The strange barge was, as perhaps he should simply have assumed, at rest beside the white stone centipede of a dock in front of Deviant's Palace.
Quickly he turned back to the roof, and saw that if there had been a chance of getting back down the ladder without a fight, it was gone now. Lollypop's young friend was only a few steps away, clearly waiting for Rivas to move away from the roof edge, and he was warily watching Rivas's knife.
Rivas wondered how the Rivas of a week ago would have handled this. The footing wasn't the greatest up here—probably he'd have tried a long kick at the boy's knife hand and, as close to simultaneously as possible, a wide, unaimed slash that could be relied on to strike somewhere between forehead and throat.
What he did was smile, sheathe his knife and step off the edge of the roof.
His fall was controlled this time—he was careful to keep his body straight and his feet together, and as he took and held a breath he wondered if the workman by the crane was watching. When he hit the water and was under it he spread his arms and kicked to keep from hitting the bottom. He was pleased with the unruffled way he'd handled it until he remembered that old Lollypop was drifting around down here somewhere in the dark water—maybe above him right now, grinning and reaching for him with cold hands—and he flinched to the side, swam spasmodically for a few strokes and then did a panicky thrash up to the surface. This time when he surfaced and shook the wet hair out of his face, he looked anxiously down. He swam fairly hastily toward the pillars and when he was in among them in the shadow of the massive overhanging masonry he became aware of a spattering sound.
He paused to lift his head and blink around, and he realized that the mutant children perched in the nets and hammocks were clapping their webbed hands, clearly hoping he'd do it one more time.
Lisa was standing out on the little pier in front of her house when Rivas came trudging up the canalside path. He'd stopped dripping, and his hair wasn't as damply spiky now, but his shoes still squished when he walked.
«Afternoon, Greg. I gather you fell into the canal last night; do it again today?»
«The ocean,» he said. «Twice.»
He'd decided not to approach Deviant's Palace from the seaward side, not at first, anyway, but to reconnoiter the place by simply walking in the front door. Beyond that he wasn't sure. Order a drink? If the legends were accurate, the place was as much a bar as it was anything else. Ask for a job? He shuddered.
«What are you doing out here?» he asked.
«I keep thinking I hear a hurt animal in the canal. This is the third time I've been out to look.» She shrugged and started toward the house. «Oh well.» She squinted back at him over her shoulder. «You don't look like you found your person.»
«No.» Thinking of her carpet, he kicked off his mud-caked shoes on the porch and peeled off his socks.
She looked surprised at the courtesy, but didn't remark on it. «Well,» she said, «while you were off looking for somebody, somebody was here looking for you. He left a—» She stopped, and looked at him.
He had frozen in the act of hanging the socks on the porch rail. «A . . . hurt animal,» he said.
She nodded. «In the canal. Do you know something about it?»
«Maybe.» Jesus, he thought, what does it take to kill one of those things? And I've led it here. «Have you ever heard of, uh, hemogoblins?»
«Yeah,» she said, her eyebrows halfway up to her hairline. «Vampire ghosts in the southern hills, right? Is that what I've got in my canal, one of those?»
He straightened up and spread his hands helplessly. «Well, I—yeah, if I had to make a guess. I thought I killed it last night. I twisted its head off, for God's sake.» He sat on the rail, next to his socks, and stared unhappily at the floor. «I'm sorry, Lisa. I didn't mean to lead it to your place. It's been following me around for days, sneaking up and saying disgusting things to me. I think it'll follow me when I go, but just in case, if you can get any screens for your windows, just for a couple of days, I'd—»
He stopped, for he'd finally looked up at her, and the mixture of pity and apprehension in her eyes startled him. He reviewed the last few things he'd been saying, and suddenly, after one flash of indignant anger, he was laughing– and then a moment later the laughter was shaking him as if it were a pack of invisible dogs, and he had to fall off the rail on one side or the other so he let himself fall in, and he sat rocking and hooting on the boards of the porch floor while tears coursed into his beard and Lisa, backed up to the far rail, smiled twitchily in an effort to keep from joining him; but soon she was laughing as hard as he was.
As the laughter subsided, Lisa stepped away from the rail, pushed a stray lock of hair back from her forehead, and sighed. «Screens,» she said weakly. «And some of that spray. Isn't there a spray?»
Rivas snapped his fingers. «Now why didn't I think of this earlier? We'll get a leash on the thing and sell it to somebody as a guard dog.»
She giggled. «And . . . and what, something about blood. Do they say pure-blood dogs? I guess not. Still, there's a joke there somewhere.» Her smile had worn off. «In the old days, you'd never have thought it was funny that somebody thought you were crazy.»
«I nearly didn't today.»
«But you're not, are you? Crazy?»
«I'm afraid not.»
«You did twist the head off a vampire out there last night?»
He nodded. «Not easy, with this bad hand.»
«What a world.» She opened the front door. «There's screens in the shed. I'll put 'em up. Oh, I started to tell you—a guy came looking for you and left a note.»
«Not Jack Frenchfry,» Rivas groaned, getting to his feet. «Middle-aged, skinny, lechy grin?»
«No,» said Lisa from inside the house. «Where'd I put it—here we go.» He'd followed her into the kitchen and she handed him an envelope. «This guy had a beard and only looked about twenty-five.»
Shaking his head blankly, Rivas tore open the envelope and took out the enclosed card. «Nice paper, hm?» he said.
On the front of the card, in handsome calligraphy, was written, «Mister Gregorio Rivas». He flipped it open. « . . . is invited,» the card went on, «to have dinner at eight o'clock tonight at the Venice house of his one-time spiritual father . . . if he knows where the place is; and I can't believe he does not.» It was signed, in a different and messy scrawl, «SEV.»
Lisa had been peering over his shoulder. «This Sev wouldn't be who you're looking for, would he, Greg?»
«Uh,» said Rivas, reflecting that he'd been a fool to let himself be recognized last night. «No. But he knows where she is.» His heart was thumping too quickly and his mouth was dry. His hand began to shake and he put the invitation down.
«What's wrong, Greg?» He didn't answer, so Lisa turned to the liquor cabinet and asked as casually as she could, «Will you be accepting this invitation?»
Mechanically Rivas took and drank deeply from the glass of whiskey she handed him. «Aaahrrr,» he said quietly, almost conversationally. His face was pale. «Maybe I will,» he said wonderingly. «God help me, maybe there isn't any other way . . .»
She looked uneasily at the invitation and then back at Rivas. «Where is the place?»
He gave her the ghost of a smile. «Promise not to try to do anything about it?»
«Well . . . okay.»
He sighed. «It's Deviant's Palace.» Lisa sat down and had a drink herself, from the neck of the bottle.
A lot of its substance had been lost in the canal—it had been set back days. It had expected resistance, certainly, some obstinacy on Rivas's part, but it had not expected treachery —for he had taken two steps toward it, obviously intending to cooperate, before suddenly backing away and making that remark about go suck a fish—nor had it expected sudden senseless violence.