Kill the Dead

I go to the nightstand and find some aspirin in the top drawer. I pour out four and sit there for a minute.

“Your JD is under the bed, in case you forgot.”

I shake my head.

“I don’t want that. You have any water in your fridge?”

“Oh shit. You really are dead.”

“Do you have any water?”

“I have beer. That’s kind of like water.”

“No. That’s kind of like beer.”

I go back into the bathroom, dry-swallow the pills, and drink water out of my cupped hand.

“There. I’ll be fine once those kick in.”

“That’s what Jeffrey Dahmer said when his doctor gave him Valium.”

I find my phone and dial the number Cabal gave me.

“McQueen and Sons bail bonds. We can’t come to the phone right now. Leave a number and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can. If you already have a bond with us, don’t even dream about leaving the jurisdiction. Have a nice day.”

I go back to the bathroom and drink a little more water. Then I dial the number again. It goes straight to the message.

I go back to the other room and lie down.

“You’re going to break the news to Lucifer about this shit,” I say.

“Am I?”

“Yeah. I’m Dirty Harry. You’re Paul Revere. It’s called division of labor.”

“It’s called having a Martian’s grasp of history.”

“Just let him know.”

“I mean, one of those people isn’t even real.”

“Of course they’re real. I saw them on TV.”

I dial the bail bondsman again and get the message. Fuck it. I need to close my eyes.

“I’m going to lie down and wait for a callback. You should go lock yourself up.”

Kasabian does his bug thing, crawls down to the floor and over to the closet on his little legs. He stops by the door.

“Seriously, man, are you going to go cannibal crazy?”

I sit up.

“When I dropped Brigitte off, she was already turning. Do I look dead or hungry?”

“I don’t want to have to break in a new roommate is all I’m saying.”

“Don’t open the door for anyone but me. The secret word is ‘swordfish.’”

He closes the door and I can hear him throw the lock. He’s never done that before. A TV comes on. I’m waiting to hear Lucha Libre or an old movie, but it sounds like the news.

I close my eyes and drift in the dark for a few minutes, letting the Pepto and pills have their way with me. I’m already feeling better, though my head still throbs behind my eyes. That will stop soon. I can tell.

I lied to Kasabian. I can feel myself dying inside, but just the Stark part. He flickers in and out of focus, like a strobe light losing power. The intervals of darkness get longer and longer. Soon the flashes will stop and Stark will be gone.

The phone rings. I ignore it.

Rest in peace, asshole. Maybe someone will miss you, but it won’t be me.

The phone stops ringing, then starts up again a second later. I pick it up.

“What the hell is wrong with you, boy? Have you gone full time into the getting-people-fucked-up business? I swear, you could open a goddamn franchise.”

I sit up and swing my feet onto the floor.

“Hi, doc. What do you want? I’m just a little busy.”

Kinski says, “I’m an archangel, remember? The aether all of a sudden started smelling like blood and it was coming from your direction. Some girl of yours got hurt tonight, didn’t she? And it wasn’t Allegra.”

“It’s kind of late to be pulling out your little black bag right now, don’t you think? You got secrets you want to keep, that’s fine with me. I can respect that. But don’t go calling me when you’re road-tripping on the dark side of the moon getting all high-and-mighty. I thought you were one of the few people I could count on, but it turns out to be just one more reminder of how I should never trust an angel.”

“Did it ever cross your mind that taking off in the dead of night and dragging Candy along was about the last thing I wanted to do? That it would take something pretty important for me to do anything like that?”

“Like what? You need to get your harp restrung?”

“Like someone trying to kill us. Me, mostly, but they seem fine with killing anyone in my vicinity.”

“Is Candy all right?”

“We’re both all right, but we’ve been lucky and that’s not going to last forever.”

He doesn’t say anything for a minute. I never heard this kind of stress in his voice before. There’s noise on the line behind him. Wind and rumbling. It sounds like he’s calling from the side of a freeway.

“Exactly what happened?”

“We were out one night at a Thai joint we like and six masked heavies came in. They make like they want to rob the place, but I could read them and knew they were there for something else. They told the girl at the register to give them the money, but kept getting in her way. They told the customers not to move, but they kept tripping over them. The whole thing was an act to start a fight. When no one took the bait, they got real agitated and just started shooting up the place. These boys weren’t thieves. They were a hit squad.”

“How do you know that?”

“Street punks don’t have Dragon’s Breath rifles and quantum street sweepers. All around us people were burning up and gassing out into subatomic particles.”

“Shit, that sounds like Vigil gear.”

“Or Lucifer’s. He has a whole stable of state-of-the-art friends. Though why they’d come after me after all these years, I can’t say.”

“I know you’re Mr. Self-Control, but did Candy do anything to piss them off?”

“When the shooting started she went into full Jade mode and, no, it wasn’t easy holding her back. She took down a couple of them before I could stop her. All I wanted was to get both of us out of there while we were still on our feet. The longer we were in there the more civilians were going to be collateral damage.”

“Are you safe where you are?”

“We’re safe for now because we keep moving. This is a throwaway cell, but I’m still not wild about talking even this long.”

“Why did you call?”

“To tell you to get out of there. That city is about to be hit by the shit storm of the century. I can feel it. The dead have wandered out before and the Sub Rosa have always taken care of them, but this feels different. I don’t know that they can cork the bottle this time.”

“How is it different? What do you know?”

“This isn’t going to be a few zeds and Lacunas wandering out of some abandoned mine shaft. This is going to be big. I never felt anything like it before. It’s a damn sight too big for you to handle by yourself and don’t tell me you’re not going to try ’cause that’s exactly the kind of thing you do.”

“Thanks for the warning, but I have things to do here. There’s that hurt girl, remember?”

“Dammit, boy. This isn’t the time to be bullheaded. I’m telling you to get Eugène and Allegra and get out of L.A. Bring the other girl along if you need to.”

“I’ll tell them what you said, but I’m going to stick around.”

“You saved the city once already. You don’t have to make a habit of it at the expense of dying.”

“Trust me, I know. But I’m staying anyway. See, I was bumming a smoke off a zed tonight and got bitten.”

There’s a long silence this time.

“That when the girl got hurt?”

“Yeah. Her name is Brigitte. She got bitten, too. Vidocq’s planted her in the Winter Garden. I got the feeling it wasn’t safe to be dragging her around in that condition.”

“Okay, but getting bit doesn’t necessarily mean anything for someone like you,” he says. He says it quietly. I can barely hear him over the noise on the line.

“I was just explaining that to someone. But the truth is I don’t want to risk it. And even if nephilim don’t start seeing everyone as finger food, I’m feeling sick and not very good company right now. It’ll be better for everyone if I stay.”

“Maybe Candy and me ought to come back.”

“Yeah, the two of you getting shot will fix everything.”

“I’m not going to just leave you there.”

“Stay the hell out of L.A., doc. This isn’t your town anymore. It’s mine and I’ll burn it to the ground if I have to. You take care of yourself and Candy. Thanks for calling and thanks for the offer. Tell Candy hi for me.”

I hang up before he can say something else stupid about coming back. I’m not afraid. I should be, but my head is a little funny, so I’m not.

My head is clear, not clear like before the drinking got out of hand. Clear for the first time in my life. I feel like a blind man who traded up for new and better eyes. The world has never looked like this before. Like deep, bottom-of-the-ocean fish. They’re so far down there isn’t any light and their skin is transparent. You can see the fish and through the fish at the same time. That’s the way the world looks to me. I can see it, but see inside and through it, too. This is how the world looks to angels. Real, but only as real as the souls of the almost-dead waiting to be the completely dead. We’re a world of ghosts to them. That’s how angels can turn cities to salt and rivers to blood. To them, we’re already 90% corpse and the part that’s alive is made of glass. And glass is meant to break.

When Stark is gone the angel is all that will be left.

Check me out now, boys and girls. I am become Death. The destroyer of worlds.

I dial the bail bondsman again.

The line clicks.

“Yeah?”

It sounds like a woman’s voice.

“Is this McQueen and Sons?”

“Is this the guy who calls over and over in the middle of the night and never does anything but breathe into my voice mail?”

“That was probably me.”

“I don’t recognize your number and caller ID says you’re not dialing from lockup. What do you want?”

“I want to meet Johnny Thunders. Don’t say no. I didn’t remember your name at first, but I do now because it was on a matchbook I had in my pocket when I crawled out of Hell. We’re connected somehow. You’re going to get me an audience with Pope Johnny because if you don’t this whole city is going to die and I guarantee that you’re going to be among the first.”

Someone else says something. McQueen and Sons puts her hand over the mouthpiece. More muffled talk. Then she’s back again.

“Come to the office at nine-thirty. You know what to bring?”

“I know what to bring.”

“Good. Don’t cheap out on the jelly beans.”

I HIT ALLEGRA’S number and she picks up on the second ring.

“Sorry. Did I wake you up?”

“Hell no. With a friend like you, no one expects to sleep more than a few hours a night.”

“Is Brigitte under yet?”

“Yeah. Eugène is watching her. Making sure the potion took and she’s doing all right.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem. But you owe me a story about how you hooked up with Pussy Galore.”

“Sure. Listen, I need to read someone’s meter. Do you have an animascope?”

“A couple of different kinds. But I thought you were off chasing zombies. Why do you need the scope?”

“I’m meeting someone new and I need to know if he’s dead or alive. If I have the scope, you don’t need to come along. It’ll be safer that way.”

“Fuck that. You and Eugène are going to protect me to death. If you want the scope, I’m the one who’s going to work it. That’s the deal.”

“Okay, but you have to tell Vidocq. And don’t leave out the part where I said you could stay home.”

“When should I expect you?”

