Sandman Slim

It's full of Alice's things, whatever things Vidocq could salvage from whatever happened to her that night. I know that the box will be safe to open. He wouldn't have saved anything with blood on it, but it still takes a minute to work up the nerve.

There are neatly folded T-shirts and panties on top, which is funny because I don't think Alice or I ever folded anything in our lives. Under those are her favorite shoes, a pair of glow-in-the-dark leopard-spotted Chuck Taylors. There are pesos and taxidermy frogs playing toy instruments we got on a road trip to Mexico. Tucked in a corner near the bottom is a pair of vintage Ray Bans she'd hot-glued back together after a bouncer knocked them off her face for slamming too hard at a club in Culver City. These days, I would have pulled the guy's spine out through his ass, but I wasn't such a hands-on type back then. A simple Sumerian spell gave the bouncer the worst case of food poisoning he'd have in this or any other lifetime.

When I piled it all on the bed, a small white box that had been stuffed in with the T-shirts fell out. When I opened it, I recognized the box instantly. It was that stupid magic-shop box with the hole in the bottom and the fake bloody cotton inside. The one she'd used to show me that she could do magic, too. I put the magic box in my pocket and the rest of her stuff back in the big box and carry it out into the living room.

Allegra and Vidocq are still taking inventory, but pause long enough to grin at me.

"Eugene says that I can be his apprentice and learn to be an alchemist."

"Congratulations. Just don't forget that we had a deal. I'm letting you into the other world, the Sub Rosa, but you still have to help me with a few things, too. And you can't abandon Max Overdrive. It may not be much, but it brings in money and, unless things changed while I was gone, that's what makes the world go round."

"I'll remember. We'll go out tomorrow and get you a phone."

"And the Internet. We need to get that, too."

"First thing, never say 'Get the Internet.' You sound like the Beverly Hillbillies. You 'use' the Internet or you 'access' it. You never 'get' it."

"See? That's why I hired you."

She turns to Vidocq. "Don't listen to him. He didn't hire me. I blackmailed his ass."

"Is this true?" he asks.

"Ignore her. She's schizophrenic and a pathological liar. I only let her work at the shop to keep her from swindling widows and orphans."

"You just can't handle the truth, can you?"

"And what's that?" I ask her.

"That I totally made you my bitch."

"See? Not a word of truth can pass her lips." I take the box with Alice's things and go to the door. "I don't know how long it'll take me to pay you for the Spiritus Dei."

"I was going to bring that up. I know someone who can help with both the Spiritus Dei and provide some work. Work that's more in line with your talents than your video store. The fellow's name is Muninn. Mr. Muninn."

"Why do I want extra work? I have a job. Killing Mason."

"And how is that money you stole from the man near the cemetery holding up? How much did that jacket and those boots cost you?" Vidocq crosses to the window and pulls back the curtain. Clouds have softened the sunlight, but it's still all billboards, brown hills, and asphalt below. A couple of burly kids in baggy denim jackets are doing a brisk trade in what the buyers will be hoping is crack, but in this part of town is probably baking soda and plaster. Across the street, a couple of leathery-skinned old men are selling oranges and watermelons off the back of a pickup truck. They're probably illegals and new in town. They don't know which neighborhoods are profitable and which are dead zones. Or maybe the orange and watermelon Mafia muscled them out of their territory and this was the best they could do.

"You see it, right? Even here, where there is very little, this is a world that runs on money. There's no arena here for you to fight in. No rich fallen angels to pay your bills."

"Fallen angels?" Allegra asks.

"It's just an expression," I tell her. Turning back to Vidocq, I say, "In case you hadn't noticed, I live in a store. Allegra runs the store. Stores bring in money."

Allegra says, "Not really."

"What do you mean?"

"The store's never really turned a profit. There's a Blockbuster and some other big chains just a couple blocks away. The porn keeps the doors open, but most of the real money came from Mr. Kasabian's bootleg business, and now that's gone."

"Stop calling Kasabian 'mister' all the time. He doesn't deserve it." Out the window, the crack dealers are buying oranges from the old men in the truck. The cultural divide between homegrown American entrepreneurism and immigrant ambition is being bridged right before our eyes. It's an inspiring moment. Maybe the old men will let me sell oranges with them off the back of their truck when Max Overdrive closes and I'm homeless again.

"What's this guy's name again?" I ask Vidocq.

"Mr. Muninn."

I nod like the name means something to me. "Okay. Let's meet him."

"I want to show my new apprentice a few more things, so we'll do it tonight."

"Sounds good." I start to leave, but Allegra calls me.

"How am I supposed to get back if you take the car?"

"You take it. I jimmied the ignition, so you can start it with a flathead screwdriver. Vidocq will give you one. Ditch the car at least ten blocks from the shop."

The sound of shots comes through the window and we all turn. The two crack kids are on the ground in widening pools of blood, and a powder-blue Chevy lowrider is speeding away. Oh well. It's like the real estate people say, "Location, location, location."

"How will you get back?" asks Allegra.

"I know a shortcut." I go out into the hall, step through a shadow next to the door opposite and come out in the alley behind Max Overdrive. I go in through the back and straight upstairs. The morning crew has cleaned the place up pretty well and taped the front-door glass back together reasonably well. Some customers look at me, but I don't look back.

In my room—this is my room now; that other place is Vidocq's—I put the box with Alice's things on a shelf in the closet where I'd kept Kasabian's head. I wish he was still here. I'd put one of Alice's T-shirts over his head at night, the way old ladies drape parakeet cages. Sleep tight, motherfucker, with my murdered girl's shirt for a nightcap.

I wonder where Parker has taken Kasabian and what he's done with him. Only one thing makes sense. Parker has killed him. After I set off the trap back at Mason's place, he and Parker realized I was back. They checked on the rest of the Circle and found Kasabian was gone. Knowing what a rancid little worm he was, Mason would figure that he'd start blathering secrets sooner or later. It would be simpler and easier just to kill him. Sweet dreams, Kas. I might not have killed you, you know. You were just too damned pathetic. Leaving you to your little store and the dreams of the power the others swindled you out of might have been punishment enough. I could have been happy to see you live another fifty years trying to make lemonade out of your misery.

I take the little magic box from Alice's things and set it on the table beside the bed. I don't dwell on it sitting on that crap table in this nowhere room. Let it go. Don't think. It's what you're best at.

I'd picked up the habit of playing movies on the monitor Kasabian used to make his bootlegs. Mostly I watched old Shaw Brothers chop socky stuff. Five Deadly Venoms. The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. Dirty Ho. Or spaghetti westerns. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The Great Silence. Four for the Apocalypse. The sound of fighting, even movie fighting, is weirdly comforting when I'm falling asleep. Something else is playing now, and I don't remember having left the set on. It's Fitzcarraldo, a German movie about a crazy Irishman who tries to drag a riverboat over a mountain in the Amazon. It almost kills him. Is this a message? Did Parker leave this playing for me? After he broke in, why didn't he wait to ambush me?

I take the Veritas off its chain and do something I wanted to do last night. I flip the coin and ask, "Is Doc Kinski for real?" When I catch it, the Veritas is showing a symbol it's never displayed before. A calopus. Imagine a flying wolverine covered in porcupine quills dripping with enough poison to give God himself a sore ass. That's a calopus. Written in Hellion script around the edge of the coin's face is, If assholes had assholes, Kinski is the shit that would come out of that asshole. I've never see the Veritas say that about anyone before, Hellion, angel, human, or beast.

Like every sentient creature in the underworld, the Veritas has strong opinions. Using the Veritas well means being able to separate facts from its horror-show editorials. This is good news. There's only one reason it would hate anyone like that.

Kinski is one of the good guys. Okay. Time to take the doc's advice.

I leave Fitzcarraldo running with the sound off and dig around on the worktable until I find a creased AAA map of L.A. After I unfold it on the floor, take out the piece of lead the doc gave me, and start drawing a magic circle around it, I can't remember any specific locator spells, but the idea is pretty simple and I know I can fake my way through one.

The circle is complex. Hellion magic is always complex—either that or so simple, Fungus could do it. There's not much in the middle when Hellions are in charge.

When it feels like the circle is done, when the map is completely enclosed and I've loaded in every luck, hunting, and eavesdropping charm I can think of, I reach up for more junk off the table. A piece of string and some foil from a burrito wrapper. I wad up the foil and tie it to the bottom of the string, making a pendulum. Then I take my knife and slice across the palm of my left hand. Squeezing hard before the wound closes, I sprinkle blood around and inside the magic circle.

Hell doesn't run on prayers or promises. Downtown magic is about reaching out and grabbing what you want, and that requires payment. An offering. Blood. Black magic on Earth isn't so different and it's why so many dark magicians dress like cashiers at Hot Topic. Black is a good color anytime you're flinging around blood.

I start chanting, a free-form mix of Hellion and English, ordering whatever Lurkers, spirits, magical pinheads and old, forgotten gods who happen to be nearby to turn down The Price Is Right and listen up. Show me where Mason is. I paid you my blood, now give me what I want. I command you. Give me what you owe me. I have the key to all the doors in the universe. You don't want to even dream of cheating me.

The foil ball on the end of the string begins to move, making little circles where I hold it over the map. The movement becomes steady and strong, pulling my hand and my whole arm in circles, too. Then it stops. The foil slams onto the map like it's magnetized. I pull the pendulum away and look at where it landed. Just a little north of Hollywood Boulevard and Las Palmas, right on top of Max Overdrive.

Cute. I should have seen that one coming. Mason stuck a reversal gag on anyone stupid enough to look for him with magic.

On the floor, the map wads itself up and bursts into flame. A lick of fire reaches up like a burning claw and snatches the pendulum from my hand. Both the map and pendulum disintegrate into ashes and drift away on a breeze blowing in from some other part of Creation.

That was an Amateur Hour move. Now I know why Parker didn't go for me the night he took Kasabian. Why should he bother? I've proven that I'm dumb enough to walk into a bear trap marked with a big flashing neon sign that says warning: bear trap. I'm a killer who hasn't managed to kill anything. And it must be clear to everyone paying attention that I'm not Sam Spade. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm running on instinct and hunches.

Killing is a funny thing. Even if it's killing a Hellion general, one so psychotic that even other Hellions want him dead, the first time you commit murder, you're going to get sicker than you've ever been in your life and it's going to last for days. The second time you commit murder, you're going to get just as sick, but you're going to be over it the next day. The third time you commit murder, you change into that extra shirt you brought along, the one that's not covered in blood, and you go out for a drink. After that, killing doesn't feel like much of anything at all. Of course, I haven't killed a human yet. I'm not sure how I'm going to feel about it when the time comes.

Maybe it's not such a bad thing that Alice isn't here to see what I've become.

I sit down on the edge of the bed and pick up the magic box, roll it around in my hands, then set it back on the table. On the TV, some poor Indian has just died hauling Fitzcarraldo's boat over the mountain. The Indian's friends are gathered around his body, but Fitz is screaming for them to keep pulling his boat. He's the hero of the story and he's completely nuts. This isn't going to have a happy ending.

I lie down for a while, trying to get the kinks out of my back, but I'm too restless, so I walk over to the Bamboo House of Dolls. Carlos says hi, but I just sort of grunt at him. Being a good bartender, Carlos sees all and knows all. He brings me a double of Jack, along with some rice and beans with warm tortillas. Then he leaves me alone. The music isn't Martin Denny tonight. It's someone named Esquivel. It sounds like what James Bond's dentist must play in his waiting room. I try to relax, enjoy the food, and let the ludicrous sound wash around me. After two or three more drinks, Esquivel is really starting to grow on me.

When Carlos comes over to take away the empties, I ask, "What about me on a yacht in a white tux? Could I be James Bond's stunt double?"

Carlos takes the glasses away before he says, "Only if Bond fell into a wood chipper first."

He asks if I want another drink. I tell him I need a cigarette more and go outside and light up. It's around eight. Maybe nine. Ten's a possibility. Anyway, it's dark out. Time to get back to Vidocq's. I head for an alley across the street where I can slip unseen into a shadow. Halfway there, I spot a Ducati parked down the street. The twenty-something hipster TV producers love these sleek Euroracers, but like the Melrose Harley boys, it's mostly for show. The Ducati's tires are clean enough to eat off of. Doesn't anyone in this town actually ride their bike?

It'll be nice to feel some wind on my face. I take out the knife, jam it in the ignition, and I'm gone.

RULE ONE WHEN you get back from Hell and haven't ridden a high-performance in eleven years is not to get on the bike after three or five Jack Daniel's. Rule two is not to try a stoppie-grabbing just the front brake so that your rear end pops up. When you're drunker than you think you are, which is pretty much always, you're going to lean too far forward and pull the rear end of the bike up and over onto your dumb ass. Lucky for me, even six or seven sheets to the wind, I still have impressively inhuman reflexes, which means I can jump off the bike before it comes over and snaps my neck. The downside to jackrabbit reflexes is that while they get you out of the way of obvious and imminent danger, when you're going forty miles an hour on your front wheel, those reflexes will simply launch you into the air like a squirrel on a land mine.

Off to my left, the bike is pinwheeling down the empty street, kicking up, sparking, and shedding its plastic and chrome skin as it flies apart. It's kind of beautiful, turning from a machine into an ever-expanding shrapnel flower.

Then I hit the street and start tumbling. Then sliding. Then tumbling again. I vaguely remember that there's a proper way to come down after laying down a bike, but my head is bouncing off asphalt and manhole covers and I'm way beyond technique at this point. I just roll up into a ball and hope that I don't break anything important.

And I don't. I just come away with some road rash on my hands and legs. Chalk one up to Kevlar scar tissue. My leather jacket is nicely scarred, which is fine by me. There's nothing more embarrassing than new bike leather. However, my jeans look like they were attacked by a pack of wolverines. The bike is a total loss. I drag what's left of it and leave it between a couple of stripped cop cars. I'm only a couple of blocks from Vidocq's, so I walk the rest of the way.

AT THE DOOR Vidocq hits me with the resigned look of a father who knows that no matter how much he tries, this son probably isn't going to make it to thirty. He shows me mercy by letting me in without saying a word. Allegra is grinning at me like the little sister who's thinking the same thing as the father, but finds it funny and not pathetic.

"Are there any of my old clothes around?"

"I think there might be some in one of the cabinets. Wait here and try not to bleed on anything."

"I showed Eugene that fire magic you taught me," Allegra says.

"That was barely magic at all. More of a trick. And I didn't teach you anything. I charmed your hand and gave you about one molecule of what I can do. That's not the same as learning magic. You need to remember that or you'll get hurt."

Vidocq comes out of the bedroom with a familiar looking pair of beaten-up jeans.

"Thanks," I tell him. I take off my shredded pants, toss them in a corner and put on the clean jeans, then remember that while modesty isn't in high demand in Hell, you're not necessarily supposed to do that kind of thing up here. But they're both still looking at me like I stepped off the short bus, which is pretty much what I just did.

Vidocq leads us into the hall, stops, and looks at me.

"Allegra is with us now," he says. "She needs to see and understand the things we do. You're too drunk to safely steal another car tonight, though I know that's exactly what you'd like to do. Instead, you need to show this girl your true gift and prove to her that you do things besides hurting yourself and other people."

"Where are we going?"

"Third Street and Broadway. The Bradbury Building."

I hold out my hand to Allegra. "You ready to do the next thing?"

"What is it?"

"This isn't an asking situation. This is a doing situation. Either you're ready or you're not."

A moment of hesitation, then she takes my hand. "Show me."

Vidocq takes her other hand, and I pull them both into a shadow and into the room.

"What is this place?"

"The center of the universe."

"What does that mean?"

"You can go anywhere you want. Any street. Any room. Anywhere. Across town, the moon or Elvis's romper room."

"If you can go anywhere you want anytime you want, why are you always stealing cars?"

"Because ghosts walk through walls. People drive cars."

"Mr. Muninn is waiting," says Vidocq. "We should move along."

I take Allegra's hand as Vidocq touches her shoulder and we all step out onto Broadway together. We're right next to the Bradbury Building. It's late enough that the only people who might see us are a couple of winos and some master-of-the-universe business types so in love with their cell phones that a nuke could go off in their pants and they wouldn't notice.

Allegra looks around and punches me in the arm hard enough that I can tell she means it.

"You shit! You could have done this last night, but instead you made me stab you."

"I didn't think you were ready for it."

"Like I said, if you want girls to hurt you, there's plenty of professionals in the phone book."

The inside of the Bradbury Building is a giant Victorian diorama. It looks like aliens dipped one of Jules Verne's wet dreams in amber and dropped it in Los Angeles. The place is all open space in the middle, with masonry walls and wrought iron catwalks leading to offices and shops.

We step into an iron elevator that looks like a cage for an extinct bird the size of a horse. A couple of guys get in behind us. Grim expressions. Dark suits. Shades that look like they've never been taken off and, in fact, have been soldered to their faces. They wear those things in the shower and when they're fucking their best friends' wives. Mostly the guys in the suits bug me because they give off a whiff of bacon—cops earning a little extra money under the table by working as security guards. They might be off duty, but a cop is always a cop and being caged up with them makes me want to chew my way out of this steam-powered rattrap. The funny thing is that while their presence is sending my blood pressure to Mars and back, their heartbeats are rock steady. So is their breathing. Cops make me nervous at the best of times, but when I've been ripping off people and cars every couple of hours for days, and I'm packing a Hellion knife and an incredibly unregistered handgun, it brings out the bad side of my personality. Vidocq hits the button for the fifth floor. One of the men in black presses the button for three. If either of these guys even blinks funny, I'm going to be painting the walls with livers and spinal cords.

But nothing happens. The elevator hits three; the cops get out and walk away without even looking back. The fucked-up part is that I'm actually a little disappointed. I was so ready for a fight that now that it hasn't happened, I feel like I've been tricked. Teased and let down. I desperately want to break something. It occurs to me that I might still be a little drunk and that the only thing that will cure me is a cigarette or random violence. Or maybe a glimpse of the ugliest furniture in the known universe.

There's a home-decor shop right across the elevator. Some kind of high-end Pier I nightmare selling faux-exotic crap for dot-com cokeheads with too much money and no shame. There are life-size porcelain cheetahs with gilt eyes. Fake antique Chinese furniture. Plasticine Buddhas. Paint-by-number Tibetan thangkas. The sight of the place is the kind of horror that will kill you or sober you up. Fortunately, I'm hard to kill.

Vidocq closes the elevator door and we start up to the fifth floor. Before we get there, he pushes the stop button and the car rattles to a halt. Using two fingers, he pushes the one and three buttons on the elevator keypad.

"What did you just do?"

Vidocq says, "We're going to the thirteenth floor."

"There is no thirteenth floor," says Allegra. "Look at the buttons. This building only has five floors. And if it had more, it wouldn't have a thirteenth floor. It's bad luck. No one would move in."

"If you say so," he says, and pulls out the stop button. The car begins to move down. It stops at the third floor.

"See? We're on three again." Then something moves by the home-decor shop.

The window where the porcelain cheetah stood just a minute earlier is dark and lit only by candlelight. The big window is caked with a century's worth of dust and impacted grime. In the cheetah's place is a bell jar at least six feet tall. There's a woman inside. She's transparent and drained of color, nearly black and white. Her hair and dress billow around her, blown by some invisible storm. She screams and claws at the glass walls of her prison. When she sees people getting off the elevator, she goes quiet and stares at us like a lion tracking a herd of zebra. A second later, she's pounding on the bell-jar glass again and showing yellow, sharklike teeth.

The interior of the shop is dark and crowded and has the musty smell of an attic that hasn't been opened in fifty years. A shadow moves out of the shadows. It's a man. He's small, round, and black. Not the way Allegra is black, but black like a raven or an abyss. He's wearing an expensive-looking silk robe and holding a brass telescope.

