Kill the Dead

“They’re so dumb because they’re fragments of the Angra Om Ya. The old gods. They’re powerful but brain-dead crumbs of whatever god they fell from.”

“That’s blasphemy, boy. There were no gods before God.”

“Okay, forget that. Did your team take a look at these marks on the skin? They’re teeth marks. Señor Chew Toy could have healed himself, but he didn’t. He liked the scars. He just covered them with tattoos to hide his dirty little secret from the other Sub Rosa.”

Wells is looking at me now.

“Keep going.”

“If you find Enoch Shitheel’s head, check his teeth. I bet you’ll find he gave himself some of those scars.”

“Demon possession?”

“Think simpler. Ever heard of autophagia?”

“No.”

“I bet you’ve never seen any Sub Rosa porn either. You’re out of your depth, choirboy. In the books, autophagia is a mental disorder, but Springheel made it into a fetish. He got off on eating himself.”

Wells is giving me his disapproving squint, but he’s listening. His team edges in closer, not even pretending to work anymore.

“Santa Muerte is death and protection all rolled into one. A gangster Kali. She’d tighten Springheel’s jeans.”

“Watch your language.”

“Fuck you. You brought me in. I’ll do this my way.”

Pause.

“Keep going.”

“The altar is a dark-magic sex shop. All you need is Lucifer’s cock ring to have the party of the century. I only mention that because that’s what Springheel wanted to do. Party very hard.”

I walk over and stand in the hexagon, trying to step around the sticky bits.

“The hexagon with blood and bone calls dark power. Yojimbe mixes in sexual energy, but that’s not a big surprise considering all the speed and poppers on the altar. Well, maybe for you. Look at this one side of the hexagon. There’s maybe a half-inch gap where the edges don’t touch. If this is a protection configuration, it won’t work. Whatever Enoch calls will be able to slip in through that hole. That’s stupid and it’s sloppy. Unless it’s deliberate.”

“What did Springheel invoke and why did he let it in?”

I step forward to the broken edge of the hexagon.

“He would have been here, near the opening. He’s thrown yojimbe around. He’s probably been snorting meth and doing his poppers. He starts his spell and he calls up a demon.”

“What kind of demon?”

I hold up one of the still-smoking bones with my fingertips and point to the broken edge.

“An eater. Five hundred years ago, an eater was what you called when you wanted it to look like locusts chewed up on your neighbor’s crops or wolves killed their cattle. Enoch wanted something more up close and personal. That’s why there’s a break in the hexagon. Springheel built himself a cosmic glory hole. He was a Bone Daddy.”

Wells is frowning. He really wants me to shut up. I keep going.

“He’s got a hard-on for demons. For eaters. Springheel wanted to stick as much of himself as he could get through that glory hole and get it nibbled on by a primordial retard with ten rows of shark teeth. Only something went wrong.”

“What?”

“Damned if I know. Let your techs figure it out. Springheel called an eater because that’s how he got off. But he fucked up. Broke the circle too wide or made some stupid stoner mistake to completely break the hexagon’s protection and got himself eaten.”

“You’re sure about this sick shit?”

“Who else lived here?”

“No one. He was the last of the Springheels.”

“All alone with no one to look over his shoulder. That’s a nice setting to work out really elaborate fantasies. There’s one other thing you probably ought to check out.”

“What’s that?”

“If end-of-the-line Enoch was the last member of a house that went from number one to less than zero, getting eaten might not have been a mistake. It could have been a nasty, lonely little suicide. A hard-core player partying one last time as he pisses off this mortal coil.”

Wells turns and walks away.

“Enough. How do you live inside your head? I’m not saying you’re wrong or that I disagree with your conclusions or that disgusting scenario that you obviously know a lot about. All I’m saying is stop. I don’t want to hear any more. You’ve done your job. My team will finish up. Thank you for your valuable contribution to the investigation. Now please, get the hell out of here. I don’t want to look at you for a while.”

I’ve seen Wells screaming crazy, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen him upset. I guess when you’re in love with an angel, the idea of someone spending his alone time shoving his cock down demons’ throats might be disturbing. Welcome to my world, G-man. I’ll show you Hellion hobbies that make Enoch Springheel look like Jiminy Cricket.

I go back to the porch and into the kitchen. Marshal Julie is still alone up front.

When she sees me she asks, “Did you do your job?”

“I just got thrown out. That usually means I did.”

“Good for you. I’m sure the marshal is grateful that you came through for him.”

“Not really.”

“Your car is gone.”

“It wasn’t my car.”

“That’s why it’s gone. Do you need a ride?”

“Are you offering?”

She gets quiet for a minute. Stares past me over my shoulder.

“What’s going on back there? I know it’s a murder scene, but I’m supposed to stay up here and guard the doorknobs.”

“You’re the new kid, right? They give you the worst hours, shit duty, and they short-sheet your halo?”

She almost smiles.

“Something like that.”

“Yeah, it’s a murder scene. A rotten one, too. Dark magic gone bad. It even got your boss upset.”

“Damn. I wish I could see that. You don’t know how much I want to be back there.”

“Cool your jets, Honey West. Don’t be in such a rush to get what’s back there stuck in your head. It doesn’t come out again.”

“I don’t care. I need to know what’s in rooms like that. I’ve prepared for it my whole life. Now I’m here, but I’m still missing out.”

Scratch a cop, find a pervert.

“Don’t worry,” I tell her. “L.A.’s not going to run out of psychos anytime soon.”

I go outside. The steps crack and crunch beneath my feet. Good special effects.

Marshal Julie says, “You never told me if you wanted a ride.”

“Mind if I steal one of your vans?”

This time she does smile.

“Yeah. I kind of do.”

“Then I think I’ll walk awhile. I can use the air.”

I get half a block down Sixth Street before I’m sure that someone is following me. Whoever it is isn’t very good at it. The heavy footfalls say it’s a he. And he’s dragging one of his feet. He kicks and steps on things. For a second I wonder if it’s Marshal Julie, but no one from the Vigil would be that amateur hour. I turn around twice, but the street is always empty.

At the corner of South Broadway, I look again. A man stands half lit under a streetlight. His posture is funny, like he needs a back brace but forgot his on the bus. He just stands there. When he tries to turn around, he stumbles on the foot he’s been dragging. For a split second, his face is in the light. I swear it’s Mason. His face is dead white and gaunt, the skin torn. But then it isn’t him. It never was. I don’t recognize him. By the time I run over to where the stranger is standing, he’s moved back into the dark and disappeared.

Hissing sounds of car tires rolling by on Broadway. Gurgle of water from the sewer at my feet. There’s nothing else. I’m the only thing alive on the street. Serves me right for turning down a ride home from a cannibal play party, even if it was with a cop.

I step through a shadow into the Room and stay there long enough to smoke a cigarette. I’m nowhere in here. I’m outside space and time. The universe crashes around me like cosmic bumper cars. Somewhere out there stars are being born while others flare out, frying planets and whole populations. A few billion here. A few billion there. Lucifer promises some pimply kid ten years at the top of the music charts for his soul. Of course, the kid is too dumb to specify which charts and is about to find himself with number one singles in Mongolia and Uzbekistan. God watches while a bus full of his worshippers spins out on a patch of black ice, flips, and catches fire, burning everyone inside alive.

The universe is a meat grinder and we’re just pork in designer shoes, keeping busy so we can pretend we’re not all headed for the sausage factory. Maybe I’ve been hallucinating this whole time and there is no Heaven and Hell. Instead of having to choose between God and the devil, maybe our only real choice comes down to link or patty?

When I got back to my room above Max Overload, I put Kasabian in the closet where I used to lock him up. I built him a bachelor pad in there. Padded the shelves with cabinets where he can keep beer and snacks, along with a bucket where he can slop the remains. There’s a computer inside, so he can surf the Web and watch any movies he wants. It’s soundproof so I can sleep and not hear if he’s watching Behind the Green Door. I know I’m going to dream about Springheel’s chewed-up carcass tonight and I don’t need Kasabian and Marilyn Chambers joining the party.

I DON’T WAKE up until almost two the next day. It took a fair amount of drinking to fall asleep last night. All the pillows are on the floor and the blankets are in a knot by my feet, so I know I dreamed, but I can’t remember what about. Kasabian probably knows. He’s back over on the table at the PC going through online video catalogs, pretending he doesn’t know I’m awake. I think Lucifer gave him a touch of clairvoyance so he can get snapshots of my mind. That’s okay. I’ve been playing a lot more with hexes lately so I don’t always have to go for the knife or gun. I have some tricks I’ve worked up that he doesn’t know about yet.

Losing the Bugatti has punched a car-size hole in my heart, so I steal a Corvette from in front of Donut Universe and drive to Vidocq’s. Maybe I should start thinking of it as Vidocq and Allegra’s. She’s always there when I go. I don’t think she goes back to her apartment to do anything but change clothes.

I hate Corvettes, so I leave it in front of the most obvious crack house in Vidocq’s neighborhood and walk the last few blocks to his place.

Inside, I take the elevator to the third floor and head down the hallway. I can’t find my cigarettes, so I stop in the hall to pat myself down. A gray-haired guy in a green windbreaker and worn chinos stops beside me.

“Didn’t you used to live here?”

I nod, still patting myself down. If I left the cigarettes in the car, the crackheads have them by now, dammit.

“A long time ago.”

“With a girl, right? Pretty. And she kept the place after you left.”

Why do I do this to myself? This is what happens every time I try to be a person. I do something normal, like walk in the front door of a building, and the Neighborhood Watch is on me.

“Yeah, she was very pretty.”

He gives me a just-between-us-guys half smile.

“What happened, man? She throw you out for doing her sister?”

Sometimes there’s nothing worse than the truth. It can be harder and sharper and hurt more than a knife. The truth can clear a room faster than tear gas. The problem with telling the truth is that someone then has something on you that they can use against you. The good part is that you don’t have to remember which lie you told who.

“I got dragged to Hell by demons from the dawn of time. While I was down there, I killed monsters and became a hit man for the devil’s friends. How have you been?”

The guy’s smile curdles. He takes a step back.

“Don’t let me catch you hanging around the halls anymore, okay? I’ll have to call the manager.”

“No problem, Brenda. You have an extra cigarette?”

“My name’s Phil.”

“You have an extra cigarette, Chet?”

He walks away and gets a good twenty feet before he mumbles “Fuck you,” sure I can’t hear him.

I knock on Vidocq’s door to let him know I’m there and go inside.

“Hi,” says Allegra from behind the big cutting table where she and Vidocq prepare their potions. Vidocq is in the kitchen making coffee. He holds up the pot when he sees me.

“Good afternoon. You look like you’re still asleep.”

“I’m fine, just don’t wake my brain. I think it’s been drinking.”

Allegra walks over with a shit-eating grin on her face.

“No thank you, little girl. I don’t want to buy any of your cookies.”

Her smile doesn’t waver.

“Is it true? Is Lucifer really here in L.A.?”

I look at Vidocq.

“Word travels fast around these parts.”

He shrugs.

“We have no secrets.”

I turn back to Allegra.

“I spent the evening with a guy in a magic hotel room the size of Texas and decorated like the Vatican, if the Vatican was a whorehouse. I think there’s a pretty good chance it was Lucifer.”

“You knew him down in Hell, right? What’s he like?”

Vidocq brings me a cup of black coffee, holds up his cup in a little toast.

“Girls are obsessed with bad boys, man. How can we compete with the Prince of Darkness?” I ask.

He sits on the worn sofa and shrugs.

“We’ve already lost the battle. We accept defeat and move along, sadder but wiser.”

“Well?” says Allegra.

“What do I know that isn’t in the Bible or Paradise Lost?”

“Are those right? Are they accurate?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I never read ’em, but they’re popular.”

She takes away my coffee cup and sets it on the table behind her.

“I want to hear it from you. Tell me what he’s like.”

“He’s exactly what you think he is. He’s good-looking, smart, and the scariest son of a bitch you can possibly imagine. He purrs like a cat one minute, and the next, he’s Lex Luthor with a migraine. He’s David Bowie, Charlie Manson, and Einstein all rolled into one.”

“That sounds pretty hot.”

“Of course he’s hot. That’s his job. He’s the guy you meet at a party that you take home and fuck even though every sensible part of your brain is screaming at you not to.”

“What’s so scary about him?”

“He’s the devil.”

“I mean have you ever seen him do any devil stuff. Anything really evil?”

“I live with a dead man’s talking head. I’d say that’s pretty fucked up.”

She hands me back my coffee, but is clearly not satisfied.

“That’s not what I mean.”

“I’ve never seen him turn a city into salt or make it rain blood. He doesn’t do that kind of thing. Why should he? We do most of the shitty stuff in this world. He can just sit back and watch us like HBO.”

I take a long swig of my coffee. It burns my tongue and throat all the way down. It feels good and tastes better. Allegra walks to the window and crooks her head at me.

“Come over here.”

I set down the coffee and go to her.

She holds my face in her hands, moving my head back and forth, looking me over in the sunlight.

“Your cuts have all healed, which is pretty normal for you.”

“Why’s this happening to me?”

Vidocq says, “It could be a curse or some residual effect from being stabbed by Aelita’s sword. I just don’t know. I’m sorry. Your case is pretty unique. I’m still looking through my books.”

“Your scars haven’t changed much since the last time I checked,” Allegra says. “Whatever’s happening, I think it’s happening at a steady rate and not getting any faster. Once we stop the healing where it is, we can figure out what to do next.”

“How do we do that?”

“I’m making you a magic cocktail. It’ll take just a few more minutes.”

“And my scars will stay?”

“For now.”

“What can I do to help?”

“Relax.”

She pats me on the cheek, goes back to the worktable, and grinds up ingredients with a mortar and pestle. I stay by the window.

Vidocq says, “What does the Golden Vigil have to say about socializing with le diable?”

“Nothing. Why would they? I sure haven’t told them anything about it.”

“Do you really believe that Lucifer can come to Los Angeles and the Golden Vigil be utterly unaware of his arrival?”

“Who cares? I owe him. I’m supposed to go to a party with him so he can show off Sandman Slim.”

“I’m sure Aelita will see it that way when you explain it so simply.”

I turn to the old man. He looks more concerned than I’ve seen him since the day Aelita stabbed me with her flaming sword. The day he quit working for the Vigil.

“You think she knows? Wells told me about their magic radar. Supposed to track the Sub Rosa and any big hoodoo going on in town, but I’ve never seen a bunch with less of a clue.”

“The Vigil’s technology is, at best, inconsistent, but they have psychics and Lurkers who can smell and taste changes in the aether. I have to think that the arrival of an angel as powerful as Lucifer will cause quite a ripple.”

“He’s not here for anything they’d care about. He’s here for his ego. He thinks he’s Marlon Brando.”

“Is that all?”

“And he wants out of Hell. Whatever fight’s going on down there, I think he’s losing. Maybe it’s Mason or maybe it’s just his time. I get the feeling he’s looking for any excuse not to be home right now.”

“Or he has another agenda altogether.”

“What?”

Vidocq shakes his head, sets down his coffee.

“I have no idea, but this is Lucifer we’re talking about. Next to God, the brightest light in the universe. He might not lie to you, but don’t assume just because he tells you the truth you know what’s going on.”

“Don’t start talking that way. My head already hurts.”

Allegra is still grinding ingredients, concentrating. Ignoring us. It’s nice to have a job and know exactly what you’re doing, what’s expected of you, and that you can do it all yourself.

“Sometimes I miss the arena. I miss being pointed at some monster and told, ‘It’s you or him, little drytt,’ and just going for it. No decisions. No motives. No guessing games. Just blood and dust, and afterward, I have a gallon of Aqua Regia and go to sleep.”

Allegra asks, “What’s a ‘little drytt’?”

I guess she is listening after all.

“A drytt is a bug that lives in the desert outside Pandemonium, Lucifer’s capital. Drytts are like sand fleas. They’re everywhere and get into everything. They live in the dirt and they eat and shit their body weight every day for two days. Then they die. They lay eggs in their shit and that’s where their young are born.”

“You miss being called a shit bug?”

“It’s what they call all mortals,” Vidocq says. “Angels, even fallen ones, are eternal. We, the story goes, are made from dust. We eat. We shit. We grow old and die. We are born in filth, decay, and return to filth. We’re all little drytt to them.”

Allegra shakes her head.

“I bet you were one morbid little kid, Stark. Your poor mother.”

“You have no idea.”

Vidocq asks, “How is the potion coming?”

“I have all the ingredients together. It just needs to be digested.”

“Show him what you’ve learned.”

Allegra turns and raises her eyebrows at me. I go to where she’s working at the table.

“In alchemy, digesting something just means cooking it. You need the Friosan nostrum to stop your scars from healing, right? The storax, the liquid amber, is the base for the other ingredients. There’s also white cedar, salamander bones, ground sea horse. All things that grow slowly.”

“What’s that other powder?”

She glances at Vidocq.

“I don’t know. Mysterious things in old jars with Latin names. Eugène helped with that part.”

“Good. I was worried about the Latin part.”

Vidocq leans forward on the sofa.

“Don’t be shy. Show him the rest.”