“I’m supposed to meet the contact in Hollywood at nine-thirty this morning. I’ll come by a few minutes before that.”

“I’ll be ready.”

The Grand Central Market doesn’t open until nine, which is still a few hours away. I lie back on the bed, close my eyes, and sink back down into the angelic dark. It already feels like home. The place I should have been my whole life. If I’d seen and felt like this when I was a kid, I wouldn’t have grown into someone who let Mason play him for such a fool. I wouldn’t have lost a third of my life in Hell. I wouldn’t be living with a dead man in an attic and covered in scars. Normally, going over all the ways I’ve fucked up my life turns my brain to swamp gas and bleeds my vision red. I need a cigarette and a drink to keep my heart from gnawing its way out of my chest. But now my heart beats fine. I don’t want a glass of the red stuff or a smoke. The world is a perfect white diamond. Transparent. The facets glowing with internally reflected light. And it takes just one tap in the right place to shatter the whole thing.

I GET UP a few minutes before nine and walk through a shadow to come out in a corner of the Grand Central Market. I haven’t seen the place since that day with Eleanor. It looks a lot nicer when it’s not on fire.

I buy a Styrofoam cooler and dry ice at the liquor store where Eleanor torched herself. I have to stop at three different butcher stalls to make sure I have enough pig guts to bribe Johnny. At a Filipino market near the Hill Street entrance, I pick up pork blood to fill out the feast.

Of course, if I’d felt this way earlier and hadn’t fucked up in just the right way so I landed exactly where I was at exactly the right time and place, I might never have met Alice. Without that, why would I be doing anything at all?

I pick up a couple of pound bags of jelly beans and step into another shadow.

And out into Allegra and Vidocq’s living room.

They’re sitting around the kitchen counter drinking coffee. Allegra is dressed, but there’s something wrong with her proportions.

“Did you gain twenty pounds since I’ve been gone?”

“Ask him,” she says, and nods at Vidocq.

“I simply want her to be well padded if your friend should try to make a snack of her.”

“I’m wearing like three shirts, a sweater, and a coat.”

I look at the Frenchman.

“You couldn’t have just sprinkled her with holy water or shark repellent or whatever it is that scares off Drifters?”

“I did that, too. But spells can be broken. Potions counteracted. I would rather she didn’t look so pretty for a while if it means she comes home.”

Allegra smiles and leans across the counter to kiss him on the cheek.

“Where’s Brigitte?”

“In the bedroom for now, until I can find a safe and more permanent place for her.”

“Thanks.”

“None are necessary.”

“I’d invite you along, but it’s dicey enough bringing one more person. I don’t think this guy’s handlers would go for two.”

Vidocq waves off the comment.

“I should stay and watch your Sleeping Beauty anyway. And, as my dear has explained to me several times this morning, she needs to see and experience the kinds of things that I have experienced to become the alchemist she will someday be.”

“Good answer,” says Allegra.

“Are you ready to go?” I ask.

She stands and pats a nylon bike-messenger bag slung across her shoulder.

“Got the scope right here.”

I hand her the bags of jelly beans.

“What are these for?”

“Tribute.”

“What’s in the cooler?”

“You’ll see soon enough. Then you’ll be sorry you asked.”

She goes around the counter and gives Vidocq a real kiss. He looks at me.

“You will look after her the way you would Alice, correct?”

“I won’t let anything happen to her.”

“And you yourself. You’re feeling all right?”

“I’m fine. You were right. The Cupbearer elixir is keeping me from changing one little bit.”

“Excellent.”

Allegra takes my arm. We step through a shadow on the wall and out onto Hollywood Boulevard.

MCQUEEN AND SONS Bail Bonds is at the end of the block next to a used medical supply store. Prosthetic arms and legs are hung from a cord and propped up in the window like today’s specials in the world’s worst butcher shop.

A couple of LAPD cars blast by, lights flashing. Are they heading to grab some gangbangers or to check out the first reports of strange cannibal killings?

The bail bond office is a clone of all the dismal DMV offices and bus stations in the world. It’s a wide single room with fluorescent lights and a white tile floor. Dented metal desks piled with papers that the last people who used the desk never bothered to file. There are message boards around the room covered in flyers for classes, cheap moving, and drug counselors who just have 800 numbers and a Web site. Everything else is calendars and wanted posters. If you shot time in the gut, this is where it would crawl off to die.

It looks like the place just opened. Someone in a white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up sits at a desk at the far end of the room talking on the phone.

“Get him to give you the money or take his car, Billy. I know it’s not legal, but so the hell what?”

I recognize the voice of the woman I talked to early this morning.

“The way to keep a parolee’s attention is to threaten to call his PO or to show him that his testicles are soccer balls and you’re David Beckham. Beckham. He’s a Brit who kicks the holy hell out of things for a billion dollars a year. Look, just get the money he owes or don’t bother coming back to the office.”

She’s wearing a white shirt, black Dickies, and a black tie she might have stolen off Joe Friday’s corpse. Her upper body and shoulders are wide, like someone taught her to box when she was pretty young. She doesn’t like us strangers in her office. She doesn’t like anyone who isn’t ready to turn over the title to their car or the deed to their house.

I use the cooler to push some papers out of the way and set it on her desk. Now she really likes me.

“You must be McQueen, but I don’t see any sons.”

She looks at me steadily.

“McQueen was my dad and he’s dead. And there aren’t any sons. Daddy was an optimist, but all he got was me.”

“I know the feeling.”

“I didn’t say you could put that there,” she says, pointing a pen at the cooler. “It’ll leave a ring.”

“Then we should get going.”

She cranes her head around to look at Allegra, who’s hanging a step behind me.

“I invited Bert. I don’t remember inviting Ernie, too.”

“She’s my technical adviser. I don’t know you and I don’t know your Drifter boyfriend. She’s here to confirm that he’s what you and Cabal say he is.”

She nods.

“Cabal sent you. No wonder my ass started burning the moment you walked in. That guy is one big rectal itch and so are his friends. Why should I let you see Johnny?”

“Haven’t you heard? I’m Clark Kent and I’m here to save the world.”

“It’s not my job to take care of the world. I take care of Johnny.”

“Introduce me and maybe I can help with that.”

“We don’t need your help.”

The office is still the abandon-all-hope bunker I saw when I came in, but to my new angelic vision, it’s an X-ray of shimmering, vibrating molecules. Everything is made of the same microscopic particles and they’re almost weightless.

I turn and hand Allegra the cooler, turn back to McQueen and Sons, hook two fingers under the rim of the desk, and flip it into the air. It goes high enough to graze the ceiling tiles and lands upside down with a deep hollow metal thunk. A snow of bail forms follows it to the ground.

McQueen and Sons looks at me from her desk chair.

“I guess you really are the guy they said would be coming.”

“Who said?”

“The rectal itch.”

I nod and take the cooler back from Allegra.

McQueen says, “Sorry about the attitude, but you’re not the first person to walk in here claiming he was Saint George, the angel Gabriel, or the devil himself and start asking questions.”

“I thought Johnny was a secret.”

“He’s supposed to be. Hence, the attitude.”

“I understand. If you want I’ll put your desk back.”

She shakes her head.

“Let Billy do it. It’ll be his penance for the mortal sin of lameness.”

“Hi. I’m Allegra.”

We both turn.

I say, “McQueen and Sons, this is Allegra. She’s an alchemist and my medical specialist.”

Allegra frowns at me and turns to McQueen.

“If you don’t tell him your regular name soon, I guarantee he’s going to call you McQueen and Sons for the rest of all our lives.”

“Tracy.”

“Hi, Tracy,” says Allegra.

Tracy focuses back on me.

“So, you’re really that Sandman guy people talk about.”

“I don’t know. I don’t talk to that many people.”

“Did you really come all the way back from Hell for a woman?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“Shit, man. I do it every day.”

TRACY LOCKS THE office and walks us around the corner to an apartment building a couple of blocks away. It’s one of those peculiar L.A. complexes supported on a series of metal legs, with an open parking area underneath and the apartments above. It’s like Hannibal Lecter hired an architect to design something guaranteed to turn into a human trash compactor in any quake higher than a 3.0.

She has a corner place on the top floor. It was probably the old owner or manager’s place because it looks like someone knocked down a wall and made two small apartments into one decent-size one.

A small blond woman lets us in.

“That’s him? I thought it was just going to be one person coming.”

“It’s okay, baby. The chick’s a doctor and she brought the candy.”

Tracy ushers us in and closes the door behind us.

“This is Fiona,” she says, going over to the blonde. “Fiona, this is Stark and Allegra.”

“Hi.”

“Thanks for letting us in on such short notice,” says Allegra.

Fiona gives her a nervous smile.

“It’s just that Johnny doesn’t get a lot of visitors and we know most of the people who come to see him.”

“So, why are you here to see Johnny?” asks Tracy.

I say, “Because Johnny may be top of his class, but his friends cut school and they’re hungry.”

She stiffens.

“There’s going to be an outbreak?” asks Tracy.

“There already is, but it’s early. Maybe Johnny can help us stop it from getting out of control.”

“We haven’t heard anything about rogue zeds and we know some important Sub Rosas,” says Fiona.

“People have been disappearing for weeks, but just one or two at a time. Last night was the first breakout of Drifters into the streets. If the Sub Rosa isn’t being chatty about it, it’s probably because someone in the Sub Rosa is behind it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“Cabal is my guess. He’s got the background, the family chip on his shoulder, and his public drunken crazy act has most of the other families scared. And they should be. Just because Cabal pretends like he might be crazy doesn’t mean he’s not.”

Tracy gets a bottle of blue Mexican soda from the refrigerator, twists off the cap, and tosses it into the sink.

