Killing Pretty

THE STORE IS empty of customers. It’s just Kasabian and Death in a cozy little homespun scene. Kasabian labeling discs. Death putting them in cases and shelving them, sometimes stopping to sniff them. They smile at me as I come in. Domestic bliss. There’s a movie playing on the big screen. An operating room lit up like something on the Discovery Channel, only there are a few too many neat stacks of wet, random organs and body parts laid out like a cannibal buffet to be TV-­friendly.

“David Cronenberg’s version of Frankenstein,” says Kasabian, catching me watching. “He tried to make it in the eighties, but couldn’t get the cash. Now we have it. Maria brought it by after you left.”

I nod, remembering what Maria said.

“That ought to bring in some cash.”

“Damn right. ­People will pay blood money for this one.”

I look at Death. He’s happy with his discs, but ignores the screen. Guess he’s seen plenty of stuff like this before. I scratch the palm of one hand with the top of the Gentleman Jack bottle.

“Cherish it. We might not be getting any more movies for a while.”

Kasabian looks stricken.

“What do you mean?”

“Dash, Maria’s movie hound, took a powder. She asked me to find him.”

“You’re going to do it, right? I mean, this is our livelihood.”

I hold up the bottle to point at Death.

“No. He’s my livelihood right now and he’s the job I’m working on. Dash will have to wait. We must have enough inventory to keep the yokels happy for a while.”

Kasabian thinks.

“Maria’s brought by a few things I haven’t put out yet. I’ve got the Buckaroo Banzai sequel and Pasolini’s Saint Paul movie. I guess I can hold them for a while and bring them out one at a time.”

“There you go. Keep the public hungry.”

“ ‘I’m waiting for my man. Twenty-­six dollars in my hand,’ ” says Death.

Kasabian and I both look at him.

“How do you know that song?” I ask him.

“It’s just something I’ve heard somewhere. It’s about hunger, isn’t it? About trying to buy drugs?”

“That’s right. The Velvet Underground’s first album. Nineteen sixty-­seven,” Kasabian says.

I go over to where Death is working. He stops when he sees me approach.

“You remember that, but you can’t remember how you got here.”

He nods.

“I like music,” he says. “Everyone thinks I like chess because of that movie.”

Kasabian turns down the sound on the big screen.

He says, “The Seventh Seal. Ingmar Bergman. Nineteen fifty-­seven.”

I shoot him a look . . .

“Thank you, Rain Man.”

. . . then turn to Death.

“You want to have a drink with me? Maybe it’ll shake something loose.”

“You really want to get him liquored up?” says Kasabian.

I shrug.

“I figure it’s that or electroshock. What do you say?”

I put down the bottle on the counter. Death looks it over, his forehead creased.

“I don’t know. But if you think it will help.”

“You liked beer the other day. Maybe you’re a whiskey man too. Let’s explore that possibility.”

“All right. When?”

“Give me an hour. I’ll let you sniff the cork and everything.”

Kasabian doesn’t look happy. I’m stealing his help. And keeping him from buttering up the Grim Reaper.

“I’m going to see Candy. When I come back down, we’ll start the party. You know any party songs?”

Death thinks for a moment, then sings, “ ‘Happy birthday to you . . .’ ”

I start upstairs.

“You two have fun. I’ll be back in a little while.”

CANDY IS ON the sofa. A laptop sits on the coffee table, photos scattered around it. I recognize some as the Three Stooges from the other night. Others are new. There’s one of a dour-­faced, doughy guy with dark, wavy hair and the White Light insignia on his crisp white shirt. I pick it up.

“Don’t lose that,” says Candy without looking up.

“Who is it?”

“Edison Elijah McCarthy.”

“Our favorite fascist.”

“That’s him at the height of the White Light Legion’s popularity, in the early fifties. Julie gave me this laptop to do some research for her.”

I sit down next to her on the sofa.

“What happened to kicking down doors with me?”

“I like that, but I like this too. It’s different. I’m learning a lot.”

“Promise you’ll come out and break things with me sometime. I don’t want to be jealous of a machine.”

“I promise,” she says.

I move more of the photos around and she gives my hand a smack.

“Don’t mess those up,” she says. “I need them. Julie has access to all kinds of crazy law enforcement intel.”

“What are you looking at now?”

“A few minutes ago I was in NamUs, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System. Now I’m in the NCIC. National Crime Information Center. It’s an FBI site, but Julie can get into crazy Golden Vigil sites too. Not just DNA and fingerprints, but auras, drone Lurker surveillance, Power Spot monitoring. Congregations of ghosts. There’s even a huge database called ‘Soul Viability.’ ”

“That one’s easy to figure out.”

“What do you think it is?”

“Some kind of computer program that runs odds on if you’re going to Heaven or Hell. Like guys at racetracks set the odds for horses.”

“Cool,” she says. “Who should we look for?”

“Am I in one of those databases?”

She laughs at the screen.

“Yeah. You could say that.”

“Meaning?”

“In Homeland Security’s Extranatural Cryptologic Register—­sort of their fanboy Pokémon card collection—­there’s two files with a million times more security than the others. Guess who.”

“Karl Marx and Patty Duke.”

“Lucifer and Sandman Slim.”

“Does mine have pictures? I need new head shots for my movie auditions.”

She shakes her head.

“No. But don’t you think it’s just a little cool?”

“I’m not sure if I’d say cool. More like you’ve confirmed all my worst fears.”

“Don’t worry. It says some nice things too. They know how you saved the world and things.”

“They just don’t know why and don’t trust me that I’m not doing it for some nefarious reasons all my own.”

“Yeah,” she says. “Something like that.”

Thank you, Marshal Wells.

“Do we have any food around here?”

“I got burritos on the way home. Yours is in the fridge.”

“You are a goddess.”

“I know.”

While the burrito heats up in the microwave, I get out my phone and call Vidocq.

“Bonjour, James. How are you today?”

“Up to my eyeballs in Nazis and burritos. I had a quick question for you.”

“And what is that?”

“Death is awake, walking around. Want to come over and meet him while he’s conscious?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

“Get over here ASAP.”

I sit down next to Candy again.

“What does Julie have you looking for?”

“Where the White Light Legion used to hang out, and places they might have used as a base of operations.”

“Sounds exciting.”

“Shut up and eat your burrito.”

“If you get bored, you want to do something for me?”

“What?”

“See what you can find on Tamerlan Radescu.”

“The Dead Head?”

“That’s the one.”

“What do you want to know?”

“I’m not sure. Just general background stuff for now. Who he hangs out with. Where he came from. Is he just a snappy dresser or is he into anything shady?”

“If I have time,” Candy says.

“Sure. I’m not bothering you, am I?”

“Of course not, dear. But why don’t you take your food into the bedroom and watch cartoons until your little friend comes over and you can go out and play?”

“This is a really good burrito.”

“Get out,” she says, so I do. Vidocq gets to the store a half hour after I finish eating.

DEATH, VIDOCQ, AND I go into the storage room. I bring three glasses.

It’s introductions all around, then it’s drinks all around. Vidocq and I down some of the Jack. Death sniffs his, sips, and makes a face.

“I don’t know if this body likes it.”

“You’re not supposed to like it. You’re just supposed to absorb it into your tissues.”

“I think you’re making fun of me.”

I shake my head.

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“What he means,” says Vidocq, “is that whiskey, like many of the more interesting things in this world, is an acquired taste.”

“Why acquire a taste for something you don’t like?”

I set the bottle down by my chair leg.

“Do you hate it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, there you go. You try it. Then try it again until you know. Sometimes you find the thing you didn’t like the first time becomes one of your favorite things.”

Death sips his whiskey again.

“I don’t think this is going to be a favorite thing.”

“That’s all right. It just means more for Vidocq and me.”

Death sets down his glass on a box that stands in for a bedside table.

“So here’s the thing: no one is coming for you,” I say. “There’s no cavalry. No golden chariot full of angels. Trust me. I checked.”

Death sighs, unconsciously rubs his chest and the scar over his missing heart.

“I’m not surprised. Someone would have come for me already if they could.”

“For now, you’re just one of us chickens.”

“That might be preferable to being a human.”

“I hear humans taste lousy deep-­fried.”

Vidocq clears his throat.

“What is the process of death like? From your perspective, as a being not subject to its laws.”

Death stares at him for a minute.

“That’s an interesting question. You’re not entirely subject to its laws yourself, are you?”

“That’s right. I’ve been, as far as I can tell, rendered immortal. It was an accident, a slip of the hand while performing an experiment in Paris in 1856.”

“Why is it that you want to know? You’ve had ample time to observe the process of death. You must have learned something.”

“Not enough,” Vidocq says. He finishes his drink. “I’ve only seen it from the outside. I want to know what it’s like. The transition from life to unlife. Is it something felt? Is it a journey or the blink of an eye?”

“You’re not asking for yourself, are you?”

Vidocq leans back against the storeroom wall.

“There was a woman I knew in Paris. Liliane. I loved her very much. I want to know what she experienced when she died and went from our world to yours.”

“Oh yes. I know who you’re talking about. She didn’t.”

“Die? Of course she did. I saw it with my own eyes.”

“I’m afraid your eyes were wrong.”

“Her heart stopped. Her breathing. How is this possible?”

“It’s not my place to say.”

“All right. I was wrong and she didn’t die then. When did she die?”

Death keeps his mouth shut.

Vidocq says, “Is she not dead?”

Death looks away.

“Can we talk about something else?”

Vidocq stares down at his hands. I pour him another drink and look at Death.

“I know your name. Your body’s name. It’s Eric Townsend. He was some kind of stockbroker. Does any of that sound familiar?”

“No.”

“He was part of a group called the White Light Legion. That’s what the tattoo on your arm is. Their sigil. I didn’t think about it until this morning, but I wonder if he could have been a necromancer in his spare time.”

“I wouldn’t know. Necromancy has never interested me. And most magicians involved in death magic want to speak to the souls of the departed, not me.”

“But some must have tried to contact you.”

“Of course.”

“What happened?”

“None was powerful enough to compel me and I didn’t have any interest in the weak ones. As you might have guessed, my job is a busy one.”

Vidocq says, “How is it you’re able to be all places at once and carry away a thousand souls all dying at the same time?”

Death drums his fingers on his knee.

“It’s my nature.”

“Who is more powerful, Death or God?”

“All gods die. I do too when each universe dies and I resurrect with the birth of each new universe. But there’s no guarantee it will happen. Who knows what the next universe will bring? Maybe there will be no death there. Can you imagine?”

I sit down on a box of old Mannix VHS tapes. How the hell do we still have these?

“You’ve seen other universes before this one?”

“Dozens. But this one is my favorite. I’ve touched parts of human lives—­each soul leaves a tiny echo of itself with me—­but I’ve never been flesh before. All these senses are interesting. Except for the pain.”

“That pretty much sums up what we like to call the human condition.”

“How do you live with it?”

I hold out the bottle.

“This helps.”

“I’m not sure I believe that.”

“Well, we like to think it does.”

“Wishful thinking is also part of the human condition,” Vidocq says.

I sip some Jack, say, “What’s the last thing you remember before you woke up here? When you were still yourself.”

“I was gathering souls to the Tenebrae.”

“See anyone unusual? Did anything funny happen?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“Nothing.”

“It just went blank?”

“Yes. It was like I was sucked out of myself. Like a seed from a husk.”

I feel the Colt against my back.

“You’re one unhelpful dead man.”

Death looks at Vidocq and then back to me.

“I’m sorry.”

I stare up at the ceiling, thinking.

“Maybe we’re looking at this thing all wrong, making it more complicated than it really is.”

“What do you mean?” says Vidocq.

“What I mean is, Death is stuck in a human body, right?”

“Right,” says Death.

I take out the pistol.

“What if we unstick him?”

Death’s eyes widen and his pupils turn into dinner plates. I wonder if Eric Townsend ever looked that freaked out, like maybe when the market tanked. I doubt it. I get the feeling that Death has found a whole new expression in an otherwise ordinary face.

“I don’t think I like your idea,” he says.

“I think that perhaps you’re getting frustrated and are looking for a quick answer,” says Vidocq.

He puts his hand on the barrel of the gun and points it at the floor.

“You don’t think it’s even worth considering? Maybe we can fix things right here and now.”

“Not all of life’s answers are in guns and na’ats. It just isn’t that simple,” Vidocq says. “Besides, we don’t know what might happen if we damage Death’s body too badly. He might be lost to us forever.”

“I can think of worse things than no death in the world.”

“To spend eternity in a coma like all those poor ­people?” says Vidocq. “That sounds like Hell to me.”

Very quietly, Death says, “Everyone hates me or is afraid of me or both. Angels, Hellions, humans, Gods. It gets lonely.”

“Then there’s no Mrs. Death, I take it?”

“That’s not funny,” he snaps, and for a second Death isn’t just a sad sack in dead skin. There’s a flash of cosmic fury in his eyes. A power that hasn’t been there before. Then it’s gone.

“Hey, I know what hated feels like, so we’re in the same club,” I say.

Death does a small nod, but I don’t think he’s convinced.

Vidocq finishes his drink and motions for the bottle. I give it to him.

He says, “Some texts claim that death is just a way station on a journey to somewhere else. That to die again in Heaven is a gateway to other planes. Is that true?”

“Ah, that. You ­people have a lot of ideas about what death is.”

“You ever hear the name Edison Elijah McCarthy?” I say.

“No.”

“What about Tamerlan Radescu?”

“It’s not familiar.”

“Give me your arm.”

He does it, but slowly, like he thinks I’m going to tear it off and use it for an ashtray.

“We know about the tattoo. I want to know what that brand is.”

Maybe to distract himself, Death turns to Vidocq.

“Why have you been looking for me for so long?”

“Becoming immortal was never my choice. Now I would like to be like other men.”

I look at him.

“You want to die? What about Allegra?”

“I didn’t say I wanted to die now. But I would like to know that it’s a possibility.”

“Of course it is,” says Death.

“How would I go about it?”

“You were changed with a potion. The right potion will return to a normal human life.”

“Potions. I’ve tried an endless parade of godforsaken potions.”

“Try more.”

Vidocq frowns and stares at the far wall. I guess that wasn’t the answer he was looking for. I let go of Death’s arm.

“Samael, an angel, says something is trying to take your place.”

Death nods.

“Of course. There must be a Death, therefore there will be one.”

“You don’t seem too concerned.”

“I’m very concerned, but what can I do in my current state?”

“I wonder what would happen if we got you two together.”

“I suspect one of us would destroy the other.”

“You think so?”

“I doubt the universe could survive or would permit more than one Death.”

“Too many yous does sound like a drag.”

Death twists his arm around, looking at the underside.

“I think I do remember something,” he says. “I’ve been thinking about the brand.”

“What about it?”

“I don’t know what it is. But I’m sure I’ve seen it on some souls. Ones that didn’t want to move on.”

“You mean ghosts.”

“Yes.”

“A branded soul?” says Vidocq.

Death nods.

“The mark was only on a few, but it was there.”

Vidocq and I look at each other, neither sure what to make of that information.

Death starts looking uncomfortable. I want a cigarette, but I have a drink instead.

“So, you know any funny jokes or stories?” I say. “Something you and the other angels giggle about around the watercooler.”

Death looks at the floor, then at me.

“Knock knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Doorbell repairman.”

Vidocq chuckles. I slap Death’s knee.

“Hey, that was funny. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“Now it’s your turn,” he says.

“No. I forgot my jokes during my vacation Downtown.”

“You’re always making jokes. You must remember one.”

“Yes,” say Vidocq. “You must remember one.”

I shoot him a quick “fuck you” with my eyes.

“Okay,” I say. “Here’s one. There’s this old preacher home in bed. He’s dying and doesn’t have much longer to go. So he sends a note to a banker and a lawyer that go to his church. They come over and sit in chairs he’s set out, one on each side of the bed. The only thing is, when they get there the preacher doesn’t say a word. He just lies there. Finally, the lawyer speaks up. ‘Excuse me, sir. We don’t seem to be talking about anything. Why did you ask us here?’ ‘Well,’ says the preacher, ‘Jesus died between two thieves and I figure if it was good enough for him, it’s good enough for me.’ ”

Death stares at me for a second like I was speaking Urdu. Then his face changes, relaxes, and he laughs.

Vidocq holds out his glass and clinks it against the bottle as I pick it up. What do you know? We had kind of a normal moment there. I look at Death smiling. Guess I’m glad I didn’t shoot him after all.

VIDOCQ LEAVES NOT long after that, still shaken by what Death said about Liliane. Figuring someone to be dead, then finding out they’re still alive and kicking, can be a shock. It happened to me with Mason. Before Christmas I thought I’d gotten rid of him so many times, but the fucker always scuttled out from under the floorboards like an armor-­plated cockroach.

Vidocq is luckier than me. At least his nondead pal is someone he liked. Didn’t he? Or did I read it all wrong? Was he upset because he didn’t know someone he loved was still around and lost to him, or did he melt down because he thought he was done with her, but now knows she might be waiting around the next corner? I’ll have to ask him, but not now. He needs to calm down and remember how to breathe. He was so pale when he left he looked like he’d been huffing paint thinner all afternoon.

I guess the movie is over. Kasabian has the news on the big screen, so Death and I go over and watch with him.

What do you know? The world is still a big ball of shimmering shit. But before the usual parade of misery detailing all the wars, famines, and atrocities ­people enjoy so much, we lead in with a long story about the nondead piling up all over the world. In the U.S., they say that civilian and military hospitals are full, so they’re setting up temporary wards in school gyms and empty stadiums. The dreaming dead lie motionless under sheets, like bugs in spider silk, between goalposts and filling the outfields of baseball diamonds. The news hack describing all this says the one bright spot is that suicides are down, since the poor saps know that killing themselves is a ticket to nowhere. I look over at Death. I can’t read his expression. He’s staring at the monitor, big-­eyed. He takes long, deep breaths.

I say, “I can’t keep calling you Death. It’s beginning to creep me out. You have any other names we could try?”

“Many,” says Death. “Thanatos. Azriel. Mrityu. Yan Luo. Malak al-­Maut—­”

I hold up a hand.

“Stop. Most of those are more depressing than Death. But I need something to call you when civilians are around. How about Vincent?”

“Why Vincent?”

“The Masque of the Red Death,” says Kasabian.

I nod.

“Vincent for Vincent Price. Death himself, as directed by Roger Corman.”

Vincent looks back at the news.

“I suppose it’s as good a name as any.”

Kasabian says, “It’s better than Sandman Slim.”

I look at him.

“Hush, Gort.”

Everyone quiets down as the news goes local. There was another massacre in Laurel Canyon. Five dead. All beaten to death. No one saw anything.

What the fuck is wrong with that place?

I should have seen it coming with the Three Stooges the other night. A massacre is nothing new out there. You could fertilize all the farms in the Central Valley with the bodies buried in Laurel Canyon.

In the sixties, when the young and the beautiful from music and movies ruled the roost, they dumped hapless shitheads who OD’d at parties there when it was too risky to call an ambulance. In earlier, classier days—­the twenties through the forties—­well-­connected stars could call a manager or agent who’d arrange a discreet disposal of human waste by studio security. Not that they’d necessarily need it. There was always been plenty of room to bury an unruly spouse with the help of a lover or two.

The Army Air Corps even built a base at the top of Wonderland Park Avenue in 1941. It was transformed from an air defense site into a military movie production house, but rumors still persist that they ran experiments on some of the hippie locals. Mostly MKUltra-­style acid tests. Dose enough innocents and you’re bound to end up with a few bodies, and who knows how to get rid of bodies better than the army?

