Although he wasn’t fully awake, Dylan hadn’t wanted him to leave either. Long after he got up to quickly jump in the shower and get dressed, he could still feel the heat of Dylan’s hand on his stomach, trying to pull him back down into bed. He told him he’d back as soon as possible, and Dylan had said he’d better be and kissed him softly on the lips. This was that fun stage of the relationship, where you couldn’t keep your hands off each other, and after so much time alone he could see himself wanting to take advantage of this. He was fairly certain Dylan wouldn’t object. He was even thinking that, maybe once this case was over, they could go away for a weekend, just take off and not tell anyone where they were going. It might be nice to escape for a couple of days.

Still, Dylan had a pretty good fever going right now. As Roan got his bike out of the garage, he decided he should stop and get something for Dylan on the way home. But what? He was pretty sure he had a cold, but colds affected people differently. Some were affected mainly in their sinuses or their throats, while others just felt an all over misery. He had no idea how Dylan was affected. But he could look in the health food section of the store – well, he was a Buddhist and a vegetarian; it was an easy guess that he was into that health food crap – see if he could find something that looked like it might work. And then get some Nyquil, which, while not health food by any stretch of the imagination, was always welcome whether you had a cold or were just really depressed. He really thought they should load up tranquilizer guns with that stuff.

The afternoon was sunny but not too warm, the air had the subtle chill of fall in the air, and it was a nice day to be out on the motorcycle. Maybe it was just his mood that had changed; getting laid did wonders for your general outlook on life.

The staff at County General were so accustomed to seeing him walk in the doors that they didn’t even bother to check his ID or reason to be here. The nurse behind the desk, a plump, matronly woman whose name was Suzanne but who always went inexplicably by the nickname Candy, looked up, saw him, and pointed down the hall. “ICU,” she said, and then went back to her paperwork.

Holden met him at the corner of the ICU hallway, nearly trembling with pent up frustration and anger. He almost looked like a normal guy, what with his wardrobe of slightly baggy olive green pants and a loose grey t-shirt, but his hair was still way too blond and studiously, artfully messy, and he was still wearing about a half dozen necklaces. “This is fucked up,” he said, by way of greeting.

“I’m fine,” Roan replied. “And yourself?”

Holden glared at him, and he was sure he was in for some evil remark, when another familiar face appeared around the corner. “You may have come all this way for nothing.” It was the dark, sad sack face of Kevin Robinson. He was wearing his full police uniform, which made sense since he was on duty, and he had his cop cap pushed back precariously on his head, so it looked like a sudden movement would send it flying. That was actually kind of funny, as Kevin had always hated the hats.

“You’re vice,” Roan said, aware that sounded idiotic. Kevin knew what department he was with. “Isn’t this a case for violent crimes?”

“Yes and no. Meloni was here, but he got called off on an ADW. I have a couple of eyewitness accounts that have Leo’s – er, Cowboy’s beating as drug related.”

“Can you believe they found Ice in his system?” Holden interjected. “Ice! That stupid fucker. Once he’s healed up, I’m gonna beat the shit out of him.”

Roan concentrated on Kevin, mainly because the news that Leo was on Ice was hardly a shocker. “Drug related how? He got in a fight with a dealer?”

“A known dealer and a couple of his buddies. Two eyewitnesses seemed to corroborate that there was a dispute between the dealer – one Francis Gagnier – and Leo over the quality of the drugs he sold him. Leo got very vocal about it, and apparently shoved Gagnier, which led to the intervention of two of his friends, who beat Leo with a blackjack and quite possibly the butt of a gun.”

“So a fair fight,” Roan commented sarcastically.

“Gagnier was taken in, but he claims he has no idea who those men were, although he claims they saved his life because Leo pulled a knife on him. That’s rather dubious, no witness saw Leo pull a knife, although a switchblade was found in his boot.”

“Do you think he’d have the presence of mind to tuck it back into his boot while being beaten? That makes no sense!” Holden snapped.

Kevin raised his hands in a placating manner. “I’m not saying that. Everybody knows that Gagnier had his friends beat Leo down. The problem at this point is proving it. The descriptions the witnesses gave of the men are contradictory, and with Gagnier refusing to talk, we’re going to have to rely on Leo to tell us who attacked him. The fact that he was on drugs at the time will not help his case.”

Holden snorted in disgust, folding his arms over his chest and looking away as his jaw took on an angry set. “Yeah, he’s a whore and he’s high. That pretty much gives license to everyone to do what they want to him, huh?”

”Actually, since he was attacked by a known drug dealer and what were probably a couple of low rent thugs, he still has a good case,” Roan told Holden. Actually there was a better than even chance this would never be prosecuted, but he wasn’t going to burst his bubble. “Okay? We’ll get these guys. Don’t worry about it.”

Holden’s blue eyes narrowed to slits. “Don’t patronize me.”

“I’m not patronizing you. I’m suggesting you take a chill pill. Lashing out isn’t going to help Leo right now.” He shot a glance at Kevin, and asked, “How is he?”

Kevin scratched his head, and did so without moving his cap. It remained a minor miracle of physics. “Well, his jaw’s been wired shut, and he has a broken wrist and three broken fingers. Four of his ribs got busted as well. He’s not going to be playing the piano any time soon, but he’s not gonna die.”

“He’s a fucking mess,” Holden said. “And I swear to god if you don’t find the fuckheads who did this, I will.” Holden turned and stormed off dramatically, and Kevin shrugged as he walked off, saying without words “Well, what are you gonna do?”

As soon as he was sure Holden was out of ear shot, he asked Kevin, “Is Gagnier being held?”

