Читать книгу Aloha from Hell - Richard Kadrey - Страница 6

“TELL ME,” SAYS the Frenchman. “How long has it been since you last killed anything?”

He’s fucking with me. He knows the answer, but he wants to make me say it. Father Vidocq taking confession.

“I don’t know. What time is it?”

“That long, then?”

I shrug.

Vidocq and I are in a very dark room in a very large house full of very fashionable furniture and we’re stealing something very valuable. I have no idea what and pretty much don’t care. It’s just nice to be hanging out and doing some crimes with the old man. Crimes where no one ends up zombie meat, shot, or annoyingly decapitated.

“It’s been a while,” I say. “Six. Eight weeks. Somewhere around there.”

I slipped us into the house through a shadow. Vidocq is working on the wall safe. He’s good with safes. He’s had over a hundred years of practice.

“So, no crusades? No great wrongs that need to be righted?”

I reach into my pocket for a cigarette, then remember there might be smoke alarms.

“Nothing worth killing for. I’m no cop. The Sub Rosa has their own Mod Squad to deal with the small stuff.”

I like watching Vidocq work over a safe. He has hands like a surgeon. Nimble. Precise. He could thread a needle while being shot out of a cannon.

“Incroyable. Perhaps you’re reaching something of a rapprochement with your angelic half and it’s having a moderating effect on your disposition.”

Right. I’m part angel. Half, if you want to get picky about it. It’s great. A halo and five bucks will get you a cup of coffee in L.A.

“Maybe. The angel screams at me sometimes, mostly at night when I’m tired and he can ambush me with one of his Give-Peace-a-Chance, no-smoking, veggie-bacon sermons. But he isn’t trying to run the show single-handed anymore. We reached a kind of MAD pact the other day.”

Vidocq looks at me.

“MAD?”

“Mutually Assured Destruction. I told him that if he ever tried to push me out of my brain and turn me into a clean-living choirboy again, I’d have to do something, you know, unreasonable.”

“Such as?”

“I told him I’d get hammered and go through the Room of Thirteen Doors to the Pearly Gates. Then I’d find the Archangel Gabriel and thunderbolt-kick him in the cojones in front of all the other angels.”

“Whereupon the other angels would draw their swords and kill you.”

“Exactly. Mutually Assured Destruction.”

“That sounds much more like the old you.”

“Thanks.”

Technically, I’m what you call a “nephilim.” Half human, half angel. And I’m the only one. The others are all dead. Suicides mostly. Some people call my type freaks. If you’re one of heaven’s lapdogs, you’ll probably call me “Abomination.” I say, call me either of those things to my face and you’ll get to see what your lungs look like as throw pillows.

The angel half of me got shaken loose a while back when a High Plains Drifter—that’s “zombie” to you—bit a chunk out of my hand. The human half of me almost died and the angel half thought that was its chance to take over. It was for a while, but then I got my strength back and I locked the angel upstairs in the attic like Joan Crawford in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? It still bangs on the door and shouts, but I’ve learned to ignore it most of the time. Some of the time. It depends on the day.

Vidocq goes back to work on the safe. Over his clothes, he’s wearing a tailored gray gabardine greatcoat. Looks like his girlfriend Allegra’s been dressing him again. He looks like the doorman at a speakeasy in the Kremlin. The greatcoat tinkles gently when he moves, like he’s smuggling wind chimes. The sound of the hundred or so little potion bottles he has sewn into the coat’s lining. I have my guns, my knife, and na’at. Vidocq has his potions.

“What exactly are we stealing?” I ask.

“A golden brooch or device in the shape of a scarab. It’s quite ancient. There is a clockwork mechanism inside. Perhaps it’s God’s pocket watch.”

“He doesn’t need a watch. He needs a compass so he can find his own ass.”

There’s a click and the front of the safe swings open.

Vidocq moves his hands in a graceful TV-spokesmodel arc in front of the safe.

“Et voilà.”

“You are the man, Van Damme.”

He squints at me.

“Jean-Claude Van Damme is Belgian, not French.”

“There’s a difference?”

“Fuck you.”

I like how Vidocq pronounces “fuck”: “fock.”

He whispers, “C’est quoi, ça?”

“Anything wrong?”

“No. It’s very interesting. The owner of this safe is a very paranoid man. The inside is etched with spells and runes.”

“Can you still get the swag?”

He flashes a small LED light around the inside of the safe.

“I don’t see anything in here that should stop us. They mostly seem to be containment spells. He must have been afraid of this shiny scarab walking away.”

He reaches into the safe and pulls out a polished ebony box the size of a cigar box and pushes up the lid. A beautiful gold scarab lies on bloodred silk. He hands me the box and begins packing his tools. I slip it into my coat pocket.

I say, “I have to admit, it doesn’t feel bad, but it feels a little weird not raising a hand in anger this long. I can pretty much just talk humans and Lurkers out of doing stupid shit to each other these days.”

“See?” he says from the floor. “By embracing your angelic half, the mere force of your personality is enough to keep the peace.”

“I think killing all zombies in the world in one night helps.”

“Yes, that could be a factor.”

“And Lucifer and the Vigil aren’t around paying me to be a hit man rent-boy bitch.”

Vidocq scrolls his gear into a leather tool roll and stands up.

I ask him, “Are we cool?”

He smiles and says, “As the North Star on Christmas Eve. But we aren’t quite done.”

He takes two potion bottles from inside his coat and pours their contents onto the floor where we were standing and on the safe door, trying to shampoo away any magic or forensic dandruff that might lead back to us. When he tosses the contents of a third bottle into the safe, I hear the scratching.

“You heard?” he asks.

“Get out of the way, Eugène.”

He doesn’t. Vidocq has a scientific mind. Instead of getting out of the way, he looks inside the safe.

It wouldn’t be my fault if the back of his stupid French skull blew out like a five-dollar retread, but I pull Vidocq out of the way just before the demon cannonballs out of the safe and hits the far wall.

The demon’s carapace gleams like blue-black gun steel. The big bug doesn’t have eyes, just two sets of jaws at an angle to each other and two huge hooked front claws. The moment it hits the wall, it starts tunneling through it. That’s what this particular type of demon does. It’s a digger. A greed demon. It’ll protect anything it thinks it owns. Like the contents of a safe. It’s why the safe had containment spells on the interior. To keep the demon inside. Smart. Your basic bad guys—us, for instance—will maybe test for eaters, but who’s going to worry about a brainless digger until it’s excavating the Panama Canal through your intestines?

Vidocq bumps against the desk when I pull him to his feet. The digger freezes and turns. It’s blind but it has great hearing. I can slow my heart and breathing, but in a few seconds the demon’s going to zero in on Vidocq. I step back from him, leaving him exposed to the digger. He turns and looks at me with wide horrified eyes.

Sorry, man. This is how it has to be.

The digger turns. It has Vidocq’s heartbeat. It hooks its two huge digging claws into the wall and uses them to slingshot forward. A metallic blur, four glittering jaws, and arm-size hooks going right for the old man’s chest. He doesn’t look at it. He never takes his eyes off me.

As the digger’s body blurs across the desk, I whip the na’at out. Twist the grip out from the body into a hair-thin serrated whipsaw.

The digger hits the na’at like a meteor with teeth. I twist the na’at’s cutting edge into its body and the bug splits in two lengthwise. The halves come apart and smash into the wall on either side of Vidocq, embedding themselves deep into the wood and plaster.

Vidocq swivels his head, checking out the giant insect shanks that flank him.

I say, “What do you know? I do remember how to kill things. Good news for our side.”

“Fuck you, boy.”

An alarm goes off when a naked fat man kicks open the office door. I’m going to roll the dice and guess he’s the home owner. He points an exquisitely made-over and -under shotgun at us. It might even be a Tullio Fabbri. A hundred and seventy-five grand worth of etched steel with a carved walnut stock and accurate as a cruise missile. I’m almost tempted to ask him, but his pupils are dilated and I smell the excitement in his sweat because he thinks he’s finally going to get to use that Fort Knox popgun on actual human beings.

Through the angel’s senses I hear the infinitesimal scrape of metal over lubricated metal as the fat man applies pressure to the shotgun’s trigger. I grab Vidocq in a bear hug and jump through the window just as the gun goes off.

Davy Crockett here isn’t Sub Rosa, but he must know some because he has an antimagic cloak over his house and the grounds outside. What that means is no one’s supposed to be able to throw any hoodoo or hexes around here. Whoever built the cloak probably pegged him for a mark right off. I figure they got him to pay a bonus to build it big enough to cover the whole estate, the perfect way to turn a cloak into something as reliable as a marshmallow condom. Antimagic shields are powerful things when you do them right, and part of that’s knowing they can only be so big. Blow them up too much and the skin stretches thin. Keep blowing and they can pop right out of existence. That’s what Davy the Rube paid for: a one-hundred-thousand-dollar soap bubble.

The cloak is stretched so thin I can throw all kinds of hoodoo in here. Like when we climbed the fence onto the grounds, I could take us into the house through the Room of Thirteen Doors. But I can’t get us off the grounds that way. Of course, I could have used some hoodoo to wrap Davy Crockett’s shotgun around his neck like a mink stole and swung him around like a carousel pony while I shot the shit out of his office, but I didn’t do any of that. Someone else might think that would earn them karma points down the line, but I know better. Karma is just loaded dice on a crooked table. Celestial pricks with wings and halos make the rules and the house always wins. Always.

SO VIDOCQ AND I are falling. Tinkling glass falls with us like razor-blade snowflakes.

When you’re jumping two floors with a civilian whose broken bones won’t heal overnight like your own, you need to remember a couple of things. One, cushion the fall as much as you can, and two, be prepared to use your body as an air bag. That means controlling the fall enough so the other, usually extremely startled, person lands on top of you. Does it hurt? Go outside, get a friend to drop a garbage-can-ful of bacon fat on your chest, and see.

Trying to control a fall is no tea party when you’re holding on to someone who’s thrashing around like a Tasered octopus. But it’s not impossible. The trick is to grab them just under the ribs and squeeze so they can’t breathe. Then you let go just as you hit the ground so they breathe out hard when they hit. It helps absorb the shock, though it still hurts. Especially if you’re the one on the bottom.

There’s a tree below Davy’s window. I aim for it, rolling us into the branches, hoping it’ll slow our fall a little. It does. Coming down into the hedges helps, too. We still have some momentum to burn off, so I keep rolling and we end up on the lawn that Davy was kind enough to lay out with fresh soft sod in the last few days. Thanks, man. I’ll send you a honey-baked ham for Christmas.

I pull Vidocq to his feet and we run for the wall like a couple of spooked raccoons. I look back over my shoulder and Davy is standing in the broken window with the shotgun at his shoulder. Wishful thinking. We’re too far away for him to hit anything but the air.

Don’t sweat it, Davy. Vidocq and I aren’t going to touch your safe or wreck your office again. But I might have to come back some night for that Tullio Fabbri and you can try to shoot me with something else. I am in severe need of something like that. It’s so quiet and peaceful out here I’m getting bored with breathing. Maybe we’ll get lucky and the world will go to Hell again. Fingers crossed.

I PARKED THE stolen Lexus half a block away. Vidocq is limping. He stops and opens his coat like a flasher. There are dozens of pockets sewn into the lining. Each holds a different potion. Batman has his utility belt. Vidocq has his coat. I have guns and a knife. None of us will be on the cover of GQ.

Satisfied that Vidocq’s little glass vials aren’t broken and leaking about a hundred hexes into his underwear, we head for the car. The old man is limping, but when I put a hand on his arm to help him, he shrugs it off. Another grateful customer. I have a knack for pissing people off, especially my friends.

He still won’t talk to me, but at least when we get to the Lexus he lets me help him into the car. I start to close the door, but he blocks it with his hand.

“Who is that?” he asks.

I turn and see a man a few yards away. He’s standing in the shadow of a big shade tree on someone’s lawn. He doesn’t move when I look at him. I reach behind my back and pull a Smith & Wesson .460, making sure he sees it. He doesn’t flinch. I put the gun back and start toward him. Now he moves. He comes right at me.

“Is this Disneyland?” I say. “Are you Mickey Mouse? I always wanted to shake hands with giant vermin.”

Not a peep. Maybe he’s a Daffy Duck fan.

There’s something wrong with his face. I can’t make out any ears and there’s a deep slit where his nose should be, like he’s healed up from third-degree burns. Must be a tough bastard to go through that and still walk.

We both stop about six feet apart, having a Sergio Leone stare-down.

“I don’t know if you’re looking for directions or a date, but we’re fresh out of both. Take a walk and stare at someone else.”

He’s fast for a guy who looks like he just escaped from a deep-fat fryer. He lunges and grabs my arms over the biceps. He’s strong for a cripple, but nothing I can’t handle.

Then my arms are burning. Literally. My coat sleeves smoke and burst into flames where he’s holding me. I have heavy Kevlar inserts in the sleeves, but in just a couple of seconds the heat is almost through and down to my skin.