Cops have always loved the canyon. In the old days, they’d drive mobsters high up into the hills and dump them into the ravines. Let the coyotes have them. A lot of gangland hits went down out there too. For a while it was Bugsy Siegel pulling the triggers, then, after a sniper splattered his brains all over his Beverly Hills mansion, it was Mickey Cohen’s turn. He was a professional boxer in his youth and knew how to use his hands. After him, Johnny Stompanato got to run a little mayhem through the Sunset and the canyon. Of course, no one could prove anything. There were accusations of murder, but nothing came of them. In the end, Siegel got shot for his Las Vegas sins. Johnny Stomp was knifed to death by Lana Turner’s daughter. And Cohen was put away for tax evasion.

Laurel Canyon hosted a thousand random deaths over the years. The still unidentified Jane Doe number 59 was found with 157 stab wounds. Aging star Ramón Novarro—­“Ravishing Ramón” in happier times—­was murdered by a ­couple of not very bright rent boys. In the late twenties, Samantha Bach, a rising MGM starlet, was wasted by her producer/lover Irvine Lansdale. The killing was a kind of proto–Black Dahlia affair. Like the B movie before the big feature. Bach was found propped up in bed, pale and lovely, not a drop of blood on her, but with her heart and eyes resting on a bedside table.

Laurel Canyon still beckons generation after generation to its promise of the good life, its movie-­star frisson, and faux-­rural splendor. Most of the current show-­business creeps and money-­shuffling assholes who roam its hills and trails smile down at the suckers below in Hollywood, never knowing or caring that they’re gazing out over one big graveyard.

And now some New Age Nazis were beating the shit out of the locals. Anywhere else I’d be surprised. But not there.

From outside the store comes a series of pops, like a string of firecrackers, only the sound is too low and flat. I shove Vincent and Kasabian to the floor and yell, “Candy, get down!” before taking a dive myself.

Bullets tear up Max Overdrive’s front wall. One shatters the edge of the big screen. Kasabian squeals “No!,” more afraid of losing his screening room than catching a slug in the face. Vincent is flat on the floor spread eagle, like a pinned butterfly. Not too dignified, but he’s new at the duck and cover game and doesn’t grasp the necessity of keeping some shred of dignity while hunkered down, scared shitless. For example: you don’t want to be found dead, say, head down and ass in the air, ostrich-­style. That’s guaranteed to give the crime-­scene squad the giggles as they zip you into a body bag, and who wants to leave the world a funny corpse?

Finally, the shooting stops, but not before the last bullet blows apart the Gentleman Jack, an innocent bystander.

When the room goes quiet, I jump up and head to the door. A blue Honda Civic is idling at the curb. I head outside. Reaching behind my back for the Colt, I realize it fell out of my waistband when I hit the floor. Still, I’m mad enough that when the Honda pulls away, I run after it, hoping to catch it before it reaches the corner. I can’t recommend this method of chasing down bad guys. It’s not subtle or a good use of your adrenaline.

Plus, when the banditos decide to back up and run you over—­like they seem to be doing right now—­you’re standing in the street like a side of beef with a glow-­in-­the-­dark target painted on your brisket. I take a few steps back toward the store, but the car keeps gaining speed.

Gunfire pops over my shoulder and the Honda’s back window explodes. Candy runs up with her 9mm blazing. The Honda squeals to a stop, then takes off in the opposite direction. I grab Candy and pull her into the shadows at the side of the store, hoping the neighbors haven’t moved back to town so they can call the cops on our little O.K. Corral.

I hold Candy in the dark for a ­couple of minutes. She’s vibrating with animal rage, her body in the transition state between regular Candy and her Jade form. I’ve never seen a full-­on Jade with a gun, and I’m not sure I want to. Soon she calms down and folds up the pistol. I let go of her and we walk around to the front of the store. There are more than a dozen bullet holes in the walls, but not a single shot through the glass.

“Here’s why,” Candy says.

Some clever boots has painted ED on the window, so the angel’s tag now reads KILLED. Next to that is a squiggle that looks like a left-­handed monkey painted it with his right hand. But if I squint at it hard enough, I can make out the emblem of the White Light Legion. Turns out these guys might be murderous Nazi shitheads, but they’ll need some community-­college art classes before they take over the world.

The paint is still wet, so Candy leans on my arm and smears out the letters and emblem with the sole of her boot.

When we get inside, Vincent, always the good guest, is soaking up the spilled whiskey with paper towels. The Colt is lying by the edge of the counter. I pick it up and put it back in my waistband.

Vincent stops wiping the floor and looks up.

“Was all that because of me?”

I look at him on the floor on his hands and knees, wet towels in one hand and a confused look on his face. I’ve never seen an angel so out of his element.

“I don’t know. We ran into them the other night. It could be you, or it could be on us.”

“How did they find you?” says Kasabian. “I mean, am I going to have to crawl around the store like a goddamn schnauzer waiting for round two?”

“That’s a good question,” says Candy. “How did they find us?”

“I turned on the car lights the other night. Maybe one of them saw the license plate.”

“That would lead them to Julie, not us.”

“Yeah, but they wouldn’t be looking for her. They’d stake out her place and look for the two idiots that went after them.”

“Still, if they know where to find Julie, that’s bad.”

“Call her,” I say. “And tell her to get out of there.”

“What are you going to be doing?”

“Nothing. I just want you to call. She’ll be nicer to you when you tell her about her maybe getting shot.”

“She knows you attract trouble.”

“We do, sweetheart. We. It was a doubles act the other night, so you get to give her the good news.”

“Lucky me.”

Vincent pops a ­couple of his pain pills and dry-­swallows them. I can’t say I blame him.

CANDY IS STILL doing more computer research in the morning, so I go over to the office alone. Julie is pouring coffee when I get upstairs. She brings both mugs over to her desk. I sit down across from her and take the cup she pushes my way.

“Thanks.”

“Of course,” she says. “I thanked Chihiro for the call about the shooters. I slept with my Glock under my pillow last night.”

“You might make a habit of it for a while.”

“Trust me, I will.”

She takes a ­couple of sugar packets out of a desk drawer, shakes them, and dumps the contents into the mug.

“You sticking to coffee during working hours?” she says.

“Pretty much. The Augur offered me a drink on his boat. It seemed unwise to turn him down.”

She nods. Sips. Sets down the cup.

“That makes sense. This morning, Chihiro told me more about what happened last night.”

I pick up a paper clip from her desk. It’s an odd shape. Round, the metal spiraling down to a point. I start unwinding it.

“I wish I could have gotten my hands on those White Light pricks.”

Julie says, “Has anyone ever talked to you about PTSD?”

“No. What’s that?”

“Don’t play coy. You know exactly what it is. In this case, it’s you running after a carful of ­people with guns.”

I stop fiddling with the clip.

“At the time, I didn’t know I was unarmed.”

“The point still stands. Your reactions aren’t always those of a normal person.”

What the hell did Candy tell her? I go back to tormenting the paper clip.

“Exactly which normal part of my life are you talking about? The normal part where I spent eleven years in Hell? Or the normal part where my father told me I wasn’t even a human being, right before he was murdered by an angel. Maybe it’s the part where I live with a dead man’s head and I have to beg for my cigarettes from the Devil. Or maybe it’s how I can’t even look at my girlfriend without seeing a stranger’s face. Which of these normal things in my life are you referring to?”

Julie takes her coffee cup in her hands and leans on the desk.

“All I’m saying is that your fight-­or-­flight response is dialed up a little high and it’s something you might want to look into.”

“You mean I need a shrink. No thanks.”

She takes a sip of her coffee.

“Aren’t you going to drink yours? It’ll get cold.”

I set down the paper clip and pick up the mug, but I don’t drink.

“Consider this,” Julie says. “If you’d finished your psych evaluation forms when you worked for the Golden Vigil, they would have paid you what they owed and you’d be a wealthy man right now. But you didn’t do it. I wonder why?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I was busy saving the fucking world.”

“You’re always saving something or killing something or chasing cars. You scare ­people, Stark. You scare your friends. You scare me sometimes. You scare Chihiro.”

I thought the two of them were talking about the case this morning. Is this what’s going on behind my back?

I set down the mug.

“Thanks for your concern, and don’t take this the wrong way, but there are two things in this world I don’t respond well to: threats and interventions.”

“This is a conversation over coffee, not an intervention. And don’t go looking for threats where there aren’t any. That’s exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about.”

The only thing worse than being threatened is being told you’re not being threatened. No way I’m drinking my coffee. There could be Prozac in there or an evil Vigil feel-­good powder. I don’t want some psych poison telling me how to think.

When I stay quiet, Julie says, “You’re going to burn out and you won’t be good for anyone, including yourself.”

“I handled the arena. I can handle this.”

“What about Chihiro? Do you think she’s all right with you just handling things?”

“Did she say something to you or is this just coming out of your own skull?”

“Human beings are capable of doing more than just existing. They can be happy.”

I pick up the mangled paper clip from her desk and toss it in the trash can.

“But I’m not human, am I? I’m not a Hellion or an angel or a person. I’m not anything except maybe, as angels like to remind me, an Abomination. Try explaining that to a shrink.”

Julie picks up her mug, starts to take a sip, but sets it aside.

“All right. Let’s forget this for now. I didn’t mean to upset you. But you need to know that there are ­people worried about you and that they have your best interests at heart.”

“Noted. Now can we get back to work?”

“Of course.”

“You know all about these White Light clowns. Where are they and how are we going after them?”

Julie shakes her head.

“We’re not going to, and when we do, I’ll be the one doing the legwork. I don’t want you running in cutting off any heads.”

“It gets ­people’s attention.”

“Chihiro is doing some background work on the Legion for me. Right now that’s more important than you skulking around, looking for revenge.”

“Just to be clear, as my boss, you’re officially telling me not to go after them.”

“Yes.”

“Then what exactly am I supposed to do?”

Julie picks up a pen from a pad sitting next to her laptop. She taps it on the paper.

“I agree with you about looking into Tamerlan Radescu, but we have a problem. You’re too well known to do it discreetly.”

“I’d say let Candy—­Chihiro—­do it, but ­people will have seen us together. If they know me, they’ll know her.”

Julie looks away, thinking.

“I suppose I could call some old colleagues from the Vigil and see if they want any after-­hours work.”

“I have a better idea. Brigitte Bardo can do it. She’s an actress, so she can look and sound like anything you want. Plus, she’s a trained zombie hunter, so she can handle herself if there’s any problems.”

Julie sits back in her chair.

“I don’t know her that well. I’d have to interview her before I can agree to anything.”

“I’ll call and get her over here today.”

“All right. Do that.”

“You know, one thing I could do is talk to some Cold Cases. They keep tabs on the dying and the recent dead. Maybe one of them has heard about some necromancer badassery.”

“That could be a good idea, but don’t you have a history with the Cold Cases. Didn’t one try to have you killed?”

I wave it off.

“Who hasn’t tried to have me killed? We’ll have a chat over tea and cakes. It will be fine.”

“Keep it civil. No fighting. No guns. At the first sign of trouble, you excuse yourself and report back to me.”

“Got it. I wonder if I should talk to some ghosts.”

Julie frowns.

“You can do that?”

“I don’t see why not. I saw a witch do it at Max Overdrive. It didn’t look all that hard.”

“Once again, I don’t know if you’re joking. But if that’s something you can do, hearing from the dead might be helpful.”

“I know a ­couple that will probably talk to me. All it’ll cost is some coffee and donuts. Maybe a sandwich.”

“Don’t forget to get receipts.”

“Right. Receipts. Sure.”

“I’m serious—­if you want to get paid back I need paperwork.”

“No problem. I’m on it.”

Julie picks up her mug and takes a swig of coffee.

“Are we going to be all right working together?” she says. “You were pretty upset earlier and I need to know that it’s not going to affect things.”

I touch the cigarettes in my pocket, wanting to get outside and have a smoke.

“We’re fine. I’m sorry I flew off the handle. I know you were trying to help, and I’ll take what you said under advisement.”

“Good.”

“I can head over to Bamboo House later and see if there are any Cold Cases around. And I’ll call Brigitte.”

“Good. Chihiro and I have a meeting later. She’s doing a great job.”

“She’s a smart girl. Smarter than me.”

“I’ll have to tell her you said so.”

“She already knows.”

I take off, stopping in the stairwell to light a Malediction.

Outside, I draw the smoke in and let it out slowly, pacing up and down the block, checking the parked cars. I don’t see any Honda Civics, blue or otherwise. Anyway, most of the what’s happening is on the sidewalk or in the street. Not many ­people hanging out in parked cars or loitering on the block. No one obviously casing Julie’s office. I check the door to her building, making sure it locked behind me.

I think about Candy, but I call Brigitte and tell her to make time between auditions to come by the office. She sounds happy. I think I made her day.

At least someone in L.A. is happy.

“A LITTLE BIRD told me you’ve been talking to Julie about me.”

Candy glances up, then back to the laptop. She reaches out and half closes it.

“Just about the other night.”

I dumped the Crown Vic a few blocks away on Hollywood Boulevard so I could walk off some anger.

“But you did it in secret. I thought we weren’t supposed to have secrets.”

She shifts around on the sofa.

“Everyone has secrets.”

“You think there’s something you can’t tell me? You think I’m that shockable?”

She looks up at me, two sets of eyes—­Candy’s and Chihiro’s—­nervous and wounded.

“Don’t make this into a bigger thing than it is. I only talked to her because she can say things to you I can’t.”

“Like PTSD. Because you probably have it too after Doc Kinski and all the shit that went down at Christmas. Are there other things you haven’t told me about?” I don’t want to sound angry, but I am even if I’m not sure it’s fair.

She shakes her head, the expression on her face changing.

“Nothing I want to talk about now.”

“But sometime.”

She puts her hands together and nods.

“Probably sometime.”

“I guess that’s the best we can hope for in this life.”

“Don’t be mad.”

“I’m not. Just defensively curious.”

“You still trust me?”

“Who else am I going to trust? Kasabian? He’d sell me for a dozen glazed if he thought he’d get his body back.”

“No, he wouldn’t.”

“You don’t know him like I do.”

“And you don’t know him like I do.”

Downstairs, Kasabian and Vincent are watching A Hard Day’s Night. Vincent was singing along when I came in through the store. The sound comes up through the floor. I want to choke him.

“This stuff you can’t tell me . . . is it Jade stuff?”

“Some is. Some isn’t.”

“So there’s that much. Does this have anything to do with Rinko? She came by the other day, didn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“Are you still in love with her?”

Candy leans back on the couch, crosses her arms.

“I was never in love with her. But if you’re asking me the bigger question, yes, sometimes I miss dating women.”

“That’s not something you have to hide from me.”

“There’s just been so much craziness and now I’m not even me anymore. I don’t know what I want.”

“I’m not about to stop you if you want to be with Rinko or anybody else. Just be honest with me.”

She frowns.

“Hey, why is this only about me? This was about you trying to get shot the other night.”

“I’ve been shot plenty of times. I’m not that afraid of it. Not when it’s important.”

“What about me? I’m afraid. Do I get a say in you putting yourself out as a target all the time?”

The back of my neck itches. Can’t tell if it’s real or just nerves. I rub it with the palm of my hand, thinking.

“Okay. Point taken. I was just mad then.”

“You’re always mad and then you can’t think. That’s what I mean. Maybe you should talk to Allegra about it.”

“Not now. Not when I’m being pushed. I won’t push you about your secrets and you won’t push me on this. All right?”

“Yeah. Okay,” she says quietly. “You are mad at me.”

“A little. Don’t talk about me behind my back anymore, even if it’s for my own good.”

“I can do that.”

Candy opens the laptop again and bookmarks the page on the screen, keeping her eyes down.

“Are you going to go out now?” she says.

“Why would I do that?”

“I don’t know. This just seems like when you’d leave and go to Bamboo House for a drink.”

“We have booze here. I can drink fine at home.”

“You want to have a drink with me?” she says.

“Sure. I’ll have a drink with you. But make it coffee. I’m on duty.”

She gets up and goes to the sink, takes a ­couple of cups from the drainer, and turns on the coffeemaker. She talks without turning around.

“You’re always so ready to run away. It’s like you still have one foot in Hell and you’re ready to go back there forever. Just don’t ditch me, okay?”

I walk up close behind her.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

She leans back against me as the coffeemaker gurgles, the noise mixing with the music coming from below. I put my arms around her. We stay that way for a few minutes, no one talking, just letting the sound hang around us in the air.

WHEN I GET to Bamboo House of Dolls, there isn’t a single Cold Case inside, which is lousy. I was hoping to see them on my turf. Now I have to go to theirs.

When the young ones aren’t slumming it at Bamboo House, there’s only one Cold Case hangout in L.A. It’s a West Hollywood club called simply Ibis . . . but not the word. On the front of the place is a skinny, stylized long-­legged bird in an Egyptian cartouche. You either recognize it or fuck you. It’s funny. With their sharkskin-­suit aesthetics, I never thought about the Cold Cases as giving much of a damn about ancient mythology. Maybe they don’t. The ibis and other glyphs on the façade are always a hot sell to spiritual tourists. Egyptians believed in five parts of the soul. I wonder how many Cold Case drinking games have been invented around that?

There’s a line outside Ibis, even in the crushing afternoon heat. But it isn’t like most L.A. club crowds. It’s quiet and orderly. No pushing or shoving. No one harassing the doorman. Everyone is on their best Miss Manners behavior because no one wants to get bounced. These sorry suckers are all looking to buy a clean soul or to sell theirs, hoping it’s untainted enough to be worth some filthy lucre. Most of the sellers will be turned away. The buyers, on the other hand, are always welcome. Metaphysical capitalism at its finest.

I park the car on La Cienega, facing south. In case things go sideways, I can jump in and hit the freeway. If there’s a problem getting on, I can always keep heading down toward to LAX, all the way to the La Cienega oil fields. Maybe lure whoever is following me out among the derricks. Sure, there’s a lot of traffic nearby, but no one ever goes into the fields themselves. It wouldn’t be hard to hide a body behind the big pumps sucking dirty crude from the ground. But we’re far from that right now, and anyway, I’m trying to play nice with others now that I’m a working stiff.

I walk back along Sunset and turn up a side street that lets me circle around behind the club.

From the back, the Ibis looks like any other drink factory. A blank back wall. Locked delivery door. A line of Dumpsters. Floodlights, turned off during the day. A fire escape leading to the second floor. The whole back area is covered by a ­couple of security cameras. The good news for me is that I only have to take out one.

I run down the alley next to the club. I’m fast when I have to be. Fast enough, I hope, to be not much more than a blur on the club’s low-­res cameras. When I’m under the fire escape, I get out the black blade and throw it, aiming high up on the wall. I wait around the side of the building for a minute to see what happens.

When nothing does, I go back around the club and push a Dumpster under the fire escape. It’s just tall enough that I can jump, grab the bottom of the ladder, and pull it down, all the while hoping that my aim was good and the knife sliced through the cable of the nearest security cam. No one tries to stop me as I climb, so I guess I got it. On my way up, I grab the knife out of the wall and climb onto the roof.

There’s not much up here. Vents for the air-­conditioning. Some abandoned furniture and fixtures baking in the sun. A small satellite-­TV dish held in place with a ­couple of cinder blocks. On the side of the roof is a closet-­size structure with a metal door. My way inside.

