8

 
When Logan came to on a wooden floor, his first thought was that he was back in the Canadian Rockies, hiding in cabins, running from a vague but gnawing feeling whose dimensions he could barely guess.

But he instantly dismissed it, as there were several flaws in the scenario. For one thing, the room smelled
of tacos and men’s dirty sweat socks, and it wasn’t cold; it was, in fact, uncomfortably stuffy.  He tasted dried blood in his mouth, and faintly heard cash registers ringing downstairs.

He remembered then.  Rags - right. He must have passed out, or - as he preferred - fallen asleep. He sat up, realizing he'd slept at a very uncomfortable angle, so he had to move his neck side to side and rub it to work the kinks out.

Come to think of it, even though his mind had been a complete and utter waste back then, back when he was breaking into abandoned cabins along the range, he realized now that his survival instincts - even though he'd been insane at the time - were impeccable. Why had he gone farther up into the higher elevations during winter, without proper clothing and with no idea where the fuck he was going or what he would do when he got there?  Simple: they would not follow.  It was cold, not what he thought of as “American cold”, but bitter cold, the killing kind, the kind that could easily give you frostbite, the kind that could make your engine die and leave you stranded. Snow clouds ruled out any possibility of being seen from the air, and the fact that he'd stayed away from whatever roads were around there meant it would be that much harder for them to get a bead on him.  He could survive those conditions, no matter what, but knew they could not. They would wait until the worst of it was over, until it got closer to spring, and by that time he'd been long gone. Maybe the real reason they wrote him off as MPD (missing, presumed dead) was so they didn’t have to bother trying to look for him.

Wow. What did it mean when your auto-pilot was a sharper tactician than your conscious mind?  Oh shit, he really didn’t want to think about it.

He figured Rags wasn’t home because the T.V. wasn’t on, and his bed was empty.  It was kind of creepy to be in a stranger’s apartment - and although he knew Rags, it was only in the most casual sense - and have him know you were there.  Breaking and entering was bad enough, but just leaving him here …

Wait a minute. Did that mean something bad could have happened to Rags?

Logan used his bathroom, not looking around too much at all (and there was no way he was taking a shower here), and while there was a hint of blood in his urine at the beginning, it quickly disappeared. He felt like he had healed, or at least he was moving around easier, and not spitting up blood any longer. He then went and turned on the beat-up old air conditioner, but needed to give it a good whack on the side before it started. How could Rags stand to live here? The smell of tacos was about to drive him mental.

Walking out into the bright sunlight, he needed a minute for his eyes to adjust, and understood why sunglasses were an actual necessity in Southern California.  Maybe the pollution concentrated the sunlight, gave it a laser like intensity?

He went back to his motel room, wondering if he’d see Dru again. If she was working for the Dragons, it was a given, so he should be ready for her next time. She wasn’t the only one who could use insanity as an effective defense.

He got his air conditioner going - it was just as bad as Rags’, it seemed - and took a cool shower, wondering about his latest “memory”.  Honestly, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know anymore.  He was starting to get a very bad feeling, especially about that government guy.  His instinct was telling him he was better off not knowing, and how could he doubt it?  Sometimes instinct was all he had.

But how did you tell the Powers That Be to stop?  If they were at all like Bob, they didn’t take orders or requests, they simply did what they wanted.

He suddenly realized, after the shower, that he had nothing to change into.  So he got back into his torn and bloody clothes, and hit the nearest clothing store. He got weird looks for wearing his leather jacket zipped up in this weather, but it was better than letting everyone see how torn up and blood spattered his shirt was. As for the jeans … well, he could always claim to be a musician.  This was L.A. - they were a dime a dozen here.

After being briefly appalled at clothing prices - this wasn’t even an upscale boutique! - he bought three pairs of jeans (well, his track record indicated he needed spares), a pack of pre-packaged t-shirts and tank tops. (He already knew from experience that he needed lots of shirts; he was always losing his shirts. Shit, sometimes he wondered why he even bothered to wear one).  At the last minute, he threw in a pair
of mirrored sunglasses.

Returning to his room, he quickly changed, choosing an olive green tank top with no overshirt, since it was already about a hundred out there, donned his sunglasses, and set out on the motorcycle he’d gotten from Argenis. With Chin dead, he was forced to go to plan B - the hard way. Well, not for him, but surely for the others.