I step back and bring up my forearms in an outward circle from underneath and hit his arms hard. Standard self-defense stuff every high school kid knows. It doesn’t work. It’s like hitting Jell-O. And now my forearms are burning. Wrestling this guy is like waltzing with lava. I try to form hoodoo in my mind to knock Smokey the Asshole across the street or at least make him let go, but the pain makes it hard to think straight.

I bark some Hellion I learned back when I was fighting in the arena. If you do the hex right, it’s like a garbage-can-size gut punch that hits in a blaze of purple light and bores like an oil-rig drill through just about anyone or anything. I get it just right. The purple explosion, the whirlpool of power. Smokey’s midsection collapses in on itself. And goes through and out his back, dragging a long strip of lava flesh with it like burning taffy. The prick doesn’t even seem to notice.

The guy isn’t a burn victim. His face churns like thick liquid as we wrestle. Stupid. I should have known this asshole wasn’t human.

The heat is down to my skin, cooking my arms. Being hard to kill means a lot of things. I have a high pain threshold, but it’s not infinite. Not when something a volcano shit out is trying to give you an Indian burn. Being hard to kill also means that you don’t go down fast, so whatever’s cutting you, shooting you, or burning you alive is something you get to experience for a good long time.

Being hard to kill isn’t the worst thing that can happen to you, but it sure as shit isn’t the best, and right now it isn’t even fun.

Something clear and hard spins past my shoulder and hits Smokey in the face. He jerks his head away like I have bad breath. But he doesn’t let go. Another vial flies past. And another. Smokey lets go this time. Vidocq is behind me, limping over and tossing potions like a pitching machine.

Smokey backs away, his arms pulled in close to his body. Something’s hurt him. Good. He starts to shake like someone stuck a vibrator in a bowl of cherry Jell-O. I step back and grab my gun, but before I can use it, Smokey melts like the Wicked Witch of the West, leaving a circle of scorched black earth on the green lawn.

Vidocq grabs my shoulder and pulls me back to the car. He bunny-hops on his good leg into the passenger side and I slide into the driver’s seat, jam the black blade I carried back from Hell into the ignition, and we peel out.

“What the hell kind of burglar alarm was that? Why can’t rich people have rottweilers like everyone else?”

“I don’t think that was an alarm. That was a demon.”

I glance at him. My arms are throbbing now, and between each throb they still feel like they’re burning. I smell something, but I don’t know if it’s the coat or me.

“I’ve never seen a demon like that before.”

“Neither have I, but the potion that hurt the creature was a rare type of poison. A toxin formulated to affect only demons.”

I drive at a moderate speed. I pause at stop signs and obey every light.

“Think it was after us?”

Vidocq shrugs.

“Possibly. But who knew we’d be here tonight? And why would someone attack you now? You’ve been a good boy for weeks.”

I roll down the windows to let out the smell. I’m stinking up the Lexus, but who cares? I hate these luxury golf carts. Gaudy status symbols with as much personality as an Elmer’s-Glue-on-white-bread sandwich.

I say, “Maybe someone was settling an old score. Hell, maybe it was after you.”

Vidocq laughs. “Who would send a demon for me?”

“I don’t know. The few thousand people you’ve robbed over the last two hundred years?”

“It’s more like a hundred and fifty. Don’t try to make me sound old.”

“’Course, sending a demon for something like that sounds like overkill. Especially something rare enough that neither of us recognizes it.”

“I’ll look into it tomorrow when I’m certain I’ll be able to feel my right leg again.”

“Whiner. Your girlfriend is the best hoodoo doctor in town. She’ll give you an ice pack and conjure you some kangaroo legs. Then you can do your own second-story work.”

Vidocq pats me on the shoulder.

“There, there …” like he’s patting a five-year-old with a skinned knee. “I would have thought you’d be happy. You got to have a fight. Draw a little blood. Isn’t that what you’ve been wanting?”

I think it over.

“I suppose. And you killed it, not me, so my not-slaughtering-things record is still intact.”

“Unlike your arms.”

“A little Bactine and they’ll be fine by the morning.”

“Judging by the look of them, they’ll hurt in the meantime. Take this. It will help you sleep.”

He reaches into his coat and hands me a potion.

“No thanks. Dr. Jack Daniel’s is coming by tonight. He’s got all the medicine I need.”

He slips the vial into my pocket.

“Take it anyway. He might be late.”

“Yes, Mom.”

“And don’t forget to brush your teeth and say your prayers.”

“Fuck you, Mom.”

WE DRIVE ACROSS town, near what the city fathers call the Historic District, an ironically named area in a city that has no history but has seen more shit go down than a lot of countries. It’s all right to forget all the Mansons, the celebrity ODs, the brain-boost religions, the UFO religions, the tin-horn Satanists, the rock-and-roll suicides, the landgrabs, the serial killers, the ruthless gangs and even more ruthless cops, the survivalists with cases of ammo, cigarettes, and freeze-dried beans in their desert compounds, as long as we remember to bring the family downtown to grab a latte and admire the knockoff Mickey Mouse T-shirts.

We ditch the car in the Biltmore Hotel parking lot and start the four-block walk to the Bradbury Building. This is flat-out stupid, but Vidocq insisted that he could walk off whatever happened to his leg in the fall. I’ve seen plenty of injuries. I know he can’t, but I let him hobble until he grabs my arm, huffing and puffing before falling against a newspaper box full of local porn papers. I didn’t know those things were still around.

“Want to take the shortcut?” I ask.

“Please,” he says.

I put one of his arms around my shoulder and lift him off the box. We limp to the corner and around the side of a Japanese restaurant. I pull him into a shadow by the delivery entrance. We go into the Room of Thirteen Doors and I pretty much carry him out the Door of Memory and into Mr. Muninn’s place.

Every good thief needs a fence and Mr. Muninn is Vidocq’s. Muninn’s regular shop, the one he keeps for his vaguely normal clients, is in the old sci-fi–meets–art-deco Bradbury Building on a floor that doesn’t exist. He serves a pretty select clientele—mostly Sub Rosa and über-wealthy L.A. elites. But if you ever stumbled into his store and could afford a Fury in a crystal cage, the seeds from Eve’s apple, or Napoleon’s whalebone cock ring, he’d let you in. Mr. Muninn’s a businessman.

The really interesting stuff he keeps in a deep cavern beneath the Bradbury Building. His secret boutique for only the oddest and choicest items in the world. That’s where we come out.

When he sees us Muninn holds his arms out wide like he’s giving a benediction.

“Welcome, boys. What a pleasure to see you two working together again.”

Vidocq says, “Just like the good old days. I’m limping and he was just on fire.”

Vidocq drops into a gilt armchair that probably belonged to King Tut.

I stamp my foot on the stone floor a few times, shaking loose shotgun pellets that have embedded themselves in the soles of my boot.

“On fire is my best look. Ask anyone.”

Muninn shifts his eyes to Vidocq and then back at me.

“How may I ask did a simple robbery turn into a Greek drama? And were there any witnesses who might make things complicated later?”

I say, “The drama started and ended with demons. One in the house and one in the street.”

“The only witness is the man who owned the scroll you wanted,” says Vidocq. “His residence was badly cloaked and there was a guardian demon in the safe. He’ll be too embarrassed that he paid for a worthless shield to tell anyone. No doubt he knows that leaving a demon mantrap where an innocent party might stumble on it is a serious violation of Sub Rosa precepts. No, I believe he’ll lick his wounds and not tell a soul about tonight.”

Muninn smiles and does his benediction thing again.

“And there we are. An adventure complete with just a few scars to make the memories all the more vivid. And then there’s your reward. Not a bad night’s work, I’d say.”

I take the box out of my pocket, then peel off the charred remains of my coat and drop it on the stone floor. If it was anyone else, I’d stomp him for his attitude, but Muninn doesn’t think like regular people. I don’t know if he’s the oldest man in the world, but I’ll bet there isn’t anyone else within midget-tossing distance who’s seen multiple ice ages freeze and thaw the world. He’s a nice guy for someone who thinks like a Martian. And he’s always fair when it comes to business. If you ask me, we could use a few more like him. You never know what’s going to come out of his mouth and he always pays on time.

He rummages around his endless maze of shelves crammed with books, bones, strange weapons, the crown jewels of kingdoms no one’s ever heard of, and ancient scientific devices. Does even he know what they do? They could be Krishna’s gumball machine for all I know.

He comes back with a handblown green glass bottle and three small silver cups, takes them to his worktable desk, and pours drinks. He hands us each a glass and raises his own.

“To God above and the devil below.”

Vidocq says something pithy back in French.

Great. Now it’s my turn to sound smart. The angel in my head chimes in with something, but I shove Beaver Cleaver back into the dark.

“You owe me a coat,” is all I can think of.

He smiles and nods, pouring more drinks.

“A man of many thoughts but few words. Lucky for us all that it’s not the other way around.”

Vidocq laughs and turns away, pretending he’s looking at the shelves so I won’t see him.

Muninn says, “I hear that when you’re not playing le voleur with Eugène, you’re rebuilding your movie house.”

“Rental place. We don’t show them. We just pimp them. And yeah, Kasabian and I are rebuilding and expanding Max Overdrive with all the Ben Franklins that vampire bunch, the Dark Eternal, gave me.”

Muninn looks down, contemplating his glass.

“I expect they would be grateful for you clearing out the revenants. Zombies can’t have much nutritional value for vampires.”

“According to the news, it never happened. It was mass hysteria. Drugs in the water or weaponized LSD. Between tourists, traffic cams, and private security, there’s a million video cams in L.A., but there’s not one good minute of zed footage anywhere, just blurry cell-phone shit. We might as well say we were attacked by Bigfoot.”

It stinks of the feds like ripe roadkill. Like Marshal Wells.

Until I snuffed the zeds, Homeland Security had heavy muscle in L.A. I mean, they had a goddamn angel on staff. Aelita. The meanest celestial rattlesnake I ever met and I’ve partied with Lucifer. Aelita is Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS, but not as good-natured. She was the organ grinder and Marshal Wells was the monkey. They’re exactly the kind of bastards with connections to levels of occult and law enforcement power who could make thousands of hours of video disappear overnight.

Washington spanked Wells hard after the zeds got out of control. Aelita strolled away, so he got to be the fall guy. DHS closed him down out here. Who knows, if he plays nice and eats his vegetables, maybe the Men in Black will send him back. They might even let him resurrect the Golden Vigil, his and Aelita’s private jackboot army. Heaven’s Pinkertons on earth.

Muninn waves his hand.

“It was bound to happen. Most ordinary people’s desire to forget what they can’t comprehend is virtually infinite. It’s more comforting to disbelieve their own eyes than accept the possibility that the dead can walk the streets. I can’t say I blame them.”

I raise my glass.

“To reality. The most overrated and underpaid game in town.”

We all drink.

“So, what will you do until your movie palace is complete?” asks Muninn. “Are you considering carrying on as an investigator? You seem to have a flair for it. No one else figured out the nasty little secret behind the revenants.”

“That was a onetime thing. And I got lucky. If Brigitte and I hadn’t been bitten, I wouldn’t have done any of it. I would have taken her and blown out of town.”

Brigitte is a friend from Prague. A trained High Plains Drifter—that is, a zombie—hunter. I might have fallen for her if we’d met at a different time, under different circumstances, and on another planet. I screwed up and let Brigitte get bitten by a Drifter. She almost turned. If it hadn’t been for Vidocq and his alchemy hoodoo, she would have.

“That’s not true and you know it,” says Vidocq. “Perhaps you’ll turn your attention back to Mason? If I remember correctly, finding him was the main reason you returned from Hell. I understand, of course, your getting distracted, what with saving the world and all.”

“I did find Mason. And I locked him up good and tight Downtown.”

“Which is what he wanted all along,” says Vidocq. “I’m not sure you can call that punishment.”

I give the old man a look. I don’t like having my own stupid confessions thrown back at me. Of course he’s right. Mason wanted to go to Hell and he wanted to go there alive, just like I did. And I walked up to him like a backwoods rube with a corncob pipe and put him there. Not many people know about that. I couldn’t walk the streets if they did. I couldn’t look people in the eye if they knew I’d sent the most dangerous man in the world to the worst place in the universe so he could raise an army to kill them all. People get murdered for mistakes like that. Sometimes they don’t wait for someone else to do it. If someone else tries it, they might get it wrong and leave you in a coma, only half dead. That would be even worse. Someone might feel sorry for you and that’s something I couldn’t take.

“Kasabian still has access to Lucifer’s book, The Daimonion Codex. He keeps an eye on Downtown twenty-four/seven. If Mason makes a move, I’ll know about it.”

“Why not simply go yourself?”

“I’ve tried a few times. Even changing my face with a glamour, there’s always some Hellion or other who spots me and I have to de-ass the place fast. There’s got to be another way to get to him, but I haven’t figured it out yet.”