None of this Man from U.N.C.L.E. cat-­burglar bullshit would be necessary if the Cold Cases didn’t hate me quite so much. It almost makes me want to be nicer to them in the future. Almost, but not enough.

I try the knob on the door. It rattles in its collar but the damned thing is locked. It’s not much of a lock, though. Who’s stupid enough to climb up here when all the action is downstairs? I slide the black blade between the door and the frame and cut straight through the latch. Abracadabra, it opens, nice and quiet.

I walk carefully down a steep wooden staircase, trying not to make noise. I’m doing a pretty good job of it too, until some asshole comes around the corner carrying a case of champagne.

He’s your typical pro bouncer/bodyguard type. A mountain of meat and muscle. The idea of a guy like this isn’t to protect you or your property. It’s to scare ­people stupid so they don’t even think about getting out of line in the first place.

The beefsteak is wearing a parka, which seems a little odd until a breeze hits me coming up from the club below. Guess that means the stories are true. If I’m going to find out for sure, I’ll have to get past Gorilla Monsoon here.

I reach for my na’at. He drops the champagne and pulls a goddamn machete out from under his parka. This fucker thinks I’m a baby seal. He smiles at me, but I can tell there’s something wrong with him. It’s all on his face. The guy acts normal enough, but his eyes are dead and glassy. He reminds me of some of the more pathetic souls I met Downtown. As he raises the machete I know that’s kind of what he is.

This double meat patty is one of the truly desperate or epically stupid who’ve sold off their souls to the Cold Cases. I’d bet you a dollar he’s working here cheap to get in good with the bosses, hoping they’ll cut him a deal on a new soul. Not quite a person, not a zombie—­or a ghost or anything else you’ll ever see on a normal day—­he’s almost a living jabber. A sad husk clinging to a body because he has nowhere else to go. I’d feel sorry for him, except he’s waving a machete for his masters down below, bastards every one of them, living off ­people’s desperation and misery worse than any smack dealer or pimp in town. I’d like to cut this fucker down just on general principles, but a fight would be noisy and draw more chuck steaks up here.

He swings the machete hard at my head. I step back and bark some Hellion hoodoo. It freezes him in place, the empty-­headed creep. I take him by the arms and lower him to the floor, pull his parka off, and drag him and his blade behind the stairs. Stack a ­couple of boxes in front of him and leave him there to sleep off the hex. The parka fits fine over my coat. I shove the crate of champagne against a wall and head downstairs.

THERE ARE DARK clubs and there are dark clubs, but this one is goddamn dark. I stand in the back of the place for a minute, letting my eyes adjust to the nonlight.

There’s a good reason the Ibis is so cold and dim. Ever hear about those ice hotels in the winter in Sweden? This is an ice club. The bar, the chairs, the tables, the glasses, the low walls around the VIP booths—­all glass-­clear ice. And the only light in the place comes from glowing test tubes suspended in the frozen blocks.

Each of those shimmering tubes contains a piece of a person.

What I mean is, they’re using human souls to light their love shack. I didn’t think I could hate these assholes more, but they just hit a level of disgust a notch below where I’d consider locking all the doors and setting the Ibis on fire. But this isn’t the time or place for a lecture on Buddha-­like compassion for all living things, and I’m not the person to give it. My meditation mantra for the next few minutes is “Ask some questions. Get some answers. And get out before I’m surrounded by a mountain of ground chuck and have to fight my way out.”

I zip up the parka and walk around, looking for any familiar faces. Of course, the only ones I spot are the Rat Pack that used to go slumming at Bamboo House. “Used to” because we had a disagreement and I sent them home from the club naked and broke. I also used a little hoodoo to make one of them think I was pulling his skin off. Like Candy said, sometimes I get mad and don’t think. Anyway, the kid got a little bit of revenge. Turns out, he was the nephew of Nasrudin Hodja, grand CEO of all the Cold Cases on the planet. That’s why I ended up with a hit out on me. Saragossa Blackburn calmed Hodja down, but I never formally made up with the nephew. I suppose now’s as good a time as any.

I head over to their table near, but not in, one of the roped-­off VIP areas. I don’t want to surprise the nephew and make him bolt. I get into his line of sight so he sees me coming. He starts to get up and his friends look around. I talk fast.

“Relax, boys. I’m not here looking for trouble. I just want to talk. I might even be able to do you a favor.”

“We don’t want any favors from you,” says the nephew.

“Sure you do. You can’t be moving many souls these days, not with ­people refusing to die. Inventory must be stacking up. I’m trying to change that. Come on, admit it. You love dead ­people. That’s all I’m looking to do. Help ­people die again.”

“What do you think we have to do with that?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m here. Mind if I join you?”

I don’t wait for anyone to answer. I pull up an ice chair and sit down. Even through the parka my ass starts freezing.

“So,” I say. “What have you heard? What do you know? Any ideas who’s fucking with the dead? You have to have some theories.”

The nephew pours himself a glass of champagne I’ve never heard of. I’m guessing that puts it out of my price range.

He says, “Isn’t it obvious? It’s an attack on us. On our business. Hell, our whole way of life.”

“You think tens of thousands of ­people aren’t dying just to spite you?”

“Think about it. When ­people aren’t afraid of dying, they don’t need new souls. Meanwhile, idiots come to us wanting to sell, but what are we going to do with the merchandise? We have souls going bad on the shelves.”

“Souls have an expiration date?”

“Everything has an expiration date.”

“What happens to a soul when it gets moldy?”

“I couldn’t care less. All I know is it costs us money.”

“You think that’s what this is all about? Money?”

“What else?”

“Revenge, maybe,” says one of the nephew’s idiot friends. He’s a creepy kid with a million-­dollar pompadour and a little John Waters pencil-­thin mustache. What works on an eccentric movie director just makes the kid look like an Arkansas pedophile.

I say, “What kind of revenge?,” reach across the table, and take the kid’s champagne.

“What I mean is you. Some of us thought you were using your angel bullshit to get back at us for . . . you know.”

“Trying to shoot me and almost killing a friend of mine?”

“Yeah.”

The champagne is good, but, oops, what a clod I am. I splash some on the table and set the glass on top of it.

“Don’t be stupid. If I was looking for revenge, I wouldn’t involve thousands of innocent morons. Plus, I’d have cut all your throats by now.”

“Don’t threaten us,” says the nephew. “My uncle would still like your balls on his wall.”

“Let him know that I’d be happy to come by and tea-­bag any furniture he wants, but that’s a little off topic. Let’s all concentrate on the real question. What’s going on and who’s doing it?”

The nephew opens and closes his fingers around the champagne glass.

“I don’t believe you. You come in here claiming to want to fix things. So know what? Fuck you. The only one who’s offered any real help is Tamerlan Radescu.”

“Radescu’s been around? What did he want?”

“Like I said. To help.”

“The bastard,” mutters the pompadour.

“Shut up,” says the nephew.

“Why’s he a bastard?” I say.

No one says anything.

“Boys, I have nowhere to be, so if you want to get rid of me, tell me something.”

“What Eddie means is Tamerlan drives a hard bargain,” the nephew says. “He wants a piece of our business.”

“A big piece,” says the pompadour.

The nephew throws the last of his champagne at the kid.

“Don’t go telling this fucker our business.”

“Let me get this straight. Tamerlan Radescu told you he knows what’s going on and can maybe make ­people start dying again?”

The pompadour uses a thumbnail to scrape at a flaw in the ice on the edge of the table. The nephew shakes his head back and forth like he can’t believe this is his life. I can see that he’s had about enough. Scared or not, he’s close to making a scene to get security over here.

“One last question. Did Tamerlan say anything about the Angel of Death?”

The nephew says, “He said the last thing he wants is what’s going on. Both of our businesses rely on complete death. These loafers in comas are hitting business hard.”

The nephew’s eyes go hard. Time to stop pressing my luck. I get up. The pompadour reaches to retrieve his glass, but it’s frozen solid to the table where I spilled the champagne.

“Thanks, boys. Come around the Bamboo House sometime. I’ll buy you all milk shakes.”

“Don’t think just ’cause we talked to you we believe you, Stark,” says the nephew. “We know you’re part of this, and when we get proof, my uncle is going to the Augur and he’ll put a hit out on you himself.”

Out of the corner of my eye I see a woman sit up straight, like she’s startled. I turn and find Tykho, head of L.A.’s more powerful vampire gang, having drinks with a cluster of business creeps in one of the VIP areas. She smiles and nods when she sees me. She’s the only one in the club not wearing a parka. Being a shroud eater has its advantages.

I turn back to the boys.

“You don’t know where I could get some brass knuckles, do you?”

“Get out,” says the nephew.

I head for the front door, tossing the parka and ten dollars to a coat-­check girl on the way out.

“Thanks for the loan,” I say.

She looks at me funny, but doesn’t say anything. Just pockets the money. Smart kid. One day she’ll be a millionaire.

When I get back to the car I almost call Julie, then think twice about it on the off chance she asks me how I got into the club. Instead, I’ll write down the meeting when I get home. I figure I can remember the important parts because they were so few and far between. From what the nephew and the pompadour said, it sounds like Tamerlan might be flat-­out blackmailing the Cold Cases. I wonder who else he’s muscling? And how did he get a line on Death? What’s changed that he has that kind of power? I can’t wait to hear what Brigitte comes up with.

I START THE Crown Vic and head south on the 101. Get off in Little Tokyo, pick up a few things from a bakery, then swing the car west to Beverly Hills. I leave it in a lot on Wilshire and head up Rodeo Drive on foot.

I hate this place. You can’t get a cup of coffee unless it has a backstory and a pedigree so the café can charge you as much for the cup as a normal human pays for dinner. Women drive by in cute little sports cars with more power under the hood than a Saturn V, but the speedometer will never top twenty because then they might not be seen and admired. Men window-­shop in silk jackets made by indentured servants in countries they’ve never heard of while their sons all imagine they’re Tupac because they bought their thousand-­dollar designer jeans a ­couple of sizes too big.

Up near Santa Monica Boulevard is my destination: the Lollipop Dolls boutique. The Dolls are a strange kind of girl gang, a coven of middle-­aged women who’ve used their hoodoo to remake themselves into prepubescent anime girls. When they’re together, they look like someone left the Sailor Moon cloning machine on all night. They used to be run by Cherry Moon. She was in my old magic circle and was one of the ­people I came back from Hell to kill, but someone got to her first. Cherry was neurotic before she died, and being a ghost hasn’t improved that.

The Lollipop Dolls store is every bit as pricy as the nearby Prada and Gucci shops. They just cater to a different clientele—­ones who can afford couture gothic Lolita tutus that costs as much as a blimp, or a custom hand-­stitched Hello Kitty wearing a real diamond collar. And that stuff isn’t even in the case with the really expensive merch, the one where everything looks vaguely blue because it’s behind bulletproof glass.

I only spot two Lollipops when I go in the store, Kitty Chan and Noriko. Neither one of them looks older than sixteen. How did they even get a business license for this place?

Kitty sees me first. Stops by a display of plastic Godzillas taller than me and probably with better manners.

She calls to Noriko.

“Look what just crawled in.”

Noriko rolls her eyes extravagantly and goes behind the counter, making a big show of stacking bags and arranging pens, taking great pains to ignore me.

Kitty says, “What do you want, Stark? You’re on the wrong end of town. There aren’t any Kmarts out here.”

“Nice to see you too, Kitty. The plastic surgery turned out nice. I can hardly see the crow’s-­feet from over here.”

Noriko slams the drawer of the cash register shut.

“I’m only asking one more time, then I’m calling the cops and telling them a vagrant came in and exposed himself to us poor working girls. What do you want?”

“I’m here to talk to Cherry.”

“What makes you think Cherry wants to talk to you?” says Noriko.

I look over at her.

“She’s a big girl. Why don’t we let her decide for herself?”

“I’m pretty sure she’s busy,” says Kitty.

“And I’m pretty sure if she knew I came all this way and put up with you two, she’d at least want to tell me to go away herself.”

Kitty walks to Noriko. They whisper back and forth for a minute, glancing at me every now and then.

“Okay,” says Kitty. “She’s in the back. The room behind the office.”

“Thanks.”

I start back when Noriko yells, “Hey!”

I stop by a pile of stuffed unicorns that are really plush cell phones. She points to a credit-­card slide.

“This is a place of business, you know. Gas, grass, or ass. Nobody rides for free. Buy something or get out.”

I look around, grab a Hello Kitty hand mirror from a pile in the kids’ department and head for the back of the store.

“You going to pay for that, sport?” says Kitty.

“I’ll pay on the way out if Cherry talks to me.”

In the back is a pretty ordinary-­looking business office. There are a few too many polka dots and a peppermint-­striped desk, but the place looks functional. I go through a door in the back.

I don’t know what the hell this new room is for. Actually, I have a pretty good idea, which means I don’t want to sit on anything or touch the bedspread.

The place is decked out like a girl’s bedroom decorated by a cartoon princess. Pinks and lace everywhere. White furniture and a makeup table. Big posters of Idoru bands on the walls. Anime-­character pillows stacked on a frilly canopied bed. The big Ultraman video monitor on the wall has octopus hentai playing on a loop.

Cherry Moon’s dream home.

The last time I saw Cherry was in the Tenebrae. Now that I can’t go there and I can’t depend on her coming to me, I’ll have to try Maria’s trick. I set the Hello Kitty mirror on the makeup table and whisper some off-­the-­cuff ghost-­conjuring hoodoo. I’ve always been good at improvising spells, but this one might be a bust. Nothing appears in the mirror. I open the bag I picked up from the bakery and lay out some mochi and a bun filled with sweet red bean paste. A few seconds later, Cherry’s face drifts into focus in the mirror. She looks over the edge and crinkles her nose.

“Why did you bring that garbage?” she says.

“They’re Japanese desserts. I thought you’d be clicking your ruby slippers and wishing you were home when you saw them.”

She shakes her head.

“I hate that stuff. If you want to talk to me in the future, bring ice cream or pie.”

“Cherry, right?”

“Who’s my smart boy?”

Cherry hasn’t changed. She looks around twelve, but she’s really in her midthirties. She wears a schoolgirl uniform and pigtails. Seeing her face in the mirror reminds me of Maria’s lost ghost, Dash. Some ghosts don’t like the limelight and some can’t get enough. Cherry, for instance. I glance at the TV when something makes a weird squishing sound, wish I hadn’t, and look back at the mirror. Cherry is gone.

Over to my right someone says, “Where did you learn the mirror trick?”

I turn.

“A witch named Maria. When did you learn to manifest yourself?”

She tosses her head, making her pigtails bounce.

“Like it? I thought if I was going to be a real ghost, I might as well be able to haunt the store properly.” Cherry nods at the mirror. “If your friend has to use that trick, she must know some shy spooks.”

“The one I’ve met seems a bit reserved.”

“Well, I’m not, so put that silly thing away.”

I set the mirror on the table and put the pastries back in the bag. When I start to drop it in the trash, Cherry says, “Leave it for the girls. Kitty has a gentleman caller who’ll grunt like a pig and eat it off her ass. It’s hysterical. You should stick around.”

I tap my wrist.

“I’m a working man these days. I have a schedule and a boss and everything, but thanks.”

Cherry presses her fingertips to her chest in mock horror.

“How the mighty have fallen.”

“We can both probably say that.”

“Touché. Now, why are you here, Jimmy?”

“Now that no one is dying anymore, I’m trying to find out what’s going on with ­people who are already dead. Has anything changed for you? Is there anything new in the Tenebrae?”

“New? Nothing. Oh, unless you mean the humongous black twister that’s blowing all over the desert on the outskirts of town. Aside from that, it’s a mellow scene. How are you doing?”

“Swell as always. What does the twister look like?”

“Like something out of the Bible. Wrathful God stuff, you know? It’s a tower of swirling black as far up as you can see, and every now and then there’s sort of a guy’s face.”

“Can you tell me what he looks like?”

“He doesn’t stick around long. I guess he’s a WASPy-­looking white guy. Sometimes he talks. Sometimes he screams. Maybe being a big tower of farts and lightning isn’t as much fun as it looks. What do I know?”

“He talks? What does he say?”

“That he’s Death. The true Death comes to us at last. Hallelujah.”

I pick up a tube of lipstick off the makeup table and open it. There’s a knife inside. I put it back where it was.

“I can guarantee you that’s not Death. The real Death stubbed his toe and is staying with me right now.”

Cherry gives me a crooked grin.

“You scared Chihiro off already? That was fast.”

“She’s still there, don’t worry. By the way, thanks for helping outfit her. I owe you.”

“We Japanese girls have to stick together in this big cruel world,” she says. “Tell me, when did you turn into such a rice queen?”

“The Japanese look was her idea. She always wanted to be in Spirited Away.”

“Don’t lie to me. You love it,” she says.

I don’t say anything or change my expression. Just give her a minute to settle down. Then I say, “How are you doing? Do you feel any different? Is there anything else strange going on besides the twister?”

Cherry turns and watches the TV.

“I don’t want to talk about death and dying. You don’t know what it’s like.”

“In fact, I do. I’ve died. A ­couple of times.”

She laughs quietly.

“You’re a fucking angel. What do you know? I mean dying like a person, with no power, no say, no nothing. Just a cold hand on your arm and everything you ever were slipping away. It’s horrible. He’s horrible.”

She turns back to me. Gives me a big smile.

“But all that’s over with and everything’s peachy now.”

“Have you felt anything else? Any tugs or nudges from necromancers trying to wheedle secrets from you?”

“All the time. A lot of them, they sound desperate. Hysterical. I guess the half dead are sucking up all the bandwidth and it’s hard to get through. Who cares? I never bothered with them. Some of the duller spirits love to chat away with them. Not me. I have my girls and my store. And you, of course.”

“I’m flattered.”

“Except today you’re being boring,” says Cherry.

She goes and sits on the bed. Her feet don’t touch the floor. She swings them back and forth.

“Bad desserts and dumb questions,” she says. “You should work more on your patter before you come around. You used to be a real player before you went away. Remember? You were a looker back then. But you’ve got no game these days.”

“I didn’t come here to hit on you. Or get hit on.”

She shakes her head gravely.

“You should have fucked me when you had the chance.”

“You looked like you were twelve. That isn’t exactly my thing.”

She moves her legs apart.

“You really missed out.”

“Why do we have to do this every time we meet?”

She pulls her legs back together.

“Because it’s fun to watch you squirm.”

“Now who’s being boring? See you around.”

I open the door to the office.

“No, Jimmy. Don’t go away mad. I promise I’ll be good.”

I come back in and she points to the small chair by the makeup table. I sit down, feeling like a giant in a dollhouse.

“Have you ever watched any ghost porn?” she says. “I bet that girl of yours has. It’s quite the thing among discerning perverts and L.A.’s jaded royalty.”

“What the fuck is ghost porn?”

She sighs and drops her shoulders like a little kid about to have a tantrum.

“Fine. Never mind. What were we talking about?”

“Where are all the souls of the half dead? Anywhere in the Tenebrae?”

“The new souls are suspended in the sky like rotten fruit on sick trees. You’d love it, you morbid thing, you. Sometimes the twister reaches out like he’s trying to pluck them. He gets closer each time. You think it’s scary having ­people not die? Wait until this new Death gets going. He’s going to be a wild one.”

“I told you. He’s not Death. Maybe he thinks he is. Maybe he just wants to be, but he’s not the real thing.”

“I know he’s not really Death,” Cherry says. “He’s the Devil, finally coming to eat us, sins, bad dreams, and all.”

