“No, I really don’t know,” she insisted. “At least I’m not sure. Please, you have to believe me. I’m telling the truth. All I know is that it’s some kind of enhancement thing. An energy booster, but I don’t know how it’s to be used. All I really know about it is the code name and the cost.”

I gestured to the other two. “Do they know?”

She turned to them and considered. She nodded to Woodpecker. “He’s a local broker. He’d know who he was taking it to and where. But that’s all.”

“Okay. And the other guy?” I said, indicating Slenderman.

She licked her lips again. Not to try the seduction thing but to stall. “I don’t know him. Not even his name. He uses a code name. Die Katze.”

The Cat. How interesting.

I said, “Aha.” Aloud this time.

I grilled Cruella for another twenty minutes, but it was clear she really didn’t know anything more.

“Thank you for playing,” I said and shot her with the dart gun.

Mind you, it was tempting to just freaking strangle her. I wanted to. Or maybe the Darkness wanted to. Hard to really say. But there was no proof she had blood on her hands. I had her prints, a scan of her face, and I took a swab of the inside of her mouth to capture her DNA. All of that would go into the system, and god help her if she came onto my radar again.

I left Woodpecker to sleep. He was too much of a small fry for my needs. Lucky him.

The Cat—Slenderman—was another matter entirely. I jabbed him with a syrette of JumpStart and watched him twitch and cough and piss and puke his way out of Sandman’s arms and into the awful realities of the moment.

I watched him pull at the threads of what he last remembered and tie them into the fabric of what was happening. What was about to happen. The woman had blanched, but the Cat turned an even whiter shade of pale as he realized who I was.

“Ledger,” he gasped, making it sound like the name of the devil.

He was not far wrong.

CHAPTER 131

THE PLAYROOM

UNDISCLOSED LOCATION

NEAR VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA

Kuga was alone at the pool when Mr. Sunday walked out onto the patio.

Brooding clouds hid the sun, and the trees were filled with ugly birds. Kuga did not get up but instead let Sunday drag a chair over and sit down. The salesman wore crisp blue jeans with a razor crease, hand-tooled cowboy boots with hummingbirds and roses on them, an embroidered Western shirt with the same pattern, and a brown sport coat with leather elbow pads. He even had a white cowboy hat on his head.