Augustus stopped short, and I could see the hesitancy in his posture because he stiffened like someone had just rammed a stick up his ass. "Just some dude from the old neighborhood."

I just stared back at him. "You seriously expect me to believe that?"

He deflated. "Come on. You can't expect me to ... snitch on someone."

"'Snitch' on someone?" I snickered. "Like a rat? What the hell is this?"

"You don't do that," Augustus said. "It ... that's not right."

"Code of omerta? Nice. I don't care what Cary's doing," I said, "except as pertains to this particular case. But I need to talk to him, and if I go into that conversation without all the facts, someone might end up getting shot."

"That's a little extreme, don't you think?" Augustus asked. "And a bit of a leap, too-straight from, 'I don't have all the facts' to 'BAM BAM BAM' and cooking some fool."

"Here's what happens when I don't have the facts going into an encounter," I said, trying to explain it patiently. "A lot of times, they run when they see me coming, especially if they have the sort of checkered background that would prompt someone like yourself-a decent and honorable person, clearly-to hesitate before discussing their business. This flight to avoid me ... well, it ends up pissing me off." I clapped him on the shoulder with one hand. "Tempers flare. Unkind words are sometimes exchanged, ones that can never be taken back. And somewhere, in the middle of all that heat, a gun is drawn. Maybe by him, maybe by me, but the point is-who do you think wins that exchange in the end?" I gave him my most serious look.

Augustus chewed it over for a minute, finally looking disgusted. "I didn't think you were going to be able to draw the line between points like that, but you went and did it, and made it almost seem like a reasonable person talking instead of a crazy-ass insane killer person."

"I like how you threw in the 'almost.'"

"He's a dealer," Augustus said. "Has been for a long time. Probably where Kennith got his abnormal narcotics results."

"Hrm," I said, pondering that one. "That's ... hrm."

"What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking we have to talk to him," I said. "That's our obvious link to Kennith's criminal past, after all."

"Yeah, but what if Kennith went straight?" Augustus said. "You know, after jail. What if he went straight, except for maybe a little indulgence in the herbal remedy for his glaucoma every now and again?"

"Then this is gonna be a short conversation with Darrick," I said, "and also, you know damned well he didn't have glaucoma."

"How are you going to know if he's telling you the truth?" Augustus asked. I sensed skepticism.

"If you break like ... three, four major bones in their body and they still tell the same story, they're usually telling the truth," I said, absolutely deadpan. Then I smiled, nodded, and started to walk away.

"Oh, hell," I heard Augustus say. And then, after another few seconds, his footsteps hurrying to catch up with me. "You were joking about that."

"You asking me or telling me?"

"You have a dark sense of humor," he said.

"I have a dark sense of everything."

"That a new thing?" he asked.

I thought about it for a beat. "Not particularly, no."

I could feel his presence at my side, walking along with me, eyes boring into me as we walked. "You know, they don't really talk about your early life much."

"'They' don't really talk about anything factual in relation to any point in my life," I said. "Because 'they' are a bunch of assholes who are paid to speculate in order to fill dead spaces in airtime, magazine column inches, and bytes on the web." I quickened my pace, and Augustus hurried to keep time.

"You really got a powerful anger for the press, don't you?" he asked.

"I've done, like ... two interviews," I said. "Two. That's all they really know of me, other than some YouTube videos that have me in action doing things like flying around and beating the crap out of the occasional person that deserves it-"

"I think like ninety percent of your YouTube videos are you beating the crap out of someone," he said. "I mean, everyone knows the New York one, but there's that one in Houston-"

"Dude totally deserved it," I said.

"-Los Angeles-"

"Super-duper-uber-deserved it."

"-that one in Montana-"

"I didn't even break any bones that time."

"-and wasn't there one in like ... northern Canada someplace?"

"Yellowknife," I said. "Which was totally unfair because that was a bar fight that someone else picked and I just finished."

"Wasn't that person human?"

"Yes," I said. "And very drunk. Which is why he's still able to walk and has all his limbs still attached."

