“Two.”
I fished two crumpled bills from my pocket and tossed them. “Well?”
He raised a brow. “Plus tax.”
My squint became a glare. I shoved my hand in my pocket and came up with two quarters, which I dropped one after the other onto the counter. “Keep the change.”
His eye roll told me he was unimpressed by my generosity. “Upstairs.” He nodded toward the steps at the rear of the store.
“Thanks a lot.”
“Whatever.”
At the top of the stairs, there was a hallway leading to a door at either end. The one on the right had a simple welcome mat out front, and the one on the other end had two trash bags. The scent of dirty diapers permeated the air on that end of the hall, which told me I had the right place.
After a quick knock, a shadow moved behind the peephole. “Who is it?” a suspicious female voice shouted from inside.
“It’s Kate, Mary.”
The door opened quickly and I was pulled inside by a meaty hand. I stumbled in and blinked against the dim light. The hulking form in front of me helped me gain my balance. “Hi, lady.”
I forced a smile despite the overpowering stench of body odor and something similar to dirty cat litter. Little Man wasn’t in his normal baby carrier. Instead, Mary cradled him in her arms like a baby doll. He was shirtless and wore nothing but a diaper. The bruises from the beating Dionysus gave him had dulled into sickly green-and-yellow smears across his face. Seeing him look so vulnerable was unsettling. Instead of a street-wise homunculus, he looked like a battered infant.
I pushed that disturbing thought aside and tried to be thankful that Mary, at least, had a shirt on. She was not, however, wearing any pants. Luckily the T-shirt was long enough to cover her to midthigh.
“Yo, Prospero,” Little Man said in a drowsy voice. “You caught us just waking up.”
I glanced at my watch. It was five in the afternoon, but considering I’d only woken up an hour earlier myself, I couldn’t really fault them. “Thanks for seeing me on short notice.”
“Come on in.” He waved to instruct Mary to move farther into the apartment. I followed more slowly, careful to breathe through my mouth and not touch anything.
The room they led me to had a single recliner, a TV tray, and a small television perched precariously on a two-by-four and a couple of cinder blocks. The walls were yellowed from cigarette smoke, and the carpet looked like a breeding ground for pubic lice.
Mary lowered her bulk into the recliner with a groan. Her legs fell open to reveal a pair of tighty-gray-ies. I forced my eyes upward to where Little Man leaned back against her chest. He crossed his bare legs at the ankle and rested his feet on Mary’s impressive belly. “I don’t know where he is.”
I blinked. “I know.”
“How?”
“Because you’re smart enough to understand that if you did know where he was and didn’t tell me, it would not go well for you.”
He laughed. “You ain’t as scary as you let on, Prospero.”
“You haven’t given me a reason to show you how scary I can be.” I crossed my arms. “Yet.”
“And I don’t plan on it neither.”
I raised a brow.
He waved a tiny hand. “Relax, Kate. You’re too good a customer for me to fuck over.”
I nodded. “So you don’t know where he is, but you gotta know something.”
He shrugged his thin shoulders. “Believe me, I wish I did. We barely left this shithole for days now.”
“Why?”
His eyes widened. “You been out there? The moonies are going apeshit.”
“Yeah,” I said, “I been out there. Which is why I really need you to tell me what you’re hearing. We have to stop this asshole.”
Little Man heaved a sigh from his tiny chest. “Shit, Prospero. He’s a ghost. Just ask your boy.”
I frowned. “Which boy?”
The homunculus’s smile bordered on evil. “Volos.”
I pressed my lips together and let the jab lie like a pile of shit on the floor between us. “What about him?”
“What? You ain’t heard?”
I shook my head.
“Motherfucker got robbed.”
Shock prevented me from schooling my features in time. “You’re fucking with me.”
“No, ma’am.” LM shoved a tiny hand in the waistband of his diaper.
I blew out a big breath. “When did it happen?”
LM smiled, obviously thrilled he knew something I didn’t. “Last night.”
In other words, while most of the police force had been busy dealing with a sex riot at the college, Dionysus had been knocking over one of the Cauldron’s most powerful citizens. Problem was, the Raven obviously didn’t know Volos well enough if he’d thought John’s first move would be to call in the cops. He preferred to handle things himself. So my next question was, when was Volos going to make his move? And, more to the point, what did he know that I didn’t?
“That’s a huge help, LM. Thanks.”
The homunculus cleared his throat. “You could show your gratitude in a more material way.”
I cursed myself for not bringing Morales—and his wallet—along. Removing my too-thin billfold from my pocket, I pulled out a five-dollar bill. When I handed it to LM, he shot me a look like I’d offended him. Rolling my eyes, I removed the gum from my pocket, as well. “Here.”
I half expected him to throw it in my face. Instead his face lit up like a kid at Christmas. “Ooh! Look, Mary. Clove!”
The silent partner’s large paw snatched the gum from his hand with surprisingly agile fingers. “Mine.” She tucked the package into her bosom.
I filed that little tidbit away for future use. If I’d known all it took was gum to make her happy, I would have been using that instead of my beer money all this time.
“Yo, Prospero,” LM said after I turned to go. I looked back to see uncharacteristic candor and a touch of fear in his gaze. Or maybe it was just the shadows from the bruises around his blue eyes. “You catch this motherfucker, okay?”
I nodded and forced confidence I didn’t feel into my smile. “Sure thing, LM. You stay loose, all right?”
He scratched himself and burped his acknowledgment.
“Later, Mary.”
She pulled her gaze away from the grainy black-and-white images flashing on the TV. For a moment I could have sworn I saw shrewd brightness in the eyes lurking behind those heavy lids. “Bye-bye, lady. Don’t get dead.”