“That’s not true either. Listen to me. Lucifer isn’t like he was before. I know him and that isn’t him.”

Cherry crosses her arms and leans forward on her legs.

“I’m scared, Jimmy. I don’t know what to do. I’m scared all the time.”

Her face turns a pale red. She brushes some tears from her eyes.

“None of this would be happening if I’d listened to Mason and gotten myself a blue-­yonder contract. If you love that girl of yours, you’ll get her one. You don’t want us to end up roomies here in the middle of this nowhere, do you?”

“Trust me, Cherry. Hell isn’t what you think it is anymore. It’s opening up to Heaven. You won’t have to stay down there. Soon you’ll be able to walk straight Upstairs.”

“If that’s true, come to the Tenebrae and go there with me.”

“I can’t. I’ve lost the Room. I can’t go anywhere anymore.”

“If you won’t go, then I’m sure not going alone.”

“I’m going to work it out. I can’t stand being stuck here on Earth all the time. When I fix things, I’ll see what I can do about you.”

“Sure. Later. When you’re not busy,” she says, and disappears.

I look around and find her in the mirror. I pick it up. She wipes away more tears.

“I’ll just wait right here, shall I, while you go save everybody else but me? Go away, Jimmy. You always let me down.”

I go out through the office and head for the front door.

“Wait a minute, Stark,” says Kitty. “You owe us for the mirror.”

“The mirror is in the back. I’m not paying for it. Cherry said it was a freebie.”

“Liar. I’ll call the police.”

“Leave him alone,” says Cherry.

I see her, blurry and distorted, in the side of a polished metal display case.

“The police won’t come. He’s too dull to arrest,” she says.

“Thanks, Cherry. I’ll take you on a tour of Downtown sometime.”

“Of course you will. Remember to bring ice cream the next time you come by.”

“Right. And mochi for Kitty’s ass.”

“Excuse me?” Kitty shouts.

“Get out, Stark,” says Cherry.

This is the second time today someone’s thrown me out. A few more times and my feelings are going to get hurt.

DON’T TALK TO ghosts.

Don’t talk to ghosts.

Don’t ever talk to fucking ghosts. They’re carrying more baggage than the Hindenburg and are just as likely to burst into flames.

Still, through all her bullshit, Cherry coughed up something useful. The new Death—­wannabe Death, this year’s model Death—­is slowly pulling himself together, accreting form and power. It’s not a new story in the mystical transformation game. Hell, I went through something like it myself after a Drifter bit me. I died a little. The human part of me. Just enough that the angel half began to take over. I could feel it happening. Layers of me stripped away, like someone skinning a dead deer, until the human part of me was gone and all that was left was the red raw meat of a bouncing baby angel. Only with this neo-­Death the effect is the opposite. I was un-­becoming. New Death is getting stronger, growing in power and position. What’s he going to do when he manifests himself completely? No one joins the Death game as a retirement plan. This is an active boy who’ll soon have plenty of plans, tricks, and toys. I hope I have the chance to put many, many holes in his face before he gets to play with any of them.

It’s another hour home from Beverly Hills, but the traffic doesn’t make me angry this time. It just reminds me of the freeways Downtown. Lined with damned souls twisted into lane dividers and guardrails, and other souls trapped in rusting hulks of barely functional cars stuck in bumper-­to-­bumper traffic on the endless loops, sucking fumes and exhaust heat for the rest of eternity. That’s all over now in Hell, but I have to admire L.A. for its dedication to this primal form of Hellion humor.

KASABIAN IS BEHIND the counter explaining to a ­couple of new customers about how our movies don’t really exist in this world and that’s why the discs rent for $100 a night. You’d think that all they had to do was turn around and watch a few minutes of the Mulholland Drive TV series David Lynch never got off the ground, or maybe acknowledge that they’re haggling with a dead man on a mechanical body. Either of those things should give them a hint to our business model, but no. Some ­people’s brains can only handle so much weirdness. So, they pretend this is a regular video store and they should get a discount on the Die Hard 2 someone threw in the bargain bin (which is where it always belonged). Me? I would have shot both of them by now and burned their bodies in the Dumpster, but that’s why Kasabian is the businessman and I’m the silent partner who lurks upstairs, which is where I head before I get drawn into the debate society.

Candy is on her lunch break, picking at a baguette and watching an episode of Yakitate!! Japan. She looks up when I come in and pauses the cartoon.

“How did it go, Nick Charles? Did you crack the case?”

“Yeah. Death is really a crooked shoe magnate from Minneapolis on the run from loan sharks in the Wisconsin cheese Mob.”

“I’d run too. There’s a lot of cannibals in Wisconsin.”

“Hey, Ed Gein spent his golden years as the asylum barber, a decent and noble profession. Don’t slander the man for a few bad dinner choices.”

“What about Dahmer?”

“Dahmer was a drunk with power tools who watched Return of the Jedi one too many times. I know I’ve thought about murder when ­people won’t shut up about Star Wars.”

“Guess I won’t be sending for those Millennium Falcon sheets after all.”

“Please don’t.”

I want a drink, but I go to the kitchen and pour myself a cup of coffee. Just what I need: a three-­hundred-­degree drink on a scorching L.A. afternoon. I once considered learning to love iced coffee, but then I remembered I’d have to kill myself, so I gave up the idea.

“Have you seen Vincent? He wasn’t downstairs.”

Candy restarts the anime.

“I think he’s on the roof.”

“Why is he up there?”

“I think he’s feeling cooped up, but is too afraid to go out.”

“You don’t think it’s dangerous, him on the roof by himself?”

“He’s a smart boy. He understands gravity.”

“I wonder.”

I go through the door in the back of the closet and climb the stairs to the roof. Vincent is crouched on the edge like a black-­clad pigeon.

“If you’re thinking about jumping, we’re not high enough. You’d just break your legs and ruin the pants I loaned you.”

He glances over his shoulder, shielding his eyes with his hand. When he sees who it is, he turns back to the street.

I walk over and sit down beside him.

“What are you doing up here?”

“Just looking at the city. All the lives. They used to form a floating web of sound and heat that I could follow to any individual. It was like a symphony in a furnace. Now . . .” he says, and shrugs. “Everything seems so much more fragile since I’ve had this body.”

“Yeah, we break easy, but we fix ourselves too.”

“Not all of you.”

“You mean suicides? Yeah. That whole thing sucks. It doesn’t seem right for anyone to get pushed that far.”

Vincent half turns to me.

“When you were imprisoned in Hell, did you consider it?”

“Why bother? I was already in the belly of the beast. What were they going to do? Send me to Super Hell?”

That makes him smile. He takes out his bottle of pills, taps out a ­couple, and dry-­swallows them.

“You’re getting good at that. You’re not turning into a pill head, are you?”

“Being human never stops hurting.”

“You learn to roll with it. And seriously, don’t get hooked on those things. It’s hard getting off.”

He nods, but I don’t think he’s listening. We sit together, neither of us talking.

A ­couple of minutes later, I say, “You ever have any second thoughts about your job?”

“No. Do you?”

“Sometimes. We’re both sort of in the same game. Death.”

“You can choose to change.”

“That’s easy to say. My father, the archangel Uriel, called me a warrior, a natural-­born killer. He said that’s what I was good at, what I was made for, so I should get on with it.”

“I wonder if all the nephilim were killers like you. Maybe that’s why they were so hated.”

“You don’t know?”

He shakes his head.

“The affairs of angels don’t interest me.”

Then he looks at me.

“You’re still human too. You don’t have to listen to your father.”

“Yeah, but he was right. Killing and hoodoo are the only things I’ve ever been good at. They’re sure the only things that have ever helped anyone else. Why should I quit? Shouldn’t I just get better at it?”

“That’s not for me to say. But I do appreciate the steady stream of work you’ve sent me over the years. I like keeping busy.”

“Glad to oblige.”

I take out a Malediction, light it. I’m downwind, so the breeze blows the smoke away from Vincent. If he’s annoyed he doesn’t say it.

He says, “When I was younger, there was a time when I didn’t want to be Death. I wanted to be one of the guardian angels, protecting life, not taking it. For a while I pretended to be one.”

“Wait. This isn’t the first time ­people stopped dying?”

­“People? No? There weren’t any ­people back then. Most of the life in the universe was teeming swarms of microscopic organisms. I liked them. I didn’t want to see them go.”

“Why did you change your mind?”

“Life stagnated. Things were born, but nothing ever changed. After evolving from almost nothing, the universe filled with copies of copies of copies of the same organisms for millennia. It felt wrong. So, I went back to work.”

“And along came us.”

“Eventually.”

“Well, thanks for that. Understand, that’s my answer today. If you’d told me that story last Christmas, I might have punched you for letting humans, gods, and angels live at all.”

“It will all be over soon enough.”

I look at him.

“That’s by immortal standards, right?”

Vincent nods.

“Don’t worry. I’m talking about billions of years from now.”

“Good, because I haven’t even seen that Sergio Leone The Godfather we got.”

“It must be nice to have things to look forward to.”

“I hadn’t thought of that before. I guess your job is kind of production-­line work. The same thing over and over.”

He looks up, tracking a seagull as it flies over us.

“When I took Henry Ford’s soul, he made some suggestions about how I could operate more efficiently.”

“Did you take any?”

“No. I have few enough surprises that turning death into a true assembly line would make existence unbearable. I might have to end things early.”

“Then by all means, be as inefficient as you can.”

I smoke and Vincent looks down at his hands.

“What if I never get back to myself again? I can feel myself getting weaker. My spirit is settling into this body. I feel like I’m losing all connection to the eternal.”

“From what I hear, the guy who’s taken your place is getting stronger. That’s probably what you’re feeling. Don’t worry. We’ll stop him.”

“Thank you.”

“Why don’t we go back inside. I’ll introduce you to some annoying customers downstairs. They deserve a good scare.”

“All right.”

VINCENT HEADS DOWN to see Kasabian and I stay upstairs with Candy. She ignores me, wrapped up in her cartoon. I walk around the table and take a peek at her laptop. The screen saver is running, blocking my view of whatever she’s been working on.

“You researching the White Light Legion?”

“Yeah,” she says. “They’re interesting. Why?”

“Just curious. Wikipedia says they used to publish books and pamphlets. Do they still do that? Maybe I could go over and get some.”

Candy pauses Yakitate!! Japan and looks at me like I just lied about eating the last cookie.

“Do you have my brass knuckles?”

“I’m working on it.”

“Then forget it. Julie said not to tell you anything, and she’s right. We need to understand them, not clunk their heads together like coconuts.”

Damn. Candy has gone reasonable on me.

“Listen to you, Nancy Drew. I thought we could pay them a visit together, like old times. Put a nice scare into them.”

She looks back at the frozen image on the screen.

“You struck out with the Cold Cases and Cherry?”

I sit down on a stool by the kitchen counter.

“No. I got some information. Little scraps. I think Tamerlan is up to his ass in this thing. But I’m sick of tiptoeing around. Come on. Let’s go break things.”

“As much fun as that sounds, you should just sit down and write your report for Julie. You’re the one always saying how much we need the money.”

“Can I use your laptop?”

“Sure. All my work files are password protected, so don’t bother snooping for the White Light’s address.”

“That’s a hurtful thing to say.”

She puts out her lower lip in a mock pout.

“Poor dear. Want me to run you a bubble bath?”

“Fine. If you insist on being no fun, I’ll do it your way. But you’re going to regret walking away from hilarious mayhem.”

“I’m trying to watch my show,” says Candy.

I sit down at her laptop, open a blank text file, and start typing. I’m pretty much a two-­finger typist. With a good tail wind, I can sometimes work in a third finger. Let her listen to me hunt and peck my way through this report. By the time I’m done, she’ll be begging to kick someone’s ass.

Candy picks up the remote and cranks up the volume on the TV, drowning out the sound of my crude key smashing. Outsmarted again.

Around six, Julie calls. She thanks me for the report, says, “That’s fine work, except for the part where you roughed up the security guard.”

“I didn’t have any choice.”

“You could have found a different way into the club.”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

“And that’s what I mean about most of your day being good work, but not all.”

“I got some useful stuff on Tamerlan.”

“Maybe,” Julie says. “You’re more convinced of his involvement than I am. Clearly, he’s connected, but I don’t know that he’s at the center of things.”

“He’s up to his eyeballs in this. All roads will lead to him.”

“I think you have a problem with necromancers and it might color your work. Don’t let your prejudices lead the investigation.”

“Got it. But I’m not wrong about Tamerlan.”

“I don’t know why I bother talking to you sometimes.”

“Hey, I’m listening, but sleuthing isn’t my style. You’re going to have to cut me some slack while I ease into it.”

“I’m doing my best. Anyway, get to bed early tonight. I have a surprise for you in the morning. Come by the office tomorrow about nine, and bring your guest. You’ll enjoy this. We’re all going on a little field trip.”

“Where?”

“You’ll see.”

“It sounds like fun.”

No. It doesn’t.

“Oh, and one more thing. You and Candy should be sure to bring your guns.”

“Now it sounds like fun.”

“Do you have anything else to tell me? Anything that didn’t make it into your report?”

“Yes. His name is Vincent.”

“Whose name?”

“The guest. He’s going by Vincent these days.”

“Charming. Was that his idea?”

“Not entirely. But he likes it.”

“How’s he holding up?”

“Not so good. We need to speed things up. If this is going to be a prestige job, we don’t want to solve the mystery but lose the client.”

“Nine o’clock tomorrow, on the dot.”

“Got it.”

“And, Stark . . .”

“Yes?”

“You don’t touch your gun unless I tell you to.”

“Whatever you say, boss.”

“I mean it. And don’t call me boss.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Let me speak to Candy for a minute.”

“Don’t worry. She hasn’t told me anything about the White Lights.”

“At least one of you understands orders.”

“I understand them. I just don’t like them.”

“I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Wait, don’t you want to talk to Candy?”

“No. I just wanted to know if you’d been trying to get information out of her. Now I know.”

“All roads leads to Tamerlan and they’re going to detour through the White Lights.”

“Good night, Stark.”

“Good night, boss.”

“Stark.”

“Sorry.”

THE ALARM ON my phone goes off at eight the next morning. I shake Candy and she kicks me with her heel.

“Go away,” she says.

“Rise and shine, Miss Marple.”

She sits up and blinks.

“Fuck. Julie is great, but this early-­bird thing is for the birds.”

“I’ll put on some coffee.”

She drops back down onto the bed.

“I’ll just lie here and make sure the blankets don’t run away.”

“If you say so, but you won’t be teacher’s pet anymore if you make us late.”

She sits up and throws a pillow at me.

“I don’t like you when you don’t drink. Without a hangover, you’re too chipper in the morning.”

“You think I like it? I feel like Andy Hardy.”

“Come back to bed. We’ll tell Julie we were captured by pirates.”

“She’ll never believe that. Tell her killer robots.”

“Robots are sexy. You’re not right now. I’ll get up when I smell coffee.”

“You’re a morning pest.”

“I’m a goddamn princess. Now go and make me coffee.”

I start up the coffeemaker and go downstairs to roust Vincent. When I knock on his door, he opens it on the second knock. He’s fully dressed and bright-­eyed.

“Shit, man. Did you even go to bed last night?”

“For a while,” he says. “Now that I’ve healed I don’t need much sleep. Where are we going?”

“You’ve got me. But it better be goddamn outstanding. I mean Disneyland with dancing girls and a bourbon Slip and Slide.”

“Sounds wonderful.”

“If it’s not, Candy’s going to hate me for getting her up. Hell, I hate me right now.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“Thanks, but two against one says that I’m an asshole.”

Kasabian pounds on the wall. “It’s three to one. Shut up and let me get back to sleep.”

I steer Vincent out of the storage room.

“Come upstairs for some coffee.”

When the machine finishes, Candy wanders into the kitchen in a Killer BOB wanted-­poster T-­shirt.

She pours herself some coffee and hands the pot to Vincent. He pours himself half a cup and fills the rest with milk and five sugars. He sniffs it, smiles, and washes the brew down with another pill.

I wash up and go back to the kitchen. Candy sips her coffee, not looking any more awake than when she came in.

“Do you know where we’re going?” I ask her.

“I’m not supposed to tell.”

“That doesn’t fill me with confidence, especially if we’re supposed to go in armed.”

“You’re always armed.”

“Yeah, but Julie wants it this time. That makes it different.”

“Whatever you say, Deputy Dawg. I’m getting dressed.”

It’s almost nine when she’s ready. Everyone piles in the Crown Vic and I drive us to Julie’s office. I don’t bother getting out. I just call her and tell her we’re downstairs. She comes down with a big USGS map under her arm. I look at her in the rearview mirror.

“Which way?”

“Take Sunset all the way to Pacific Palisades,” she says.

I pull out into traffic.

“Where are we going?”

“Will Rogers State Historic Park.”

“Goody. A picnic.”

“Not even close,” she says, studying the map.

When we get to the park entrance, Julie pays the entrance fee for everyone.

I say, “Don’t forget the receipt.”

“Thank you,” she says like a tired substitute teacher.

I park the car and Julie pulls out a map of the park, studies it for a minute. Parts of it are marked in yellow highlighter.

“This way,” she says.

We follow her as she looks around for landmarks. The park is green and boring, just like all parks. At least Griffith Park has an observatory and an abandoned zoo. Those are kind of fun.

In a few minutes, we come to a polo field and Julie walks us around it to the east side. She pockets the Will Rogers map, pulls out the USGS map and a GPS device about the size of a cell phone. There’s a trail leading from the side of the field. She starts down it and we follow. Candy has on her round welding-­glass dark shades. In the sun, her pink hair is as bright as a flare. Vincent looks around like one of those immuno-­fucked-­up bubble kids who’s never been outside before. I trudge along at the rear.

The trail winds down into the canyon. When we come to a creek, we follow the trail up farther into the canyon.

It’s not long before the trail fades out into a one-­lane dirt rut. I look around.

“Are we still in the park?”

Julie doesn’t look up from the map.

Candy says, “We’re heading into Rustic Canyon. It might be where Vincent came from.”

“I’m guessing they don’t have polo fields there.”

“Just trees and snakes.”

Oh hell. I check my gun.

We follow the rut made by other hiking idiots, through trees and vines, crisscrossing the creek for half an hour. I was already annoyed when we got off the trail. Now I’m annoyed and sweaty.

Eventually, we come to a dam and a man-­made waterfall.

I look at Vincent. He’s squinting, swiveling his head around.

I say, “Does any of this look familiar?”

He looks around.

“I’m not sure. It was night and I was disoriented.”

We head up a steep dirt trail and I take off my coat, toss it over my shoulder. My Colt is exposed now, but it’s not like we’re going to run across a Boy Scout jamboree in this shit-­forsaken wilderness.

“How much farther?”

Julie looks back at me, frowning.

“Another mile or so.”

“Fuck me. Now I know why you didn’t want me to know where we were going.”

“The fresh air will do you good,” says Candy just to torment me.

“Un-­huh. No fresh air is going to pollute my lungs.”

I shake the Maledictions from my coat pocket.

Julie stops.

“Put those away. This is fire country. One spark and you could burn the whole canyon.”

I stick the cigarettes back in my coat.

“I’d say I was back Downtown, but at least in Hell I could smoke.”

“I like it here,” says Vincent.

“I can’t go on. Leave me here and save yourselves.”

“Hush,” says Julie.

“Yes, boss.”