“For the moment, but he’s going to walk. He wasn’t carrying when we picked him up – he’s too slick for that – he never actually laid a hand on Leo according to our witnesses, and we have no proof he told the men to attack. All he did was not help Leo when he was being beaten, but that in itself isn’t a crime. All we have now is he was a material witness and didn‘t report a crime. His lawyer will get him bounced in two seconds.” Kevin then glanced around before leaning in close to him and whispering, “So are Fox and Cowboy … an item? Were they?”

What a curiously old fashioned way to put it. But he was so in the closet he probably couldn‘t say “fucking“ without breaking out in hives. “Not to my knowledge. Why?”

Kevin shook his head and stepped back, grabbing the brim of his hat before it could fly off his head. “It’s just the way he reacted is all. He seemed – seems – really upset.”

“Fox was like the older brother to a lot of the boulevard boys when he was starting out; he looked out for them, and he seemed to take the job pretty seriously. Since most of his family out there has run off, disappeared, or died, he’s probably pretty possessive of the ones he has left.”

“So why did he leave them? Why isn’t he out there protecting them now?”

A good question, but the answer was pretty obvious. “Can’t be a street hustler forever. He was always angling for the big leagues, and he got it. He couldn’t save everyone, so he saved himself.”

Kevin snorted in dark humor. “If you call being a high priced whore being saved.”

“Better than being a low priced one, I suppose.” Was that why Holden seemed extra pissed off – the guilt? Yeah, he made the only choice he felt he could, but now someone was preying on the boys, and he may have been playing the “If only” game in his head: “If only I was there to protect them/take care of them/ scare off the big bad trolls,” et cetera. Not so much the hooker with a heart of gold but the hooker with a conscience, and the bone deep belief that he was tougher and smarter than all the rest of them.

Roan was so lost in his thoughts he was genuinely surprised when Kevin spoke again. “So how’re you doing? I heard that Murphy had you investigating this hooker beating creep. Got any leads?”

“It’s early days yet.” Cop talk for ”No, not a single goddamn one“. “But I’ll get him.”

Kevin eyed him skeptically. “You mean we will. You know, the cops.”

“Exactly what I meant. Excuse me, I’d better go find Holden and talk him out of going all Death Wish on these assholes.” He felt Kevin’s eyes on him as he walked away, and knew he didn’t buy the slip of the tongue excuse. If Kevin told Murphy he was intending to get the guy himself, he’d get such a reaming he’d walk funny for a week.

He found Holden in the corridor leading to the ER, sitting in one of the brightly colored plastic chairs that had probably been put out there for anxious but tired loved ones. Luckily the ER didn’t seem terribly busy at the moment, which must have been why he spied a nurse and an intern loitering around the soda machine, discussing the benefits of having a Tivo. Roan sat in the seat beside him, and Holden grumbled, “I don’t want to hear any cop bullshit.”

“It’s not your fault.”

He looked at him sharply, his eyes full of mistrust. “That you guys talk shit? I know that.”

“What happened to Leo. You can’t save everybody, especially from themselves. It’s a chicken or egg thing, isn’t it? Are they on the streets selling their bodies because of drugs, or are they doing drugs because they’re selling their bodies? It could go either way, and it usually does.”

He rolled his eyes. “Thanks for the armchair psychiatry, but I don’t need it.”

“You want to help Leo? You can do it now. There’s no way he can get back out on the street with a half a dozen broken bones. Put him somewhere where he can detox and heal, and do that thing you do – talk him into trying for a better life, free of the streets. This could be an opportunity to get out of this fucking sewer, but he’s gonna need help to see that. You might be able to save his life, Holden. That’s better than saving him from a beat down any day.”

Holden shook his head and glanced down the hall, watching a rather twink looking male nurse walk on by. He did have a pretty nice ass. “So when did you become a life coach?”

“I don’t even know what that is.”

“It’s a personal motivational speaker.”

“Ah, so a shit merchant. No, I have too much self-respect.” His cell phone buzzed in his pocket like an angry hornet, and he pulled it out and checked to see who was calling. It was Eli. He considered not answering, but Holden was looking at him curiously, so he figured what the hell. “I gave at the office,” he said by way of greeting.

Eli sighed heavily. “You know, you’re not funny. I know you think you are, but you’re not.”

“Oh come on, girlfriend, I’m hilarious.” He threw in the “girlfriend” just to irritate Eli, and he was sure he did, which gave him a nice warm feeling inside. “What do you want?”

Eli was silent for a moment, as if considering hanging up, but he was too agitated to do it. “Have you heard what that idiot in the state legislature is doing?”

“You’re gonna have to narrow that down.”

“Metzler. That tweedy little fuck is trying to rush through legislation that would require every infected to register with the health department, all because of that lion on the street incident. Can you believe that?”

“Easily. They do this shit all the time.”

“We need to stop it.”

“We? Call the ACLU – they’ll be up his ass so fast he’ll think he’s getting a drive by colonoscopy. Besides, as soon as they get a look at how much registration and policing it would cost, they’ll be happy to let it die quietly on the vine. Nobody has that kind of money.”

Eli’s moment of silence was somehow accusing. “You’re rather glib about all of this, aren’t you? Aren’t you at all concerned about your own people?”

That made him chuckle and slump back against the uncomfortable chair. “My own people? Which ones? Oh, right, the infected community. I thought you meant compulsive masturbaters.”

Holden grimaced, trying not to laugh, and mostly failed.

Eli sighed heavily, not amused. Was he ever? “This is not a joke. You are a highly visible member of the community. If you come out against this publicly, it’ll carry a lot of weight.”