Allegra dumps all the ingredients in a silver bowl and sets it on a tabletop brazier.

“Remember that fire trick you showed me?”

“The one you used on Parker? You saved my life, so, yeah, I remember.”

Allegra smiles like a girl with a secret.

“Watch this.”

She blows across her fingers the way I showed her back when she was just another civilian. Flames flicker to life on her fingertips, but she keeps blowing, moving her hand in a slow circle in front of her lips. In a few seconds, the flames have moved from the tips of her fingers to burn all the way down to her palm. She puts her hand under the silver bowl with the ingredients. As she blows, the flames rise and the storax begins to boil. Steam comes off the amber, filling the room with the smell of burned pine. The powder and other ingredients quickly dissolve. She holds her hand near her lips again, blows lightly, and the flames shrink and disappear.

“Damn. I showed you a party trick and you took it and turned pro. You’re practically Evel Knievel.”

“I’m McGyver, baby. Stick around. I’ll make you a philosopher’s stone from Barbie dolls and spark plugs.”

Vidocq says, “She’s a brilliant girl. She’s learning much faster than I did.”

“What do I do with the snake oil, doc?”

She pours the thick liquid from the silver bowl into a beer stein and hands it to me. The liquid has darkened from amber gold to something more like maple syrup.

“Slam it back. Every bit of it.”

“You sure? I think I still see some of the salamander moving around in there.”

“Drink.”

It tastes every bit as good as you’d guess lizard and tree bark would. It’s thick enough that I have to upend the glass to get the last dregs.

“Is that it? Am I cured?”

“Not even close. But it should keep you where you are for a while. Eugène and I’ll keep looking for a long-term fix.”

“Thanks. Both of you. I mean it.”

“If you’re really that pathetically grateful, take me as your date to the party tonight.”

Vidocq is up getting more coffee.

“Did you put her up to this?”

He fills his glass and leans on the kitchen counter.

“Allegra is one of us now. She should see everything.”

“I want to see everything,” she says

“A while ago, Vidocq could have taken you to the soiree. You know why he won’t now? ’Cause the Sub Rosa don’t like me, but they don’t like him even more.”

She looks at him.

“Because you’re not Sub Rosa?”

“Because I’m a thief.”

“Because you steal their shit.”

“Only because they want what each other has, but are afraid to do it themselves. They need me to take it and Muninn to sell it back to them because the wealthy and powerful have always preferred to pay their lessers to commit their crimes for them.”

Allegra looks back at me.

“Take me with you tonight. I want to see the crazy people you two are always talking about. I’ll brush my teeth and wear underwear and everything.”

“Trust me, neither of those things are mandatory with this crowd. But you can’t be my date. I’m Lucifer’s date.”

“Bull. He wants you there to intimidate people. I’ll be Lucifer’s date. You can loom behind us like a teddy bear with a Gatling gun.”

“I’ll introduce you to Lucifer when Hell freezes over and Jesus opens a sex shop on Melrose.”

“Don’t be such a grandma. Vidocq would introduce me if he could.”

“No, he wouldn’t.”

“It does no good to hide the world from those determined to see it for themselves,” Vidocq says.

“We’re talking about Lucifer, not taking little Susie down to Planned Parenthood for birth control.”

“When you introduce yourself to the devil willingly, you take away his power to surprise you.”

“And an apple a day keeps the doctor away, except for all those people who got cancer.”

Allegra yells, “This is what I’m talking about. You two are arguing like I’m not here about things I’ve never seen. I want to know about these secret people and places and I will, with or without your help.”

“You’re not coming with me tonight. Maybe I can get you into something else later. Lucifer is in town for this movie thing and those can drag on forever, so there’ll be lots of other parties with plenty of magical douche bags for you to meet. But you’re not coming tonight. And I’m not introducing you to Lucifer. Not now. Not ever. That’s it. You want to do alchemy, you’re in Vidocq’s world, and you two can work that out however you want. You get near the Sub Rosa or anything to do with Hellions, you’re in my world and I make the rules. Understand?”

Allegra turns away, nods.

“I understand. Okay.”

I take my cup to Vidocq for some coffee to wash the taste of the nostrum out of my mouth.

Allegra says, “I’m sorry. I just don’t want to be left out of the big things. I get frustrated because you and Eugène have done and seen so much. I don’t think you want me to see anything. You want me to go back and be the cute little ignorant girl who runs the cash register at Max Overload.”

“I wouldn’t mind seeing you over there sometimes, but I don’t want to nail your feet to the floor. Try to understand, if Vidocq or I seem like we don’t want to show you something, maybe it’s because we’re not the best role models. We’re basically a couple of huge fuckups who ought to be dead. Eugène screwed up his chemistry set so bad he made himself immortal by mistake. He could have ended up a worm or slime on a wall in a Paris sewer, but he got lucky. Me, I’m so good at what I do that I’ve spent more than a third of my life in Hell. Sometimes, if you ask a question and we don’t jump in right away with the secrets of the universe, it’s not because we think you can’t handle it, but because we don’t have all the answers either.”

Allegra takes something out of her pocket and holds it behind her back.

“Put out your hand,” she says.

I do it and she drops something heavy. It looks like a cigarette box, but it’s dense enough to be full of buck shot.

“What is this?”

“It’s an electronic cigarette. All the cool kids have ’em. They look just like normal cigarettes. You charge the cigarette part off the computer and there’s a nicotine cartridge in the filter end. Basically, you’re just sucking in nicotine and steam. It’s just like smoking a real cigarette, but these won’t kill you as quick.”

“Doesn’t that kind of defeat the point?”

She takes the pack from my hand and slips it into my jacket pocket.

“Sometimes being smart is more important than magic.”

I say, “Thanks for looking out for me.”

She smiles and shrugs.

“What choice do I have if I want to get into one of those parties?”

Vidocq gets up and puts his arm around Allegra’s shoulders.

“I think the real reason he doesn’t want to introduce you to Lucifer is that he’s afraid you’ll be running Hell within the week, which would make you his boss.”

Allegra brightens at that, saying, “Make me a sandwich, beeyotch!”

I head for a nice shadow on the side of a bookcase.

“I’ll call you tomorrow and let you know what the beautiful people are wearing this year. Thanks for the smokes.”

A COURIER DELIVERS a package from the Chateau Marmont. It’s addressed to “Wild Bill Hickok,” which is annoying, but better than if it was addressed to Sandman Slim.

Inside the box is a brand-new tuxedo, a white shirt, socks, and shoes. A small box covered in dark green snake-skin holds miniature silver Colt .45 cuff links. Throw in a hat and spurs and I could be one of Roy Rogers’s pallbearers.

Kasabian says, “Someone wants you pretty tonight.”

“Let’s trade. You go to the party and I’ll stay here and drink beer and watch The Wizard of Oz. We can both spend the night with witches and monkeys.”

“I’ll pass. But you have fun with the beautiful people. I bet they’ve missed you.”

“Every bit as much as I missed them.”

“Try not to do anything too stupid, okay? If you piss off Lucifer and get sent back to Hell, I’m going to be on a coal cart right behind you and I don’t want to go back again for a good long time.”

“The next time I go back to Hell it’ll be because I mean to.”

“Gee wow, that’s a comfort.”

I put on the butler suit and the new shoes. Everything is a perfect fit. Lucifer must have had his tailor run the thing off for me. He would have to do it after eyeballing me for just a couple of minutes. That’s impressive, even for a Sub Rosa rag sewer, but then having the lord of the abyss looking over your shoulder is probably even more motivational than an employee-of-the-month fruit basket.

My only problem with the suit is that the jacket is too tight for me to wear a gun without looking like I have a conjoined twin. Allegra took me to a local fetish shop and I had them make me a kind of leather shoulder holster for the na’at. It fits under my left arm pretty well, and unless I get the urge to do jumping jacks at the party, it should stay hidden. If I was designing the suit myself, I would have run a twelve-inch Velcro strip from the pants cuff up the leg so I could strap the black knife under it. For now, I just slide it into my waistband behind my back. I check the bedside table for anything else I might want to take with me.

“What’s that?” Kasabian asks.

“It’s an electronic cigarette. Supposed to be better for you than regular ones. You want it?”

“I might not have balls anymore, but I still have a little pride, so no.”

At ten, my phone rings. The limo’s arrived to take me to pick up Lucifer. I go downstairs and out the back of the store, trying to get out without anyone seeing me. I know it’s stupid to use the door when I can just as easily go out through a shadow, but I like using the door at Max Overload. I think I’m the only person I know who still has a normal door.

The limo is just like the kind you see in the movies. Long, shiny, and black. The driver opens the rear passenger door for me, and then gets back in the driver’s seat. He doesn’t say a word for the whole drive, probably because his throat has been cut from ear to ear and looks like it was sewn up by a blind man with bailing wire. This is going to be an interesting night.

When we’re down the block from the hotel, I dial the number Lucifer gave me last night. Yeah, I have the devil on speed dial.

The phone rings once and a voice I don’t recognize says, “He’ll be right down. Wait for him in the lobby,” then hangs up.

I tell the limo driver to wait in the parking lot outside the lobby. The staff seems to know that someone important is on his way down because none of them tell me to move the car. None of them even look at me. Does everyone at the hotel owe Lucifer a favor?

There are thirteen well-dressed people in the lobby when I go in. I’m pretty sure I know what this means. They confirm it a few seconds later when Lucifer steps out of the elevator and all thirteen jump up like kids on the last day of school. A woman in an expensive Jackie Kennedy black dress and pillbox hat leads the pack. Her face is young and her skin is perfect, but when she takes off a glove, her hands are like buzzard claws. Old as King Tut and dry as a Death Valley rattlesnake’s eyeteeth.

“Master,” she says, breathy and excited. The million-dollar coven behind her mumbles the word in stage whispers like stuttering ghosts.

“Amanda, lovely to see you,” Lucifer says, all diabolical charm. “I have someplace to be, so I’m afraid I can’t stay and chat.”

The old woman with the Lolita face smiles like a maniac when he says her name.

“We don’t want to keep you, Master. Will you be in L.A. long?”

“I’m not sure.”

“We’d like to hold a special Mass for your arrival.”

“No need. But thank you all the same.”

Amanda is disappointed, but keeps smiling. Her heart is going like the drum solo in “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.” Lucifer hasn’t touched the woman’s buzzard hand, and while he’s probably technically smiling, you’d need a microscope to be sure. His contempt for these people is so obvious, it’s even giving me the creeps. I don’t know if I’m on bodyguard duty yet, so I stay put.

Amanda pulls back her hand and reaches into the huge damned purse that all old ladies seem to carry. I take a couple of steps toward her, just to make sure she’s not taking anything too sharp or explosive out of her bag. Lucifer couldn’t look more bored. She pulls out a carved whitish-yellow box and hands it to Lucifer. As he takes it he gives her a tiny nod. The Rosemary’s Baby Mouseketeers behind her start mumbling “Master” again. Lucifer shifts his eyes toward me for a second. Now I’m on the clock.

I move in as Lucifer raises his left hand and touches the top of Amanda’s head, like he’s blessing her. She’s thrilled and, to tell the truth, I like the move, too. A priest would have blessed her with his right hand, but Lucifer put his devil horns on and went lefty. If we had some pea soup we could do a scene from The Exorcist.

I put an arm up, and when Lucifer takes his hand off Amanda’s head, I get between him and the crowd and stay there while I walk him to the front door. Amanda yells, “Praise thee, Master! Praise thee!” Lucifer ignores her. As he gets in the car, the limo driver opens and closes the passenger door behind him and gets in the front. Guess now that the big man is here, I don’t rate door opening. A good thing to remember. I’m back with the ruling class, where everyone knows their place. Except for me, but I don’t think Lucifer is going to be shy about telling me whose ass to kiss and whose to punch. I open my own door and slide in the back of the limo.

“You’re like all the Beatles rolled into one. Getting you out of there is like them trying to get out of Shea Stadium after the concert in ’65.”

“I was there that night. The sound was terrible.”

“You knew them? They didn’t make a deal with you, did they?”

He gives me a look.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Pete Best wanted to make a deal back in Hamburg, but he was already out of the band, so who cared?”

I nod at the box Amanda gave him. “What’s the deal with the pyx?”

“You know what it is. I’m impressed.”

“I’m trying to take the hoodoo thing more seriously. Been reading some of Vidocq’s books and thinking about getting my magic, I don’t know, more organized.”

“Have you had any results yet?”

“Not much. But I’ve been thinking that killing everyone is maybe counterproductive. Been playing around with some stunning hexes. I wasn’t big on stunning back in the arena, so it’s all new to me.”

“I’m impressed again. I know that thinking goes entirely against your ethos, so the fact you’re considering a new approach to things is a good sign.”

“A sign of what?”

“That you might actually live. That you’ll become a new and improved monster. Not killing everyone means that if something happens there will be survivors to question.”

“Of course, none of it means shit. Wells hires me to kill things and so do you. Thinking is like playing in a band when you’re fifty. It only happens on weekends and holidays.”

“Why don’t we agree on a new policy starting tonight? I don’t expect any problems, but if something does happen, try using magic instead of violence. I want to support the idea of a newer, better you.”

“We’re still talking about killing, right? Not potty training.”

Lucifer turns the pyx over in his hands.

“Who was that bunch back at the hotel?”

“The most important human-only coven in the city. They had a lot of power back in the day, when Los Angeles was changing from orange groves into a city, but now they’re mostly a nuisance.”

“The Sub Rosa took over.”

“The Sub Rosa have always been in charge here, but it helped to have civilians as go-betweens with politicians and business. These days everyone has moved beyond that kind of Checkpoint Charlie thinking. The Sub Rosa are powerful and there isn’t a politician or businessman alive who doesn’t like to rub shoulders with that.”

“So, what’s in the box?”

He hands me the pyx.

“Take it. Consider it your first bonus.”

I wonder how much buzzard-claw Amanda liked being blown off back at the hotel? Is she the type to throw some disrespect back at Lucifer? Slip him some bad juju or an underwear bomb? I hold the pyx at arm’s length and open the top. Nothing happens. I look inside.

“Are those fingernails?”

“Yes. A few toenails, too, probably. No, you don’t want to know where they came from.”

“I was just telling Kasabian I hoped I’d get to see a pile of ripped-out fingernails tonight. I guess dreams really do come true.”

Lucifer lights a Malediction.

“The box is Grecian ivory and very old. Take it to a good auction house. You’ll be able to open a dozen video stores.”

“How much do you think I can get for the nails?”

THE DRIVER TAKES US south on the Hollywood Freeway, gets off at Silver Lake, and steers us up the hills to the old reservoir. There’s a concrete path all around and a steep descent down to the water. The driver stops on the street bordering the reservoir, gets out, and opens Lucifer’s door. Neither of them says anything as the driver closes his door, gets back in the front, and drives away.

Lucifer says, “He’ll be back when we need him,” and leads us through a typical L.A. excuse for a park—parched grass and a line of half-dead trees—to a walkway sticking out over the water.

At the end of the walkway is a burned-out three-story concrete utility building. Technically, it’s only two stories now. It looks like the top one collapsed and caved into the second during the fire. The city bolted wire shutters over all the ground-floor windows to keep kiddies from playing in the death trap. Naturally, most of them are torn down or bent back enough for someone skinny to squeeze inside. The double metal doors in front are shut with a padlock and chain heavy enough to hitch the Loch Ness monster to a parking meter.

Why am I not surprised when Lucifer pulls a key from his pocket, pops the lock, and throws open the doors? A blast of cold, wet air hits us from inside. The place smells like Neptune’s outhouse. There’s a set of stone steps inside, winding down to the waterline. A few high school kids are hunkered on the stairs below the first turn, drinking forties and passing around a joint. They lurch to their feet, a little shaky in that panicked stoner kind of way where cops and pigeons are equally terrifying. I guess they don’t see a lot of tuxedos down here. Lucifer nods to them and one of the boys nods back.

“You cops?” he asks

As we pass the group, Lucifer turns to the boy.

“Sometimes. But not tonight.”

I don’t know if it’s the dark, the narrows walls, or just being in a strange place for the first time, but the stairs seem to go down a long damn way. Feels like well below the waterline. When we hit the bottom, there’s another door. Instead of rusted metal, this one is covered in red leather and has brass hinges. There’s a doorman next to it in a gold silk coat and short breeches dripping with enough gold filigree to make Little Lord Fauntleroy look like he shops from the discount bin at Walmart. He opens the door when he hears us. I guess standing in the dark doesn’t bother him. His eyes look black and blind and his lips are sewn shut.

I start to say something, but Lucifer cuts me off with a dismissive wave.

“Golem. Salvage from some Parisian potter’s field. French revenants are all the rage among the Sub Rosa gentry this year. I wouldn’t waste my money. Golems aren’t much more than windup toys. You could train a dog to open that door and it could still fetch and bark on cue. This dead thing will open the door from now until doomsday, but that’s all it’ll ever do. Ridiculous.”

“At least you don’t have to tip him. Are they all sewn up like that?”

“Of course. Golems are lobotomized so they don’t bite, but they’re not so easy to recall if something goes wrong.”