"I see you've met my Fury," he says. "She's a very recent acquisition from Greece. Of course, I've had all three Furies at one time or another, but never all at once. That would be a coup." I look back at the Fury and out the dirty window. Women in business clothes and men in suits and carrying attache cases pass, completely unaware of the Fury and the strange store.

"Nice to see you all," says Mr. Muninn. "I was beginning to think that you'd forgotten about me."

"Never, my friend," says Vidocq. He introduces Allegra and then me.

Muninn takes my hand and doesn't let go.

"I've heard a lot about you, my boy." He stares up at me like he's trying to see out the back of my head. "Interesting. I thought I might see bit more of the devil in you. Perhaps it's best for us all that I can't."

"Vidocq said that you might have work for us."

"That I do, my boy. I'm a trader and a businessman. Merchandise comes in and merchandise goes out. I'm busy, busy, constantly busy. There's always work here for those who want to work and to earn a decent wage."

"We were hoping for more than decent."

"Then we'll have to find something indecent for you to do."

"You have so many beautiful things," says Allegra, picking up what looks like a basketball-size pearl with a map of the world caved on it.

"These are just baubles, shiny things to bring in the curious. Come. Let me show you the real store."

He sets down the telescope on a table overflowing with pocket watches, an orrery with the wrong number of planets, and a box of glass eyes, some of which are larger than the palm of my hand.

Muninn takes us through a steel door marked emergency exit. Beyond the door, the walls are rough, chiseled stone, like we're in a cave cut into a mountain. There's a stone stairway that's so narrow at points that we have to walk down single file. And it's not a short walk.

The trick getting into and out of a place like this is memorizing landmarks. Anything will do. Anything you can remember. A loose stair. A breeze from a hole in the wall. A crack in the rock face that looks like a sheep blowing the eagle on the presidential seal.

If it's too dark, like it is on Muninn's stairs, you can always steal a handful of rare and ancient coins from a bowl in a guy's shop and drop them like bread crumbs all the way until you get where you're going.

The most important thing to know about caverns is to never go in one without having a pretty good idea of how to get out. And never let yourself be led into said cavern by a stranger who owns his own Fury. That last one isn't absolute. It's just a good rule of thumb. It also helps to have a friend vouch for the guy, which is the only reason I'm still stumbling down a set of crumbling stairs dropping doubloons and drachmas behind me.

Just before we hit the bottom of the stairs, I can see where we're headed. It's huge. Like Texas huge. I can see the cavern's ceiling, but not the far walls. There's a junkyard of old tables, cabinets, and shelves at the bottom of the stairs. About fifty yards beyond that is what looks like a stone labyrinth that twists, turns, and snakes away into the distance. Can't see the end of that, either. It's like standing on the beach at Santa Monica and trying to see to Japan.

"Where did all this come from?" I ask.

"Oh, here and there. You know how it is when you stay in one place too long. You tend to accumulate things."

Shelves, dressers, and old tables are piled with books, old photos, jewelry, furs, false teeth, pickled hearts, and what might be dinosaur bones. Those are the normal bits. Sticking up over the top of the labyrinth's walls are parts of drive-in movie screens, the masts and deck of an old sailing ship, a lighthouse, and strange carnivorous trees that snap at the flocks of birds circling the ceiling.

"How long have you been here?"

"Forever. I think. It's hard to be sure about these things, isn't it? I mean, one ice age looks pretty much like another. But I've been here a long time and that's why everyone comes to me. I have all the best things. For sale or for trade. Buyer's choice."

"That's why we're here. I used up some of Vidocq's Spiritus Dei and need to pay him back."

Muninn glances over at Vidocq.

"Eugene, I didn't know that you knew the sultan of Brunei."

"What does that mean?" I ask.

"You're not the sultan? Perhaps you're Bill Gates or the czar of all the Russias?"

"No."

"Then trust me. You can't afford Spiritus Dei."

The little man wanders to a nearby table and picks up a wooden doll that looks like it was pulled out of a fire. He winds a key at the doll's back. It stands up and begins to sing. The song might be a hymn or an aria from an opera I've never heard of, which is all of them. The doll's voice bounces off the walls, high, perfect, and heartbreaking. With a soft click, the key in its back stops moving and the doll falls over. Its voice echoes for several minutes, bouncing off the labyrinth's thick walls.

"Of course, we might be able to do a trade," Muninn says. "There's a certain someone who would like a certain something in the possession of certain other people in our little town. I would like you to help Eugene procure this item for me. If you're successful, I guarantee you a flask of Spiritus Dei and a not inconsiderable amount of cash. Eugene told me that you'd like money to be part of your payment. Is that right?"

"Money is good."

"Money I have."

Muninn brings over a set of blueprints he'd hidden behind a collection of canopic jars. He spreads the blueprints on the only relatively uncluttered table in the room, first pushing animal teeth, Mayan vases, and a box of lenses and prisms out of the way.

"The place you are invading is called Avila. It's a gentleman's club in the hills."

"What does that mean, 'gentleman's club'?"

"Just what I said. A gentleman's club. In the old sense. A place to drink, to eat, and to gamble with friends. It's also the most exclusive and expensive bordello in the state. Perhaps the country. Avila's clients are film producers, software billionaires, local politicians, and foreign heads of state. Only the highest of the high can get inside. Except for you two, of course. You'll be the rats in the walls."

The building on the blueprints is round and the interior is laid out in concentric circles.

"While Eugene is an accomplished thief, Avila is heavily guarded. It might take days or even weeks for him to figure out how to penetrate the defenses. However, I understand that you can easily get him inside and out again."

Avila is laid out with the offices in the outside circle. Food and a bar one circle in. Gambling one more level in, and the bordello one after that. The center of the blueprints is blank.

"At this time of year, there are parties every night, leading up to their New Year's Eve party in a couple of days. You'll want to go in there as soon as possible. Now, there will be enough chaos to make your work easier, but on New Year's there will be too much."

I point to the building's blank center.

"What's in there?"

"No one knows. Perhaps you'll find out."

"Does it pay extra?"

"Let's see what you bring me."

I'm trying to keep my mouth shut, but it's really pissing me off that I have to give up the hunt for Mason so I can play cat burglar for an Oompa-Loompa. But that's exactly what I have to do if I want to keep Max Overdrive open and have a place to live. I don't have a choice. I don't think Vidocq would be happy having me planning mass murder at his kitchen table.

"I'm in," I say.

"Good boy," says Vidocq. "I'm in, too."

"Me, too," says Allegra.

"Forget it. No amateurs on this bus. Only criminals."

Allegra starts to say something, but Vidocq cuts her off.

"He's right, even if he's rude about it. What we're doing is criminal and dangerous. This isn't the time or place for you to learn about such things."

"Fine," she says. "Have a boys' night out. I hope you and your dicks will be very happy together."

I look over at Muninn and he has two tuxedos on hangers.

"Gentlemen's disguises for a gentleman's club."

WE STEP FROM the room and into Avila without anyone noticing, which is something I've always wondered about. How can you see two guys dressed like ushers at Liberace's funeral walk out of a wall and not react? My guess is that no one sees us or remembers us. The room or the key or some combination must temporarily blind or switch off the memories of anyone nearby. Otherwise how could I have sent so many of Hell's A-team killers down to Tartarus, the special Hell for the double dead. Avila is a palace designed by Martians. A rip-off of a rip-off of a rip-off of a Victorian men's club that some set designer saw in a Sherlock Holmes movie when he or she was six. Still, the scale of the place is impressive. They must have cut down half the Amazon rain forest to get the dark wood for the bar. The Rolexes in this one room could pay off the national debt.

The place is full of sloppy, well-dressed drunks laughing and screaming in a dozen languages. Happy hour at the United Nations of Money. Half-naked and just plain naked hostesses serve drinks and tapas and hold out silver trays piled high with white powder, syringes, and glass pipes, whatever the partiers want. Perfect. Who needs magic to sneak around when you've got Caligula's bachelor party going on down the hall?

Vidocq's thief instincts are cranked up to eleven and he finds the office in the time it takes me to stop looking at the girls. He's no fun at all when he's in business mode. He pushes me into the office ahead of him and closes the door.

After all the rumpus-room fun, the office is kind of a letdown. It could be the office of a bank president or a Beverly Hills real-estate tycoon. There are lots of awards on bookshelves. Lots of celebrities smiling down from the walls. Some of their eyes are so glazed it looks like you could go ice skating on them. Over where Vidocq is working on the safe is an oak desk the size of a Porsche and probably more expensive.

"How's it going over there?" I ask.

Vidocq is rattling little bottles together as he pulls potions from the pockets of his tux.

"It's as I thought," he says. "The safe is ordinary, but it's protected by a number of protective spells."

"Want me to help? I'm good at breaking things."

"Be quiet. I have to understand exactly what's at work here and eliminate the spells one by one and in the proper order."

I'm already bored and annoyed by Avila. It's not that I have anything against bad behavior. I'm all for it. But this incestuous, backslapping, heavy-money-party cabal scene is everything I hate about L.A. in particular and human beings in general.

Those pricks down the hall, flying high above it all on this hillside, they're the kind of people whose faces end up on money or a new library so that kids will have a new place to hang out while realizing that no one ever taught them how to read. Their wealth doesn't insulate them from the world. It creates it. Their bank statements read like Genesis. Let there be light and let a thousand investment banks bloom. They shit cancer, and when they belch in a bowl valley like L.A., the air turns so thick and poisonous that you can cut it up like bread and serve it for lunch at McDonald's. A Suicide Sandwich Happy Meal.

There must be a hundred of them just ten steps away. I wonder how many I could kill before the cops got here.

Vidocq is mumbling over his vials and potions across the room. I drop down into the desk chair and look through the pile of envelopes in front of me. Aside from a few charity begging letters, suck-up notes from politicians, and more bullshit awards, the rest is just bills and ads. What do you know? Even the gods get junk mail.

I toss the pile back on the desk and pick up a photo in a silver frame. From TV, I recognize one guy as the current mayor of L.A. and the other as a guy who was almost elected president. There's a woman standing to one side and the governor is handing her yet another award. All three beam from the picture, showing their teeth. A pack of happy wolves.

Something fun must have just happened at the party because the crowd suddenly got loud and then died down again. I bet I could take out everyone in that room and be gone before anyone figured out what's happening.

A little switch clicks in my brain. I pick up the framed photo and show it to Vidocq.

"Recognize anyone here?"

He shoots me a look.

"What? Oui. Politicians. Fuck them. Let me do my job."

"Not them. The woman."

He looks again. Then gets more interested.

"I know her. Is that your friend Jayne-Anne?"

"Yeah. This must be her place. She was always a crazy social climber. Avila is her gift for standing by Mason."

"It's a very funny coincidence that we're here."

"Isn't it just?" I get up and walk around the desk.

"Where are you going?"

"To kill someone."

Vidocq comes over to me and grabs my arm hard. Two hundred years of work has given him a strong grip.

"Don't you dare. Be a man! Hold your temper and do the job you agreed to do. You know where she is now and you can come back for her another time."

"You're right. Sorry. I just lost it there for a minute."

"Stay there and make sure no one comes in."

"Got it."

The second Vidocq turns his back, I'm out the door.

A few minutes ago I was feeling like an idiot in the tux, but now I'm glad Muninn insisted that Vidocq and I tart up like a couple of players. No one looks at me twice as I plow like an icebreaker through the crowd, just another horny drunk, bumping his way through the human waste, running down his rightful share of first-class drugs and free pussy.

I didn't have much of a temper before I went Downtown. Maybe I never needed it up here. The first time I felt it was a few weeks after I got tossed into the arena. I kept winning fights. Barely, but I won. This surprised me as much as it did the crowd. Azazel was my owner by then, but he didn't pay much attention to me. My novelty had worn off and waiting for me to get beaten to death was the only amusement I had left to offer. Every time I didn't die it seemed to piss off the handlers Azazel had sent to keep an eye on me.

They always walked me out of the arena in chains, on my wrists, ankles, and neck. It was a joke. I could have just killed some poison-spitting sphinx thing, but I was the wild man-beast that had to be leashed. Hellion humor. Big laughs every time the chains went on.

One night, Baxux, the tallest of my three watchers, got a little frisky with my chains. He held them behind me like reins and whipped me with them like I was a four-dollar mule. There was a half-broken na'at embedded in the dirt floor of the arena. I don't even remember picking it up, but I must have because all of a sudden Baxux's belly was as open as the Holland Tunnel and his angelic guts were lying at my feet. The crowd went apeshit, which might have been the nicest thing anyone did for me the whole time I was in Hell. The roar distracted my other two attendants for long enough that I could swing the broken na'at hard enough to extend it to almost its full length, taking off the head of attendant number two with my first swing and one of attendant number three's arms with the next.

The bad news was that attendant three still had three arms left and now he was pissed. He lucha-libre leaped on top of me, all five or six hundred pounds of him, collapsing the na'at to its noncombat length of about eighteen inches. Then he started pounding me with three big fists like granite jack-o'-lanterns. Every time he set me up for one of his John Wayne haymakers, he pulled his body away from me and up in the air a little, just far enough for me to smash the end of the na'at into the ground.

The na'at has a spring-loaded mechanism that extends it full length in a nanosecond. I mean, a working one does. This na'at was badly damaged, so it took a dozen good raps on the ground for the thing to go off. When it did, the look on number three's face was almost worth the beating.

He stood up, which was a lucky break. I couldn't have lifted the guy off me with a hydraulic jack and dynamite. He stood there swaying and looking down at the shaft of the na'at that now went into his chest and out his back.

I whipped the na'at's grip around clockwise, which extended thick barbs that bent backward, getting a good grip on my opponent's flesh. Then I pulled. I put all my weight into it and spun my body as I fell back, using the na'at's razor edges like a drill to open up the wound even wider. The last big pull hit the spring lock that made the na'at collapse back into itself. The force knocked me flat on my back, but that was all right, because it also pulled out attendant number three's black heart and part of his spine.

Do I even need to tell how the crowd reacted to seeing one of their own eviscerated? The cheer nearly melted my eardrums. I was Hendrix at Woodstock.

But just killing my attendants isn't what taught me that I had a temper or what gave Azazel the idea that I might have the stomach for serial murder. It's what happened next.

I piled dead attendant one on the body of dead attendant two, climbed up both of them, and grabbed one of the torches off the arena wall. Fire in Hell isn't like Earth fire. It's more like Greek fire or burning magnesium. It burns long and hot and is practically impossible to put out.

While attendant number three tried to crawl away from where I'd left him, I shoved the lit torch into the hole in his chest where his heart used to be. He didn't just have jack-o'-lantern hands anymore. His whole body lit up, burned, and burst like the Hindenburg.

I used the na'at to slice through the chains and made a break for the door. Not that I ever had a chance of making it. Twenty armed guards came pouring into the place. I had enough full-tilt crazy left that I killed three or four of them before the na'at flew apart in my hand. It was all country music after that. Those Hellion guards square-danced all over me. It was Azazel himself who broke up the party and kept the guards from killing me.

They threw me in one of the arena's punishment cells and put a couple of guards on the door. At the time, I thought that was overkill. I was already three-quarters gone. There was no chance I was going to even try to escape. Later, I realized that the guards were there to keep other Hellions from getting in and finishing me. That cell was where I first realized that I was officially hard to kill.

I went in there bleeding and slashed, and with half my bones sticking out through the skin. Three days later, I could stand up. A day after that, I could walk. My guards didn't like this one bit. When they thought I was asleep, they'd sneak peeks at me through a sliding panel in the cell door. There was something new in their eyes. I should have been deader than dead. But I wasn't. They thought I was a monster. And no one bothered me until a few days later when Azazel sent a friendly little homunculus with sweet Hell fruit and Aqua Regia and a request that I join the general for dinner that night. Naturally, I said yes.

That's the upside of a temper. The downside is that it makes you do stupid things, like not watch where you're going.

I'm stalking through the party, trying to catch a trace of Jayne-Anne, when I walk straight into someone, knocking his drink all over his $10,000 suit. The guy gets up and starts to call me an asshole, but only gets out, "Assh—" before he chokes.

It's Brad Pitt. Not the actor, but my favorite crackhead from the outside cemetery when I first got back.

I say, "Where you been, man? I've missed you."

"Security!" he yells.

"I've been meaning to give this back to you."

I pull his stun gun from my pocket and zap him in the ribs, just for old times' sake. He goes down like a sack of lug nuts and I drop the stun gun on top of him. It won't do much good against what I know will be here in a second.

I'm not entirely stupid. I start back for the office when security comes tearing around the corner before I can get very far. Five or six of them. Buzz-cut heads and necks as wide as manhole covers. They look as stupid in their suits as I do. But they have more guns. They all draw down on me, but don't make a move. A woman walks around them and heads right for me. She has no idea who I am. Until she does.

"You're dead," she says.

"Not as dead as you're about to be."

Jayne-Anne backs off, yelling, "Kitty! Bennett!"

A starlet-skinny blonde in an off-the-shoulder designer schmata and a fop who looks like Ziggy Stardust in a purple velvet suit come around from behind the guards.

They reek of magic. It comes off them like heat ripples over desert asphalt.

So, to recap: we have five or six guns, a couple of hoodoo hipster killers, an old friend who wants me dead, a lot of drunks and naked showgirls, and me in a borrowed suit. I'd duck through a shadow, but with the crazy lighting in this place, there's nothing dark or deep enough for me to dive through.

Even my stupidity has its limits. I turn and run.

Fire and lightning explode behind me. Burning golden sparks rain down on me like a thousand lit matches, burning through the suit and into my skin. Best of all, ducking and bouncing off the walls to keep from getting hit is making the bullets in my chest very angry. They scrape my ribs and prod my lungs. I can already feel blood in the back of my throat. I'm never going to outrun these idiots.

I drop to my hands and knees, breathing hard through the froth in my throat. Blondie and the fop stop and look at each other, a couple of good hunting dogs who just ran down the fox and are about get their reward.

I've got their reward.

I shout guttural Hellion syllables, coughing up blood with every word. I push every ounce of power I have down through my arms and legs. I spit and my blood soaks into the expensive carpet that lines the hallway. Then it's gone. So is the floor. But I knew that was going to happen. Jayne-Anne's magicians and her armed linebackers didn't. They fall straight through where the hall floor used to be, roll down the hillside and into the trees. Jayne-Anne's and my eyes meet just long enough for me to give her a little wink. Then someone grabs me from behind and drags me back into the office that I wasn't supposed to leave in the first place. Plenty of shadows in here. I grab Vidocq's shoulder and we walk out through a photo of Jayne-Anne glad-handing the pope.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.

WE STEP OUT of a shadow and into Muninn's cavern. Vidocq turns and punches me in the gut. I go down on one knee.

"You fucking child! You could have gotten us both killed."

This isn't the first time Vidocq has been mad at me, but it's the first time he's ever gotten physical. Good job. I'm about to lose one of the few friends I have on this rock.

When I don't get up he says, "Don't play with me. I didn't hit you that hard." Then he must see the blood. "What happened to you?"

"You hurt me bad, Pepe LePew," I say.

"You child," he says, and helps me to my feet. The bullets are rattling around inside me like gravel in a tin can.

Muninn looks like a little kid on Christmas morning when Vidocq hands him a small golden box with what looks like delicate grasshopper wings on top.

"Perfect. Beautiful," he says over and over. He takes the box over to what looks like solid rock. But with a few touches and turns to specific stones, the rock face swings away, revealing an enormous vault in the side of the cavern. Muninn takes the golden box inside, comes back out, and seals the vault so that it's invisible again.

"You've done a splendid job, gentlemen." He gives me an indulgent smile. "Well, one of you has been splendid. The other has ruined his suit. Don't worry. I have a million of them. Literally."

"You didn't tell us that they were using magicians as security at Avila," I say.

"Are they? That's new. But you rose to the challenge and completed your mission. I look forward to doing more business together."

"What else do you know about Avila? You know what they're hiding in that blank spot in the blueprints. Don't you?"

Muninn looks troubled.