I’m lying. I’ve tried it a couple of times and I was so nervous that the glamour wasn’t even half-baked. I thought I could walk back Downtown like Patton riding a tank. But I can’t. The smell and the heat hit me and I’m back on the arena floor, ripped open and bleeding, hoping my guts don’t slip out into the dirt. Or I’m covered in thick Hellion blood, playing hit man for another Hellion while he tells me Alice will be safe as long as I keep killing for him. And then she’s dead and all I am is a murderer. So I close the door to Hell and I slink back home, sitting at my favorite bar long enough that the smell fades and Kasabian won’t know what a coward I’ve become.

What’s more useless than a weak-kneed killer?

“You’ll find a way in,” says Vidocq.

I nod and finish my drink, putting on my serious, thoughtful face.

“I hope it’s soon. Since I can’t play Hannibal Downtown, the angel in my head wants me to roam the streets at night looking for bad guys like Batman. I got so pissed one night that I actually did it. Know what happened? Exactly nothing. Looking to get mugged is crazy and bad guys walk the other way when they see crazy coming. What I need is angel Valium to shut this Boy Scout up.”

Muninn nods.

“I know how it feels to constantly be at odds with those closest to you. Eventually you reach the point where none of you can stand the sight of each other anymore. My brothers and I are like that.”

“Brothers?” says Vidocq.

That’s more interesting than a two-headed calf singing “Some Velvet Morning” in tight harmony. I have about a million questions, but most aren’t real discreet. I go with the easiest.

“Are they like you? Live in caverns and know everything about everything?”

Muninn shakes his head, lost in thought. He stares at the green liquor bottle.

“I have four brothers, and no, none live in caverns. None of us is even the slightest bit like the others. I haven’t seen any of them in years. Centuries. Occasionally I miss them, but the truth is that I have no real interest in tracking any of them down. I daresay they feel the same thing about me.”

No one says anything. We’ve hit into one of those weird silences that happen when someone drops something too real into the middle of a conversation that should just have been about drinking and patting ourselves on the back. Somehow, while we were talking, Muninn has opened the box and extracted a scroll from the scarab. I pick it up.

“What’s so special about this that we had to bust open Fort Knox to get it?”

Muninn’s eyes lighten. He smiles.

“Yes, that. The scroll is for a gentleman in, let’s say, investment banking. A man like that can do extraordinary damage to his soul. Maybe even several souls. He is always on the market for new souls to wear until he ruins them too. Even L.A.’s many soul mongers can’t keep up with him. The price of souls is going up for everyone. And Los Angeles is a town that needs all the souls it can lay its hands on.”

“So, the scroll is a soul?”

“No. It’s a bit like … What do you call the elixir that restores hair?”

“Rogaine?”

“Yes! Rogaine for the soul. It restores and replenishes the user’s original umbra. A re-souling will last him a year or two I hope. Buyers can become testy when they want a new soul and you have to tell them that the cupboard is bare.”

“Suddenly I don’t feel so bad about my life.”

Vidocq says, “If you feel so good, why not come take a trip with me tomorrow?”

“Another job?”

“That’s for you to decide. I sometimes do work for a private investigator. Today she called and asked about you. She has a job that she believes you would be perfect for.”

I finish my drink and smile.

“Get mixed up in a total stranger’s problems for no good reason? Sounds like a scream, but I think I’ll pass.”

“Maybe doing something for a stranger will settle down your angel,” says Muninn.

The moment he says it, the haloed bastard starts squirming around. It tickles the inside of my skull and not in a good way. I try to push him back into the dark, but he smells a hero moment and won’t budge.

“And there’s my poor, abused knee,” the old man says, patting his leg. “You owe me for tossing me through a window tonight.”

I turn from Vidocq to Muninn.

“Never save a Frenchman’s life. He’ll hold it against you for the rest of yours.”

I look at Vidocq and screw up my face into the least sincere smile I can make.

“What the hell? I haven’t done anything truly stupid in weeks.”

THE BEAT HOTEL is in a typically glamorous area, near the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and North Gower.

Across from the hotel is the Museum of Death, a fenced gray bunker with a ten-foot painted skull out front. Next to it is the long-dead Westbeach Recorders, an empty studio local acts used to record and where Pink Floyd recorded part of The Wall (I believe that like I believe Jesus invented chili dogs). Down the street a car dealership is dying in the desert sun, the parboiled cars like beached fish carcasses slowly cooking to squid jerky. A couple of strip malls and empty parking lots on the corner. The front of the Beat Hotel is painted a pale industrial green. Maybe green paint was on sale that day or maybe it’s supposed to be ironic. I’ve never been sure.

If any of this makes you think I don’t like the Beat Hotel, you’re wrong. It’s like a cross between a seventies swingers no-tell motel and the kind of hipster hot spot where rock stars stay when they don’t want to be seen bringing home good smack or bad strippers. The rooms are comfortable in a Zen halfway-house kind of way. But the kitchens are decorated in bright primary-colored vinyl like a Playboy-chic burger joint. The place looks like where David Lynch would meet Beaver Cleaver’s mom for secret afternoons of bondage and milk shakes. I love it.

Kasabian and I have been there about three weeks. I rented us a room for the month. At the end of the month I’ll probably do it again. You’re not supposed to stay for more than a week, but I pay the right people to change my name on the registry so it looks like someone new moves in every Saturday.

I had to get out of Max Overdrive for a while. All the rebuilding going on after the zombie riots—the saws and hammers and especially the stink of new paint—was making me feel kind of stabby. None of it bothered Kasabian, of course. He’d put on headphones, crank up the volume on Danger: Diabolik, and peck away on his computer. The smell didn’t bother him because he doesn’t have lungs, so he doesn’t breathe.

Kasabian and I have a lot in common. Like me, he’s a monster; only he wasn’t born that way. I made him one when I cut off his head with the black bone knife I brought back from Hell. The blade that didn’t let him die. Now he’s a chain-smoking, beer-stealing pain in my ass. To get specific, Kasabian is a head without a body. And he won’t shut up about it. He gets around on what to a civilian would look like a polished mahogany skateboard with a couple dozen stubby brass Jules Verne legs underneath. Really, it’s a hoodoo-driven prosthetic for a guy who’s wandering around with nothing but a bad attitude below his neck. It’s his own fault. When I came back from Hell, the idiot shot me, so I cut off his head. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Now I’m stuck with him. We’ve gotten as used to each other as a couple of monsters can be. But I’ll never get used to a roommate surfing around on a magic plank like a beer-swilling Victorian centipede.

And that’s the other reason we’re at the hotel. I don’t want some schmuck carpenter wandering upstairs and getting an eyeball-ful of Kasabian’s disembodied cranium. When the guy’s brain explodes, our insurance would go through the roof.

I go right to the game room set up for the guests. There’s an “Out of Order” sign outside. I rap on the door using the secret knock Kasabian insisted on. (He’s been watching too many spy movies.) Knock. Pause. Knock. Knock. Pause. Knock. A second later I hear something scrape behind the door and it opens a few inches. I look around to make sure no one can see me and slip inside. When I get in, Kasabian uses his little legs to wedge a wooden chair under the doorknob, then tells me to throw the lock.

I say, “You’re riding the paranoia pony pretty hard today, Alfredo Garcia.”

“Blow me, biped. I have to be security-conscious or I’ll end up freak of the month on YouTube.”

“Don’t sweat it. We’re both going to end up a couple of pickled punks in the Museum of Death someday.”

“Yeah, but I’m not looking for it to happen tonight.”

He clambers on top of the pool table and gives me a sometime-today-asshole look. I roll the cue ball and we lag for break. Kasabian wins. I rack the balls and step back to light a Malediction, Lucifer’s favorite cigarette. You can only get them Downtown, and since I haven’t seen Lucifer in a while, I’m running low. It might almost be worth chancing going back down to snatch and grab a pack or three. Almost.

Kasabian shooting pool is as graceful as a lobster playing soccer. He scuttles around the green felt tabletop, lines up his shot, and kicks the cue ball with his stubby metal legs. I’m not sure if him playing like that is fair, but you’ve got to pick your battles, so I let it go. Besides, it gets him out of the room and makes him happy and that makes him easier to live with.

“What’s that smell?” he asks.

“Me. I got parboiled by a demon when I was out with Vidocq.”

I shrug off the rifle frock coat Muninn gave me and show him the burns on my arms. I’m doing my best to ignore the pain, but I’m going to need a drink soon. Getting tossed in a meat grinder every now and then is part of what I do. I came back to earth to kill things, so I have to expect things to fight back occasionally.

“Nice. New scars to add to your collection. You collect getting fucked up the way old ladies collect state spoons.”

Kasabian takes a shot and sinks the nine, eleven, and four. Two stripes and a solid.

He says, “I’ll play stripes. Thirteen in the corner,” as he lines up the shot. He sinks it.

I puff on the smoke. I get the feeling he’s not going to leave me much else to do.

“So what kind of a demon was it?”

I shake my head.

“Damned if I know. I’d never seen one like it before.”

He creeps around the table, not looking up.

“What did it look like?”

“Not much. I mean, from a distance it looked like a guy in a cheap suit. But when it got closer, it was all Jell-O and acid. When it grabbed me, bang, I was burning.”

He takes one of the blue chalk cubes from the side of the table and uses it on his stubby legs.

“Sounds like a Gluttire.”

“A what?”

“Gluttire. A glutton. He wasn’t burning you. He was trying to dissolve you. Gluttons are pretty rare and mostly eat other demons. You been around any recently?”

“Yeah. The guy whose house we hit had a digger in the wall safe.”

“There you go,” he says, and sinks the fourteen. “He smelled the digger.”

“I need to start bringing cologne on robberies.”

“There’s a ton about demons in the Codex. There’s a lot more kinds of them than you think, but Gluttires are the rarest. Most people never get to see one.”

“Lucky me.”

Things get quiet for a minute. He knows what I’m going to ask.

“Talk to me about Downtown. Got any gossip? Marilyn Monroe dating the Antichrist? Is Lovecraft being tortured by sexy octopuses?”

“What makes you think Monroe’s Downtown?”

“Wishful thinking.”

Kasabian lines up another shot and sinks it. I’m not even paying attention to which balls anymore.

I say, “So?”

Kasabian doesn’t look up when he answers, keeping his eyes down on the table.

“The weather’s hot with a chance of chain saws and bullshit blowing up from the south.”

I walk over and put my hand over the cue ball. Kasabian looks up at me, not at all happy.

I’m bugging him about the one thing he controls. His one little domain. The Daimonion Codex. It’s Lucifer’s Boy Scout manual, Google search engine, and secret angelic ball-buster cookbook all in one. The most valuable thing in Hell besides the horned one himself. It contains every bit of dark, esoteric-stuff-you-don’t-want-to-know-about-if-you-ever-want-to-sleep-again knowledge in the universe. As far as I know, Kasabian is the only one on earth who can read it.

He glances down at my hand and I take it off the cue. He sinks another ball. The little prick has been practicing when I’m not around.

Kasabian used to look things up in the Codex for Lucifer when he was too busy, which was 90 percent of the time. Of course, nothing in Hell works the way it’s supposed to. That’s why they call it Hell. The magic gear down there is like buying Russian souvenirs. The samovars are pretty, but you know they’re going to leak all over your mom’s chintz tablecloth.

What that means is that Hell’s half-assed gear hacks pretty easy. Take the Codex. Kasabian’s supposed to get a peek Downtown just wide enough to read the book. But it doesn’t work right. He’s like one of those traffic surveillance cams that catch you running red lights. If he squints just right, he can see a lot more than the book. He’s like a whole series of traffic cams wired together and he can spyglass all over Hell. Not all of it, but a lot. It’s the one thing he has over me and he never lets me forget it.

He says, “The usual Chuck E. Cheese ball pit-party games. Since Lucifer pissed off back to heaven, Mason’s completely taken over. Lucifer’s generals are having slap fights over battle plans. Mammon and Baphomet have been sabotaging each others’ troops. Poisoning their food and shit like that. All so they can suck up to Mason. Semyazah is the only general who refused to kiss Mason’s ass, so he’s had to blow town.”

“Smart move.”

“Mason’s getting ready for something. He’s pulling troops in from everywhere, but they’re scattered all over Hell, so it’ll take a while. In the meantime he’s got some other game going, but I haven’t figured out what it is.”

I can walk through shadows and come out almost anywhere I want, passing through the Room of Thirteen Doors, the still-central point of time and space. I can get into the Room because years ago one of Lucifer’s generals, the one who wanted me as his personal assassin, stuck a key in my chest. I’m the only one in the universe who can get into the room because I have the only key. But while the Drifters were tearing through town like graveyard locusts I found out that Mason was trying to make his own key.

“Is it the Room of Thirteen Doors? Has he found a way to get in?”

“I don’t think so. If he did, he’d be up here already gnawing on your skull.”

Kasabian is right. Mason isn’t shy or subtle. If he could escape from Downtown, even if it was just for a minute, he’d do it and try to kill me.

“So, what’s he up to?”

“You tell me. You talk to the guy every night. It used to be Alice, which was creepy enough, but now it’s Dr. Doom.”

