I shifted into drive again and pulled onto the side street.
“You lead a complicated life,” Jessica said.
“Tell me about it.” I screeched to a stop in front of an abandoned mental asylum, the kind you see in horror movies and music videos.
Jessica shriveled at the sight of it. “Is this the demon’s lair?”
“Nope. This is a friend of mine’s lair. I just have to make a quick pit stop to see if a few people are still kicking or not. Next stop is the demon’s lair. It’s a nice adobe off Wyoming. Very discreet. But I’ve heard that those pristine plaster walls were painted with the blood of virgins. Or a terra cotta latex from Sears. Not sure which.”
“You’re evil,” she said.
“Tell me something my stepmother didn’t yell in my face every day since I was two.”
I grabbed my flashlight out of the backseat, got out of Misery, and found myself facing a digital lock on the chain link surrounding the asylum. The tall gate as well as the rest of the fence was topped with razor wire, a nice but superfluous touch. In this neighborhood, the residents would see the razor wire as more of a challenge than a deterrent, but Reyes had felt the security measure necessary. I found his concern endearing. He knew what Rocket and his sister meant to me, and he’d bought the building and the land around it to preserve it so Rocket would always have his home.
Rocket was a large man-child who’d died in the ’50s in this very mental asylum. He was a savant – an incredible being who knew every name on earth – and he could tell me if a person was still alive or had already passed. I took advantage of that more often than I probably should. While his sister – who’d died of dust pneumonia around the age of five – also lived at the asylum with him, I rarely saw her. She was cute as a bug’s ear and painfully shy.
So here I was again, trying to break into an asylum that I now owned, but because of the razor wire, scaling the fence was out of the question. I didn’t know the security code. Reyes had yet to give it to me, and I wasn’t about to call him and alert him to the fact that I’d ditched him. I should have stopped at the Daeva’s house first and convinced him to come along with me. He would be a measure of protection, one that would tamp Reyes’s wrath once he found out what I’d done. Wouldn’t tamp it a lot, but it’s the thought that counts.
I wasn’t a moron. I wasn’t really putting myself at risk. I knew if one of the Twelve showed up, I could summon Reyes instantly. He could still be my protector incorporeally, since the hellhounds would be in the same state – incorporeal – but he’d be mad nonetheless, seeing my actions as reckless and impulsive.
Maybe they were. I placed a palm against my abdomen. I really did have more to worry about than just my own ass now. According to prophecy, the bun was a lot more important than I would ever be, any day of the week. But I still had a job to do and bills to pay. I could hardly expect Reyes to follow me around for the rest of my life, no matter how delicious the thought.
I walked up to the gate and decided to try my luck. I punched in Reyes’s birthday, to no avail. Then my birthday, also to no avail. Then, just for shits and giggles, I punched in another date and stood stunned when a dot on the display flashed green and the gate unlocked. I paused, surprised he’d remembered the very first time we met in the flesh – the night I saw Earl Walker beating him. The night I’d tried to stop said beating and almost got into even more hot water than I could handle.
But the ordeal had been worth it. Every moment with Reyes was worth it, and that first sighting, as heartbreaking as it was, had changed my life.
I strolled up to the metal doors, punched in the same code, and gained entrance again. At least his security measures would keep out the riffraff. Mostly partiers who wanted to destroy the place once their alcohol levels reached the size of their IQs. This place was historic, fascinating, and to many, creepy as hell. It was awesome.
But even for Reyes, these were a lot of security precautions for a run-down building that had been abandoned in the ’50s. Thankfully, there was no alarm system, but even without one, I had to question all the other electronics. Unless he was storing weapons of mass destruction down here, I had no idea why we’d need this much protection.
I stepped inside the lobby and continued down a darkened corridor.
“Rocket?” I said, my voice soft as I trampled through dirt and debris left by partiers. Much of the surface had been tagged, but Rocket’s etchings made them look rather beautiful, like crumbling pieces of ancient abstract art.
The last time I saw the Rocket Man, he’d been scratching my name into one of the walls. He wrote only the names of those who had died or were about to die, so seeing my name up in scratches was sobering. But that was before I knew about the bun. This was a whole new game, and I was not about to die anytime soon. My daughter had to be born. Her birth was prophesied according to some guy way back when, before the invention of sliced bread. Rocket was wrong, however – and this wouldn’t be the first time. Well, okay, technically he hadn’t been wrong yet. He’d prophesied Reyes’s death, and Reyes did die for a few seconds before I brought him back to life with a kiss – according to my affianced, anyway. So I had to believe that Rocket’s record was yet untainted, but was about to be. If there’s one thing I’d learned as a supernatural being thus far, it’s that there’s always a loophole. No way was I going to die now. I would lie, cheat, and steal to make sure nothing happened to the bun. And I needed info to assure my survival.