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lived here, but we moved to my mother’s property in Lawrence, Kansas, when Aki was born. We weren’t sure we wanted him growing up here …”
    She trails off and looks around the room. A bald man in a white silk suit takes what looks like a whiskey flask from his pocket and snaps it open. Inside is damp soil and pale, gray worms. He picks a worm up by its head and blows onit. The bug straightens, and when it’s rigid, the man lights one end with a cigarette lighter and smokes it.
    “Aki just had his eighteenth birthday and wanted to come back to where he was born. Alone, of course. A young man wants to feel independent. How could we say no?”
    A corn-fed Kansas farm boy full of bumpkin magic loose in L.A., what could possibly go wrong with that?
    “My husband still knows people, Sub Rosa, in the area. He asked them to keep an eye on Aki, but it’s a big city. We haven’t heard from him in weeks. I know he knew people out here. He was corresponding with a Sub Rosa girl. I forget her name.”
    “Do you have the letters with you?”
    “No. They’re gone. He must have taken them with him.”
    “Have you talked to your husband’s friends?”
    “None of them knows anything.”
    “Why are you coming to me about this?”
    “I have a feeling something has happened to my son. I heard that you do things other people can’t or don’t want to do. There was a crime in the city earlier this year. I believe a cult was planning on sacrificing a group of kidnapped women. You stopped it.”
    Is that what the tabloids are saying happened now? It’s annoyingly close to the truth. Couldn’t they have worked in some ETs?
    “Listen, Evelyn.”
    “How did you know my name was Evelyn?”
    “Listen, Evelyn, I know you need help, but not from me. I’m not what you think I am.”
    “What are you?”
    “I’m a monster.”
    I let that sink in for a second. She’s a nice woman, but Ziggy really fouled my mood. I kill off the tumbler of Aqua Regia.
    “Don’t take this the wrong way, but if your husband really is Sub Rosa, why isn’t he out here with you doing locator spells? Or echo tracing? Sloppy teenybopper magic usually leaves a fat shiny trail of residue all over the aether. Easy to follow.”
    “My husband is dead. It was very recent and sudden. That’s why I was trying to get in touch with Aki. Now I might have lost both of them.”
    She looks down at the coffee cup. Her heart is slowing, but not because she’s any more relaxed. My blackened arm is starting to heal. It burns and itches. I can’t help this woman. I don’t want to be here.
    Carlos says, “I think you’re getting a little ahead of yourself. Why don’t you go to the cops or hire yourself a private investigator? You don’t need magic for this kind of thing. And from what I’ve seen around here, magic doesn’t really help anything. It just makes everything more confusing.”
    She puts her hand on my arm.
    “You saved all those people. Why won’t you help me?”
    “Carlos is right. You need to go to the cops or hire yourself a detective. I’m not Sam Spade. That’s not what I do.”
    “But you saved all those people.”
    “I didn’t save anyone. I just killed the bastards who needed killing. Get it? I don’t save good people. I murder bad ones.” I wish I was saying this quietly and reasonably, but really, I’m way too loud.
    Evelyn straightens and turns to ice. She puts her kid’s photo back in her bag and gets up.
    “I’m sorry to have taken up your valuable time.”
    “Wait a minute.”
    This time I grab her arm. I look around for someone who was here a minute ago.
    “Titus. Come on over here.”
    A whippet-thin black guy in a purple velvet suit and glasses with round, yellow-tinted lenses walks cautiously to the bar. I hold a hand out at Evelyn.
    “Titus, this is Evelyn. Evelyn, this is Titus Eshu. Titus is a Fiddler. Do you know what that is?”
    “He reads objects by handling them.”
    “Right. He plays around with things,