L.A.’s Chinatown - famous movie setting that it was - only appeared different from New York City’s Chinatown in that there was a little more room between buildings. It wasn’t precisely sprawling by anyone’s interpretation, but the width of the buildings and the alleys between them gave you a sense of breathing room that New York City just couldn’t have, not with its population density.  Also, you got to see more of the sky, as smoggy as it often was. As much as he liked big cities - ironically, it was so easy to become lost in a crowd, to be among a thousand people and never noticed - he did miss the open sky in more remote places, and certainly the smell of a forest was always more inherently appealing (even rife with skunks) than hundreds and hundreds of people crammed together, regardless of their personal hygiene.

He traveled the back alleys, looking for the places where tourists never went and were never welcomed, and it was easy to visually tell what part of town that was, as it wasn’t as quaintly picturesque as the rest
of it, nor were their any signs in English.  Also, it didn’t look as clean, overall; this was the seedy side of Chinatown, the dangerous part.

Chinatown itself was a misnomer. It was actually “Asiantown”, as everybody from the Near East seemed represented here: the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Thais, Taiwanese, Malaysians, Philippines. Even the Pakistanis and Indians had made inroads here. But Chinatown was a much catchier name, and of course more famous now.

He parked his bike in a narrow alley, hiding it behind a dumpster, and walked towards a bar so low profile that it had nothing but a hand drawn sign in the window announcing it as a bar - and in Mandarin only. Two different ways to avoid the gaijin.  Well, usually.

He pushed open the peeling wooden door, and walked into a smoke filled, dimly-lit dive, where all the neon signs were in ideograms, not English. There were a handful of men - they were all men - sitting at rickety tables scattered around the bars, slumping in booths. For some reason, the actual bar itself was devoid of people filling the stools.

Everybody glanced at him, but as soon as they saw he was a white guy, glances turned to hostile or stunned stares. As he walked past, two guys who looked like professional drinkers said, in Mandarin, “Stupid fucking tourists.”

“I wonder if he has any money.”

Logan looked at them, taking off his sunglasses, and replied, in Mandarin, “I’m no stupid tourist, asshole. And yeah, I got money. Think you can take it from me, grandpa?”

Their look of shock made him smile. He swaggered over to the bar like he was the toughest guy in the joint, like he could take anyone if they wanted to start trouble. It helped a lot that he was, and he could.

The bartender was a young Korean guy with a long, pale scar nearly bisecting his right cheek. Despite his racial background, he spoke perfect Mandarin. “What the hell do you want?” He snapped.

Logan chuckled to himself as he slid onto a stool, and, glancing at the list of available beers - all Asian, most unheard of in this country - asked, “Give me a Sun Lik, and talk nicer to a paying customer.”  He
dug a twenty out of his pants pocket and tossed it on the ash-smeared bar.

The kid looked warily between him and the twenty, and Logan found himself mentally counting all the
acne scars on his face. He began to wonder - if he connected all the dots, could he make a picture of Abraham Lincoln?  Seriously, it almost looked like he could.  Finally, greed won out, and the kid took the bill before retreating farther down the bar and retrieving a bottle of Sun Lik beer from a cooler.  If someone could be said to pop a bottle cap 'viciously', he did, and slid it down the bar.  Logan caught it easily, and with two gulps swallowed half the bottle.  It was way too fucking hot out there.

When the kid came back with his change, he said, “Your kind isn’t welcome here.”

Logan raised an eyebrow at that, and found it impossible not to smile. “My kind? Oh, you mean the whole white thing?  Accident of birth; can’t be helped.” It was funny to be resented for that, when the guy could resent him for being a mutant.  But he didn’t know he was, so it was rather ironic.

“I really think you should have your beer and go.” The kid was starting to sweat.  Logan’s incessant, amused smile was starting to make him nervous, and his dark eyes kept flicking over him, sizing him up, trying to judge if was carrying a weapon (he was, but he’d never see it coming), and if he got his biceps from lifting weights or actually beating the snot out of people on a regular basis.

“Not until I know where the action is. Where’s the game?”

The kid pulled out a dirty rag and pretended to wipe down the bar, the usual action of a bartender who wanted to ignore someone. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do. How does Chinatown stay so financially solvent?  Selling tea?  There’s always a game on somewhere, and I want in.”

The bartender continued wiping down an imaginary spot, ignoring an actual drink ring, and shook his head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He took another swig of his beer, then said, “Does the name Yashida help?”