Past the door is another golem, this one with stapled lips, but that’s not the hilarious part. There’s a gondola floating in an underwater canal lit by phosphorescent globes hovering near the walls. The golem is dressed in a gondolier’s striped shirt, black pants, and flat-brimmed hat like the ticket taker at a Disneyland ride, if the ride was hidden under an L.A. reservoir and full of animated corpses. It’s a small dead world, after all.

Lucifer steps down into the gondola and I follow him. The golem poles us along the narrow canal until we hit a T-intersection where he steers us right into a wider channel.

“The limo driver, he was cut and stitched up, too. Is he a golem?”

“No, he’s alive. He’s just annoying.”

“You cut his throat?”

“Of course not. When he apologized for what he did, he cut his own throat to prove his sincerity.”

“I guess it’s better than ending up in a box of fingernails.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Where the hell are we? How far are we under the reservoir?”

“We’re not under the reservoir anymore. Our brain-dead friend has taken us out into an old tributary of the L.A. River.”

“Huh. It never crossed my mind that the L.A. River was ever anything more than scummy concrete runoff.”

“Everyone here thinks that way. It’s only the ones who remember when the river was wild who appreciate it.”

“Muninn would remember.”

“I’m sure he does. If I remember right, his cavern isn’t far from another of the underground channels.”

“Will he be here tonight?”

“I doubt it. He’s worse than you when it comes to socializing with the Sub Rosa.”

“Where are we going? Who’s going to be there?”

“The party is being thrown by the head of the studio, Simon Ritchie. I think I mentioned that he’s a civilian, so the party is being thrown in the home of one of the truly outstanding Sub Rosa families, Jan and Koralin Geistwald. Lovely people. They came here all the way from the northernmost part of Germany when this river roared along the surface.”

“So, that makes them a couple of hundred years old?”

“I’m sure they’re considerably older than that, but they came to America two-hundred-ish years ago.”

“Why?”

“They were ambitious and they had the guts to do something about it. Europe was lousy with ancient Sub Rosa families who’d consolidated power centuries before. If you wanted to advance, the only way to do it was create your own dynasty and the only way to do that was to go very far away and start from nothing.”

“Like the Springheels.”

“Exactly. They were the first. They came a very long way and gave up virtually everything to get here.”

“I guess we won’t be seeing any of them tonight.”

“Why not?”

“Damn. I know something you don’t. Do I get a prize?”

“Be happy with your box.”

“The reason why you won’t see any Springheels is that the last of them, little Enoch, died a couple of days back.”

“How?”

“There was a severe chewing accident. The guy was playing around with eaters.”

Lucifer shakes his head and tosses his Malediction into the water.

“That family fell apart and just kept on falling. What a perfect way for the last of them to go.”

“That’s where I was going when I left you at the hotel. I met Wells at the Springheel place to help suss out what happened there.”

“Do you do a lot of magical forensics for the Vigil? Or was it a Homeland Security matter?”

“I don’t know if there’s any difference to Wells. And it was the first time.”

“And you’re sure it was eaters?”

“All the signs were there.”

“Good for you. Congratulations on your new job. I didn’t know you were such an expert on demons.”

“I’m not, but once I started looking, it seemed pretty obvious.”

“Did Wells agree?”

“I think so. It’s hard to tell with him. And his crew were everywhere. It was goddamn Woodstock at five hundred decibels in there. I could hardly think.”

“Sounds like a hard way to work.”

“It was a pain in the ass.”

“Interesting that he’d call you in just to have you working in such terrible circumstances.”

“That’s Wells. It was probably a test. Like he was hazing me.”

“Or distracting you.”

“What?”

“It’s what I’d do if I didn’t want someone to find something. I’d call in someone new and then make it impossible for them to do their job. They’d be flattered I’d asked them and too embarrassed to say anything when they didn’t perform well.”

“Why would Wells do that?”

“I have no idea. I didn’t say he did it. I said it’s what I’d do.”

“You have a lot more to cover up than Wells or the Vigil.”

“Fair enough.”

We come around a bend and up ahead the cavern place opens up into a huge marble room lit with hundreds of torches and candles. A dozen other canals cut through the place and there’s a golem-powered gondola in each one, steering guests under arched stone bridges.

There are two Venices I know about and one of them is a hotel in Vegas. The other is an L.A. beach where pretty girls walk their dogs while wearing as little as possible and mutant slabs of tanned, posthuman beef sip iced steroid lattes and pump iron until their pecs are the size of Volkswagens. This Venice is pretty damned far from those. This is the old fairy-tale Venice with Casanova, plague, and Saint Mark’s stolen bones, meaning it’s a high-quality hoodoo copy. Hopefully without the plague. It’s not as big as a real city and there’s a vaulted roof over our heads, so we’re probably still in part of the old L.A. River system.

Every few yards, there’s a dock with a couple of steps leading up from the water. The golem stops at one and Lucifer and I get out. There must be a couple of hundred people down here. People and other things. Big-shot Lurkers and civilians laugh and chat with heavyweight Sub Rosas. They can talk shit about each other behind the others’ backs, but when it comes right down to it, money is the one true race and everyone down here is the color of greenbacks and as tall as mountains.

Lucifer checks his tie and gives me a quick once-over like maybe I’d changed into clown shoes during the boat ride. He nods and says, “Let’s get a drink.”

I’m a little surprised that the total fucking ruler, grand vizier, and night manager of Hell can just walk into the place without us getting mobbed like he was back at the hotel. But of course, people like this don’t do that kind of thing, do they? If Jesus, Jesse James, and a herd of pink robot unicorns strolled in walking on water, this bunch wouldn’t even look up. I wonder if Lucifer had his tailor make my jacket too tight to wear a gun on purpose because I’m genuinely inspired to start shooting things just to see if anyone jumps.

A golem in a white waiter’s jacket comes by with a tray of champagne. Lucifer takes one glass and hands me one.

“No guzzling tonight. You’re on duty, so you get to sip politely.”

“Don’t worry. These golems all need a good moisturizer. I’m not drinking anything that might have dead-guy skin flakes in it.”

“Don’t worry. They’re all certified as hypoallergenic.”

“It’s coming back to me why I fucking hate the fucking Sub Rosa.”

When the costumed corpse that brought our drinks turns away, he bumps my shoulder, and his tray and the rest of the drinks crash to the ground. A few dozen heads turn in our direction. So, that’s what it takes to get their attention. Wasted booze. A tall, heavyset guy pushes through the crowd. He’s big, but not fat. Like maybe he was a cop or a boxer in some former life. He sticks out one hand to shake and the other goes to Lucifer’s shoulder.

“Mr. Macheath, it’s good to see you. Please forgive me for the mess. It’s so hard to get really good subnaturals now that they’re so popular.”

Lucifer shakes the guy’s hand warmly.

“It’s no problem, Simon. You should see the kind of help I have to put up with at home.”

The big man laughs. Not a big L.A. suck-up laugh, but a small relaxed one. His heartbeat isn’t even going up that much. He’s got some juice, being this relaxed around Lucifer.

“Simon, I’d like you to meet an associate of mine.” Lucifer half turns to me while keeping an eye on Simple Simon. “This is James. You probably know him as—”

“Sandman Slim,” says Simon. He puts out his hand to me. I shake it, but don’t say anything. I’m not exactly sure what kind of performance Lucifer wants from me tonight, but I’m guessing it isn’t bright and cheery.

Lucifer smiles.

“Be nice and say hello, James.”

“Hello.”

“I’m really happy you could make it tonight. I’ve heard so much about you, James. Or do you prefer Sandman Slim?”

“Stark. Just Stark.”

Lucifer says, “James, this is Simon Ritchie, the head of the studio doing my little movie.”

“Have you cast him yet?”

“Cast who?” asks Ritchie.

I nod at Lucifer.

“Him. Your star. Do you have a Lucifer yet?”

“Not yet. You can probably imagine he’s a hard part to cast.”

“No shit.”

I look at Lucifer.

“You must have a lot of actors Downtown, Mr. Macheath. How about Fatty Arbuckle? Maybe you can put him on work release for a few weeks.”

“What an interesting idea. I’m going to give it no thought whatsoever.”

Ritchie laughs and shoots me a glance, measuring me up, probably wondering if I’m really the monster he’s heard about. Ten to one he was LAPD before burrowing his way into the movie biz. He has those eyes that see everyone as guilty until proven otherwise. He wants to know if I’m for real or more Hollywood window dressing. Great. That ups the chances of something stupid happening while Lucifer is in town.

“Would you like something to eat? I can assure you that unlike the waiters, our chefs are very much alive and the best in town.”

“We’re fine, thanks,” says Lucifer. “I think we’re just going to stroll around and say hello to a few people. Care to join us?”

“I need to put out a small fire first. Our new imported starlet has gone rogue. You can’t let Czechs wander around without a minder. They’ll organize the workers and start a revolution.”

“Do you know where Jan and Koralin are?”

“In the big ballroom straight through there,” says Ritchie, pointing a couple of bridges away. “Why don’t you go in and I’ll catch up?”

“Excellent,” says Lucifer. “We’ll see you there.”

Ritchie puts his hand out to me.

“Nice meeting you, too. I’d love to pick your brain sometime about your experiences in the underworld. There might be a story in it.”

“Uh. Okay.”

After he’s gone I say, “If he calls, I don’t really have to talk to him, do I?”

Lucifer shrugs and starts walking.

“You might as well. If you don’t, someone else will and they’ll get it all wrong. Trust me. I know about these things.”

“Think they’d make me into a toy? I’d like to be a toy.”

“Only if it talks a lot and doesn’t have an off switch.”

As we go over one of the stone bridges, I see something funny.

“Damn, I’d forgotten about that.”

“What?”

“Elvis and Marilyn Monroe are talking to some drunk blonde over there. I hate that stuff.”

“Don’t be so judgmental just because it’s not your kind of fun.”

“People shouldn’t rent ghosts for their parties. Ghosts shouldn’t have better agents than live people.”

“I never pegged you for a Puritan, Jimmy.”

Errol Flynn is standing on the bridge railing, pissing into the canal. It’s just ghost piss, so it doesn’t make a sound, but he still gets a round of applause when he’s done.

“Man, these rich assholes really love dead people.”

“Do the math. Most celebrities are more valuable dead than they ever were when they were alive. Why shouldn’t they get a cut? Almost everyone important has a wild-blue-yonder contract these days. They get to keep working and it puts off the damnation that most know is waiting for them.”

I want a smoke, but I’m tired of bumming Maledictions off Lucifer. I check my pocket and find the electronic cigarette. I take a tentative puff. It isn’t nearly as horrible as I thought it would be.

“That’s the first time I ever heard you crack a joke about Hell.”

“Hell is hilarious if you’re the one in charge.”

The ballroom is like Rat Pack Las Vegas in a Hellraiser theme park. The Sub Rosas, civilians, and Lurkers are all sporting tuxes and evening gowns, but even here there are a few holdouts. Cabal Ash looks like he slept under a leaking Dumpster and he smells worse. Being repulsive is an Ash family tradition. A sign of their big-league status. And they’re not the worst clan. At least they wear clothes.

There’s a band onstage, but no one’s dancing. Dead people are okay, but I guess metal bands are too harsh for this crowd. It takes me a minute to recognize them over the noise.

“That’s Skull Valley Sheep Kill.”

Lucifer sets his empty glass on a wandering golem’s tray.

“Is it?”

“Not the kind of band I’d expect at a party like this.”

“That’s because they were my daughter’s favorite music, not mine.”

It’s a woman’s voice, deep, melodious, and with an aristocratic German accent. Her skin is as white as a full moon and the irises of her eyes are gold.

Lucifer says, “Koralin, so lovely to see you.”

He takes her hand and she kisses both of his cheeks.

“It’s been too long, my dear,” she says.

“You’re one of the things that make coming to this silly world worthwhile.”

She laughs and means it.

“How interesting that your daughter chose tonight’s band. I think James here knew her.”

“Is this true? You knew Eleanor?”

“I don’t believe that she was using the family name at the time. What was she calling herself? Eleanor Vance?”

“Yes. It was some foolish thing from an old book.”

She looks at me.

“Did you know Eleanor?”

“No, ma’am. Mr. Macheath made a mistake. I didn’t.”

It’s true enough. I didn’t know her at all. I just put her down. Sorry, Eleanor. I’m ignoring your last request. No way I’m telling your mommy you stole whatever it was ’cause you wanted to make her mad. Not this woman. Not here.

“Is Jan around?”

“He’s helping Simon find his Prague whore.”

“They make some awfully good ones,” Lucifer says.

“Better than the French make their damned golems, I hope.”

Koralin accepts the cigarette Lucifer hands her.

“You must be the little monster I’ve heard so much about. The one who tried to burn Beverly Hills to the ground.”

“Just Rodeo Drive. And it wasn’t my fault. The other guy shot first. Sorry if I messed up any of your friends’ thousand-dollar jeans.”

“Fuck those hausfraus and their witless rent boys. I’m sorry I missed the fun. The next time you’re feeling genocidal, you must call me before acting on it.”

“It’s a date.”

I look at her gold eyes, but I can’t read them. Can’t hear her heart or get a feel for her thoughts either. Some Sub Rosa keep a kind of antihoodoo cloak over their homes. It keeps hexes and general magic mishaps to a minimum. I bet the Geistwalds have it cranked to eleven tonight. The most excitement we can hope for is Cabal getting drunk enough to pick a fight with Bruce Lee’s ghost.

“Here come the boys,” says Koralin. “And they found the little slut. I wonder how many dicks she’s sucked tonight?”

I look at Lucifer, but he’s ignoring me and the remark.

Jan Geistwald is as dark as Koralin is light. He has a dark olive complexion and a deeply lined face like someone who’s spent too much time in the desert squinting at the sun.

Ritchie has his arm around a woman’s shoulder and he’s smiling like he just won the lottery.

The woman is brunette and her dark pupils, within the bright whites of her eyes, look like bullet holes in the snow. She has the perfect bird-bone cheeks you see on French girls, but her non-plastic-surgery nose and full lips look more Italian or Greek.

Hollywood beauty can make your IQ drop, but there’s that other kind that’s like the end of the world. Armageddon gorgeosity. She walks in the room like the Angel of Death in a miniskirt and all you can think is, If I got shot in the head right now, I’d die smiling.

The brunette gives me a crooked smile. I was staring and she caught me. Outdrawn already.

“You found your way home,” says Koralin.

“She gave us a good chase, but we tracked her down,” says Jan. “Poor Simon was almost in tears.”

“That was sweat, not tears. I usually make other people hunt-and-gather for me these days,” says Simon.

The brunette holds out her hand to me.

“Hello. I’m Brigitte.”

“Stark. Nice to meet you.”

“And you.”

Ritchie wakes up.

“Sorry, darling.”

He takes her shoulders and points her at Lucifer like she’s artillery.

“This is Brigitte Bardo. Brigitte, this is Mr. Macheath. Light Bringer, his film, is the one you’re going to be in.”

“Nice to meet you, Mack the Knife. Did you bring your dagger?”

Lucifer nods toward me.

“I brought him. He carries the knife.”

“Only because I couldn’t fit a gun under this damned jacket.”

Brigitte and Koralin smile.

“I’m glad you’re here taking care of our special guest,” says Ritchie. He claps his arm around Lucifer’s shoulders.

“Did you hear? Spencer Church is gone,” says Jan.

“Missing?” asks Ritchie.

“No one knows.”

“Spencer Church is a drug addict, a gambler, and a pusher,” says Koralin. “He’s either sleeping in a ditch or buried in the desert. But this isn’t the time or place to be talking about these things. This is a party.”

Jan says, “Why don’t we make a circle around the room? I know there are a lot of people who’d like to pay their respects.”

Lucifer nods.

“I always enjoy a little genuflecting. Shall we walk?”

Lucifer, Jan, Koralin, and Ritchie stroll on ahead looking impressive and important. Brigitte and I follow a few steps behind. Close enough to keep an eye on things, but far enough back that we look like a couple of sixteen-year-olds pretending we’re not with our parents.

“So, you’re the famous Sandman Slim. I supposed we both have to have funny names to do our jobs. Do you get that my name is a little joke?”

“You mean how there’s Brigitte Bardot, a jet-propelled French succubus from the sixties? Got famous in And God Created Woman. Got respected in Contempt. Kind of a nut job, but she liked dogs. Then there’s Bardo, like the Buddhist states of being. Life, death, enlightenment, and a side of fries. Yeah, I think I got it.”

“Very nice. Most Americans don’t understand.”

“Don’t be too impressed. Everyone in California is a Buddhist for fifteen minutes. Then they realize they’re not allowed to eat chili dogs and enlightenment starts sounding like a real drag.”

“You know, I thought you would be uglier.”

“Huh. Thanks?”

“I heard that you were covered in scars. You don’t look so bad, really.”

“You sound disappointed.”

“You were looking at me before. Have you seen my work?”

“Ritchie said you were an actress in France. You coming to work in Hollywood?”

“Simon is going to help me do different sorts of movies than what I was doing back home.”

“Were you stuck in those rotten American action-movie rip-offs they do over there?”

“No, pornography. I’m very famous for it in Europe. In Japan, too.”