It’s another solid hour of climbing over, well, nature. Fucking trees, and fucking vines, and across fucking creeks, until we come to an old wooden ranch house that’s held together with nothing but cobwebs and dry rot. Soon the trail opens up out of the trees. We bear left.

“A quarter mile more,” says Julie, studying her GPS.

Vincent looks back at a stable.

I say, “It looks familiar?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t sweat it. I can’t tell one goddamn thing from another out here in broad daylight. They ought to tear down this place and put up a mall. Pizza and a pedicure sound good about now.”

Candy looks over Julie’s shoulder at the map, then jogs ahead of us around a bend.

“We’re here,” she yells.

The rest of us follow her around the corner. When we do, I stop.

Ahead of us is a concrete building, a broken-­down two-­story freak-­show hovel that’s been tagged by every hippie, goth kid, skate rat, art twerp, and metal head in Southern California. Spray-­paint eyeballs, monsters, naked ladies, gang signs, and names cover the front of the place. It’s such a shit shack that if I didn’t know better, I’d think it was a Sub Rosa mansion.

“Where the hell did you drag us to?”

Julie doesn’t turn around. Candy runs up and grabs my arm.

“Isn’t it a charmer? And for just a small down payment, it could all be ours.”

“What the hell is it?”

“Welcome to Murphy Ranch.”

Julie says, “We think this is where Vincent walked from.”

I look at him.

“Is she right?”

He walks to the front of the building. The entrance is up a few steps from the ground. He grabs the metal handrail and slowly pulls himself up the stairs. He’s moving slow. I can’t tell if he’s being careful or if the sight of the place is frying his brain.

When he gets to the building’s entrance—­a wide black gullet where double doors used to stand—­he hesitates, then steps inside. Julie walks up after him, and Candy and I follow.

When we get inside, Vincent is facing us, standing over a magic circle laid out in black paint. Someone covered the graffiti and piss stains on the floor in white so that the black would stand out against it. In the very center of the white is rust-­colored splatter. A lot of splatter, like someone emptied a kiddie pool of color on the floor.

“Is that dried blood?” says Candy.

Julie says, “I think so.”

“This is it. Here,” says Vincent. “This is where I woke up.”

I walk into the center of the circle, stand in the old blood.

“You sure?”

He nods.

“I’m absolutely certain. It was night, but warm. I was naked. I found my coat and clothes over by the door.”

“You remember anything else? Anything you haven’t told us?”

He shakes his head, holds up his hands.

“I don’t know.”

I turn three hundred and sixty degrees. Whoever set up the room knew what they were doing. The paint created a binding circle, and a good one. Whatever someone drew down here, maybe even an angel, would have a hard time getting out. And if there was, say, a body at the center of the circle, a clever necromancer Dead Head could drive the entity right down into the meat and there’s nothing it could do about it.

Vincent gets on his knees and touches the circle, looks up at the ceiling. There’s black there, but it’s not paint. It’s a scorch mark. I crook a finger at it.

“Something came down hard from up there. It would have gone right through the floor and out again if it hadn’t been caught in the circle.”

Vincent lies down on his back in the middle of the circle and rubs his chest. He points at the back wall.

“It was here. I woke up facing that way.”

There’s a symbol painted on the back wall.

“Do you recognize it?” says Julie.

“No.”

Candy takes out a pocket camera and snaps a few pictures. She shoots a few more of the circle. Vincent gets up and dusts himself off. Julie points to a spot near the door. A White Light Legion emblem. Candy shoots it.

I look at Julie.

“What the hell is this place?”

“I told you. Murphy Ranch,” says Candy. “Hitler’s American love shack. Sort of.”

I look from her to Julie. Julie looks around appraisingly.

“She’s right. Remember the Silver Legion, the precursor to the White Lights? Like them, the compound was started around the same time they did. It cost four million dollars. That’s in 1930s dollars, and was entirely financed by one ­couple: Winona and Norman Stephens.”

“A ­couple of Silver Legion groupies,” says Candy. “This is just one building. The whole compound covered over fifty acres and had its own water system, a diesel generator for power, and a bomb shelter.”

“Everything a self-­sustaining Nazi community would need to ride out the war,” says Julie.

“I guess history didn’t go their way. What happened to the place?”

“It was raided by local police and shut down in ’41,” Candy says. “And that was the end of der Führer’s Hollywood penthouse.”

I look at the walls and floor, hoping to find a clue, an explanation for Vincent and this place.

“You think the White Lights did the ritual to grab Death and stick him in a body. Why? What do they get out of it?”

“That’s what we need to find out,” says Julie. “Edison Elijah McCarthy spent his life studying the supernatural and higher states of consciousness. If we could find him, we’d know.”

I go over to the entrance, take out a cigarette, and light it. No one objects this time.

“He’d be an old man by now.”

“Yes,” Julie says. “An old man with a powerful and ruthless organization behind him.”

“A bunch of assholes, if you ask me,” says Candy. “We shouldn’t have let that bunch on Wonderland get away.”

She’s right. And if I’d had my gun the other night, we would have had them then too.

“We’ll get ’em next time, cowgirl.”

Vincent looks around.

“If we found the right person and brought them here, could they put me back where I belong?”

“Probably,” I say. “The trick is finding the right one. My money is still on Tamerlan.”

Julie looks at me.

“I’m not saying he’s a goose-­stepper. I’m saying he likes money. He’d do the ritual, take the cash, and never ask a single question.”

“Has Brigitte reported anything yet?” says Candy.

“We’re meeting tomorrow,” Julie says. “I’ll know more then.”

“Can we come along?” says Candy.

“I was going to suggest it.”

“You’ll see,” I say.

“I prefer not to jump to conclusions,” says Julie.

Over the stink of the Malediction, I smell something else. Something sweeter. I drop the smoke and crush it out with my boot. Step to the side of the door. A few seconds later, a kid wanders in smoking a blunt the size of a chimichanga.

He has long, dirty blond hair halfway down his back. He’s wearing battered boots, a thrift-­store leather jacket covered in patches for different metal bands, and a Pantera T-­shirt.

He’s staring at his feet on the way in and doesn’t spot Candy and Julie until he stops to knock some ash off his joint. He steps back when he sees them, then pulls his shit together.

“How’s it hanging, ladies?”

Then he sees Vincent.

The kid yells “Fuck!” and bolts for the door. I step in his way with the Colt in my hand. He pulls up short and puts his hands over his head. Looks back over his shoulder.

He’s about twenty. His red eyes are not those of an Einstein. He has a scraggly mustache and a faint scattering of acne scars on one cheek. He looks from me to Vincent and back again.

“Okay, Megadeth, tell me what you see.”

“That guy over there,” he whispers like no one else can hear.

I take a step toward the kid.

“I know. They cut his heart out. You were one of the assholes partying here that night, weren’t you? Did you see what happened?”

He nods.

“Part of it.”

“Want to elaborate?”

“Mostly it was over. They took his heart and put it in some kind of jar with a bunch of writing on it, then stuck the knife back in his chest. After that, they took the other guy and left.”

“What other guy?” says Julie.

The kid stares at her, then Vincent.

I come up behind him and drape an arm over his shoulder.

“What’s your name, kid?”

“Varg.”

“Sure it is. Varg, that lady is my boss. If you don’t answer her, I’ll be obligated to stir-­fry your balls for her pet piranhas.”

Varg looks over at where he dropped his joint. He’s either regretting being high or wishing he was a lot higher. He moves his head in two jerking nods.

“Okay.”

He points at Vincent.

“But keep him away from me.”

I wave Vincent off. “Why don’t you grab some wall?”

He goes to the back of the room and stands in the corner watching us.

“Time to answer the lady, Varg. What other guy did you see?”

“The other stiff. They wrapped him up with the heart and took him away. They were a lot nicer to him than to that guy,” he says, nodding his chin at Vincent.

“What did the other ­people look like?” says Julie.

“I don’t know. I couldn’t see too good. They had some flashlights is all. I didn’t get a look at their faces. Except for the chick.”

“What chick?” says Candy. “What did she look like?”

“She was hot. Like you,” he says, trying to be charming.

Candy raises her eyebrows. “What did you fucking say?”

Varg squirms. I tighten my arm across his shoulder.

“Sorry,” he says. “But, I mean, she really was hot. A blonde. Pretty like a model.”

“Wow. It’s like she’s here with us right now,” says Candy. “What else did she look like?”

“I don’t know. One of the dudes called her Sigrun.”

“That’s a funny name,” I say. “Are you sure you heard it right?”

“I thought it was funny too. But the dude said it again. Sigrun.”

“Tell us about the other body,” says Julie. “They killed two ­people that night?”

Varg shrugs.

“I don’t know. But they both looked dead to me.”

He whispers to me as he stares at Vincent. “How’s he walking around?”

“Well, Varg, that’s the Angel of Death. Want to meet him?”

“No way.”

“Smart boy.”

“Which way did they go when they left?” says Candy.

He points outside opposite of the way we came.

I say, “Was one of the men here that night dressed like a used car salesman?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, flashy. Not normal flashy like in a magazine. Old flashy like you’d see on Starsky & Hutch.”

“Yeah, I know them. But no. I didn’t see anyone like that. They were all wearing robes or some shit. I couldn’t see anyone’s regular clothes.”

“You took the knife from his chest,” says Julie, pointing to Vincent. “Why?”

“Did you see it? It was cool.”

“And it came out of a real live dead guy, right? Your friends would love that.”

Varg nods.

“None of those pussies would touch it. But I did.”

“Thanks, Varg,” I say. “If you hadn’t done that, Vincent over there might not have woken up.”

“I thought you said he was the Angel of Death.”

“He is.”

“The Angel of Death’s name is Vincent?”

“Your name sounds like a dog fart, Varg, so don’t get pushy.”

“Sorry.”

“Anyone have any other questions for Lemmy?”

Candy comes over.

“Let me see your driver’s license.”

Varg gets out his wallet and gives her the license.

She photographs it, then reads it over.

“Now we know your real name, Danny, and where you live. Don’t tell anyone you talked to us and don’t try to run away or we’ll send Vincent after you.”

I feel Varg tense.

“I won’t. Can I have my license back?”

Candy hands it to him.

Varg puts his wallet away. He looks at me.

“You know what this place is, right?”

“Yeah. Hitler’s bachelor pad. What of it?”

“Well, some of the ­people, including Sigrun, they were speaking German.”

“Too bad. I don’t suppose you’re bilingual, Varg.”

“Yeah. I am. My grandma’s from Düsseldorf. That’s why I remember what they said.”

Julie comes over.

“What did they say?”

“When they were wrapping the one guy up, the one they liked, one of them said, ‘Get wormwood’ or ‘Get the wormwood.’ I figured they were going to go and get high.”

I’m guessing pretty much everything means getting high to Varg. I’m surprised he remembered as much as he did. If I let Vincent loose on him, I bet he’d remember all the state capitals and the names of Santa’s reindeers, but Julie would never let me do that.

“We done here?” I say to Julie.

“Yes. Let him go,” she says.

I take my arm from Varg’s shoulder.

“You’re free to go. We’re releasing you back into the wild.”

“For real?”

“Scoot, Varg.”

He hesitates.

“Can I have my weed back?”

The joint is still lying where he dropped it.

“Sure.”

Varg runs over, scoops the joint into his pocket, heads for the entrance. He stops and points back at Vincent.

“That guy’s a freak, man.”

“It’s not smart to be mean to Death. He has a long memory.”

“That asshole’s not Death,” says Varg. “The other guy is. That’s what the blond chick said. Er ist der Todeskönig. ‘He is the death king.’ ”

I turn to him.

“Why didn’t you mention that before?”

“ ’Cause fuck you, that’s why,” says Varg. He holds up his hands, flipping us double birds, and runs off into the trees.

Candy starts after him.

“Let him go,” says Julie. “We’re not going to get anything more out of a frightened stoner right now. Besides, we can find him if we need more later.”

Vincent is by the entrance, staring in the direction where Varg ran. He goes down the stairs and follows the kid’s trail. We follow him a few yards past more buildings. Beyond a stand of thirsty trees is a set of steep concrete stairs going a ­couple of hundred feet, all the way up the canyon wall. Varg is already a quarter of the way up.

“That’s the way I left,” says Vincent. “I remember climbing and climbing.”

I look at him. Vincent isn’t a big guy. I try to imagine anyone climbing all those steps with a hole the size of a shotgun blast in their chest. I couldn’t do it. But this scrawny bastard did. And fucked up as he was, he tracked me down all the way in Hollywood. Vincent has more brains and bigger balls than I imagined. Damn. Now I actually want to help the prick. But it’s nice that I’m being paid to do it.

I wave a bee away from my face. Goddamn nature. All it wants to do is hitch a ride, kill you, or sting you. Sometimes all at once.

“Are we done here?” I say to Julie. “I need a drink and a tick bath.”

“Yes. We’re done.”

She keeps looking at Varg and the stairs. I start back the way we came.

“If you want to go after him, be my guest, but I’m not climbing that. Fire me if you want, but I’m going this way and cranking the air conditioner in the Crown Vic all the way to Ice Age.”

Julie nods.

“Let’s head back,” she says, coming after me.

As we walk, she turns to me.

“Good job back there, Stark. You were menacing, but didn’t try to shoot anyone. A big step up for you.”

“Thanks. I’m happy to just be part of the team.”

“That’s why it pains me to tell you.”

“What?”

“The air-­conditioning in the Crown Vic doesn’t work.”

I really hate this job.

CANDY AND I go to Bamboo House for a few drinks after work and have a ­couple of more at home. Kasabian is binge-­watching Mulholland Drive, transfixed by Naomi Watts’s cheekbones. Vincent went to his room after we got back from Murphy Ranch and I haven’t seen him since. My guess is he popped a ­couple of pills and passed out. Can’t say I blame him. Still, I might have to steal the pill bottle from him sometime when he’s not looking.

I fall asleep early, still bruised and battered by my encounter with trees and grass. Now I remember why I don’t like to leave Hollywood. The closest thing to nature we have here are the tofu joints out past La Brea Avenue, and I can get over the trauma of seeing them with a plate of carnitas and frijoles.

In my dreams, I’m back at Murphy Ranch lying, like Vincent, in the bloody center of the circle. When Mason Faim sent me to Hell, it was through a magic circle. I use them all the time when I’m doing high-­level hoodoo.

My life is full of circles. For all the batshit craziness of my first trip back from Hell—­the Drifters, ghosts, ghouls, cops, Hellions, and gods—­it was really about finally getting clear of Mason. Now Mason is dead for good, a sacrifice to a mob of angry old deities. Maybe I’m starting a new circle. If this is the beginning, I’m not sure I want to see where it ends.

I used to dream about being back in the arena in Hell. Now I dream about being stuck in traffic in the Crown Vic, my new Hell on Earth. Even when I was a Hellion slave, I never felt as trapped as I do now that I’ve lost the Room of Thirteen Doors. I keep trying to find angles. Ways to get it back. Ways to convince myself that it’s okay to open it and go inside. That another universe won’t rush out to devour this one, and that the old gods, the Angra Om Ya, are dead and gone forever. But I know it’s not going to happen. I can’t ever open the door again. The Room is gone for good. But I can’t live without it. I can’t stay planted on the ground like a goddamn beet farmer, shuffling my way through the dirt and mud forever. There has to be an angle I haven’t figured out yet. Something I can steal or buy or trade for what will let me shadow-­walk again. The price will be high, but I’ll pay it. I need to know I can walk the universe again and that, in the end, there’s one safe refuge that’s mine and mine alone. Even Candy would be safe and she could wear her own face again. But I don’t even know where to begin looking. Well, I do. But I don’t want to go there. There are parts of L.A. stained enough with blood, bile, and misery that even I don’t want to deal with them.

Just keep cool. See where you land. If you work shit out for Vincent, he’s going to owe you. Death can go anywhere at any time he wants. Maybe he knows a trick or two he can pass on, right?

No. That’s not the kind of luck I have.

I dream about the White Light Legion and a blond Valkyrie ripping my heart out. It almost means something and I can almost see Sigrun’s face. They put my heart in a jar and carry it home. Is it a trophy? An offering? Or just Rover’s dinner?

My chest hurts. I’m sweating. I’m back on Wonderland Avenue. Every door to every home is open. Blood trails smear across the welcome mats and driveways, down the street, and into the dark. I see the brand on Vincent’s arm and his knife in my chest. I want to choke Tamerlan until all this madness makes sense. I want the Room, but never to have gone to Hell. It’s mostly childish noise, I know, but pieces of it are worthwhile. If I get one or two more, maybe things will start falling into place.

I wake up and get out of bed. In the kitchen I start to pour myself a drink. Instead, I go and wash the sweat off my face and sit on the couch. Someone left the Blu-­ray player on pause. I hit the play button and Nightbreed starts playing. It’s a strangely comforting movie. Monsters living with monsters in a world built just for monsters. Of course, civilians eventually come along and fuck it all up, the way they fuck everything up. I watch for a few minutes, until the cops head out to hammer Jesus and good clean American living into the monsters. Then it gets depressing, so I turn it off. I go to the window and smoke a cigarette. I wish I hadn’t given Vincent’s knife to Julie. I’d like to see it and feel it in my hand. Now that I’ve seen where it was used, maybe it would mean more.

I finish the cigarette and go back to bed.

Things are going to get weirder and worse before they get better. I can feel it. Goddamn skinheads are bad enough, but smart skinheads mixed up with hoodoo? That’s bad news.

I go back to bed. Candy rolls over and drapes her arm over me, only it’s not her arm. It’s Chihiro’s arm. Things can’t stay like this. Things have got to change.

WHEN I GO downstairs in the morning, I have a headache. Vincent’s door is closed, but Kasabian’s is open. However, the store is closed and there’s nothing playing on the big screen. I go to Kasabian’s door and knock. He looks up at me, holding a piece of paper in his metal mitts.

I say, “You have some aspirin? I can’t find any upstairs.”

He shakes his head.

“No. What I have is this.”

He hands me the paper. It’s on L.A. County Court letterhead. It reads, Dear Mr. Kasabian, As you may be aware, L.A. County has conducted several studies that will eventually lead to an extension of the 101 Freeway to serve the region and assist our county with economic development. The site portion of the study has recently been concluded, and this letter is to notify you that your property may have to be purchased for the freeway extension.

The rest of it is all a lot of property parcel codes and legal noise. I hand the note back to Kasabian.

“What does that mean?”

He drops the letter on his bed.

“It’s called eminent domain. It means that the county can come in and take Max Overdrive and there’s not a goddamn thing we can do about it.”

“How is that even legal?”

He shrugs.

“It’s the government. They’ve got more money and lawyers than regular ­people, so they can do pretty much anything they want.”

“It doesn’t even make sense. The 101 is like a mile down the road. To bring it out here, they’d have to knock down half of Hollywood.”

“Someone’s got a theory,” he says.

Candy comes downstairs.

“What’s going on? What’s all the whispering?”

“Remember when we got tossed out of Chateau Marmont?” says Kasabian. “Well, it’s going to happen again.”

Candy looks at me.

“What’s he talking about?”

“We got a letter, and according to Atticus Finch here, it means that the county can come in and take Max Overdrive out from under us.”

“What? What about the store? Where are we going to live?”

Kasabian picks up the letter again, stares at it. I try to read it over his shoulder, but it still doesn’t make much sense to me.

“Can’t we get a lawyer and fight it?” I say. “This is bullshit.”

Kasabian laughs.

“Look around the room. We’re three dead ­people in a store full of movies that doesn’t exist. Plus, we’re broke. What lawyer is going to work for us?”