It was like a cone of silence had slammed down inside the bar. The other men hadn’t even been making that much noise, so it was that much more amazing. The kid stiffened as if he’d just gotten a cattle prod in the ass, and his head snapped around so fast Logan was almost startled. “Are you a cop?” He hissed. “We don’t like any fucking white boy cops coming down here -”

“Do I look like a fucking cop to you?” He shot back angrily. “I’m no goddamn cop. What I am is someone looking to get back in the game - in more ways than one.”  He was talking about gambling, but he was also referring to something else, and he hoped the kid was finally getting it.

He must have, because even though he was appraising him with a hard stare, he whispered, “Are you trying to tell me you were in with them?”

“I worked for the Yashidas,” Logan agreed. “And I was no fucking pool boy.  I’ve been out for awhile, but now I want back in.” This, of course, left out several key details, and glossed over all the others, but it was good enough.  Of course, the dates wouldn’t precisely match, but he was hoping that some distant Yashidas must have survived, and hadn’t changed their name, continuing to work in the Japanese mafia in spite of the new stigma slapped on their surname.

The kid actually took a step back, anger draining away to doubt, then shock.  The Yakuza had a lot of people in their organization, and while most of them were Japanese, not all were. And with this whole Three Dragons thing, they'd even crossed the species barrier.

Someone got up from the back of the bar and then left. The guy was trying to be casual, but Logan smelled the surge of adrenaline from him. He would bet solid money he was going to report this crazy gaijin throwing around the Yashida name in a bar, and he was glad.  Why else was he here?

“You … uh, you worked for Mr. Yashida?” The bartender stammered.

Mr. Yashida? Mariko’s father, Uncle …. Or someone else entirely?  He felt a slight twinge in his stomach as he realized there might be a Yashida highly placed in the Yakuza right this second.  Oh, what kind of bitter, bite-you-on-the-ass irony would that be if true?  Even if he wasn’t related to the Yashidas, he couldn’t help but think of them as “his”, it would still be kind of freaky.  He gulped down the rest of his beer, and slammed the empty bottle down on the bar.  The bartender jumped slightly at the noise. “What, you think I’m a tourist?  Are you gonna tell me where there’s a game going or not?”

He seemed like he wanted to say no, but just couldn’t dare. If he was Yakuza, former or current, that was just trouble no one needed. “Down at Matsuda’s, about a mile from here,” he admitted reluctantly. “In the back. But I didn’t tell you.”

“Of course you didn’t.” He got up to go, and he could feel the general relief in the room.  They all wanted him gone as of yesterday.

“If … if they ask about you, who should I say you are?”

That was a curious way to put it, but he understood the kid was only trying to think of a way to put a name to the gaijin in case this came back to haunt him.  A thought that occurred to him almost made him laugh, and it was too good not to share. “Just tell ‘em I’m the last samurai, and not that Tom Cruise pussy either. They’ll figure it out.” He put his sunglasses back on and left the stinking bar, going out into the stinking outside world.  At least it was a different - and somewhat better - kind of stink.

His bike was where he had left it, which he expected, and he took it down to Matsuda’s, a little disappointed that he wasn’t being followed.  Apparently, it took them a minute to get their act together.

Matsuda’s was a large hotel with an attached restaurant, bar, and public bath, which would probably explain the large crowds to the unknowing eye. Of course it made him wonder how they could successfully hide a casino in it with all the people coming in and out, but it probably wasn’t a proper casino by any means. Las Vegas had no reason to be nervous.

The parking lot was too full and too open, so he found another blind alley where he could stash his bike. He’d just gotten it set up behind another dumpster full of fish guts when he got a whiff of something else
on the wind, accompanied by footsteps.  Finally.

There were four Ressiks, and they didn’t attack as one, but split up and swarmed from different places. They came from either side of the mouth of the alley, and the other two jumped down from the roof of the buildings above him - and one of those was shooting on the way down, like a character in a John Woo film.

Logan didn’t wait. He rushed the ones coming at him from the mouth of the alley, popping his claws as he ran, and he reached a big one first, one who pulled a machete and swung it at him like he was a stalk of sugar cane. He sliced through it mid-air, the machete apparently not made of adamantium, and then plunged his claws knuckle deep into the demon’s barrel chest.

