Page 167 of Antihero

“You’re the worst,” she said.

Evan dipped his chin. “Me, too, Josephine.”

60Roundup Complete

A brisk wind off Shinnecock Bay peppered Evan’s cheeks. The towering door parted, the face of the mansion opening in a slit just slender enough to admit him. He stepped in from the nighttime cold.

Keshishian stood in front of a phalanx of guards, uniform pressed, name tag straight, her abundant hair clasped in the back. “Welcome back, Mr. Nowhere.”

“How’s it been?”

“Alarmingly quiet.”

“I take it that’s rare?”

She smirked. “Last week, I would have put the odds around: When flying pigs freeze over.”

Rawlings emerged from one of myriad doors letting into the foyer, his footsteps clacking across the vast space. He looked clean and compact, as if he’d been poured into his suit, a perfect mold of a man. He shook Evan’s hand firmly but not as though he had something to prove.

“Glad you’re here.” Rawlings’s hand dipped into the side pocket of his jacket and came out with the little black box and its solitary button. He relinquished it to Evan with a ceremonious flare of his hand. “Devine asked to receive you in the drawing room.”

Pocketing the device, Evan followed him. Across the huge foyer, past the three-story waterfall, up the staircase sweeping to the right, across the landing, down a corridor, and into the empty drawing room.

Rawlings withdrew with a nod, leaving Evan alone before the curved bar with its dozen stools. The bookcases seemed to stretch higher than before. Kahlil Gibran gazed down morosely from his portrait, taking Evan’s measure.

He pulled up a stool at the bar. It felt like tucking into a boat hull.

The selection was immense, at least five hundred bottles.

Folding his hands on the polished mahogany, he waited. Pain throbbed meekly where he’d hammered a pump needle above his high rib.

Five minutes passed. Ten.

His RoamZone dinged.

A text from Naomi Templeton: Roundup complete. Four for four. They’ve been treated, arraigned, charged, and are being held without bail.

She’d promised to fast-track the proceedings, and fast-tracking them she was.

He texted back: I owe you a solitary peanut butter cup.

The door opened with a whoosh of air and Devine entered. He had returned to his particular way of walking that seemed more like coasting. He looked healthy, well rested, alabaster skin glowing.

He was dressed keenly—white button-up shirt with gartered sleeves, pleatless wide-leg trousers that looked to be cashmere. Approaching, he greeted Evan with a tilt of his head and, for once, no words. Without slowing, he hopped lithely over the bar and stood facing Evan from the other side.

His hands dipped beneath the bar and there came a clanging of metal. He came up with a stainless-steel cocktail shaker, tossed in five ice cubes, and poured in two fingers of Kauffman Vintage. Since the war, the vodka was harder to find, the price spiking into the thousands per bottle. For Devine, that was belly-button change.

“RedLite’s head has been cut off,” Devine said. “They just don’t know it yet. They’ll hold their feet another seventy-two hours, ninety-six tops. Then they’ll collapse and I’ll scatter their ashes to the wind.”

Evan said, “Good.”

“Anything else you require?”

Evan considered. “There’s a young man who lives in East Los Angeles, name’s Lesandro Candella. He’d just lost an arm in an attack when I … ran into him. I’ve been looking into getting him a customized prosthetic—the Hero Arm from Open Bionics—but they’re backlogged at the moment. Can you pull a few strings?”

“Consider them pulled.”

“I’ll get you his information.”