Sacrifices by Jamie Schultz Page B

to see.”
    â€œAt the hardware store. I dunno, man. I seen
Casino
.”
    Clarence gave a short, dry laugh. “I wanted you dead, I’da had it done already, ’stead of wasting my time withthis shit.” The humor fell away from his face. “Now get the fuck out the car.”
    Nail got out. Clarence and the bodyguard did likewise.Once again, Nail found himself sandwiched between the two. He followed Clarence up the stairs and into the building.
    The air-conditioning was a welcome change, immediately chilling the fingers of sweat that oozed down the sides of Nail’s head. The smell, though . . .
    â€œSomething burning?” he asked. Clarence and the bodyguard shared a glance, the meaning of which Nail couldn’t divine, and then Clarence walked down the hall a little farther. He stopped at a door. The glass window had been hung with a blind, so Nail couldn’t see in.
    Clarence opened the door. The burning smell grew more intense. “Hey, Big John. How’s it hangin’?”
    An indistinct murmur came from the room. Clarence beckoned Nail over.
    Nail stepped forward and looked in the room. He let go a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. He’d worried that, despite Clarence’s assurances, maybe there’d be a guy with a gun ready to waste him, or a chair with some leads hooked to a car battery, or something equally terrible. Instead, there was a big guy—the name wasn’t ironic, apparently—sitting in a chair, hunched over a table. That was it.
    â€œI don’t get it,” Nail said.
    Clarence gestured at the room with an open hand.
Have a look around,
he seemed to be saying.
    Nail obliged. The burning smell, he noted, came from candles, arranged in a rough circle on the floor. Wide puddles of wax surrounded each, and Nail got the impression that several candles had burned to nothing in each spot, only to be subsequently replaced. The room’s walls were largely covered in Peg-Boards hung with tools. Tools and papers, Nail noted. Irregularly shaped papers torn carelessly from notebooks or invoice pads or, from the look of things, whatever was handy. Nail inspected the nearest, where a dozen or so business cards had been stuck together with masking tape to form a wider writing surface.
    He didn’t recognize any of the specifics, but he knew that kind of writing. Tommy had done that shit. Genevieve did it by the bucket load—had once done the better part of the interior of a house in Magic Marker to keep the bad guys from finding them.
    â€œWhat are you into, Clarence?” Nail asked.
    â€œWhy don’t you tell me?”
    Nail glanced uneasily over at Big John, who, he saw, was now scribbling over the surface of his table. Quick, sure lines, accompanied by a low mutter Nail didn’t like at all.
    â€œThis is—” Nail cut himself off as the tenor of Big John’s muttering abruptly changed, growing louder and picking up speed. Nail turned, annoyed and concerned in equal measure, and Big John sat up straight in his chair, a beatific, awful smile spreading across his face. He spread his hands apart and said one final word.
    In the space between Big John’s hands, a seething black cloud appeared.
    â€œWhat—” the bodyguard began, and then something uncoiled from the cloud, abruptly dispersing it as it leaped out.
    Nail didn’t even have time to think. The thing that had burst from the cloud—
Snake!
Nail thought, and it had that general shape, though he saw no details—flew through the air toward him. He batted it out of the air, felt a sting in his palm. The snake hit the floor and reared up immediately. Nail saw a serpentine body, maybe a meter long, thick as his wrist, lined with wicked spines. It hissed, spreading a spiked hood like some nightmare version of a cobra, and it struck.
    Nail danced back. The snake hit the floor in front of him, missing by inches, and before he