He shoots at the twelve. It bounces off the cushions and doesn’t drop. My shot.

I set down the cigarette, lay the cue down on my thumb and index finger, and line up a shot.

“What does that mean?”

“Back at Max Overdrive you used to talk to Alice in your sleep. Since we got here, though, whenever you’re asleep you start spinning like a rotisserie chicken and talking to Mason.”

“What do I say?”

I bank the one off the rail and sink it in a corner pocket.

“Aside from ‘Fuck you’ and ‘I’ll kill you,’ you mumble a lot in Hellion, so it’s hard to tell.”

“Buy a dictionary.”

He walks around the edge of the table, a fleshy spider circling a fly.

“There’s something else. It doesn’t really change anything, but you might want to know.”

“What?”

“No one’s all that scared of you Downtown anymore. You used to be the bogeyman who kept them up at night. Now they talk about you like you were the high school bully.”

“So they’ve forgotten about me.”

“I didn’t say that. What I mean is, Mason is the new scary human in town, and you’ve been gone so long, he wins badass title by default.”

I take a shot at the three, but hit it too hard and it rolls back into the center of the table.

I pick up my cigarette and Kasabian crawls back onto the table.

“First he sends me to Hell and then he won’t even let me keep my rep. The little prick wants everything.”

Kasabian lines up a shot.

“So go down there and kill something. Slit some generals’ throats. You’re the monster who kills monsters. Be creative.”

I shake my head.

“Everyone knows my face, and Mason’s put wards on all the entrances I use to get into Hell. He’d know the moment I stuck my big toe down there.”

“Worrying about shit like that doesn’t sound too Sandman Slim to me, if you don’t mind my saying.”

“I do mind, but you already said it.”

“Just go down and kill him already! You’ve done lots crazier shit than that before.”

“It’s not the right time. I need to shut down everything he’s doing. Battle plans. Backroom deals with generals. All of it. I need more chaos. You murder someone at the Ice Capades and the place goes apeshit. You blow someone’s head off in a war zone, people step over the body and have a snack.”

“Maybe. A few months back you’d have John Wayne’d your way in there and started your own war. I think that angel in your head’s made you soft. You’ve been Glenda the Good Witch too long.”

He’s right. Mason talked to me once. He possessed other people’s bodies and talked to me through them. He’s getting stronger and he’s working on a key. He’s rallying troops. I should be Downtown murdering him and giving fallen angels new nightmares. I wasted the last six, seven months skipping rope with Wells and the Vigil, drinking myself stupid and losing my edge.

After all this time, I still don’t understand this world. It’s soft and stupid and full of soft and stupid people. Why aren’t they all crazy and ripping each other to bloody confetti? They want to. I can read their eyes. Hear their hearts beating. Smell the fear sweat. The anger sweat. The fury inside they can never let out. I’m turning into one of them. It’s the price of living in this world and trying to fit in.

The angel in my head is part of it. On the other hand, is the angel even there? Maybe I’m going crazy and it’s my Tyler Durden. Maybe I’ve always been crazy, and coming back here let it loose. Hell was my Haldol and without it I’m slowly going schizo. Hearing voices. Taking orders from something that might not even exist.

Alice isn’t here and this place will never be anything but a desert without her. But I’m connected to people now. Vidocq. Allegra. Candy. Carlos. Kasabian. Even Brigitte, who dumped me. They’re the cinder blocks dragging me to the bottom of the ocean. Knowing them, giving a damn about them, sucks the marrow out of my bones. Makes me weak. They want me sane and clean, but the monster in me wants to hear Hellion necks snap and pop like champagne bottles on New Year’s.

Kasabian sinks one ball and lines up another. Am I playing stripes or solids? I can’t remember. I finish the last of my cigarette and drop the butt in an abandoned soda can under the plastic “No Smoking” sign.

“Maybe you should start something here. Go beat up some more skinheads. Fight a dragon. Or a Kissi.”

I look at him, trying to read him. He doesn’t breathe or sweat much, so it’s hard. He’s concentrating on his shot, so I can’t see his eyes.

“What made you say that? The Kissi are gone.”

I know it because I’d killed them, the whole race of deformed, half-finished angels. Well, almost the whole race. I saw one, he calls himself Josef, a few weeks back. He’s alive and he knows where there are other Kissi. We talked about that for a long time.

Kasabian stops and looks at me. We’ve lived together long enough that he knows when I’m being … well, deadly serious.

“Cool out,” Kasabian says. “It was a joke.”

He gives the fifteen a solid kick and it slams into the hole. He moves around fast, trying to get things back to normal. Back to the game. He sinks another.

I say, “Don’t joke about them. I don’t like it.”

“Whatever you say, man. If I hurt your feelings we can watch Fried Green Tomatoes and eat a pint of Häagen-Dazs.”

I can’t stand it anymore. I take out Vidocq’s pain potion and down the whole thing in one gulp.

“No. Let’s watch The Wild Bunch and pay strangers to bring us Korean ribs.”

“Well, fuck me with Lloyd Bridges’s dick. You’re still alive in there after all,” he says. Then, “Corner pocket.”

He lays down a solid kick, bounces the eight ball off the far rail, and sinks it in the corner pocket at my end.

“You pay,” he says.

“I always do.”

I PUT KASABIAN in his bowling bag so I can carry him to the room without the other hotel residents having a nervous breakdown. I close the bag all the way, but he always unzips it a few inches so he can see out.

On the way across the parking lot I spot a Nahual beast man grab a little blonde’s arm. She sounds Scandinavian when she shouts at him. She has on the traditional surfer tank top and shorts all foreign exchange students seem to wear. The Nahual isn’t showing his beast face, so she has no idea that the guy she’s arguing with isn’t human.

I set Kasabian down on a bench and walk over. The Nahual lets the girl go when he sees me. I shove his head through the windshield of a shiny rental car and bounce his face off the dashboard a few times. When I stop hurting him he runs like hell. The Scandy girl hasn’t moved an inch. Her eyes are fixed on the broken windshield. She doesn’t say thanks when I go past, but I don’t expect her to. Between the Nahual and me, she’s too shell-shocked to say anything at all. Welcome to L.A., darlin’.

As I carry Kasabian upstairs he says, “That’s exactly what I was talking about.”

IN THE MORNING it feels like my brain ran away to join the circus, got mauled by a lion, and rolled over every bump and boulder coming home. The pain juice Vidocq gave me doesn’t mix well with Jack Daniel’s, unless you enjoy feeling like someone parked a Saturn V on your eyeballs.

Weird whiskey dreams last night. I dreamed about the old Faces of Death movies. Sideshow pseudo-documentary mash-ups of real and obviously fake footage of people being killed in interesting and creative ways. A real carnage rodeo. And each of my dream segments starred Alice being mangled in wide-screen Technicolor.

After all this time I still don’t know how she died. I know that Parker, a magician, professional asshole, and Mason’s favorite hoodoo thug, murdered her and that Mason ordered it. But I don’t know how Parker killed her. The question always hovers at the back of my mind whenever I think of her. When I’m asleep my dreams play out different scenarios. Everything from a quick bullet in the back of the head to being stabbed and bleeding out. Her death scenes get mixed up with dreams of being back in the arena. Whatever beast I kill morphs into Alice dying at my feet.

I know it’s a kind of betrayal to hide from the truth of how she died, but I know Parker’s mind and I doubt that he made it quick. Parker’s the kind of guy that makes you want to believe in reincarnation. I already murdered him once, but if I had the chance I’d never stop killing him. Killing Parker would be my circuit training. My racquetball game. I could build a whole new healthy lifestyle running him to the ground and snapping his neck three times a week.

VIDOCQ COMES BY with a cab around ten. On my best days, the sun isn’t my friend. This morning, hungover and still wearing yesterday’s clothes, all I can do is cover my head and run from shadow to shadow like a vampire that forgot to wind its watch.

When I get to the cab, Vidocq is waiting by the front passenger door, which is weird. We usually ride in the back so we can talk. I look through the window into the back and see why he’s up front. Candy is inside.

“What, are you playing matchmaker?”

Vidocq grabs the door and starts into the cab.

“Oui. You need to talk to someone besides me and that chattering jack-o’-lantern in your room.”

Vidocq slides in next to the driver. I get in the back with Candy.

She’s in her usual ensemble of white T-shirt, a beat-up and just a little too big leather jacket, Chuck Taylors, and black jeans about to completely give up at the knees. She looks like Joan Jett’s little sister. She’s got on a pair of kid’s sunglasses, like something you’d pick up in Little Tokyo. The frames are white with blue flames and there are flying robots down the sides. When I sit down she doesn’t say hello. She touches the middle of the frames just above her nose. The sunglasses start singing the theme song to some Japanese kiddie cartoon in a tinny robot voice. It makes my skull throb.

“Did you wear those just to torture me?”

She touches the frames and the robot song starts again.

“Not everything is about you, but yeah, pretty much. And I always wanted a robot sidekick.”

“Can it be a quiet robot?”

The song stops. She holds a finger over the frames.

“Don’t make me use my super-awesome robo powers on you again.”

Candy is like me. A monster. Specifically, she’s a Jade. Jades are sort of like vampires, only worse. They dissolve your insides and drink them like spiders. But she’s a good girl and is trying to kick the human milkshake thing with a special potion. Blood-and-bone methadone. Besides being cute and dangerous, she saved my ass from joining the living dead after a Drifter bit me. I was far gone and didn’t want to take the cure, so she stabbed me with a knife coated in the stuff. Yeah, it hurt. And yeah, I’m glad she did it.

I throw up my hands.

“You win. Take our lands and gold but leave me my virtue.”

“Those are my only choices?”

“If you’re going virtue hunting, you better bring a backhoe and dynamite. You’re going to have to dig deep.”

“I’ll bring a strap-on.”

I look at Vidocq in the front seat.

“Make her stop. I’m hungover and she has a robot. It’s not fair.”

“Life is fair only in the grave and in the bedroom. This, you will notice, is neither.”

“That’s why I don’t take cabs.”

I look out the window. The cabbie takes us down Hollywood Boulevard for a few blocks and then U-turns on Sunset and heads back the way we came.

“Where are we headed?”

“The Bamboo House of Dolls.”

“What the hell, man? It’s just a few blocks. We could have walked.”

“But then you might have walked away. You’ll notice I told our driver to take the long way so that I could talk to you. The woman we’re going to meet thought you’d be more comfortable discussing business there.”

“What woman?”

“Julia Sola.”

“Never heard of her.”

“Marshal Julie, you used to call her. One of Marshal Wells’s agents. You liked her. You said she was the only one in the Golden Vigil who treated you like a human being.”

I sit up.

“Are you fucking kidding me? Just cause she didn’t icepick me doesn’t mean I want to work with her. Or any other Homeland Security. Stop the car. I’m getting out.”

“Keep going,” Vidocq says to the driver. He turns back to me.

“Stop behaving like a child. The Vigil is dead and Homeland Security isn’t here anymore. You know that. Julia has opened her own private investigation business. Trust me. Do you think I’m so stupid that I would work for someone without investigating them?”

“With who? Your little thief pals?”

“Who better to know who works for law enforcement and who is a free agent?”

I’m not sure what to think. Vidocq has a nose for cops. He knows how they think, how they work. A hundred years ago he taught the French police forensic analysis techniques he’d picked up from his science and alchemical books, and transformed them from a bunch of medieval thumb breakers into actual cops that could do real criminal investigations.

The cabbie has the radio on. Patti Smith is singing “Ask the Angels.”

Pounding devotion, armegeddon, and rock and roll. A song to die to.

“This situation is total bullshit.”

Candy looks at me, presses the button, and her robot glasses are singing over the radio. I’m back in Hell.

WHEN WE GET to the Bamboo House of Dolls, Vidocq comes around to my side of the car and opens the door fast like he thinks I’m going to bolt. Hands the driver a twenty and doesn’t wait for change. The three of us go inside, where it’s dark and cool. Carlos is behind the bar setting up glasses for the night’s business. He nods at me when we walk in. It’s weird seeing the bar at this time of day with no music playing. The tiki dolls and coconuts look as bleary as I feel.

Carlos says, “Funny seeing you awake. I thought you’d melt like the Wicked Witch if someone tried to wake you up before dark.”

“You, too. Are you part of this conspiracy, too?”

“I’m just the hired help. Ask the pretty lady in the bathroom what’s going on. She booked the place at this unholy hour. Is it your birthday or something? You should have told me.”

“No. This is just me being shanghaied, is what it is. If that’s coffee I smell, I don’t want any. I’m not staying long.”

Julia comes out of the back. Her dark hair is longer than I remember and she’s wearing it up. She has on a sensible black skirt with a power-color bloodred blouse. She looks like a sexy librarian, but moves like someone who could casually dislocate your knee or crack some ribs with a tactical baton.

She stops when she sees me. Smiles a little and comes over to the bar.