"You don't want to know about these things. I don't want to know about them and I've seen whole civilizations turned to salt or buried in ice."

"What's in there?"

Muninn shakes his head.

"A bordello. The secret one. A celestial bordello full of creatures seldom seen here on Earth. But the real reason those so inclined go there, risk their lives and their souls, is for the pleasure of abusing captive angels. These are the injured ones who fell to Earth during Lucifer's uprising and new ones that they've captured since, though I have no idea how one goes about capturing an angel." Muninn looks at me. "There. Are you happier knowing? Will you sleep better tonight? Young man, there are some things in the world so profane that their only real value is in not knowing about them."

I wipe blood off my lips with my tuxedo sleeve while Muninn brings over a bottle dusty enough to have been on Noah's Ark. He pours three drinks in three crystal glasses. When he raises his, Vidocq and I follow.

"To God above," he says, and tosses the drink over his right shoulder. Vidocq and I do the same. He pours three more drinks.

"To the devil below." He tosses the drink over his left shoulder. So do we.

Muninn pours three more drinks, each twice as full as the first two.

"To us. The ones who did real work tonight while those other two were off playing tiddledywinks with poor fools' souls." He raises his glass and knocks the whole thing off in one gulp. The stuff burns like rose-flavored battery acid, but I don't taste blood anymore.

Muninn sets down his glass, takes a blue bottle from the end of the table, and sets it in front of Vidocq.

"Spiritus Dei, my friend."

Vidocq beams. "Thank you. That's more than I was hoping for."

"If you have extra, can I have some?" I ask. "I want to put it on my bullets. I might have to shoot things that don't die easy."

Muninn goes to a shelf and comes back with a smaller version of the bottle he gave Vidocq.

"On account," he says.

"Thanks."

"And I owe you some cash, too, I believe."

"That would be nice. Do you have an ATM down here under all these clocks and bones?"

Muninn walks to a corner of the room piled twenty-feet high with boxes of bills and chests overflowing with gold and silver coins. The little man pokes through the pile like an old codger trying to choose just the right ripe peach at the grocery store.

"Ah." He pulls down a box marked U.S. TREASURY and hands me a neatly banded stack of brand new bills. I riffle the stack, enjoying the feel of money in my hands. The bills are all hundreds. Next to the counter girl at Donut Universe, it's the most beautiful thing I've seen since coming back to Earth.

Over Muninn's shoulder there's a glass decanter with a small blue flame, not much more than a match head, hovering at the center.

"Is that what it looks like?" I ask.

"What does it look like?"

"It looks like the Mithras. The first fire."

"Right you are. The first fire in the universe. And the last. There are many in this world, and others, who believe that at the end of time the Mithras will escape and grow until it has burned down all of Creation. The ashes of our existence will fertilize the soil for the universe to follow."

"How much is something like that worth?"

"It's not for sale. And if it were, not in this lifetime or with the accumulated wealth of your next thousand lifetimes could you afford it. Don't be too ambitious too quickly, my friend. If we're able to do business more regularly—and I think that we can—then your payment will increase and become considerably more interesting."

I put the bills Muninn gave me into the inside pocket of the tuxedo jacket.

"Who were we working for tonight?" I ask.

"That's confidential."

"Not even a hint?"

"Answers are easy, but hints cost money. Save yours for now. You're going to need a new suit," he says, fingering a hole in my sleeve where some of the golden sparks have burned through.

We say good night and start back up the steps to Muninn's store.

"Would you mind picking up those coins you dropped?"

I wave to him and pick up each one as we pass. When we reach the shop, I drop them in the bowl I'd stolen them from.

In the elevator, Vidocq asks, "Why do you care who Muninn's client is?"

"That's was a big coincidence walking into Jayne-Anne's place tonight. It's the second time since I've been back that I happened to stumble into a member of the circle. I want to know if I'm being set up."

"Muninn will never tell you. It's a matter of honor for men like him. We must be more careful."

The elevator reaches the ground floor and Vidocq slides the brass gate open.

"This is going to get worse, you know. That run-in with those goons tonight? That's nothing."

"Inter urinas et faeces nascimur. We are born between piss and shit," he says. "Many wanted to kill me back in my day in France. The criminals I sent to prison. The local police who never believed I was anything other than the rogue and thief I was in my youth. Even the Surete, the special police force I built for Paris, one based on true scientific principles—even they were corrupted by those in power and turned against me. Most of what I've built or had has been taken away from me by liars and curs, so if you're going to tell me to go away or that I don't have to stay for what's coming, kiss my arse. The things that Mason and his friends do—they are the things of men. Mason has power, maybe more power than any magician in history, but he is still a man. I am not afraid of any man."

"Let's go get drunk."

"And piss on our enemies from a great height."

I'M SITTING AT the bar in the Bamboo House of Dolls, playing with the Barbie-size keyboard on my new phone. Phones are like toys now. They fit in your pocket, light up and vibrate like joy buzzers. Plus, you can get—I mean, "access"—the Internet and find anything you want. Music. Maps. Porn. Anything. If cell phones came with a cigarette dispenser, they'd be the greatest stupid invention ever.

"Googling yourself?" asks Carlos.

"What's that?"

"Searching for yourself on Google. Find out how famous you are. How many places you're mentioned. They call it 'ego surfing.' Just put in your name."

The first thing that comes up is an old L.A. Times Article on Alice's murder. It's just a filler piece with no details because who cares about one more dead punk? It's kind of insulting, but I'm grateful not to know too much about exactly what happened to her. I'm still not ready for that.

Carlos is right. I'm on Google, too. Apparently, LAPD is looking for me as a "person of interest" in Alice's murder. So much for ego surfing.

I put in Mason Faim and get another L.A. Times article on the fire at his house—the first one. Not the one Vidocq and I started. There's a sketchy obituary, too. Sounds like they found a body in the mansion; it was so far gone that they couldn't check dental records and get a decent DNA sample. My guess is that the body was the Circle's resident hippie, poor, dumb TJ. Mason isn't the type to let a perfectly good corpse go to waste if he can use it to convince people that he's dead.

Another search and I find Jayne-Anne's name mentioned in about a million places. Mostly society-page party and charity events, political fund-raising, and movie premieres. Anywhere she can get up close and personal with the masters of the universe.

I put in Cherry Moon's name and get a link to a Web site. Click on the link and there she is, in perfect Sailor Moon drag, a rhinestoned cell phone in one hand and a pink teddy bear backpack in the other. She looks even younger than she did before I went Downtown. When I left, she could pass for twelve or thirteen. Now she looks like she's eleven, tops. I hope it's done with makeup, but I have a feeling it's something else.

I click the enter button and go to her site. It's the same thing inside. A pretty little girl's pretty little diary, full of gossip about her cool friends and the neat things they do together. Plus pages and pages of pictures of her in maybe a hundred different Gothic Lolita outfits, everything from Shirley Temple pinafores to pirates to a kimono-clad vampire with fake fangs. It's a pretty convincing little girl's site, only Cherry is about my age. If I didn't know her better and know that this was all an act, I'd think she was retarded.

There's a links page with buttons that lead to you to the sites of the rest of her prepubescent coven. At the top of the page is a big link to a site called Lollipop Dolls. That was the name of the creepy girl gang she hung out with while we were in the Circle. Now Lollipop Dolls seems to be an expensive store on Rodeo Drive selling imported Japanese anime and monster-movie toys, games, and custom Gothic Lolita clothing. Now I know what Mason gave Cherry as her reward. I check the address one more time, go the bathroom in the back of the bar, step through a shadow, and come out on Rodeo Drive.

It's sunny on Rodeo. It's always sunny on Rodeo. When rich trophy wives with platinum AmEx cards and endless supplies of Vicodin float down the street like Prada parade balloons looking for $20 lattes and $2,000 jeans, it goddamn well better be sunny.

Cherry's store is at the end of the block. I've got my knife, a gun, and I'm wearing the motocross jacket with the Kevlar inserts. The perfect accessories to go shopping for a Hello Kitty lunch box.

LOLLIPOP DOLLS IS like some weird little girl's hunting lodge. The heads and faces of every Japanese cartoon character and monster are hung on the walls like trophies. Their plastic guts are in model kits on the shelves and their skins are draped on padded hangers in long rows of animal prints and Little Bo Peep frills. When I turn around, there's a platoon of twelve-year-old Cutie Honey types staring up at me, letting me know that I'm extremely not welcome. It's Village of the Damned with ankle socks.

I say, "I'm looking for Cherry Moon."

One of the Lolitas walks over to me. She barely comes up to my chest.

"Who the fuck are you?"

It's exactly what I thought it would be, and now that I know, it's even worse. What comes out of this mouth of Lolita in a pink ball gown and yellow ribbons isn't a cartoon squeak, but the voice of a thirty-something bar chick who's had too many late nights and smoked too many unfiltered Luckies. That's the other thing Mason gave Cherry. The power to be twelve forever and to do the same thing to her creepy entourage. A terminally fucked-up fountain of youth.

"I'm an old friend of hers. We both knew Mason way back when."

"Are you stupid or are you fucking stupid? No one talks about Mason around here, cocksucker."

I've never been chewed out by a fourth grader before. It's all I can do to keep from laughing. She must see it in my face because the next thing I know, she's snapped out a white furry-handled tanto knife and is pressing it under my chin hard enough to break the skin.

"Why don't you get out of here, Grandpa? We have a reputation and you're driving down property values. Cherry doesn't want to talk to you. And, by the way, you look like a faggot in that jacket."

Even with her cute move with the knife, I'm guessing that she's not a real blade fighter. If she was, she'd be holding the tanto under my ear, where she'd be right above a major blood vessel.

I sweep my arm in front of me, faster than she can see. All of a sudden I'm holding the knife and she has a sore wrist. The first thing she does is register surprise. Then fury. She steps back into the pack and they all strike cartoon fighting poses. A few more of them have knives out. They might look like little girls, but they stink of magic, Cherry's or their own. I can't tell. Either way, I don't like the idea of duking it out with a dozen windup dolls. This place probably has surveillance cameras and alarms. I don't want to have to explain to the cops why I'm going Mike Tyson on a bunch of pink-cheeked cherubs.

I hold up my hands so they can see I'm not going for a weapon, and start for the door. There's a pen on the counter. I use it to write down my cell number on a receipt.

"She can call me at this number. Tell her a dead friend is back in town and that she better call him soon or he's going to come back here and spank her." I hold up the tanto to the girl in the ball gown. "You get this back when she calls me."

I walk out of the store and drop the knife into the sewer grating on the corner.

I hear something over the noise of the traffic. Someone is calling my name. I turn around, thinking at first it's one of the girls from Lollipop Dolls, but no one is there. It's a man's voice coming from across the street. I have to shield my eyes from the damned sun, but when I do, I get a good look at him. It's Parker, not more than fifty feet away.

Parker isn't big. Parker is a Disneyland attraction. Lay some track across his back and shoulders and he could give the kiddies a wild ride. I go for him straight through traffic. Cars are zipping along Rodeo, heading for the green lights at both ends of the block. I hop across the hood of the closest car, drop down, and cut behind the next. Then I'm up on the trunk of another, but slip and end up on the hood of the car behind it.

Everything is very calm and quiet inside my head. In the distance, halfway across the solar system, I hear squealing tires. Grinding metal. Shattering glass. People are yelling. But I'm back on my feet and moving. My blood is pumping and I feel a heat spread from my belly to my arms and legs. For the first time since I crawled out of the fire and back onto this rock, I feel like myself. Parker is dead ahead and I know exactly what I'm doing.

On my left, a storefront explodes, knocking me off my feet. I make a nice dent in the front passenger door of a Cadillac parked at the curb. People are screaming. The store is on fire. I look up in time to see Parker tossing what looks like a flaming basketball from hand to hand. He throws it in my direction. I roll away from the Caddie, but Parker misses the car and hits a bus stuck in traffic. More broken glass. More screaming.

I get to my feet and run at him. He backpedals down the street. Something is wrong. No matter how fast I go, Parker stays ahead of me. When he spins on the balls of his feet and really turns on the speed, I can't come close to keeping up.

By the time I'm on the next block, he's gone. I keep turning around, like a drunken ballet dancer, hoping to catch a glimpse of him.

Something hot explodes against my chest and it feels like a bulldozer is trying to park on top of my lungs.

Parker has thrown another one of his plasma balls, but show-off that he is, he missed by an inch and took out a mailbox. It's snowing People magazines and liposuction flyers. The front of my jacket is scorched down to the Kevlar and a little voice in the back of my brain is telling me to let one of the fireballs hit me so that next time they won't hurt. Only if one of them hits me, I'm not all that sure there will be a next time, so I tell the little voice to shut the hell up and go to Plan B.

I spring forward from a crouch and slam my shoulder into a parking meter. The pavement cracks. Two more slams and the meter is loose enough for me to pry it from the ground. I creep along the sides of the cars, keeping below window level. Parker has disappeared again. I try to reach out with those weird, new senses that keep telling me people's secrets, but I can't feel him. He's probably too powerful for something as crude as my kindergarten mind-reading experiments. Besides, I'm distracted by the smell of burning shops. The sound of crashes and women screaming.

Then I see him, behind a Hummer two cars ahead. He's juggling another plasma ball and the glow is visible under the parked cars. I sprint forward, hoping that I'm faster than he is at this distance.

When he steps around the car to knuckleball the burning plasma, I'm already there. I swing the parking meter up and catch him square in the chest with the end that's still hanging on to a nice chunk of concrete. Parker goes flying, smashing into the half-inch-thick glass of a bus kiosk, where he leaves a nice bloody spot on the shattered glass. I'm amazed, but he manages to crawl to his feet. That's something new. The old Parker was tough, but there's no way he could have taken a blow like that and lived, much less stood up. Then he surprises me again. He starts running away. Not as fast as before, but fast enough that I have trouble keeping up.

At the corner, he cuts left onto Wilshire and blows down the street at his inhuman pace. I'm fast at short distances. My reflexes are quick enough to snatch a knife out of a moppet's hand or yank the eyes out of a Hellion's head. But I'm not a marathon runner. Parker is a receding dot. I'm losing him.

Desperate to keep him in sight, I do the only thing I can think of. I grab the knife and slam the blade down as hard as I can lengthwise on the street. This one block of Wilshire shudders and an inch-wide crack slices the sidewalk in both directions. It's not exactly ten-point-oh on the Richter scale, but it makes Parker stumble. He looks back and, for the first time, seems a little nervous. He takes off running across the street to a tall, glass-and-chrome office building. I take off after him, but stop in the middle of the street.

When Parker reaches the office building, he doesn't go inside. He doesn't stop running or even break his stride. He takes one big leap and goes from the street up the side of the office building and keeps running. He doesn't crab up the side like Spider-Man. He sprints standing straight up, like the Flash.

My brain might have been cracked at the beginning of the fight, but now it breaks. I lived in Hell for years, and I never saw anything like this. I stand there as the traffic flows around me. Horns honk. Drivers give me the finger. Bus drivers scream at me to get out of the street. I crane my neck as Parker, the Human Fly, skitters up the side of a building, getting away.

My brain explodes like ice dropped in boiling water.

I sprint forward and get right under him.

Fuck magic.

I pull the Colt Peacemaker from under my jacket and blast all six shots into Parker's back. As each bullet hits, he slows down. When the last of the big .45 shells slams into his spine, I can see bones through the hole in his back. He stops running, stands drunkenly on the side of the building for a couple of seconds. Then his body goes limp. He starts to fall.

I step far enough away from the building to avoid the splatter when he hits. I have the knife out, ready to drive it into his heart to make sure he's really dead.

As Parker falls, his body seems to drift away like smoke. He becomes transparent. Two floors above the street, the last of him blows away like morning mist. I keep the knife out, ready for a trick. Nothing happens.

I walk back to the front of the building, looking up, hoping that Parker has somehow scrambled around to another side. He's not there. He's gone. I hear someone laughing nearby.

Across the street Mason is leaning against a lamp pole. The sun shines on him. A slight breeze blows his hair. He's smoking a cigarette. He doesn't look at all like the dark god of Los Angeles. He looks like Mason. A smug, handsome rich kid, but entirely human. A shadow slides from behind the lamp pole and joins him. It's Parker. His clothes are perfect. His shirt is pressed and clean. His bones are back inside his body. Both men are laughing at me. Mason points his index finger at me like a gun, and then snaps his thumb down as he pulls the imaginary trigger.

I take a step forward as two crows dip silently toward the street. When the birds pass, Mason and Parker are gone.

I HEAD BACK to Max Overdrive to change my scorched party clothes. I'm an Evel Knievel doll that a kid lit on fire and tossed on Dad's barbecue. Good thing I bought the motocross jacket with Brad Pitt's money. Otherwise, I'd be really pissed off. At least my boots are all right. And I still have the silk overcoat. Thanks, Brad. Hope Avila's security goons didn't confiscate your stun gun.

Going through the door at Max Overdrive, even the back door, usually feels good. It's boring and normal. Burned up like this, I don't bother. I step through a shadow and straight into my room. For the few seconds I'm in the room, there's noise coming from behind every door, especially the thirteenth. Something seismic is rippling through the aether, giving the universe indigestion. Good.

I take off my ruined clothes, toss them into the far corner of the room, and dig out a hoodie and pair of black jeans that I picked up with Muninn's cash. Then I walk the few steps through a dark patch in the wall to Vidocq's apartment.

I knock and let myself in. Allegra is holding an old book that looks like it weighs more than she does. Vidocq is reading it over her shoulder, with a couple of potion vials in his hands. They look up when I come in. Allegra doesn't say anything. Vidocq turns back to his worktable. I don't need super magic sense to figure out that something isn't right. He takes a set of keys from his pocket and hands them to Allegra.

"Would you take the car and get us some lunch?"

I walk into the room. "You own a car?"

"I own and do many things you don't know about. You don't know anyone anymore. You don't listen. You don't care."

Allegra walks to the door.

When she passes I ask, "Cat got your tongue?"

She turns to me. "You fucked up good, man." When she leaves, I look over at Vidocq, but he won't look at me.

Quietly he says, "You and your cowboy bullshit. There's no excuse for what you did today. It was too public and too reckless. You could have been killed. You could have killed others."

I sit down on the arm of the easy chair. "Right. It's all my fault because Parker was being so careful not to hurt civilians."

"You should never have gone after him, Mason, or the others like this."

"If I didn't, which one of you was going to? You were a detective once. Why didn't you track Mason down?"

Vidocq shakes his head, turns away, and flips pages in the book that Allegra had been holding when I came in. "I tried for a while, but I saw things. I heard things. Don't ask me what."

"You people have had eleven years to deal with Mason and, as far as I can tell, you haven't done a goddamn thing. You think he grabbed all that magical power so he can retire? You should be on my side, trying to snuff him."

"People were here earlier. Representatives from the Sub Rosa." Vidocq finally looks at me. "They came to me because they know that you and I are close."

"Are we still? I can't tell lately."

"They're done with you over that debacle. There were so many people. So many security cameras in the stores and on the street. Tourists with more cameras. There's only so much they can do to cover it up."

"They have a story yet?"

"A publicity stunt for a movie. Equipment malfunctioned. There are many Sub Rosa in the film industry. They'll pay any fines and lawsuits this time. But they won't next time." Vidocq makes a face like he can smell two-week-old garbage from the apartment next door. "In this matter, no one is on your side."

"Are they going to kick me out of the magic union? Take away my 401?"

"This isn't a joke." Vidocq slams the book closed. "These are powerful people. Medea Bava was here. She left this for you." He hands me a small white linen bundle tied with horsehair. Crow feathers inside. And wolf teeth spotted with blood.

"An Inquisitor? That's a fairy tale. They don't exist."

"That lady sure existed," says Allegra. "Her face was more messed up than yours."

Vidocq says, "These people can hurt you."

"Let them try." I get up and go to the door. "Tell those Sub Rosa and their meter maids that they have three choices if they want me out of L.A. They can help me. They can stay out of my way. Or they can kill me."