“If no one is talking about escaped zeds, how do you know about it?”

“Because I let them out. They bit a friend of mine and they escaped while I was getting her away.”

“You let them out? So this is all your fault.”

“They got out when I was trying to save a friend. Someone who came halfway around the world to stop exactly what’s happening and save all your asses. You want to start working on whose fault it is those Drifters got out last night, how about finding out who put them there in the first place?”

“I suppose,” says Tracy. “Where were they?”

“At the Springheels’ place.”

Tracy and Fiona exchange a look, but neither says anything.

I hold up the cooler.

“This is getting heavy. Think we could meet Johnny?”

Tracy sets the soda on the counter and gestures for us to follow her to a closed door at the far end of the apartment.

“Don’t come in until I tell you to and don’t say anything until I tell him who you are. Savants are kind of obsessive-compulsives. Don’t take it personally if he ignores you for a while.”

“Got it.”

She opens the door and says, “Johnny?” like she’s talking to a nervous six-year-old. “There are some friends here to see you. Can I let them in?”

I don’t hear anything, but Tracy waves us in.

“Johnny, this is Allegra and Stark. They brought you some presents.”

She nods at us to put the cooler and jelly beans on the floor near Johnny.

Johnny Thunders is hunched over a metal folding table wearing a magnifying visor on his smooth white head. He’s studying something microscopic in his left hand while his right hovers above it with a delicate paintbrush. He’s wearing black sweatpants and nothing else. He looks like an albino mantis about to strike. Johnny is beyond skinny. He’s Auschwitz thin. You can count each of his ribs. Practically strike a match on them. But he doesn’t look sick or weak, more like he’s a separate breed of minimalist humans designed to take up as little physical space in the world as possible.

“Can you say hello, Johnny?”

“Just a minute,” he mumbles.

His right hand moves almost imperceptibly. I’m not sure Allegra or Tracy saw it. I barely caught it and I can see down to the quarks in his fingernails.

Johnny holds his microscopic object at arm’s length, studies it for a second, blows on it, and sets it down in a small upturned box lid. There are dozens of other flea-size objects in the lid. Apparently satisfied, Johnny turns and looks at us. He smiles and for a minute looks sort of human.

“Hi. I’m Johnny.”

He stands and puts out his hand. It’s reflexive. Something he’s learned or remembers from another life. Allegra shakes and I follow. He holds on to my hand and looks at me, cocks his head like a dog listening for a strange sound.

“They brought you some goodies,” says Tracy.

Johnny touches the cooler and bags of candy with his toes.

“Thanks.”

“Glad to,” I say. “Mind if we sit down?”

“Of course not.”

Tracy gets us a couple of folding chairs from the closet.

Johnny crosses his long legs and waits for us to start. I heard that the dead are usually patient. What else do they have to do?

Allegra takes an old Polaroid camera out of her shoulder bag.

“Do you mind if I take your picture?”

Johnny smiles and sits up.

“Is this all right?” he asks.

“Perfect,” says Allegra. She presses a button and the flash goes off. The camera’s motor grinds and ejects the shot. Allegra takes the photo and rests it on her lap while it develops.

I ask, “Do you know about the other dead people in the city, Johnny?”

“Not really.”

“Some got out into the streets last night. They’re probably going to cause a lot of trouble.”

“I’m sorry. But I don’t know anything about them. I know I’m one of the twenty-seven, but I don’t know much about other revenants.”

It was a long shot that the smart ones might have a sense about or a psychic link to the dumb ones.

“What are the twenty-seven?”

“I don’t know. It’s my understanding that no one knows.”

“Do you like being here? Do you ever want to get out of this room?”

“I like it here. Tracy and Fiona are wonderful and the people who come to visit are mostly very nice.”

“Mostly, but not always. Who hasn’t been nice? Cabal?”

Johnny shrugs.

“He tried to be nice, but I don’t think it’s in his nature. I think he’s a very troubled person.”

“Did Cabal want to take you out of here and away from Tracy and Fiona?”

“No. We just talked.”

“About what?”

“I don’t remember.”

Is this how I’m going to end up if the Stark part of me dies off? Like a psych patient drooling on Thorazine. Or will I be something else? I’m already something else, I think. Not that that helps much. The stronger this angel vision gets, the deeper I can see inside things. But I still can’t be sure if Johnny is a well-spoken Drifter or a P. T. Barnum scam.

Allegra leans over and hands me the photo. The anima-scope built into the camera can catch the life essence on film. Johnny’s isn’t there. The photo is a normal shot of a boring room except for the Johnny-shaped black hole in the middle. It’s true, then. Johnny is as dead as corn dogs.

What would that camera show if I let Allegra shoot me?

“Did you ever bite anyone, Johnny? Did you ever kill anyone and turn them into something like you?”

“That’s completely out of line,” says Tracy.

Johnny raises a hand.

“It’s all right. The truth is I don’t know. I think I was dead for a long time before I woke up and became what I am now. I suppose I might have hurt some people back when I was a zed.”

I didn’t expect him to even know that word, much less use it.

“No one’s taken you out of here recently? Even if it was just for a little while?”

“That I would remember. Why would I go? I have everything I want right here.”

“Not free-range flesh. You like Tracy and Fiona and you’d never hurt them, but what about a stranger? What if someone took you out of here and let you loose on someone you didn’t know?”

He looks at the floor. Crosses his legs and shifts in his seat like it’s suddenly uncomfortable.

“I’m not sure,” he says. “But as I said, I haven’t left the apartment in a long time.”

“Maybe it’s time to take a break,” says Tracy.

“Just one more thing. If a regular person like Tracy here got bitten by someone like you, or maybe a zed, is there some way to fix her?”

“You mean so she doesn’t die and return?”

“Yes.”

“No. There’s nothing for that.”

Tracy comes over and stands between Johnny and us.

“That’s it for now. Let’s let Johnny have his snack, and if he feels like it, he can answer a few more questions.”

As Tracy talks, Johnny takes off the top of the cooler and looks inside. He goes to a dresser and takes a plastic sheet from the top and spreads it on the floor like a picnic blanket. He rips off the top of one of the bags of jelly beans and pours the candy into the pig guts and blood, stirring it with his fingers. He looks at us and grins.

“I have a bit of a sweet tooth.”

“Let’s go have some coffee and let Johnny eat,” says Tracy, shooing us out of the room and closing the door.

“He likes to eat by himself. He knows his food bothers living people. It’s his way of being polite.”

“He’s not what I expected. He’s like a kid.”

Fiona started the coffeemaker while we were in with Johnny. It smells good. She pours cups for all of us.

“He isn’t always like this. None of the undead sleep, but they still have bodies and bodies need rest. Every few weeks, Johnny goes into a kind of fugue state. Sleepy. Vague. Uncommunicative. Like he’s suddenly autistic. After a couple of days, he starts coming out of it. That’s what he’s doing now, so he’s a little slower than usual.”

“How’s his memory?”

“Look, if you still think someone’s been sneaking him out, you can forget it. Johnny’s tagged with one of those house-arrest ankle bracelets. If he tried to leave here or if someone tried to take him, alarms would go off all over the place.”

“Someone could disable it with tools or magic.”

“Yeah, but they’d have to know about it. The bracelet isn’t on his ankle. It’s inside him. Sewed inside his stomach cavity.”

Dammit. Cabal using Johnny as a blunt instrument was a nice neat package, but Johnny seems to be off the hook. Cabal, on the other hand, is still homecoming king to me. I just need to connect a few more dots.

Allegra pours cream and sugar into her coffee.

“How’d he get the name Johnny Thunders?”

Fiona smiles like a mother remembering her kid’s first step.

“Johnny was in one of his fugues when they brought him here. I think moving when he was zoned out was hard on him. He ignored us and didn’t talk for days. He just stared at the wall. We used to leave the TV or music on when we weren’t in the room so he’d have company. Usually one of us was in the apartment, but this one night Tracy’s car broke down and I had to go and pick her up. When we got back, Johnny was bouncing up and down singing along with the stereo. It was the Murder City Devils song ‘Johnny Thunders.’”

I drink the coffee straight. It feels good to have coffee for its own sake and not to cure the night before.

“Why was he staring at his hands with a magnifier when we went in?”

Tracy says, “He wasn’t staring. He was working. I said it before, Savants are obsessives. They do something really well and they do it over and over again. They’ll do it forever, I guess.”

She pours herself more coffee.

“Johnny likes words and he likes geology. He’s transcribing the entire Oxford English Dictionary onto grains of sand. The last time I asked, he was up to ‘farraginous.’”

I take my coffee, go back to Johnny’s door, and open it. He’s bent over the cooler on his knees, a fistful of pig guts in each hand. His mouth and chest are smeared with blood and half-dissolved jelly beans. Not exactly a yearbook photo, but I saw plenty worse Downtown. Hell, I did worse. When Johnny notices me he smiles.

“These are really good. Thanks.”

“Before Tracy told me to bring the candy, I didn’t even know Drifters could taste anything.”

“That’s what most people think. They bring smelly meat and old, clotted blood. That’s zed food. This is better.”

“You’re welcome. Who comes to see you?”

He shrugs.

“A few Sub Rosas. I think they’re important, but they’re not very interesting. They always ask about what I remember. I tell them the same thing I told you. I don’t remember anything before waking up, but I think they think if they keep asking, I’ll remember and they’ll win a prize or something.”

“Even if you do remember, you don’t have to tell them anything. They’re your memories, not theirs.”

He nods and shoves more pig into his mouth.

“If you don’t mind, I’m going to finish my coffee and come back and talk a little more.”

“Okay,” he says through a full mouth.

I go back to the kitchen and Fiona pours more coffee.

Tracy stares at me.