“Maybe a Sub Rosa one,” says Candy.

“As I recall, the Sub Rosa like to eat, just like regular ­people,” Kasabian says. “We don’t have the money to pay a civilian, a Sub Rosa, a Lurker, or your aunt Sadie.”

I reach over and take the letter out of his hands.

“I know what this is. It’s the fucking White Lights. They’ve been around long enough they probably have all kinds of connections to crooked county pricks and lawyers. If they can’t kill us, they’re going to ruin us.”

Candy says, “Let’s show the letter to Julie. She’ll know what to do.”

“What if you’re wrong?” says Kasabian.

“How am I wrong?”

“You talked to the Augur, right? Told him you didn’t want to work for him.”

“Yeah. So?”

“What if you pissed him off and this is his way of getting back at you.”

That little rat bastard. I hadn’t thought of that.

“It doesn’t matter. We still have to show the letter to Julie. We can worry about who sent it later.”

I give Candy the letter.

“I don’t want to leave,” she says. “The only other home I had around here was Doc Kinski’s clinic, and they burned that down. Now someone wants to burn us out of here.”

Kasabian looks past us at the storage room.

“Too bad we can’t let Vincent loose on these ­people. We have the Angel of Death in our pocket and we can’t even keep the doors open.”

“No one is going anywhere,” I say. “First, we show the letter to Julie and see what she has to say. After that, I’m going to clean my guns.”

“Can’t you just talk to the Augur and apologize?” says Kasabian.

“We don’t even know it’s him. And if it is, caving without a fight doesn’t give us anything to bargain with.”

“I’m getting dressed. You get dressed too. We’re going to the office,” says Candy, tapping me on the shoulder with the letter.

“Yeah. We can hear what Brigitte found out too.”

Vincent opens his door and comes out.

“Good morning. Is there something wrong? You all sound tense.”

I start back upstairs.

“Nothing’s wrong. Someone’s just looking for a fight is all. Stay here with Kasabian and open the store. Act normal.”

“I don’t know what acting normal means,” says Vincent.

I stop on the stairs.

“None of us do, so just keeping doing whatever it is you do.”

“Maria called,” says Vincent. “She asked if you’d found Dash.”

“Fuck Maria’s ghost. Unless he went to Harvard Law School he can fucking hang until we get this shit sorted.”

“I’ll just tell her that you’re still looking.”

“You do that.”

Upstairs, Candy is already half dressed. She stops when I come in.

“Things are going to be okay, right? We’re going to work this out?”

“We’re going to be fine,” I say. “But this is what happens when I try to be reasonable. I should be out shooting ­people right now. And you should be next to me tearing up the ­people I don’t shoot.”

She comes over and puts her arms around my neck.

“Let’s try things this way first, okay? If they don’t work out, there’s always time to run amok.”

“I’m glad you see it my way. You sure you don’t want to tell me where the White Light Legion hangs out?”

Candy gives me a peck on the lips, then goes back to putting on her clothes.

“Reasonable now. Decapitation later. That’s the deal,” she says.

“I love it when you talk dirty.”

WHEN WE GET to the office, Julie isn’t exactly surprised to see us or the letter. She reads over ours, takes an envelope out of a drawer, and drops an almost identical letter on the desk.

“It came yesterday,” she says. “Someone has it in for us. In a way, this is good news.”

“Exactly how is getting evicted good news?” I say.

“Because it means we’re making someone nervous and that only happens when you’re getting near the truth. We’re close to a breakthrough. I guarantee you, we’ll know why someone wanted to bind Vincent in a few days.”

“In the meantime, what do we do about these?” says Candy, holding up the letters.

“Sit tight. I’ll have some lawyers in the Vigil’s legal unit look them over. There’s always something to be done.”

I sit down.

“Are you sure? I mean these letters are obviously bullshit. No one is running the freeway through your place or ours. That means these aren’t legit and that means whoever sent them might not be in the mood to be reasoned with.”

“It’s still a legal proceeding,” Julie says. “Let me handle things.”

I get up and go to her coffeemaker, pour three cups.

“You’re the adult in the room. But if legal doesn’t work, I’m going to throw a big, bloody tantrum.”

I bring the cups to the desk. Julie takes one and says, “If legal doesn’t work, I might join you.”

Someone presses the buzzer on the street. Julie checks the little security cam over the door on her laptop and presses a button to unlock the door. A few seconds later, Brigitte comes into the office. She’s wearing a smart, navy-­blue dress with a longer skirt than usual. Conservative business wear for a meeting with the boss. She sets her bag on Julie’s desk. There are no more chairs, so she perches gracefully on the edge of the desk like a femme fatale in an old gangster movie.

“Thanks for coming in,” says Julie.

“It’s lovely to see you all. How was your walk in the woods?”

“Very interesting.”

“Hot,” I say. “I almost got stung by a bee.”

“You poor dear,” Brigitte says. “How did ever you survive?”

“It was touch and go for a while,” says Candy. “But we poured him into a cold martini and managed to revive him.”

“And they all lived happily ever after,” says Brigitte.

Julie coughs.

“If you three are done.”

“Of course,” says Brigitte.

“How did it go out there? How many of Tamerlan’s ­people did you get to?”

“Six in all. It was interesting interacting with real ­people in real places who had no idea they were in my little play.”

I say, “Did anyone give you any trouble?”

She raises a hand to say no. “I was much too charming and needy for that.”

“What did you tell them?” says Julie.

“That I needed to speak to my poor dead mother and get some advice from her.”

“How did they respond?”

“The first two told me to go to an ordinary medium. The rest were all too happy to take my money.”

“Did you convince the others to help you?” I say.

“Of course. I told them that my mother was a bitch, but she knew the whereabouts of a small family fortune. I told them I’d give them a cut if they could contact her spirit and extract the information.”

“Is any of that true?” says Candy.

“Not a word. My mother is a lovely woman, living happily in Prague.”

“What did you find out from Tamerlan’s ­people?” says Julie.

“That a smile makes an impression, but a gun and a smile makes even more. I also learned this: that the necromancers who work through Tamerlan’s franchises are more afraid of him than a pistol.”

Julie shakes her head, sips her coffee.

“You ­people and your guns.”

“You learn a lot about someone when you show them a gun,” I say. “Like that the ones who still won’t talk are worried about something worse than dying.”

Brigitte says, “That’s what Tamerlan’s ­people are like. Every one is afraid of him.”

“Did you find out why?” says Julie.

“On the surface, Tamerlan appears to be a simple—­though ruthless—­businessman, but there is something else. His lackeys are afraid of him, but none will say why.”

“Did you learn anything useful about his business dealings?”

“He is obsessive when it comes to money. He is bleeding dry the necromancers that work through him. He demands not only money, but favors, though I don’t know what kind.”

“So, he’s shaking his franchisees down.”

“Not exactly. He never touches the money himself. According to the ­people I interviewed, he seems to have no connection to payments. They all go through a company called Wormwood.”

Julie, Candy, and I look at each other.

“Did I say something interesting?” says Brigitte.

“We heard the name yesterday,” Julie says. “Did they say what Wormwood is or how to find them?”

“Or him or her,” says Candy. “It could be a person.”

“Good point.”

Brigitte shakes her head, picks up my coffee.

“Is this yours?”

“Yes.”

“May I?”

“Of course.”

She takes a sip and sets down the cup.

“What was most interesting,” she says, “is that even when I became quite physically insistent that they tell me about the money, no one would. They are all quite afraid of both Wormwood and Tamerlan.”

Julie writes something down on a pad.

“I’ll do some research on Wormwood. If they’re operating in California, they must at least have a business license.”

“I can help with that,” says Candy.

“Thank you.”

Brigitte says, “By the way, I showed each of them the photo you sent me of the brand on your guest’s arm.”

“And?”

“No one was able to identify it. Some seemed quite certain they could, and consulted various grimoires and books of arcana. It was all futile.”

“Are any of those Dead Heads going to remember your face?” I say.

“The ones not staring at my chest.”

“I mean will they be able to identify you if Tamerlan or someone asks?”

“They might know my face, but not my name. And I wore gloves, so there will be no fingerprints or any aetheric residue they can use to find me.”

“You’re the best,” says Candy.

Brigitte winks at her.

I look at Julie.

“Any chance I could get Vincent’s knife back?”

Julie frowns.

“Why?”

“It’s not a very good reason.”

“Then why should I give it to you?”

“Because maybe it will look different after our trip to Murphy Ranch.”

“Is that all?”

“Also, I had a funny dream about it.”

“He has these dreams sometimes,” says Candy. “Sometimes they mean he should have taken an aspirin before bed, but sometimes they mean something.”

Julie goes to a file cabinet, takes out a key, and unlocks it. From the bottom drawer, she removes the knife and brings it back to the desk. I pick it up, turn it over in my hands.

“Well?” she says. “Any vibrations from the spirit realm?”

“Not yet. Can I keep it for a ­couple of days?”

Julie sighs.

“Just be careful with it. Besides Vincent’s clothes, it’s our only piece of physical evidence.”

“What did the Vigil techs tell you about it?” says Candy.

Julie picks up her coffee cup, sets it down again in a gesture of exasperation.

“Nothing. No one would touch it. They know I’m working with Stark on the case and that makes it too hot for them to handle.”

“You always make an impression, Jimmy,” says Brigitte.

“That’s what my mom said.”

I put the knife in my coat pocket.

“I have a question about Tamerlan,” I say. “If he’s involved with this Wormwood thing, doesn’t it make sense that I was right and he’s working with the White Light Legion? It makes sense. He’s the brains and they’re the muscle. The enforcers.”

Julie says, “Then why wasn’t he at the ceremony at Murphy Ranch? From what Varg said, it sounds like the woman, Sigrun, could have been performing the ritual.”

“And he specifically said he didn’t see anyone who looked like Tamerlan at the ceremony,” says Candy.

“He’s deeper in this thing than we know yet, I’m sure of it. And he’s part of what happened on Wonderland Avenue. What if those ­people owed him money, or owed Wormwood, and he sent his thugs to get them? Maybe it doesn’t relate directly to this case, but it’s something we could use as pressure against him to get some answers.”

Brigitte takes a piece of paper from her purse and sets it on the desk.

“One of the gentlemen I chatted with was good enough to give me Tamerlan’s contact information.”

Julie snatches the paper off the desk before I can get near it. Too late, though. I already saw the address. She puts the paper in a drawer.

“I have an assignment for you, Stark,” she says. “Starting tomorrow, I want you to shadow each of Brigitte’s necromancer contacts. Maybe one of them will reveal something without meaning to.”

“Stake out six ­people? How am I supposed to do that?”

“One at a time,” she says.

I sit back in my chair.

“This is just busywork, while you and Candy do the big-­brain stuff.”

“We need to keep you from playing in traffic,” says Candy.

“Or getting stung by a bee,” says Brigitte.

“You know, you two should do a ventriloquist act. You can take turns being the dummy.”

Julie says, “It’s only busywork if that’s what you make it. Real investigative work isn’t always exciting, but seeing ­people at unguarded moments can be key to finding out what they’re really up to.”

“I suppose you want reports on everyone. Write down everything I see.”

“That would be nice.”

“What if all I see is the idiots reading palms and going to McDonald’s for Shamrock Shakes?”

“Then write that down. The smallest thing might be helpful as the case progresses.”

“If I’m right and Tamerlan is at the center of this, you owe me a drink,” I say.

Julie considers it.

“All right. And if you’re wrong?”

“I’m not. But if I am, you get free rentals at Max Overdrive.”

“I’m not really a movie person. I’m more of an ESPN person.”

“I used to run Hell and now I’m working for a jock.”

“I used to be a U.S. marshal and now I’m working with a felon.”

Candy raises a ­couple of fingers and says, “Two felons.”

“Two felons.”

Julie looks at Brigitte.

“I don’t suppose you’re a felon too?”

“No. Merely an ex-­pornographer.”

Julie looks into the distance and sips her coffee.

“It could be worse,” I say.

“How?”

I think for a minute.

“Actually, I’m not sure. But I’ll think of something and put it in my report.”

“I can’t wait to read it.”

“I can’t wait to make it up.”

STARTING TOMORROW I’LL be a potted plant. Humpty-­Dumpty sitting in a car, making notes, eating donuts, watching my gut get big, and wanting to blow my brains out. But until then, no one told me what to do.

I leave Candy at home, happily pecking away at the laptop. This is the first time I haven’t missed her since we started this case and she decided she liked data better than kicking in doors. She doesn’t need to go where I’m going. It’s not the worst place in L.A. It just smells the worst.

I drive out to Echo Park and leave the Crown Vic by the arboretum in Elysian Park, a sprawling patch of green near the 5 Freeway. On the east side of the park, just about under the freeway, is a greasy-­spoon diner called Lupe’s. Supposedly Lupe Vélez used to eat there in the thirties, back when it was a chic spot for movie stars to slum. They say she ate her last meal here just before she took eighty Seconal and lay down for one last long nap.

Next to Lupe’s is an auto wrecking yard with no name I’ve ever been able to find. Out front is a hand-­painted sign that says WRECKERS, and that’s it. No hours. No phone number or address. Above the razor-­wire-­topped fences you can see piles of dead, rusting car bodies. Through the fence are wooden bins full of greasy axles, dusty brake drums, carburetors, and a hundred other parts. Everything you’d need to fix or assemble a car. But I’ve never seen anyone inside, and don’t know anyone who’s seen a sign of life from the place. No one even knows how long it’s been there. As far as anyone can remember, it’s always been in this spot, even when they were originally building the freeway. But I’m not here for Lupe’s or Wreckers. I’m here for what lies between them.

Piss Alley.

It’s exactly as fragrant as its name, but the smell doesn’t seep into the street or bother the diners at Lupe’s. You have to go into Piss Alley to get a hit of the pure product, and, man, what a product it is. It’s like all the toilets in L.A. take a detour through the alley on the way to Piss Heaven. It smells like ammonia and rotten meat. It doesn’t matter how many times you go into Piss Alley, it’s always a shock. Your eyes water, your nose runs, and your stomach says, “You weren’t planning on ever eating again, were you?”

I hold my breath and take a step between Lupe’s and Wreckers. I’m nauseous for a second. This is why ­people used to think that smells—­miasmas—­caused disease. If smells could kill, Piss Alley would make a nuke seem like a car backfire on the Fourth of July. There’s only one reason Piss Alley is allowed to exist and why morons like me come here.

It grants wishes.

The way I look at it is this: I can’t shadow-­walk anymore, but I need to go places, get past doors, guards, and alarms. Even Mustang Sally, the highway sylph who knows every road, turn, and shortcut on the continent, can’t help me with that. I need something more direct and desperate. I need Piss Alley.

Asking for a wish is easy. Getting it granted isn’t. The Alley has to be in the right mood and you have to ask the right way. But the basic process is easy.

The walls of Piss Alley are covered with scrawls in paint, chalk, pencil, even blood. You just write your wish on the wall and hope for the best. Of course, just like the rest of the world, a bribe helps. There’s a ’32 black Duesenberg halfway down the alley. The front end is crushed like it was in a head-­on collision, but the passenger compartment and rear are still somewhat intact. The trunk lock is long gone. It’s held closed by a loop of rusting wire. I twist it and get the trunk open.

If anything, the trunk smells worse than the alley. A swarm of flies rushes by my head, taking a break from feasting on old food offerings and the animals that dined on them and died in the trunk. I set a bottle of Aqua Regia in a clear spot by a tire well and wire the trunk closed again. Then I start on the wall.

There isn’t a clear inch on the bricks to ask for a new favor. No problem. I get out the black blade and carve my message over the old ones.

I want to Shadow-­Walk.

There’s a present on the altar.

I saved the world. You fucking owe me.

Not exactly Walt Whitman, but I think Piss Alley will get the gist. There’s nothing to do now but wait and see if it wants what I’m selling.

I go back to the car at the arboretum and drive back home with the windows open, letting my bruised sinuses fill with healing L.A. smog. I stop by Donut Universe to pick up a bag of greasy death. Every time I come here, I think about Cindil. She worked at the place until she was murdered. I rescued her from Hell and I need to give her a call. Adjusting to life back on Earth can be a little . . . well, look at me.

Back at Max Overdrive, I give Candy first crack at the donuts. I take an apple fritter, and Kasabian and Vincent descend on the rest like cruise missiles. They’re watching a weird version of Spider-­Man I’ve never seen before.

“It’s the version James Cameron was supposed to direct,” Kasabian says.

I watch for a few minutes, but I’ve never given much of a damn about poor, pitiful me Peter Parker, so I go upstairs to have a drink with my fritter.

“Aren’t you supposed to be off playing I Spy with Tamerlan’s flunkies?” says Candy.

“Not until tomorrow. My job today is to wait.”

“For what?”

“I’ll know tonight.”

“What are you doing until then?”

“Eating this donut and drinking this drink.”

She closes the laptop and pinches off a piece of her donut between thumb and forefinger. She chews and swallows it.

“I was thinking of taking a break too. Why don’t you pour me a drink and take off your clothes? We can wait on your whatever together.”

“Don’t you have work to do?”

“Why do you think I want your clothes off?”

She doesn’t have to ask twice.

AFTER I’M SURE everyone is asleep, I grab my coat, go downstairs, and head out.

I get halfway through the sales floor when Vincent’s door opens.

“It’s nearly three,” he says. “Where are you going?”

“I just have to check on something.”

“Do you need help? I could come along.”

“Aren’t you tired?”

He shakes his head.

“Not much these days. At night, I mostly lie in bed trying to remember the way things used to be.”

“I know the feeling. Look, I’m not going to a nice place. This might be dangerous.”

He cocks his head.

“You mean I might die?”

“Okay, not that. But it’s still dangerous.”

“I’ll get my coat.”

His coat is a sweatshirt Kasabian loaned him. It doesn’t matter. This is L.A., where, if the temperature dips below sixty, we call in the National Guard.

I head out to the car and Vincent follows. When he gets in, he takes out the bottle and pops a pill.

“You should take it easy on those.”

He swallows hard, getting the dry pill down his gullet.

“It doesn’t matter. That was my last one.”

“You went through that whole bottle?”

“Yes. Do you think you can get more?”

“We’ll let the doctor decide that. I’m sure she’d love to meet you.”

“It would be nice to meet some new ­people.”

I steer the Crown Vic into the light middle-­of-­the-­night traffic and head east. Vincent looks out the window, watching the city roll by.

“I didn’t often get to look at places in my work,” he says. “I like it.”

“Enjoy it while you can. We’ll have you back with a scythe in your hand in no time.”

“I hate that image. It makes me look like a monster.”

“If they painted you in pink taffeta with fairy wings, you’d still be a monster to ninety-­nine-­point-­nine percent of the human race.”

“I know.”

“The pills make that easy to deal with, don’t they?”

“I feel the pull of life. The rejection of limbo and nothingness, and that’s what death, unexamined, feels like. Even though I know otherwise, it feels as if my body itself rejected the idea of its end.”

“Survival instinct. I suppose you immortal types don’t worry about that much. We deal with it every day.”

“You’re part angel, but you still worry about death?”

“Not the death part so much as the stuff I’ll leave behind. I lost a lot of years Downtown. I’ve barely started making up the time.”

“And your friends?”

“What about them?”

“You’re afraid of leaving them behind.”

“Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“We’re friends now. I’ll make sure their transmogrification is an easy one.”

We’re almost to Elysian Park. I look at Vincent.