The last time I saw U.S. marshal Julia Sola was here in the bar. She told me how Wells had taken the fall for the Drifters’ tearing the city apart. Homeland Security had shut down its L.A. branch, disbanding the Golden Vigil and recalling Wells to Washington. She told me she was quitting the marshals’ service to open her own investigation company. Just the general awkward bar chatter between two people who barely knew each other, but had seen a lot of the same craziness and slaughter over the last few days.

“Hello, Stark.”

“Marshal.”

“I wasn’t sure you’d come. I had a bet with myself that you wouldn’t.”

“Looks like you lost.”

“I guess I owe myself five dollars.”

She holds out a hand to shake. I give her a quick polite one to make Vidocq happy. He wants me to be a gentleman. I want him to be quiet about it.

“It’s not ‘Marshal’ anymore. It’s just ‘Julia.’”

“Well, Julia, truth is I wouldn’t have come if I’d known who we were seeing.”

That night, while Julia and I were talking, her voice had changed. Dropped an octave and turned snotty. It was Mason’s voice coming out of her mouth. He couldn’t get himself out of Hell, but he’d conjured up a way to turn people into meat puppets for a few seconds. Mason hopped in and out of maybe a half-dozen different bodies, making threats and generally being the first-class asshole he always is. When he was gone, Julia didn’t seem to remember a thing. Seem being the important part.

Carlos sets a cup of black coffee on the bar. She says, “Thank you,” and picks it up. “You don’t even want to know why I got you here?”

“Not even a little.”

She smiles and I smile back, looking for Mason’s shadow behind her eyes. But I can’t find him. It’s just her in there and I can’t pick up anything that feels like deception. Julia looks at me like she’s waiting for me to say something else. Maybe she’s just sizing me up. I let the silence hang to see if the tension makes Mason reveal himself.

She sets down the coffee.

“Eugène must have told you that we’ve worked together a few times.”

“He mentioned it.”

“I know you feel a certain reluctance to talk to someone involved with DHS or the Vigil.”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

Carlos says, “Wait a minute. She’s with those people who got you beat up and fucked over? Lady, if I’d known that, you wouldn’t have set foot in my place.”

She looks at Carlos and then at me.

“I know I could tell you that I’m not with them from now until the end of time and you wouldn’t believe me. But for what it’s worth, I’m not and I won’t ever be again.”

“Is that supposed to impress me?”

“I thought maybe Eugène vouching for me would mean something, but you never let facts get in the way of your judgment, do you?”

“Mrs. Robinson, are you trying to seduce me?”

Vidocq bumps me with his shoulder from behind.

“Listen to what she has to say.”

Candy comes up beside me. I don’t have to look. I can smell her slightly inhuman scent. I once killed the pimp who ran a Hellion brothel. He lit the place with burning amber and it smelled like burning pine and smoke. Candy kind of smells like that.

“So tell me why you wanted me here.”

“I have a job I think you’d be uniquely suited for.”

“What kind of job?”

“It might be dangerous.”

“I figured that when you wanted me and not Vidocq or one of your marshal buddies. What you want is someone disposable. Someone off the grid who won’t be missed when whatever this is goes balls-up.”

“You’re way off. I want you because I think you’re the only person in L.A. with the skill set needed to handle this particular situation.”

“When someone says ‘skill set’ I get nervous. Just tell me what this is.”

“It’s a demonic possession. An exorcism went wrong and a boy is missing.”

I get up to leave.

“Thanks for getting me here for nothing. I’m gone.”

Candy puts a hand on my shoulder.

“You, too?” I say.

“Just let her finish.”

I look at Sola.

“I don’t do exorcisms or bounty-hunt demons. The Vigil got me mixed up in a demon skip trace and it ended with me and Brigitte gnawed on by a roomful of Drifters.”

She nods.

“I know. But that was Wells and this is me. There are no tricks here. No hidden agendas. Just a kid who needs your help.”

“I don’t think so. I think you’re the one who needs help. You sent the kid a demon jacker, but he blew it and the kid ended up worse than before. Now you want someone to clean up your mess.”

She picks up her coffee, takes a sip, and sets it back down. She doesn’t look at me when she starts talking.

“You’re right. Okay? There. I said it. I need you to fix up my screw-up.”

The muscles in her shoulders and the back of her neck are tight. Her breathing has gone a little shallow and rapid. Her heartbeat’s up. If I trusted her, I’d swear she’s telling the truth.

Sola shakes her head.

“I don’t know what happened and neither does Father Traven. Have you heard of him? The Vigil had him on retainer for freelance exorcisms. He’s the real deal. A genuine old-school demon ass-kicker. Only this time the demon kicked back harder.”

“Why come to me? Why not get another priest? Or a houngan or one of those old nyu wu witches in Chinatown? They love this kind of thing.”

“I tried to get another priest, but when word got out that I was working with Father Traven, none of them would talk to me.”

“Now you’ve finally said something interesting. What’s wrong with your snake handler?”

“He was excommunicated.”

I turn to Vidocq.

“Did you know about this? You were a nice Catholic boy. This is big-time stuff. Is there anything worse than an excommunicated priest?”

“Yes. One who’s not excommunicated.”

I get out a Malediction and light it. I look at Carlos. State law says I’m not supposed to smoke in here, but he gives me a don’t-sweat-it shake of his head.

“What did Traven do? Skim from the collection plate? Oil-wrestle altar boys?”

Julia shakes her head.

“Nothing like that. Father Traven is a paleolinguist. He specializes in translating ancient religious texts and deciphering dead languages.”

“Let me guess. Instead of collecting stamps for a hobby, he translated a book the Church didn’t approve of and got nailed for it.”

“Something like that. It was one book in particular that got him into trouble, but he won’t talk about it. However, none of that has anything to do with the fact he’s an experienced and extremely successful exorcist.”

“So what went wrong with the kid?”

She sits down on one of the bar stools. Shakes her head and drops her hands to the bar.

“Your guess is as good as mine. The exorcism seemed to be going well, and Hunter—Hunter Sentenza, the possessed boy—was doing well. His color was coming back. The voices had stopped. There wasn’t a trace of fire.”

“Fire?”

“We didn’t actually see it, but there was a symbol burned into the ceiling over his bed. There weren’t any matches or lighters in his room. We think it was done by the demon possessing the boy. His hands and face were blistered.”

“What’s the symbol look like?”

“Old. I didn’t recognize it. Father Traven can tell you more about it.”

“What happened next?”

“It felt like we were reaching the end. Traven was sure that he had the demon under control and almost had it out. Before that, Hunter had been speaking in tongues. But then he seemed all right. He was calm and breathing normally. All of a sudden he grabbed Father Traven and tossed him across the room. Hunter levitated a few feet over the bed and shouted, ‘I won’t be locked in.’ After that, things got weird.”

“After that?”

“Hunter fell back onto the bed and didn’t move. I didn’t know if he was passed out or dead. As I helped Father Traven to his feet, the kid started singing.”

“‘Puff the Magic Dragon’?”

She shakes her head, a knowing little smile curling the edges of her lips.

“It was an old Chordettes song. It went, ‘Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream, make him the cutest that I’ve ever seen.’”

I can’t help but laugh.

“That’s what this is. You think the demon knows me.”

“Any idea who it might be?”

“I haven’t had much experience with them.” I try to think. Run over all my kills. There are so many. They run together like a dark stinking river.

“I might have killed a demon every now and then, but it’s not like they have distinct personalities. They’re like bugs. Who remembers stepping on a bug?”

“Maybe the song was a fluke, but I doubt it. The question is, what are you going to do about it?”

I look her in the eye, take a drag on the Malediction, and blow it out.

“I’m going to Max Overdrive and find an Andrews Sisters musical. Then I’m going to the hotel, put it on, and drink steadily for the rest of the day.”

I stand up to leave, but Vidocq grabs my arm. He might look old, but he’s been using his muscles for over a century. His grip is like a claw lifter at a wrecking yard.

“Give me the folder,” he tells Julia.

Sola pulls a beige manila envelope from a shoulder bag she’d left on the bar.

Vidocq pushes me over to the bar and pulls something out of the folder. It’s a picture of a teenage boy in a school robe. Maybe a high school graduation shot. He’s smiling at the camera. Straight white teeth and messy brown hair under the graduation cap. He looks like the kind of kid who’d be captain of the track team. I hate him. Healthy, happy, popular jock. My natural enemy in school. On the other hand, he’s not someone I’d pick to square-dance with demons.

Vidocq says, “This is the boy we’ve been discussing. His name is Hunter. He’s nineteen. The same age you were when you were dragged to Hell. Tell me, Jimmy, did that experience improve your life? I don’t think so. Are you going to walk away and let what happened to you happen to this boy?”

There’s acid in the back of my throat. A whirlpool of anger and fear in my head as the nineteen-year-old kid I keep buried under the floorboards in my head, way deeper in the dark than the angel, struggles up to where I can’t help but look at him. Total Nam flashback time and I’m feeling things I didn’t know I could still feel. The dry, brittle arms gliding out from under the floor in Mason’s house, wrapping around me and dragging me Downtown. Sensations of falling. Crashing onto a blood- and shit-stained backstreet in Pandemonium. Trying to clear my head and focus as a thousand new smells, sounds, and the perpetually twilight sky hit me. Then the slow realization of where I was and the gleeful looks on the Hellions’ faces.

I toss the photo back onto the bar.

Lying there in that Hellion street, I had a strange sensation, like some primal and essential thing inside me had cracked and everything I ever was or ever might have been—my name, my hopes, Alice, my whole ridiculous life—was turning black and falling apart like rotten fruit. When it was done there was nothing left inside me but the numb hopelessness of a corpse. Not much to build a new life on but it was all I had when I realized the Hellions weren’t going to murder me right away. Maybe that’s why killing is so easy for me and why I’ve been hiding with a dead man in one room over a store since I crawled back here. There’s not enough of me left to do anything else.

I drop the rest of my cigarette into Sola’s coffee cup.

“I don’t like being manipulated. You fucked this thing up. You fix it.”

I get up and walk out.

I CROSS TO the other side of the street, where it’s darker and I can keep the sun out of my eyes. Candy just about catches up with me halfway down the block.

“Wait up, will you,” she says.

I keep walking.

She catches up and walks beside me.

“I sent Vidocq to the clinic and told him to take Allegra to breakfast. Want to have breakfast with me?”

“This is why Vidocq bought you, isn’t it. I’m the asshole who walks out and you’re the angel who’s supposed to bring me back in.”

“Of course. Is it working?”

“Not that I’ve noticed.”

She gets in front of me at the corner.

“Come on. Just have breakfast with me. We don’t have to talk about any of this.”

“No thanks.”

“Why do you have to make everything so hard? Let’s do something. Just us. We kissed that night at Avila and the timing has been so fucked between us trying to get to know each other ever since. But we’re here now and I don’t have to save Doc and you don’t have to save the world. Can we just try to be like normal people for an hour?”

“I thought not being normal people was why we got along. Monster solidarity.”

She puts a hand on my chest.

“Then we can pretend. A couple of wolves eating blueberry waffles among the sheep.”

“Keep your waffles. I need grease to kill this hangover. Lots of bacon or ham. Maybe a chicken-fried steak.”

“Anything you want.”

I take a step back from her.

“Let’s get one thing straight. You never play games like this or lie to me again. About anything.”

She nods.

“I promise.”

“Okay.”

She loops her arm in mine and pulls me down the street.

“Roscoe’s on Gower, then. They have fried chicken and waffles.”

Candy is a little shorter than me. I look down at her smiling in those stupid sunglasses. Sometimes just seeing a woman smile is like a knife in the heart. It hurts and it rattles your whole system, but against all your instincts you swallow the pain and keep looking. After a while you realize it doesn’t hurt as much as you thought it would.

“Okay. Roscoe’s.”

WE SIT IN a booth in the back of Roscoe’s, me with my back to the wall. It’s an old family habit after Wild Bill caught one in the spine back in Deadwood. Neither of us had to look at the menu to order. Roscoe’s specializes in fried chicken and waffles in a heroin-addictive gravy. You eat there because the food is great, and if you live in L.A. and aren’t going to flat-line on a speed binge, you might as well check out with arteries the color and density of concrete.

I’ve been trying to ignore my arms all morning, but I can’t stand it anymore. I heal fast, but it’s just a fast-forward version of how everyone heals and that means almost-healed skin itches like hell. I lean back against the wall, scratch one arm and then the other. It feels great. I want to dig underneath the red skin and new scars and hack away at the nerves with my fingernails so they’ll shut up.

Candy says, “Have you been sleeping in pet-shop windows? You look like you have fleas.”

“A Gluttire demon made me his chew toy last night.”

“You have all the fun. I’ve never even seen one of those.”

“Unless you see it through binoculars from an air-conditioned bunker, you don’t want to. The bastard burned the hell out of my arms.”

“Let me see.”

I shrug off my coat and push my burned sleeves out of the way. (I really need to change clothes soon. It looks like I stole my clothes from a hobo arsonist.) I hope there aren’t any nice families looking over here right now. They might have to bag up their chicken and finish it at home.