“You must walk on goddamn water. Johnny never just talks to people like that, especially when he’s eating.”

“I get along pretty well with monsters.”

“Johnny’s not a monster,” says Fiona in a tone that tells me I’m not getting any more of her coffee.

“Yeah, he is. Look out your window. Johnny’s the worst nightmare most of those people will ever have.”

“That’s only because they don’t know him.”

“They don’t want to know him. Or you. You feed the monster and hide his leftovers in the trash under the pizza boxes. Don’t get me wrong. I like monsters. But to people who don’t like them, people who help monsters are monsters, too.”

“What are you getting at?” asks Tracy.

“How did you end up being Johnny’s stepmoms?”

“Granddad was Sub Rosa, but Dad wasn’t born with the gift and neither were any of us. After Granddad died, the family kind of went to shit. You heard about Enoch Springheel?”

“Yeah.”

“He was a distant cousin. His part of the family used to look after Johnny. When there was just Enoch left, well, he couldn’t take care of himself, much less a Savant. That’s when we got him.”

“I’m going to see if Johnny’s finished,” says Fiona, and goes to his room.

“A few of the big families kicked in and pay us to look after him,” says Tracy. “They make like they’re doing us a favor because all us Springheels are such losers. The truth is that none of them want Johnny around. For all their money and power, they’re a bunch of pussies.”

She looks over her shoulder.

“Don’t tell Fi I said it like that.”

“We’ll keep your secret,” says Allegra.

Tracy looks at my coat, then at me.

“Are you packing?”

“Always.”

“Can I see?”

I take out the Smith & Wesson and hand it to her butt end first. She weighs the .460 in her hand.

“What are you planning on shooting with this?”

“You never know when Hannibal is going to come back with his elephants.”

She hands me back the pistol.

“Years ago I was a cop. I’m glad I don’t have to carry anymore.”

“With Drifters loose, you might want to reconsider that. At least for the next few days.”

She shrugs.

“I’ll think about it.”

Fiona comes back with a plastic trash bag filled with something wet.

“Johnny is finished and cleaned up. You can talk to him for a few more minutes, but then I think that’s enough for today.”

She means she wants us out of here, but she’s too polite to say it.

We go back to Johnny’s room and sit down. He looks a lot better than when we first came in. Alert and awake.

“I just want to ask you a couple more things and then we’ll leave you alone.”

“That’s okay. I like talking to you.”

“Tracy tells me that you used to live at the Springheels’ house. I’ve been there, too. Did you ever go into the basement behind the wall?”

“All the time. Enoch liked us to play down there.”

I seriously don’t want to know anything about the games an autophagia freak would play with a zombie.

“Last night a group of Drifters came out of the basement. There was a big hole in one wall. It looked new and like it might have led to a tunnel. Do you know where it goes?”

“A lot of the old family houses were built over the caves in case they needed to run away. Of course, they don’t use them anymore. Enoch didn’t have much common sense, but even he wouldn’t go down there. Live people never go into the Jackal’s Backbone.”

“Tell me about the Jackal’s Backbone, Johnny.”

“It’s where the dead people live. It’s where everybody lives.”

“What do you mean ‘everybody’?”

“Everybody who dies in Los Angeles goes into the Jackal’s Backbone and stays there. Unless they find one of the tunnels that leads out or unless someone comes and gets them, like me. I guess it’s pretty crowded down there these days.”

A sick, cold feeling rises from my stomach.

“When you say ‘everybody’ do you mean all the people in the cemeteries? What about the people before that? Before the city was here. Are they there, too?”

“Everybody. The Jackal’s Backbone has been around for a long time.”

“What if someone wasn’t buried? What if they were cremated and their ashes scattered in the ocean?”

He thinks about that for a minute.

“I don’t know. I only remember a little of the caves from when I woke up and before they took me away. The rest I learned from people who come by to talk to me.”

“Like Cabal.”

“He knows a lot about them. He said there’s someone else who knows even more and told him about the Backbone after he did something for them.”

“Do you remember what he did?”

“No.”

“If I wanted to go into the Jackal’s Backbone, would you go with me? You could show me where you woke up.”

“I don’t remember it very well.”

“Maybe you will if you go back.”

“Maybe.”

“Would you go with me?”

“Hey,” says Tracy. “You can’t ask him that.”

Johnny says, “I don’t think you should go into the Backbone. It doesn’t seem right.”

“I have to. Someone is using Drifters to kill people they don’t like and now some are loose in the city. I have a feeling more are going to get loose. I need to understand why it’s happening. And there’s someone I need to look for and see if she’s in the Backbone.”

“You won’t be able to find one person. There’s about a million people there.”

“I still have to try. Will you go with me?”

Tracy says, “Johnny, don’t listen. You don’t want to go out there where people will be afraid of you.”

“No one will know I’m there if I go into the Backbone.”

“You can’t leave,” says Tracy. “That’s final.”

She whips around at me and sticks a finger in my face.

“And you, asshole. I knew I shouldn’t have let you in. Get out.”

“Johnny is one of the twenty-seven. I think if he wants something, he should get it. Including going home.”

“Get out.”

“It’s your choice, Johnny.”

“You need to leave now.”

I turn around. It’s Fiona. She looks very determined. The .45 automatic in her hand is probably helping with that.

I turn to Tracy. “Let me guess. Your old cop gun, right?”

Tracy says, “It’s a big bad world out there. A lady needs to know how to defend herself, doesn’t she, Fi?”

“Herself and her loved ones. You two need to leave.”

Allegra is frozen in her seat. I think it’s been kind of a long day for her. I take her arm and pull her to her feet.

“Okay, we’re going. You be careful with that.”

Fiona cocks it.

“Go to hell.”

Allegra tugs on my coat.

“Let’s go.”

We start for the door, Fiona behind us, an angry righteous mom defending her brood.

“Fi?”

It’s Johnny calling.

“Yeah?”

Fiona pushes us the last few feet and throws the dead bolt to let us out.

“I think I want to go.”

“No you don’t, Johnny. It’s dangerous and you can’t trust these people.”

“I think I want to go.”

“Let’s talk about it after they’re gone.”

“I don’t think I want to talk about it. I want to go.”

Fiona keeps the gun on us. She looks back at Johnny standing in the doorway to his room.

He says, “I want to go.”

“You can’t.”

“Stark’s right. I’m one of the special ones. Sometimes I get to say what I do.”

She sighs and says, “Johnny, the twenty-seven thing is made up. It’s a way to keep you smart ones together and controlled.”

“I still want to go. We’ll go tonight. It’s too bright out now. It hurts my eyes. Come back tonight. When is it dark, Tracy?”

“It gets dark late, honey. And you want it real dark if you go out. Don’t go out before eleven.”

“Come back at eleven,” says Johnny.

“I’ll be here.”

Johnny goes back into his room and for a second I think that Fiona might shoot us on principle. Finally she puts the gun on the kitchen counter. Tracy puts her arm around her.

“Get the fuck out,” she says.

When we get outside, Allegra wants to run but I hold her back. Even with people, running makes you look like prey and we don’t want to look like prey to an angry mom with a .45.

“Now you know some of the kinds of things Eugène and I have seen. What do you think?”

Allegra holds a hand over her mouth. I can feel her trembling under all the shirts and sweaters Vidocq made her wear. Get ready for the waterworks. Get ready for her to puke. This is when it always happens. People get away from danger, start to relax, and it all comes out at once.

“What do you think?”

She lowers her hand.

“That was the most awesome thing ever.”

She grabs me and hugs me as hard as anyone ever has.

“Let’s get home. I want to blow Eugène’s mind.”

We head back to the Boulevard. I scan the backs of stores and sides of apartment buildings for a decent shadow shielded from the street. The sun is so goddamn bright at this time of day it’s bleaching the shadows to frail patches of gray. Those pale shadows are no good to get to the Room, but they’re beautiful. I can see each burning photon and trace it all the way back to where it emerged from the sun.

We could call a cab to get home, but in the morning in this part of Hollywood we could wait an hour. I could steal a car, but that might be one colorful adventure too many for Allegra. I’d rather float home through the sewer on a raft made of medical waste than take the bus.

Fuck it. I turn back and forth looking for a likely car. That draws my attention away from the rest of the street until they’re right on top of us.

I smell them from ten feet away, but am distracted enough to think it’s restaurant trash that’s gone ripe. I know what a complete fucking idiot I am when I hear Allegra give a little yelp.

There’s two Lacunas. A man and a woman, if you can call them that. They’re pretty obviously dead. Their skin looks like bruised sandpaper wrapped around fat and muscle. The male wears a camouflage baseball cap. The female wears wraparound shades. They both have knives and are holding them at Allegra’s throat.

Even with it pressed right up to her carotid, I know I could get the knife away from one of them and pry its skull open with it before it could hurt her. But I’m not sure about two. Especially two somethings that feel no pain, are kind of dumb, and aren’t afraid of ending up any more dead than they already are.

“You going to do something, tough guy? Save the day, cocksucker,” says the female.

“No. I think I’m going to stand right here and admire the view.”

“Good cocksucker. Smart cocksucker. First smart thing you’ve said in a week,” says the male.

“Is that it? Did you come by to hurt my feelings or are muggers getting paid by the word these days?”

The female is next to Allegra, pinning one of her arms to her side while pressing the tip of her knife into her throat. The male holds Allegra from behind. He has his arm wrapped around her neck with the side of his blade ready to slice her jugular. He presses the knife harder against her neck.

“Watch your tone, cocksucker. One of us might twitch.”

“It’s nothing personal. I’m just trying to get the conversation rolling and find out what it is you walking garbage heaps want.”

“We want you to go to Disney World,” says the female.