“Thanks . . . I guess.”

“You don’t want them to die at all.”

“No one wants ­people they care about to die.”

Vincent stares out the window and starts to hum. It takes me a minute to get the song. “Chim Chim Cher-­ee” from Mary Poppins. I imagine him in his room, humming all the songs from all the movies he’s watched with Kasabian.

“Things were easy before, less frightening when you came back from Hell and knew you could go back when you wanted, weren’t they?”

“A lot easier.”

“We’re the same, then. I can’t go home and neither can you.”

I never thought of Hell as home before, but in a twisted way he might be right. It’s the place I always think of running to when things get bad here. Maybe home isn’t the place you love, just the place you know best.

I say, “Maybe tonight will change that. Maybe I’ll be able to walk to Hell and back again, and if that happens, maybe you can too.”

Vincent settles back into his seat.

“Going home won’t make me me again.”

“One step at a time, man.”

I stop under the 5 Freeway near Lupe’s and get out with my na’at in my hand. If things go sideways I don’t want to attract any cops with gunfire.

Vincent follows me out of the car, looks around.

“What are we afraid of?”

“Lions, and tigers, and bears. And shitheads who want our cash.”

“I don’t have any money.”

“If you explain that to them, I’m sure they’ll understand.”

When I’m sure there’s no one on the street, I grab Vincent’s sleeve and pull him behind me into Piss Alley. I see his face change when the smell hits him.

“Oh my,” he says.

“Not so great having senses now, is it?”

“Why are we here?”

“To see if I’m getting wings. Stand over there,” I tell him.

He goes to where I’m pointing, a trash can well away from the Duesenberg. I extend the na’at to the length of a sword and twist the grip to shape it into a blade. Holding the na’at up, ready to gut anything waiting for me in the car, I use one hand to twist the wires holding the trunk closed.

It pops opens and nothing attacks me. A few rats scatter down through the exposed undercarriage, but they mostly head off in the direction of Lupe’s to party in the Dumpster out back.

I lean to the side to let street light fall into the trunk. A small brown bottle glitters in the middle of all the garbage in the trunk. I pocket the bottle and wire the trunk closed again. Vincent follows me back out to the street. I collapse the na’at and put it in my coat.

“What is it?” he says.

“A bottle. There’s a note attached.”

Paper dangles from a red ribbon around the bottle’s neck. In florid script, the note says Drink me. I hold it up to the light to make sure I’m reading it right.

“They think I’m goddamn Alice in Wonderland.”

“Who?” says Vincent.

“Them. Whoever runs Piss Alley. The bottle wants me to drink it.”

“Is that all?”

I turn the paper over. There’s more writing on the back.

Sidestep for one week.

Vincent moves around, trying to stay clear of rats and bugs.

“What does it say?”

“It wants to me to dance a jig. Or something. I don’t know what the hell this is.”

“Drink it and find out.”

I look at him.

“You know how to drive?”

“No,” he says.

“Too bad. If this kills me, you’re shit out of luck. Cabs don’t come here.”

“Then good luck.”

I hold the bottle up to the light. There’s nothing special about it.

“Fuck it.”

I take out the cork and upend the bottle, swallowing the slimy stuff in one go.

It doesn’t really taste that bad. Sort of like cherry cough syrup with a whiskey bite. I put the bottle back in my pocket and wait. Nothing happens. A minute later, nothing is still happening.

“Did you do it wrong?” says Vincent.

“It said ‘drink me.’ How can you fuck that up? Maybe the stuff went bad sitting in the trunk. I should have come earlier.”

“Maybe you should have,” says a man holding a gun to Vincent’s head.

I was so wrapped up in my Alice in Wonderland bottle that I didn’t hear the crackhead creeping up on us. I’m going to be very embarrassed if I get shot because I was waiting for the Queen of Hearts’ tarts.

“Don’t look at me,” says the creep.

Vincent’s eyes are wide.

“Be cool, Vincent. This will be over soon.”

I shouldn’t have put the na’at away. The fucker has his finger on the trigger of a snub-­nose .357 pressed behind Vincent’s left ear. I’m fast, but I’m not fast enough to stop the gun from firing. The extra good news is that while I still have a lot of the $500 Julie paid me, it’s back at Max Overdrive on the bedroom dresser.

“You, talker, give me your cash,” says Mr. 357.

“I don’t have any.”

I hold up the keys to the Crown Vic.

“Want a car?”

The crackhead shifts his stance nervously, pressing the gun hard enough into Vincent’s skull he might be tunneling for gold.

“Don’t fuck with me,” he says. “Give me the money.”

I speak slowly, like I’m trying to explain differential equations to a Chihuahua.

“I’d like to, but I don’t have any.”

Mr. 357 keeps hold of Vincent, but points the gun at me.

“Last chance, cocksucker,” he says.

“Really, man, I want to help.”

I measure the distance between us. It’s too far to grab him before he fires.

“Fuck it,” he says in a tone that I recognize.

As the gun goes off, Vincent screams and I jump to the right, hoping to slip past the bullet.

And I come down in a hurricane. Grit stings my eyes. I put up an arm to keep the wind from blinding me. Overhead, the sky swirls like oil in black water. Things blow by around my ankles. Trash it looks like, but trash that’s alive. The street is still the street, but time seems to be moving very slowly or I’m moving very fast. The slug from the .357 emerges from the barrel like a snail out for an evening stroll. Things boom in the distance. L.A. disappears. Crumbles to the ground. Things like swarms of insects land on the rubble and build the city again. Then it falls apart. And is rebuilt. Ants up the block use the living garbage to assemble other things. Horses. Rivers. Air.

This is it. The note really meant to take a sidestep, right out of reality and into the machinery that keeps the show running. This is the world, just from a different vantage point. Behind the scenes, where you aren’t supposed to peek.

I lean into the wind, struggle a few steps until I’m behind Vincent. I get out the na’at, and this time I take a step to the left. The wind lets up. The sound of the gun going off deafens me. I swing the na’at like a cosh at Mr. 357’s head. His skull makes a satisfying cracking sound and he falls like a hippo with the bends.

Vincent whirls around and looks at me.

“Where did you go?”

“Into the wings. Did you miss me?”

I push Vincent to the car and kick the crackhead’s pistol into Piss Alley. Let’s see if he or the cops have the balls to go in and pick it up. My guess is no.

Jamming the key in the ignition, I start the Crown Vic and head back through Echo Park. Somewhere in the distance, I can hear sirens. When the crackhead tells the cops about the guy who disappeared right before his eyes, they’re as likely to 5150 him as arrest him. Maybe vacationing for a few days in the loony bin will do him some good. The food can’t be worse than any other lockup and I bet the beds are better than jail. Hell, if the county throws us out of Max Overdrive, maybe I can get us all locked up together. It ain’t the Chateau Marmont, but it’s better than trying to live in the car.

And it will have a/c.

I DROP VINCENT back at Max Overdrive and head for Tamerlan Radescu’s place. I need to get as much done tonight as I can, before I turn into a bump on a log tomorrow.

The address on the slip Brigitte gave Julie was on Elrita Drive, near Mulholland. Of course Tamerlan lives in Laurel Canyon. Where else would the prick be?

I head down the winding roads through the hills, past gated palaces with circular drives and fences out back to keep the coyotes from eating the pets. Dump the car on Laurel Canyon Boulevard and go the rest of the way on foot.

The driveway is so long that I can’t see Tamerlan’s house from the road. I’d hop the Spanish tile fence out front, but there will be surveillance and alarms, and maybe even armed security. Instead, I hide in a shadow and take one step to the right.

The hurricane hits me again and I’m backstage. The sky is a whirlpool of glistening oil. The living garbage blows by. Some piles at my feet, tossed by the wind to land on my ankles. They touch me, run their smashed and crumpled bodies up my legs, trying to figure out what I am. Insects destroy and reconstruct the mansion as I watch. The fence disintegrates and I step past it before the insects have a chance to rebuild it.

It’s a long, stumbling walk up the drive. Each step feels like falling, a nauseating sensation. The hurricane blows down the hill, harder than it did on the flatlands. Off to my left lies L.A. Despite the storm, the backstage view of the city is bright and clear and beautiful. Between gusts, I can see all the way to the ocean. Between whitecaps, the water too dries up and is rebuilt by the insects.

Then the house comes into view. It’s a white Italian villa hugging a stone hillside. There are marble lions flanking the entrance. The villa seems more substantial than the fence, more solid than much of what I’ve seen tonight. The walls are translucent, but they stay in place and don’t crumble like so much of the architecture I’ve been seeing. I touch the front door. It stretches like a thin latex membrane. Pressing my face to the thin skin, I push. The wall membrane stretches, and curls, enveloping me. In a few seconds, it peels open and I’m through.

A step to the left, and the wind stops. The world goes back to normal.

I’m in the foyer. A checkered marble floor. Grand piano. Flashy paintings as memorable as motel art on the walls, but probably costing more than a black-­market kidney. A staircase to my left. The kitchen to my right.

I stay put, listening for anything that means ­people are awake.

From upstairs comes laughter. Several ­people. Men’s voices. I take out the Colt and head up the steps.

A few doors down the second floor is a large room. A desk and laptop to one side. Pricey chairs and sofa around a carved coffee table in the center of the room. Tamerlan sits on a leather recliner at one end of the group, his men scattered on the sofa and chairs. Six of them. I put the Colt away. If I could shadow-­walk, I could come through the dark patches on the walls and floor and take the men out. But I can’t figure out how sidestepping will help me do that. So, I go with a different, much dumber strategy. I put the Colt back under my coat and walk into the room unarmed.

Tamerlan sees me first. He holds up a forefinger like he was expecting me.

“That’s close enough,” he says.

His men turn in my direction, then scramble to pull out guns. They’re clearly Sub Rosa and able to throw hoodoo. The fact they went for their guns means they might use the same trick I do: dipping their bullets in Spiritus Dei, a rare and expensive potion that when coated on a bullet will kill fucking anything. I’m not about to put up my hands for these pricks, but I hold them out at waist level so they can see I’m unarmed.

“Do you know who I am?”

Tamerlan nods. The room is full of smoke. Foreign cigars the size of brown burritos sit in crystal ashtrays. Tamerlan still holds his.

“Everyone knows who you are.”

“You don’t seem surprised to see me.”

Tamerlan shrugs. He’s wearing a dark red tracksuit with brown loafers and white socks. It’s a strange look. Part CEO of a software start-­up and part Russian gangster, but his voice doesn’t sound like either. More like an East River tugboat captain than a crooked Dr. Moriarty.

“I knew someone was going to show up, though not you in particular. Why’ve you been you harassing my business partners?”

“Partners? They hate your guts.”

­“People don’t need to be best buddies to do business.”

“No, but it makes for better New Year’s parties.”

“You missed the holidays. But Valentine’s Day is coming soon. I’ll buy you one of those boxes of chocolates shaped like a heart before I have my men kill you.”

“Speaking of hearts, I want to talk to you about the guy whose heart you had cut out.”

He puffs his cigar, blows smoke. It hangs blue over his head.

“How did you get in here?” he says.

“I walked through the wall.”

“Yeah. I heard you could do shit like that, but I wasn’t sure I believed it.”

He turns to his men.

“Shoot this asshole.”

Before he actually gets near the word asshole, I’ve dropped to my knees, pressed my hands to the dark wood floor. A shot tears out a piece of the doorframe over my head as I shout Hellion hoodoo. The rest of the shots go up into the ceiling as Tamerlan’s men fall where I made the floor disappear. I shout more hoodoo and the floor reappears. Tamerlan sits up straight in his chair. His is the only part of the floor I left untouched. He puts down his cigar, tries to play it cool and not show shock, but the microtremors in his hands give him away. I close the door and speak a little more hoodoo. The door and windows fade away and are replaced by a smooth surface of walls. Tamerlan looks around at his redecorated room.

“You know you’re going to die, right? I’m tight with the Augur, and Abbot takes care of important ­people.”

I go to his desk. His phone is lying on top. I throw it against the wall and it shatters into a thousand pieces.

“You’re going to have to shout pretty loud for the Augur to hear you in here.”

“My men will be up here in a minute.”

“Maybe. But the ones without broken legs will take a while to get inside. In the meantime, we’re going to talk.”

“About what?”

“The dead man. Well, two dead men. One you took away from Murphy Ranch and one you left to rot.”

“I never heard of Murphy Ranch.”

He picks up his cigar and sticks it in his mouth.

I go over to him and pull Vincent’s knife from my pocket. Tamerlan freezes. I stick the tip of the knife into the glowing end of his cigar and push it through the full length of the stogie until it bumps into Tamerlan’s teeth.

“You remember anything now? Or do I keep pushing?”

He lets go of the cigar. I shake the knife so the smoke falls on the floor. Tamerlan picks up the cigar and tosses it into an ashtray so it won’t burn the pretty rug.

“What exactly is it you think I did?” he says.

“You and the White Light Legion—­which is where I’m guessing your pet poodles downstairs came from—­you did a ritual to corral and bind Death into a human body.”

“Why would I do that?”

“I’ve been thinking about that. Once you control Death, I figure that you were planning on making a fortune selling life-­extension policies to ­people who don’t want to die.”

Tamerlan leans back in his chair again, a little more relaxed now that he knows I’m not just here to kill him. He shakes his head.

“That’s cute, but it’s not much of a business model. I’m a necromancer. Death is my bread and butter. Anyway, the life-­extension idea wouldn’t work.”

“Why not?”

“It’s too obvious. A bunch of rich jerks stick around too long and ­people start getting suspicious. And tampering with death itself? That’s heavy baleful magic. We both know that if the Augur or his ­people find out, you can get put in a box in the ground for that kind of thing. It’s not worth the risk.”

I watch his eyes as he talks, waiting for a change in his pupils. They dilate a little with tension, but that’s it. He’s not lying.

Time to shift gears.

“Are you Wormwood? Admit it. Wormwood is a front for your Dead Head business and any other shit you’re into. It’s a way to launder all your money so it can’t be traced to you.”

He chuckles and shakes his head, briefly putting a hand over his face.

“Oh man, you don’t know anything about anything, do you? I don’t have to launder money because, whatever opinion you might happen to have about my business, I’m legit. I make plenty of money from spirit conjurations for a few select clients and from my franchises. That’s it. It’s not that I have anything against being crooked, it’s just that I don’t have to be.”

“But you know ­people who need money laundered.”

“That’s neither here nor there. Sure, I work with Wormwood, but I’m not them.”

“What exactly is Wormwood, then? Do the White Lights launder their money? They have enough muscle they could run it.”

“Now you’re just guessing.”

“Okay. Let’s back up a little: What is Wormwood?”

Tamerlan sits back and squares his shoulders.

“Pal, if you needed to know about Wormwood, trust me, they’d make sure you did.”

“What if I broke your arms and legs and burned down your house if you don’t tell me more?”

He laughs again.

“You’re not going to do that. You’re dumb, but not that dumb.”

“What makes you think that?”

“You want something. Killing me won’t get it, but maybe I can be useful when you find it. But I can’t be if I’m dead. Plus, the Augur wouldn’t like it.”

I think for a minute.

Tamerlan takes a new cigar from a wooden humidor by his chair.

“Your problem is that you’ve got a Jesse James complex. You’re an outlaw. That’s how you think and that’s how you think everybody else thinks. You don’t think like a businessman. In business, the trick is maximizing profit and longevity. I go playing with baleful magic and talking out of school about Wormwood, I’m going against both of those principles.”

“Let’s try something else. A business deal.”

“I’m listening.”

“Someone bound Death in a human body and he can’t get out.”

“If you say so.”

“I want to hire you to do an exorcism. You can do those, right? I want you to pull Death out of the body of this Townsend guy so he can be himself again.”

Tamerlan shakes his head.

“This human body you’re talking about, was this Townsend still in it when someone corked Death inside?”

“No. They killed Townsend and bound Death to the body.”

Tamerlan holds up his hands.

“Then you’re shit out of luck. Exorcisms only work when a spirit takes hold of an inhabited body. Your body was empty when Death entered it. He’s the animus now. The life force. You don’t exorcize that.”

Fucking hell. I don’t know enough about death magic to make any headway with this guy and he knows it. I should have studied up. This whole thing is like an anxiety dream where you show up without pants for a final exam in a class you never went to.

Then I get it.

“I know you’re involved.”

“How?”

“Because there’s a brand on the body Death’s inhabiting. It’s a necromancer’s mark.”

“Bullshit. You got a picture?”

I take out my phone and show him the photo.

Tamerlan bursts out laughing, hands me the phone.

“Oh my God, you’re so much stupider than I thought. How do you remember to zip your fly, you fucking idiot?”

“You’re saying that’s not a Dead Head mark?”

“No, asshole. It’s the logo for a talent agency.”

That’s not the answer I was expecting.

“Come here,” he says.

We go to his desk. He touches the space bar on his laptop to wake it up, and types a URL into the browser. A second later, a page appears. It’s for the Evermore Creatives Group. The logo, the exact shape of Death’s brand, is at the top of the page with the agency’s name. I stare at the page, trying to figure it out. Trying to find Tamerlan’s angle. How he’s tricking me.

I type in a few more URLs and they all come up on real pages that I recognize. I put the agency’s name into a search engine. When I check the results, they take me back to the page Tamerlan showed me. Death’s mark and Townsend’s body’s big secret is that he was probably some kind of small-­time actor.

I say, “What kind of talent agency brands its clients?”

“Why don’t you go break into their fucking place and leave me alone?”

This is bad. Was I this wrong the whole time? Is he really just a Mr. Moneybags creep and not the secret boss of the White Lights? He won’t tell me about Wormwood, so he could be lying. Or maybe there’s something about Wormwood that scares him the way he scares his minions. I think I just wasted a lot of time and hoodoo on nothing. I haven’t been this wrong about anything since I bought a Genesis album because I was drunk and I thought the lady with the fox head on the cover was kind of hot.

Tamerlan claps me on the shoulder and sits down behind the desk.

“Holy shit, thanks for coming tonight, Stark. With ­people not dying and business being off, I needed a good laugh.”

I look at him.

“Aren’t you worried about what’s going to happen to you when you die? You must have pissed off a lot of dead ­people in your time. Some of them will be waiting for you in Hell.”

“I’m not worried,” he says. “A little bird told me that some do-­gooder changed Hell all around. Made it nice for ­people. He even opened the door so souls can go to Heaven. The way I figure it, anyone who might have been waiting for my ass won’t be there to give me grief. And who knows? I might like Hell with all the riffraff cleared out. I could set up business there. Cut deals with necromancers back here to get souls and information for them.”

He aims a finger at me.

“That’s what I mean about you not thinking like a businessman. What you think of as death and damnation, I see as another capital opportunity.”

I’m having trouble taking in all the ways I’ve fucked up in the last few days. Am I missing something? Is Tamerlan dancing around me, hiding his White Light connections? If he is, I’m goddamn sure not going to find them right now. I need to get clear and think.

I go to his humidor and take one of his cigars, put it in my pocket. I could kill Tamerlan right now and no one would weep for the bastard. But I’m not going to do that, on the off chance that he really isn’t involved in the case. Besides, I don’t have to. ­People like Tamerlan, sharp guys who think they have all the angles covered, eventually end up playing fast and loose with the wrong ­people. All I have to do is sit back and wait and watch. He’ll dig his own grave.

“Thanks for the cigar,” I say.

“Thanks for the good time tonight. I can’t wait to tell the boys all about it.”

“You do that.”

