're secretly a bloodthirsty murder machine."

"That's not . . . I'm not . . . I don't . . . People die. It's a thing that happens, that's all."

"Uh-huh. Sure, Kitten. They just up and die in front of you?"

"Exactly." A lot of that was to do with the curse... "Yup." Although a curse didn't wipe out my entire family. I did that.

"You're so cute when you lie. It's fucking adorable."

"It's technically true."

He chuckled. "I know we haven't had much time to talk about shit, and we will, but let me say, your camouflage is fucking perfect. Average, all-American, boring guy. That's you. Maybe a little bit too sweet and innocent, though. No real person is as nice as you."

"I am this nice. It's just some people make me not nice. Sometimes." People like Gideon Cain.

"I fucking hear that." Zee spotted a trio around a little campfire. "There's some fae. Let's ask if they know Jim."

We spent the next few minutes asking after Jim, and were given directions toward the back of the camp where most of the residents lived out of caravans and cars. I spotted Jim's familiar van and nodded for Zee to follow. The words Junk Jim had been painted on the side, and a whole lot more about Jim's life began to add up.

As we approached, Jim hopped down from the front passenger side and made his way to the back of the van where he'd just lit a campfire. Piles of trash flanked his van. It was clear Jim spent his days rummaging through dumpsters for human flotsam to sell on to curious Lost Ones at the markets.

"Hey, it's you, my best ever sales assistant," Jim said, grinning. His green eyes glittered like gems. Shorter than Zee, Jim didn't tower over me like most fae, but he was still taller than me. His tufty brown hair stuck out at all angles. "And you, scary flower-shirt demon, come back to interrogate me, bro?" He laughed. "Pull up a stump. You wanna buy a unique money box?" He whipped out a tin can with a hole cut in the top.

"That's just an empty drink can, bro," Zee said.

"Ah, but it has this convenient hole for all your coins, see?"

"We're good, thanks." I sat on one of the tree stumps while Jim poked at his fire, teasing out the flames. "How's business?"

"Oh you know, good days, bad days. Did you find the answers you wanted about those AI bartenders?"

"Yeah, some. Sort of."

"Wanna buy this plant home?" Jim asked, scooping up an old leather boot beside him.

"Uh, no? I think I'm okay for, erm, plant homes." I chatted with Jim for a while. Zee seemed content to stay quiet and scan the gloom where the firelight didn't reach.

"You didn't come here to chat, so what can I do you for, Adam?" Jim asked.

"When I sold those items from your stall, I uh . . . happened to accidentally open a metal tin, and erm . . . well . . ."

Jim chuckled. "So that's how the pixie escaped. You're lucky, bro. That pixie was wild ."

"You caught it in the wild?"

"No, no. I'm a city fae, me. Don't do none of that wild-hunt, living under a hill stuff. I meant the pixie was insane . You did me a favor getting rid of it. Nobody was gonna buy an angry pixie, right bro?"

"Where did you get it?"

"Guy named Ingo—local vampire—gave it to me. Said it was a gift. "

"A gift?" Zee asked, suddenly invested in the conversation. "This sucker, Ingo? He said those exact words?"

"Yeah, a gift, right? That means something? I had no clue, bro, like... I sell upcycled trash. I figured he was just throwing it out."

"Vampire gifts are bad," Zee said. "Unless it's cake. Apparently."

"It definitely weren't no cake. I can eat cake. Can't eat a pixie. Some folks do. There's not a lot of meat on 'em, I hear."

"Do you have any idea why Ingo gifted you an angry pixie in a tin?" I asked.

"No, man. He just handed it over and walked away real fast."

Zee gave his head a shake. "Vampires suck."

"Do you know this Ingo?" I asked. "Can you take us to him?"

"No need," a thin voice pealed from the shadows on the opposite side of the fireplace. "I'm right here."