“I’m a highly visible member? Really? Is it because of that interview I did in Shift magazine last year?” Shift was a magazine for infecteds, and occasionally profiled a “successful infected”. Paris had convinced him to say yes to it when they originally approached him, so he did, but the interview segment didn’t run until after Paris’s death. That may have been a horrible irony, or maybe just bad timing. But since it had a circulation of about five, counting Canada, he was pretty sure no one ever saw it. It was a comfort.

“You stopped the lion, didn’t you? Also, you’re the only virus child so far who’s, y’know, normal. For the most part.”

Ooh, this sounded wonderfully offensive. “For the most part?”

“Well … yeah. Being gay isn’t n -”

Roan flipped his phone shut, cutting the connection. Holden openly stared at him, an eyebrow raised. “That sounded like an interesting discussion.”

“I know many an idiot. A hazard of the job.” His phone started buzzing again in his hand, so he shut the power off before dropping it back in his coat pocket.

Holden was giving him a half smile, a twinkling of mischief in his eyes. His pep talk must have done some good. “I know the feeling. So why did you hang up on him?”

“He was either going to insult me or compliment me, and frankly I didn’t know which was worse.” He sighed and stood up. “Should we go pay a visit to Michael Gilpin?”

They did, but he was still in a coma, and he was only improving in tiny increments. The doctor he spoke to seemed to think he would recover and not be “significantly” brain damaged, but somehow that didn’t sound like a cause for celebration. They glanced through the door at him, but he was a mummy, an object lost in a sea of white and monitored by machines that bleeped and blink in a monotonous rhythm that reminded Roan obliquely of a funeral march. Poor kid.

Holden must have been similarly touched, because as they walked down the hall, he said, “There’s a guy who works at the agency with me, Kai, a real twink doll. Has a crush on me; keeps trying to get us teamed up on a gig together.”

He looked at him curiously. “Is this leading somewhere?”

“Yeah. Let’s set this fucker up.” He stepped in front of him and stopped, eyes alight with zeal, and Roan was forced to stop before colliding with him. “Kai will do whatever I ask. I’ll ask him to hit the boulevard, and we’ll watch him. He’s pure twink – no cop in the world could look as genuine as he does; our psycho won’t think he’s a decoy. But he is. Whoever picks him up we follow, and if it turns out our john’s the psycho, you make a citizen’s arrest. Hopefully after beating the living shit out of him.”

Roan considered that a moment. “There are so many flaws in that plan I don’t know where to start.”

“What? It’s not entrapment. You’re not a cop anymore, and Kai and I have never been cops. There’s no reason we can’t stake him out. Kai will be good with it – he’s into some light domination, from what I understand.”

Roan rubbed his eyes, restraining the urge to ask if “light domination” meant he liked having his dates order for him in restaurants. “This is a bad idea, Holden. A tragedy waiting to happen.”

“Okay. So how else are you gonna get this guy?”

“Yes,” Gryphon replied, not even bothering to be defensive. Either way they thought he was nuts: either he was talking to himself or talking to a ghost, or thinking he was talking to a ghost while talking to himself. There was no way to win.

She gave him a funny look, but eventually turned away and got on the radio, which she originally intended to do, ignoring him completely. He liked it that way.

He slept again, until Varner shook him awake. “Gryph, you wanna go home?”

“That’d be nice,” he admitted, still not fully awake yet. He got out of the car, and the cold, damp night air woke him up a little, at least enough to make him stop yawning. But Varner’s car was more comfortable than the squad car, which was a problem.

Still, on the way back, Varner told him that they found lots of evidence that they were sure would help identify victims and just maybe the killer. They were looking into who might have a key to the padlock on the back door, but since making a “dupe” (duplicate key) wasn’t that difficult, they didn’t think that would get anywhere. He asked if they found a finger, and told him it belonged to Anna Alvarez. Varner gave him a new species of funny look, and gave it to him for a long time, but eventually looked away and went back to chattering hyperactively. Had he been gulping coffee? He must have been. They probably didn’t allow Red Bull at crime scenes.

The lights were off in the house, save for the solar lights lining the drive and the porch light, so he tried to quietly sneak in and didn’t know how successful he was. But he didn’t hear anything as he got undressed and collapsed into bed, exhausted from speaking to the dead for too long. Who knew that would take it out of you?

Inevitably he found himself back inside the store, lit only be a Coleman lantern, as the killer butchered someone, cutting them up into component parts. But as Gryphon stood there, watching him perform his grisly task, he suddenly stopped, his shoulders tensing. He turned his head slowly, looking over his shoulder, his face hidden behind a mask that kept the blood off of him. Gryphon could see nothing of him but his blue eyes, regarding him like some kind of ghost, which was ironically appropriate.

This must have been a dream – there’s no way this could have been happening. And yet, he got the curious sensation of being in a room with another person. He wasn’t alone, and it wasn’t just his passengers keeping him company. This was weird, and it made his skin crawl a bit … but on the other hand, he got a sense that the man looking at him was just as freaked out, maybe even a little more.

“You better hope the cops find you first,” he said, hoping that he was somehow sharing space with the man. Although there was no way he could be. (Right?) The man just stared at him, his eyes cloudy behind the mask, but Gryphon sensed the turn of his anxiety, the clenching of his stomach. Somebody was talking to him; somebody was threatening him. A ghost.

He was being threatened by a ghost.

Gryphon was woken up by the pervasive smell of strong coffee and a rhythmic pounding over his head and against the glass. It wasn’t raining; it was pissing down with a drunkard’s intensity. It was a true Oregon rain, something violent and nasty and undoubtedly cold. The light was grey, like it was being filtered through dirty cotton, and it struck him as a tremendous day to sleep in.