Out in the hall a guy with two overflowing bags of groceries stops dead in his tracks, his key halfway to his door lock. With Vidocq's apartment being invisible to civilians, it must have looked like I appeared out of thin air.

"Oh. Hello," says the guy.

"Good-bye," I say, and disappear through a shadow right in front of him.

CARLOS HANDS ME a plate of rice, beans, and enchiladas in a thick mole sauce. I tear right into them. I'm starving after the fight, and Carlos's food is so good I want to marry it.

"You been doing your ninja thing again?" Carlos asks.

"What makes you say that?"

"One side of your face and your hands are all red, like a burn."

I look at my hands. They're scraped and raw-looking, like I've been juggling cinder blocks. "No big deal. They'll be fine by morning."

"I have aloe in the back if you want some."

I shake my head. "Thanks anyway. Another scar or two isn't going to ruin my pretty face."

"Right."

"Carlos, are you being polite? That's not what I come here for. I know I'm not Steve McQueen."

"My lady is totally in love with him. Lucky for me he's dead or I'd be in trouble."

I hold up my glass of Jack Daniel's in a toast. "Here's to all the guys better looking than us. May they all die first." Carlos picks up his glass, clinks mine, and we drink.

For the first time since I've had it, my cell phone rings. I don't even know what it is at first. It feels like a rat is having a nervous breakdown in the pocket of my hoodie. When I get it out, it takes me a second to remember which button to push to answer it.

"Hello?"

"Jimmy?"

"Who is this?"

"It's me. Cherry. I heard you were at the store. I didn't believe her."

"So, you called someone you didn't think was alive?"

"I called because if you were alive, I need your help."

I don't answer for a minute. I eat a forkful of enchilada.

"Jimmy?"

"Don't call me that. I don't like it."

"What should I call you?"

"The guy you helped send to Hell for eleven years of torture." I get up and walk over by the jukebox, speaking quietly. "The guy who is seriously thinking about redecorating the inside of that store of yours with your guts."

Now it's her turn to not talk.

"I know you must hate it."

"Hate doesn't come close to it."

"I heard about your fight with Parker."

"Everyone has, apparently."

"Did you know Jayne-Anne is dead?"

"When?"

"Last night. Parker did it. At least, that's what I heard."

"That's why you need my help. I go after Jayne and Parker kills her because she probably has information that could lead to Mason. TJ and Kasabian are already out of the picture. That just leaves you."

"Will you help me?"

"Give me a reason."

"I know where Mason is."

I walk back to the bar and away from the music. I don't want to miss any of this. "I don't believe you."

"The reason no one can find him is that he isn't in this reality. He's somewhere else. But I guess that if you got back here from Hell, you can find a way to get to him."

"How do I know that Mason isn't standing next to you right now, telling you what to say?"

"How do I know you won't shoot me in the back like you did Parker, once I've told you where Mason is?"

Mason or Cherry. If she's telling the truth, it isn't much of a choice. Especially after today. I wouldn't mind giving bloody noses to some nosy Sub Rosa hall monitors, but with Parker and Mason dogging me, it's dumb to go begging for unnecessary trouble.

"Okay," I say. "It's a deal. When and where should we meet?"

She doesn't say anything for a few seconds. "Someone's coming. I'll call you later."

I put the phone in my pocket and go back to my food. Carlos has already refilled my glass.

"Let me guess. You were talking to a woman. I don't need to hear the words. It's all in the tone," he says. "They call when they want something, then they're the ones who cut you off."

"It's not women. It's humans. Can't live with 'em. Can't kill 'em all."

I go back to my food, and wonder about Cherry. Her breathing sounded nervous on the phone, but I can't be sure. I guess my new Spidey senses don't work over wires. But if she's setting me up, wouldn't she have suggested a time and place to meet right away? I can go round and round like this forever, looking for secret meanings in every syllable and pause in the conversation. If I am being set up, I want to go in with an edge so I don't end up eating one of Parker's fireballs. Normally, about now, I'd go and ask Vidocq for advice or maybe a protection charm. Today doesn't seem like the day for that.

It takes me a minute to notice that the music has changed. It's shifted from tiki drums and bird calls to something more somber. All slow bass and breathy sax. Then a singer.

"It's dreamy weather we're on You waved your crooked wand Along an icy pond with a frozen moon A murder of silhouette crows I saw And the tears on my face And the skates on the pond They spell Alice."

I go to the jukebox to see what's playing.

"Set me adrift and I'm lost over there And I must be insane, to go skating on your name, And by tracing it twice, I fell through the ice Of Alice…"

"Who put this song on?" I turn and look at the room. It's early enough that the place isn't packed yet. There are maybe a dozen people scattered at different tables. "Who put this song on?" Not a word. My heart is pounding. I go back to the bar, keeping an eye on the room, not sure what to do. I want to start throwing furniture and people, but two sets of civilian casualties in one day is probably two too many.

I ask Carlos, "Did you see anyone by the jukebox?"

"Sorry, man. No. I didn't even know we had the song. Never heard it before. The service guys change the tunes every now and then, when they come in to empty the coin bins."

"Next time one of them comes in, tell them to take it off."

"You got it. Here. Have another drink." Carlos starts to pour me one, sets down the bottle, and grabs a baseball bat from under the counter.

"Get the fuck out of here, rulacho. You got no business here."

I look at the door. One of the skinheads from the other day is there, black eyes and his arm in a sling. He comes inside and stands by the bar, tall and cocky, but his heartbeat says he's scared, and he's keeping an eye on Carlos and his bat.

"The Blut Fuhrer wants to see you," he says, nodding at me.

"The bloated what?"

"Blut Fuhrer," says Carlos. " 'Blood leader.' The boss to these Nazi bitches."

"Shut up, spick. White men are talking."

I have one hand around skinhead's throat and I'm squeezing the juice out of him. This is exactly what I need to work off some tension. When I let go, the skinhead falls on his ass on the floor. So much for tall and cocky.

"The Blut Fuhrer…" he rasps.

"Blood leader?" I say. "When did you guys start playing Dungeons and Dragons? Tell the blood fart to kiss my ass."

Himmler grabs a bar stool and pulls himself to his feet. "I told him about that black knife you used on Frederic. That's why he wants to meet you."

"Why do I care what he wants?"

"The Blut Fuhrer says he knows the original owner."

Azazel? A third-rate Colonel Klink impersonator knows Azazel?

"How does your boss know the owner?"

"I don't know. He just said he wanted to meet the man with the power to have that particular knife. He promises you safe passage in and out."

"Thanks, but I think I can find my own way in and out of your mom's basement."

"Don't trust this little bug," says Carlos. "Let me call the cops."

"No. If he knows about the knife, I want to meet the guy."

The skinhead says, "There's a car outside."

When he turns, I wrap my right arm around his neck and squeeze. I have the knife against the side of his throat.

"If you're lying to me, I'm going to cut out your eyes and cut off your balls. Then I'm going put your balls in your eye sockets and staple your eyes in your ball sac. So, let me ask you one more time, are you absolutely sure you're telling me the truth?"

The skinhead tries to nod. "He said he just wants to meet you and that no one will bother you."

I take off the Veritas and flip it. It lands showing a burning cross and Sieg Heil in phonetic runes.

"Okay, Princess." I put the knife back in my waistband under the hoodie. "But remember—no tongues on a first date."

THE NEW REICHSTAG is an abandoned furniture warehouse near Sunset and Alvarado. A dozen American junker cars with white-power bumper stickers are parked outside. Another dozen chop-shop Harleys are lined up just beyond the cars. At least now I know who rides in this town.

My Nazi best friend knocks on the door and a girl skinhead with a Luger in a shoulder holster lets us inside the clubhouse.

No one has opened a window in this place for ten years. The room stinks of beer, piss, and sweat. It's packed with roid rage Hitler Youth, but I can't take my eyes off the girl who let us in, fierce and skinny, sporting a wife beater, shaved head, and a gun. I want to tell her, Baby, you're my punk-rock dream date. Let's get drunk and break stuff. Then I remember that she's not like the girls I knew way back when. Proud to be scum. She's waiting to be swept off to Valhalla by goose-stepping Dolph Lundgren look-alikes.

She asks, "What the fuck are you staring at, asshole?" and moves a hand to the gun.

I smile at her. "Spank me harder, Eva Braun."

She spits at my boots but misses. My Nazi pal says, "Shut up, Lisa." He leads me to an office door marked private. He knocks twice and we go inside.

While the main room is a piss-soaked junkyard of broken furniture and overflowing garbage cans, the office is as clean and organized as an operating room.

Behind a gray metal desk, a blond man is writing with a fountain pen on a yellow legal pad. High forehead. Sky-blue eyes. Cheekbones like the prow of an icebreaker. A perfect Aryan wet dream. Hell, even I want to have this guy's babies.

His desk is surrounded by neat piles of white power pamphlets, slim books on how Jews and blacks are really extraterrestrial invaders, event sign-up sheets and CDs with pictures of bare-chested bands covered in swastika tattoos. At one corner is an impressive pile of weapons, knives, knuckle-dusters, and pipes wrapped in electrical tape. Mixed in the pile of metal, I'm pretty sure I see a couple of Hellion weapons that I used in the arena.

He looks up at me and gives me a smile that would melt a car salesman's heart. "Sorry. Just making some notes for a speech I have to give this weekend. Please, sit down."

I sit on a padded metal folding chair. My weight makes it squeak. Only the Fuhrer gets the good furniture. I've gotten used to being able to read people, their breathing and heart rate, but I can't get a fix on this guy. He's not even too calm to read. It's like he's not there at all.

"What's the story, Siegfried?" I ask. "Why are they all shorn sheep out there, but you get to have hair?"

"In the group, I'm called Josef. I'm the face of the movement. It's all about media these days, isn't it?" He points to a box of recruitment DVDs and tapes. "Tattoos and shaved heads scare people. Looking like the prom king brings the newspaper and local TV around, and gets our message out to more potential recruits."

"I know about your message and don't want to hear more. I've had enough crazy talk for this lifetime."

"I'm sure you have. They don't think much of the human race down in the pit, do they? I know Azazel doesn't." He watches me when he says it, waiting for a reaction. I don't give him one.

"How do you know what Azazel thinks?"

"Because I've talked to him. He's not happy with you killing him with his own knife. Tartarus is a bleak place compared to Hell."

"How could you talk to Azazel? You can't do a summoning on anyone as powerful as Azazel, and only Lucifer can walk in and out of Hell on his own."

"Who says I'm on my own?" He opens his hands in an expansive gesture, like something a preacher would do. "What's that old line from Luke? 'My name is Legion: for we are many.'"

"Who's 'we'? Not those idiots out there."

"Of course not." Josef gets up and walks around the desk. He's wearing chinos and a polo shirt. He doesn't look any more dangerous than a salesman at RadioShack. "Who we are doesn't matter. You matter. You got out of Hell and that makes you special. But why are you special? You don't even smell like other humans. What are you?"

"I'm no one. I'm just me."

"I think you're being modest. Let's see."

Before I know what's happening, Josef has one hand on my shoulder and the other inside my chest. I'm not bleeding and my bones aren't cracked. He's just got his hand inside me. I can feel his fingers moving over my ribs and between my organs. I try to throw him off. Punch or kick him. But I can't move. He finds one of the bullets. Turns it between his fingers.

"Oh," he says. "That shouldn't be there. You should have that looked at."

Josef's human facade cracks like old paint, drops in flakes, and peels away in long sheets, falling on the floor. There's a black void beneath his skin, but the blackness doesn't hold and I can see what's inside him. Josef is the hands and eyes of the operation, but he's not alone. There are other creatures in there, too. Their outlines aren't entirely solid. They're vague, like ghosts. Like Josef, they glow from the inside, a pale blue white, like a slug crawling across the bottom of the ocean. They remind me of angels, if angels were candles that you left in a locked car in Texas in August. Their faces are fish-belly white and soft. Half formed. The fact that the creatures are almost beautiful makes them even harder to look at. I can't read them the way I can a person, but I don't have to. They remind me of insects. They might pounce on your next move, or they might wait for a million years, until they think the moment is right. It's all the same to them. They're patience and hunger with a side of fury.

I'm sick and freezing. It's like I'm icing up from the inside. There's a bitter smell and taste. Like a mouthful of vinegar. I want to throw up, but I can't move.

"What's this?" The question comes from far away and in a thousand discordant voices.

Josef takes my heart in his hand. His fingers glide through my flesh and touch Azazel's key. Josef goes rigid.

All those voices again. "What is that? Is that your secret? I want it!" He leans forward and pulls on my heart. This time I scream. He's trying to pull it out through my chest and it feels like he just might make it. But it's not my heart he wants. It's the key inside. He gets his fingers around it and tries to pry it out.

I don't black out. I don't scream. My vision collapses to a small point and settles on the floor, which opens up beneath me. I can see the outlines of Lucifer's palace, Pandemonium, and the city around it. The smaller generals' palaces and the arena where I fought. Individual Hellions drift up through the chaos at the edges of Hell, flying toward me. I know what this is now. I'm dying. Until now, I wasn't even sure I could die. Now I know better.

The Hellions are getting closer. Soon I'll fall right into their waiting arms. I hope they let me fight in the arena again. What else am I good at?

Josef screams and pulls his hand out of my chest. The human fingers are black and charred.

"What did you do to me? What is that thing? I want it."

The floor is suddenly solid beneath my feet. He's let go. I'm not dying anymore.

Josef grabs me with his good hand and pulls my face close to his. He looks human again. "A man couldn't do that. Tell me what you are."

"I'm the Gingerbread Man. I'll run and run as fast as I can."

Josef swings me around and throws me, one-handed, over his desk. Books, papers, and CDs scatter around the room. I slam into the wall. Some of the knuckle-dusters and knives that had been on his desk now dig into my back. I roll over on my belly knowing that I'm useless. I have a demonic knife under my shirt and I'm lying on a pile of shiny killing toys, but I couldn't go two rounds with a kitten right now.

When I try to get on my feet, my hand comes down on one of the taped pipes. It feels familiar and heavy, like Hellion metal. It's a na'at. Of course. Josef said that he's been to Hell. He definitely knows dark magic. He's the one who gave the Devil Daisy to the skinhead in Carlos's bar. I stay on the floor, slip the na'at inside my shirt, and wrap my arms around myself so he won't see it.

I say, "Don't stop now, sweetheart. It was just getting fun." Then I puke.

I hear Josef open the door and bark orders at someone. My Nazi pal and some of his friends come inside and haul me to my feet. I stay bent over so that they can't see the na'at. Not that I can stand up straight yet. I still feel Josef's fingers inside my chest.

The skinheads perp-walk me to the door, but Josef stops them. He leans over and whispers, "My name is…" and he makes a sound like a snake getting ready to strike. "Remember me. We're going to meet again."

This trip through the skinhead's playhouse isn't as fun as the first. It feels like every one of them spits on me or bounces a beer can off my head. My punk girlfriend at the door grabs my balls and squeezes until I collapse and get my first chance to admire the warehouse's lovely linoleum floor.

That's it, honey. We've officially broken up.

The trip back to the Bamboo House of Dolls is a blur of elbows and knees as the skinhead boys play Frisbee with me in the backseat. The good news is that the meth head driving gets us to the bar in record time. The bad news is that he barely slows down when we get there. The boys push me out of the backseat while the car is still going thirty miles per. I land like a sack full of Silly Putty, rolling and bouncing down the street until I hit the curb in the front of the bar.

Before anyone can call the cops, I crawl under a parked car, drop into the shadow, and stumble through the room back to Max Overdrive.

I don't even get into bed. I lie on the cool floor. Try to catch my breath and shake off the feeling of those fingers scrabbling around in my chest. I take the na'at out from under my shirt, feeling its familiar weight in my hand. If I was a better liar, I'd say that scoring the weapon was worth the beating, but I'm not and it wasn't. On the other hand, coming away with a working na'at and leaving a demonic skinhead with nothing but a burned hand and a pile of puke can give you a feeling of accomplishment at the end of a long day.

I WAKE UP with Mount Rushmore lying on my chest. My body feels like it weighs about a million pounds and it's telling me that I shouldn't move until at least the next ice age. Then I could forget all about L.A., get a job sweeping up Muninn's labyrinth, and live in the dark and the silence forever. Or, more likely, until Baphomet or some other Hellion redneck finds a loophole in the universe's cosmological rule book and wiggles his way out of Hell for the simple pleasure of gnawing my head off.

I think I might have gone a little too far down this road to call a press conference and announce my retirement. But what would I say? Ladies and gentlemen, I'm hanging up my key and my guns and will follow my bliss to lead a quiet life, devoting myself to my nonprofit organic-vegetable farm cooperative, where I plan on going slowly out of my mind and strangling every goddamn human being and chicken within one hundred miles. I really hate chickens.

THE BURNS ON my hands and face are gone, but my chest is a Jackson Pollock mess of black and purple bruises. Every time I take a breath, the tissue around Kasabian's bullets feels like someone is trying to check my oil level with a cattle prod. If I'm still alive when this is over, I'm definitely going to see Kinski.

My phone is beside me, blinking. I thumb the on button and find a text message from Cherry, with the address of a little taco place called No Mames on Western Avenue and a time when she wants to meet. The good news is that I have a few hours to get cleaned up and pull myself together. I want a cigarette and a drink, but I can't smoke in the shower (trust me, I've tried), and if I started drinking now, I'm fairly certain that my brain would finally give up, get a new roommate, and move to Redondo Beach without me.

I can still feel Josef's fingers inside me. I dreamed about that room in the back of the Nazi playhouse. And the arena in Hell. About the black and empty creature that Lucifer once ordered to leave the arena. For all I know, it could have been Josef or one of the legion I sensed was there inside his body with him. If it even was a body. When he split open, his insides felt more like an empty portal than a real entity. I don't want to ever meet him or any of his friends again.

I strip down to take a shower and see that I've ruined another set of clothes. This time it isn't my fault. Those Nazis owe me a new pair of jeans for shoving me out of that car. I'll have to go collect on that sometime. That will be fun.

The shower feels so good I almost faint. I can't get over how these little things still thrill me. If I was the spiritual type, being so pleased by little pleasures would mean that I was one of those penitent saints who live in a cave and only eat gruel once a week. In my case, it's my secret shame that the most exciting thing I can think of is clean socks.

After I get cleaned up, I put on the last pair of unshredded jeans I own. I put on the trashed motocross jacket figuring it will keep tourists from asking directions to Disneyland.

None of my guns will fit under the jacket without sending waves of pain through my body. I don't think Cherry is going to get cute about anything, but if she does, the knife ought to be enough to take her down. I take off the Veritas and toss it. Should I go? No words this time. Just the image of a winged bug on a small hill. A fly on shit. That's how I'm attracted to these things. In Hellion speak, it means that the answer to the question is inevitable, so why bother asking? It's right. Why bother?

THE GRILLED FISH tacos at No Mames aren't half bad. The place is minimal inside. A few folding tables and cheap white plastic lawn chairs. It's a pleasantly anonymous atmosphere. I eat three tacos and drink strong black coffee and wait.

And wait. When Cherry is officially an hour late, I go outside for a smoke. (I know she's officially late because Allegra told me that the time on my phone is set by a goddamn satellite thousands of miles up in space. Apparently, while I was Downtown, people decided that they needed to know the exact time on Neptune.) I call Cherry every ten minutes for the next half hour. I text her. Nothing. Finally, I get fed up with the car exhaust and the rancid pot smoke from the dealer by the pay phone. Cherry probably grew some brains in the night and hopped freight out of town. Smart move.

I was too tired to steal a car on the way over, so I scan the traffic for a cab. A Yellow and a Veteran's show up a minute later, and I start waving at them. The Veteran's cuts across two lanes, aiming right at me. When it's one lane away and about to turn into the curb, three black Ford SUVs come blasting around it from behind and cut it off. The middle one pulls up in front of me and a tall man in a dark blue suit and tie and white shirt steps out, flashing a badge. It's one of the two men in suits who rode the elevator at the Bradbury Building with Vidocq, Allegra, and me.