“It’s called Disneyland, you stupid cunt,” says the male.

“No. There’s another one. In Florida, I think.”

“If you two want to go get a map, we can come back later,” I say.

“Shut up,” says the male. “You need to take a vacation. Stop everything you’re doing and go away. Right now. This goddamn minute.”

“I’m kind of booked up. How about Labor Day? We can all go to Hawaii together. Get a cabin on the beach and burn you two for firewood.”

The female is jumpy. She really doesn’t like not stabbing anyone. When I have to move, she’ll go first.

“That’s the wrong attitude. For you and her, but especially her. You don’t want her to end up in pieces like the Fiddler, do you?”

“I don’t know any fiddlers, but I’ve never been into blue-grass. Either of you ever listen to Skull Valley Sheep Kill? Now, that’s music.”

“He’s too stupid to get it. Cut her,” says the female.

I say, “No. Don’t. Don’t move at all. Stay exactly where you are.”

I’m a little surprised and extremely relieved when they do it.

“Put down your knives. Let go of her and move away.”

The Lacunas do that, too. I grab Allegra, pull her away, and push behind me.

“Throw your knives into the street.”

They toss them.

I turn to Allegra.

“Are you okay?”

She steps up beside me.

“Fine. Who are they? And why are they just standing there?”

“Take a deep breath. Smell that? They’re Lacunas, pitbull Drifters. And I think they’re standing there for the same reason that Johnny said he’d come with me tonight. Because of this.”

I take Eleanor’s belt buckle out of my pocket and show it to her.

“What is that?”

“I have no idea, but it’s honey to Drifters. They can’t get enough of it and it seems to have some control over them.”

“So, you didn’t know they’d listen to you when you started calling them names?”

“After Johnny said yes so fast, I had a hunch.”

“I’m pretty sure I hate you right now.”

“But you’re not positive. I can live with that.”

Allegra goes to the gutter and retrieves the Lacunas’ knives. She pockets the male’s, but holds the female’s, a black KA-BAR. She points the tip at the male.

“What did they mean I don’t want to end up like the Fiddler?”

“It’s a kind of hoodoo. Titus Eshu is a Fiddler and this maggot pile just told me that he’s dead. Titus was looking for some lady’s kid and he’s been murdered for it. That’s one more person fucked up by whatever this is.”

“How did they know where we’d be?”

“Good question. You, Dark Phoenix, how did you know where we were?”

The female takes something the size of a matchbox from her pocket and hands it to me.

“What is it?” asks Allegra.

“It’s a tracker. This is Vigil tech. It has to be.”

I hold up my arms.

“Pat me down. See if there’s anything on me.”

Allegra stands behind me and runs her hands down my arms and sides and around my boots. She starts one leg, but stops.

“There’s something on the bottom hem of your coat.”

“Let me see it.”

I feel a tug and she hands it to me.

It’s the size of my thumbnail. A matte black beetle with six pincer legs. I check the screen on the matchbox the Lacuna gave me. The GPS map shows our exact location. Great. The Vigil is dealing in Drifters now. Are they running this show or just piggybacking on someone else’s apocalypse, taking the opportunity to knock off people they don’t like and make it look like someone else’s fault?

“What are we going to do with them?” Allegra asks.

A garbage truck is moving our way. It looks like it’s picking up commercial loads from stores and apartment buildings.

I tell the Drifters, “Come over here,” then lead them to the parking lot attached to a self-storage place. There’s a double-size commercial Dumpster hidden from the street by a low wood-slat fence.

“Open your mouth,” I tell the male Lacuna.

He does. I toss the tracker down his throat.

“Shut your mouth and both of you get into the garbage.”

I look at Allegra.

“Go back to the street. Let me know when the truck is close.”

She knows I just want her away from here and she’s happy to oblige. When she’s out of sight I take out the na’at, twist it to expose its sharpest edge, raise it, and bring it down hard, splitting the male Lacuna from head to crotch, making sure to slice his spine in half. The two halves crumple onto the trash bags. Its blood has long since turned to dark sludge, so there’s almost no spray from the cut.

I do the same thing to the female, and when both of their bodies are laid out in the garbage, I slice them in half at the waist. Smaller parts are easier to hide and harder to recognize if some citizen happens by. The barbs on the na’at are good for hooking trash bags. I stamp the Lacuna giblets down into the can and camouflage them by piling garbage on top.

Just in case they aren’t dead, I lean over the Dumpster and say, “If you don’t get crushed and make it to the dump site, you’re going to stay wherever you fall. You’re not going to bite or scratch anyone. Just lie there and wait for the crows to pick your bones clean.”

Allegra and I go across the street to a real estate office. We check our phones. Look around. Check the wrist-watches neither of us owns and generally try to look like we’re waiting for someone.

The truck rumbles to a stop across the street. Two bored, sunburned men hop off the back and wheel the Dumpster into place so that the truck’s hydraulic lifts can upend it. When it’s twenty feet up, the garbage slides into the big compactor. I think I catch a flash of the female Lacuna’s legs, but no one else seems to notice. One of the men hits the button that activates the compactor. It grinds through its cycle, stops, and resets. The driver guns the engine and the truck moves on to the next pickup.

I’m sick of regular people who can’t see what light is made of. I don’t care what they think or what might give them bad dreams. I take Allegra’s hand and pull her into a shadow in the real estate office doorway. An agent inside sees us coming and opens the door just as we disappear.

AFTER I DROP Allegra back home, I wander the streets for a few hours. I can’t go back to Max Overload. Kasabian’s fear will leak through the door and give me a headache. Too bad. I’d like to see him. I’m definitely seeing beyond the normal spectrum. I might be able to see in the dark. The streets are made of light. People are the most interesting thing to watch. Their glow is different. Their light doesn’t come from the particles of their physical form, but from silver-colored balls of plasma inside each of them. I think it’s their souls. I’d like to see if Kasabian has one of those balls bouncing around behind his eyes. I’m careful to avoid mirrors and windows as I walk. I don’t want to see my reflection and what might or might not be there.

I walk down to Wilshire and follow it all the way out to Sunset, where it skirts the hills leading up to the canyons and the strongholds of the old super rich.

I hit Lucifer’s number on the cell. After a few rings it goes to voice mail.

“The Vigil is using Drifters. I just got braced by two of them. Stay inside and don’t let anyone in. If you have to let someone in, make sure it’s someone you know a hundred percent. I’ll check in later.”

If the city falls apart, will the elites be better or worse off in their hilltop mansions than the rest of us down here in the flats? The Drifters will clear us out first, but at least there are possible escape routes on the freeways and even the ocean. When the dead are through with us, they’ll wander into the hills and the canyons will fill up with nouveaux Drifters. The civilians up there won’t have anyplace to go. The mansions won’t hold and the woods will be death traps. Once again the future has screwed us because we never got the jetpacks we were promised as kids.

I dial Kasabian. He won’t answer when he sees it’s me, but I leave a message about the Vigil and tell him to keep calling Lucifer until he gets through.

I circle back into Hollywood. Bamboo House of Dolls is closed, so I go to Donut Universe.

Someone is smoking in the parking lot. The part of me that isn’t Stark smells the industrial processes that created the cigarette, the injected nicotine, the fog of carcinogens. The Stark part of me smells whiskey, music, and pretty girls. He’ll be gone soon enough.

“What’s fresh?” I ask the counter girl. Everyone on staff at Donut Universe wears springy antennae. Hers bob charmingly as she answers.

“The apple fritters and the bear claws just came out.”

“I’ll take a fritter and a black coffee.”

As she gets my food I wonder if I should tell her what’s coming. That she should turn off the lights and close early, but I know what she’d think. The concept of zombie hordes is something regular people have to experience to believe. Maybe she’ll be one of the lucky ones who gets to see it from a distance and makes it home in one piece. Maybe I’ll be ripping out her spine tomorrow. I hope she makes it home first. It would suck to be killed and reanimated while wearing corporate antennae. Though, it wouldn’t be as bad as reanimating dressed like a crab or a taco because you were pimping a new restaurant when you died. There’s a difference between a bad death and the universe stopping by to take a great big shit on you.

I pay her and sit in a booth by a window at the far end of the place where it’s quiet. I sip my coffee and dial Lucifer again. No answer.

There are sirens in the distance. Cops and fire trucks. Three, then four plumes of black smoke curl into the sky south across the city. The aether twitches and twists, giving off a metallic smell of panic. If I hold my breath and sit very still, I can hear the Drifters moving underground. They sound like ants scratching at the packed dirt walls of their caves, digging out new tunnels, undermining the soil until they pull the whole city down into the Jackal’s Backbone.

“Are you okay?”

I look around.

Antenna Girl is standing by the booth.

“What?”

“Are you okay? Do you know you’ve been sitting here for two hours and you haven’t moved? I mean totally haven’t moved.”

I glance up at the clock over the counter. She’s right. Two hours have passed. My coffee and fritter have long since gone cold.

“I got lost. I have a lot on my mind.”

“I guess so. I’ve never seen anybody sit that still that long before. I couldn’t decide if you were high or meditating.”

I smile.

“Both. Neither. If I told you something unbelievable, would you listen without running away?”

“Okay.”

“You hear those sirens? See that smoke? Something is going to happen. Maybe tonight. Maybe sooner. But something is going to happen and it’s going to be bad. Go home. Lock the door and turn on the TV. Call your friends and tell them to do the same. Most of them won’t listen, but some will and later you’ll know you saved them.”

She squints.

“Are you a cop?”

“Never.”

She curls her lips in a smile.

“Maybe you’re my guardian angel.”

“Could be. Of course, not all angels are created equal.”

“What does that mean?”

“There’s those kinds of angels.”

I point up.

“And those kinds of angels.”

