fine.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Nurse, some psycho is making mud pies on my blisters with her hairy meat hooks and it hurts.”
“That’s more like it, baby boy. Knowing when I’m hurting you and not hurting is how I get better at this.”
“You’re doing fine. I’m a happy guinea pig.”
Allegra sets down the jar and uses the lid to rub the excess paste from her hand.
“Why is it you come to me these days instead of Kinski? I’m not complaining. Patching you up is a great crash course in the whole healing thing.”
“You’re good at it, too. When people find out, you’ll steal all of the doc’s business.”
She puts a couple of wide red leaves on top of the paste and wraps my arm in gauze, then uses white medical tape to hold the gauze in place.
I put my shirt back on. The arm still hurts, but it’s definitely better.
“As for Kinski, I don’t need any more neurotic angels in my life. Aelita wants to mount my head on a wall like a stuffed trout and Kinski is in his own remake of Earth Girls Are Easy.”
“Avoiding Kinski doesn’t have anything to do with Candy?”
“You’re the second person who’s asked me about her today.”
“You should call her.”
“Candy doesn’t factor into anything. And I have called. She doesn’t answer the phone anymore. It was only Kinski for a while. Now it’s no one. I haven’t talked to either of them in weeks.”
“You only come over here anymore when you’re bleeding. You don’t talk to Eugène. Kinski is gone. You’ve been avoiding everyone who cares about you. All you do is lock yourself up with Kasabian, drink, and drive each other crazy. Speaking as your doctor, you’ve got serious issues. You’re like those old guys you see at diners, staring at the same cup of coffee all afternoon, just sitting around waiting to die.”
“Sitting around? Tell that to my burns.”
“That’s not what I mean. You came back to get the people who hurt you and Alice and you did it. Great. Now you need to find the next thing you’re going to do with your life.”
“Like learn the flute or maybe save the whales?”
“You should grow up, clean up, and treat yourself like a decent person.”
“I’m pretty sure I’m not either of those things.”
“Says who?”
“God. At least everyone who works for Him.”
Allegra looks past me into space, thinking.
“If I gave you some Saint-John’s-wort, would you take it? It might help your mood.”
“Give it to Kasabian. He’s the shut-in.”
Allegra pulls me over to the window and examines me under the light.
“Do you think your face is getting worse?”
“Define ‘worse.’”
“Are the changes becoming more noticeable?”
“I know what I think. Tell me what you think.”
She nods.
“It’s worse. Your old scars are healing and your new cuts aren’t disappearing like they used to. You still heal fast, just not ridiculously fast.”
“Can you stop it?”
“Leave it to you to ask for the opposite of everything I’ve been learning for the last six months.”
“I need my scars. Come on, if you can fix something you should be able to break it, too, right?”
“I can beat the shit out of you with a claw hammer. That’d be easier than working up a scar potion.”
“What about something that’ll just stop the healing where it is?”
“I don’t know about that.”
The door opens as Allegra is talking.
“But I do,” says Vidocq.
He comes in with a paper bag full of what looks like weeds, bugs, and most of the animal parts the dog food company rejected. He holds up a jar full of turquoise liquid.
“Blue amber.”
He hands the jar to Allegra, who gets up and gives him a peck on the cheek.
“That’s mazarine ice?”
“Oui. If you look in The Enochocian Treatise, the large gray book by the old alembic, you’ll find notes on the Cupbearer’s elixir. Take the amber and start gathering the other ingredients.”
“That will bring my scars back?”
“No, but we might be able to halt the healing. The Cupbearer brewed and served the gods the elixir that gave them eternal life, keeping them as they were forever. Her elixir doesn’t cure; it holds illness and infection in place. Teutonic knights brought it back from the Holy Lands during the Crusades for comrades who had contracted leprosy. I suspect that if it will stop the spread of a disease, I can make it hold your scars where they are.”
“But you don’t know.”
“How could I? Only un homme fou asks for a way to stop healing.”
“Fou me up, man. Give me skin like rhino hide. Make me look like the Elephant Man.”
“It might take some time to get it right, but we’ll see what we can do.”
Vidocq and Allegra gather plants and potions, cutters and crushers, on the worktable. They don’t have to talk much. Just whisper a word or two to let the other one know what they need. They’re a nice team. Batman and Robin, but without the rough-trade undertones. For a second, I really hate their guts. I could have been like that with the right partner, but I’m stuck with the Beast That Wouldn’t Shut Up. I wonder how smooth these two would be after a week of Kasabian screaming for porn and cigarettes. I should bring him over for a family dinner. Vidocq must have a ball gag around here somewhere.
Damn. What a childish little prick I am. There they are, working to save my ass, and all I can do is whine about poor, poor pitiful me. I need to go kill something real, not snuff dead cheerleaders, but something alive and nasty, something that deserves it.
“It’s ironic, isn’t it?”
I look up into Vidocq’s eyes.
“You spent all those years in Hell fighting to