It wouldn’t kill the ugly brute - he knew that from experience - but he also knew from experience that getting stabbed fucking hurt, even if it wasn’t fatal.  The bronze-scaled, snake-like demon gasped, gaping at him in wide-eyed shock, as his pal came in from the side.  Logan nailed him in the abdomen with a side kick before he yanked his claws out of his friend’s chest.

“Stop shooting, asshole,” one of them snapped. “You almost hit me with a ricochet!”

The one he'd stabbed fell away, hitting the wall and grabbing his chest as he slid down it, while the other three swarmed. Logan was roughly certain he’d been shot, himself (perhaps several times), but he couldn’t really feel it.  He was currently pumped on adrenaline, and was pretty sure he could rip through a tank if he absolutely had to.

They’d seen the claws, so they ganged up on him, one Ressik grabbing each of his arms and trying to hold them back, while the one with the gun moved in for a point blank shot.  He shot him twice - Logan felt the powder burn his eye as one of the shots hit his cheek and bounced off - and he pumped two other shots into his chest as he moved in. “Tough fucker, ain’t you?” The gunman sneered.  He was a greenish Ressik this time.  This was another thing that made sense to him, although he wasn‘t sure why, exactly: different races within demon species. “Will a shot between the eyes finally put you down, dog?”

“No.” Since they were holding his arms tight, Logan was able to jump up, and wrap his legs around the Ressik’s gun arm, twisting until he heard a sickening - but satisfying - crack.

He yelped in pain and dropped the gun as his buddies drabbed Logan out of range and started pummeling him, pounding their fists into his face. Someone broke their knuckles on his cheekbone, and his assailant barked in pain as much as shock. Since they stopped, Logan slammed his foot down on top of the right Ressik’s foot, breaking several bones. He screamed, loosening his grip momentarily, and Logan took advantage of that, giving him a sharp elbow in the throat before yanking his arm free and stabbing the Ressik who was still holding on to his left arm straight through the head. He made a painful, wet noise, and fell back, not dead but close enough.

The gunman had picked up his gun in his left, usable hand, and fired another point blank shot at him as Logan lunged for him. Despite being only a couple of feet from each other, he missed; he just wasn’t used to shooting from the left, and he had a tremor in his hand that was either fear or pain, or both. Logan didn’t wait to find out - he slashed through his neck, and cut his head clean off. It hit the asphalt before his body even buckled.

He knew the Ressik with the broken foot was coming up on him, so he wasn’t terribly surprised when a metal pry bar came down hard on the back of his skull. It snapped clean in half, one part flying off and hitting a brick wall with enough force to kick up some dust, and while he was sure it had cut open some skin on his scalp, and left him seeing stars, that was all it did. He turned around snarling.

The Ressik limped back, mouth agape. “Oh fuck, you’re all metal.”

They didn’t know? They thought he just had the claws? Well, you learned something new every day, didn’t you? He retracted the claws of his right hand and grabbed him by the throat, bring his left hand claws a hair’s breadth from the side of his head. “Listen and listen good,” he growled. “Go tell your bosses I couldn’t give a fuck what they want to do, and to whom. If they give me one thing, I’ll leave them the fuck alone.”

His apple sized yellow eyes were bugging out of their sockets, and he strained to sputter, “Wh-what?”

This had just occurred to him on the way over from the bar. It wasn’t his original plan exactly, but it was probably better. That’s why he worried that Scott was really going to fuck up his “X-Men” team one of these days - a good fighter had to be ready to improvise, use what he had around him. Scott seemed to prefer sticking to a script; rigidity could kill almost as fast as stupidity. “I want Yashida. They give me him, I’ll get out of your hair and never bother you again. If they don’t cough him up, I will cut through every single fucking one of you to get him, just like I did before. Got that?”

It would track, and sound highly plausible. After all, he had cut through the Japanese underworld once before; what would stop him from doing it again? Certainly not these boneheads. If the guy was highly placed in the Yakuza, there would be chaos - some would want to give him up, and he wouldn’t want to go. Best case scenario, the sharks would turn on one another, and tear each other apart. In the ensuing struggle and power vacuum, he could easily take down all the Three Dragons. As the great Alfred Hitchcock termed it, it was a Maguffin, but one that Yashida couldn’t afford to ignore.

He wasn’t replying fast enough, so Logan shook him, and he sputtered, “Yes, yes, I got it.”