Get up you lazy ass, Taneesha cracked.

Okay, so, maybe not.

He eventually stumbled downstairs to find Clay sitting at the rustic kitchen table, holding a coffee mug with autumn leaves stenciled on the side, staring off into space. Gryphon checked the clock on the microwave, and just as he thought, it was pretty late. Clay should have been at work at his day job by now.

“Something wrong?” he wondered, grabbing a cup off the mug tree beside the sink and gravitating towards the coffee maker.

It took him a moment to respond, his tired eyes sliding towards him. “Oh, yeah. My back was acting up again this morning, so I decided to take the day off.” Clay had hurt his back installing an air conditioning duct a week or so ago. Just a pulled muscle, but those hurt, especially when you did a lot of bending and lifting. His doctor had given him heavy duty painkillers, but he didn’t like to take them – which baffled Gryphon, as he’d happily take them now, and he didn’t have a bad back.

“Oh. If there’s anything I can do to help -”

Clay snickered, which made Gryphon give him a funny look. “What’s so funny?” He found the sugar and started dumping teaspoons full of it into the strong black coffee Clay usually made.

You ever heard of diabetes? Mr. Aronofsky said. You’re not indestructible.

Actually we don’t know that, Hugh said. He could be.

Don’t encourage him, Mr. Aronofsky scolded.

“You’ve done enough for us, Gryph,” Clay said, after taking a sip of his coffee. From the way he winced and set it down, it was still too hot to drink.

That gave him a suddenly bad feeling. “Did I get you guys in trouble?”

Now his snicker from before became a chortle, and he wasn’t sure how to take that, so instead of sitting at the kitchen table he leaned against the counter, out of hitting distance. “Far from it. We heard from Mrs. Bledsoe, the woman who hired us to exorcize Phillip Chapman from the house in Salem. She’s giving us a five hundred dollar bonus. She said you could feel the difference just walking in the house. There was no sense you were being watched, no slamming doors, no inexplicable cold breezes. She seemed stunned, like she expected us to be frauds.”

“They all treat us that way.”

“I know. But I think they must know they hafta stop now.” He shoved his mug across the tabletop with his fingertips, and then shoved it back towards him, the liquid equivalent of playing with his food. “We gotta call this morning from a guy down in Los Angeles. He offered to pay us to fly down there. There’s a mansion down there where a family was killed, and supposedly it’s a hot spot of ghost activity. And we heard from someone who works for the Fortean Times. They want to interview all of us.”

“The Fortean Times?” That sounded vaguely familiar, but not in an useful way.

“It’s a British magazine that deals with strange phenomena, but it’s not a tabloid rag. It’s actually very respected, a big deal.” His eyes darted towards him, almost bashfully. “Although the guy said he wanted to talk to us, I know he really wants to talk to you.”

“I’m horrible in interviews,” Gryphon said, shaking his head. “They want to talk about me, and I’m not about to expose what’s left of my family to this … stuff.”

You mean admit to them what you’re actually doing, Mr. Aronofsky said.

“And I can’t go into great deal about what I do. I mean, I don’t control this, I don’t understand this, I’m just a poltergeist “agent” whose best friends are all dead people.”

I ain’t your friend, Taneesha snapped.

Clay studied him for a moment, his expression unreadable, and Gryphon just knew he was going to ask him a question he had no desire to answer. Finally he did. “Why don’t you ever tell the complete story of how you became an agent? You start and then you stop.”

“Because I have to.”

“Why?”

“’Cause if I told anyone everything that happened that night, they might be legally liable, an accessory after the fact.”

Clay’s eyebrows lifted slight, and Gryphon grimaced at him. “C’mon, what do you think my passengers really want? To do things they never got a chance to do, or live one more day? They’re poltergeists, Clay – they’re dead as hell and they’re not gonna take it anymore.”

You stole that from Buffy, Taneesha accused.

Yeah, but it’s still amazingly apt, Hugh said.

Clay must have gotten his meaning, as his eyes widened slightly and he paled faintly, blood draining out of his face. “You’re – you’ve said they’re not all violent.”

“They’re not. But most of my passengers are murder victims. What do you think they want? Sending someone to rot in prison doesn’t feel like justice to most of them.”

Fuck no, Ray agreed.

I want to strangle Doherty to death with his own fucking intestines, Ruby added.

I wanna shove a sawed off shotgun up Dave’s ass and blow the top of his head off, Ray continued, as if trying to top her in a gruesome death competition. Ruby still had the edge, mainly because it was easy to imagine her plunging her hands in Doherty’s stomach and ripping out his intestines to throttle him. Ray was angry but had the unfocused nature of a follower requiring a leader – Ruby seemed more like the Terminator. She didn’t need a leader, just a target.

“Believe me, if you could hear them talk, you’d shit your pants.”

Clay looked like he wanted to say a thousand things, but had lost the ability to talk. Gryphon sipped his coffee while he waited for him to regain his speech. He felt bad for Clay and Shane, when it came down to it. They were true believers, guys who honestly hoped ghosts existed and went about trying to prove it. Now they had their proof, and it was so much more fucking scary than they ever credited it for. The dead were not a happy people – what a shock.

Finally, Clay asked, “Did Louis Stanhope really disappear?” His Adam’s apple bobbed wildly in his throat, enough so that it was almost hypnotizing to watch.

“Do you really want to know?” He sighed, and told him, “He’s missing. He will never be found. Leave it there and be glad you don’t know the details.” Actually he’d already been found, but since his body was burned beyond all recognition, it was just assumed he was a homeless man who accidentally set his squat on fire, and was dumped anonymously in a potter’s field. He would never be found, as he was already buried as a John Doe. For the purposes of the world, he was so gone he was barely even a memory.

