I just look at him. Normally, I like hearing Vidocq shout “fuck” because he pronounces it “fock.” On the other hand, of the top ten people I didn’t expect to find here, he’s the entire top five. I stay put, not moving to the right or left, orienting my body so that, if I have to, I can make it out the door without looking.
“Vidocq? What are you doing here?”
“That’s how you greet a friend after all these years?” he asks, setting the battered book he’d been reading on the floor. “I’ve been waiting for you, keeping your home safe. You think I wanted to squat in this concrete shithole?”
I raise the .45 and aim it at his head. “How did we meet, old man?”
“Ah, you don’t think it’s me, no? You think this is some trap. I might, too, if I were you.” He picks up a tumbler filled to the top with wine so red it looks black.
“You and I met at a saloon. It’s closed now. Blood Meridian. This was before you met lovely Alice. We were both at the bar, each chatting up the same pretty girl, who stood between us. Neither of us had more than a few dollars then, so we’d employed a small memory charm on the bartender so that we could pay for drinks with the same money over and over again. When we realized what the other was doing, we forgot the pretty girl and talked about what and who we were, what and who we knew, paying the poor bartender with the same few dollars all night.”
“No great loss, from what I remember. The girl was pretty, but kind of wasted.”
“So were we, as I recall. Our sudden loss of interest offended her.”
“Next lifetime, I’ll buy her drinks and listen to her all night long.”
“Next lifetime.”
The gun suddenly feels heavy in my hand. I lower it. Vidocq, a head taller than me and half again as wide, comes over and crushes me in a long bear hug.
“It’s good to see you, boy,” he says.
Like the building, Vidocq hasn’t changed a bit. He looks about forty-five, but is old enough that he can tell you what guillotines sounded like offing the aristocracy during the French Revolution.
I look around the room. It doesn’t look right. Where’s all my stuff? Where’s Alice’s?
“How long have you been living here? Where is everything?” I ask.
“Alice moved out a few months after you disappeared. I saved your things and the things she left in the bedroom.”
“Where did she go?”
“She moved in with a friend in Echo Park. That’s where she was when the terrible things happened.”
“Mason murdered her. You can say it.” I feel stupid, but I have to ask him. “The friend she moved in with, was it a girl or a guy?”
“No, a girlfriend,” he says. “Alice had lovers after you were gone, but none of them were very serious. You broke her heart. She wasn’t the same girl.”
I go over to the counter that separates the living room from the kitchen. The teakettle on the stove looks familiar, but not much else. And I’m not sure about the kettle.
“You checked up on her?”
“As much as I could. She didn’t really want to see anybody from your old days together. Certainly, no one associated with magic.”
That sounds like her. She didn’t like Mason or anyone else in the Circle. After I was gone, she’d want to get as far away from magic as she could. But she didn’t run far enough. I should have told her to leave town if something happened to me. I should have given her an escape plan. But what could happen to me? I was a golden boy. I was bulletproof.
I say, “Thanks for trying. And thanks for keeping the place. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d come in and found some asshole stranger sitting here.”
Vidocq picks ups the bottle of red wine from the coffee table, gets a glass for me from the kitchen, and fills it to the rim. He fills his glass, raises it, and we both drink. I sit down on the couch.
“So, how are you? What have you been doing since I’ve been gone?”
“I’ve been working. These days, the work is all I have,” he says. “Thievery pays for the tools, and the work shows me the mind of God. Stealing is a lot like alchemy, you know. In each, we each try to find what is beautiful and hidden and make it ours.”
“This is funny. The whole time we’ve known each other, I don’t remember you staying more than a few weeks anywhere. It’s hard to picture you here as a rent-and-electric-bill guy.”
“Don’t insult me. I wouldn’t pay a penny for this hovel. I used an old gypsy potion, a vin de mémoire manquée. I painted the walls, the windows, floor and ceiling, et voilà! Your home no longer exists. It is not seen or remembered, except, of course, by our funny sort of people. The Sub Rosa.”
The Sub Rosa. I haven’t thought about the Sub Rosa in a long time.
Vidocq is Sub Rosa. So are Kasabian, Mason, and the rest of the Circle. I’m Sub Rosa, too, though back in the day I never thought of myself that way, even though there are maybe a few thousand of us walking around Southern California.
Sub Rosas are the secret people who look just like you, but are different. They bank where you bank. They stand behind you in line at the coffee shop. They panhandle you for the money that you suddenly and inexplicably have to drop into their grimy hands. Some of us also talk to the dead. Some see the future, trade souls like baseball cards, or bribe angels for a peek at God’s to-do list. Mostly, Sub Rosas are the people regular people aren’t supposed to know about. It’s not that we don’t like you; it’s that you have a habit of burning us at the stake when you notice us.
Vidocq’s alchemical supplies and burglary gear cover nearly every surface—racks of potions, books and scrolls in Latin and Greek, alembics, test tubes, and grinding stones. On a table in a corner are the baubles he’s stolen on commission—netsukes, loose diamonds spilling from courier envelopes, passports, and computer discs. It was one of his less successful experiments that turned him immortal. He’s spent the last hundred and fifty years stealing things to fund his research for a cure.
“Thanks for watching the place. I’m glad you have it,” I tell him. “I couldn’t live here without Alice.”
He nods solemnly.
“Where will you live?”
“I’m crashing at a friend’s place. There’s a bathroom, a comfy bed, and all the movies you can eat. You should come by and see it.”
“It sounds charming.”
“I’m back here to kill some people, you know.” I blurt it out, trying to get the words out fast. “I’m going to take out the whole magic circle.”
“I knew that when you walked in. And I understand. I won’t even try to talk you out of it, but there are things you should know before you start.”
I can tell this is going to be a Real Talk. I light a cigarette as Vidocq pours more wine.
“I did something much like what you’re doing, many years ago. Long before you or your grandparents were born. Revenge is never what you think it’s going to be. There’s no pleasure and glory, and when it’s done your grief remains. Once a man does the things you’re talking about, he will never be the same, and he can never go back to who he was before. Worst of all, no matter how many enemies you kill, you are never satisfied. There is always one more who deserves it. When it becomes too easy to kill, it never ends.”
“You stopped.”
“The desire is still there, even though all the men are dead, the ones I killed and the ones who passed away during the many years I restrained myself. Worse, when it was over I had to leave Paris, get on a ship, and