Hey, at least she didn’t tell me she’s dead.

“I’ve met a couple of local porn girls in clubs over the years. I’m never sure what’s worse for them—not recognizing them or recognizing them too quickly.”

She smiles.

“It’s fine either way. All that matters is that the person isn’t too mean or too happy to meet you.”

“Good way to put it. I’ve been trying to work through something like that myself.”

“I know. You may not know me, but I recognized you and your funny nom de plume.”

“Don’t blame me. Hellions gave me that behind my back. I didn’t even know about it until a cop told me.”

“It’s better than ‘whore.’ That’s usually what’s said behind my back.”

“Most people are idiots. There’s nothing worse than idiots who tell you their opinions.”

I puff my fake cigarette. It really doesn’t taste that bad, but the plastic texture is hard, like sucking nicotine through a spackle gun.

“So you’re in Light Bringer. You an angel or what?”

“Don’t be silly. I’m Eve, the destroyer of men and, so, the whole world.”

“And here I am without a drink to toast you with.”

“See? I’m much worse than you could ever be, Sandman Slim.”

“People call you names behind your back, but trust me, they’d call me worse if they weren’t afraid I’d skin them and wear them like oven mitts.”

“Being friends with Lucifer must help.”

“I’m not stupid enough to think we’re friends, but we’re not enemies. We have some common interests.”

“Then you are what people say you are?”

“What’s this week’s theory?”

“That you’re a bit of a vampire, but without the blood. You’re strong like a vampire. You’re fast. You heal and you can see inside people. Some believe that you were a vampire, but that Lucifer cured you and now you are his property.”

Out of habit, I tap my finger on the cigarette to knock off the ashes. Moron. There’s no ash on a piece of plastic.

“I’m no one’s property. I get paid for my services,” I say. “I also freelance for the Golden Vigil. They’re not exactly on Mr. Macheath’s side.”

Up ahead, Lucifer is getting glad-handed by Cabal Ash. I think the guy took out his spinal fluid and replaced it with tequila. He’s epically, gorgeously drunk. If his drunkenness had legs, it would be Alexander the Great and conquer the known world. Then it would puke for a week into a solid gold toilet it stole from Zeus’s guest room.

Right now, Cabal is stinking up the party with the death grip he’s got on Lucifer’s hand. He’s pumping it like he thinks he’ll strike oil. A woman dressed in the same kind of dirty rags as Cabal is trying to coax him away with more booze. Maybe I’m supposed to step in and pull the guy off, but it’s not my party and it’s too damned fun standing right where I am.

Cabal’s ragged lady friend finally gets his meat hooks off Lucifer and quickly steers the drunk into the crowd and out of sight.

“It’s nice to hear that no one owns you. Men, especially Americans, have quite a desire to buy and sell each other. For me, they’re attracted to me because I model and do sexy things in magazines and in movies, then when they have me—or think they have me—they want me to transform overnight into a mousy little housewife.”

“I can see how what you do could intimidate a guy.”

“But it doesn’t feel as if you are judging.”

“I’m pretty out of judgment for this lifetime.”

“What is that you’re smoking?”

“I’m not sure. I think it’s low-tar crack for underage robots.”

“May I try?”

She puffs away and gets a nice red glow going on the LED at what’s supposed to be the lit end of the thing. Opens her mouth in an O and blows a series of perfect smoke rings. She gives the cigarette back to me, smiling.

“Is this what you smoke in Los Angeles these days? I’m not sure I approve. Vices shouldn’t be safe. They’re what remind us we’re alive and mortal.”

I toss the thing, sending it skipping across the floor into one of the canal tributaries that run along one wall.

“There. Thanks for saving me from a too-long life.”

“So, you don’t like to be called Sandman Slim. Your Wikipedia page says that sometimes you are called Wild Bill.”

“I’m on goddamn Wikipedia?”

“It’s a tiny entry full of notes saying that no one knows if any of what’s there is real. It’s very funny. You’d like it.”

“Read it to me sometime. I have a feeling it’ll sound better in Czech.”

“But none of this answers my question. What should I call you?”

Up ahead, Lucifer turns away from his admirers with his phone to his ear. From the look on his face, someone is going to get a Cadillac-size pitchfork up the ass.

“Call me James. Not Jimmy or Jim. Just James. What do I call you?”

“Brigitte is fine.”

“Ah. I thought we were confessing true names.”

“No. I just asked what to call you.”

Now that he’s not getting the royal treatment for a couple of seconds, Ritchie’s realized that Brigitte isn’t next to him. He looks around like a Titanic survivor hunting for a life vest.

“I think you’re about to be called back to the stage.”

Brigitte gives a little sigh.

“You’re lucky. Your patron doesn’t spend all his waking hours worrying that you might fuck someone else.”

“Not that he’s mentioned.”

She smiles and waves to get Ritchie’s attention.

“I have to go. It’s been lovely talking with you, Sandman. Pardon. James.”

“You too, Ms. Bardo.”

As she goes, she runs a finger lightly over the back of my hand.

I don’t usually think of porn girls as actresses, but Brigitte might be an exception. When she goes to Ritchie, she gives him a Pretty Woman smile like she thinks he’s the center of the world.

It looks like the center of Lucifer’s world has gone sour. He crooks his finger at me and we start out of the ballroom. No good-byes. No handshakes. Nothing. It must be nice to just start walking and know that everybody else will follow. Which is exactly what happens. Jan, Koralin, and Ritchie practically sprint after him. Ritchie is pulling Brigitte like a puppy on a leash. She laughs as they go. I push through the crowd, cut around a hairy Nahual beast man and a couple of Jades eating raw meat off a golem’s tray. Wolf Boy has hold of the golem’s arm so it can’t wander away.

I catch up with them just as everyone is saying good night. Lucifer shakes a last few hands, blows some air kisses, and we’re moving again.

“What’s going on?”

He looks at his phone one more time and stuffs it into his pocket.

“We’re going back to the hotel. Apparently Amanda and her coven never left and they’re not playing nice with the hotel staff who are too afraid to throw her out.”

“Whose followers are dumber, yours or God’s?”

“Mine are simpletons and his are self-righteous prigs. Take your pick.”

“I should have known that little shit would be here.”

Lucifer looks at me. I nod at a pretty young guy drinking and scowling at the edge of a group of other pretty young things. It’s Ziggy Stardust, the bad-mannered kid from Bamboo House of Dolls who thought I was a dolphin who’d do a trick for a fish.

“That’s Jan and Koralin’s son. Rainier I think is his name. An angry little bore and a ne’er-do-well.”

“Sounds like a typical Sub Rosa to me.”

Lucifer heads for the first gondola he sees, cutting off an angry Sub Rosa woman who was stepping into it. She starts to say something, sees me, and shakes her head.

It’s Medea Bava, head of the Sub Rosa Inquisition.

I step down into the boat and she says, “Judge a man by the company he keeps.”

“Admit it. You live alone with thirty cats, all named Mr. Whiskers.”

She stands there scowling at me as the golem gondolier poles us away.

“Friend of yours?” Lucifer asks.

“She either wants to burn me at the stake or shut off my cable. I forget which.”

“Why don’t you kill her?”

I look at him. I can’t tell if he’s serious or not.

“’Cause she hasn’t done anything yet.”

“Don’t be an idiot. If you always wait for your enemies to move first, you’ll be dead before breakfast.”

“But it’s your fans, not your enemies, that ruined your night. You just can’t win.”

“We might have put your no-killing policy on hold. Amanda and her people can be unruly, but they have to be dealt with one way or another.”

“You want me to slaughter thirteen people in the hotel lobby?”

He shrugs.

“Do it in the parking lot if you’re worried about the rugs.”

“These aren’t sulfur-sucking Hellions. I’m not promising to kill anyone.”

He lights a cigarette and doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t offer me one this time.

“If you need to play at being the humanitarian, deal with Amanda first. Put her down and the others will most likely slink away home. I’ll deal with them later.”

“While we’re dealing with annoying situations, fuck you very much for that Eleanor thing back there with the old lady.”

“Don’t be so serious. You hate the Sub Rosa because you don’t know how to have fun with them.”

“Light Bringer sounds fun. Great title, by the way. It makes you sound like Luke Skywalker’s harelip cousin. Maybe they can get Ewoks to play the other fallen angels.”

When the golem docks us by the reservoir stairs, Lucifer dials the chauffeur and tells him to wait back where he dropped us.

When we get back to the street, he isn’t there. Does this moron want his throat slit all the way around back, too, so it matches the front?

I say, “Go back inside. I’ll wait.”

“Calm down. Here he is.”

The limo pulls up to the curb and Lucifer heads straight for it. I grab his arm and hold him until the driver gets out. When he does, I do something I’m pretty sure no one but God has ever done before. I knock Lucifer down. The guy getting out of the limo doesn’t have the heartbeat or the nervous breathing of someone who’s just kept the lord of the flies waiting. He sounds more like me when I’m hunting.

Five more men follow him out of the car. They’re dressed in black jumpsuits, boots, and balaclavas, typical tactical drag, but they don’t have insignias on their suits. For all I know, they could be LAPD, Dr. No, or the SPCA.

Next time, no matter how tight the damn jacket is, I’m bringing a gun.

The six men split into two groups. The four with what look like nonlethals go for Lucifer. Two with guns come at me.

The taller one has an AA-12 auto shotgun. Looks like his pal has a G3 assault rifle. This is only interesting because it means that they work for people who can afford the best toys on the shelf, which means they’re probably pros. Damn. I was hoping to buy them off with free movie rentals. Microwave popcorn included.

Shotgun Guy starts blasting the moment he hits the curb, pushing me back toward the reservoir, trying to cut me off so I can’t help Lucifer. It’s a good plan. I’m not running in front of the double-ought shot and I’m not charging him while he has that hand cannon. I do exactly what he wants me to do. I fall down.

In gunspeak, it’s called a fall-away shot. You fall over backward while raising your gun and firing. If you’re good at it, a fall-away is a great way to shoot at an armed assailant without getting shot. Unfortunately, I’m not great at it. Fortunately, hitting something in the dark with a na’at is a lot easier than with a bullet.

I snap the na’at up and out, tagging him on the side of the throat. Judging by the red fountain that erupts there, I must have nicked his carotid. Lucky shot. Double lucky because his buddy with the G3 turns to check him out and gets hit in the face with some of the blood spray. Blinded, he snaps up his rifle, but he’s too afraid he’ll hit Lucifer or one of his own men to shoot. He tries to wipe his eyes with his sleeve. It takes him all of about ten seconds to get one eye clear. Long enough for me to collapse the na’at’s shaft and spin it like a whip so that it slams him in the center of his chest. His body armor stops the spear point from going all the way in, but the way he’s gritting his teeth tells me I’ve made contact.

I sprint forward and pull my knife. Still half blind and hurt, he starts popping off panic shots. It’s more dignified than just standing there. My jacket is open and the material snaps back when a couple of his shots get way too close to me. He finally clears both eyes, but I’m right on him, so it’s not going to help. I drive my shoulder into his chest right where the na’at hit him and he thuds down onto his back. Before he can react or smack me with the gun butt, I drive the black blade straight down into his throat until I feel it snap through his spinal column.

I look over at Lucifer. The other four guys have him surrounded.

Two of the tactical team have Tasers as big as RPG launchers. The other two are carrying what look like industrial-strength tangle web guns. Those two are in a ready position waiting for the electric boys to drive Lucifer into their loving arms. That means they’re standing there like a couple of macho ducks that got high and had targets tattooed on the sides of their heads right before hunting season. But I can’t be sure their weapons don’t have rifle fail-safes built in in case the nonlethals don’t work.

I grab the G3 and put two rounds through the closest duck’s head to see if anyone shoots back. Everyone looks at me, but no one fires. I give the second duck two in the chest and one in the head to make sure he stays down. The other two aren’t so lucky.

There are lots of theories about fighting and warfare, from Sun Tzu’s Art of War to Der Führer’s Total War to when you’re a Jet you’re a Jet all the way. The one thing all these theories have in common is this: Know your enemy. His tactics, strengths, and weaknesses. When you do, ninety-nine percent of the time you’re going to make him squeak like a church mouse and run away like the Road Runner. Of course, if you get it wrong, you’re going to be a ten-foot banana and the guy you’re fighting will be King Kong with the munchies. That sort of describes the glimmer twins with the oversize Tasers.

Seeing the rest of their team dead, they do the only thing they can. They fire at Lucifer and keep pumping the juice into him, hoping to knock him down by themselves.

This whole time, all I’ve seen Lucifer do is watch what’s happening like he’s at the zoo and wondering what funny thing the monkeys are going to do next. When the Taser darts hit and the electricity starts to flow, though, he flinches. Then he stands stock-still and for a second I think that they’re zapping him with so much current that his brain has short-circuited. A moment later he holds his arms out in a way that brings back bad memories. Bodyguard or not, I’m not getting anywhere near him.

Lucifer, once upon a time the greatest angel of them all, conjures up not one, but two flaming gladius swords. He sweeps them down in a smooth, simultaneous overhand attack that slices both Tasers in two. The swords are between the shooters and down low. He brings his arms up at an angle and hits the gunmen just above their waists, but he doesn’t stop. He keeps going until he’s drawn the swords all the way through them. Their bodies are nothing but towers of burned meat and they fly apart like suicide bombers at a backyard barbecue.

Lucifer stands with his head bowed, staring at the ground, studying the smoldering mess. I wonder how long it’s been since he’s used those swords. They probably bring back funny memories for him, too. Finally, he looks up and heads toward me.

On instinct, I snap the rifle up to my shoulder, sighting in on his left eye. He freezes. Looks at me hard, wondering what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. Finally, he lowers his arms and the swords flicker out. I drop the rifle to my side.

He comes over like he’s going to say something, but two unmarked vans are roaring down the street toward us. Backup for the first team. I toss the empty rifle away and sprint to the limo, start it up, throw it in reverse, and floor it.

The vans are doing about forty and I’m doing the same when we hit. Van number one smashes through my back bumper and up onto the trunk. Then van number two crawls right up number one’s ass, knocking it and the limo another ten feet down the road. Good thing I wasn’t doing anything important with my vertebrae or my neck would probably hurt.

Both vans are smoking and silent, but the men inside won’t be for long and I’m not waiting around for Lee Marvin and the Dirty Dozen to come out shooting.

Half a block from us, two limos are at the curb to take other guests home from the party. I gesture for Lucifer to head for the lead car and I take off after him.

I can feel it now. The heat in my muscles and bones whispering to me like an old forgotten friend. I’m not Lucifer’s anymore. I’m not the Vigil’s night janitor, sweeping up bloodsuckers and demon fuckers. I’m back in the arena where the air tastes like blood and dust. Something is screaming at my feet because I’m making it scream. Then I make it stop. I throw its head into the grandstands to remind the crowd what a real monster looks like and it’s just like coming home.

I get to the limo first and put my fist through the driver’s-side window to pull out the chauffeur. A jelly-bean-size chunk of my frontal lobe is firing just enough to remind me that the driver is probably just a terrified slob doing a shitty job. I pull him through the window and shove him hard enough that he lands on the opposite curb, out of harm’s way. Lucifer is already in the limo when I slide behind the wheel. As we take off I can hear gunfire popping behind us. The crowd from the party is screaming and running back toward the water.

Overhead, there’s the whup-whup of helicopter blades and a floodlight hits us from above. At the far end of the reservoir, two vans are parked side by side, blocking the road. I turn off the headlights and look at Lucifer.

“I hope that’s not your favorite suit.”

“Why?”

I floor it and crank the wheel right, fishtailing the limo up over the curb and across the grass. While we’re still under the trees, I push open my door, grab Lucifer, and roll left. We hit the ground hard, but not as hard as the limo when it hits the water. The hood snaps back and smashes through the windshield. It only takes a few seconds for the car to disappear into an oily froth of bubbles. The helicopter hovers over the crash, its bright belly light turning the scene into a Vegas floor show.

By then, Lucifer and I are hunkered down behind the cars on the opposite side of the street. While the vans and chopper concentrate on the spot where the car went into the resevoir, we head down a side street into a residential area. I must have pulled a muscle or something when we rolled out of the car. My side is cramped and burning.

Down a block or so, I spot an old Jeep Wrangler in a weekend warrior’s driveway. I get it open with the knife, but don’t start the engine. Just pop it into neutral and Lucifer and I push it into the street. Then we hop in and coast. It’s slow going with no engine and no headlights. I don’t see any better in the dark than you do, and my Batman night-vision scope must have gotten lost in the mail, so we pretty much crawl down the hill.

When we hit Fountain, I start the engine and steer us onto Sunset Boulevard, where we’re immediately lost in the city’s bumper-to-bumper nightlife wonderland. I’ve never been so happy to get stuck in traffic among a million other assholes in my life. I glance at Lucifer to see how he’s doing. He’s frowning and fingering a spot on his jacket cuff where he lost a button.

BACK TO THE Chateau it’s no big surprise when we find that Amanda and her coven pals took off a few minutes after we left and there was never any trouble there.

