Mark Henry_Amanda Feral 02 Read Online Free PDF Page A

was I supposed to know that derelict would do something like that?”
    “It really was just bad timing,” I suggested. Gil stared straight ahead, his eyes drifting away.
    “Doesn’t matter. I’ve heard some really nasty stuff.” Ricardo tapped a cigarette on the table.
    “Like what?” Wendy lingered on that last word like a secret.
    “Well, a few years back, one of Markham’s ‘girls’ showed up to work fresh from a weekend meth-a-thon, tweaking like crazy. The boss man stripped her nude, shook a whole box of itching powder on her and pushed her onstage. By the end of her dance, she’d picked herself bloody and half the audience had either run out, puking and blood spattered, or … shot their wads, to put it crudely.”
    Marithé added, “Well, I heard—”
    “How do you know about Markham?” I asked.
    “I get around,” she said.
    I looked from her to Ricardo and back. “Yes … you do.”
    She gave me her patented “fuck you” look and continued. “Like I was saying, I heard that he keeps a bag of ball bearings in his office and if a girl slips up and accidentally gives the crowd a peek at the girls”—she shook her chest to accentuate the point—“he hammers their tits like a mafia thug silencing a snitch.”
    “Oh that’s lovely.” I glanced at Gil; his eyes were wide and dry. “Is that all, or does someone else want to toss a rock at Gil’s house of cards? Wendy?”
    “I got nothin’,” Wendy slurred, between greedy swallows of rum.
    “Well …” Ricardo ran his fingers across his lips.
    “Yeah?” I eyed him.
    “… there’s the …” He looked over each shoulder and then spat the words across the table. “The Oatmeal Scotchie.”
    Gil gasped. “Oh my God, how do you know about that?”
    “Uh—” Ricardo grimaced.
    I glanced at Wendy. Her eyes caught fire—I imaginedmine had as well (this was too juicy)—as though a terrible family secret had been revealed. “So … you’re not referring to a delectable butterscotch cookie, I take it?”
    Ricardo shrugged and let loose a sly smile. Marithé concealed a giggle behind a stiff hand.
    “Just shut up, all of you!” Specks of blood clung to the air around the sound, curling and undulating between us like a living thing. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
    “Ooo.” I pointed to his face and drew an invisible circle. “What’s all this about?”
    Pinpoints of crimson appeared on Gil’s pale cheeks like freckles—Rose McGowan’s blood was fresh in his system … and mobile—the effect was more Pippi Long-stocking than all-American boy. The closest thing to human I’ve seen from him in a while. Cute, kind of.
    Wendy broke in, “I know, right? So testy.”
    “There might be something that could play in your favor.” He leaned in and motioned for the rest of us to do the same. “Markham has a memory problem, ever since a car accident from his youth. Becoming a vampire doesn’t heal brain damage. He might forget the whole thing in a matter of days, so if you just lay low, got out of town maybe.” Ricardo held up a finger, his face turned deadly serious. “Do you think you can do that?”
    “Sure. Of course.”
    “I mean it, now. You’ll have to offer some sort of refund and an apology. But, I wouldn’t do it anytime soon. Let the man cool down and maybe he won’t kill you.” He said it like the situation actually
had
a bright side.
    “Oh God.” Gil’s head lolled back on his shoulders.
    Wendy jumped on the suggestion and slapped myarm. “We could totally go see your mom! It’s like another sign.”
    “Looks like you may get your way, girl,” I said.
    Wendy bounced in the seat, clapped her hands and prodded Gil, like he wasn’t going through a crisis. He cringed.
    “What’s this about?” Ricardo asked. “You were all planning a trip anyway?”
    “Oh, my mother. She has cancer or something. Wendy’s telephone psychic predicted that we’d take a trip to see her.”
    “Telephone psy—” he