I sidestep to the right and go back into the storm. Walk through a wall and back outside, leaving Tamerlan stuck in his doorless, windowless office. Fuck him and his mansion. Let his dog boys chisel him out.

I go back to the car and drive home. The only thing worse than having Tamerlan laugh in my face is knowing I’m going to have to tell Julie about it without making myself sound too stupid.

I toss his cigar out the window.

“YOU DID WHAT?”

Julie is shouting. I’ve never heard her shout before. It isn’t a pleasant sound, especially when the shouting is aimed at me.

“I talked to Tamerlan last night.”

“He just let you into his home in the middle of the night?”

“Eventually.”

“You mean you broke in.”

“Technically, I walked in.”

“But you weren’t invited, so it’s still breaking and entering.”

“He let me have one of his cigars, so he couldn’t have been too mad.”

She’s at her desk. She drops her head into her hands.

“Did he recognize you?”

“Our kind of ­people pretty much know who I am by now.”

“Our kind? You mean ­people who break into other ­people’s homes and threaten them?”

“No. I meant ­people who deal in hoodoo.”

She brings her head back up and looks at me.

“I can’t begin to tell you how many ways I’m angry right now.”

“Sorry.”

“That’s all you have to say?”

Candy crosses and uncrosses her legs nervously.

“What he means is this will never happen again. Isn’t that right?”

She turns to me.

“Yes. What she said. Never again.”

Julie blows out a long stream of air.

“Do you think this is going to come back at us? I mean, should I be talking to a lawyer?”

I shake my head.

“I don’t think Tamerlan wants everyone knowing how easy it was to get into his place. Plus, I kind of rearranged the architecture. He has that to take care of.”

Julie stares at me. I’m not explaining myself well.

“He laughed in my face. I don’t think he’s coming after you or anyone else ’cause he had too good a time with me. And he’ll have a better time telling his friends what a fuckup I am. Your agency is safe.”

“You better hope so. I’m not losing everything I’ve worked for because you can’t help playing cowboy.”

Candy says, “You have to admit, though, that he came back with some good information. We were still going page by page through old magic texts. How long would it have taken us to figure out the mark came from a talent agency?”

Julie purses her lips and looks away.

“That doesn’t get him off the hook for anything.”

She turns back to me. I nod, trying to look sorrier than I feel, part of my indentured servitude.

“I understand. But shouldn’t we follow up on this lead? The Evermore Creatives Group is right down on Wilshire.”

“What I should do is cut you loose right now, just to protect myself. You understand that, right?”

“If you want me gone, just say the word.”

“I didn’t say I was going to, just that I should. You still know things about the magic world that we need.”

She sits back, thinking.

“Consider yourself on probation,” she says.

“That sounds fair,” says Candy.

I nod.

“Thanks.”

Julie says, “Remember that I went out on a limb for you two. All I’m asking is that you consider your actions in the future.”

She’s right. She saved Candy. Okay, now I feel bad.

“I’ll clear things with you in the future.”

“Thank you.”

“What are we going to do about Evermore Creatives?” says Candy.

“We do need to check it out. But I should do some research before we approach them directly. Find out who they are.”

“They peddle B actors and dancing girls to the movies,” I say. “What else do we need to know?”

“Thank you for that succinct description, but I prefer to go in with facts,” says Julie.

“Stark could keep an eye on the place while we go into the background. See who goes in and out,” says Candy.

“That’s something we could do, or you could go with Stark. He keeps an eye on the agency and you keep an eye on him.”

“I’d really rather do computer stuff with you.”

“This is the way it has to be. Stark needs a babysitter and it’s not going to be me.”

“Okay,” says Candy, and gives me a look I don’t want to see again.

“I promise to be good,” I say.

“See that you are. Now both of you get out of here. I have a lot of work to do. I have to give my lawyer a call just to let him know what might be coming.”

Julie turns to her computer in such a way that I know it’s time to leave. I start down the stairs and Candy follows.

Outside, she walks fast, heading away from me. It takes a few steps for me to catch up.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean for you to get caught up in my shit.”

She stops, looks at me, and puts on her black sunglasses.

“But you did. I’m not ready to sit in a car with you all day. I need to walk for a little while. Follow me in the car. Drive around the block. I don’t care, but don’t talk to me for a while.”

She walks away. I light a cigarette and watch her. I thought today might go something like this, but I didn’t want Candy to end up as collateral damage. I don’t think even finding her brass knuckles right now would get me back in good with her. And she’d punch me if I bought her flowers or something stupid like that. Better just to keep my head down and my mouth shut. I get in the Crown Vic and follow her down Sunset.

She crosses over to my side of the street at Fountain Avenue and gets into the backseat. I look at her through the rearview mirror. If she’s less angry, I can’t see it.

“Don’t talk,” she says. “Just drive.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Shut up.”

Heading to Wilshire, I’m careful to obey all traffic laws and stoplights. This would be a lousy day to get a ticket.

A lousier day, I mean.

I PARK THE car down the block from the Evermore Creatives Group. Far enough away not to be noticed, but close enough to see the main entrance. It’s an ordinary office building. A concrete, steel, and glass shoe box tipped on its side along a quiet section of the boulevard. Mostly hotels, drugstores, and lunch joints down here for the tourists who can’t afford thirty dollars for a room-­ser­vice burrito.

Candy moved up to the front seat when we parked, but hasn’t said much since. She’s just been screwing around with her phone. I roll down the window and have a smoke. Couriers with packages and snappily dressed men and women go in and out of the building. A lousy actress from a C-­minus caper movie I saw a while back comes outside, walking a husky on a leash. A FedEx truck pulls up. The driver unloads packages and takes them inside. A ­couple walks by holding hands, eating tacos.

“I don’t know if I can do this much longer. The excitement is killing me.”

Candy shushes me.

She likes to play a game on her phone called Mecha Disco. It’s sort of like Dance Dance Revolution, but with robots and lasers that blow up the dancers when they can’t follow the beat. But she isn’t wearing her headphones and her phone isn’t beeping and shaking like a Martian vibrator. I lean back in my seat, trying to see what she’s doing.

“Stop that,” she says.

“What are you doing?”

“Just ’cause I’m away from the computer doesn’t mean I can’t do background research on Evermore Creatives.”

“Find anything interesting?”

“Not especially. They’ve been around since the thirties. They used to handle a lot of musical acts, but couldn’t compete with the big agencies, so they went small and boutique.”

“Who do they handle now?”

“Mostly ghosts. A lot of famous ones too. The big agencies worked with them when they were living—­”

“And ECG got them when they kicked. It’s a smart deal. ­People are dead a lot longer than they’re alive.”

“But they still represent some regular acts too,” she says.

“Probably to keep up appearances. No one wants to be pigeonholed in this town.”

“Get this. They make a lot of money selling wild-­blue-­yonder contracts.”

“Of course. Every star needs one.”

“No. They sell to civilians. It’s almost as big as their ghost business. Isn’t that a little weird?”

She’s right. I puff the Malediction. A guy walking by with a yoga mat under his arm makes a face when he passes through a cloud of my fumes.

“Excuse you,” he says.

I wave to him.

“Have a blessed day.”

“There’s something I don’t understand,” says Candy.

“Why does a talent agency brand its clients?”

“Exactly. That doesn’t sound like a business–client relationship. That’s more like . . .” She searches for the right word. “Ownership.”

“Maybe they owned Eric Townsend. I want to know why a talent agency is doing business with the White Light Legion.”

Candy stares at her phone. She’s still mad, but at least she’s talking.

“We don’t know that they are,” she says. “It could just be the one guy.”

“I wonder if that one guy lived with the other zoo animals in Laurel Canyon?”

“Julie might know. I’ll e-­mail her.”

“Send her my love.”

“See me typing? That means I’m ignoring you.”

I drop the rest of the Malediction out the window, look around for somewhere to get coffee. If I can’t have Aqua Regia, maybe caffeine will help me get my brain around all that’s happened in the last few days.

I say, “What do we have? Someone killed Eric Townsend and dragged him and another stiff out to a Nazi condo in the woods.”

Candy sets down her phone.

“One that’s not easy to get to. That would be a hard hike carrying two corpses.”

“Right. The White Lights performed a ritual to bind Death to one of the bodies, dumped it, and then went to all the trouble of hauling the first body out of there.”

“Why leave a body behind when you just bound an angel inside?” she says.

“Maybe those kids partying spooked them. Remember, Death was locked in a rotting corpse. He wasn’t going anywhere until Varg took the knife out of his chest. What I want to know is why the White Lights were so in love with one body that they dragged it to the ranch, then humped it all the way back out again.”

“And assuming it was magicians from the Silver Legion that did the ritual,” says Candy, “why talk about Wormwood? What does Tamerlan’s bank have to do with Death?”

“I’d like to see that other body. I bet it had an ECG brand on it too.”

“There’s a lot more we don’t know. Who is Sigrun?”

“And who or what is the new Death?”

“I’ve been looking for actors, singers—­anyone in L.A. involved in show business named Sigrun. I haven’t found anything.”

I point at the ECG building.

“I’ll bet you a dozen donuts she has a blue-­yonder contract with those creeps.”

“Or she could work there. Or just be a freelancer they brought in for the job, which will make it harder to track her down.”

A seagull circles overhead and shits on the Crown Vic’s hood. The bird was probably aiming for me and missed.

“It’s no fun going over things if you aren’t going to jump to conclusions with me.”

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to avoid doing,” Candy says.

I look at her.

“I haven’t seen you so latched on to something since Doc Kinski died.”

She flips through screens on her phone, looks up at me.

“I’m liking this private-­eye thing. I like learning things and doing smart work.”

“So, does that makes the work we did before dumb stuff?”

“That’s not what I mean. I liked kicking in doors and punching bad guys with you. But sometimes I missed working with Doc. I learned things working at the clinic with Allegra, but it wasn’t the same. Now there’s this new thing and I think I could get pretty good at it. What do you think?”

“I think you can do whatever you set your mind to.”

“But do you think I’m wasting my time with Julie?”

“You’re doing a lot better than I am. And if brainwork is what you want, I think you can handle anything she throws at you.”

“Thanks.”

She smiles.

“Now let’s see if you can get me out of the doghouse with her.”

“I’m not sure anyone’s that smart.”

She holds up her phone and takes a photo.

“What are you shooting?”

“I’m Instagramming the seagull shit.”

“Good idea. It could be a Nazi seagull.”

“Please. Seagulls are anarchists,” Candy says. “They don’t play by anybody’s rules but their own.”

I open my mouth to argue with her, but what comes out is, “Oh shit.”

She turns where I’m looking.

“What is it?”

“Lock the back door on the passenger side. I’ll be back in a second.”

I get out and walk as fast as I can without attracting attention.

Outside the ECG office, David Moore is having a friendly chat with his phone. I wait until he’s facing away, come up behind him, and put the black blade to his back.

“Hang up,” I whisper. “Tell them you’ll call back later.”

Without missing a beat he says, “Babe, I’ve got to call you back. Something’s come up.”

I turn off the phone for him and put it in his pocket.

“Let’s take a ride.”

“Why can’t we talk here? I won’t run away.”

“I don’t like the sun. My scars don’t tan. I end up with freaky white railroad tracks all over my face.”

“Where are we going?”

“Back here for now. Later, who knows?”

I walk him to the Crown Vic. Candy leans over the seats and opens the rear passenger-­side door. I shove Moore inside and get in next to him.

He looks at Candy in her big black shades, black lipstick, and pink hair.

“This is Chihiro,” I say. “She has a gun and a phone, so it’s fifty-­fifty whether she’ll shoot you or Instagram you.”

“I told you, I’m not going to run.”

“You got that right,” she says.

She crooks her finger at me.

“Can we talk a minute?”

I keep the knife against Moore’s ribs and lean up where I can talk to Candy.

She whispers, “This is kidnapping, exactly the kind of thing Julie doesn’t want us doing.”

“I suppose you’re right. Maybe you should leave that part out of your report.”

“This once, but we seriously need to work on your bedside manner.”

“Good plan. But I already have Moore, so let’s see what we can get out him.”

“Fine.”

I swivel around so I’m facing Moore again. He’s pressed up against the door, as far from me as he can get.

I say, “You wanted to sell me a wild-­blue-­yonder contract a few days ago. Actually, you lied to me—­said you were with the L.A. Times—­then you tried to sell me a contract.”

“So? I embellished a little. Welcome to show business.”

“Why come to me?”

“I told you before, the agency wants A-­listers. You’d fit right into our Smoking Gun department.”

“What’s a Smoking Gun department?”

“I think he means crooks,” says Candy.

“Is that what you mean? Who else do you have in there?”

“Client names and affiliations are confidential.”

“But basically you want me to do a dog and pony show with Johnny Stompanato for some rich idiot’s sweet sixteen party?”

Moore frowns.

“I don’t have to tell you anything.”

“What else do you do for ECG?”

“I just look for clients.”

“For wild-­blue-­yonder contracts.”

“Yes.”

“You must have a lot.”

“Not as many as you might think. We have high standards. Only the right backgrounds get an offer.”

“What’s the right background?”

“That’s also confidential.”

“Show me your left arm.”

I grab his arm and pull it straight so Candy can hold him by the wrist.

He wiggles and pulls, but she’s got him tight.

“Don’t hurt me,” he says.

I hold up the knife.

“It’ll only hurt if you move.”

Digging the knife into a seam, I slit the sleeve of his jacket and shirt all the way up to his shoulder. Up near his armpit is a brand in the shape of the ECG logo.

“What does the brand mean?” I say.

“That’s confidential.”

“You’re talking to a bored man with a knife. What will I cut next?”

Moore looks from me to Candy. She shrugs.

“Don’t look at me. There’s no reasoning when he gets this way.”

I say, “Let me get things rolling. I bet you have a blue-­yonder contract. Is that what the tattoo means?”

He nods.

“Why mark ­people?” says Candy. “Is it to scare off other agencies?”

“Partly,” Moore says. “But it’s to let paramedics and morticians know, anyone who might work with dead bodies, about the contract.”

“A blue yonder is about the spirit,” I say. “Why does the body matter?”

“Each brand is a little different.”

“Like a serial number,” says Candy.

“Yeah. They use it to confirm you’re dead so the necromancers can collect your soul.”

I tap his leg with the knife, thinking.

“How long does a contract last?”

“Indefinitely,” he says.

“So, basically ECG owns you forever. Who told you to come to me?”

“No one. I’m a salesman. Getting you to sign would have been a big deal for my career.”

I look at his eyes, trying to read him, but he’s too scared for me to get anything useful.

“You know you’re talking to someone with a history of erratic behavior, right? And I’m holding a knife.”

He looks at the ceiling for a minute. Candy lets go of his arm and he snatches it back.

“It was my boss,” he says.

“Who’s your boss?”

“Mr. Burgess.”

“And who told him?”

“I don’t know.”

“Someone from the White Light Legion? Wormwood?”

“How do you know about Wormwood?”

With all the conviction of a good liar, Candy says, “We know all about Wormwood. They own your agency.”

Moore narrows his eyes, but his face relaxes a little.

“No, they don’t. The Burgess family owns it. You don’t know anything about Wormwood, do you?”

I prod him with the knife.

“Why don’t you enlighten us?”

Candy’s phone rings.

In the split second she and I look at the phone, Moore pulls the door handle and stumbles out onto Wilshire. He sprints across the street, dodging traffic like a goddamn ballet dancer. He almost makes it to the other side when a van pulls out of a parking space down the block, peels rubber, and mows him down. I get out of the car, ready to go after it.

Candy tackles me and pulls me out of the street just as a blue Honda Civic sideswipes the Crown Vic and takes off. I don’t have to run after it this time. I recognize the car from the other night when it shot up the front of Max Overdrive. That means the van that took out Moore was another White Light vehicle.

“Where’d he go?” says Candy.

I look up and down the street. There’s no evidence left of Moore’s collision but some skid marks and blood.

“They must have grabbed his body. Let’s get out of here.”

We jump in the car. It starts and drives just fine. All the damage the Civic did to it was cosmetic.

“Why are we running?” says Candy. “Somebody back there must have gotten our license plate. The cops will find us at home. Or find Julie.”

“Not necessarily,” I say. “After the other night, when the White Lights got our number, I switched plates.”

“With who?”

“A Porsche by Bamboo House. I took them while the owner was inside drinking mai tais.”

“So, besides kidnapping, we’ve been riding around in a car with stolen plates.”

“Yeah. Are going to rat me out?”

“Are you kidding? If I told Julie this shit, she wouldn’t fire us. She’d have us arrested.”

“Was she the one who called?”

Candy looks at her phone.

“Yes. I’ll call her back when we get home.”

“That’ll give us time to get our stories straight.”

“You’re going to change the plates back to the real ones. And throw the damned Porsche plates away.”

“What are we going to tell Julie about the car?”

Candy thinks a minute.

“We didn’t see it happen. We went for chicken and waffles, and when we came out, we found it this way.”

“That’s good. I’d buy that.”

No one talks for a while, then Candy says, “I don’t want to have to lie for you again.”

“You won’t. And thanks for saving me back there.”

“I had to. You still owe me brass knuckles.”

“I’m working on it.”

“You better be.”

“You’ve got to admit, though. The thing with the cars. That was a rush back there.”

“Yeah, it was,” she says. “Poor stupid Moore.”

“Poor? An ECG employee is going to get priority treatment. They’re probably processing his blue yonder right now. He’s going to be fine.”

“I wonder what he’ll end up doing?”

“Probably babysitting his Smoking Gun goons. Once a company man . . .”

“Always a company man.”

WHEN WE GET back to Max Overdrive, Kasabian and Vincent are sitting on the step by the front door. Kasabian is eating a donut and Vincent is sniffing the bag like a starving dog.

I park and we go over.

“Knock it off,” I tell Vincent. “You look like my grandma huffing paint.”

“Sorry,” he says, and sets the bag on the step. “It just smells nice.”

“What’s going on?” says Candy.

Kasabian hooks a thumb over his shoulder. There’s a piece of paper glued to the door and chains on the lock. Candy shades her eyes so she can read the notice.

“It’s from the county,” she says. “It has something to do with the eminent domain, but I can’t understand anything past that.”

“Take a picture and send it to Julie,” I say. “It’s another message. More harassment from the White Lights.”

Vincent studies the dents and scrapes along the Crown Vic’s side.

“What happened to your car?” he says.

“A Nazi tried to run me down.”

He looks at the locked door, then to me.

“I think the Nazis are winning.”

“He’s right,” says Kasabian.

He gets up and clanks over to me.

“You can do something, right? Just break the door down.”

“I wouldn’t try,” says Candy.

“Why?”

She holds up her phone.

“This is a Vigil app, kind of an augmented reality thing. It detects and displays traces of magic.”

I look at the screen. Max Overdrive is rimmed in pulsing neon green.

“That’s cool. Good for the Vigil.”

“Fuck the Vigil,” says Kasabian. “Can you break the door down?”

I shake my head.

“Whatever kind of hoodoo they’re using, it looks powerful. If I knocked the door down the blowback would probably wreck the whole store.”

“That’s what someone wants,” says Candy. “For you to break in. The county calls in the sheriff’s department, and they seize the property out from under us.”

“We get thrown out of the Chateau Marmont and now we can’t even go home,” says Kasabian. “Vincent and me, we don’t have any clothes but what we’re wearing. We were out getting food.”

I haven’t eaten all day. I take a donut out of the bag. Chocolate glaze. It’s pretty good.