I point down.

She leans her hip against the table.

“Which kind are you?”

“I haven’t decided yet. Probably neither. But please don’t tell Dad I said that.”

“Angels have daddy issues, too?”

You have no idea, Antenna Girl. The silver light inside her glows brightly.

I say, “You think I’m crazy. What else can you think? But being crazy doesn’t automatically mean I’m wrong. Stay in tonight and be safe. What have you got to lose? It’s one night. By tomorrow night, it’ll be done one way or another.”

“Are all angels as serious as you?”

“I’m sober and I think I just quit smoking. That’ll depress anyone, even an angel.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re vegan, too.”

“Even God isn’t vegan.”

“That’s a relief.”

She looks at me. The wheels are turning in her head. I can almost hear her thoughts, but not quite.

“Okay, Johnny Angel. Maybe I’ll order in Chinese tonight. How’s that?”

“Or you could pick some up on the way home. Don’t want to put the delivery guy in danger, right?”

“Fine. Go and tell Freddy I said to refill your coffee. The stuff you have is turning to paint varnish.”

“Take care of yourself, Janet.”

“How did you know my name is Janet?”

“You’re still wearing your name tag.”

She looks at her blouse. Unclips the tag.

“For a second I thought you were psychic.”

“No. I just like donuts.”

A helicopter shoots by overhead heading south toward the smoke.

Janet puts on the coat hanging over her arm, gives me a little wave, and leaves.

I KNOCK ON the apartment door at exactly eleven.

Tracy opens it and lets me in without a word. Fiona is by the kitchen counter, standing conspicuously close to the gun she held on Allegra and me that morning. I walk over to her.

“I’m not staying long, so if you’re going to use that, you might want to get started.”

She shakes her head.

“Go to Hell.”

She wants to stop me from taking Johnny. The Stark part of me understands her wanting to protect someone she cares about. The not-Stark knows how easy it would be to kill her and Tracy and how simple it would be to justify. What are their silly lives worth versus a whole city? But it won’t come to that. They won’t try to stop me. The resignation is in their eyes and body postures. Their breathing. It’s hard for them. They’re both brave and they want to be heroic, but they know they’ve already lost. Johnny said he wants to go and they know I can take him. The gun is just a gesture. More for their benefit than mine. It’s something Stark would do. Use a prop and bluster to cover up for what he knows he can’t do.

“I’m ready to go.”

Johnny is standing by his door in clean sweats and sneakers. He has a wool skullcap pulled down almost to his eyebrows. He looks like an emo kid who went off his meds.

“You look good, Johnny. I’m glad you’re coming.”

“Me, too. I haven’t seen the Backbone since they took me out.”

“You remember the way?”

He laughs.

“I remember where Beverly Hills is. Do you have a car?”

“I can get us one.”

“Great.”

He turns to Fiona and Tracy.

“How do I look? Will I pass?”

“You look good, Johnny,” Fiona says. “Stick close to Stark, especially if there are people around. And don’t talk to anyone. If anything happens, you come right back here. Okay?”

Tracy looks at me.

“He hasn’t been outside without us since he’s been here. I don’t know if he’s ever been outside without one of his minders. You’ll take care of him, right?”

“We’re going to his territory, so he’ll be fine. In between here and there I’ll look after him.”

Tracy gets close and whispers.

“As far as I know, Johnny’s never seen one of his kind get put down. If you gut a zed in front of him, I don’t know how he’ll react.”

“I don’t think it’ll come to that. I’m getting better at talking to Drifters.”

“I hope so.”

I try to ignore them as they say their sappy good-byes. I look out the window and listen to corpses digging L.A. out from under our feet. Maybe we’ve been lied to all these years. The San Andreas Fault doesn’t exist. Maybe earthquakes are just the dead turning over in their sleep.

Johnny is next to me.

“Should we go?”

I nod.

“Sure.”

He follows me outside. A moment later the door closes and someone throws the dead bolt. I take Johnny downstairs and boost a Hummer parked in the lot by McQueen and Sons. Normally, I hate these suburban G.I. Joe land barges, but tonight seems like a good night to be surrounded by three tons of metal.

“Where to?”

He gives me an address on West Pico at the edge of Beverly Hills. I pull out into traffic and head for the Jackal’s Backbone.

THE FIRES AREN’T just to the south anymore. They’re spreading all over the city. LAPD chopper searchlights rip up the sky. I turn on the radio. It’s exactly what you’d expect at the end of the world. Panicky chatter about mass murder. Something new and bad running wild in the streets. Is it a CIA experiment gone wrong—super crack seeded into “undesirable” neighborhoods—or a new strain of Book of Revelation rabies? The freeways are bumper-to-bumper. Nothing’s moving. Just one big box-lunch buffet for flesh eaters. Cop cars and ambulances tear through the city like speed-freak banshees. I turn off the radio. People sprint through the traffic in ones and twos. Sometimes small groups. They aren’t going anywhere. They’re just running.

My cell rings. I know it’s Kasabian or Lucifer, so I don’t bother checking the ID.

“Where are you? Why aren’t you home?” comes a harsh voice.

“Doc?”

“No. It’s Jim Morrison’s ghost,” says Kinski. “Tell me you aren’t running around in that goddamn madness out there.”

“I’m not running around in the madness. I’m driving. Tell me you aren’t in L.A.”

“I could, but I’d be lying. Did you know there’s a head living in your closet? And it’s pretty pissed off.”

“That’s Kasabian. Be nice to him. He has a hard enough time just existing.”

“He’s doing fine. We were chatting about finding him a body so he doesn’t have to crawl around this room forever.”

“Where’s Candy?”

“She’s having a beer with the head. He’s telling stories about you. He’s a real cutup.”

“Why are you in town, doc? I told you to stay away.”

“Candy and I came back to drag your ass out of here. You can’t stop what’s coming. This isn’t about zombies or the Vigil or Lucifer. It’s about the city eating itself. This train’s been coming for a long time and you don’t want to be here when it crashes into the station.”

“Thanks, doc, but a dead buddy and me are on our way to the Jackal’s Backbone for drinks and a lap dance.”

“Dammit. If you go in there you’re never coming out. Do you understand that? You’ve been bit. You’re already halfway to becoming one of them. Come back and we’ll see what we can do for you.”

“You’re wrong and you’re wrong. I’ll come out of the Backbone and I’m going to stop whatever’s going on because whoever’s doing it has really pissed me off. You’re wrong about the other thing, too. I’m not turning zed. I’m turning into you. Stark’s going bye-bye. In another day or so, the angel part is all that’s going to be left.”

That shuts him up.

“Listen to me. You’ve got to stop whatever it is you think you’re doing and come back here right now. We can fix this and put you back like you were.”

“Why would I want that? Get Allegra and Vidocq out of town. If you can’t take Brigitte or Kasabian, then hide them someplace safe.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“Doc?”

“Hi, Stark.”

“Candy?”

“You need to come home. Kasabian and I are drinking all your beer.”

“Just remember to empty his bucket every bottle or two.”

“I’ve missed you.”

“Hobbies are a good way to forget your troubles. I’ve heard needlepoint is relaxing.”

“Doc says you’re sick.”

“No. I’ve been sick. Now I’m getting better. Soon I’ll be perfect.”

“Please come back.”

“I can’t. We’re here.”

I park across from the address Johnny gave me. We’re in front of a ten-story office building shaped like a cake box sitting on top of a shoe box. The only interesting thing about the place is that it doesn’t seem to have any windows.

I say, “Good-bye, Candy,” and hang up. Good-bye to everyone. Been nice knowing you.

Johnny leans over and stares up at the building, as curious as I am.

“Do you have a way in?”

“You got us the car. I thought you could do it.”

“You’re more awake than this morning.”

“Yes. Almost back to my old dead self. That snack you brought hit the spot.”

“You have a sweet tooth.”

“I have a sweet tooth.”

I look the building over, wondering about the best way in. I’ve never tried to take a dead man through the Room and this doesn’t seem like the right time to turn Einstein and run experiments.

“I guess you twenty-seven Drifters really are special. How did they put your soul back in when they made you a Savant?”

He shifts his gaze from the building to me.

“What do you mean?”

“I can see souls and you have one.”

I point at the ball of light behind his ribs.

“How did they put it back in after you died?”

“No one put it back. It never went anywhere. I told you before. The dead live in the Jackal’s Backbone. Everyone who’s ever died in L.A. is down there.”

“Right. I got that.”

“If everyone is down there, where else would their souls be? What’s the use of holding on to the bodies if you don’t have the souls? The Backbone is here because L.A. is a power spot. We’re here because it needs to be fed.”

“It feeds on the souls.”

“That’s what I said.”

“What happens to the souls when the city sucks them dry?”

He shrugs.

“They’re gone. Poof. Dust in the wind.”

“I’ll get us inside.”

I gun the Hummer, crank the wheel, and hit the gas. The Hummer blasts over the curb and up the stone stairs, and smashes through the glass front doors. Yeah, I just set off a shitload of alarms, but LAPD has more to do tonight than check out a B&E. Johnny gets out of the Hummer with his big kid grin plastered across his face.

“Cool.”

“You lead the way from here.”

We go through an atrium and paneled doors that look like they lead to business offices. But it’s not offices on the other side. It’s machinery. The interior of the building is hollow and it’s full of generators and pipes. Huge fucking pipes that come out of the ground and twist around each other like Gigantor’s intestines.

“Where the hell are we?”

Johnny’s smile grows wider.

“In the pumping station. Right over the Backbone.”

“What’s it pump?”

“Oil. I looked it up. This is the largest station, but there’s ninety-seven active wells in this field pumping almost a million barrels a year. One of them is right by the football field at Beverly Hills High School.”