We take the elevator up to Lucifer’s floor, get out, and squeeze through the Alice in Wonderland clock. My neck and left side where I landed after jumping from the car is numb except for spasms of pins and needles. My right side is burning and leaking red all over my nice suit. I want a drink and a real cigarette.

I start to sit down and Lucifer says, “Don’t get blood on my couch.”

“It’s not your couch.”

I sit.

There’s a black hotel phone on almost every flat surface in the room. Lucifer sits across from me and picks up the one on the coffee table between us.

“Desk? Would you ring Dr. Allwissend’s room and tell him to come to my suite immediately? Thank you.”

“If you’re doing that for my benefit, don’t bother. I’ve got my own doctor.”

“Do you mean the little girl or the missing old man?”

“Sounds like Kasabian’s been earning his keep.”

“He told me about the girl. As for Kinski, it’s part of my job description to keep track of all of Heaven’s rejects. You never know when you might need an archangel.”

“Maybe you can hire him for a party like those idiots tonight. He can turn your guests into pillars of salt.”

Lucifer takes off his jacket and tosses it onto a chair. Gets a cut-crystal bottle from the end of the table, fills two glasses, and slides one in front of me. When I reach for it, I can feel the wet spreading from my stomach down to the tops of my legs.

“Does it hurt?”

“Is this Aqua Regia?”

“Yes.”

“Then it won’t hurt for long.”

“Was it a bullet or the jump from the car that did that?”

“A lucky shot from the rifle, I think. I’d still be on my back if it was the shotgun. It’s not too bad. He hit my side, so the shot went through and through. No bullets inside me this time. But I seem to be losing a lot of blood.”

“The doctor will be here soon.”

“I want to call Kinski.”

“Be my guest.”

Both of my hands are covered in blood. Not helpful when you’re trying to dial the tiny keypad on a cell phone.

Surprise, surprise. I get Kinski’s voice mail.

“Goddamn it, doc. Where are you? I’m bleeding to death and all I’ve got here is Lucifer, a stapler, and a couple of cocktail napkins. You said to get help from Allegra, but she doesn’t know how to handle stuff like this. Please call me back.”

I go back and drop down onto the couch.

“Did you have a nice chat?”

“Do you know where he is?”

“No.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I have a general idea, but he’s a powerful fellow. Angels are very good at not being seen or heard when they don’t want to be.”

“Then what use are you?”

“None. We angels have outlived our time. We’re superfluous. But I thought you already knew that.”

“The pyx is gone. It’s back in the limo. So much for my bonus.”

I pick up my drink. Something reflects off the glass and for a second I see Alice’s face. I turn quickly and the pain in my side is blinding. There’s no one there.

Why can’t I forget anything like regular people? Is it because I’m a nephilim that my brain hasn’t dissolved by now? I’ve swallowed an ocean of the red stuff and Jack Daniel’s, but I still remember everything. Every woman looks like Alice and every cigarette smells like my skin burning down below.

Memories are bullets. Some whiz by and only spook you. Others tear you open and leave you in pieces. Someday the right one will catch you in between the eyes and you’ll never see it coming. There’ll just be a flash of a face or a smell or her touch. Then bang, you’re gone. The only rational thing to do is kill memory. Get it before it gets you. One more drink should do it. It hasn’t worked before, but what the hell, maybe I’ll get lucky this time. I finish the Aqua Regia.

“I don’t want you to worry, James. I’m going to make sure you’re taken care of. I know with the way your mind works, that must sound sinister, but you’re just going to have to live with it.”

“You’re only worried ’cause I owe you money.”

He ignores this and points to my stomach.

“You’re still leaking. You need to keep pressure on the wound.”

“I’m not made of rubber. I’ve got the front, but I can’t reach the hole in back.”

He gets up and comes around the table.

“Turn around so I can see your back.”

I slide around and feel him press one of the throw pillows against the wound.

“I’m bloody and drunk and a strange man is holding a pillow over me. It’s like summer camp all over again.”

“You did a good job tonight. You saw the attack coming before I did. I hope you know how embarrassing that is for me.”

“It’ll be our little secret.”

“A century ago, I wouldn’t have missed it.”

“A century ago, they’d have been coming by steamboat and horse-drawn buggies. Helen Keller wouldn’t have missed it.”

Someone steps through the clock with a leather satchel in his hand. It’s an old man in a wrinkled shirt and a severe case of bed hair.

Lucifer barks at the old man.

“You took your time, you old fool.”

“Ich schlief. Es tut mir leid, mein herr.”

“Take care of his wounds.”

The old man nods and sets his bag on the table as Lucifer goes back to his chair. I start to take off the jacket, but Dr. Allwissend waves at me to stop. He takes an oversize cutthroat razor from his bag and, with a couple of smooth Jack the Ripper slashes, cuts the jacket and shirt so he can lift them right off me. I wouldn’t want to be dating this guy’s daughter. He wipes the blood from my wounds and takes some bottles from his bag. He spreads them on the table and begins mixing a potion.

“So, which one of them did it?” I ask.

“Which one?”

I look over the doctor’s shoulder so I can see him.

“Which one of everyone who hates your guts set you up? Mason? Aelita? Some civilian who doesn’t want his soul on a hook in a Hellion butcher shop? Maybe Bruce Willis is scared your movie will be bigger than his?”

“You’re hilarious. I have no idea.”

“Guess.”

“Not Mason. He wouldn’t have done it like that. He would have gone for something more … baroque. Winged snakes. Fire from the sky.”

“Yeah. Lizzie Borden with a death ray stuff.”

“Exactly.”

“At first I thought it was the Vigil, but—and don’t get offended, I’m just the messenger—you’re not on Aelita’s radar. She thinks you’re all buggy whips and syphilis. Quaint old antiques.”

“Lucky me.”

“That only leaves one candidate. Someone at the party. A Sub Rosa?”

“How’s that?”

“Who else knew where you were going tonight?”

“Just you and Kasabian.”

“Kasabian didn’t know when you were leaving. If I was the one who arranged the hit, I could have just let those guys take you. That means either I arranged to get myself shot again or it was someone else.”

“There were a lot of people at the party. Including civilians.”

“Yeah, but how many of them have the contacts to arrange a hit like that? They came at you with nonlethals, so they wanted you alive. That means someone has the contacts to set up a snatch-and-grab that size and the balls to think that they can hold you. That doesn’t sound like a civilian to me. At least not a civilian on his own.”

“I don’t imagine they wanted ransom. Whom would they ransom me to?”

“One of your generals? Mason? God?”

Lucifer laughs.

“If Father wanted me, he wouldn’t send a SWAT team. A rain of toads or plague of locusts, maybe, but not children in ninja pajamas.”

“What about a civilian who wants his or her soul back?”

“Hmm.”

The doctor pours the potion he’s put together into his hands and smears it on my wounds. It’s thick and smells like diesel oil. From a battered wooden box he pulls a couple of fat, glistening beetles. Puts one on my stomach and the other on my back. They start eating the oil.

“Shit!”

I try to twist away, but the doctor grabs me.

“Nicht bewegen.”

“He’s telling you not to move,” says Lucifer.

“Being shot is one thing. Bug food’s another.”

“Be quiet and take your medicine like a good boy.”

As the beetles eat the oil, they nibble the dead skin around my wounds, leaving a filament behind. When they’re done, both wounds are closed with a kind of thick spiderweb patch.

The doctor puts his beetles away and says something to Lucifer.

“He says that you’ve already stopped bleeding internally and that you won’t even have scars. He says that all your scars, including the burn on your arm, are healing very nicely.”

“Does he know any way to stop them?”

Lucifer says something to Allwissend. The doctor looks at me and laughs.

“I know. Only an idiot doesn’t want to heal. Forget it,” I say.

After the doctor puts away his tools, he and Lucifer talk for a couple of minutes. Allwissend looks at me and nods a good-bye.

Lucifer takes two Maledictions, lights both, and hands me one.

“To answer your question, I don’t know which Sub Rosa or civilian would want to kidnap me. If they’re working for one of my enemies, why not just kill me? I’d go straight back to Hell, to where whatever general hired them could pick me off.”

“What about the missing guy, Spencer Church? Do you own his soul?”

“No, I’m not sure I even met the man.”

“Seems like there’s other people around town missing. It’s practically all Lurkers at Bamboo House. Do you know anything about that?”

“No.”

Now that my right side feels better, I can feel my neck and the pins and needles on my left side more.

“You need to be careful. And you need more help than just me. Who else do you have here?” I ask.

“I’ll make some calls. But until this is resolved, I’ll be doing most of my business from this suite.”

“Good, ’cause I think I’m going to want tomorrow off.”

“Of course. We can stay in touch by phone and through Kasabian. Let’s talk and I’ll let you know when I need you again.”

I pick up the shirt the doctor sliced up.

“Can I borrow something to wear?”

Lucifer gets up and goes to the bedroom. It lets me get a good look at him and confirm what I thought I saw earlier.

He comes back and drops a pile of neatly folded silk dress shirts onto the table.

“Take whichever you like. Take a few extras, too.”

I go through the pile shirt by shirt, dropping each one onto the table.

“You like these colors, don’t you? Black, dark reds, and purples.”

“Why do you ask?”

“They’re good colors for hiding blood. You’re bleeding, aren’t you?”

He stares at me for a while. Long enough that I start to wonder if I’ve finally said the wrong thing and he’s going to have to tip the maid extra to peel my skull off the ceiling. Eventually, he nods.

“Yes, I am.”

“But you didn’t get hurt tonight. You always wear these colors, so I’m thinking you’ve had the wound for a while.”

He smiles.

“Keep going. You’re impressing me.”

“That’s why you’re here and not in Hell. You got hurt in a tussle with one of your generals who went bad on you, but you don’t want anyone to know. It’s better to come up here and play an egomaniac dick than it is to stay Downtown and hide all the blood.”

He cocks his head and puffs his Malediction.

“Not bad. You’re not entirely right, but you’re closer than I thought you’d get.”

“What did I get wrong?”

“No one in Hell did this to me. I received these wounds in Heaven.”

Lucifer stands and opens his shirt. Most of his body, from his waist to his chest, is wrapped in linen bandages. Here and there, yellow lymph and blood have soaked through. There’s a large bloody patch near his heart. That’s the blood I noticed earlier.

“There are some things even an angel can’t endure. A father’s disapproval is one.” He sits down and winces. “His thunderbolts are another.”

He buttons his shirt.

“You think you were scarred in the arena? You should have seen my face before the surgeons had their way with me. Of course, in those days we had no medicines or medical instruments in Hell. My doctors attended to me with obsidian knives chipped from the walls and slivers of sword blades that had fallen from Heaven with us.”

“You’ve always been like this. The whole time you’ve been in Hell?”

“Daddy showed me the door with a face full of fire.”

“Do your generals know you’re hurt?”

“They fought beside me. Of course they know.”

“If they know, that means Mason knows.”

“I suppose so.”

“The wound is getting worse, isn’t it? It’s bleeding more than it used to and you had to leave to hide it. What happened? Did you get hexed?”

Lucifer gestures at the table.

“Pick a shirt and get dressed.”

I take a red one so dark it’s almost black. He stares at me as I put it on.

“The front desk will call you a cab.”

He pulls a few hundreds from his pocket and hands them to me.

“This will get you home and buy you some drinks to stop the pain. We’ll talk later.”

I go to the clock and lean over to step through. I pause and look at him.

“You’re the one who told me to get smarter about what I do, so don’t get weird because I start asking questions.”

I push open the door on the other side of the clock and am stepping through when he says, “I think I liked you better when you just killed things.”

“So did I,” I say, and pull the door shut.

THIS IS SOMETHING I haven’t felt for a while. This is pain. Real pain. Fire ants gnawing their way out of the stitches over my bullet wounds. Some use their pincers, but the twitchy speed freaks are going at it with chain saws and jackhammers. I remember this feeling from my early human-punching-bag days Downtown and later ones in the arena. I don’t like remembering it and I sure as shit don’t like feeling it. This is how regular people feel, not me. I’m home and my body is developing a mind of its own. It thinks it gets a vote in how things work around here. It wants my scars to heal and it’s taking away my most basic weapon—my armor. My body is staging a revolution and it no longer recognizes me as its great and glorious dictator. Pain is how it’s burning me in effigy.

It’s not just the bullet wound, but also the road rash from bailing out of the limo. I didn’t even notice it last night when I was busy leaking all over the stolen Jeep and hotel. My pants are shredded and Lucifer’s shirt is stiff with dried blood. I may need to rethink my priorities. Maybe put off the not-killing-everyone thing while I work on shielding hexes. Getting hit without my armor just isn’t fun anymore.

As sweet as it feels, I can’t lie here forever curled up in a big ball of fuck-the-world.

If I was really smart, I’d go online, take an aptitude test, and change careers completely. Work around soft things and away from bullets. A marshmallow factory or a plush-toys sweatshop. Maybe dress like a clown and learn to make balloon animals for kids’ parties. I know some beasts the kiddies have never dreamed of.

“You’re awake,” says Kasabian.

“If you say so, Alfredo Garcia.”

“What happened to your pretty Sunday school clothes?”

“I jumped out of a car.”

“Of course you did.”

I get out of bed slowly, stagger into the bathroom to piss and brush my teeth. I wash my face in cold water, but it doesn’t help. I’m as zombied out as last night’s golems. I hope someone has the courtesy to burn my chewed-up headless corpse when I die. The thought of ending up a billionaire’s Muppet makes me want to shoot every Sub Rosa I can find, starting in East L.A., heading west, and not stopping until I hit the ocean. I’d need a pickup truck to carry that many bullets. I wonder if Kasabian can drive shift?

Still on autopilot, I flop back down on the bed. It hurts, but I don’t have to move again for a long time. Glad I told Lucifer I was taking the day off.

When I was a kid I plucked magic out of the air. Didn’t even think about it. It was just there, like breathing. I was naked last night without my gun. I can’t live without my weapons and I’ll never give them up, but I can’t rely on guns to get me out of every scrape. I need to make friends with my inner brat, get back to when magic was as easy as getting bit by the neighbor’s dog. Ever since I got back, I’ve been in arena mode. I picked up the habit of weapons there and I have to get out of it here.

Time for a drink. Something to loosen up and let little Stark out of the basement, where he’s been locked up playing five-card stud with Norman Bates’s mom. She cheats, of course. The dead think they can get away with anything because you’ll feel sorry for them. If you play cards with the dead, make sure you deal and don’t let them buy you drinks. They’ll slip you a formaldehyde roofie and pry the gold fillings out of your teeth.

I pour a tumbler of JD and take a long sip. Whiskey doesn’t mix well with toothpaste, but I already filled the glass, and once whiskey’s been let loose you have to deal with it, like love or a rabid dog.

There’s a crumpled bag from Donut Universe on the floor. I drink and Kasabian likes glazed chocolate with sprinkles. We’re the trailer trash that Dorothy never met in Oz.

I tear a square from the bag and fold it over and over again, trying to remember the pattern. When I’m done, I have a lopsided origami crane. I put it on the bedside table, tear another square, and start folding. It takes a couple tries, but I end up with a kind of thalidomide bunny. Now I’m on a roll and make a fish, a dog, and an elephant whose legs are too long. Like he escaped from a Dalí painting.

I set up my inbred critters around the whiskey tumbler like carousel animals and whisper a few words to them, not in Hellion, but in quiet English, like I’m trying to coax a cat out from under the bed.

My mother once told me a story she said got left out of the Bible. It’s when Jesus was a young boy. He snuck off from the fields where His family was working and Mary finds Him on a riverbank making birds out of mud. The little sculptures are lined up next to Him, drying in the sun. Mary yells at Him and tells Him to come back to work. Jesus gets up but before He goes He waves His hands over the mud birds and they come to life and fly away. A great way to let your folks know you’re not going into the family business.

The origami animals start to move. The elephant takes a step. The crane tries its wings. I lean in close and blow on them. That does it. They march and flutter around the glass like a special-ed Disney cartoon. I pick them up, set them on the floor, and point at Kasabian. They start the long Noah’s Ark march across the room.

I take another sip of my drink and see Lucifer’s stone on the table next to the money he gave me last night. Is it a seeing stone? Chewing gum? Am I supposed to start carrying around a slingshot because he knows I’m going to run into a giant who never went to Sunday school and doesn’t know how the story ends? I stare at it and the stone lifts from my hand and hovers about six inches over it. I tap it with a finger and start it spinning. Maybe Lucifer is supposed to take the stone back from me like David Carradine in Kung Fu. Or maybe he was fucking with me and it’s just a stupid rock.

“Shit. What is this?” asks Kasabian.

The animals have made it across the floor, up the table legs, and are clambering onto Kasabian’s skateboard.

“Get ’em off me!”

“Don’t move, man.”

I crook a finger and imagine a peashooter. When I flick the finger, the bunny flies off Kasabian’s deck like it stepped on an origami land mine. The fish and the dog get the same kill shots. When I try to sniper the elephant, it seems to see it coming and the shot knocks Kasabian’s beer over onto his keyboard. He kicks the bottle off the table as the elephant legs it for the window. The crane might be lumpy and not very aerodynamic, but it’s no dummy. It flutters out the window after the elephant.