Candy leans across the table and pokes my raw red left arm.

“Hey. That hurts.”

“You big baby. It doesn’t look so bad.”

“I’ll send the next Gluttire to your place to give you a massage and a skin peel.”

Our drinks arrive. My coffee and Candy’s Coke. I haven’t eaten with her before, but I hear that Jades have a real sweet tooth.

In between sips of soda she says, “After breakfast we should see Allegra. She’ll have something to fix you up.”

“That’s not a bad idea. Even if it’s only something to stop this damned itching.”

Candy takes the straw from her drink and wraps it around her finger.

“Let’s start the job interview. Mr. Stark, what’s your favorite color? Your favorite movie? Your favorite song?”

“Are you fucking serious?”

“It’s called speed dating. You have five minutes to see if you like someone, then a permed-bitch control freak rings a bell and you have to move on to someone else.”

“You’re serious. You’ve done this?”

She makes a face and shakes her head.

“Hell no. But I want to see you squirm. And I have lots worse questions than those. If you were a tree, what kind would you be?”

Someone remind me why I came back to earth.

“Christ. Okay. Ask me the questions again.”

She gives me a wicked smile.

“Favorite color, movie, and song.”

I glance at the kitchen, willing our food to arrive so I can stuff my mouth and not talk.

“Hellion gray, Herbie versus Godzilla, and ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’”

“Okay. Now me.”

“If this is how speed dating works, I think I’ll stay home with Kasabian.”

“Go on.”

“Okay. Favorite car, movie, and way to use a knife.”

Our food arrives while she’s answering. Thanks to whatever monsters are watching over me. This will be over in a minute.

“Shelby Mustang and Evil Dead II. I’ve never used a knife except to cut bagels.”

“Wrong. The correct answer is a ’71 Impala Super Sport. Once Upon a Time in the West. And from behind, your right arm around the throat and an upward thrust with your left so the blade slips between the ribs and into the heart.”

The waiter is laying out the plates when I answer. He freezes for a second then puts down our cutlery and glasses of water. He turns and walks away slowly, like from a rabid dog, trying not to draw its attention or piss it off. What a pro. I’m leaving him a massive tip.

“How are the waffles?”

“Perfect. How about your chicken?”

“Smoothing over this hangover like a road grader.”

We don’t talk for a while. Just eat our food like a couple of civilians who haven’t killed enough people to populate a small city. It’s been six months since that night at Avila when we were both in monster mode, ripping our way through some of L.A.’s most elite millionaires and politicos, all of them Mason’s accomplices as he tried to open the gates of Hell. Candy and I did kiss each other that night. A hard, long kiss while we were covered in other people’s blood, a couple of monsters who recognized each other and weren’t afraid of what they saw. And then nothing. Candy went back on the wagon, taking Doc Kinski’s potion to keep from turning back into a killing machine. Then the Drifters invaded. And someone was looking to kill Doc, so she went on the road with him. I don’t know if there’s anything between us really, but it sure as hell feels like someone sprinkled mayhem and saltpeter all over creation to make sure we never find out.

I feel a little guilt bubbling up in the back of my mind. It’s the same feeling I always get when I look at a woman who isn’t Alice. But like Candy said, we’re here now. Let’s just see what happens. I can’t live in the shadow of Alice’s absence every moment of my life. I don’t push her away, but let her drift back where she was. Not forgotten, but not making me wish I was dead. I don’t let the picture of the Sentenza kid get to me either. Julia found one exorcist, so she can find another. Hell, I could point her to some Sub Rosa demon hunters.

My phone buzzes. A text comes through.

The girl is delicious. You’re right to be with her.

Leave the case alone. Forget you heard about it.

Stay with the pretty girl.

I push the plates away and get to my feet, storming through the restaurant looking for anyone holding a phone. A guy in blond dreads and a sleeveless T-shirt is looking at his. I’m across the room in two long steps and snatch it from his hand. A woman’s voice comes out of the speaker. He’s listening to his voice mail. I slam the phone on the table and stomp out of the emergency exit, setting off the alarm. There’s no one on the street. A dusty station wagon and a VW Bug pass each other in the road. Only one passenger in each and neither of them has a phone.

I push back into Roscoe’s through the front door. Everyone in the place is looking at me like they’re expecting the crazy man in the coat to set off the bomb he’s obviously hiding.

I go to the table and show Candy the message.

“Tell me this isn’t you or Vidocq. Or something one of you set up with Julia.”

She shakes her head.

“Vidocq wouldn’t and I didn’t,” she says. I look at her and let the angel out for a second so he can look, too. He sees what I see. She’s telling the truth.

I take a couple of the hundreds I grabbed from my stash of vampire money last night. Drop the money on the table and nod for Candy to follow me out. We double-time it back to Hollywood Boulevard to get lost in the tourist crowd before one of the solid citizens back at the restaurant dials 911.

I say, “Do me a favor.”

“What?”

“I’m a little agitated and don’t want to have to explain anything. Do me a favor and call Vidocq. Tell him I want in on the case. I don’t like threats and I hate crank calls.”

Candy puts her robot glasses on.

“At least whoever it was thinks I’m pretty.”

“Even assholes can have good taste.”

THERE’S A PARKING lot less than a block from the Beat Hotel. Vidocq hates riding in stolen cars, so I look for one that will make him the least unhappy and settle on a brown Volvo 240, one of the most boring cars in the world. No one, especially a cop, will look twice at a Volvo, especially one the color of a Swedish turd.

I leave Candy in the idling car, go into the room at the hotel, and ditch my burned shirt for a clean one. I always have the knife and na’at with me, but on the way out I grab the Smith & Wesson .460. You don’t have to shoot an elephant with a gun this big and powerful. You just hit it on the knee with the butt and the elephant will give you all of its lunch money. When he sees me slip the gun into my coat pocket, Kasabian shakes his head, which, in his case, is his whole body.

“I knew they’d drag you in. You can’t stay away from trouble.”

“Can I help it if trouble has me on speed dial?”

“Have fun, sucker.”

“Vaya con Dios, Alfredo Garcia.”

Sola already gave Vidocq the Sentenza family’s address, so I pick him up and we head north on the Hollywood Freeway.

STUDIO CITY IS the kind of place where the poor have to settle for two-million-dollar “luxury properties” instead of mansions. The only difference between them and the genuinely rich in the hills is that they have to get by with one pool and they can’t park a 747 in their two-story living room, though they can probably squeeze in a decent-size blimp. There are fake villas with fake Roman mosaics out front and fake castles with wrought-iron gates like Henry VIII is going to stop by with guacamole for the keg party.

Lucky for everyone, the address Julia gave us belongs to a place on Coldwater Canyon Avenue with nothing but a long snaking driveway. No monarchist gates, armed guards, or a giant hermetically sealed Jetsons dome.

At the end of the drive, a gold Lexus is parked next to a clean but well-used Ford pickup. There are streaks of mud and dried cement around the truck’s wheel wells. We get out and follow a stone path to the front door. I ring the bell.

A woman opens the door a second later. She’s obviously been waiting for us. She’s about fifty and pretty, with short dark hair and a high-quality chin tuck.

“Oh,” she says, all the hope and brightness disappearing from her eyes.

It’s Hunter’s mom. I can see the resemblance from one of the photos back at the bar. Mom takes one look at my scarred face and I can practically see the words home invasion with multiple fatalities spinning around her brain like the dragon in a Chinese New Year’s parade.

I say, “Mrs. Sentenza. Julia Sola sent us.”

She relaxes. The storm in her brain clears and her blood pressure drops to below aneurysm levels. Her little freak-out probably shaved a good five years off her life, but they’re the shitty ones at the end, so no big deal.

“Oh. You must be Mr. Stark and Mr. Vidocq. Julia said you’d be dropping by.” She stops, staring at Candy in her robot sunglasses.

I say, “This is my assistant, Candy.”

Mrs. Sentenza gives Candy a thin smile.

“Of course she is. Please come in.”

The inside of the house is bright, with light coming through a million windows and reflecting off the polished tile floor. Obsessive California chic. Like they own the sky and are goddamn well going to use every inch of it. Hunter’s father is waiting for us by the stairs leading to the upper floor of a two-story living room. (I told you.)

“This is Hunter’s father, Kerry.”

“Nice to meet you all. Call me K.W.”

Handshakes all around. His grip is firm and serious. He has rough laborer’s hands, like he actually works for a living.

“Are you three exorcists, too?” he asks.

“No. Father Traven holds the prayer beads. We’re more like spiritual bouncers.”

“Well, if you can fix this, we’re willing to try.”

There aren’t any hoodoo vibes coming off these people. Nothing shifty and hidden. They come across like straight-arrow civilians who wouldn’t know a Hand of Glory from an oven mitt. They’re not responsible for calling a demon into the house. Unless they’re a lot more powerful than they look and can throw up a glamour powerful enough to even fool the angel in my head. Their eyes are dilating and their hearts are racing. I smell Valium and alcohol in Mom’s sweat. Most of what I’m getting off them is heavyweight fear for their kid and confusion and a meek mistrust of us three. No surprise there. They don’t run into people like us on the golf course at the country club.

Vidocq looks around the place. Like me, he’s looking for any traces of magic, in his case mystical objects.

“You have a very lovely home,” says Candy. “It looks like a happy place.”

“It was,” says Mom.

I say, “Can we see the room?”

“It’s Hunter’s room. His name is Hunter.”

“Hunter. Got it. Can we see Hunter’s room?”

Mom isn’t sure about Candy and Vidocq, but I can tell she hates me already. I’m not sure about Dad. He looks like the kind of guy who didn’t come from money, and now that he has it, he’s always a little on edge waiting for someone to try to take it away. That means he’ll have a handgun or two in the house.

K.W. leads us to Hunter’s room while Mom trails behind.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but did Hunter take anything like antidepressants? Or was he ever locked up for, you know, behavior problems?”

“You mean, was our son crazy?” asks Mom.

“Was he?”

“No. He was a normal boy. He ran track.”

So that’s what normal is. I should write that down.

“Did he take any recreational drugs?”

Mom’s attitude has gone from hate to stabby.

“He’d never touch those. He’s an athlete. Besides, when Hunter was a boy he saw Tommy, his older brother, destroy himself with drugs. He hallucinated. He was scared all the time and couldn’t sleep for weeks on end. And it kept getting worse. Then Tommy died. Hunter saw all of it.”

“He didn’t die. He hanged himself,” says Dad. His face is set and hard, but it’s clear that admitting this hurt.

“Don’t say it like that,” says Mom. The tears come fast, an automatic reaction when her other son’s death comes up.

These people are unbelievably easy to read. They don’t have any magic. There aren’t any spells that will hide it this thoroughly.

K.W. puts an arm around his wife’s shoulders.

“Jen, why don’t you put on some fresh coffee for our guests?”

Mom nods and heads down the hall.

When she’s gone K.W. turns to us.

“Sorry. This thing has us both a little crazy, but it’s hit her worse. How are you supposed to live after one son’s suicide and your other son’s … well, whatever the hell this is. What’s normal again after that?” he says. He swallows hard. “I still don’t know what we did to ruin our boys.”

“You didn’t ruin anyone,” says Candy. “Things just happen sometimes. It’s easier to fall off the edge of the world than you might think. Even for nice people.”

K.W. looks at her. His eyes are wet, but he’s fighting hard not to let it go any further. I hate being reminded that rich people are still people.

He pushes open the door to Hunter’s room.

“This is it,” he says. “Look around at anything you want. We don’t have any secrets.”

Mom comes back.

“I put coffee on.”

She looks past us into the ruined room.

She says, “Julia told us not to touch anything, so we haven’t.”

I scan the wreckage inside.

“You haven’t done anything? Like a spilled glass of water or class photo?”

“No.”

“Good. Never clean up after monsters.”

“My son isn’t a monster.”

“I’m not talking about your son.”

Vidocq goes into Hunter’s room.

“What my associate is saying is that when powerful supernatural forces are at work, without proper preparation any encounter can be extremely dangerous. My advice would be to not enter the room at all and to keep it locked unless Julia or one of her associates is here.”

Jen nods and stares, a little surprised at Vidocq’s accent. She relaxes a little. Even in a pile of splintered furniture Vidocq is a charmer.

Candy and I go inside while Mom and Dad watch from the hall.

I kneel down, take some packets of salt I lifted from Roscoe’s, and sprinkle a white line across the entrance. Vidocq sticks iron milagros down one side of the door frame with some green hardware-store putty.

“I have to close the door for a second,” I tell the Sentenzas.

I get out the black blade and carve a protective rune into the wood on the inside of the door frame.

Vidocq reaches for my hand like he wants to stop me, but he’s too slow.

“Why are you destroying their house further? Why not put an ash twig over the door?”

“Why don’t we send the demon roses while we’re at it? I hate hippie hoodoo.”

Vidocq rummages in his coat and finds ash powder in one of his vials. He reaches up and sets it on the frame over the door.