“Good.” He then slammed his forehead into the Ressik’s, and his huge eyes rolled up into the back of his head. When Logan let him go, he dropped like a stone.

The Ressik he’d stabbed through the chest was on his feet now, and had pulled a nine millimeter out of his pocket. Logan just stood there, smiling, waiting for him to shoot. “Come on, you know you want to,” he growled, continuing to smirk at him.

For a moment, the Ressik just stared back at him, as if trying to figure out if he was bluffing or not. As soon as he decided he wasn’t, the Ressik turned and ran. Smart choice.

Logan rolled his shoulders, trying to work the kinks out (bullet impact did hurt, even if it did nothing else), and retrieved his bike, figuring he was done here - at least for now. Now it was time for the Dragons to really seek him out, make them work for it. Get deeper and deeper in the shit. As soon as they completely tipped their hand, it was all over but the screaming.

It wasn’t anything he should feel proud about, but damn it, he felt good.

9

He decided to swing by Rags’s place, just to make sure he was okay, and he was. He answered the door with a painful groan, and looked incredibly hung over. “So ya lived?” Rags asked, somewhat factiously.

“Yeah. Did you?”

He continued to groan in pain, and quickly shut the door as soon as he was inside, as if trying to banish all the sunlight in the world. The blinds were firmly shut, and while some light had bled inside, most of it came from the silent television. “Yeah, kinda.” He rubbed his crystal eyes, and then said, “Thrakk gotta ‘it for ya.”

He wasn’t sure he’d heard him right. “Huh? What do you mean he got a hit for me?”

“’e found a guy who can ‘elp you find Arcanum.”

He was honestly surprised. He hadn’t expected that to ever pan out. “Seriously? Where?”

“Just a sec.” He sat down on his bed, and started going through the pockets of a coat that smelled vaguely of cigarette smoke and vomit. “I’m guessin’ you didn’t run into Dru again.” He jerked his head at his tank top, which was decorated with bullet holes and blood; most of it his, but some of it black Ressik.

“No. I met some of those Ressiks you mentioned the other night. They wanted to have a chat.”

“Did you kill ‘em all?”

“No, just the one shooting at me. The rest I just scarred for life.”

He snorted humorously. “Next time you go up against ‘em, invite me. I wanna ringside seat.”

“You hate ‘em that much?”

“Ressiks are motherfucking bastards, the whole lot of ‘em. You know they generally eat a piece of their opponent? It’s so they can get some of their strength or essence, or somethin’ gross like that. If someone’s gonna kick their reptilian asses, I wanna see it. ‘ell, if we film it, we could make a lot of scratch.”

Now there was an idea. A bizarre, sick idea, but one all the same.

Rags found what he was looking for, and held it out to him, It was a business card, but when he took it, he saw it was actually a hotel’s business card - the Beverly Hills Hotel, with a room number scrawled on the back in ballpoint. “’e’s only in town for business; supposedly ‘e’s leaving soon. You should find ‘im by the pool. ‘e wears flashy clothes and is green. Thrakk said ‘e’s from Vegas.”

“Don’t tell me - is he an agent of some sort?”

Rags shrugged. “Don’t know.”

“Do you have a name for him at least?”

He shook his head. “Thrakk never mentioned it.”

Logan sighed, and shoved the card in the back pocket of his jeans. “Guess I’d better get goin’ then.”

“If you wanna catch ‘im, yeah.”

“I’m gone. Thanks.” At the door, he turned back and asked, “Do the Sisters protect you always?”

Rags glanced up at him curiously, eyes narrowing in equal parts suspicion and pain. “Pretty much, yeah. Why?”

“You might need it, that’s all. I’ll try not to come by here anymore.”

Rags sighed like the world’s last martyr, and shook his head. “You’re a fuckin’ maniac.”

“So I’ve been told,” he admitted, venturing out into the bright sunlight once more. He wondered if he should change for this fancy ass guy waiting for him in Beverly Hills, or just let the bullet holes and bloodstains speak for themselves?

Yeah, why not? Might give the upper class a thrill.

******

Absolutely no one wanted to let him anywhere near the pool - once he was inside the air conditioned, perfumed (!) lobby, they wanted to shoo him out. So he started ranting about how he needed to see his agent now, and he was sorry he didn’t have time to get his makeup off, but he’d just gotten off set, and he needed to go back ASAP, and if he was late Mr. Cameron was going to hold them all personally responsible for the delay.