“What’s wrong with you, goddamn it?” yells Kasabian.

Luckily, the beer bottle was mostly empty. I point to it.

“Come on, I’m open. Hit me!”

He doesn’t need that much encouragement. Kasabian half turns and kicks the bottle at me with six of his legs. It goes somersaulting at my head.

When it’s a foot away, I bark some Hellion and the bottle explodes into a million pieces. Okay, it wasn’t exactly shield magic, but I didn’t get hit.

“Don’t even dream of asking me to clean that glass up.”

“I’ll get the maid to do it. Come on. Boot something else. I need to practice.”

I don’t have to tell him twice. He kicks an empty DVD case, a wire-mesh penholder, and a pile of printer cartridges at me.

This time I hold back and throw a big mental marshmallow around me. The DVD case bounces and ricochets off the ceiling. The penholder bounces and flips into the bathroom. I block two of the printer cartridges.

“My wings are like a shield of steel!”

I’m so pleased with myself that I miss the third cartridge and it hits me over the eye.

“Touchdown!” yells Kasabian.

“Damn. That hurt.”

I take another sip from my tumbler. The pains in my stomach and side aren’t getting any better, but they’re getting farther away. Like I’m looking down at them from the third floor. My cell phone rings. It rings again. Kasabian is back working on the computer. After the third ring, the phone stops. A second later, the phone at Kasabian’s desk rings. He picks it up and gives me a look.

“Yeah, he’s here. Sure it rang. He’s just being a little bitch today.”

I have a pretty good idea who’s on the other end of the call. Kasabian mostly listens and grunts every now and then.

He has Black Sunday playing on the monitor with the sound down. Some very bad men are nailing a devilish witch mask to Barbara Steele’s pretty face. I’ve seen that done for real. I’m glad this version is in black-and-white.

A couple of “okays” followed by a “yeah” and Kasabian hangs up.

“Guess who that was,” he says.

“Unless it was about me winning the lottery, I don’t care.”

“Lucifer says for you to answer your damned phone.”

“What did he want?”

“He doesn’t need you today and maybe tomorrow, too. Ritchie and some bigwigs are coming to the Chateau for a meeting.”

“Does he know them all? Does he trust them?”

“He said you’d ask that and says not to worry. He owns all their souls. They wouldn’t dare cross him.”

“Those are exactly the people who are going to cross him.”

“He says he’s got it under control.”

“I hope he has fun and only agrees to tasteful nudity.”

“You know, you’ve been drinking a lot lately, even by your standards.”

“‘There was moonshine, moonshine to quench the devil’s thirst. The law they swore they’d get him, but the devil got him first.’ Robert Mitchum wrote that for Thunder Road, the year of our Lord, 1958.”

“You’re not Robert Mitchum, this isn’t Cape Fear, and the devil is pissed at you. You might think about spacing out the Jack with, I don’t know, anything that’s not Jack.”

“You heard anything new about Mason?”

“Nope.”

“Ever hear of a guy named Spencer Church?”

“Should I?”

“Probably not. He’s a rich junkie who’s turned up missing.”

“There’s a first.”

“What about the Sub Rosa. The families. Are they in the Codex?”

“Everything is in the Codex.”

“Except what I want.”

“Try asking the right questions.”

“It’s my fault, then. You’re not holding out on me.”

Kasabian ignores me and watches his movie.

“What does it say about the families?”

“It’s boring. It’s mostly histories. Family trees. Who begat who. There’s one fun fact to know and tell. Whenever a lot of families are in the same geographic area, each family specializes in a different kind of magic. It’s like a franchise. Supposed to keep down the hillbilly feuds.”

“The Springheels were blue bloods, so I suppose they’d have first dibs. What kind did they do?”

“Past-tense blue bloods. They didn’t have much by the end. I don’t know what magic they started out with, but even at the end they were pretty respected charm makers. Amulets. Talismans. Protective runes.”

“What about the Geistwalds?”

“Scryers. Fortune-tellers. If you ask me, the whole so-called art is a joke. I’ve met maybe two or three scryers with enough nickels in their pockets to make a quarter. The others I’d second deal at poker and take all their money. They couldn’t even see me cheating. What kind of seer is that? The whole so-called art is for rubes.”

“The Geistwalds look like they’re doing all right. Their house is about the size of the San Fernando Valley. Someone said they advise studios on what movies to make.”

“Still sounds like a gaff.”

“What does it say about the Ashes? Cabal and his sister.”

“Another old family. They pulled something shady back in the old country, took off, and ended up here. No one’s sure if Cosima, the chick, is Cabal’s sister or his wife. Hell, they probably don’t even remember anymore, which makes it even worse if you’ve ever seen them.”

“I have.”

“My condolences. The Ashes are into the Black Sun. Chaos magic. Technically, it’s about controlling elementals to bring you luck and your enemies bad luck. It’s power yoga for the ruling class. Tycoons and politicos love it. It’s sketchy, but no one’s getting attacked, so it’s all legal. Everyone knows the Ashes keep the big-money stuff off the books. Revenge. Banishments. Maybe even vaporware.”

“They’re soul merchants?”

“Soul trading is bigger than hookers and drugs combined in L.A. So many people have lost theirs or the one they have is so rotten they need a transfusion.”

“Think they’d murder someone for a particular soul?”

“There’s stories.”

“Working with elementals means they’d probably have hotshot demons on their Christmas-card list.”

“Along with their T-shirt size and favorite Beatle.”

“They ever been caught playing rough, demonwise?”

“The Inquisition has made some moves, but never found enough to do more than fine them. The Ashes are one of the oldest families in the world. They know how to cover their tracks.”

“Unless they don’t want to cover their tracks. Unless they want to make an example of someone.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing.”

I mentally walk through the Springheel house, from where Marshal Julie was pulling doorman duty to Santa Muerte standing guard over bones and gristle, to the broken magic circle that was really a hexagon drawn to call dark forces. One dark force. The eater. Did Cabal and Cosima know that Enoch Springheel was a Bone Daddy and sent him something special delivery? But why bother? From what everyone is saying, the Springheels were about as low as you could get and still have indoor plumbing. If you wanted to off somebody to make a point, why not go for the Geistwalds? But the Ashes are too smart for that. And if they just wanted to have fun, they’d go for civilian rubes, not another Sub Rosa. Still, there is a dead guy and the demon that ate him.

I don’t even know why I care. I didn’t know the guy. I don’t know any of these people. But I don’t like being lied to, especially if being lied to gets me shot. Springheel gets eaten. Lucifer gets bushwhacked. Another Sub Rosa named Spencer Church is missing. Carlos lost his pal, Toadvine, and that woman at Bamboo House is missing a kid. Probably none of this has anything to do with me, but as long as Lucifer means to drag me along into the Sub Rosa’s billion-dollar outhouse, I know there’s a gun pointed at the back of my head.

“Give me the Walter Cronkite on Hell. What’s the weather like down there?”

Kasabian turns from the movie and looks at me. He sighs.

“There’s nothing to tell. It’s the usual mess. Guys stabbing guys. Women stabbing guys who just stabbed guys. It’s rerun season down there. Nothing new.”

“The other night I was walking around East L.A. and for a second I thought I saw Mason.”

“You didn’t. That’s impossible.”

“Then he’s down there. You’ve seen it.”

“I don’t have to see it. I know.”

“From Lucifer?”

“I just know.”

“That’s not good enough. I need to know what’s happening. Lucifer is here for a reason and it’s not to make a damned movie.”

“Can’t help you. Speaking of movies, shut up. The two traveling doctors are about to open Barbara Steele’s coffin and bring her back to life.”

When you make a threat, make it big. When you make it big, make sure you’re prepared to go all in if someone calls you on it.

I go to the table and hit the power switch on Kasabian’s monitor.

“Hey, I’m watching that.”

I grab Kasabian and his deck under one arm, pull open the door, and carry him downstairs.

He stage-whispers, “Put me down! Take me back!”

I carry Kasabian straight out the back door to the alley. If any customers caught a glimpse of a head on a deck, they would just think I was throwing away a mannequin or an old movie promotion.

Kasabian is pretty discreet considering his situation. He doesn’t start screaming until I close the back door.

“What the fuck are you doing, man? Take me back inside.”

“It’s time for you to leave the nest, Tweety Bird. The world is your oyster. I saw a ‘Help Wanted’ sign at Donut Universe. With your managerial skills, you’ll be running the place by the end of the week. Vaya con Dios, Alfredo Garcia.”

“Are you out of your mind? What if someone sees us?”

“People will pay big bucks to see you. Maybe you should go to Griffith Park and sign up at the petting zoo. Hell, you’ll be their star attraction.”

“Is this about the money? I wasn’t embezzling. I was investing it for us. The store is on its last legs, man. We’re going to need a stake when it goes under.”

“It’s not the money or the attitude or you shitting beer out your neck hole. You’ve outgrown the place. You’re a lone wolf, not a team player, and I don’t want to hold you back.”

I reach into my pocket, wad up one of Lucifer’s hundreds, and toss it at him.

“Go buy yourself some platform shoes. Tall people always get the best job offers.”

When I go back inside, he’s still sitting there with his mouth open, the hundred lying at his metal feet.

I pull the door closed and wait. Right away I hear scratching, like a stray cat trying to get in after it got locked out of the house at night. Kasabian is cursing me through the door, but not loud enough for anyone else to hear. He doesn’t want that. The kicking and cursing goes on for thirty or forty seconds, getting louder the whole time. Then it stops. I listen. Nothing.

Okay. That’s something I didn’t count on. That moneygrubbing jack-o’-lantern isn’t crazy enough to go around to the front, is he?

I run up the stairs far enough that the customers can’t see me, and step through a shadow into the alley.

At first, I don’t see him. Then I hear a scrabbling from overhead. Fuck me. The little centipede is halfway up the wall, climbing for the bathroom window on his prehensile legs. He’s slow, but he’s moving steadily. I had no idea he could do that. Something else he’s been hiding along with all the other information he’s locked away?

I start to say something. When he looks down his eyes go wide. He screams and starts to fall. I throw up the shield I used earlier in the room. Kasabian is right over the Dumpster, so I vault the side and catch him when he bounces off the shield.

He yells, “Get out! Get out now!”

“Calm down. You’ve been in plenty of dirtier places than this.”

“Look down, asshole.”

I move Kasabian’s deck to the side and look at my feet. At the bottom of the Dumpster, on a pile of JD bottles, boxes, and worn-out DVD cases is a man’s hand. There’s a few inches of bone sticking out past the torn and ragged wrist. It looks like rats have been having a Sunday buffet.

“Please take me back inside.”

“What are you so upset about? It’s not yours.”

I get out of the Dumpster and set him on the ground.

“Sorry. I can’t go carrying you through there naked again. You’re wearing a disguise this time.”

There’s a Disney box lying on top of the Dumpster junk. I grab it, drop it on top of Kasabian, and carry him inside and up to the room. I punch the power on his monitor and set him down in front of it. Black Sunday is still playing. He stares at it for a moment like he’s never seen a movie before, and then turns it off.

“Is there any beer left?” he asks.

“I think so.”

I take one from the minifridge, pop the top, and slide his bucket under him. Kasabian is still staring at the blank monitor screen.

“Did you see that fucking thing?”

“It was pretty much on my foot.”

“Where do you think it came from?”

“A guy’s arm.”

“I mean did you recognize it. Did it look familiar?”

“It looked like a hand. You want to be Sherlock Holmes? I’ll drop you back down there and you can play patty-cake with it all day.”

“Body parts lying around. That’s a bad omen for me. I can’t afford to lose anything else.”

“That’s right. The universe stopped by our trash to personally deliver you a message from the great beyond. Get a grip. Some wino probably died in the neighborhood and the dogs got at him. Or there’s medical trash on the beach again and kids are leaving legs and eyeballs all over town.”

“What a waste. A perfectly good hand like that.”

“I’ll look for the other one. You can wear ’em like angel wings.”

“I’ll never have one again. Lucifer’ll never let that happen.”

“You mean a body.”

“It’s humiliating, you know. This whole situation. I’m not even a dog. I’m half a dog. On top of that I got you and Lucifer surrounding me, gnawing my ass like it’s filet mignon. You both want information and I know someday I’m going to tell one of you something you don’t like and you’re going to throw me into the wood chipper without a second thought.”

“I can’t help you get a body. The black blade is a mean Hellion hex machine. Whatever it cuts stays cut and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t, you know.”

Kasabian picks up his beer and chugs the bottle. It drains out of his neck and into the bucket, sounding somewhere between a light summer rain and someone peeing in a Dixie cup.

“So, my options are: I can go back to Hell, be damned and tortured forever, but at least I’ll have a body, or I can be Zardoz on a skateboard up here with you forever. You’d think this would be an easy choice, but it isn’t.”

“Does the Codex say anything about someone in your situation putting a body back together?”

“No, but I’ll tell you one thing I’ve learned. Any spell cast can be broken. Any spell broken can be put back together.”

“If you want I can have a word with the boss.”

He shakes his head and drops the bottle into the recycling bin.

“Forget it. The last thing I need to get into is office politics.”

“I can see how your situation sucks, but in case you haven’t noticed, neither one of us is exactly free to go drink mai tais in Maui. Maybe if we don’t shank each other in the shower, we can do something to improve that stupid situation. I don’t know what exactly, but maybe something.”

“You’re going to improve things? I’m so fucking relieved. Just remember to tell Santa I’ll need a stepladder when he brings me that pony next Christmas.”

I get up and look for some clothes that don’t have blood on them. When I’m pulling on my boots, Kasabian says, “Beelzebub is the only one of the big generals left who hasn’t joined up with Mason’s bunch. He has all the other generals, but Beelzebub’s army is almost as big as all of theirs put together. But if he gets offed or switches sides, that’s it. Mason wins.”

“And Lucifer has nowhere to go.”

“Allegra can teach him to run a cash register. He can be night manager and we’ll be his bosses.”

I check the drawers in the bedside table looking for something to smoke. I check my pockets for the electronic cigarette and then remember that I tossed it into a canal in the ballroom. Sometimes we do dumb things to amuse women.

“There’s something else.”

“Don’t tell me. Mason has a herpes gun. Or a bomb that gives everyone a fat ass and they get depressed and sit around eating ice cream all day while he takes over.”

“Mason is working on something all right. He’s got his own Manhattan Project going with alchemists, sorcerers, witches—human and Hellion—all working together. One of Beelzebub’s spies found out and passed the word along. From what I heard, right after that, he ended up in Tartarus.”

“You can hear things when Lucifer talks with other Hellions?”

“Not always and not everything. But I heard enough of this.”

I shrug and give up on finding smokes. That’s okay. I need to get out of here and walk off some of the knots in my legs and side.

“This isn’t news. Mason’s always got two or three things going at the same time.”

“Yeah, but nothing like this before.”

“What is it?”

“He’s trying to make a new key to the Room of Thirteen Doors.”

I don’t know what I was expecting to hear, but that wasn’t it. But it makes sense. What’s worse is that the prick is talented and relentless enough to actually do it.

“Is that what you didn’t want to tell me?”

“You shot at me once. You threatened to drop me in the ocean and throw me to the coyotes, so I had some concerns you might overreact.”

“You weren’t holding back because you thought you could cut a deal with Mason?”

“Make a deal with the guy who blew me up and left me like this? He’s right at the top of my people-to-trust list.”

“Okay. Thanks for coming clean.”

“You’re taking it pretty well.”

“No. I’m not.”

I head for a shadow next to the closet door, stop, and turn back to Kasabian.

“No one’s going to look out for us but us. We’re just bugs on God’s windshield. You need to get serious and work with me on this or we’re both going to end up in Tartarus.”

“What the Hell is in Tartarus? Even the Codex doesn’t say.”

“I don’t know, but I figure anything that scares Hellions ought to scare me. We need to talk some more, but I need some alone time to clear my head.”

“Me, too.”

“By the way, what happened out back? I wouldn’t have left you out there.”

“Yeah, you would have.”

“Only if I thought you were going to dick me around forever. Then yeah, but only then.”

“Lucky me some schmuck lost a hand.”

“You were wrong, see? Turns out it was a good omen.”

Kasabian scuttles around and hits the eject button on the DVD player.

“You got enough devil movies for tonight?”

“Suddenly I’m out of the mood for those. Maybe I’ll watch The Great Silence.”

“Do one more devil movie. Bedazzled. The original. It makes facing down Lucifer easier if you picture him in a Brit burger joint in a silly cape.”

“Maybe I’ll do that.”

“I’ll be going by Bamboo House later. Want me to bring you back something?”

“A burrito. Carnitas. Hot. Not those old-lady ones you get. Lots of salsa and green peppers.”

“Anything else, boss?”

“Thanks for not doing a slice-and-dice when I told you about Mason cooking up a new key.”

“You’ve got good timing. I was going to try and not kill all those other people out in the world, but that’s on hold since they’re trying to kill me. That means you get to be my no-kill project.”

“Lucky me.”

“Lucky us. We might be doomed, but we’re not in pieces in a Dumpster.”