“Okay,” I say to K.W. and Jen when I open the door. “Nothing should get out of here.”

“Thank you,” Jen says.

The room is a wreck. It looks like it was worked over by Linda Blair on a crack binge. One of the windows is boarded up. There are holes in the wall where it looks like someone punched through. The place hums with residual dark hoodoo, like there are wasps in the walls. I don’t think the Sentenzas can hear it, but Candy, Vidocq, and I can. Something bad was stomping around in here, but I have no idea what. Vidocq is blowing some kind of powder into the air and watches it settle on the floor and furniture. He looks at me and shrugs. Candy is over by Hunter’s closet. I look at her and she shakes her head.

Vidocq prowls the room, trying different powders and potions, trying to identify the magic residue. Candy paws through Hunter’s closet and dresser.

I ask, “How did the whole thing start?”

“I guess it started with the migraines,” says K.W. “His head would hurt and he’d get real sensitive to light. He said there were ants eating their way into his brain. I get migraines sometimes, too, so I’d give him some of my Imitrex and put him in a dark room. Sometimes it helped, but other times it made things worse. I’d hear him talking and he said it was to the voices in his head. After a week of that, things got really bad.”

Jen picks up the story.

“Hunter stopped sleeping. He said he had horrible dreams. Things were chasing him. Not to hurt him, just to have him. He drank coffee and energy drinks to stay awake, but he’d fall asleep anyway. There would be marks on the walls where he clawed them. His hands would be bleeding. It was like Thomas all over again.”

Hunter’s bed is just a bare mattress. The scene of the exorcism. All four corners are stained with blood. The kid cut himself on the restraints during the ritual. The rest of the mattress is stained with every fluid a human body can produce. There are deep claw marks by the head of the bed. Even some bite marks.

“Did he ever take anything more powerful to stay awake? Speed? Amphetamines, I mean.”

K.W. says, “I know what speed is. And no, not that I’m aware of.”

Candy stands at the foot of the bed looking. It’s the sigil Julia told us about, which was burned into the ceiling. I can’t place it, but I’m sure I’ve seen it before. I snap a picture with my phone.

Neither parent has moved from the door. Jen has one hand over her mouth as she watches us ransack her younger son’s room.

“What you’ve told me so far could be anything from a bad batch of acid to a brain tumor. When did you start thinking it was supernatural?”

Jen says, “There was the time I found him floating in midair.”

Vidocq stops pouring his potions.

“Julia didn’t mention that,” he says.

Jen turns away so she doesn’t have to look at us.

“Tell us what you saw,” says Candy. She has a good instinct for this kind of work, for knowing when it’s best for a woman to ask another woman a painful question.

“It was early in the morning. It was still dark out. I couldn’t sleep, so I came by Hunter’s room to check on him and I saw that.”

She nods at the scorched symbol on the ceiling.

“You saw him making it?”

She nods.

“He was floating there over his bed, smiling like he was the happiest boy in the world. He was digging that symbol into the ceiling with his fingers. There was blood all over his arms. He looked at me and then back at the ceiling. Then his whole body convulsed like he was going to throw up. He opened his mouth and out came a jet of flame. It spread all across the ceiling. I thought it was going to burn the house down. When he stopped, all that was burned was the symbol. After that he fell onto the bed and lay there like he was asleep. That morning we went looking for someone who could help.”

K.W. squeezes her shoulder.

“It smells like coffee is ready. Would you go and bring us some?”

She nods and disappears down the hall, her arms wrapped around herself.

When she’s out of earshot K.W. says, “Hunter did take drugs. Jen doesn’t know about it. It was Hunter’s and my secret. We made a deal. I’d pay for rehab and we’d never let his mother know. After Thomas, it would have killed her.”

“What was he on?”

“Some new thing. Akira, he called it.”

“I haven’t heard of it.”

“I have,” says Candy. “It’s a hallucinogen. Real popular with the Sub Rosa cool kids.”

Vidocq nods.

“I’ve heard of it, too. It’s supposed to enhance a user’s psychic ability. However, Akira seems to work on anyone, so it’s moving out into the civilian world.”

Candy says, “A bunch of kids take it together. The high comes from being able to touch other users’ minds.”

Brilliant. Teenyboppers use condoms to fuck safe and then they bore psychic holes in their heads so that anyone or anything can get inside.

“Were you here during the exorcism?” I ask K.W.

“Jen and I were in the living room. We could hear it, but we didn’t see anything until Father Traven got hurt. He was on the floor. Hunter was already gone.”

He nods to the boarded-up window.

“We haven’t seen him since.”

While I talk to Dad, Vidocq examines the smoking patches some of his potions have left on the floor. They spread out in spider legs, each one a different color. I have no idea what it’s telling him, but it looks impressive.

I give Candy the last packet of salt and she lays down a line beneath the window.

K.W. gives us a half smile and shakes his head.

“Seeing you three reminds me of Tommy’s friends. They were into magic. Claimed to know about these kinds of things. Some of them called themselves Sub Rosas. It just seemed silly at the time. You know, kids dabbling in old stuff no one understands to impress their friends and bug their parents.”

His smile gets broader, like he’s found a memory that doesn’t hurt.

“You’re not quite like them, though,” he says. “You look like you might have a clue.”

“Thanks,” I say.

I wish we had a fucking clue right now. I go to where K.W. is standing. He’s still in the hall. Hasn’t so much as stuck a toe into Hunter’s room.

“Let me make sure I have this straight. Thomas, your older son, was heavy into magic with his fashion-victim friends. Did Hunter want to play Merlin, too? Even something small and silly like a Ouija board.”

K.W. shakes his head.

“Not after he saw what it did to Tommy. He was just a kid at the time, but he remembers. Hunter’s into sports, Xbox, and girls.”

“You sure? You didn’t know he was taking drugs.”

He waves a hand, palm up. A dismissal.

“That’s different. You can hide drugs. When Tommy was into that stuff, there were magical books, crystals, twigs, and potions all over his damn room. When Jen asked him to clean up, he said his friends were the same way. There’s a picture of him and a bunch of the kids. Would that help you?”

“You never know.”

He still won’t come into the room.

“You, lady,” he says to Candy. “By your left foot, there’s a photo in a frame. Would you bring it to me?”

She gets it and hands it to K.W.

He looks at the photo for a minute, not sure he wants to show it to us, an intimate thing he doesn’t want to share. Finally, he hands it to me.

“See what I’m talking about?”

There’s a group of six kids. Harry Potter by way of Road Warrior. My neck hurts and my stomach is in knots. I hand him back the shot. Take out my phone and pretend to look at the time.

“Mr. Sentenza, before we go any further, I think we should talk to Father Traven. Thanks for letting us have a look around.”

“That’s it? That’s all you’re going to do?”

“We’ll know how to proceed after consulting with the father. Don’t want to piss off any spirits by coming at them the wrong way.”

“That makes sense, I guess. So, you’ll call when you know more?”

“Exactly. Thanks.” I turn to the others. “Let’s go.”

Vidocq and Candy look at each other, but follow me out. Vidocq shakes K.W.’s hand.

“Thank you for your hospitality. Please say good-bye to your wife for us.”

I’m heading for the door, leaving the two of them to catch up with me.

“You’ll call back soon, right? Hunter is still out there somewhere.”

I turn and give him what I hope is a reassuring smile.

“We’ll call right after we confer with the father.”

I head back to the Volvo and fire it up. I already have it in gear when the others get in.

“What’s wrong with you?” asks Candy. “Why are we running out on that family?”

I don’t answer until we’re down the driveway enough that I can’t see the house anymore.

“I need to get clear of that place. I’ve got to think.”

“What’s wrong?”

Vidocq is in the front seat. He’s looking at me hard.

“Thomas, the older kid in that photo? Hunter’s big brother? He’s TJ.”

“Who’s TJ?” Candy asks.

“He was in my magic Circle with Mason. He was there the night I got dragged Downtown. I never even knew his name was Tommy. I was going to kill him with the others when I came back, only Kasabian told me he’d already killed himself.”

Vidocq nods.

“It seems more likely now that the demon who sang that ‘Mr. Sandman’ song knows you after all.”

“Doesn’t it just? But I can’t think of any demons I’ve pissed off. I kill Hellions and hell beasts.”

“People, too,” says Candy.

“They usually deserve it most.”

Vidocq says, “Perhaps at Avila. Or something you did for the Golden Vigil. Perhaps you killed or injured a possessed person, ruining the demon’s host. That might be enough for it to want revenge.”

“Then why wouldn’t the demon come after me? Or you or Candy or Allegra? Even Kasabian? Someone I give a damn about.”

“Perhaps the father can answer that question. Let’s hope so.”

I cut around cars and thousand-dollar mountain bikes cruising Studio City’s quiet, privileged streets, running the Volvo away from TJ’s Haunted Mansion ride and onto the freeway. The exhaust fumes and clogged lanes are like a welcome-home party. The knots in my stomach are getting worse. I feel cold. I hold the steering wheel tight enough I feel it bend and get close to breaking. The angel in my head moves back into the dark. It recognizes this kind of anger and knows it’s not going to talk me down. If it speaks or touches, it might burn up in the heat.

“This is what I get for going soft. For backing off. I don’t kill anything for a while and the world starts coughing up this shit. Okay. I get the message loud and clear.”

“You need to calm down if we’re going to talk to the father,” Vidocq says.

“I am calm. I don’t know what exactly is going on, but what I do know is that someone or something is daring me to find them and maybe this preacher can tell me what. I’ll do it old-school. No bullets. Just the knife and the na’at, like back in the arena.”

“You scare me when you’re like this, Jimmy.”

“Not me,” says Candy quietly from the back.

“Good, because when I get this thing figured out, I’m going to bring down all kinds of Hell on these assholes and this city.”

I’VE CALMED DOWN a little when we reach Father Traven’s place near the UCLA campus.

Vidocq’s been playing navigator, running us up and down every little side street in the county. He can read a map as well as anyone, but I think he’s been buying time, hoping that if he drags out the drive long enough, I won’t storm into Traven’s place like it’s D-Day. The plan sort of works, but mostly it’s seeing where the father lives that brings down my blood pressure.

Traven has an apartment in an old art deco complex from the thirties and the place really shows its age. It was probably beautiful once, back before reality TV, when lynching and TB were the most popular pastimes. Now the building’s best quality is that it stands as a big Fuck You to all the developers who wake up with a hard-on every morning dreaming of plowing the place under and turning the land into a business park or prefab pile of overpriced condos. If I ever find out who owns the place, I’ll buy them a case of Maledictions.

Father Traven lives on the top floor. In a normal building, that would be luxury central. The penthouse suite. In this one, it’s pretty much a sock drawer with a view. The original architect had the brilliant idea of putting storage and utility areas at both the top and bottom of the building. Maybe elevators didn’t work that well back in the thirties. Maybe he was anal-retentive. Sometime in the long history of the building, someone chopped up those top-floor spaces and tried to convert them into apartments, only they weren’t designed to be a happy place for anything except rats and mops. The ceilings are too low and are at funny angles. The untreated wooden floors are warped. You’d have to call in Paul Bunyan to chain-saw the top of the building off and rebuild it from scratch to make Traven’s bachelor pad into something anyone but a ghost or an excommunicated sky pilot would love.

We take the elevator up to the floor below Traven’s and walk up a set of bare, uncarpeted stairs. Traven’s apartment door is open a few inches when we get there. I don’t like unexpected open doors. I knock and push it open, my other hand under my coat on the .460.

Traven is sitting at a desk scribbling away on yellow paper that looks old enough to have Spanish Inquisition letterhead at the top. He stops writing and lifts his head, speaks without turning around.

“Ah. You must be God’s other rejects. Please, come in.”

Traven gets up from a long desk piled high with books. Really, it’s the kind of fold-up conference table you see in community centers. I don’t know if he’s getting ready for work or a church bake sale.

As we come in, Traven extends his hand. He gives us a faint smile, like he wants to be friendly but hasn’t had any reason to be for a long time and is trying to remember how to make his face work.

“I’m Liam Traven. Good to meet you all. Julia has told me a lot about you.”

He turns to Candy.

“Well, about two of you.”

She takes off her sunglasses and beams at him.

“I’m Candy, Mr. Stark’s bodyguard.”

Traven grins at her. He does it better this time.

“It’s very nice to meet you all.”

He steps out of the way so we can get farther into the place.

The apartment is small but neat and brighter than I expected. Whoever cut up the place installed a couple of big picture windows overlooking UCLA. There are books, scrolls, and folded sheets of vellum, mystical codices, and crumbling reference books everywhere. Even some pop-science and physics textbooks covered in highlighter marks and Post-its. Brick-and-board bookshelves line the walls and there are more books on the floor. Vidocq heads right for them and starts eyeballing the piles.

“I owned many of these years ago. Not here. I had to leave my library when I left France. I haven’t seen some of these texts in a hundred years.”