Unbelievable - it worked. They backed off. For as many drawbacks as L.A. obviously had, there were some perks, such as obnoxiousness being completely acceptable if there was the slightest possibility you were “someone”. Oh, someone would investigate it, figure out he was a fraud, and kick him out, but he could milk it for all it was worth in the meantime.

Since it was roughly eight million degrees out in the sun (okay, give or take a few million), he didn’t expect there to be that many people poolside, so wasn’t he surprised. All the chaise lounges and chairs seemed taken with hard bodied men and women of various kinds, wearing little clothing, and he was tempted to go up to a couple of them and ask if they thought their implants might melt in the intense heat, but thought better of it. That was something to do on the way out.

There were some small circular tables scattered around the poolside area, shaded by huge, multicolored parasols, and since he saw no green skin on the semi-nude club, he figured these weren’t Thrak’s friend. (One guy wore a gold lame Speedo, though - it was flashy, but did it count as clothing? At least he had an idea why they were called “banana hammocks”, though.)

He glanced around as he walked through the tables, wishing the reek of chlorine and sunscreen wasn’t as bad as it was; it was hard to smell much of anything (the chlorine really knifed through his sinuses), and his eyes were starting to water. It would have been a good place for Dru to attack him again, if it wasn’t for all this pesky daylight. And the manager loudly calling someone “a fucking assface fuck” loudly on his cell phone had garlic breath that probably could have dissolved a vampire on contact. (Assuming garlic actually worked on vampires. Did it? Damn, he forgot to ask Angel about that.)

Finally, he caught a glimpse of a bright purple tailored suit, something way to hot and bright for a day or a place like this, but the man was putting away his own cell phone, and was wearing a strangely old fashioned fedora, so he couldn’t get a good look at him. He was within six feet of the table when he finally got a whiff of something familiar getting past the chlorine. Logan was so stunned he actually paused. “Lorne?” He asked, surprised.

The man turned sharply, almost as if braced for something bad, but then the green demon lowered his designer sunglasses, and peered up at him with bright red eyes. “Holy hand grenade. Clint Eastwood, what are you doing here?”

He scowled at that, and approached his table. “It’s Logan.”

“Oh, I know sweetie, it’s just that … “ he petered off, and then sat forward, whispering, “Is that real blood on your shirt?”

He nodded as he sat down in the lone empty chair at his tiny table. “Yeah. Some Ressiks had a problem with me.”

“Ressiks.“ He shuddered extravagantly. “Land sharks of the demon world. And no fashion sense at all.”

“So you’re Thrak’s friend?”

He took off his sunglasses as he snorted through his nose. He had the dregs of what smelled like a tequila sunrise in a glass near his left elbow. “I wouldn’t say friend, per se. It’s just if you ever owned a karaoke place, you needed to know who Thrak was.”

“To keep him out?”

He tapped his nose. “Give Steve McQueen a Cupie doll. He rarely kills demons with his voice, but still … not a pleasant experience for any being with ears. Thrak said he knew a guy who was looking for Arcanum, a friend of Rags’, but he never mentioned you by name. Weird coincidence, huh?”

Logan shrugged. “I’m not sure I believe in coincidences. I prefer the term ‘conspiracy’.”

Lorne chuckled, and dabbed at the sweat on his brow with a napkin. He wondered why he didn’t take off his hat, then he remembered he had horns. Probably not what you wanted people to see, especially poolside at the Beverly Hills Hotel. “You’re a macho man after my own heart, sweets. So what is it you want with Arcanum? You know there’s some bad mojo around that place, don’t you?”

A waiter started to approach, but Lorne shooed him away, which was fair enough. Logan doubted he could get a decent beer here. “Yeah, that’s why I want to find it.” Lorne’s quizzical gaze suddenly became startled, and he didn’t know why. “What?”

“Have they picked you?”

“Who?”

Lorne sat back, looking both displeased and frightened. “Sing for me.”

“Say what?”

“You want me to take you to Arcanum, sing. Anything, just a line or two, doesn’t matter. I just need to know …”

“Know what?”

“I don’t know.”

Logan glared at him, then picked up the virtually empty rocks glass. “How many of these have you had?”

Lorne crossed his arms over his chest, and settled back in his chair, as if in it for the long haul. “That’s my price, Loganberry. You want the info, you have to humor me first.”

Loganberry? Oh man, how the hell had he ended up in this town?