"Excuse me, sir," he says in a West Texas drawl. "I'm U.S. Marshal Larson Wells. There's a Homeland Security matter that we need to speak to you about."

I should have known something was up when I saw three Ford vans rolling down the street together. Is there any other time you see so many expensive American vehicles in one place? It's always a presidential motorcade or a bust. Who else would buy those rolling tugboats when they're so easy to steal? American cars are like condoms. Use them once and throw them away.

I step back and reach for my knife. The van doors swing open wide. It's bright out and all I can see inside are silhouettes. There are at least six of them and I bet every one of them has a gun pointed at me. I'm not exactly in shape to get shot fifty times right now. I bring my hand forward and hold it up. Nothing palmed there. Everybody stay cool.

Wells takes my arm and leads me to the middle van. Just before I step inside, he slaps cuffs on my wrists in one smooth motion, like maybe he's done this before. He pushes me inside and joins me in the rear seat, keeping himself between the door and me. All three vans shoot straight down Western, turn right on Beverly, and keep going.

"Is this about those library fines? I swear I meant to pay them, but I was ten at the time and had a lousy credit rating." The marshals in the front ignore me. Wells checks his watch and looks out the window. I pull on the cuffs. There's barely any give. I might be able to break them and get them off, but not without shattering bones and peeling most of the skin off my hands. "For a Sub Rosa hit squad, you hide it well. I'm not picking up any magic vibes. I don't see a binding circle or any killing charms. Did you hide them in the headliner?" I reach up and touch the vinyl, feeling for lumps or ridges that might give away hidden evil eye booby traps.

Wells snaps, "Don't touch that." He's still not looking at me. "And the Sub Rosa can kiss my ass. I don't work for pixies and necrophiliacs."

He says "pixie" the way a redneck says "faggot."

I say, "I think you mean 'necromancers.'"

"It's all the same to me, Merlin. A bunch of middle-age Goths playing with Ouija boards, and talking to spooks and fairies. Or playing Martha Stewart with their Easy-Bake Oven potion kits."

"You keep bad-mouthing them like that, one of those pixies is going to turn your guts to banana pudding with one hard look. Or don't you believe in that kind of thing?"

"Oh, I believe. I just think those absinthe sippers are a joke. Half the Sub Rosa are out-of-their-mind party animals. The other half dress up like the Inquisition and have committee meetings on how you pixies should live and behave around normal humans. You people are all either drug addicts or the PTA with wands."

"They sound like a lot more fun than I remember."

"I bet they're in love with you, boy. You must have missed the memo about keeping a low profile."

"If you're not Sub Rosa, tell me why I shouldn't be killing you right now."

Wells finally turns and looks at me, giving me his best El Paso squint, trying to drill a hole in my head with his eyes.

"Because if I shoot you, you're not going to hop up and decapitate me. Just because I don't work with the Sub Rosa doesn't mean that I think all nonhumans are worthless. For example, the guns my men and I are carrying were designed by a coalition of human engineers and certain respectable occult partners. What I'm saying is that if you sneeze or blink or do anything even slightly annoying, I'll burn you down with the same holy fire that the Archangel Michael used to blast Satan's ass out of Heaven and into the Abyss."

"If you're not Sub Rosa, who do you people work for?"

"I told you. Homeland Security."

"The federal government monitors magic in California?"

"Not just California. The whole country. It's our job to keep our eyes on all freaks, terrorists, and potential terrorists, which describes all of you pixies, in my opinion."

His heartbeat and breathing are steady. His pupils aren't dilating. He's telling the truth. Or he thinks he is.

"Are you spooks local? 'Cause I just met this funny little Nazi named Josef. Know him? Blond. Good-looking. Not even remotely human."

"We know about Josef and his goose-steppers. They're irrelevant to our current concerns. And we're not spooks. The CIA are spooks. We heard you and Josef got into a little dustup."

"It wasn't so much a dustup as him beating me about three-quarters to death. He also showed me that I can die and how it'll probably happen. So, how was your day?" Wells checks his watch again. He's not as cool as he looked at first. Something is worrying him and it's not me. "That probably doesn't make much sense to you."

"I've read your file. I know all about you. You've haven't exactly been inconspicuous since you got back to town."

"You guys have been watching me?"

"From the moment you walked out of the cemetery. At first, we thought you were just another zombie, and were about to send out waste disposal. But when you mugged that crackhead and didn't eat him, we decided just to keep an eye on you."

"How?"

"Radar. We've got all you pixies on radar."

"More respectable magic?"

"Our friends understand the security issues at stake."

"Radar and death rays. Where do I sign up? It doesn't seem fair that you get all the fun toys."

"Cry me a river. Anyway, with all your fun and games, my superior asked me to bring you in for a talk."

"Seems like my week to meet bosses." The cuffs hold my wrists together, which makes my arms rest on my sore chest. I shift around in my seat, trying to find a more comfortable position. I glance out the window and see that we're crossing La Cienega. "I notice we're not going to the courthouse."

"What makes you think you deserve a day in court?"

"You're a cop…"

"U.S. marshal."

"Fine. A cop who can read. Isn't there something in the law or the Constitution about everyone getting a day in court?"

"That only applies to the living, son."

"I'm sitting right here."

"Technically, no. Not in any legal sense. Legally, you're a nonperson. You've been a long-gone daddy out of this realm of existence for eleven years and change. A missing person can be declared dead after seven, which means that you've been legally dead almost four years."

"You're not serious."

"Look at the bright side. If you were alive, you'd still be the prime suspect in your girlfriend's murder. If you were alive, the IRS would want to know why you haven't been filing taxes. Ask me whether I'm more afraid of Hell or the IRS, I'll go with the IRS every time."

"So, you know who I am and where I've been."

"I know every inch of your sorry waste of a life. My boss might want to talk to you, but to me, you're a parasite. A waste of space and air. It makes a person wish the earth really was flat. Then we could take all the people like you, load you in a garbage scow, and push you over the edge and out of everybody's hair."

"If you know where I've been, then you know why I'm back. Let me go and let me do what I came here for. I'll get rid of some very bad people for you."

"How? By blowing up Rodeo Drive?"

"That was a mistake."

"Was it? Thanks for clearing that up. The truth is, I don't give a damn about some Hollywood lawyers' wives and their shoe stores. What I care about is you. What you represent and the kind of trouble you bring with you. You're a walking calamity."

Now I feel it. His heart rate is picking up and there's the slightest whiff of perspiration coming off him. One of the G-men in the front of the van has turned to watch our conversation. He and Wells smile at each other, sharing some private joke.

When Wells speaks again, he does it with the kind of phony casualness that lets everyone in the room know that you're about to tell the bad joke they've all been waiting for. Wells says, "So, what the hell kind of a name is Sandman Slim anyway? You think you're some kind of superhero?"

I turn and look at him, "You lost me there, Tex. I don't have any idea what you're talking about."

"Don't be modest, we've all heard of you. 'Sandman Slim. The monster who kills monsters.' I have to admit, it's kind of catchy. Did you come up with that or did some Hellion ad firm shit that out for you?"

"Listen, cop. I've never heard that stupid name before. Stop calling me it. And tell me where we're going or I'm getting out."

Wells and the marshal in the front laugh. "I wouldn't try. I'm dead serious when I tell you that I could put a bullet in your head right now and go have a sandwich."

"What kind?"

"What kind of what?"

"What kind of sandwich? What's a murder sandwich taste like? Does it come with extra cheese or chili fries? What tastes better after murder, Coke or Pepsi?"

"You are working my very last nerve, cocksucker."

"I'm going home." I reach across Wells for the door, shoving him back into the seat with my shoulder. The marshal goes for his gun.

When you're facing down multiple attackers, you always want to make the first move. It lets them know that you're ready to fight and that you're crazy enough to get the party started. One rule of thumb in fighting is that crazy can often overcome skill and numbers, because, while a trained fighter might actually enjoy going up against another trained fighter, no one really wants to wrestle with crazy. Crazy doesn't know when it's winning. And crazy doesn't know when to stop. If you can't pull off crazy, if, for instance, you're handcuffed in a small van with six armed assailants, stupid is a decent substitute for crazy.

Wells still has his hand inside his jacket when I slam my elbow into his throat. He freezes, trying to remember how to breathe. Before the boys in the front of the van get any ideas, I swing an elbow up over his head and bring the arm down on the other side, getting the cuffs around his throat. Then I fall back across the seat, pulling Wells on top of me. The G-men in the front of the van have all drawn their guns out by now, but I'm not sweating. If they want to shoot me, they're going to have to blow a lot of holes in the big man first.

"Stand down," shouts Wells. Then, quieter, to me, "That got you far, didn't it, shit-for-brains?"

"It got me your neck. That's a start." I tighten the cuffs across his throat. Just enough so that he can feel it, but not enough to make him pass out. "You're not the first bunch that ever kidnapped me, but you're definitely the least fun."

"Boy, you just attacked a federal officer. I'll have you swinging from your balls at Gitmo."

"Who you going to arrest? I'm already dead." Wells goes for his gun again. I spring forward and slam his head into the door frame, spinning him at the same time so that his body stays between his boys and me. I've got four guns on me and one guy is still driving.

We're somewhere south of L.A., near Culver City. The van turns into the parking lot of what looks like an aircraft assembly plant that hasn't seen action in twenty years. There are diamond-shaped hazardous materials warnings and rusted DOD signs on all the fences and buildings.

The van slams to a stop and the side door opens. I tighten the cuffs on Wells's neck and pull him back to use as a shield against whatever is coming into the van.

A woman in a crisply tailored power suit leans her head inside.

"I can come back later if you two gentlemen need a moment alone," she says.

I let up on Wells's neck, but still keep hold of him.

"He's the one getting grabby," says Wells.

The woman nods. "That's what he does. All those years in the Abyss have left him with some impulse control issues. It's all in his file." She looks at me. "Let Marshal Wells up right now. No one is going to shoot you. And, Larson, uncuff this man. You look like a couple of third graders."

"Sorry. Who are you again?" I ask.

The woman shakes her head, and then walks away. The G-men have holstered their guns. I lift my arms so that Wells can wiggle out from under the cuffs. He gets out of the van without looking back at me and starts adjusting his suit and tie. I follow him outside and hold out the cuffs. He takes his time, playing with his jacket and tie like a bad Vegas lounge comedian. Finally, he digs a key out of his pocket and unlocks me. There are red marks on my wrists, but there are corresponding marks on Wells's throat, so I guess we're even.

I take out my cigarettes and Mason's Zippo. When I thumb the lighter, all I get is sparks.

"Anybody got a light?" I ask.

"You can't smoke here," says Wells.

"We're in the open in the middle of nowhere. Why not?"

"Are you stupid?" asks Wells. "That's Aelita. She's an angel. They're very sensitive to things like cigarette smoke."

"Cool. I've never seen an angel in disguise before." I follow her to the old assembly plant.

Aelita isn't what I imagined an angel would look like. She's about as ethereal as a zip gun. She walks like she's about to call in an air strike or buy Europe. Donald Trump in drag with her enemies' balls in a candy dish on her desk, right next to the stapler.

The complex's main building is huge. Probably a Cold War-era industrial assembly line. Aelita opens a side door and I can see inside. Absolutely nothing. Concrete floor and metal walls. Shadows of smashed and abandoned machinery. Not even lights.

A few steps into the building, I hit a kind of barrier. It's like walking through warm Jell-O. Then I'm suddenly in Times Square on New Year's. Humans in suits, and different kinds of nonhumans, are moving huge diesel engines on automated chain lifters. Others are driving forklifts with pallets loaded with cedar and mugwort. Silver ingots and iron bars. Industrial drums of holy water. They're assembling armored vehicles and what look like weapons. Shiny superscience versions of old pepper-pot guns.

I look back at the entrance. There are angelic runes chiseled into the concrete floor. Overhead some kind of massive machine hangs bolted to the ceiling. It hums like a beehive and gives off a shimmering fluorescent-green light.

"It's called a Phylactery Accelerator," says Aelita. "The holy relics and sigils in the floor form a protective talisman."

"But not one powerful enough to hide all of whatever the hell this is."

"Please don't use profanity in here. The Accelerator captures the energy released by charmed-strange mesons as they decay into protons and antineutrinos, and uses that energy to amplify the talisman's blessed essence."

"You lost me after 'profanity.' But I think I get the idea. You're the respectable magic committee. You've got a real Norman Rockwell vibe here. Except for all the guns."

She looks right through me. Suddenly I'm thinking that maybe I would have been better off if the guys in the van had been a hit squad.

"Come with me."

She takes me into a soundproofed side room. After the noise of the factory floor, the room is spooky quiet. There are stained-glass windows suspended by wires from the rafters. More angelic script cut into the floor, this time in the shape of a cross. There's an altar at one end of the room. The other end looks like Frankenstein's lab. There are celestial maps of the universe looking down from Heaven (I'd seen the reverse maps Downtown). The machine that surrounds the operating theater could be anything. Part of a personal nuclear power plant or one of the alien rooms from Forbidden Planet.

I wait for the angel to say something. I want to know why she had me dragged here, but I'm not about to be the first one to blink. I turn and find her over by the altar, brushing Communion-wafer crumbs into her hand. She gently drops them into a trash can beside the altar, then bows her head and crosses herself. Now I know why Lucifer and his wild bunch ended up down below. If I had to take my boss's kid so seriously that I was required to salute his dandruff, I'd go stab—happy, too.

"Have you been enjoying yourself since your return?" she asks with her back to me.

"Not particularly."

Now she turns. She smiles. A beaming, monstrously insincere angel smile. Probably another part of her job training.

"I only ask because it seems to me that you've been having a lot of fun. Cutting people's heads off. Beating up people in bars. Blowing up whole shopping districts. Shooting people on the street in the middle of the day. It sounds terribly fun to me. The kind of fun that I'd expect to appeal to someone like you."

"Is snatching people off the street your idea of fun? God gave you wings, so you have an everlasting get-out-of-jail-free card. You can do anything you want because everything you do is holy. Is that it?"

"Yes. As a matter of fact, it is."

"Is everything your army does holy, too? They didn't all look like angels to me. Was Marshal Wells sweating holy water? I must have missed that."

"Marshal Wells is a good and dedicated man who is willing to give his life in the cause of good. What are you willing to die for?"

"To kill the people I came here for. And to not be fucked with along the way."

"What if I told you that I could help you find what and who you're looking for?"

"I wouldn't believe you."

"Why?"

"Because I rode here with a gun to my head."

"Have you ever heard of the Golden Vigil?"

"Sounds like a community-college Goth band."

"We're an ancient order. A coalition of celestial beings and humans dedicated to protecting the world and mankind from its greatest enemy."

Get ready for the Garden of Eden Sunday school lecture.

"Don't try and sell me the snake oil you fobbed off on your Ghostbusters out there. I've met Lucifer. I've killed his generals. Those idiots are too busy stabbing each other in the back to be much danger to mankind."

"You're right. I agree completely."

Aelita walks to a long wooden table and picks up what looks like a piece of thick brown cloth. When she gets closer, I see that it's vellum.

"Lucifer is a eunuch and his armies are buried at the bottom of Creation. No, our real concern is the world's true enemy, the Enerjik Kissi." I'm not sure I catch the first word, but she pronounces the second one "Kee-shee." She holds up the vellum and a sigil has formed there. One I've never seen before. It's not like the usual angelic or even Hellion symbols. It's practically a Rorschach blot, like someone spilled ink on the vellum, and then tried to wipe it off.

"Let me tell you a story," she says, and goes and sits at the wooden table. "All little boys like stories."

As much as I want to get out of here and away from this crazy angel and her mercenary zealots next door, I'm still feeling too ragged to bolt or put up too much of a fight. So I do the next best thing, and surrender. I go to the table and sit down across from her. She spreads the vellum on the table between us. As her hands pass over it, the sigil fades away.

"At the beginning of time, the Lord God made a mistake. Frankly, to some of us, He made two mistakes, but since He likes you talking monkeys, we can't fix that one. So we turn our attention to the first great mistake."

She passes her hand over the vellum and images of rough glass globes appear, like pen-and-ink drawings. As Aelita talks, the drawings begin to glow.

"When the Lord bought life to the universe, He did it by spreading His divine light throughout the dark. He breathed His light into glass vessels that He hung in the sky like the stars that would come much later. We, the angelic order, were born from this light. And we helped to spread it throughout Creation. Once, as the Lord blew light into a vessel, He blew in a bit too much and the vessel shattered. His divine light fell into the void and onto the worlds we were building. That falling light was the beginning of life in the universe."

Like a Disney cartoon, the vessels on the vellum crack open, turning into squirming little one-cell organisms.

"But not all of the divine light landed on the worlds. Some fell into the deep unformed void that was nothing but boiling chaos. Since the Lord was now enchanted by the life growing on His worlds, we never bothered to put anything into the far void. We all now regret that decision."

She waves her hand and the vellum images disappear, like lines on an Etch A Sketch. She lays her palm on the vellum, and a roiling, crawling blackness seeps across it.

"As both angels and lower life,"—she nods in my direction—"were born from divine light, so was something else. In the chaos grew another sort of life, very much like angels, but different. Wells and some of his men describe them as 'anti-angels,' which is as good an explanation as your little brains can grasp."

I put my hand on the black vellum that's now roiling and writhing like liquid obsidian. It looks like the knife I have under my coat. The knife is supposed to be bone, but I never found out what kind of bone.

I say, "The anti-angels are the Kissi."

"Yes." She moves her hand again and the bubbling black is gone. As she talks, other images appear from under the hand resting on the vellum.

"The Kissi don't hate life. Life fascinates them. The energy. The unpredictability of it. The chaos of life. When they found early humans, they settled right in, creating more chaos. Helping one tribe create weapons. Teaching language to another. The Kissi were born in chaos. It's what they're made of. It's what they consume. Humans create a particularly appetizing sort of chaos to the Kissi.

"Eons ago, there was a war between us angels and the Kissi that raged from the earth all the way to the gates of Heaven. Neither side won."

"Was Lucifer already in Hell? If you'd asked for his help, he might have come through. I don't think he'd like a bunch of mad dogs eating up Earth, either. If we were gone, who else would he screw with?"

"No one would ask the Prince of Lies for help. Don't be stupid."

"So, it was an option? But you didn't go for it. Isn't pride one of the seven deadly sins?"

She looks at me like my mother used to look at me right before she smacked me on the ear. Like Mom, she gets hold of herself before the big explosion.

"As I said, there was a war. Neither side could defeat the other, so we struck a bargain with the Kissi. They could stay and, since humans were naturally chaotic creatures, the Kissi could satisfy their appetites for chaos and destruction within certain specific limits. The Golden Vigil was created to monitor this truce.

"The truce has held for millennia. But lately things have changed. The Kissi activities are becoming more bold and reckless. They openly attack humans. They are involved in wars. Terrorism. Drug and weapons trading. Something has upset the balance." She takes her hand off the vellum and starts folding it up. "When we heard that Sandman Slim had come to Earth, naturally we thought that he might be the cause of the trouble."

"Wells called me that name in the car. What the hell was he talking about?"

"Please don't use profanity here." She sets the vellum aside. "The marshal was talking about you, you fool. You're Sandman Slim. The monster who kills monsters. Do you think we don't know what you were doing in Hell? Fallen angels are still angels. We notice when someone kills them. You have quite a reputation in the celestial realms. That's why you're here."

"I'm not a monster. I'm just a man."

"You're a monster to someone. In the Inferno, you're the bogeyman who frightens the bogeyman. And you've bought your talent for destruction back here to Earth. That's why you're here. In case you hadn't noticed, this is a job interview."

That's the single scariest thing I've heard anyone say since I came home. And this angel is making my skin crawl in ways that even Mason can't.

"I already have a job, thanks. I run a video store."