Clay stared at him with his storm cloud eyes, wanting to ask more but not daring, and jumped about a foot when there was a knock at the door.

We didn’t do that, Hugh claimed, as others chuckled.

“That’s either Varner or O’Leary,” Gryphon guessed, wandering out of the kitchen to the living room.

Opening the door revealed O’Leary standing on the porch, looking sullen and miserable huddled beneath a yellow rain slicker that he had probably ripped from the back of the Gorton’s fisherman. He glared at him like the downpour was somehow his fault. “You ready to head out to Wax’s house?”

Wax’s house? Wasn’t that a horror movie with Vincent Price? Rather than lob out that bon mot – surely O’Leary wouldn’t appreciate it – he said, “Give me a minute to get changed.” Which probably should have been obvious since he was wearing blue velvet Old Navy “lounge” (pajama) pants with a little cloud and crescent moon pattern all over it (and they were about a size and a half too big for him, which just added to the general comedy), and a pale olive tank top that was also a size too big for him, which was doubly odd since it was a cast off from Clay, who had a similar bird like build to him.

These probably looked like a sleeping outfit to Clay and O’Leary, but it was all a ruse. He had slept in his underwear. He only put these on to go downstairs, so no one could see his ribs standing out in relief on his chest, or see the unexplained, oblong bruises that dotted his scrawny legs like the harbinger of the plague. It actually bothered him to spy himself semi or totally naked, which was probably a bad sign overall.

He left O’Leary dripping in the small foyer as he went back upstairs and changed into some more weather appropriate clothes, which was basically a heavy fisherman’s sweater that made him look like he was being swallowed by a rather large piece of a wool/acrylic polyblend, and heavy jeans that would weigh approximately a thousand pounds when they did get soaked, but would take a long time to soak through. He had a coat with a hood, but it was a dorky brown jacket with black fleece surrounding the hood – it couldn’t have made him feel sillier. But it was waterproof, so he couldn’t complain.

He went back downstairs to silent but troublesome tension, indicating that O’Leary and Clay had had a brief but awkward conversation that had left both of them feeling unsatisfied, although they weren’t about to spring the details on him. O’Leary was a big wet glowering yellow thing that he followed out into the deluge, and he had a new car today. No, not a car – a tank. Some kind of black SUV that he had to climb into carefully, lest he fall and break his neck while scaling Mount Vehicle.

Inside, the front seat – cockpit? – seemed vast, with a huge dashboard full of all sorts of displays and thingamabobs that he could only guess at, and the seats seemed to be made of black leather that squeaked under their wet asses. He began to think of A Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, but he wasn’t sure why. Rain pounded hollowly on the roof, sheeting down the enormous windshield, making him feel like he was in a deep water submersible.

O’Leary was quiet until he started the leviathan and pulled out of the gravel drive, but Gryphon got a sense that he wanted to tell him something, so he simply waited. When they were on the road, the whole SUV humming like he imagined a tank with great shock absorbers would, O’Leary finally said, “So … I heard you found that store for Varner.”

“Yeah.”

Thick, awkward pause. “Did he, uh … did he say anything about me?”

What the fuck was this? Was he a kid of divorced parents, having his dad grill him about his mom’s new boyfriend? Just when he thought his life couldn’t get more bizarre, it went ahead and did just that. “Not really, no. I figured out that he recommended me to you.”

“Yeah.” O’Leary studied him out of the corner of his eye, and did so for a long time. Gryphon tried to ignore him, figuring he wasn’t going to play this game. Did he want to know if he told him about the raid? If he told him that, in his opinion, that the entire strike team lied in their version of the story? He wasn’t about to say. Let him twist in the wind.

They drove out into the rural countryside, the green fields a pleasant contrast to the gunmetal grey sky, and Gryphon actually saw a wet, miserable looking cow. When was the last time he’d seen a cow? He suddenly felt like a kid on a driving holiday. Maybe weekend dad would take him to a petting zoo.

He turned down an unpaved, rutted road where holes had become surprisingly deep mud puddles, and slowly on the left side of the horizon a rather sad looking clapboard house started to come into view. It looked like it was starting to lean slightly to one side, and the roof seemed to stick out over the side in an ill fitting manner, like it had been removed as one whole piece and then slammed back down in disgust. It had probably once been white, but was now sort of a dirty snow color, the trim nude wood that had bled through the paint that had once been there. It was the perfect serial killer house, complete with an overgrown yard, weeds twisting around the body of an Oldsmobile that may or may not have had tires.

“This is Wax’s place?” Gryphon asked, a bit surprised. “He’s really let it go.”

“I don’t think child molesters are known for their gardening skills.”

“You’d actually be surprised,” he replied, knowing from sad experience that many were quite neat and tidy. Also religious, but that was another can of worms.

O’Leary gave him another funny look, but had to shift his focus to the dirt road as a deep pothole nearly sent them airborne.

It was then that Gryphon noticed a man standing at the edge of the yard, watching them drive up. He was deep into middle age, with a sizable paunch and a few wisps of meager hair covering a scalp with a waxy sheen. Oddly enough, he seemed untouched by the rain, and O’Leary drove so close to him he nearly hit him, but he didn’t move, and O’Leary didn’t react at all.

Didn’t he look familiar? Yes. It was Clifford Wax, with about twenty five pounds and several lines added to his mug shot. And oh yes, he was dead.

“Prepare to be disappointed,” Gryphon warned the ex-cop.

Of all of them in the car, Holden had the most steady employment, because who didn’t like to fuck? Fiona was probably a close second, because, although she wasn’t a prostitute, people also loved their fetishes. He was just plain fucked.