"I mean, maybe it's just my naturally sunny disposition talking, but," he made a pained grimace that showed me rows of even teeth, "if I wanted more people to like me, I might be a little ... gentler. More restrained. I'm not saying 'be like Katrina,' but she's got the public persona down-"

I stopped, feeling a hard shudder run through my body. "I will never be like her." I whipped a finger into his face. "You know what Kat is like? Weak. She's weak. She flops around from place to place, person to person, unable to make a decision with spine for herself."

"That's harsh," he said. "I thought you used to be friends."

"Yeah," I said. "So did I. Until she broadcast a private phone call between the two of us on her show's premiere without my permission in order to boost her ratings on my name."

"Oh, shit," Augustus said, and his hands came up to his mouth like it could cover his obvious surprise. "You didn't know about that?"

"No," I said, more than a little miffed. "And I sat there and talked to her after the Russian incident for ... I don't even know. Forty-five minutes? Thinking she cared. That she was a friend. That she was ... worried." I spat the word out with hard contempt. "But she wasn't. She was just worried about her ratings. Worried how she'd look if her little vanity project bombed. So she used me to look concerned, sweet, caring-they edited that call down to five minutes of me being a complete and total-"

"Yeah, I heard," he said. "It, uh ... I mean it wasn't the New York video, but uh ... it maybe didn't highlight your most flattering ... uh ... side? Personality? I got nothing," he said, finally giving up on trying to put a nice spin on it.

I waited a beat to see if Aleksandr Gavrikov would interject. He didn't say much about her anymore, which I considered a giant effing blessing. "I keep getting blindsided by people," I said.

"So why'd you take me on as a partner?" He froze. "Intern? Uhhh ... charity project?"

I sighed, felt the weight of everything I'd just told him settle on me. "Really, at this point ... why not?" I felt my eyes burn a little at that admission. "What do I have to lose?"

He was quiet for a moment after that. "Your job?"

"Screw my job," I said.

That just hung there for, oh, about two minutes, and he finally spoke again. "So ... what should we do?"

"Find Darrick Cary," I said. "After we stop at the tire shop and ask Kennith's old employer a few questions."

There was a flash of confusion across his face. "I thought you said-"

"I know what I said." I straightened my shoulders and started walking. Any direction would do, because I was sure Augustus would correct me if I was heading the wrong way. Eventually. "But I haven't lost my job yet, and until I do ... I'll just keep doing what I have to." I felt an acidic taste on the back of my tongue, a disagreeable aftereffect of the tea. It reminded me of life: it had seemed sweet for a little while, but that had faded pretty quickly, leaving nothing but awfulness behind.

Augustus There were easier things than finding Darrick Cary in the midst of Vine City, especially when I didn't know where he lived or where he usually hung out. I'd known Darrick way back in the day. He'd dropped out at-sixteen? Seventeen, maybe? I'd heard the rumors here and there about him, of course-that he'd had a kid and actually got married and turned to dealing when economic prospects didn't turn out so bright for a high-school dropout with a couple of high-level possession charges. Just enough to go felony, I heard.

Walking down the street looking at random passersby wasn't going to do it, I knew, but I was really hesitant to just go all out and call someone I knew would know where Darrick was. I had loyalties still, and one of those was ... well, you didn't do that sort of thing without a damned good reason.

Especially when the person asking was the sort of person who might-oh, I don't know-break his kneecaps for the hell of it.

"Where are we going?" Sienna asked, still wearing that hangdog look. Man, I expected this killer lady to be a total badass, but I hadn't exactly expected the level of bad juju coming off of her in the emotional toxic waste department. This girl had some issues, and not just the kind that stemmed from a bunch of crappy articles about her, either. There was something behind all this "betrayed by a friend, everybody hates me" motif. Something deeper, maybe? She had an anchor of some kind on her, and it was dragging her down, or burying her in quicksand or something.

"Tire shop," I said tightly. No, I just wasn't ready to throw even a low-down street hood like Darrick Cary into her path just yet. "Maybe they can tell us where Darrick is."

"You think that they'll know there?" she asked. "Why? Is the tire shop secretly a drug den?"