"You're weak. I can smell the damage from your recent injuries. That's the only reason you're here and alive. When we thought that you were in league with the Kissi, there was a death warrant on your head. But after your encounter with Josef, that seems doubtful."

"He's a Kissi."

"Of course. I thought that you would have understood that by now."

"I think I met one in Hell once. In the arena. Is that possible?"

"Unlike the Hellions, the Kissi can move anywhere in the universe, including into and out of Hell. So, yes, you could have easily met one. What happened?"

"Lucifer was pissed. He threw the thing out."

"No doubt hoping it would return to Earth to wreak havoc and leave his disgusting kingdom to him alone. How brave."

"He did walk right up to it and order it out. Have you ever walked right up and started a fight with a Kissi?" She doesn't answer. "Anyway, if something's upset the balance of the universe, it probably means that we're looking for the same person. Mason Faim."

"Excellent. We have a common enemy. You'll join the Vigil and we'll fight the forces of chaos together."

"No thanks. Your little war sounds like fun, but I have my own work to do."

Aelita says, "This is God's work."

I get up from the table and walk away across the room. I need to be careful. I don't want to say the wrong thing when she knows that I'm hurt. The bullets in my chest are playing soccer with my ribs. I'd filled Mason's lighter earlier, so I take out my cigarettes and spark one. Take a couple of big puffs and flick the ashes onto her altar. I'll admit it. I'm not good at careful.

"Where was God when I was stuck in Hell?" I ask her. "If you knew about Sandman Slim, then you knew I'd been dragged down there alive and was being tortured. But you hosanna-singing sons of bitches couldn't spare one lousy angel to help me out?"

"Maybe God thought you were where you belonged."

"He was right. You know why? Because I got to see exactly how the wheels turn in that part of the universe. Now you've given me a little snapshot of Heaven. You Heaven-and-Hell types are just the same shakedown artists in different uniforms. I've only been kidnapped twice in my life. Once by Lurkers and now by an angel."

"You understand that since none of Lucifer's fiends can leave Hell, it must have been Kissi who dragged you down, probably in league with your friend Mason."

"Thanks. When I'm done with Mason, I'll know who to go after next." I grind the remains of my cigarette into the altar and leave them. "All of you celestial pricks. Lucifer's psychos and God's lapdogs, you're out for yourselves, just like everybody else. You don't care about the world. You cut a deal with the Kissi. I wonder why?"

Aelita stands, very tall and straight, with her hands folded in front of her.

"Tell me. Enlighten me, Sandman Slim."

"Because they made it to Heaven. Got right up to the gates. So, you cut a deal. You sent the wolves down here among the sheep and asked the wolves to behave. And if they didn't, oh well. It's just a few ewes being slaughtered. But now the wolves are hungrier than ever, and you know that sooner or later, they're going to come knocking on Heaven's door."

Aelita shakes her head and gives me that creepy, benevolent-angel smile again.

"You make me so sad, James."

"Don't call me that."

"All right, Sandman."

"Don't call me that, either."

"I hadn't realized how all those years in the Abyss had warped your mind. You've completely lost your ability to feel empathy. I've told you what's coming for humanity, yet you won't lift a finger to prevent it." She's walking over to me, like a kindergarten teacher about to take the white glue away from a kid who won't stop eating it. "Don't you feel anything for anyone?"

"No. The only person I cared about was murdered. And you didn't do anything about that, either, did you?"

"I can help you heal. Your body and your soul. You were an empty vessel when you went into the Abyss and the devil filled you full of poison. Let me fill you with the Lord's divine light."

She's throwing some hardcore angel hoodoo my way. Trying to get control of my tiny, expendable monkey brain. Candy was better at the soothing talk trick—she really had me going back at Kinski's. But Aelita isn't getting anywhere. Maybe the difference is that I kind of liked Candy, but Lucretia Borgia here isn't my type.

"Let me help you, my son." She reaches out and takes both of my hands in hers. "Become part of God's great plan."

"No."

Aelita's face turns red and she screams. Tears are streaming down her red face. She takes my hand again and then drops it.

"Abomination," she whispers. Then she screams, "Abomination!"

Downtown, one of the things Hellions used to complain about was how Heaven had disarmed them before tossing them into the garbage dump. Every angel is born with a weapon. Not something they can lose, but something that's part of them. A flaming sword. They manifest it with a thought and use it like a handheld nuke. I'd never seen one before Aelita manifested her sword in the soundproof chapel.

I'm still looking at it, kind of hypnotized by the thing, when she sticks it through me. I can feel it go through my chest and come out my back, burning and freezing at the same time.

Then I'm on the floor. I have a weird hallucination that Vidocq and Allegra are standing over me. Then I'm dead.

I DREAM THAT I'm back on Earth. I dream that I've escaped from Azazel and all the pain and madness of Hell. I'm home and I'm drinking beer with Alice, sweaty and happy in bed. I struggle to open my eyes and I see blue skies. I'm waking up in a cemetery. I am home. It isn't a dream. But why is the moon out during the day?

It's not the moon. It's a light.

That's not the sky. It's a blue ceiling. I know the smell of this place, but its name is lost down some darkened detour in my brain.

"I WAS DEAD."

"Pretty much," says Kinski. He's leaning over me, shining a light into my eyes as I lie on his exam table. "But Eugene poured a whole bottle of white nightshade elixir down your throat. It kept your soul from wandering away. After that, it was just a matter of kick-starting your body. How do you feel?"

"All right. Tired, but all right."

Several of Kinski's rocks are arranged around the wound in my chest. Others around my head, arms, and legs. The doc takes the stones off me, one by one.

Vidocq and Allegra are at the other end of the table. "I saw you there," I say. "I thought I was dreaming, but you were there."

"Yes," Vidocq says. "I'm so sorry for what happened."

"You knew those cops were going to snatch me, didn't you? You told them where I'd be. You set me up."

"You've been so out of control lately. I thought meeting the Golden Vigil and seeing their work would help you to focus your energies. You're going to kill yourself or some innocent person."

"So, you handed me over to Homeland Security and a psychotic angel. Is that your idea of group therapy?"

"I had no idea this would happen. Aelita was just going to talk to you."

I swing my legs over the edge of the table and try to stand. My vision blurs and my head swims. I sit back down.

"I crawl all the way out of Hell just to get kidnapped and sold out by friends all over again. But you know what the funniest thing about this is? Mason didn't get me killed. You did." Vidocq is sweating and cold. It's a fear reaction. Fear and guilt. "How long have you been working for them?"

"I work with them, not for them. It's been a while. Half a year. A little more, maybe. You don't know how things have been getting here. It's bad and getting worse. Things are quieter now. I don't know why. But they'll turn bad again and then you'll see why I did what I did."

"Were you working for them before I went Downtown?"

He shakes his head. "No. I'd barely heard of them back then."

Kinski hands me a glass of some stinking brown tea.

"Drink that down. All of it. Don't sip it."

I down the tea in three long gulps. It's thick and hot and I can feel little bits of twigs and leaves in my mouth. I hand the glass back to Kinski.

"Thanks. That was disgusting." I look at Vidocq. "At least your lie is a new lie. That's something. Small mercies, my father would say."

Allegra is holding on to Vidocq's arm, like she's supporting an old man who's had a stroke but is too proud to use a cane. Her heart is racing. Her pupils are like hubcaps. She's afraid, but not of me. Of everything. It might not have been such a good idea to bring her into the Sub Rosa world. She's seen a lot in just a few days. "Were you in on this with him?" I ask.

She looks at Vidocq, then back at me.

"He told me earlier. Look, after the thing on Rodeo and Medea Bava with those feathers and teeth, it didn't seem like such a bad idea."

"Okay. Thanks. You can leave with him."

Vidocq comes around the table. The bottles of potions and poisons sewn into his coat tinkle as he walks. "No, Jimmy."

"Yes, Jimmy. Get out of here. Both of you."

"Eugene saved you," says Allegra. "Aelita about killed your ass."

"Maybe next time she'll get lucky and save you two the trouble of selling me out."

Kinski says, "Why don't you ease up on these people a little? You brought some of this on yourself." I can't read Kinski. His eyes are steady. I can't hear his heart or breathing. He's hiding them from me somehow. Maybe Candy taught him some Jade tricks.

"Thanks for saving me, doc. I mean it. I'm going to need to sit here for a while. After that, I'll be out of your hair. But until then, please stay the fuck out of this."

Candy is over in the corner of the room. I missed her before. She's got her back to the wall and is trying to make herself small.

Looking back to Allegra and Vidocq, I say, "You two need to leave now. I don't want to look at you anymore." Vidocq starts to say something, but I cut him off. "I should have seen something like this coming. Hell's a circus run by mental patients. Heaven's a gated community where we're the bastard stepkids the real kids hate. Daddy's little mistake. Where does that leave us on this rock? I believe Aelita's story about the broken glass starting life. Trash falls from the sky and no one cleans it up because the trash starts talking. Why should anyone expect anything from anyone? How can trash trust trash?"

Vidocq nods. "Right, then." He looks at Allegra and they walk out together, closing the door to the exam room behind them.

Kinski and Candy start putting things back in cabinets. Bottles. Bundles of dried plants. A tray of desiccated sea horses. Kinski wraps his rocks up in their silk covers and quietly stows them away.

"What's wrong with your arm?" I ask. His left arm is bandaged up to the elbow. Spots of blood have soaked through the dressing.

"That's nothing. A couple of kids jumped me last night. They must have been high or something. They weren't very good robbers. They didn't get anything. Maybe they just wanted to beat someone up."

"Did they grab you or did they just start pushing you around?"

"What difference does that make?"

"If they grabbed you, it was probably a robbery. If they started whaling on you, then they were just looking to kick someone's ass. Which was it?"

"I guess they sort of grabbed me, at first."

"Then it was a robbery."

"Yeah, but they didn't ask for my wallet or pat me down. They just kind of held on and dragged me around."

"Were they trying to pull you toward a car or into one of these stores?"

"Like they were kidnapping me? No. I don't think so. They were just high."

"Who've you pissed off? You owe anyone money?"

"No one. It was nothing. Just life in the big city." He puts the last of the rocks away and turns to me, half smiling. "Look who's quizzing me about pissing people off. I think you took the gold, silver, and bronze in that event."

I waited for a minute, not sure I was going to say the next thing.

"I figured out one of your secrets."

"Which one would that be?"

"The rocks you used on Allegra and me. They're glass, aren't they? The glass from Aelita's story. Glass all full of divine light. Where did you get them?"

"You can find anything on eBay."

"Or from Mr. Muninn," says Candy.

"He has some nice things, no doubt."

"Why did you want them?" I ask. "You don't seem like a hippie New Age type. And you seem smart enough. Why aren't you a regular doctor?"

"What do I keep telling you? We'll talk when you let me take those bullets out."

"Then it was a bad move using those rocks on me. I don't even feel them anymore."

"You will." The doc keeps moving around the place, putting little things away. Examining others before handing them to Candy. He drops things, clumsy with just the one good arm. Candy leans against the end of the exam table. I pull my legs back so she can sit down. "Keep running around things and you'll feel them soon enough." Kinski picks up some green stems with small white blossoms on top. Candy leans over and takes them from him. "See? I told you we had some veratrum," he says.

"That's why you're the doc," says Candy.

The doc looks at me and crosses his arms.

"You might want to ease up on Eugene. He stood up for you while a lot of folks around here want to see you sent right back to where you came from, but he stood up for you."

"You one of them?"

"I'm on the fence."

"That's why I don't know if I trust you to cut me open."

"Imagine how I feel having you in my home, Sandman Slim."

I hadn't thought of that.

"Thanks again for fixing me up. I owe you."

Candy says, "You're going to have a nice new scar for your collection."

I rub my chest. She's right. There's an almost-healed burn near my heart, right where the sword went in.

"It's a good one, too. I think I'll be immune to nukes after this." Candy's heart has slowed, but her pupils are still wide. "Listen. I was an asshole the other night. I had no call to talk to you the way I did. I'm sorry."

"It's okay. Jades freak out a lot of people."

"Not me. I know better than that. When I was Downtown, I met Hellions more honorable than ninety-nine percent of the people I have to deal with up here. And I met human souls as vicious and treacherous as any Hellion. So for me to say that stuff to you, that was double shitty. My father would have smacked me and I'd've deserved it."

"I forgive you. We'll all be freaks together. A bloodsucker who doesn't suck blood. A human who thinks he's a Tasmanian Devil driving a tank. And a two-armed witch doctor with only one working arm."

I ask Kinski, "Why don't you use the glass to fix yourself?"

He shakes his head.

"They don't work the same way on everybody and they can't fix everything. I've got my herbs and my ice packs. I'll be fine."

"It's funny, you got mugged by people who didn't know what they wanted and I sort of did, too."

"You mean the angel?" asks Candy.

"Yeah. One minute, she's doing the hard sell and then she's coming over all beatific and Mother Teresa. Then she suddenly goes batshit psycho. Screams, 'Abomination,' and stabs me."

"You're sure she said 'Abomination'?"

"She was screaming it right in my face. I'm sure."

Candy makes a face and says, "Angels can be such pricks."

"That they can, darlin'," Kinski says. "Listen, you're going to have to watch your back. Just because Eugene stopped Aelita today doesn't mean he'll be able to do it again."

"You think she'll come after me?"

"Angels don't use the word Abomination lightly. You're the lowest of the low to her. Worse than a Hellion."

"So, if Parker or Mason or Hellions or Homeland Security don't get me, she will."

"Don't forget the Sub Rosa," says Candy.

"Thanks, sunshine. The Sub Rosa, too."

"You can always come here if things get too hot. I know people who can help get you out of town," Kinski says.

"I'll remember that." I slide off the table and try out my feet. What do you know? I don't fall over or want to throw up. It's the little things that make life special. "I should go. Do you know the number of a cab company?"

"I've got one in the desk. I'll go look." He goes out and Candy and I are alone in the exam room. She gets off the table and brings me a plastic bag full of what looks like mulch.

"Doc wants you to boil this stuff and drink it once in the morning and once at night until it's gone. Don't worry. It doesn't taste any worse than a boiled doormat."

"Thanks. Is this what the doc gives you to wean you off being a Jade?"

"My tea tastes a lot worse than yours."

"How's sobriety working out for you?"

"You know. One day at a time."

"Were you bitten or something? How do you become a Jade?"

"You're born to be a Jade. The gift, or affliction, depending on who you ask, descends through the female line in the family. I can trace all my Jade ancestors back to the First Crusade."

"If it's your nature to eat people, doesn't it feel funny to go against that? And against a thousand years of your family history?"

"We drink people. We don't eat them. And giving it up isn't so bad. Everything has to evolve, right? We're monkeys in trees one day and the next we're monkeys with dental hygiene and cell phones. Best of all, we don't throw shit at each other anymore."

"Speak for yourself," I say, and Candy laughs. Her heartbeat goes up a little. "Do you think that if the doc can get you off drinking people juice, you'll feel like a regular person someday?"

"Project much, Sandman Slim? What you mean is that if doc can make me less of a monster, can he do it for you, too?"

"I didn't say you were a monster."

"But I am. By any human definition, I am a monster. And I always will be, so, no, I don't think I'll ever feel like a regular person. I'll just be a monster who chooses to be a little less monstrous. Who knows? I might fall off the wagon and start drinking people milk shakes again. But I'm going to try not to. Are you asking because you want to see if doc can turn you into a librarian when all this is over?"

I'm walking circles around the table, trying to get my sea legs back. Candy cranes her neck around to watch me. It's weird being alone with her.

"I don't know exactly what I want. I know that no one outside of Hell can stand what I am. I'm not wild about it most of the time myself. But I can't picture being something else."

"Try. Just imagine it for a few days. See how it feels."

"Why not? But I'm lazy. When it's time, I'll probably go for a simpler fix."

"Like what?"

"Going back to Hell isn't the worst thing I can imagine. I know the place. I have a rep. I can probably get my old job back, fighting in the arena."

"Are you talking about killing yourself?"

"Nah. I'm not the suicide type. I just mean that if I get to pick my moment, it might not be so bad. That was the problem last time. I wasn't ready. I didn't get to pick the moment. I could this time."

"I hate to break it to you, but planning your own violent death, whether it's you murdering yourself or letting someone else do it, is still suicide."

"You think so?" I shake my head and lean against the wall, suddenly out of breath. "Ignore me. I'm babbling. I'm tired. My only friends narced me out to Norman Bates's mom. And every time I get up close to death, I think about Alice."

"You know she's not down below. You let yourself be killed and you'll be farther away from her than ever, and it will be forever."

"Point taken. Truth is, enough people want me dead that I'm probably never going to have to make that choice."

"See? Things are looking up already."

"Let's see if my cab's here yet."

I WAKE IN the early afternoon, wander into the bathroom, and see myself in the mirror. Candy was right. Aelita's sword has given me one of my best scars. It looks like a rattler set itself on fire and did a GG Allin stage dive into my chest. This scar is a work of art. It deserves an Oscar and a star on Hollywood Boulevard. It deserves its own power ballad. Now I sort of know how Lucifer must have felt when that last thunderbolt hit and he fell out of Heaven's cotton candy clouds and into the deep, deep dark.

Aelita seems to have given me something else, too. Back in Hell, each new scar was a gift. Protection against a new attack. That attack in Aelita's chapel seems to have left me with something besides a new scar. She's given me some part of her angelic vision. Or maybe she just tore open my third eye, the one that's been sensing other people's moods and heartbeats. Whatever it is, I see with different eyes now and I see what she was trying to tell me. The Kissi are everywhere.

There's graffiti on the alley wall behind Max Overdrive. It's painted on the buildings and street corners. Store windows and telephone poles. The marks aren't in any language I know, but I can almost understand them. Like a name on the tip of your tongue that just won't come. The marks are greetings, warnings, and messages. Hobo signs for eldritch hicks.

The Kissi wander the streets ghosting the holiday merrymakers. Giddy families window-shop, trying to fill some of their desperate hours together with anything that gets them out of having to talk to each other. In some of those families, Mom or Dad is a Kissi. Or possessed by one. A little Kissi girl follows her parents, holding her big brother's hand, literally draining the life from him as the family stops to admire a blinking LED wreath outside a Burmese restaurant.

There are Kissi as pale and tenuous as vapor from a car exhaust. They whisper lies into people's ears. Slip hotel receipts into a husband's wallet. A phone number into a wife's jacket pocket. They merrily plant little cells of paranoia that grow like a melanoma, because what's more fun at this time of year than a holiday family slaughter?

I have to get off the street. I can't stand looking at this. Regular people are bad enough, but regular people being made worse by chaos-sucking bottom feeders is something I can't take right now.

What's going on in the street doesn't look much like a detente to me. The Kissi don't care who sees them. The Vigil might be right about the Kissi breaking the treaty, but they don't seem to have a clue how to do anything about it.

There are plenty of cops out, too. Unis and plainclothes. More than I'd expect around Christmas. Aren't people supposed to be nodding off on tryptophan, eggnog, and fascist Santa's order to be merry? Maybe the cops know something the rest of us don't know. Maybe they just feel the undercurrent of craziness in the air. They try to blend in with the holiday wanderers, but they're as inconspicuous as spiders on a birthday cake.

I just want quiet, a cup of coffee, and no one talking to me. I head for Donut Universe.

Some genius has installed a TV on the wall behind the doughnut counter. Those of us stupid enough to want to sit and drink our coffee inside get a complimentary twenty-four-hour-a-day slice of weather, sports, and genocide with our glazed old-fashioneds. When the local report comes on, it confirms more of what Aelita told me. Robbery. Murder. Rape. Arson. They're spiraling up and out of control. The local politicos and law dogs don't have a clue why or what to do about it. Sounds like someone moved Devil's Night to December and forgot to tell the rest of us to duck and cover.