It wasn’t that he didn’t have enough work to survive, because he did. He worked for Dennis Caldera’s firm as their resident P.I., and working for lawyers (and corporations) was pretty much the steadiest employment you could get in the business, unless you spun off into private security. And if he had wanted to be a bodyguard or a security guard, he’d have become one in the first place.

Detectives were becoming dinosaurs in this day and age, and he knew it. But he didn’t imagine that he was cut out for much else.

They dropped Fiona off at her car, and then Holden drove back to his place, asking Roan if he had any solid leads. Roan found that funny, even though he knew he shouldn’t. He told him it was too early, but he felt like he was on the path to finding the guy, and he reluctantly thanked him for the lead. Holden accepted that somewhat smugly, but he didn’t expect any less from him.

Back at his place, Holden invited him in for a drink – Mr. Subtle – but Roan just thanked him for the lift and said he’d call him, which felt great in an evil sort of way. Like he was a trick he just pumped and dumped. Holden scowled at him like he knew it.

He drove home, wondering what his next move should be. The night was cool, the road slick under his tires, and he vowed next time he’d take his bike. On the bike he could just zone out, mentally enter a sort of Zen space where he could pretend he was almost bodiless, an empty thing nearly fading away. It was a nice thought that he could one day just disappear.

Once at home, he made a few phone calls, got the bureaucratic beast lumbering to its feet in the search for Zoë Williams. He then got himself a bottle of pale ale from the fridge and turned on his stereo before surfing the web, finding a few records here and there. The newspaper articles on the case were easy to find, but after a small spate they trickled down to nothing – there was always a new “freak of the week” tragedy, and two kids found with their dead mom was just another one in a long list of common disasters.

It was amazing how parents could fuck up kids even if they weren’t around. It also brought home how much he and Holden bizarrely had in common: both had mothers who died when they were young, and neither ever knew who their father was.

Roan was reading one of the first articles on the mother found dead In her apartment, and he noticed something a little odd, something that the reporter who wrote the article – one Alice Rothwell – apparently wanted someone to notice. (But he seriously doubted anyone did.) A man called 9-1-1 to report a constantly crying child, and a suspicion that something was wrong with the mother, which eventually brought the cops to the apartment. But the other neighbors – none of which were all that near, as her apartment was in a rather unfortunate spot next to the laundry room – reported having heard anything out of the ordinary, and Alice was unable to find the neighbor who called in the report to talk to him. Now she could have talked to him and he simply denied it. But why mention such a thing in a story? It could have been left out, and no one would have noticed. The most obvious answer was she was suspicious – she didn’t think the caller was a neighbor. Meaning someone knew she was dead, but like a chickenshit called it in anonymously. Since her death was ruled accidental (with probable suicide), no one probably thought anything of it. Who cared? It probably meant nothing.

But it could mean everything. He did a little poking around online, and found Alice Rothwell was still alive. She wasn’t working for the paper anymore – she was retired and living in a senior citizen’s only apartment complex known as Autumn Woods up near Caldwell. He was jotting down her phone number when there was a knock at his door. Very weird, as he was expecting no one, but when he neared the door he caught a scent of who was on the other side.

He opened the door to find Dylan standing there. He assumed he was stopping by before going to work, but his raven hair was casually messy, with a slight, natural wave to it, his jaw line was lightly stained with new stubble, and he wore loose jeans and an emerald t-shirt beneath a brown leather bomber jacket. If Roan knew anything by now, he knew Dylan wore tighter jeans and junkier t-shirts when going to work, and he was always totally clean shaven. “Hey stranger,” he said, holding the door open so he could come in.

Dylan did, and briefly looked towards the living room as These Arms Are Snakes raged over the stereo in all their noisy chaos. “You constantly surprise me, Roan. I thought you private detectives were supposed to listen to jazz and drink Scotch by the barrelful.”

“Yes, well we’re also supposed to go for the femme fatale, so right out of the gate I’ve fucked the image.” After shutting the door, he asked, “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, I just called in sick tonight. I haven’t taken a night off in a while, and I just didn’t feel like going in.” His dark eyes scudded to Roan, asking a silent question, and he nodded, so Dylan collapsed on the couch with a tired sigh. “Maybe I’m getting a cold or something, I don’t know.”

“Are the sales that bad?” he wondered, going to the kitchen to retrieve him a bottled tea. Dylan continued to hang in with him, although Roan had no idea why, as their relationship – if you could call it that – hadn’t really progressed a single iota. They hadn’t really kissed, not to mention anything beyond that. But they knew an awful lot about each other now.

Dylan was a teetotaler, so he knew by now not to offer him a beer (although the irony of a non-drinker being a bartender was pretty rich, and it always brought to mind that lyric in that Hold Steady song, “- hard drugs are for bartenders”). Also, along with the gallery his artist collective had downtown, he also had some paintings, sketches, and poster prints available at a bookstore on the East Side that supported local artists. Dylan was actually a very good artist, sort of expressionistic, who could sit down and bang out a wonderfully detailed street scene sketch in about ten minutes – he had actually seen him do this during one of their lunches when Roan unfortunately spent most of it in the phone. He found himself getting distracted by the way Dylan’s hand moved smoothly and quickly over the notebook paper, turning pen strokes into the street and buildings around them like he was rubbing charcoal over a gravestone. Roan had tried to buy one of his paintings only to have Dylan refuse the money, saying friends got pictures they didn’t buy them. But Roan showed up at the gallery when he knew Dylan wasn’t around and bought one anyways, a night cityscape, but Dylan didn’t know that as it was hanging up in his bedroom and he’d never been there.

