Revenant

Chapter 20

Finally getting back to my apartment and relaxing with a drink should have been enough to lessen some of the anxiety that had strapped itself tightly to my ribcage.

It wasn't.

After pouring myself a truly monstrous scotch, I'd spent several hours reclined on the more comfortable of my two couches, mulling everything over, occasionally leafing through some of the more relevant papers that Maria had printed off for me. I was seeing logical inconsistencies in just about everything to do with this job, no matter where I happened to look. Whenever I attempted to peel away the uncertain bits and focus on something solid and real, I would just end up re-exposing some impossible or bafflingly bizarre aspect of this situation I'd somehow found myself knee-deep in. Not the most relaxed headspace to be in, nor the most productive.

That, and I was becoming annoyed with myself for how I'd handled that whole meeting with Diavolo, now that I'd had time to think everything through. At the time I'd wanted to find out how serious he was about keeping me on the job, and had thrown out what I thought was an appropriately audacious figure for him to chew on. What I'd thought he'd do was call my proposal preposterous and then explain the situation further, or otherwise attempt to prove that my fee was completely out of line with the expectations of the job. Surprisingly, he hadn't even balked at the number I'd given him, and before I'd even had a chance to realize what I'd done he'd transferred half of the payment to my account. Now I was on the hook for a job with more holes in it than a wheel of Emmentaler cheese someone had mistaken for a dartboard. Stupid.

And, of course, now that the price tag for this job was so ridiculously high, there was also the possibility that Diavolo would simply try to get rid of me once the job was finished rather than pay the remainder of my fee. That sort of situation has happened to me before, and more than once. Offering to pay someone huge, whopping loads of cash might seem like a perfectly reasonable idea when you're in the middle of a life-threatening situation, but once the problem gets resolved and the crisis has abated, almost everyone begins to think thoughts along the lines of 'Do I really have to part with the rest of that money like I promised?'

Waiting until the job was done and then setting me up to be killed later amounted to a fifty-percent discount if he was successful. I was fairly confident Diavolo hadn't really been keen to tell me about all of his various shenanigans concerning the piano shop, either. By getting rid of me, he'd be tying up what he probably considered a loose end, and save himself some money to boot.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Myrrh came skittering into the living room from the kitchen area, ears perked forward, looking ready for action. He glanced over at me, then turned his attention to a perfectly normal and un-suspicious looking section of rug, immediately falling into a crouch, his feline butt wiggling mightily. A half-second later, he pounced upon the unremarkable spot, reared up on his hind legs, gave two swipes at the air in front of him, did sort of a twisting backwards cartwheel, stuck the landing, briefly looked to his left, and then zipped away like a mottled lightning bolt.

A second later I heard the distinct sound of claws seeking purchase on linoleum floor tiles, followed by the familiar 'whumph' of a furry body crashing lightly into the far kitchen wall.

"You do know there was nothing there, right?" I called out behind him.

He responded with a single 'Mrowr?' before taking off down another hallway, presumably to do battle with some other nonexistent thing on the other side of the apartment. Chasing after ghosts again . . .

Kind of like I was, actually.

Ghosts, spirits . . . reanimated dead. Jesus Christ, what the hell was I supposed to do with this mess?