The green-haired pixie counter girl I've seen before is working today. She's good at her job. Chats up the customers. Smiles and listens without looking fake or like a mental patient. At another time and place, I'd steal a car for her every night and leave it in the parking lot with the keys in the ignition. But here and now I can't keep falling in instant love like this. It's embarrassing and distracting. If Vidocq was around, I'd ask him for a potion. A temporary lobotomy, please. Just something to get me through the holidays, and maybe kill off this idiot nineteen-year-old who still lives in my head.

I look up from the pixie girl to burning houses in East L.A. Crying mothers. Screaming kids. There's blood in the water, so the TV reporters swim up with blank eyes and a mouthful of shark's teeth. They stick microphones in the faces of new widows and ask, "How does it make you feel?" I love L.A.

I wonder if things have always been this way. Are the Kissi the devils on our shoulders? Or do they just like us because our devils are so loud and hard to miss? I see why Heaven and Hell want to control the Kissi. They can't ever let regular people hear about them. After the panic, it'd be too easy to pin all of humanity's bad habits on them. Plus, someone would have to explain where they came from. That means people finding out that God is a fuckup and the devil doesn't matter. Neither side wants that.

I wonder if the Kissi are strong enough to jack an angel? Maybe. If they really are anti-angels. Muninn said someone was dragging angels up the hill to Avila. That sounds like urban-myth bullshit to me. Like that kid down the street who made a funny face and it stayed that way, so his family had to move away. If someone is snatching angels, it's probably the Kissi. I don't think even Mason could mug Aelita.

Two guys come in from the parking lot. I can feel them from all the way across the room. Heat and crazy breathing. Their hearts are going off like machine guns. But they look boring. An older guy in a gray suit. A junior high boy with a skateboard under his arm. They're bent over the counter ordering doughnuts. I can't get a look at their faces. They order a few dozen. A whole box full. The green-haired girl rings them up, and when she tells them the total, the guy in the suit pulls a .44 from his jacket and shoots her. And he keeps shooting her. He has to lean all the way over the counter to get off the last few rounds.

I'm up while he's still concentrating on the girl. Junior drops his deck, pulls his own piece, and aims it at me. I stop. They're both Kissi.

This isn't a good time. I'm weak. I don't want to get shot right now and they know it. They laugh at me.

The guy in the suit says, "You naughty boy."

"You stole our na'at," says the kid.

"And after we invited you into our home so nicely and politely."

"Some people have no manners."

"No manners at all. That's all right. We'll do you a trade." The man points to his chest, then mine. "Hold on to whatever that is in there for us. We'll be back with a doggy bag."

"Happy holidays," says the kid. There's blood all over the box of doughnuts. The kid opens it and takes out an apple fritter. "You really ought to try these. They make 'em fresh every morning."

They stroll out the door like they just won the lottery.

Behind me, an old lady is screaming. I hear cell phones beeping as people fumble with the keypads trying to make their fingers hit 911. I look over the counter at the green-haired girl. She's dead. As dead as anyone I've ever seen.

Is that what Alice looked like?

Good-bye, green-haired girl. How many more of you am I not going to save?

THERE'S A GOLD Lexus parked around the corner. Ten seconds later, it's mine. I pull into a no-name indie gas station and buy a pack of cigarettes, two plastic gas cans, and a T-shirt with mann's Chinese theatre on the front. I pay for four gallons of gas in advance, fill the two cans, and get back in the car. I've always been pretty good with directions. Hell made me good with them even when I'm getting my ass kicked, so I know where I'm going. Fifteen minutes later, I'm parked down the block from the furniture warehouse where the skinheads party.

I slice the T-shirt in half and dip each piece into the can, letting them soak up the juice. Then I stuff them in the cans' mouths and head for the clubhouse.

A fat man in a Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts is walking the other way. As we pass I say, "You should call 911."

He stops. "Has there been an accident?"

"Not yet."

There's no one outside the clubhouse. Why would there be? Who's going to play games with a building full of methed-up headbangers?

I light the rags in each can with Mason's lighter. I knock on the door politely. My other adolescent crush, Lisa, the skinhead girl, opens up. She smiles at me like you smile at an old dog that can't help shitting on himself.

She asks, "What the fuck do you want?"

I kick once, slamming the door open and her out of the way. I sling the gas cans underhanded, aiming at the opposite ends of the room.

They explode, one a fraction of a second behind the other. Flames splash across the walls like a flood of hellfire. It's an instant riot inside. Screaming. Punching. Skinheads and their white power girlfriends clawing past each other for the one exit. I pull the door closed and kick a garbage can in front of it.

The first one out is the big gorilla I stabbed in the leg at the Bamboo House of Dolls. He trips over the can and face plants just outside the door. The next few drowning rats trip over him. Fall in a screaming pile of bodies, blocking the door. It's the Keystone Kops with third-degree burns.

Eventually, enough people inside push forward that the bodies and the door get kicked out of the way. The panicked, burned, and smoke-choked master race pours outside and collapses in the street.

Josef comes strolling out last. His clothes are smoldering and his face looks like a hamburger someone forgot to take off the barbecue. Lisa and a dozen of Josef's steroid lapdogs get up and follow him.

Josef doesn't even look around. He knows who did this. He comes right for me. I can see the beast under his skin. I can't tell if he was ever human.

When he's a few feet away, he starts to say something. It's going to be some Kissi threat or demonic one-liner. Who cares? I slash his throat with the black blade, giving the knife a little twist. Unlike Kasabian, when Josef's head pops off, he's totally, one hundred percent dead.

I pick up the head by its singed blond hair and push it into Lisa's chest. It takes her a minute to figure out that she's supposed to take it. I wait for one of the big boys to make a move, but they're mostly staring at the raspberry-colored lake forming around Josef's body.

I say, "You tell the rest of these animals and any Kissi you run into to stay away from my doughnut place."

I go back to the Lexus and floor it out of there before they come to enough to realize that there are fifty of them and only one of me.

IF YOU DO it right, cleaning your guns is a form of meditation. There's the precise disassembly. Attaching a cotton swatch to the end of a ramrod, soaking it in solvent, and passing it through the gun barrel from the breech end and out the front. Cleaning the nooks and crannies with a soft toothbrush. Carefully applying a few drops of gun oil. Then wiping the gun down and reassembling it before starting on the next gun, moving from smallest to largest. It's a calm, quiet, and satisfying process. I'm ashamed that I've neglected the guns this long. I should have cleaned them the moment I dug them out from under the floorboards at Vidocq's. Wild Bill would be ashamed of me.

I'd picked up the cleaning kit at an upscale gun club in West Hollywood on the way back to Max Overdrive. Also a can of WD-40 to clean the na'at. On the night table next to the bed is the bottom half of a Coke can I ripped in half. There's an inch of Spiritus Dei floating in the can and I dip each bullet into it before reloading the guns.

That encounter with the Kissi back at Donut Universe woke me up. I need to be more careful now that I don't have any real backup.

I can't get the bloody image of the green-haired girl out of my mind. Every time I think I've pushed her away, Alice drifts in to take her place.

No wonder I'm so popular.

There's a knock at the door. I stay sitting on the bed, but hide the reassembled .45 under one leg, where I can get it quickly. I don't say, "Come in," but she comes in anyway.

Allegra only takes a couple of steps into the room, like she's afraid there are snakes under all the furniture. She sits on Kasabian's old bootlegging table, knocking over a couple of stacks of DVDs that I'd stolen from the racks downstairs. I soak another cotton patch in solvent and go back to cleaning the guns.

"Why didn't you tell me before about what happened to you? What Mason did?"

"Vidocq told you my little secret? Is he in some contest I don't know about? Rat out your friends three times in a day and win Springsteen tickets."

"He just wanted me to understand why you're the way you are."

"And now everyone knows. Did you come up here to gloat? I give up. You win. You and Vidocq showed me up for the chump I truly am."

"That's not what this is about and you know it."

"Princess, I only know two things. One is that I'm going to kill Mason and Parker, and nothing human or inhuman is going to stop me. And two, I'm on my own."

"Don't play that martyr shit with me. I've seen how you are."

"You don't get it. You think I'm saying this because I'm still mad. I'm not. I just understand things better now. A friend laid it out for me. I'm not one of you. The only thing I live for now is to kill as many people and break as many things as I need to, to get what I want. By the standards of most sane people, that makes me a monster. I'm fine with that. And, if I'm alive when this is over, I'm going back to where the monsters live."

"Hell?"

"It's where I belong. It's where I want to be."

Allegra reaches down, picks up one of the piles of DVDs, and begins to straighten them.

"Eugene loves you," she says.

"That's nice. My father loved me. He tried to shoot me once."

"What?"

"We were out deer hunting. It was just after sunup and cold enough that I could see my breath. I'd spotted a six-point buck ahead in the tree line. I led the way, up front a few yards, with my father right behind me. I spotted the buck in a clearing, signaled my father to stop. I raised my rifle and took the shot. Just as I pulled the trigger, I heard another gun go off and something hit me on the side of the head. My father's shot had missed me by maybe an inch and hit the tree where I was leaning. I looked back at him, blood coming down my face where flying bark and splinters had hit me. He came running up apologizing, saying it was all an accident, asking if I was okay. But behind all the panic in his eyes, there was nothing but fear and loathing. He hated himself for taking the shot, but he hated me more for still breathing."

"I'm so sorry."

"Just because someone says they love you doesn't mean they're not going to fuck you over the first chance they get."

"What about Alice? Did she fuck you over, too?"

"No. She's the one who didn't."

Allegra empties a couple of overflowing ashtrays into a metal trash can on the floor.

"Doesn't that mean anything?"

"No. I told her I loved her about a million times. It didn't save her. It's what got her killed."

"But you both loved each other. You still have that."

"You loved your drug-dealer boyfriend. I bet he told you he loved you every day. How'd that work out for you?"

"This isn't about me."

"You're right, it's not. So, why don't you run along back to Vidocq and let me finish my work so I can get all of you and this town behind me?"

She shakes her head, pushes more junk from the table into the trash, and starts for the door.

"After I'm gone," I tell her, "as far as I'm concerned, you can have Max Overdrive. Parker's killed Kasabian by now, so he's not going to want it back. I'm sure Vidocq can come up with some kind of glamour that'll make it look like you owned the place all along."

She drops the trash can by the door. Lets it fall over and spill food wrappers, empty cans, and cigarette butts on the floor.

"You know what? You're not a monster. You're just a motherfucker. Eugene should have let Aelita put you out of your misery."

"Good-bye, Allegra. Go tidy up at Eugene's." She kicks the can out of the way and slams the door. I can hear her stomp down every single step, like she's punishing the staircase, like God's tiniest tyrannosaurus.

WHEN ALLEGRA IS gone, I finish cleaning and reassembling the guns. When that's done, I take old newspapers and paper bags from under the bootlegging table and lay them out flat on the floor.

When you stretch out a regulation na'at to its full length, it's ten feet of very sharp Hellion steel teeth, spikes, and spines. Some are spring-loaded and ready to go whenever you pick up the na'at. Others only open up when you trigger them from the grip.

Traditionally, you use a na'at like a spear or a staff, but there's another trigger that collapses the central shaft. Suddenly the na'at is as loose as chicken chow mein, a metal whip that can strip the skin off a rhino like peeling a grape. Not that I've ever peeled a rhino or a grape, but you get the idea.

I only mention this to explain that your basic na'at has a lot more intricate mechanical parts than anything any human has ever manufactured. When you decide to WD-40 your na'at, you need a lot of room and a lot of newspapers to soak up the excess oil. You should also open a window before you start spraying lube and solvents around your bedroom, something I almost always forget to do.

I drag the newspaper and the na'at across the room and out of the way. I stash the guns under the mattress and wash the WD-40 off my hands in the bathroom. I've trashed enough clothes that I'm back down to video-store T-shirts and jeans. I throw on the silk overcoat I've been avoiding and slip the knife inside. On the way out, I push open the three big windows on the wall opposite the bed.

The short walk to the Bamboo House of Dolls clears the stink out of my nose and head. A drink and a cigarette later and I'm happy to be back on Earth. When Carlos brings me my food, I drink to his health. I haven't done much for him lately, except maybe cooking and decapitating some skinheads, but I can't exactly talk to him about that. He brings up sports and I try to say something that doesn't sound stupid, but I didn't know much about sports before I went Downtown. Finally, he gives up and walks off to serve other customers.

I haven't talked to him much lately. I haven't wanted to talk much at all. It seems like a good idea to let the guy know that I appreciate him, his bar, and his food. Right now Carlos is about the closest thing I have to friend on this planet. With Cherry, Jayne-Anne, and Kasabian gone, so are all my ties to Mason, leaving me right in the middle of downtown with nothing to do and nowhere to go. When you're in that neighborhood, you need at least one person on your side. Preferably one with a bar.

I finish off two more drinks before it becomes dangerously clear that if I hang around much longer, I'm going to have to talk to someone.

I time the walk back to Max Overdrive perfectly. I get to the door right on the last puff of my cigarette. Flicking the butt into the Dumpster, I let myself in the back way.

Inside, the oily solvent smell is gone, but now there's something else. Alcohol? Disinfectant? The staircase smells like a hospital waiting room.

I find out why a minute later. By then I'm already on the floor and the world is a shivering Slip and Slide, so there's no chance of me getting up. I have a feeling that the robot ghost in the dirty trench coat that's waving a baseball bat in my face might have something to do with it.

Pieces of the world start falling back into place enough for to me to see that the robot ghost isn't really a robot or a ghost. It's Kasabian, and he's held together with a lot of metal rods and screws. There's a metal band bolted around his head, held in place by steel dowels that are attached to a brace on his chest. A traction halo. It holds his head onto his body well enough for him to stand up, but the rig makes him move like a rusty windup toy. Still, for a kid's toy, he's doing a pretty good job tuning up my ribs.

I deflect a couple of the blows with my arms, which feels just as good as it sounds. Kasabian is so stiff, he has to stand in one place to work me over. Lucky me. I swing one of my legs around and catch him behind the knee. He goes down on the knee, but refuses to fall over. Just keeps smashing me with the bat, teeth gritted, sweating and red-faced. But he's working from close range now, so the shots hurt a lot less than before.

I swing my leg again. This time I hit the top of the metal halo. That gets his attention. Kasabian drops the bat and crab walks his way back, putting some distance between my foot and his head.

Except for the first surprise shot on the back of my skull, he hasn't hurt me too much. Kasabian moves like he's half frozen in ice. Can't get up the strength to do any real damage. If he wasn't up and walking around, I'd swear that his body was in rigor mortis. Maybe he's afraid that if he wiggles around too much, his head will pop off. Let's test that theory.

Still on the floor, I throw a kick at his head. Kasabian tries to move out of the way, but I'm faster than him. But I still miss. Okay. So that first smack on the head scrambled my brain a little more than I thought.

I go for the guns under the mattress, but my aim is still off. It gives Kasabian a chance to drive the bat into my ribs again. I'm breathing hard, trying to take in air every time it gets knocked out with another rib shot. I could probably throw a spell at Kasabian if my head was clearer and my chest wasn't hurting. I can feel every single bruise from the Kissi attack. And all this wrestling around is waking up those bullets again. Fuck Kinski for being right about them getting angry again.

When Kasabian tries to jam me with the bat again, I move faster and get my hand on it. One twist and it's out of his hands and bouncing off the floor. Kasabian backs up and braces himself against the wall. He reaches for something under his dirty trench coat, but he's not fast enough. The world is settling down. Becoming firmer around me. I grab the bat and swing. It smashes into his halo, buckling and scattering the metal dowels.

Kasabian screams, "Fuck!" His head is hanging free, held on by just the stitches and the couple of remaining dowels. He gets his feet under him, braces his back against the wall, and pushes himself up until he's standing. His eyes are wide. Not so much in anger anymore. He's remembering what it was like the first time his melon came off and he doesn't like the picture. That's why his hands are shaking and he's muttering, "No, no, no," when he pulls what looks like a short tree branch out from under his coat. It wraps around his arm from the wrist to his elbow.

Now it's my turn to scramble back. The skinhead at Carlos's bar tried to shoot me with a Devil Daisy, but he didn't know what he was doing. In a room this small, even a crippled, half-dead wreck like Kasabian couldn't miss me. But I'm more worried about something worse.

I yell, "Stop!" and put up my hands. Kasabian just looks at me. I guess he wasn't expecting such an easy surrender. He face splits into a big grin. He waves the Daisy around a little, stabbing the air with it, trying to intimidate me. He does, but not for the reasons he thinks.

"Listen to me, Kas. I know that Parker and Mason gave you that thing. If you use it, you're going to die. For real this time. No second chances."

"Kiss my ass, man. They helped me. Parker took me out of here. He and Mason gave me back my body."

"Nice job they did, too. You look like Frankenstein's ball sac. You can barely move. Don't you think if they liked you they could find a spell to put your head back on for real?"

"That's your fault! You and your goddamn knife. It left some kind of residual magic behind. No matter what we tried, my head wouldn't go back on. Parker put together this traction rig for me. It sucks, but it's better than spending the rest of my life in that closet watching infomercials until you decide to shoot me."

"You're right. I got a little more extreme with you than I meant to. Sorry. I wanted Mason, but I had you. You got some of the grief I was saving up for him. That wasn't right. So. You know. Sorry."

"Sorry? Even if you didn't cut my head off, you came here to kill me. You think sorry covers that?"

"I'm not so sure you want to know the truth about that."

Kasabian hoists the Devil Daisy up to face level. I take a couple more steps back, until I'm on the other side of the bed. Still in point-blank range.

"Tell me," he says.

"When I got here, yeah, I planned on killing you. But after ten minutes, I was pretty much over that. I mean, how much more could I do? Mason did a pretty good job of wrecking you before I ever got here."

"Yeah, but I stood up to you and he's on my side again."

"No, he's not. He's never been on your side and he never will be. You think he gave you your body and sent you back here to get me? This is a setup. You're here to kill yourself. Me, too. But mostly you."

"Look at you. Look how scared you are. You'll say anything."

"Ask me how Jayne and Cherry are. I double-dog dare you."

"Why? Is that a trick question?"

"Yeah. Because they're dead. Parker killed them. He's killing everyone connected to him and Mason. If he gave you that weapon, it'll probably kill me, but I guarantee that it'll kill you."

"You are such a liar. Not even a good one. Look how scared you are."

"I'm scared you're going to do something stupid."

He pushes the Daisy in my direction.

"Don't call me stupid!"

"Sorry. Just don't do anything you-we-can't take back."

He starts to nod, but catches himself. The nod turns into a twitch as he pushes his shoulders and head back against the wall. His heart is a trip-hammer. His pupils narrow. Now that he's done something dumb in front of me, he's angrier than ever.

"Kas, Mason and Parker are using you."

"Keep talking, dead man. I hear there's a bunch of imps waiting for you with knives and forks."

I take another step back. He's going to do it. It's building inside him.

"Don't do it, man. You'll die, too."

The grin is back on his face.

"This is nice. This quiet moment before you die. Thanks for lying and whining. You made it really special for me."

Oh, hell.

I know it's coming, so I don't wait. I dive for the floor. When he fires the Devil Daisy, I'm behind the bed collapsing the na'at to its spear configuration. I dig one end into the floor and, staying low, angle the shaft over me.

The first wave of dragon fire hits, tries to tear the na'at out of my hand. The intricate Hellion web of edges, angles, and teeth along the weapon's body spreads the fire out and over me. Then the second thing happens. The one I've been worried about.

The Daisy explodes. The room turns into Dresden, burning under the Allied planes. It's Rome while Nero fiddled and pissed on the panicked mobs. It's Hamburg and Chicago and the Hindenburg all going off at once in my room. It's all I can do to hold the na'at in place and channel the supernova on the other side of the bed anywhere but on top of me.

And it's over. No fire. No smoke. No nothing. The Daisy has swallowed the remains of the fire. The room is a wreck. Lath is blown off the walls. Part of the ceiling is down. The junk on the bootleg table is scattered around the room like a hurricane blew through. All the windows are gone.