“I’ll call my broker when we get back. Take me to where the dead people are.”

“Sure.”

He takes us down a couple of levels to the bottom of the place. The stairs and railings are splattered with dried blood. There are bones and shredded clothes on the catwalk above us.

The oil pumps must either be buried deep or soundproofed well. I can feel the machinery through the soles of my feet, but it’s quieter on the bottom level. On the other hand, it smells a lot worse. Probably it’s all the zombies.

It’s like the shift change at Grand Central Dead Guy Terminal. Drifters wander in from every direction. They come out of offices and maintenance rooms. From behind machinery. Lacunas, a little more agile than your regular shamblers, climb up pipes dug deep into the ground. The Drifters shoulder their way up a ramp to a big room at the top. A loading dock. The steel doors are shredded and Drifters pour out into the streets.

None of them even look at Johnny. They don’t rush over to rip me apart, but I get checked out every now and then. One stops. Bares its teeth and moans. I hold the belt buckle tighter and say, “Keep moving,” and it does.

“That’s a nice trick,” says Johnny.

“Thanks. Later I’m going to make balloon animals. Let’s keep moving.”

“The fastest way is down the pipes.”

“Is there another way? I like to see what I’m walking into so I can strategically run away if it looks too meat grinderish.”

“Sure. You can see where I came out.”

I get out the Smith & Wesson and follow him into what looks like the shift boss’s office. There’s a bank of video monitors and a lit-up layout of the place on the wall. A desk in the middle of the room is covered with papers stiff with dried blood. It must have come from the pile of bone and gristle on the floor. I guess we found the shift boss. It looks like he was following safety procedures and had his hard hat on when was eaten. Good news for the company. At least their insurance rates won’t go up.

“Here,” says Johnny.

He’s by a filing cabinet that’s been moved a couple of feet away from the wall. There’s a hole in the floor. I stay where I am, waiting to see if anything decides to crawl out. When nothing appears, I go over and push the cabinet out of the way. Johnny politely stands aside and waits for me.

“No fucking way I’m going first. You walk point, Lazarus.”

Johnny nods, bends over, and drops down into the hole. I don’t want to follow, but I do it anyway. Brigitte needs whatever might be down there. And if Alice is here, well, I’ll deal with that when and if I find her. But if she is here, it means that from here on out, everyone I have to kill is going to die at half speed so they remember it when they wake up in the Backbone.

There are no lights in the tunnel. It’s dark enough that I shouldn’t be able to see, but I can. Every swirling electron cloud around every atom of every object in the Backbone gives off a dim neon glow. And there’s a hell of a lot of atoms down here. The walls are lit up like New Year’s in Time Square. Even the Drifters are made of light. Ugly, smelly, decayed, dry-bone, flesh-hungry light. I hold the buckle and send out a general “be like the Red Sea and split” message and they move out of the way.

I haven’t been a hundred percent sold on the whole “we’re the magic twenty-seven” thing, but I’m becoming a believer. People pull the new Savants out of the Backbone and there’s definitely been a lot of human traffic down through the place. The walls are covered with hoodoo symbols and bone murals. Not something these brain-dead maggot factories could pull off.

A series of leg-bone chandeliers runs the length of this tunnel. There are niches carved in the walls and lined with bones. Some niches hold skulls. Others have vases or burned-out candelabras. There’s a huge bone crucifix at the first tunnel junction. The skeleton Jesus is André the Giant-size. He has to have been wired together from the bones of two or three bodies. Someone’s attached articulated hand bones to skulls and suspended them around Jesus’ head like graveyard cherubs.

Most of the Drifters are headed up and out, the opposite of where we’re going. There are thousands of them. They fill the tunnels we’re in and every other tunnel we pass. The only reason Johnny and I aren’t crushed by all the bodies is that there’s a lot more room down here than on the pumping-station floor.

Very few of the Drifters even notice us. I relax. Stark’s fading away fast. I don’t have to keep doing things the way he does. I holster the Smith & Wesson.

“I think they brought me up from down here,” says Johnny, and starts down a set of stairs cut into the rock.

The steps lead to a metal catwalk bolted to a wall hundreds of feet over what looks like an underground Grand Canyon. Dozens of other catwalks extend below us and dot the far side of the cavern. How far does this place go down? How many people have died in L.A. altogether? Or died along the river before L.A. was a city, a town, or even orange groves? I never thought about it before seeing the Backbone. Tribal people and travelers have probably been dying here for thousands of years. It’s a whole sister city of corpses and each one of them has a soul bouncing around inside its leathery hide. There have to be a lot of vacancies in Heaven and Hell. Apartment rents must be great.

Johnny steers us off the catwalk and into another tunnel. There’s a strange sharp light ahead. It slices through the cavern’s internal atomic glow like a laser beam and plays over the bodies of each passing Drifter. Something is holding and examining them. The outline gets clearer. It’s a man wearing an insulated suit to hide his body heat from the shamblers. The sharp light is the infrared beam from a set of night-vision goggles.

I open my mouth to yell when something slams into me. All I see are teeth and nails clawing at my face. It’s a Lacuna. Mr. Laser Eyes distracted me from the buckle and the Drifters long enough for one of the smart ones to get ambitious. I smack him against the stone wall with one of the hexes I practiced on Kasabian. It starts to get up, and without thinking about it, I pull the Smith & Wesson and blow its spine out its back with three quick shots.

Shit. I guess there’s more Stark left inside than I thought.

I look for Mr. Laser Eyes, but he’s hauling ass the other way. I grab Johnny and start running.

Laser Eyes has a decent lead on us, but my funny angel vision picks out wisps of his body heat leaking from around the edges of his suit. I keep hold of the buckle with one hand and Johnny with the other. He has a hard time keeping up. I don’t think he’s run anywhere in awhile, but like everything else tonight, he seems to be enjoying himself.

A couple of minutes later, we emerge into another cavern. Big, but not as big as the bottomless sinkhole I saw from the catwalk. It feels like we’ve run out of the Backbone completely.

The cavern looks like the back of a museum or the world’s biggest junk shop. Johnny wants to stop and stare at things. I have to pull him behind me like a badly trained Chihuahua. We go through a slit canyon made of gargoyles on one side and temple dogs on the other and come around the edge of a stone labyrinth. I let go of Johnny and run for a familiar set of stone steps carved into the rock a hundred yards away.

When I’m in spitting distance of the steps I yell, “Muninn!” and the echo bounces for miles into the distance.

I wait and listen. A sound to my right, coming from behind shelves piled high with melting Mexican sugar skulls.

The little man peeks around the side. He’s holding an impressive iron morningstar over his head.

“You planning on tenderizing some steaks? Are we going to have a barbecue?”

He lowers the weapon.

“Stark? What in the name of all the gods living and dead are you doing here? And how did you end up in the Backbone?”

Mr. Muninn is probably the oldest man in L.A. I hope he is. The guy talks about ice ages the way most people talk about lunch. He’s a merchant to the stars and connoisseurs of esoterica. He can find you anything old, discarded, or forgotten and a few things from worlds I don’t even want to know about.

“I was about to ask you the same thing. Why are you dressed like Diver Dan and giving Drifters physicals?”

Muninn likes silk bathrobes and dapper little suits. Right now he’s dressed in a skintight rubber getup, like something a scuba diver would wear. On his round little body it makes him look like a boiled egg with legs.

Muninn shakes his head, tosses the night-vision gear and morningstar aside. He pulls a bottle and glasses from a shelf and pours a couple of glasses of wine. I go over and sit down across from him.

“You scared the devil out of me, young man. In all the centuries I’ve been looking after the dead, I’ve never encountered another living being. When you introduced yourself with a gun, I should have known it was you.”

“You still haven’t answered my question. What were you doing back there?”

Muninn unzips the top of his bodysuit and takes a gulp of wine.

“I was looking for specimens. You know I collect and preserve ephemera from the world outside of here. When I realized that the Backbone might empty completely, I went looking for a few interesting examples of these lost souls to keep for archival purposes.”

“So what are you, like a caretaker for shamblers?”

“Something like that. The resurrected are technically dead, but still ensouled beings. Someone should look in on them every now and then, don’t you think? Now let me ask you a question or two. How did you find your way into the Backbone and why would you go there? Oh, and there’s the small matter of you not being eaten alive.”

I sniff the wine. Stark wants to drink it, but not-Stark doesn’t and is still annoyed about using the gun. The wine stays put.

“Johnny over there is how I got in.”

I nod toward Johnny as he wanders to where we’re sitting. He’s having a good time looking around. He has a plastic Visible Man model kit in one hand and an old leather-bound dictionary in the other.

Muninn stares at him.

“Hello, my boy. You don’t seem to be alive, but those are interesting choices you’ve made. You wouldn’t happen to be a Sapere, would you?”

Johnny nods and grins, but doesn’t talk. He’s overwhelmed by Muninn’s gewgaws.

“I’ve never really seen one up close before. Saperes, of course, leave the Backbone. They don’t come in.”

“Johnny’s doing me a favor. I’m trying to learn everything I can about Drifters.”

“Why?”

“Because someone is using them as a weapon. And one of them bit a friend of mine.”

Muninn sets down his glass.

“Oh. I am sorry. Is she…?”

“Turned? No. Vidocq has her in the Winter Garden.”

“That’s the best thing for her, I’m sure.”

I look at the table for a minute. My brain is churning with questions and answers that don’t hook up and don’t make any sense.

“Mr. Muninn, do you know what’s happening in the Backbone or up in the city?”

“I’m afraid not. A few of the dead wander out every now and then, but never before in this number. How did you and your Sapere friend find each other?”

“Cabal Ash sent me to his minders.”