I STEP OUT of a shadow into the hallway by Vidocq’s apartment. Vidocq and Allegra’s. I need to start thinking about it that way. I love the old man, but the thought of him rattling around in there alone used to bother me. Now that he’s with Allegra, it’s different. I don’t know why. Yeah, I do. I don’t want that place to be something else Mason has ruined.

I knock on the apartment door and Allegra answers. She looks at me.

“Since when do you knock?”

“Last time I was here, you said I only came over when I wanted a potion or needed to get sewn up, so I thought I’d come over and try to act like a person for a while.”

She steps back and opens the door more.

“Come in.”

Vidocq comes over, wiping his hands on a black rag that I’m guessing didn’t start out that color. He grabs me in a bear hug.

“Good to see you, my boy. And look, no blood. We need some wine to celebrate.”

“Thanks.”

As he grabs a wine bottle and glasses off the counter, he says, “Allegra was going to call you. Tell him.”

She smiles at me.

“The Cupbearer’s elixir is ready. We finished it maybe an hour ago.”

Vidocq comes back with the bottle, hands out glasses, and pours wine for everyone.

“Allegra figured it out. Often, when those old witches wrote their potions down, they would leave out a step or two to preserve their secrets. We worked all night, but the mixture wouldn’t hold together. Then Allegra intuited a solution. You want to preserve your body, so that’s what we gave it. I found one of your bloody shirts in the trash, cut a piece, and dropped it in. That’s the trick. The elixir must be made for each individual. And this one is yours.”

He hands me a small amber-colored antique apothecary bottle. Like something Mattie Earp would use to hide her laudanum from Wyatt.

“Thanks. I mean it.”

Vidocq stands next to Allegra, puts his arm around her, and kisses her on the temple.

“She will replace us all soon. And you, you’ll be back to yourself, as scarred and lined as Lucifer’s scrotum.”

What can you say to that? I hold up my glass.

“To the devil’s balls.”

Allegra and Vidocq hold up theirs.

He says, “Pour les bourses du diable.”

Vidocq and I drain our glasses. Allegra sips hers politely.

She says, “Speaking of the devil, is it true you’re working for him?”

I put my hand over the wound where the bullet went in.

“Looks that way. I saved the bastard’s life last night.”

Allegra is looking at me like a disapproving schoolmarm, but Vidocq leans in for a close look at the bullet hole.

“Saint Raphael’s silk. Les petites araignées do beautiful work, don’t they?”

“I wouldn’t know. I had my eyes closed.”

He laughs and pours us more wine.

“I don’t blame you. They’re ugly little buggers.”

Allegra shakes her head when he offers her some.

“How can you work for him?”

“I work for him because he pays me, same as the Vigil.”

“Taking his money doesn’t bother you?”

“Does taking mine when you get paid? Some of your salary comes from what he gives me. A salary for a job you don’t even do anymore.”

“I’m no Bible-thumper, but I don’t think it’s right.”

“A little while ago you were begging me to meet him. Now, all of a sudden, you’re Cotton Mather. What is this?”

“Wanting to see him isn’t the same as working nine-to-five for someone who’s pure evil.”

“He isn’t the one who sent me to Hell. He isn’t the one who wants to destroy the world and Heaven and everything in between. That’s Mason. Lucifer has always played pretty straight with me. It’s humans I worry about. Besides, he’s had me on retainer pretty much since I got back, so I owe him.”

“Do you really think he would worry about what he owed you? You think he wouldn’t trick you so he could take your soul?”

“I don’t care what he would do. I was raised to pay my debts. Besides, I’m Pinocchio, remember? Not exactly a real boy. No one knows if nephilim even have souls.”

“That’s right, stick up for the old man, daddy’s boy.”

“What does that mean?”

“You said Lucifer helped you when you were hunting Mason and the Circle. Up till now he’s been paying you money for doing nothing but being a drunk. Now he’s here with a job he could easily get other people to do, which means it’s really an excuse for keeping you around.”

“I pulled his ass out of the fire last night and I’ve got the holes in me to prove it.”

“How many cops do you think Lucifer owns? How many politicians, soldiers, spies, and corporate billionaires just in California? And you’re the only one who can protect him?”

“You think I can’t?”

“Think about it. Your mother was a pretty, lonely woman and your father was an angel.”

Vidocq sniffs the wine in his glass and shrugs.

“Surely the possibility that Lucifer is your father has crossed your mind before.”

“A lot of things cross my mind, but I let go of the stupid ones.”

Allegra gets closer and puts her hand on my arm. I know she’s trying to be kind, but it feels like a cop about to snap on the cuffs.

“The more you’re with him, the more he’ll suck you down into his world so that you start really acting like his son, and when you do that you’ll be like him and you won’t be Stark anymore.”

“For someone who says she’s not a Bible-thumper, you’ve got a lot of opinions on the subject of the devil.”

“I don’t care about the devil. I care about you. He’s going to manipulate you and trick you and make you into something you’ll hate.”

I move my arm away from her hand and pour myself more wine.

“You’re just jealous ’cause everyone knows my daddy’s name and no one’s ever heard of yours.”

“This isn’t a joke.”

“Everything is a joke if you come at it from the right angle and that’s the angle I’m coming at this conversation.”

I swallow the wine and set down the glass.

“I spent eleven years Downtown and you think Jake the Snake is going to twist me around in the few weeks it takes to make a movie? I don’t care if he’s my father. All that means is he fucked my mom. I grew up with another guy who fucked my mom and he wanted me dead every day of my life. Hell, in the world’s greatest dad contest, Lucifer wins just for not wanting me laid out with pennies on my eyes. Like I said before, he isn’t what keeps me up at night. It’s humans I worry about.”

Vidocq steps between us and puts a hand on both our shoulders.

“Why don’t we all sit down, have some more wine, and forget this talk of devils and fathers. Neither of those subjects ever leads to anything pleasant.”

I look at Allegra. Her heart is going like crazy and her pupils are dilated. Her breathing is steady, but she’s having to work at it.

“Thanks. But I’ve got to be somewhere.”

“Please don’t go,” she says.

She puts her hand on my arm again. I pull away and go to the door.

“Thanks again for the elixir. What do I do with it?”

“Just drink it,” says Vidocq. “But mix it with something first. It tastes a bit like turpentine.”

“I’ll pick up some margarita mix and little umbrellas. Thanks.”

“Come back soon, okay?” says Allegra.

I open the door and go out into the hall. I don’t have anything to say to her, so I don’t say anything.

Of course, it’s occurred to me that Lucifer might be my father, but how do you even begin to wrap your mind around something like that? Is he the secret to my whole sorry life? Why I had so much power when I was a kid and why I never did a damn thing with it when I got older? Is it that simple? Maybe it’s why it was so easy for Mason to send me to hell. And why I get everyone I care about killed or hurt on a regular basis. The worst thing is having to admit that maybe Aelita is right. Maybe I am an Abomination. Daddy’s boy, just a chip off the old brimstone.

TEN MINUTES LATER I’m talking to Carlos at Bamboo House of Dolls. Tak Shindo’s “Bali Hai” is on the jukebox.

“On a scale of one to ten, how evil do I come off? Let’s say one is Santa baking cookies for orphans and ten is Hitler eating babies with Freddy Krueger.”

“You’re sure not Santa. But I don’t see you dipping babies in ranch dressing. To me how evil you are depends entirely on how much blood you track on my floors.”

“You don’t think I’m trying to trick you into becoming a serial killer or working for the IRS or something else horrible?”

“No. You just need to remember to wipe your feet sometime between when you kill things and when you come in here.”

“That’s good to hear. I trust you because you’re a businessman and I know you wouldn’t want Hannibal Lecter hanging around your bar.”

“What do I care? ’Cause of the business you bring in, I’m going to be able to retire early. If you have to eat a few people to make that happen, I’ll turn my back.”

“You’re a saint. You’re Mother Teresa with a happy hour.”

“I just call ’em like I see ’em. You might be crazy, but you’re just not that evil, bro.”

“Thanks. I just wanted a second opinion.”

“Want something to eat?”

“Maybe just some black beans and rice. And I’m going to need a burrito to go. Spicy enough to melt an engine block. It’s for a friend, not me, so I’ll give you cash for that.”

Carlos shakes his head.

“Don’t be stupid. You want some of the red stuff?”

“A double. I’m drinking for two today. My scars and me.”

Carlos brings the bottle and a glass and pours me two healthy shots. I take out the apothecary bottle and look through the amber glass.

“What’s that stuff?”

“Medicine.”

“You sick?”

“Not for long.”

I upend the bottle and pour the whole thing into the Aqua Regia.

“L’Chaim,” says Carlos.

“De nada.”

I knock it back in one gulp. My mouth, throat, and stomach are very unhappy about that. I squeeze my lips together to make sure I keep it all down.

“That good?”

“Worse. It’s like a dog with cancer ate a rat with leprosy and shit it down my throat.”

“I had one of those in El Paso once. You’re supposed to chase it with goat piss, but I’m fresh out.”

“Next time.”

“That old lady is back.”

“Which old lady?”

“The one with the missing kid.”

“Aki.”

“Yeah, that’s him. She’s over with Titus. I hope he’s not stealing all of that lady’s money.”

“He always leaves them enough to cover his drinks.”

“Seriously, I don’t like people messing with old ladies. Mi madre had cancer and gave all her Social Security money to a faith healer.”

“What happened?”

“He gave her a homeopathic cure and she felt better. Of course, the homeopathic cure was just sweet wine with ginger and some low-grade morphine. When she ran out of money, the cure stopped coming. She went back to the regular doctor, but by then the cancer was everywhere. Let me tell you, having cancer sucks, but being broke and having cancer is the shittiest fate that can land on a human being.”

“I’m sorry, man. You want me to go over and have a word with Titus?”

“Don’t sweat it. I’m just talking out loud. I’ve got my eye on him.”

“Titus might string things out a little, but he’s good at what he does. If the ring is real and the kid’s here, he’ll find him.”

“He better get his bloodhounds barking if he wants to keep drinking here.”

Carlos goes off to serve other customers. I can see a few of them staring at me in the mirror behind the bar. It’s a good crowd tonight. No one tries to talk to me.

I drain the dregs of the dog shit cocktail and set down the glass, feeling queasy. The things we do to stay ugly. I check my hands hoping that maybe I’ll be able to see the scars grow back in front of my eyes like Lon Chaney Jr.’s hair in The Wolf Man. Nothing. I can’t live without scars. I bet if I asked nicely, someone around here would tie me to their back bumper and drag me a few blocks. I’m like a marathoner coming off an injury. Only I need to get my wind back by peeling off a few layers of skin. Is that too much to ask? Where are Mason and Aelita when you need them? They’d drag me to Alamogordo and back.

Enemies kill you with a knife in the back. Friends kill you with kindness. Either way you’re dead.

I didn’t need to stomp out on Allegra like that, but I couldn’t just stand there after she opened her mouth. There are things you think and things you say out loud and they’re very different things. You’d think someone like her, six months into hoodoo lessons, would know that. You don’t ever say “The devil is your daddy” out loud. It doesn’t matter if you and everyone else in the room are thinking it. You don’t say the words. Words are weapons. They blast big bloody holes in the world. And words are bricks. Say something out loud and it starts turning solid. Say it out loud enough and it becomes a wall you can’t get through. The last thing I need is a big brick Lucifer in my way.

What kind of kid would want Lucifer for a father? He’d give you the shittiest Christmas presents ever. On the other hand, he’d throw great Halloween parties.

Carlos comes back with the bottle.

“You want another one to wash the taste out of your mouth?”

“Just a half. Thanks.”

A woman says something to the guy on the stool next to mine.

“That pretty redhead in the Gucci blouse? She’s been looking at you the whole time I’ve been here. Why don’t you go and say hello?”

This guy looks around and gets up. The woman slides into his seat.

I know that accent. I turn and look at her.

“Brigitte?”

“I wanted to tell you that you’re not an easy man to find. That I had to scour the back streets of Los Angeles to track you down. The truth is that you’re ridiculously easy to find. All of Simon’s friends know where you drink.”

“But do they know where I get my donuts?”

“I’m not sure I know exactly what those are.”

“Frosting and grease with a little cake in between. Sometimes chocolate on top. Sometimes they put in industrial waste that tastes like cherries or apples. They’re like eating sugar land mines.”

“Ah. You mean koblihy. Yes, I’m fond of them.”

“No. What you ate back home probably resembled food. You’re not in America until you’ve eaten an American donut.”

“Then I’ll have to try one. You’ll take me?”

“If you promise not to tell Ritchie’s friends. I don’t mind if they know about Carlos’s place. It’s more money for him. But a man should be able to enjoy a fritter in peace.”

“It will be our secret. Is that red wine? I’m famished. Do you mind?”

“It’s not wine.”

She sputters and spits it out. Curses in Czech.

“What awful thing is that?”

“Aqua Regia. It’s an acquired taste.”

Carlos appears with a glass of water.

“Drink this or you’re not going to have any taste buds by morning.”

“Brigitte, this is Carlos. Carlos, Brigitte.”

“Nice to meet you, Brigitte. Have we met somewhere?”

“She’s in the movies. Maybe you saw one of them. She goes by the name of Brigitte Bardo.”

“Oh yeah.”

He nods. Half smiles, apparently not sure what to do with his face.

“Sure. Okay.”

Another customer flags him down for a drink.

“I think you made him blush,” I say.

“That’s sweet. I didn’t think California people could blush.”

“They’re an endangered species. The government tags them like condors and pandas.”

“You’re not what I expected. You’re a very silly man, James.”

“I come from a long line of tall-tale talkers. Our family crest is bullets over crossed fingers and underneath it says, ‘Bullshit Über Alles.’”

She takes cigarettes from her purse, but Carlos stops her.

“Sorry. You can’t in here.”

“I’m in a bar full of vampires and witches, but what people are afraid of is my cigarette.”

“Welcome to America, where everyone lives forever and everyone is beautiful if you have the money.”

“Why do you drink that horrible drink?”

“It’s a bad habit I picked up along the way.”

“When you were gone?”

“Gone, yeah.”

“And you still drink it? I’d think you’d want to forget about that place.”

“No. I don’t want to forget anything. Not one second of it.”

“Why?”

“Because someone owes me for it. Every second I was there. Every beating. Every bad habit and every shitty dream. And for Alice.”

“There you are. That’s the man I was looking for. He was hiding in your eyes. A killer’s eyes.”

“What are you doing down here, Brigitte? Shouldn’t Ritchie be buying you France or something?”

“Simon is with Mr. Macheath just now. I don’t expect him back for some time. He says they’re discussing the movie, but I think he’s lying.”

“He’s trying to renegotiate his soul deal? I’d love to hear that conversation.”

“Simon can be very persuasive.”

“That I believe.”

It bugs the hell out of me how beautiful she is. I’ve seen friends go through this. Falling for porn girls can be like mainlining Twinkies. It’s usually more about addiction than nutrition. Both are sweet and oh so irresistible because they can’t help it. Then you get jealous or she gets bored and the sugar rush ends. The crash hits and there you are, depressed, toothless, alone, and with crumbs in your sheets. I don’t need to take Brigitte to Donut Universe. She is Donut Universe.

Or maybe I’m just full of shit, spooked by her ballistic beauty, and looking for an excuse to run away like a kid who’s never figured out how to talk to girls.

“You still haven’t told me why you came down.”

“I wanted to see more of L.A. than the inside of a limousine. And our conversation was cut short at the party. I heard that I missed all the fun when you and Mr. Macheath left.”

“Fun like a bullet hole in my side.”

Her eyes widen.

“Really? Let me see.”

Okay. Maybe I was too harsh. Maybe she’s more than donuts after all.

I stand and pull up my shirt. She gets off the stool and squats on her haunches so she can get a better look at the damage. We’re getting a lot of looks from around the bar and this time I can’t blame them. This crowd probably thinks I get medical exams from porn stars every night. It’s better than them knowing most of my social life is drinking and watching The Killers with a dead man’s head.

“Do you always heal that quickly?”

“Not lately. But I’m hoping that’s fixed.”

“So do I.”

“Do you know anything about the guy they were talking about at the party, Spencer Church?”

“Why do you want to know about him?”

I shrug.

“Because I’ve been drunk and out of touch for a long time and I’ve missed a couple of hundred things. A woman came in here asking me about her missing kid. Then I hear that other people are turning up missing. The truth is, I don’t give a rat’s ass about Spencer Church, but someone tried to make my boss disappear the other night and I got shot for it. If Church did disappear, I want to know who took him or if he did it on his own.”

“I’m afraid I didn’t know him well. I know that some of Simon’s friends bought drugs from him.”

“Did he burn any of them? Take their money and not deliver?”

“Not that I know of.”

“I never heard of a Sub Rosa dope dealer before. I guess they had to be there, but I never thought about it till now.”

Carlos sets down two glasses of brown beer nearby and comes over to us.

“Did I hear you talking about Spencer Church?”

“You know him?”

“Hell yes, I know that prick. He’s an ice-cream man and a bad one. He used to sell his shitty product out of my bar, meaning when people came back to complain, I’m the one that had to hear about it, not him. He is totally, one hundred percent banned from any building I happen to be in.”

