Everybody Takes The Money (The Drusilla Thorne Mysteries) Read Free

and nodded. She’d picked up that things were not good. If I got to three—and that seemed likely, given how hard Roger seemed to be pushing the drugs on me—we were gone. We hadn’t had this much trouble in Baldwin Park.
    “What do you do now?” I asked Roger, as though he hadn’t screamed at Courtney three seconds before.  
    He was still eyeing her. “I’m on a show.” The vaguest of all possible job descriptions in a town where everyone I ran into was peripherally involved with the movie/TV business. Of course, I lived with a famous actor, and it was amazing how fast people became peripheral around a star. “What about you?”  
    “Not much yet. I only moved here a few months ago.” My lack of steady employment was as much by design as it was anything else.
    “Oh? Where from?”
    “Las Vegas.”
    “Yeah? Cocktail waitress?” He grinned. His teeth seemed stained. Perhaps he was a cigarette smoker. The discoloration seemed darker than the usual yellowish smoking tint. Probably used products more serious than tobacco. Meth was a possibility.
    “Psychic advisor.”
    His foot dropped to the ground by the bed. “No shit?”
    “No shit.”  
    “Yeah? You really psychic? You got the second sight?”
    Courtney swiveled around in her chair, whatever she was saying to Anne completely forgotten. “You’re a psychic? Really?”  
    That accent. I could see why she’d have trouble getting work in Hollywood, because the words were nearly impenetrable. But it remained unadulterated by the American Standard accent everyone was rushing to adopt. I rolled her vowels around in my head.  
    Her teeth didn’t look so great, either. Not a great look for someone who wanted to be known for being beautiful.
    “Can you read me?” she asked.  
    Roger jumped off the bed and yelled “No!” at Courtney.
    There’s two kinds of people who don’t want to talk to psychics: those who think psychics are frauds, and those who are worried the psychics know something. People who think psychics are frauds are, for the most part, annoyed by them, not deeply angry toward them.  
    Roger’s immediate anger—signaling the accompanying fear that I was going to learn something—worried me. Alarm signal number three, everybody scramble into the lifeboats. Now.  
    “Anne.” I stood up.
    She reached for her bag. “It’s okay, we’re done.”
    Roger pointed at me, his arm extended and held rigid. “Hold on a minute.”
    I held up both hands, palms out. “We’re going now. You two have fun.”
    “Roger, calm yourself down,” Courtney told him.  
    Her placid voice seemed to enrage him further. “Shut up, Court.” He stalked toward me, crowding me up against the desk. “Why are you here?”  
    “Get away from me,” I told him.  
    He stood right in front of me. “Shut the fuck up, bitch.” Spittle flew out of his mouth and landed on my face.
    He wasn’t someone on my list to French kiss anytime soon. He didn’t rate having his saliva anywhere on my face.
    I held his gaze and didn’t blink. “My friend and I are leaving. Back away.”
    “You looking for something here?” he yelled. He reached for the desk drawer.
    Which was right behind me. So he had to press up against me to get to it. And he put his hand on my stomach to pin me in place.
    Yeah. That wasn’t happening.
    I raised my leg and stomped down on his foot as hard as I could, and when he startled I elbowed him in the stomach sharply. Then I did it again. He staggered back against the bed with the clothes on it.  
    “Roger!” Courtney screamed.
    “Jesus Christ,” Anne added.
    I looked at Anne. “The car!”
    She opened the room’s door. “Come on!” she yelled at Courtney, which surprised me. Not only was she trying to get Courtney out of there, but she’d clearly decided I could handle myself.
    “Roger, stop,” Courtney said.
    And Roger reached out and shoved her, this wispy girl who probably didn’t weigh over one hundred pounds. She flew