“Ah, Cabal,” Muninn says. He chuckles.

“What a charmer. He must be feeling generous these days. He paid off a sizable debt recently. It was very unlike him. My impression was that he’d fallen on some hard times.”

“Did he say where he got the money?”

“It never occurred to me to ask. Do you think he has something to do with our migrating wildebeests?”

“Definitely. I was thinking that he’d released the Drifters to settle some old scores, but if he’s suddenly rolling in cash, maybe he did it for someone else.”

“Who would want that?”

“If I could figure out what they wanted, maybe I’d know who’s doing it. Releasing all these dead fuckers in the tunnels will make it even harder to tell who had a hit out on them and who just didn’t run fast enough. At first I thought this was a Sub Rosa feud that had gotten out of hand, but today I got mugged by a couple of Lacunas and I’m pretty sure the Golden Vigil sent them.”

“That is a strange collaboration.”

“What’s this?” asks Johnny.

He holds up a sculpture that looks like a tarantula with wings.

“That’s a spider deity worshipped by natives on a small island lying between Japan and Russia. They used to capture larger spiders, sew wings onto their backs, and toss them off cliffs so they could fly up to the great Spider Mother in the sky. The spiders, of course, didn’t fly so much as plummet into the sea. They weren’t a particularly bright people and disappeared along with their island in a volcanic mishap.”

“Has anyone else who had a debt with you paid it off recently?”

“There was a strange one just the other day. Do you know Koralin and Jan Geistwald?”

“Sure.”

“Their son, Rainier, purchased some potions from me a while back. Later, there was some talk that had me concerned about payment, but then he appeared out of nowhere and settled the entire debt with some very lovely Etruscan gold.”

“What’s so strange about that?”

Muninn finishes his wine and pours himself another glass.

“It’s strange because what I’d heard was that the boy was dead.”

“Are you sure?”

“Fairly. I’m certain I’d seen young Rainier in the Backbone with my own eyes.”

Johnny is moving around behind us. Pawing through Muninn’s shelves. Knocking things over and laughing at what he finds. Can you give Ritalin to a corpse?

“What was he buying?”

Muninn shrugs.

“An assortment of potions. A few rare plants and extracts. None of it particularly sinister. I got the impression that he wasn’t buying them for himself since he didn’t seem to know what any of the substances were for.”

“I saw the Geistwald kid at his parents’ party just a few nights ago. Are you sure it was him you saw in the Backbone?”

“As certain as anyone can be in the tunnels. The dead appear and disappear so quickly. But I’d met the boy before and I’m sure it was him.”

“So, if the kid really is dead, then the Rainier who paid you is impersonating him. If he can fool you and the family, he must be using a pretty potent glamour. That’s some tight hoodoo.”

“Maybe not so tight as all that. Some of the potions I sold him, when combined with other more common ingredients, could be used to create a very powerful disguise, more powerful than your average young Sub Rosa could conjure up with simple spoken magic.”

“I’m going to need to talk to him and Cabal. Making glamour for a con man sounds exactly like the kind of job Cabal would be good for. If he paid you off, he’s done some work for someone and it sounds like the fake Rainier has some coin to spare.”

Muninn laughs quietly to himself.

“You’re becoming quite the gumshoe, aren’t you? When Eugène first introduced you, I thought you’d only be good for walking through walls and punching people very hard, but here you are puzzling through clues like a champion. If we were drinking tea, we’d practically be Holmes and Watson.”

“I feel like both these days. I had a kind of accident recently, and there’s a couple of different me’s punching it out in my head. Sometimes it’s me and sometimes it’s this better, stronger, smarter me, but even more pissed off and with a massive stick up its ass.”

“And which one of you am I speaking to now?”

“I’m not always sure, but I’m pretty sure it’s not the Stark me putting all these clues together because whenever it starts, I sort of go out for a mental cigarette and let not-Stark talk.”

“Fascinating.”

There’s a loud crash behind us.

“Sorry,” says Johnny.

“You know if you break the Holy Grail, you have to pay for it, right?”

“Don’t be too hard on him. He’s a lovely boy. Much more interesting than the tall, dark, silent types in the tunnels.”

“What’s driving me crazy is that none of this feels like any of it is getting me any closer to helping Brigitte.”

Johnny asks, “Is she the one you said was bitten?”

“That’s her.”

“Why don’t you just cure her?”

“There isn’t a cure. You told me so yourself.”

Johnny turns and gives me a puzzled look.

“Did I? Wow. I must have really been out of it.”

“You’re saying there’s a cure for a zombie bite?”

“Sure. It’s simple. It’s my blood. Well, any Savant’s blood.”

“What do you do with it?”

Johnny drops a papier-mâché devil’s head he’d been holding and comes to the table.

“It’s super easy. You just mix my blood with a little Spiritus Dei and goofer dust—graveyard dirt—and boil it over a fire made from white oak. Scoop off the clear liquid that floats to the top and inject it into her heart.”

“Johnny, can I have some of your blood?”

He looks at Muninn and me.

“Sure. I’m not using it.”

“I’ll get you a jar,” says Muninn, heading for the shelves. “I believe you have your own knife.”

I get up and let Johnny have the chair. He examines the Visible Man model while I get out the black blade.

“You probably want to cut the femoral artery up here near the thigh.”

He points to the Visible Man’s upper leg.

“If I remember right, there’s a lot of blood in there and the skin is easy to bite through, so it should be easy with a knife.”

“Thanks, Johnny. I appreciate this.”

“It’s okay. You’re fun.”

Muninn comes back with a smooth pearlescent black flask with a gold stopper.

“That looks like it’s worth more than the space program. Don’t you have a regular bottle?”

Muninn shakes his head.

“The boy is right. You’re a fun addition to our collapsing city. If it makes you feel better, consider the vessel a gift for poor sleeping Brigitte.”

I kneel down by Johnny’s leg and roll up his sweatpants. He’s still studying the model.

“You ready?”

“Sure.”

I lay the blade on his inner thigh and press. He doesn’t react. I press harder until I break the skin. Still nothing. His surface nerve endings probably died off a long time ago. I shove the blade in until it hits bone, then slice down his thigh until the skin falls open. He doesn’t flinch.

Johnny’s blood is dark and thick, like black maple syrup. It isn’t easy scooping it out, and getting it into the flask is just as hard. I have to sort of trowel it in. I don’t want to rip into Johnny’s leg too much. He still needs to be able to walk. It’s slow going.

“Don’t be shy,” he says. “I don’t know how much you’ll need, so take a lot.”

I scrape out his arteries and veins until the bottle is almost full. When I’m done I look at Muninn. I have no idea what to do with the dissected leg. Muninn hands me a roll of duct tape.

“Can you hold the skin closed for me?”

Johnny puts down the model and holds the two halves of his thigh together. I run tape around his leg from the crotch to just above his knee. When I’m done, he flexes and nods.

“Good as new.”

I stopper the bottle and press it down, making sure it’s tight.

“Mr. Muninn, I have a feeling that your handwriting is better than mine. Would you write down what Johnny said to do with the blood?”

“Certainly.”

He gets a quill pen, purple ink, and an old Fillmore West flyer and scribbles the formula on the back.

I can barely think. There’s something like relief rumbling in my gut, but I push it down. I can’t deal with it until I see what happens with Johnny’s magic juice. I didn’t see Alice in the Backbone and that’s both a disappointment and a relief. I don’t know what I would have done if she’d been there. I’m not a hundred percent sure I could have survived that. There must be a lot more of Stark left in here than the angel wants to admit, because the guilt and fear and anger and hopelessness are squirming around my skull, making the few seconds of relief I felt earlier easy to ignore. I have to keep it together and keep thinking. I want to kill my way out of all this confusion, but that won’t work this time. Going after Mason was simple. Chasing the Kissi was simple. I knew who they were and what they wanted. I’m lost at sea right now, but I have to see this through. Too many people I care about are locked in their apartments hoping they make it through the night. I don’t want to lose any more friends. The Kissi killed a waitress at Donut Universe last New Year’s to get my attention. I don’t want any more dead donut girls on my conscience.

“There you are,” says Muninn.

He takes the flask, holds the note against it, and wraps them together with silk ribbon.

He says, “Go and help your friend. And when you finally figure out what all this business is, your only debt will be to come back and tell me the whole story.”

“It’s a deal.”

Johnny puts the Visible Man down.

“Keep it,” says Muninn. “We can’t send you home empty-handed.”

“Thank you.”

“Come on, Johnny. I have to get this to Brigitte and take you home.”

“No thank you. I’d rather stay down here.”

“You sure?”

He puts his hands in his lap and looks down at the floor.

“Yes. I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but I think I’m tired of being alive. I’ll miss Tracy and Fiona and I’ll never get to finish the dictionary, but I like it down here. It’s quiet. I don’t think I want to answer anyone’s questions anymore. I want to smell the dirt and be in the dark for a while.”

“You’re welcome to stay here with me,” Muninn says “You’ll have access to all my toys and the Backbone is just a stroll away.”

Johnny looks around the piles of junk that seem to stretch forever in every direction.

“Do you want to ask me things?”

“I’ve been down here for a long time and will be here for quite a bit longer. Life and death don’t interest me terribly much.”

Johnny nods.

“Okay. I’ll stay.”

He turns to me.

“Will you tell Fiona and Tracy that I’m sorry and that I’ll miss them and to not worry about me?”

“Sure. Thanks again, Johnny. When I come back I’ll bring you some jelly beans.”

“That would be nice.”

“Thanks, Muninn. If you don’t hear from me in the next couple of days, look for me out in the Backbone.”

There’s a good shadow by the bottom of the stairs. I step through and leave behind the nicest dead guy I’ve ever known.