Of course, the pictures he really wanted to buy weren’t for sale, just exhibition – if that. Dylan had several paintings and drawings he referred to sardonically as his “bleeding hardware” series. They were all art that featured blood – no people, no living things, just blood and inanimate objects. They looked like photographs of crime scenes after the bodies had been removed: a wall with peeling wallpaper and dusty hardwood floors, where a pool of crimson glistened like fresh oil; a mattress with disturbed white sheets splattered with dark blood; a hole punched in a wall and trickling blood from its blunt edges. They were startling and disturbing, to the point that that he often saved them for private or smaller exhibition, as many people wondered if he was sane after seeing them, but Roan got them. On that floor, for example, all you had to do was imagine the body of his father after he committed suicide, just like on the bed all you had to do was imagine his mother in the aftermath of her murder. This was Dylan dealing with the trauma of being the survivor of a homicide-suicide and seeing the bodies at such a young age – how that could have fucked him up. Working it out in his art was a lot more productive and healthy than many alternatives. And there was more trauma than that, of course. He knew that when he saw the painting of a rain dappled windshield spiderwebbed with cracks, and blood seeping through a cigarette sized hole in the middle: Jason. He wanted to buy one of those paintings – they were morbid in subject but gorgeous in composition – but the pain and rage was almost palpable, and he doubted that Dylan would ever want to see any of these paintings in someone else‘s house. He usually hid them in his studio in a closet, with a sheet over them. They were his dark side given form, and once he exorcized the demons on canvas, he was more than happy to put them away.

As talented as Dylan was, the terrible truth was you just didn’t make a lot of money as an artist, hence his night job as a bartender at Panic. Technically he could have gotten a better job, but then he told him how much he made in tips monthly, and Roan felt his jaw unhinge. Apparently a shirtless bartender in a gay nightclub with a beautiful chest and face could make enough to buy himself just about anything he wanted, or at least Dylan could.

As he brought him the tea, Dylan flashed him a smile and gave him a nod of thanks before his expression fell to neutral. “I actually sold one yesterday. It’s so weird, but I’m almost depressed when I sell a painting. It’s one of my babies going away.”

“Then don’t sell them,” he said, sitting back down and shutting down his laptop.

“And be a shirtless bartender all my life? I have a feeling I’ll be fired as soon as my boobs start to sag.”

“I’ll be your sugar daddy.”

Dylan shook his head and smiled, trying not to laugh. “You’re not already?”

“I’d have to make more than you, so I’m gonna say no. You could kill me with your tip jar.”

“Only ‘cause I’m one sexy motherfucker,” he joked, although it wasn’t actually a joke. He was a sexy motherfucker, only he was aware of it in a very abstract, removed way. Unlike most men who knew they were good looking – Holden, for example – Dylan wasn’t vain or self-impressed. In fact, he seemed at times almost embarrassed by how honestly handsome he was. Maybe it was a Buddhist thing, although maybe not – Richard Gere still seemed pretty smug.

Roan took a drink of his beer, then said, “I’m sorry I scared you today. When I get threatened by another cat, my lion side has a tendency to come out.”

He gazed at him steadily with his midnight dark eyes. “That wasn’t what scared me.”

“No?”

“No. What scared me was the fact that your first impulse when you saw a lion on the street was to tackle it. I mean, I should have known since you used to be a cop that you had that hero thing going on, but really. Hand to hand combat with a crazed cat? Jesus. You know you were almost hit by a car, right?”

Roan nodded. “But it didn’t hit me. What doesn’t kill you can be ignored until the immediate crisis has passed.”

“I love the way you create your own aphorisms.”

“Somebody has to. They don’t make aphorisms like they used to.”

“For a man who jokes as much and as easily as you do, you almost never smile. Why not?”

He hated the way Dylan did that, clobbering him with serious questions when he wasn’t prepared for it. “Dylan, please -”

“Would you tell me about Paris?”

Oh no. “You know about him. He talked to you at Panic all the time.”

“But you don’t talk about him at all. If his name comes up, you just shut down.”

He gulped down the rest of his beer and got up, trying hard to pretend he wasn’t seeking refuge in the kitchen. “I’m not up to this tonight.”

“You’re never up to this, Roan. I really think you need to talk to Doctor Thompson -”

“No I don’t. I don’t need a fucking grief counselor.” He tossed his empty bottle into the recycling bag with undue force, making it break. “Would you give it a rest?”

“I’ll give it a rest as soon as I think you’re not dying inside.”

He snickered humorlessly, admiring the drama in that statement. “I’m already dead, Dylan. When Paris died, I did too. I can’t believe I’m still walking around.”

Dylan stood up and faced him over the breakfast bar, his expression mostly neutral but his eyes very sad. “Tell me you don’t really believe that.”

He was going to tell him to leave it and let it go, but for some reason he just started talking. He was much more tired than he thought. “I’ve contemplated doing Ecstasy again just so I could feel something other than rage. I’m a burnt out husk. Why are you even bothering with me? Why don’t you just go and find someone who’s not a loser, huh?”

Dylan just stared at him in that unnervingly placid way. Dylan was younger than him, and yet oftentimes he seemed so much older. “Haven’t you figured it out yet?”

The idea made his stomach clench and burn, and inexplicably he felt tears sting behind his eyes. “What do you want from me?”

“Nothing. Just talk to me.”

“About what? About how men have a tendency to die on me? How if you had any sense or desire to live at all you’d run as far from me as possible? About how it isn’t fair that he’s dead and a useless piece of shit like me is still alive?” He didn’t want to cry, and frankly he thought he wasn’t such a wimp that he would, but he felt something deep inside his chest contract until he wasn’t sure he could breathe, and the tears just started coming. He turned away and tried to stop them, but a dam had burst and he couldn’t do it.