I thought about it for a second. It was one of the big national chains, but I couldn't remember which. "Probably."

We walked along in silence until we saw the glowing sign. They had that thing lit up in the middle of the day. I suppose once you've gotten past burning tires, conserving electricity just doesn't really turn the dial anymore.

"Hello?" Sienna asked, just walking right under an open garage door. I followed her a little more cautiously. There was smoke in the air and I felt myself frown. "Hey," she said, taking a sniff. "I think it actually is a drug den."

"I don't see a car." Some dude with no neck came walking up, tall as Schwarzenegger but eight times as big across. He nodded at both of us, and it was kind of a challenge. "Why are you here if you don't have a car?"

"I'm looking for directions," Sienna said. She did not even bother to be sweet about it.

"Try the diner on the corner," No-neck said.

"This is clearly not that much-vaunted Southern hospitality I've heard about," she said, easing toward him.

He just looked at her through jaded eyes, standing next to a sedan that was waiting its turn for service. "Get your sweet ass on out of here before I show it some hospitality with my-"

I cringed, already knowing what was going to happen. She didn't disappoint.

She had a hand on the back of his head and just slammed it right into the sedan in front of him. It echoed through the shop, and I swear he hit so hard I saw stars on his behalf. I felt my whole face just make that pained look, like "OOH!"

No-Neck's head bounced back up, eyes rolling, legs looking a little rubbery, like he was going to drop. He was blinking furiously, like he was trying to figure out if he was awake or asleep. "Whaa ...?" he managed to get out.

"What's your name?" Sienna asked. She'd taken her hand off the back of his head and just stood there a pace away, watching him wobble. He looked like he was going to pitch face-first into the hood on his own this time.

"T-Tony," he said finally, focusing in on her face. "Wh-who are you?"

"My name's Sienna, Tony. Do you know where I can find Darrick Cary?"

Tony focused on her. "D-Darrick?"

"Yeah," she said. "I need to pick up something from him. Where is he?"

Tony looked like he was losing that fight with staying awake. "W ... who are you again?"

She just shook her head. "Tony ... this is going to hurt you more than me."

"Wait!" I said, holding up both hands. "You're going to kill this poor bastard."

She looked at Tony, who was registering none of the conversation we were holding before him. "He was really rude a minute ago."

"I am not going to argue that," I said, still holding up my hands. "But does he really deserve to die over it?"

"I think he'll get a concussion at best," she said.

"You hit him like that again and Tony's going to lose the capacity for speech," I said. "If you want people to like you, maybe you ought to consider not beating the crap out of everyone you run across that offends you."

"Tell me where I can find Darrick Cary," she said, and there was a darker overtone as her hand found the back of Tony's head again. He didn't even seem to feel it.

"All right!" I yelled. "All right, just let me call Taneshia. She'll know."

Sienna looked at me like I was an idiot and pushed Tony aside. He fell back on his haunches, dazed, and just sat there. "Taneshia? That girl I met last night? You think she's going to know where to find a drug dealer?"

"Yeah," I said. "Because she's been known to indulge from time to time when she's partying. Straight A student, too. You got a problem with that?"

"I told you that I don't care about the drugs," she said, and turned back toward the entrance to the garage door. She walked past a desk and rang the bell on it rapidly until a guy emerged from the back room with a pissed-off look on his face. She paused, gave him a 'don't give a crap' look and said, "Tony's got a concussion. You should take him to the hospital."

"Who the hell are you?" he asked. Dude looked like he was about to turn purple.

She was already gone. "She's a lady with a really bad experience with ... uh ... tires," I said, making up bullshit that didn't even sound sensible while trying to back out the door myself. "You should really get him checked on, though," I said, nodding at Tony. "Hit his head or something." I ducked out of the garage door and left the stifling smell of oil and rubber behind, wondering exactly who I was following at this point.

I dialed up Taneshia on my phone as I walked out of the garage. I could see Sienna a little further down, near the sidewalk, a phone of her own held up to her ear. Taneshia answered on the fifth ring.

"What is it?" she asked, sounding a little panicked, a little out of breath.