I pick up the charred bed and push it out of the way. Kasabian is lying under it. Considering how he looked before the explosion, he's not looking that bad right now. His right arm is gone. The Daisy took that off when it blew. And his head has fallen off. I get down on my knees and push random junk out of the way. I spot it a minute later under the bed.

Poor stupid, idiotic, goddamn Kasabian. If he was still alive, I'd strangle him. Right now I kind of don't mind him coming after me with the bat. I was pretty hard on him. He really did get me down on my knees and speaking in tongues for a minute, so he got at least a little of his own back before he made the big mistake of trusting Mason. Kasabian was an idiot, but he wasn't stupid. He must have known that Mason hated him at best. Considered him an insect at worst. Did Kasabian really not know what was going to happen when he pulled that trigger? Or did he want to go out in a sexy murder-suicide that would make it onto the local news? Idiot reporters would get it all wrong. They'd think it was an insurance scam gone wrong. Or that we were clumsy terrorists. More likely, they'd go with the sexiest choice, a lovers' quarrel gone nuclear. It's more than an even bet that he wanted to kill us both. At least then, one person would know that he'd done something right. I'd know that he'd gotten me, that I was truly dead, and that there was nothing I could do about it.

I stand very quietly for a minute, listening for sirens. If I had time and a clear head, I could probably come up with a spell to keep everyone away or send them off in the wrong direction. But that's not going to happen. I wait.

The sirens don't come. The fire was here and gone so fast that while the Daisy wrecked the place, it's sparing me from having to explain the headless body, all the guns, the video bootlegging gear and me. Who am I? Also technically dead, thanks. Just ask Homeland Security.

Someone's cell phone goes off. It's not my ring. I pat down Kasabian's body. Pull his phone from a coat pocket. It's one of the cheap prepaid models. I flip it open and wait.

"Well," someone says. "What the hell, man? Is it done?"

"Who is this?"

There's a pause. Then a low laugh.

"Stark? Is that you? Oh my God. What an asshole. I give Kasabian a flamethrower and a bomb and he still can't kill you. Where is he?"

"All over the place. He's in pieces."

"One thing went right tonight, at least. You must be feeling pretty good right now, huh? Pretty proud of yourself. You kicked a headless guy's ass. Thank you, masked man. You saved our city."

I listen for signs of strain or stress in his voice. I wish I could see his eyes. Or catch a whiff of his sweat. But on the crap phone, Parker sounds thin, distant, and far away. Like he's calling from the Marianas Trench.

"You're the one who sent a half-dead guy to kill me. What did you think was going to happen?"

"I expected you to die, Mr. Bond," he says in a bad German accent. "Actually, Mason and I had a bet. He thought Kasabian might be able to do one thing right one time. He told the fat man to his face how much faith he had in him. I guess I won that bet."

"What happens now? You going to send more cripples after me? Blind guys with blowguns? Grandmas in wheelchairs with chain saws? What's your next brilliant move? All I've seen you do so far is get your pitiful excuse for an assassin blown up and yourself shot in the back. How did that feel, by the way? Were you awake when you fell? I'm glad Mason saved you. It means I get to kill you all over again."

"Calm down, sweetheart. You're getting all worked up. Trust me. You'll get your chance. We're going to see each other again. Not here. Not now. But it'll be soon. Cross my heart."

"I can't wait."

"You don't have to. Mason is sending you a late Christmas present. Don't worry. No more explosions or ninja attacks tonight. Just a token of his and my esteem for staying alive this long. How did you stay alive down there, by the way? Did you suck demon cock all day every day, or did you get weekends and holidays off?"

"Pucker up, tough guy. You'll know all about it soon enough."

The line goes dead. I toss the phone into the corner of the room. At least I know one thing now. Parker took Kasabian to wherever Mason is hiding. He was with both of them. He's seen their hideout and might have even heard them talking about what they're planning next. Mason thought Kasabian was an idiot and knew that one way or another, he was going to be dead tonight. Why not talk in front of him? Make him feel like he's part of the plan. If Mason convinced Kasabian that he'd been promoted and was going to get to play with the big boys, Kas wouldn't have asked any questions, but would have run along like a dog to please him.

I need to talk to Kasabian. But I can't get to him when he's in Hell. No way I'm setting foot Downtown. I need to get to him before he hops the ferry.

I only know one way to do it and it's really going to suck.

The Daisy has saved me the trouble of having to move the bootlegging table. I just push it up against the wall so it's out of the way. I kick broken, powdery lath, boxes of DVDs, dirty clothes, cigarette butts, and Jack Daniel's bottles out of the way until I clear an area about six by six on the floor. Aside from the furniture, most of the junk is pretty light. It's easy to sift through until I find something that's heavy. The lead Kinski gave me.

Start by drawing thirteen circles, six on the outside, and six on the inside, and one in the center. Take the lead and, at the outer top circle, draw a line across to the farthest. Then draw lines to the other circles on the outer rim so that they're all connected. Now do the same thing with the other five outer circles. Wash, rinse, repeat on the inner circles until you have seventy-eight lines that connect all thirteen circles. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Metatron's Cube. One of the holiest of holy glyphs. The soul of the angel Metatron, the voice of God. Good for keeping away imps, flesh-eating zombies, and ants at a picnic. It slices. It dices. It has a thousand and one uses. A thousand and two if you draw it on a brick and throw it through the windshield of your ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend's car.

Kasabian's head is still under the bed. I pull it out and set it on his chest, then grab his body by the ankles and drag him into the Cube. I straighten the arms and legs, set Kas's head back on its shoulders, and generally try to make him look more like a respectable human being and less like a big pile of loser jerky.

Under one of the windows are the remains of the warning bundle Medea, the Inquisitor, left for me at Vidocq's place. I leave the wolf teeth. All I need are the crow feathers. Pretty much any part of a crow is useful. Especially when you're dealing with the dead. Crows are psychopomps.

They guide the dead from this world to the next. There are quicker, more direct ways to get through to dead souls, but crow's feathers are the smart way to go if you don't want some clever boots to come along and pluck your soul out of your body while you're distracted, waiting on line one for dead Aunt Lily to pick up.

I rip open Kasabian's shirt, dip the feathers in his blood, and paint a smaller version of Metatron's Cube on his chest. Then I open his mouth and put one of the feathers inside. I dip a finger into his blood and, with it, paint a circle over my third eye.

The one remaining unopened, unbroken bottle of Jack is under the mattress with the guns. I crack it open and have a couple of long drinks. Whatever I thought of Kasabian, whatever I thought that I might do to him when I tracked him down, painting him with his own blood and wearing some of it myself was never on my original agenda. One more drink and I'm ready to hit the road.

I lie down in the Cube next to Kasabian so that our shoulders and feet are touching. I use the black blade to cut one of my wrists, deep enough to really get the blood flowing, but not so deep that I lose control of my hands. I upend the bottle for one more shot of liquid courage, and then slice the other wrist.

Nice and relaxed now. Warm and drifting. The Jack and the flowing blood are doing their job. I'll be unconscious soon. Just before I lose consciousness, I put the second crow feather between my teeth and hold it there.

I'm standing on the floor of an empty desert. The alkali plain is cracked and glistening. There's a shaft of light at the horizon, but it never moves. It's always just before sunrise or just after sunset. Take your pick. The air is thick and hard to breathe. The light is a watery blue green.

Kasabian is standing a few yards away wearing the same Max Overdrive T-shirt and chinos that he was wearing the night he shot me.

"So, this is it?" he asks. "This is death?"

I walk across the packed earth to where he's standing.

"Not really. You're kind of in between worlds right now. There really isn't a desert and there really isn't a sunrise or sunset. This is just something to look at while you wait. You're sort of on hold and this is the Muzak."

"While I'm waiting to see if I'm going to Heaven or damned to Hell, this is the best the all-knowing occult powers that run the universe could come up with? Talk about being underachievers."

"Be fair, man. Everyone knows where you're headed. Maybe they just didn't break out the A material for you."

Kasabian nods.

"You're right. Why bother? I fucked up my life and I even fucked up dying."

"So we're clear, you know that wasn't me who killed you just now, right? It was Parker."

"I should never have trusted those guys. Why would Mason help me after all these years? I thought it was different now. I thought that with you back, he'd need me again."

"Where is he?"

"Listen, you were straight with me before. You know, saying you were sorry for locking me up in that closet and everything. I want to be straight with you."

"Don't worry about it. There isn't a lot of time. Where's Mason hiding?"

Kasabian looks over his shoulder to the mountains in the distance. There's a low rumble of thunder. It won't be long now. He turns back to me.

"I knew something was up that night. I knew Mason had something waiting for you. I thought he was just going to hit you with a leech charm or something. Suck out all your power and keep it for himself. But when those Lurkers showed up…"

"Kissi. They're called Kissi."

"I didn't know he was going to do that."

"What did you know about Alice?"

"Nothing. I'm not into doing stuff like that to women. And a civilian? That's messed up."

"Would you have told me if you'd known?"

He shrugs. Looks down. Shakes his head.

"Come on, man. That's not even a real question. Going against Mason feels like you're going against the devil."

I can't read a dead man like a living one. No heartbeat. No breath. Fixed pupils. But I don't need any of that now.

"I believe you," I tell him. "And Mason isn't the devil. He just likes to play dress-up. Tell me where he is and I'll get him for both of us."

"I don't know where he is exactly. It was sort of like here. Spooky and wrong, but a lot weirder. Somewhere far away and dark. Not regular dark, either. Dark like it had no idea what light even was. Like light was Kryptonite to the place. There was no one there, but it wasn't empty. In fact, it was crowded. But it was full of nothing." He holds up his hands in frustration. "If any of that makes sense."

Thunder rolls down the mountains again. A dot of light appears at the base of one a couple of miles away. A door has opened. I take Kasabian by the arm and start walking him that way.

"Listen, when you get to Hell, look up a guy named Belial. He's one of Lucifer's generals. Tell him I sent you and ask him for a job. Tell him I said not to send you to the pits."

"The pits?" asks Kasabian. "What pits?"

"When you tell him who sent you, make sure you tell him it was Sandman Slim. And remind him that the Sandman knows where he lives."

Kasabian gives me a look.

"What the fuck is Sandman Slim? It sounds like a Japanese cartoon."

"Just tell him," I say, and let go of his arm. "This is as far as I go. I have things to do back in the world."

Kasabian looks at the door and then at me.

"I know," he says. He turns and heads for the mountain. "I'll see you around."

"Probably."

Flat on my back again. I gulp and the crow feather almost goes down my throat. Rolling over, I spit it onto the floor. Home again, home again, jiggity jig.

I'm not bleeding anymore, but I'm a mess. Again. Besides getting my ass kicked, my main accomplishment on this trip has been to massacre an incredible number of completely innocent clothes. I'm the Joseph Stalin of laundry. I take off the shirt, toss it onto a pile of other junk, and slip on the silk overcoat.

My ears are still ringing, but I'm pretty sure there aren't any sirens headed this way (the crackheads aren't going to call it in and who else hangs out here at night?). But some passing Joe Citizen could call in the noise. And the morning crew will be opening the place at eleven tomorrow. I can't leave Kasabian's corpse lying here. First, I have to find something.

I find it under the splinters of the bedside table. Alice's magic box. It's been crushed a little by the blast. Inside, the bloody cotton has come loose, but it's still in one piece. I put it under the bed, near the wall.

I pull the blanket off the bed, roll up the body, and use some duct tape I get from behind the counter to hold the blanket tight. I take Kasabian downstairs and out the back way. Also grab a couple of cinder blocks that the day crew uses when they're on a cigarette break. I'm trying very hard not to think about anything I'm doing. Of all the iffy things I've ever done in my life, I've never had to ditch a body before. While it's giving me a migraine right now, I think the fact that I'm not an expert on corpse disposal says a lot of good things about me and my life choices.

About a block away, I find a shiny new BMW SUV, which is way too many random letters strung together. It makes me feel less guilty about stealing it.

I drive it around the block, pull up to Max Overdrive, and load the body and the cinder blocks in the back. Then I drive to Fairfax and turn south. At Wilshire, I make a left and hit the gas until I see mammoths.

Animals have been falling into the La Brea Tar Pits since the last ice age. Not so much recently, since the pits are fenced in and part of a pretty slice of upscale urban green called Hancock Park. There's a big museum. A lot of wolf skulls and bird bones. A gift shop. And, soon, a dead video store-owning ex-magician.

There's not a lot of traffic on this part of Wilshire late at night. I hop the curb and pull the van up onto the brick walkway that leads to the museum. When I figure out which light pole I want, I gun the engine and smash the BMW into it at full speed. The van's windshield and front bumper are totaled. Steam billows from under the hood. The good news is that the pole with the surveillance camera is now a big aluminum toothpick by the museum's front door.

If you ever need to weigh down a dead body, remember that it's not hard duct-taping cinder blocks to a stiff, but it is hard getting them balanced right. I'm sure that with enough time and practice, I could come up with a corpse-cinder-block arrangement stable enough that a tightrope walker could use it, but I don't have time for that now. I'm parked on a major thoroughfare in a stolen van. I have no shirt, an expensive overcoat, and fresh scars on my wrists. And I'm dragging around a dead guy accessorized with building materials. This is not a precise or subtle situation. This is a situation for mindless violence and brute force. First good news I've had all day.

I get Kasabian's weighted body onto my shoulder and haul it out of the van. I drop him on his back a few yards outside the fence. I stoop and grab the body by the ankles, then I start spinning, holding the body like the hammer in a hammer throw. After a few revolutions, I'm dizzy, but have a pretty good head of steam up. When I release him, Kasabian goes flying. He sails through the air end over end, like some long-forgotten Russian space probe returning to Earth, off course and out of control.

The body hits the tar with a thick, dull thunk. At first, it doesn't move. Kasabian floats on the surface defiantly, a corpse burrito refusing to sink. Demanding to be eaten by one of the local dinosaurs lying at the bottom of the pit. Finally, he realizes how unreasonable he's being, and starts to go under. Slowly. Very slowly. Kasabian's head disappears. Then his gut. When all that's left of him above the surface are his shins and feet, I leave. Even if the surface of the tar lake is disturbed in the morning, I think the police will be more interested in the stolen van.

It's a long, exhausting walk back to Max Overdrive. When I get back to the room, all I can do is flip the mattress clean side up. I don't bother taking off the overcoat. I lie down in it and get some clean towels from the bathroom to use as a pillow.

All night long, the song someone played once at the Bamboo House of Dolls loops in my head.

"Set me adrift and I'm lost over there And I must be insane, to go skating on your name, And by tracing it twice, I fell through the ice Of Alice…"

Are there people smart enough to know how doomed they are before the world crashes down on them, the way pianos fall on people in old cartoons? There must be, but I've never been one of them. Before my trip down the rabbit hole, I figured that I could joke, lie, and bullshit my way through pretty much anything. That's what's known as being a professional brat, and I was Superman at that.

Alice never liked Mason and didn't really trust the rest of the Circle. Neither did I. At least the old, sharp-tooth reptile part of my brain didn't, but that just made playing with them and being better than them more fun. Especially being better than Mason. Alice could never see the fun. She talked about the Circle like it was crystal meth and I was an addict.

"Didn't your mommy and daddy teach you that if you play with the bad kids, you're going to be kept after school?"

"My mom told me I was the handsomest boy in the world. My father taught me to shoot and how to smile while getting the back of someone's hand. That's pretty much all I remember."

She was wearing a white wifebeater and black panties. She was making coffee, but stopped, came over, and sat on my lap.

"That's why I love you. You're Norman Rockwell's perfect boy. Don't go out with those magic assholes tonight. Stay home with me. We'll eat apple pie and fuck on a flag."

"I've got to go. Mason's got something big to show us tonight. I need to be there to piss on his parade."

She got up and went back to the kitchen.

"Fine. Go, then. Go and show a bunch of losers that you're better than them. That's huge. That's a fucking accomplishment."

"This is important. You don't understand. If you had the gift, you'd know. Most of the Sub Rosa are rich dicks or Goth kids without the clove cigarettes. But I need to be around magic people sometimes. People I don't have to explain myself to."

"You need to show off to them more than you need to be with me. They're dangerous and they're going to suck you into something dangerous and stupid, like summoning the devil or something. And when they get killed or thrown in jail, you're going with them."

I grabbed my jacket and went to the door.

"I need to go. I'm late."

"You know, trying to still be the precocious one isn't that cute after you're old enough to buy beer. Grow up. Stop being such a fucking child."

Walking out, I said, "You know, sometimes you sound just like those regular jack-offs out there. You say you don't care about the magic. You say you're not jealous, but you are. You want what I have or you don't want me to have it at all. Fuck that."

Later that night, Mason played his little trick on me and I never saw Alice again.

Only now she's standing at the foot of the bed, staring at the wrecked room. She doesn't have to say a word. I know what she's thinking because it's what I'm thinking. That the mess is a kind of metaphor for my life. She sighs. Picks up small things, drops them, then picks up something else. She shakes her head in wonder at all the junk until I feel ashamed and stupid.

I know that none of this is real. This Alice is a golem. The present Parker said Mason would be sending me. This sighing ghost isn't Alice any more than the slab of meat I tossed into the tar pits was Kasabian.

The golem's eyes are milky gray. Its skin is cracked and stained with red, green, and brown lichen, like old granite. Its broken teeth ooze blood. Golem Alice's fingertips are bare bone, like something has been gnawing at them.

Unfortunately, knowing that something isn't real doesn't mean it's going to go away or that it doesn't affect you. When she isn't eyeballing the wreckage of my mini Pompeü, Alice is leaning over me and whispering in my ear.

"You wouldn't throw me into the black tar, would you, Jimmy? There's no air down there. And it's so dark. You wouldn't do that to me, would you, baby?"

THE MORNING CREW arrives like a herd of baby elephants jacked up on lattes and enough mutant energy drinks to give a rhino a stroke. The crew is an ever-shifting posse of film school hipster dudes. I don't know any of their names and I don't want to. They're just Blond Surfer Dude. Billy Goat Beard Surfer Dude. Dreads Dude, etc. They really are dudes. Sleepy eyes. IQs drowning in bong water. They invent complicated filing systems for the movies because the alphabet baffles them.

One of them knocks on my door. I open it without putting on a shirt. My wrists have healed, but there's dried blood on my hands. I hope I didn't ruin the overcoat. Time to look for a dry cleaner.

It's Billy Goat Beard Surfer Dude. He smells like he used bong water for aftershave. My lack of a shirt and the blood don't even register.

He says, "Um, a bunch of the shelves in the porn section fell down last night. What do you want us to do?"

For a second, I wonder if he's kidding. Then I remember who he is.

"Maybe one of you should go and clean it up."

"Okay, but I'm the only one who can work the register. Bill's allergic to dust and Rudy just got born again, so he's a no-porn zone till he gets over it."

"So, none of you is capable of walking to the back of the store and picking up the movies?"

"I guess not. Plus, there's cracks in the ceiling. Looks like there's cracks in there, too," he says, pointing into the room. I pull the door closed a little.

"Fuck it. It's porn. People who want it will paw through it wherever it is. Hell, they might like it better down there. Maybe we should put the whole porn section in a big pile on the floor."

"What?"

I forgot. The only things that are funny when you're as buzzed as Billy Goat Beard are cartoon animals and seeing other people get hurt.

"Never mind. Just open the store and let me get dressed."

"When is Mr. Kasabian coming back?"

I look at the kid. Does this doe-eyed weed monkey suspect something? Am I going to have to lobotomize this twerp?

"When he's damn good and ready," I say.

"Okay." He walks away, like he's already forgotten the whole conversation.

I throw the dead bolt when I close the door. Need to start locking the room up all the time. Too many weapons in here. Too much blood on the floor. Too much residual magic in the walls. All I need is for some stoned teenybopper to take a post-weed nap in Metatron's Cube and wake up with his soul on a hook in some stalker's trading booth in the souk.