God, he missed him. He still missed Paris like he had just died yesterday. It was a physical ache more painful than the phantom remnant of the lion’s bite on his arm. But he’d have been all right if he hadn’t made him think about it.

Dylan pulled him into his arms and held him, resting his head against his, and while Roan’s initial impulse was to shove him away violently, he just felt too exhausted, physically and emotionally, to bother. He was so tired, and he wasn’t sure of what or why. It was extremely humiliating, and Dylan being kind to him only made it worse.

****

He woke up with his ear hurting and slightly numb, his nose so clogged he could barely breathe, and he discovered he and Dylan had both fallen asleep on the couch. Dylan was slumped back, still in a sitting position, and Roan had been sleeping curled up on his side, his head resting on Dylan’s thigh. He sat up and rubbed his ear – he’d been sleeping on it funny, and Dylan’s thigh wasn’t the softest thing in the world – and felt like a complete idiot. Could he blame the sidecar combined with a beer and a skipped dinner? Maybe he could. It probably wasn’t its fault, but he could still try.

The sun was just coming up, the sky outside starting to glow with the half-light of dawn, and he went upstairs to take a shower so he didn’t wake Dylan up. Oh fuck, what was he going to say? Maybe he could sneak out of the house before he woke up.

His own house. How low had he sunk? Okay, so he broke down crying – it wasn’t the end of the world. And it beat getting angry for a change, didn’t it? No it didn‘t, but he tried to tell himself that.

That was the problem when you got sick and tired on a fundamental, existential level. How did you know what you felt anymore? Beyond numb; beyond encased in ice.

He made the water in the shower as hot as he could stand it so it opened up his sinus passages, and it was nice to breathe again. His head still throbbed dully, so when he got out he took three Excedrin and figured he’d live with the gut ache. He looked in the fogged over mirror, and asked, “Well Paris, do you want to tell me I’m being an idiot? Do you wanna tell me anything at all?” His own face was a blur, a barely visible ghost, a reflection in warped glass.

There was no answer, of course – there never really was an answer. It was all in his head. It was amazing what you could make yourself believe, especially if you were lonely enough and desperate enough.

He threw on some sweatpants and went downstairs, wondering what he should say to Dylan. Should he simply apologize? Should he pretend he hadn’t broken down like a fucking baby? Maybe he should just see what Dylan said and follow his lead.

He approached the couch nervously – why he had no idea, as Dylan seemed pretty deeply asleep, slumped back like a weary traveler who nodded off while waiting for the red eye – when he realized the scent of him had altered vaguely. Just a bit, but it was there. Lots of thing could alter body chemistry, which altered scent in a way so minor that most people never noticed … but he wasn’t most people. He was sick, wasn’t he? He’d caught something, a bug, just like he implied last night.

Roan leaned in close, sniffing him, trying to see if he could tell what he had by scent. Paris used to hate it when he told him he had a cold before he even felt bad, but it did have a kind of a scent, at least in the impact on the body. Dylan had a fever, although it was mild right now; he could still feel the heat rising off his skin.

He smoothed his hair back from his forehead, and found himself admiring his face up close. He’d seen pictures of his parents, although Dylan didn’t keep them around – sadly, he’d seen them through file photos in news reports. Dylan was the spitting image of his mother: they were both olive skinned, dark haired and dark eyed, fine boned and lovely in an almost haunting way. They seemed to have an almost otherworldly aura about them, a sturdy patience in the face of their own impending doom. He just hoped he wasn’t Dylan’s doom.

Feeling oddly tender towards him, he kissed him gently on the forehead. He took his face in his hands, and desire blindsided him, hit him like a speeding car. He was that out of touch with himself, was he? Actually, that made a lot of sense. He liked to ignore himself whenever he could.

He kissed him softly on his closed eyes, feeling the crepe paper thin skin beneath his lips, and gave him a gentle kiss on the corner of his mouth, which woke Dylan up. He looked at him for a moment with a sleepy, half-lidded gaze, smiling faintly. “You didn’t take E while I was out, did you?”

“I’m sober,” he promised.

Dylan cupped the back of his neck. “Good.” He gently pulled him towards him, and they kissed passionately, like they had been waiting forever to do it. And Roan figured Dylan might just feel that way.

****

For a split second after the phone rang and woke him up, he thought the warm body next to his was Paris’s. It wasn’t, of course, and he knew that the second he thought it, but it was nice to imagine it was true for a millisecond.

Not that Dylan was a consolation prize. He was beautiful and sweet and frankly too good for him. He’d probably come to his senses one of these days, so he should just enjoy the time he had with him while it lasted.

Roan settled back into his pillow and was going to ignore the phone, but the bastard thing kept ringing, and he wondered if he had turned his machine on or not. Had he checked his messages and turned it off last night? He couldn’t remember.

He untangled himself from Dylan and reached over to grab the phone, hoping it was good. “What is it?” he grumbled, rubbing his eyes. The room seemed excessively bright, but then he remembered it was afternoon.

There was an obvious pause. “Are you still sleeping?” Holden asked, horrified.

“I was up late,” he shot back defensively, as Dylan nuzzled his neck. “What is it?”

Holden sighed heavily, like he wanted to criticize him further for his poor work habits, but he let it go for the moment. “I don’t suppose you caught the guy yet, huh?”

“No. Why are you calling, Holden?”

“Because someone beat the shit out of Cowboy last night,” he replied irritably. “He’s in the hospital.”