“I didn’t think so.” I swung the door open. “Tell Mama Boggle you’re a friend of mine when she comes through. She really loves me. I’m like the half- Auphe bastard son she never had.”

I was letting the door swing shut behind me when she let out a strangled, “No, we’ll pay.”

Because she thought I’d actually do it, and it could be she was right. My brother brought out the best in me. People who messed with my brother brought out the very worst.

I caught the door. “Is that so? Damn. I’d been hoping you’d say no.” I let the gate thin to nothing. I thought about it first, a long moment, but finally I did let it go before I motioned out the door to Nik. This time I did let it swing shut and went back to my former seat. “Who told you about me? Not that it matters. It’s not a big secret these days. I’m just curious. And don’t I rate any of that blackberry brandy?” She forked the evil eye at me. I forked my own economy version right back-just the one finger needed. “What do they say? The pot calling the kettle black?” I drawled.

“The Vayash told us,” she said between disgusting puckered lips. “I called them after contacting you at the bar. I wanted to know if you were hard workers, would do well by us. Instead, they warned us and revealed to us what you are. Your clan revealed their shame to protect their fellow Rom. It is the kind of loyalty and honor our people share with one another, not that a creature like you could understand that.”

“The same loyalty and honor you showed us at our last business arrangement?” Niko asked as he came through the door. “And if you think my brother is so lacking in it, why do you want to hire us?”

“Sometimes only evil can find evil, can detect its blackened wake.” She looked as if she wanted to spit to cleanse her mouth of a bad taste, but that wouldn’t have done her squeaky-clean linoleum any good.

“Takes a monster to catch a monster. Maybe I can get that on a T-shirt.” I wedged myself in the corner to give Niko’s longer legs some room, then promptly elbowed him for having the audacity to be a few inches taller than I was. Not my usual “on the job” behavior, but I wasn’t looking to impress Abelia-Roo. She was impressed enough. Impress her any more and I might short out that shriveled black wad of phlegm she called a heart. While that might do the world a favor, it wouldn’t get us fifty thousand dollars or save the world from a murderous, psychotic, and by now, claustrophobic, antihealer.

Niko did something under the table that cut off all feeling below my right knee. Catholic nuns had their rulers; Niko had his one hundred seventy- six ways of making you regret you had nerve endings. I winced and reluctantly tried for a more businesslike demeanor. “Nik, Abelia here, loving and generous granny that she is, is paying us fifty thousand dollars to find their lost jack-in-the-box, killer-in-the-box, whatever you want to call it. Where do we start?”

“Fifty-thousand? That is generous. Most generous indeed.” The gaze Nik turned on me let me know I was lucky he didn’t do something that didn’t paralyze me from the neck down instead of the knee and then pound my head against the table. He didn’t ask how I’d managed to get such a good deal-he knew. Big brothers could always look at their little brothers and not only know they’d been bad, but how they’d been bad. And brothers didn’t come any sharper than mine.

I’d been aware of what I was going to do when I got out of the car and I’d been aware I’d have to pay the price, not from the gate itself, but from my brother. I’d done it anyway. If I had to pay a little for Abelia to pay a lot, then that was the way it had to be.

“Fifty thousand,” I confirmed. “But no brandy. Although with your being pure Rom and human to boot, I’d think you’d rate.”

“Forget the brandy.” Niko turned back to Abelia-Roo, one more narrowed glance letting me know other things wouldn’t be so easily forgotten. Those things were starting to add up at a fast and furious rate. I had four gates to pay for now. “When was Suyolak taken? Do you have a description of the men and the truck they transferred the coffin into? And were there any strangers around beforehand, asking questions about Rom culture or history?”

“A researcher, you mean. A professor and, yes, one did. We are Rom, not naïve sheep. Of course we know he was behind it. He came to talk of our legends. He brought up the legend of Suyolak over and over. Could he really heal any wound, any illness? We took his money, spun him nonsense tales, and sent him on his way. We’d planned on moving on the next day anyway, but the next day was not soon enough.” She pounded her fist sharply against the table. “Johai! The card he gave us was false. The name equally false. He was a tall man, silver hair, dark eyes.” Her hands fluttered about, then disappeared and reappeared with one of her infamous tiny bags. “That night they came, night before last. The truck had no license plate. The men wore jeans, black shirts, and ski masks. They shot five of our clan; shot them dead and carried Suyolak away.”

Niko said, “He needs someone healed then.” I nodded in agreement. Whoever it was hadn’t been trying to hide that.

“It would seem.” Abelia had spilled a small mound of gray powder on the table and was stirring it randomly with a sticklike finger. “We gathered the rest of our men and drove the roads searching for them, but found nothing. The Plague of the World was gone.”

By now she’d drawn an elaborate figure in the powder, one piece of it pointed at me like a spear. I snorted and passed my hand over it, wiping it out and leaving a clean surface of powder. I drew a tic-tac-toe design in the middle. The letters to “screw you” fit perfectly-it even left a nice neat space between the two words.

“Unless that’s anthrax and you’ve gotten Ebola-infected flying monkeys waiting outside for me, you’re out of luck,” I responded. “I know you fool the marks, but didn’t your mommy tell you there was no such thing as magic?” The Calabassa she’d sold us had been a thing of technology made by a race long extinct. Iron and zinc were proven to block psychics… by science. I knew that because Nik had made me watch some long, boring documentary on it. And mummy cats? Wahanket infused them with a tiny portion of his own life force… I absolutely did not want to know how.

But magic? Spells and fairy dust? Fall into the piranha pool at the local zoo and try tossing your magic powder at them. See what happens-beyond seasoning the human soup, doubtfully much. To believe in magic, you had to have faith. I saved my faith, what faith I had, for lead and steel, guns and blades. They worked. Even monsters laughed at the idea of magic.

She swept the powder back into the bag. “I and five of my best will follow you in your search. We will need to be there to escort the coffin back to the clan.”

True. We’d need one of their RVs. People are going to give you a second look when you’re driving down the interstate with a coffin strapped to the top of your car. Then again, I’d sooner ride on top of that coffin buck naked, eating nachos and waving a Yankees foam finger, than have Abelia-Roo tagging along.

“We can rent a truck,” I said dismissively, “when we find it. Or just use the one we find it in.”

“You will also need me to make sure the seals are intact on the coffin.”

“We’ll get a padlock. There are Home Depots everywhere.” I nudged Niko with my shoulder to move the situation along. “Hand over the money. We’ll call you when we have what’s-his-name back.”

Niko didn’t cooperate. “She may be right. It might be a good idea to have along those who’ve been responsible for Suyolak for so long. They know more about him than we can find out in weeks of research. Weeks we don’t have. If he gets free before we find him, they could be helpful. They are his people, after all.”