The phone call was a nice distraction. It meant he was being hired to do a job. They didn’t know that about his life. Beauty and her Technicians didn’t know that little tidbit. Bad men hired him to do odd jobs.
“Hymn, how can I help you?” he said into the line.
“My children have been taken and there are two men I need you to find. One is Kindred Seoul, and the other is the bastard who took Willow and my daughters,” Hymn said into the phone.
“Five grand when I arrive and another five when I locate these two men,” Rami said. “Do you want them alive to handle matters yourself?”
“Kindred, I have no use for,” Proderick said.
“Then it will be another 10,” Rami said.
“He’s not worth that much alive. I’m not paying that much for a corpse,” Proderick said.
“Then find him your damned self,” Rami said.
Silence ensued on the line. Rami was about to end the call when Proderick exhaled the words, “Fine, but for that price, both are dead, and you bring home my family.”
“Nope, ain’t no babysitting service. I find them, you pay, and you go and get your own rotten kids,” Rami said.
The line went dead. Rami didn’t like working for the bad guys. He wanted to work for the good guys getting rid of parasites like Hymn and the rest of his ilk. His connection to the man came by way of looking for his own wife, who ran away to join a Vampire Cult in Murray, Kentucky. She was dumb like that, fascinated by things she read in books, almost unable to distinguish the difference between what was written as fiction for the amusement of lonely women and the truth.
The vampires no longer existed in Murray, but she was told about another group in Pine Knot. She dragged his child to the homestead of Proderick Hymn, who considered the woman to be unstable because she encouraged the other women to read books. He didn’t want those types of women in his care.
Hymn had booted her out.
She tried one group after another until she landed in Ohio with a group of militias, operating under the guise of being Amish Mafia. They too were sadistic whoremongers. It was the last place his wife and child had been seen. Their trail went cold from there.
In his heart, he knew they were still alive. He could feel it. He would find them and bring them home, but first, he had to go and deal with that asshole Hymn. A fleeting thought crossed his mind of locating the woman and children, but killing the cult leader.
He would have been paid.
One more bad man would be taken out.
“Maybe I can still be of some use in this world,” Rami said aloud, looking at the barrel of solvent he’d taken from Wrong Way’s van. Thus far he’d dipped in a stray cat that had still been alive for a hot minute. The product she’d created was far superior to his own. He would make a mint using it to rid the world...no, he couldn’t do that. Without the traces of glitter on the body, no one would know it was him.
“Find Beauty, return the solvent, and earn a few bonus points, and maybe I can still get the job,” he laughed, knowing Tempest Fateman could never do it again. “Serves that bitch right.”
Chapter Seven – Likeness
THE TABLE WAS SET WITH cloth napkins, bowls, saucers, and the fancy napkin holders; Raphael hadn’t seen much of the stuff in years. A great deal of it had remained in the butler’s pantry, and he truly didn’t have any use for it. Willow managed to give the items a second life, which he appreciated. He also appreciated the lunch.
“Wow, look at all of this,” he said, taking a seat at the end of the table. “This looks and smells amazing.”
“Thank you, it’s just soup and sandwiches with a side of fries, but it’s a meal,” she said, placing a bowl of vegetable soup in front of him. He stirred the bowl, eyeing the thick tomato sauce which enveloped the vegetables. The girls both had grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato and spinach. His sandwich had a wedge of ham shoved in between the slices. Eight, perfectly trimmed crinkle cut fries rested on the side of his plate next to the sandwich.
“Crinkle cut fries?” he asked Willow.
“Raphael, your mother has everything in this kitchen a chef or wannabe cook could ever want. She had a crinkle cut slicer, which is what I used on the potatoes to make the fries,” she said, feeling proud of herself.
“Honestly, there is no telling what you may find around here,” he said, looking down at the food. He waited for her okay before he dug in, and he wasn’t disappointed. “Oh, wow, this is really tasty. A grilled ham and cheese with spinach and tomato...never tasted so good.”
Anxious, he wanted to taste the soup. Raphael didn’t even think he had soup in the pantry, but once he spooned in the first helping, he knew it wasn’t from a can. Willow had actually made the soup.
“This is delicious,” he said, going in for another mouthful. The children remained quiet, watching him eat. They ate slowly, happy their new Daddy liked the way their Mom cooked. If he liked the way she cooked, then maybe he would allow them to stay with him.
“Raphael, was your mother a chef?” Willow asked to make conversation.
“No, my mother was a homemaker. Her job was to take care of my father and me and my sister,” he said. “She threw parties often and hosted Bridge on the third Saturday of the month. Once she took ill, her friends, well the ones who were left, still came by on the third Saturday to sit a spell with the old girl.”
His eyes crinkled at the corners when he spoke of his mother.
“And your father, what did he do for a living?”
“He was an orthopedic surgeon,” Raphael informed her. “The ongoing joke used to be at the end of this street you could get your knee fixed, your ear, nose, and throat cleared, and check your teeth. Stanley is an ENT doctor like his father and Jeb’s a dentist like his father used to be. They took over the family practices.”
“You didn’t want to be a doctor like your Daddy?” Dusty Rose wanted to know.
“No, I didn’t have the hands for it,” he said, holding up the bear paws God had blessed him with. “Kind of hard to hold a scalpel and do delicate surgeries with ham hands.”
“How long have your parents been gone?” Willow asked.
“My father, it’s been about 12 years and my mother, we are coming up on four years. She had cancer,” he said, lowering his voice.
“I hate that word, cancer. It is said in hushed whispers as if the unbearable lightness of being is somehow lifted when the word is uttered in reverence,” Willow said. “I lost my mother to it as well, but she had it in her breast. Later it metastasized into her major organs. My father died of heartbreak at losing her. He never snapped back, and his unhappiness rubbed off on us, leaving my sister to constantly search for that feeling of belonging to a thing greater than herself.”
“I’m sorry for your losses,” Raphael said.
“I gained two beautiful joys in my life that I’ve dedicated six years with no regrets to guiding into womanhood. I look forward to what the future brings,” she said, smiling at him.
“And what about me?”
“What about you, Neck Thumper?” Willow inquired, raising an eyebrow.
“Am I not considered a win in the things you’ve gained?”