“Good policy.”

“Except that that ratfuck concha piece of shit just walked in.”

“Spencer Church is here?”

“A couple of minutes ago. He’s at the end of the bar. You can’t miss him. Skinny blacked-eyed junkie that looks like a scarecrow with a migraine.”

I look at Brigitte.

“I’m going to go talk to this guy.”

“Do you think he will tell you anything?”

“Ritchie isn’t the only one who can be persuasive.”

I push through the crowd to the end of the bar. It’s not hard to spot Church. He’s taking up a lot of real estate. No one wants to get near him. Once upon a time his clothes were nicer than Cabal Ash’s, but he smells worse and he looks like he’s been sleeping under freeway overpasses for a week. Both of his hands are flat on the bar. His nails are long, dirty, and broken. He’s got a thousand-yard stare aimed at the far wall. Between a hundred voices yammering and the jukebox, he doesn’t hear me coming. I motion for Carlos to come get his attention.

I’m right behind Church when Carlos eyeballs him.

“What the hell are you doing here, man? I told you you weren’t welcome here.”

Church doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. He just stares straight ahead. I nod to Carlos to try it again.

“Hey, asshole. You need to get out. Like now. Like five minutes ago. And don’t come back.”

This time Church seems to notice he’s being yelled at. He slowly raises his head, like a Sphinx waking up after a thousand-year nap. He moves his lips and makes a small sound.

“What?” Carlos asks. He moves closer. “What?”

Church growls and half leaps across the bar, grabbing at Carlos with his filthy claws. His mouth is open and he’s craning his neck like he wants to bite him. Carlos is yelling and bracing his arms against the bar. Church makes a gurgling growl. The floor clears as people try to get away from the chaos.

Church snaps black teeth at Carlos’s face, missing it by an inch. I grab the back of Church’s head and smash it down on the bar. I can feel his jaw crack, but it doesn’t even slow him down. He turns and lunges at me. He’s growling and biting the air, only his mouth isn’t working too well anymore. His shattered lower jaw flaps around like a baggie full of oatmeal. His teeth and tongue are black as tar. Someone must have slipped something interesting into his syringe. But even meth won’t rot your mouth that fast. What’s he on?

Church grabs my arms and opens his black pit of a mouth. He’s strong for a skinny guy. Must have pumped out a year’s worth of adrenaline in the last thirty seconds.

Cue my own little panic attack. What if Church only seems strong because I’ve got a Samson hair thing going on and I’m getting weaker as my scars fade?

His teeth snap next to my ear.

One way to find out.

I grab Mr. Oatmeal Jaw’s shoulder, spin, and toss him like a bag of trash. He flies the full length of the bar and smashes into the back wall, leaving an extremely satisfying dent in the plaster. While I’m admiring my work, feeling a warm, giddy sense of relief that I can still do unreasonable amounts of damage to my fellow man, Church rolls onto his side and stands up. He’s holding his body at a funny angle. It looks like his back cracked when he hit the wall. His left arm is badly dislocated. It hangs by his side, as limp as his jaw. If he’s in pain, he doesn’t show it. He teeters, gets his balance, and rushes me.

His head jerks back and then explodes. Not all of it. Just the back. An exit wound.

I spin around to see who fired and there’s Brigitte, up on the bar, kneeling and holding a weird little pistol in a double-hand cop grip. A white wisp of CO₂ curls out of the gun barrel.

I’m thinking When the hell did you turn into Emma Peel? but before I can say it, two more hungry-black-mouth scarecrows come stumbling in. Brigitte turns and blasts one before he gets more than three steps inside. The other one lunges for a woman by the jukebox. A blond civilian wearing her girlfriend’s oversize leather jacket. Lucky for her that her girl rides. Scarecrow Guy latches onto her shoulder, but can’t bite through the thick leather. The blonde’s girlfriend pulls her one way while I get an arm around the guy’s throat and pull him the other. It doesn’t help. He’s not choking and he won’t let go of the jacket.

“Break his neck!”

It’s Brigitte.

“Don’t let him scratch her! Snap his neck!”

I slip my arm from around his throat, grab his jaw and the back of his head, and twist sharply. You can hear the crack of vertebrae and his spinal cord snapping over the music. I know this because everyone in the bar groans at exactly the same time. He drops to the ground near the scarecrow Brigitte shot. The crying blonde falls back on her girlfriend, who pulls her away. They bump into a table and a bottle smashes on the floor. The sound is like a starter’s pistol going off. Everyone in the bar decides to go batshit simultaneously and stampede over each other trying to get outside. In less than a minute it’s just Brigitte, Carlos, the corpses, and me. Except for a couple of drunk Deadheads slumped at a corner table in their purple necromancer robes.

The less drunk one shakes his head at us.

“Big deal. The soccer games at necromancer school were rougher than that.”

“We’re closed,” says Carlos.

The Deadheads stagger out while Brigitte and I drag the corpses into the back. Carlos goes to the doors and locks them.

“Can one of you tell me what the goddamn hell just happened?” I ask.

I look at Brigitte.

She says, “Don’t worry. Whatever you think you saw, no one died here tonight.”

“You’re saying Church and the others were already dead?” asks Carlos.

Brigitte nods.

“You’re saying they were a bunch of High Plains Drifters?” I ask.

“High Plains?”

“Zombies.”

“Yes.”

“How did you know Church and his friends were going to be here?”

“I didn’t. I came here looking for you.”

“You go everywhere with that gun?”

“Of course.”

“Why?”

“It’s part of why I came to Los Angeles. My real work. I kill the dead.”

Carlos is leaning over Church’s body.

“Your friends are starting to leak on my floor. Should I be worried?”

“Is the back door unlocked?”

Carlos nods.

I grab Church and one of the other Drifters by the ankles while Brigitte grabs the third. We drag them into the alley behind the bar. The Dumpster is about half full, but I can make them fit if I push hard enough.

“Don’t bother,” says Brigitte.

“Why?”

Brigitte walks to the next building. Water is leaking from an outdoor spigot. She turns it on harder and washes her hands. I follow her over and put my hands in when she’s done, letting the frigid flow rinse black gunk from my palms. When we’re done, I wipe my hands on my jeans. Brigitte is wearing a red T-shirt with the name of a Czech band, a black miniskirt, and boots.

She gives me a questioning look.

“Go ahead,” I tell her.

She’s not shy. She happily wipes her hands all over my jeans and even kneels down so she can use my cuffs to clean between her fingers. Wish I’d thought of that.

“I take it that you don’t know a lot about revenants?” she asks.

“I’ve never even seen one until last night.”

“Do you know how to kill one?”

“I thought I just did.”

She shakes her head.

“We haven’t killed any of them. Just their brains. The rest of them is still alive and will awaken soon. That’s why it’s pointless to put them in the trash. They will just crawl out. A revenant without a brain can still hold you while others attack and kill. Or bite or scratch you, passing on their disease.”

“Okay. How do you kill it?”

“The nerves are the key. You must completely destroy its nervous system by ripping out its spine.”

I should have stayed home and watched Bedazzled with Kasabian.

“I did that to a Hellion once. It peeled all the skin off my fingers and knuckles, and really hurt.”

Brigitte makes a “why bother teaching a retard to juggle?” face.

“Don’t be stupid. There are tools for it. I don’t have mine with me, but look here.”

She takes a broken slat from an orange crate and draws something on the ground. It’s like a spear, but with a kind of claw and long backward-facing barbs on one end, like a hand with the fingers pointing the wrong way.

“The Hellion weapon you use. A na’at? Can you shape it into something like that?”

“I’ve never tried, but probably. Give me a couple of minutes.”

“Don’t take long. Depending on their injuries, revenants will revive in five to ten minutes.”

She paces back and forth while I rework the na’at. The clicking of her boots echoes down the alley. She isn’t like the woman I was talking to in the bar. More like a tiger waiting to eat an antelope it took down.

“What kind of gun was that?” I ask.

“Compressed CO₂, like at an amusement park. Mine is more powerful and fires sharpened silver-coated stainless-steel bolts.”

“Why silver?”

“It’s not necessary for revenants, but the silver allows you to also use them against verdilacs, beast men, and other undesirables.”

“You’ll have to let me try it sometime.”

“After you take me to your donut shop.”

“Are you really here to get into the movies?”

“Of course. I’ve wanted to come to Hollywood for a long time, but I was needed at home. My erotic career was going well. I made money and had ample time to do my family’s real work. Now, though, I’m needed here. It wasn’t hard to get Simon to invite me. I’m going to be in a big-budget Hollywood movie and still have time to do my other work. This is what you call a win-win, yes?”

“You think there’s more Drifters out there?”

“If there are three here, there are many more. How many is the question. We believe the numbers must be dealt with now before things become intolerable.”

“How do you know about all this?”

“My family has done this work for centuries. In the old world and the new. I’m Roma.”

“Gypsies.”

“My grandfather would shoot you for using that word.”

“I’ve been shot for less.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Let me make sure I have this straight. The cavalry just now rode into town and it’s a Czech Gypsy porn-star zombie killer. Have I got that right?”

She crosses her arms and looks at me like if we weren’t on a timetable she’d kick my ass.

“Forgive me. I didn’t think my life would seem so strange to Lucifer’s alcoholic cowboy assassin.”

“I wasn’t criticizing. I’m just trying to get everyone’s résumé straight. Last night you were a pretty girl at a party and tonight you’re Catwoman.”

She shrugs.

“Secrets quickly revealed often seem more profound than they really are.”

“Everything’s profound when there’s guns and zombies.”

She taps her wrist.

“Ticktock, Wild Bill.”

“Done. How does that look?”

I hold out the na’at to her. She takes it and spins it easily, making thrusts, jabbing the air. She drops into a strong forward stance, mimes pushing it through a body and yanking it back out. Whatever else she is, she’s comfortable with weapons.

“Church will revive first. Bring him to me and I’ll show you how it’s done.”

I kick the other two aside and pick up Church. He’s already starting to twitch.

“Lean him against the wall, facing away from us.”

I do it and get behind her.

“Your weapon isn’t perfectly designed yet, but you’ll fix it when I show you a real one. It’s best to go in through the back so you aren’t forced to rip out the rib cage and organs. Thrust the weapon at heart height through the back with an upward motion so you slide between the ribs. Try not to pop it out the front of the body. The blades will expand inside the body and grip the spinal column. Spin the blades to cut away connective tissue and pull sharply using your body weight. Only when the spine is out is the revenant dead.”

Church groans. His body straightens as much as it can, but stays facing the wall. Without its brain it doesn’t occur to it to turn around.

“You can do the next one,” she says.

Brigitte collapses the na’at as small as it will go. Stands at a forty-five-degree angle to Church’s body, resting most of her weight on her back leg, and then swings the na’at over her head. On the third rotation, she snaps the na’at out like she’s throwing a blade. The weapon extends in a second, spearing Church in the back. That wakes him up. He groans and wiggles around like a fish on a line, reaching back with his one good arm to grab at the na’at. Brigitte gives the na’at a sharp snap to the right. Church stiffens. The blades are a Veg-O-Matic in his dead guts. Brigitte crouches and jumps, not an easy thing in her boots. When she comes down she shouts something in Czech and drops her weight back. Church’s back splits open and his spinal column pops out like the handle on a one-armed bandit. This time he goes down and stays down.

“Now you.”

Brigitte retracts the na’at and hands it to me.

The second Drifter is dressed in brown shorts and shirt. Some kind of delivery guy. He’s pulling himself to his feet hand over hand, using the Dumpster like a ladder. His back is to me. When he’s upright, I spin the na’at and toss it.

It goes all the way out his front and one of the barbs hooks on the edge of the Dumpster.

When I pull the na’at, the Dumpster moves, too, and the Drifter has to do a little soft shoe to stay upright.

Brigitte sighs and walks to the Dumpster. The Drifter lunges for her and she calmly spins and catches him with a roundhouse kick to the head. While it’s dazed, she climbs onto the Dumpster’s lid and kicks the na’at free.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t talk. Kill it.”

That might be the sweetest thing a woman’s ever said to me on a first date.

I snap my wrist the way she did, but the barbs are still out the front of the guy’s body. The spinning helps dig through his chest, but I get stuck on his rib cage. I’m pushing and pulling the guy all over the alley, like I’m the worst puppeteer in the universe.

“You’ve shit it all up. There’s no finesse here. Use your strength. Just rip it out.”

I take half a step forward and then snap back, using all my body weight to pull. The Drifter’s back explodes as its rib cage, lungs, heart, and spine spill out onto the alley floor. The stink is worse than a Hellion outhouse.

“Now you know why we try not to do that,” Brigitte says.

“Thanks, Nurse Ratched. Haul up the other one. I’m getting a feel for this.”

Brigitte sets the third one upright. It takes one drunken step toward her. As she steps back, her left boot heel comes down on a chunk of the delivery guy’s liver. Brigitte wobbles for just a second, but it’s just long enough for the Drifter to lunge forward and grab her wrist.

She lays into the guy hard with fists, knees, and elbows, hammering him and twisting her arm to break his grip. A living guy would have let go just from the pain. The problem is that Drifters don’t feel pain and none of her shots are quite hard enough to lay him out because she’s still ice-skating on the guts of the other Drifter.

I swing the na’at and throw. It hits the Drifter square in the back and this time it stays inside. Wrist snap and pull. His spine pops out of his back like a bony jack-in-the-box.

I run over to where Brigitte is leaning on the Dumpster, scraping pieces of lungs, muscle, and who knows what else off her boots.

“I’m really sorry about that.”

“Do you know what these boots cost? Of course you don’t because if you did you’d be shitting yourself.”

“Sorry. I don’t have money, but I can walk into any store in the world and steal you another pair.”

“I’m not worried about the boots. Simon will buy me all the fucking boots I want. I’m worried about what I’ll tell him happened to them.”

“He doesn’t know about your hobby?”

“Simon can be a sweet man, but ninety-nine percent of his IQ is in his cock. I’m his trophy fuck and he can’t conceive of me as anything else.”

“Too bad. He’s missing out.”

Brigitte looks around at the gore-filled alley.

“I’ve seen neater kills, but I’ve also seen worse.”

“I need to call someone about this. I can’t leave a bunch of corpses lying around Carlos’s back door. I know some people, the Golden Vigil. They have all kinds of resources. They can handle this kind of thing.”

“I have people, too. They know how to dispose of revenants. Besides, I don’t much like your Vigil.”

“What do you have against them?”

“They’re the government. They’re police. That’s enough.”

Can’t argue with that. I let her call her people.

I go back into the bar. Carlos is closing up, putting glasses in the washer, dumping ice in the sink, and wiping down the bar top.

“Brigitte is finishing up out back. The bodies will be gone soon.”

“I never thought I’d see anything in here scarier than those skinheads that used to come in, but you always manage to surprise me.”

“Don’t worry. We’re going to check this out and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“Está chido. I’d appreciate that.”

“This is probably a bad time to ask, but can I still get a burrito to go?”

Carlos looks at me for a second.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

I go into the men’s room and check myself in the mirror. I don’t look too bad, but there’s more blood spatter than I’d hoped. I slip off my shirt and hang it on a hook on the back of one of the toilet stall doors. I turn on the spigot in one of the sinks and wait for hot water.

A minute later, Brigitte comes in, slapping her cell phone closed.

“My people are on their way.”

“Who are your people?”

“Friends.”

“Roma?”

“Some.”

She goes through the same routine I just did. Looks in the mirror. Doesn’t like what she sees and turns on the water in the other sink.

“Where did you hang your shirt?”

“There’s hooks on the toilet doors.”

She takes off her blouse and comes back to the sink in just her bra and skirt.

I keep my eyes to myself, scrubbing the last drops of dead guy off my arms and face. I should probably do something about my boots, too, but I’d feel kind of stupid shining my shoes next to a half-naked woman. I can wait until I get home.

Brigitte dries her face with a paper towel.

“How do I look?”

“Like thrill-kill Mona Lisa.”

“No, you fool. Look close. Is there any blood? On my neck? My arms? Check my back.”

“You’re fine.”

“Good,” she says, and pushes her hair back with her wet hands.

“Now I’ll do you.”

She turns me into the light and inspects my face.

“You missed a spot.”

“Where?”

“Lean down.”

She uses her thumb to rub something off my cheek. Then my forehead. Her fingers move around and hold the back of my head. Her arms ripple where the muscles work underneath her skin. So different from the pretty girl at the Geistwalds’ party. And the rancid meat we just left in the alley. Her heartbeat and breathing are up. She runs her other hand over my chest.

“I like your scars.”

And just like that, we’re kissing.

My hands move down her back and up her sides. I can barely remember what it’s like to be this close to another body without trying to punch or stab it. Brigitte’s skin is smooth in a way that feels brand-new. Is all skin like this? Have I really forgotten everything about bodies that isn’t about killing them?

I run my hands up Brigitte’s belly to cup her breasts. She reaches back to undo her bra and tosses it on the sink. We catch ourselves in the mirror and how ridiculous we look. Making out in a bathroom. Tracking gore on the floor. Brigitte smiles up at me and pushes me back with surprising strength into the stall where I hung up my shirt.