He kneels and picks up a bound manuscript from the floor. It’s so old and worn it looks like someone sewed dried leaves together and slapped a cover around them. Vidocq opens it carefully, flips through a few pages, and turns to Traven.

“Is this the old Gnostic Pistis Sophia?”

Traven nods and walks over to Vidocq.

“There it is. I’ve been looking for that. Thank you. And yes, it’s the Pistis.”

“I thought there were only four or five of these left in the world?”

Traven gently takes the book and puts it on a high shelf with other moldering titles.

“There’s more than that if you know where to look.”

I say, “Maybe there’s one less now that you’re not punching the clock for the pope. I bet that wasn’t a going-away present.”

Traven glances up at the manuscript and then to me.

“We do rash things at rash moments,” he says. “Later, we sometimes regret them. But not always.”

“God helps those who help themselves,” says Candy.

“Especially the ones who don’t get caught. Don’t worry, Father. We don’t have a problem with rash. The first thing I did when I got back to this world was roll a guy for his clothes and cash. He threw the first punch and I’d recently woken up on a pile of burning garbage, so I figured God would understand if I helped myself to some necessities.”

Father Traven is in his fifties, but his ashen complexion makes him look older. His voice is deep and exhausted, but his eyes are large and curious. His face is lined and deeply creased by years of doing something he didn’t want to do, but did anyway because he thought it needed to be done. It’s a soldier’s face, not a priest’s. There’s something else. He’s definitely not Sub Rosa—I would have known that the moment I touched his hand—but I can feel waves of hoodoo coming off him. Something weird and old. I don’t know what it is, but it’s powerful. I bet he doesn’t even know about it. Also, I think he’s dying. I smell what could be the early stages of cancer.

“The lucky among us might get the same deal as Dysmas. Dysmas was one of the thieves crucified next to Christ. When he asked for forgiveness, Christ said, ‘Today you will be with me in paradise.’”

Candy and Vidocq wander around the room. I’m still standing and so is Traven, protectively, in front of his desk. He likes seeing people, but values his privacy. I know the feeling.

“I know a dying story, too. Ever hear of a guy named Voltaire? Vidocq told me about him. I guess he’s famous. On his deathbed the priest says to him, ‘Do you renounce Satan and his ways?’”

“And Voltaire says, ‘My good man, this is no time for making enemies,’” says Traven. “It was a popular joke in the seminary.”

Framed pictures of old gods and goddesses line the walls. Egyptian. Babylonian. Hindu. Aztec. Some jellyfish-spider things I haven’t seen before. Candy likes those as much as Vidocq likes the books.

“These are the coolest,” she says.

“I’m glad you like them,” says Traven. “Some of those are images of the oldest gods in the world. We don’t even know some of their names.”

The angel in my head has been chattering ever since we got here. He wants to get out of my skull and run around. This place is Disneyland to him. I’m about to slap a gag on him when he points out something that I hadn’t noticed. I scan the walls to make sure he’s right. He is. Among all the books and ancient gods there isn’t a single crucifix. Not even prayer beads. The father lapsed a long time ago or he really holds a grudge.

“Would you like some coffee or hot chocolate? I’m afraid that’s all I have. I don’t get many guests.”

“No thank you,” says Vidocq, still poking at Traven’s bookshelves.

“I’m fine, Father,” says Candy.

He didn’t mention scotch, but I get a faint whiff of it when he talks. Not enough for a normal person to notice. Guess we all need something to take the edge off when we’re booted from the only life we’ve ever known.

“I’m not a priest anymore, so there’s no need to call me ‘Father.’ Liam works just fine.”

“Thank you, Liam,” says Candy.

“I’ll stick with ‘Father,’” I say. “I heard every time you call an excommunicated priest ‘Father,’ an angel gets hemorrhoids.

“What is it you do exactly?” I ask.

He clasps his hands in thought.

“To put it simply, I translate old texts. Some known. Some unknown. Depending on who you ask, I’m a paleographer, a historical linguist, or paleolinguist. Not all of those are nice terms.”

“You read old books.”

“Not ordinary books. Some of these texts haven’t been read in more than a thousand years. They’re written in languages that no longer exist. Sometimes in languages that no one even recognizes. Those are my specialty.”

He looks at me happily. Is that the sin of pride showing?

“How the hell do you work on something like that?”

“I have a gift for languages.”

Traven catches me looking at the book on his desk, pretends to put a pen back into its holder, and closes the book, trying to make the move look casual. There’s a symbol carved into its front cover and rust-red stains like blood splattered across it. Traven takes another book and covers the splattered one.

I sit down in a straight-back wooden chair against the wall. It’s the most uncomfortable thing I ever sat in. Now I know what Jesus felt like. I’m suffering mortification of my ass right now. Traven sits in his desk chair and clasps his big hands together.

He tries not to stare as the three of us invade his inner sanctum. His heartbeat jumps. He’s wondering what he’s gotten himself into. But we’re here now and he doesn’t have the Church or anywhere else to run to anymore. He lets the feeling pass and his heart slows.

“Before, you said, ‘When I got back to this world.’ You really are him, then? The man who went to Hell and came back? The one who could have saved Satan’s life when he came here?”

“God paid your salary. Lucifer paid mine. Call it brand loyalty.”

“You’re a nephilim. I didn’t know there were any of you left.”

“That’s number one on God’s top-forty Abomination list. And as far as I know, I’m the only one there is.”

“That must be very lonely.”

“It’s not like it’s Roy Orbison lonely. More like people didn’t come to my birthday party and now I’m stuck with all this chips and dip.”

Traven looks at Vidocq.

“If he’s the nephilim, you must be the alchemist.”

“C’est moi.”

“Is it true you’re two hundred years old?”

“You make me sound so old. I’m only a bit over one hundred and fifty.”

“I don’t think I’d want to live that long.”

“That means you’re a sane man.”

Traven nods at Candy.

“I haven’t heard about you, young lady.”

She looks at him and smiles brightly.

“I’m a monster. But not as much as I used to be.”

“Ignore her,” I tell him. “She’s just showing off and hardly ever eats people anymore.”

Traven looks at me, not sure if I’m kidding.

“If you’re in the exorcism business, you must know a lot about demons.”

“Qliphoth,” he says.

“What?”

“It’s the proper word for what you call a demon. A demon is a bogeyman, an irrational entity representing fear in the collective unconscious. The Qliphoth are the castoffs of a greater entity. The old gods. They’re dumb and their lack of intelligence makes them pure evil.”

“Okay, Daniel Webster. What happened at the exorcism?”

Traven takes a breath and stares at his hands for a minute.

“You should know that I don’t follow the Church’s standard exorcism rites. For instance, I seldom speak Latin. If Qliphoth really are lost fragments of the Angra Om Ya, the older dark gods, they’re part of creatures millions of years old. Why would Latin have any effect on them?”

“How, then, do you perform your exorcisms?” asks Vidocq.

“My family line is very old. For generations we served communities the Church hadn’t reached or wouldn’t come to. I use what I learned from my father. Something much older than the Church and much more direct. Best of all, God doesn’t have to be involved. I’m a sin eater, from a long line of sin eaters.”

Candy comes over.

“I don’t know what that is, but can I be one, too?”

I give her a look.

“How does it work?”

“It’s a simple ritual. The body of the deceased is laid out naked on a table in the evening, usually around vespers. I place bread and salt on the deceased. I lay my hands on the body. The head. The hands. The feet. I recite the prayers my father taught me, eating the bread and salt.

“With each piece, I take in the body’s sins, cleansing the deceased until the soul is clean. When my father died, I ate his sins. When his father died, he ate his sins, and so on and so on, back centuries. I contain all of the accumulated sins of a hundred towns, hamlets, armies, governments, and churches. Who knows how many? Millions I’m sure.”

I take a pack of Maledictions from my pocket and offer one to Traven.

“Do you smoke, Father?”

“Yes. Another of my sins.”

“Light up and we’ll ride the coal cart together.”

I light two with Mason’s lighter and hand one to the father.

Traven takes a puff, coughs a little. Maledictions can be a little harsh if you’re not used to them. Really, they taste like an oil-well fire in a field of fresh fertilizer. Traven sees the pack in my hand and his eyes widen a fraction of an inch.

“Are those what I think they are?”

“The number one brand in Pandemonium.”

He holds the Malediction out and looks at it.

“It’s harsh, but not as awful as I thought it would be.”

“That’s Hell in a nutshell,” I say. “Tell me about Hunter.”

“It seemed to be going well. You see, a Qliphoth can only possess an imperfect and impure body, one that’s sinned. Of course, that describes all humans except maybe for the saints. When I eat a possessed person’s sins, their body returns to a pure and holy state. With nowhere left to hide, the Qliphoth is ejected like someone spitting out a watermelon seed.”

“Where did it go wrong?”

“I’d laid out the bread and salt and I was saying the prayers. Not in Latin, but in an older language supposedly spoken by the Qliphoth and possibly the Angra Om Ya.”

Traven opens his mouth and what comes out is all humming, gurgling, and spluttering, like he’s drowning and speaking Hellion at the same time.

“I felt the Qliphoth being drawn out as I swallowed Hunter’s sins. It knew what was happening and fought back hard. No doubt you’ve seen the wreckage. Toward the end of the ritual, the Qliphoth tried to drag the boy’s body into the air. I shoved bread and salt into Hunter’s mouth, hoping it would draw out the creature. I prayed and ate the bread. That should have worked. It’s always worked before, but something went wrong. Imagine that I was erecting a castle to push the Qliphoth out and keep it out. Something went wrong and it burst through the walls and back into Hunter’s body. That’s the last thing I remember before Julia helping me to my feet. By then, Hunter was gone out the window.”

“Did you recognize the demon?” I ask.

“No. It’s none I’ve ever encountered before. It wasn’t angry or frightened until it realized that I knew how to force it out. That’s unusual for Qliphoth. They’re incomplete creatures and they know it, so it makes them fearful and vicious. This one was patient and thoughtful.”

Traven walks to the windows and opens them to let the smoke out. I follow him so I can flick my ashes outside over the university.

I say, “I think we’re going to need more information before we try the exorcism again. We’re missing something important.”

“I’ve been going through my books trying to identify the specific creature, but I haven’t had any luck.”

“Perhaps I can help you with your research,” says Vidocq. “I have my own library, if you would like to see it.”

“Thank you. I would.”

“You two can play librarians. I’m going to make some calls and break some people’s toys until one of them starts giving us answers.”

“Cool,” Candy says.

“Father, I know you must use the university library. Have you ever heard anyone talk about a drug called Akira?”

“Of course. It’s popular among some of the students. Artists. New Agers. Those sort of thing.”

“Do you know anything about the drug itself?”

“Not really. All I remember is that it seemed like it was harder to get than other drugs. That there were only a few people who sold it.”

“Thanks.”

I shake Traven’s hand and I let Vidocq and Candy go out ahead of me. I start out, stop, and turn. It’s an old trick.

“One more thing, Father. Julia never told us why you are excommunicated.”

He’s thinking. Not sure he wants to answer.

“I’ll tell you if you promise to talk with me about Hell sometime,” he says.

“Deal.”

Traven goes back to his desk and picks up the book he’d hidden earlier.

“I don’t like other people to see this particular book. It seems wrong for it to be a mere curiosity.”

“I saw you cover it up.”

The spray of red on the front of the book nearly covers an ancient sigil.

“I don’t recognize the symbol.”

“It’s the sign of one of the Angra Om Ya cults,” says Vidocq, looking over my shoulder.

Traven nods.

“You’ll understand why the church was so angry with me. They have an unswerving policy that there is no God but their God. There never was and there never will be. But there are some who believe that there’s more to Creation than what’s in the Bible and that the stories in this book are at least as convincing as those.”

“You translated the Angra Om Ya’s bible. No wonder God doesn’t want you whacking his piñata anymore.”

“Certainly the Church doesn’t.”

“It isn’t all bad, Father. I own a video store. Come around sometime. The damned get a discount.”

He gives us one of his exhausted smiles.

“That’s very kind of you. Since leaving the Church, I’ve come to believe that it’s the little, fleeting pleasures like watching videos that mean the most in this life.”

“Amen to that.”

WHEN WE’RE BACK in the car I call the Sentenzas. K.W. answers.

“K.W., it’s Stark. Did Hunter ever tell you where he got his drugs? Maybe give you a name?”

A slight pause.

“It was a girl. Not a girlfriend exactly, but someone he spent time with. Hang on a minute.”

Over the phone comes the sound of things being moved. Furniture scrapes. K.W. curses. Then he’s back on the phone.

“I knew he’d written it down somewhere. Her name is Carolyn. Carolyn McCoy.”

“Is there an address?”

He reads it to me.

“Okay. Thanks. We’ll be in touch.”

I call up the phone’s map app and punch in the address. It’s off the Golden State Freeway in Sun Valley.

Vidocq is in the backseat. I turn to look at him.

“How did you hear about Akira? Did you ever try it?”

He shakes his head.

“No. What Hunter’s father said at the house was wrong. Akira is nothing new. Like all drugs, it goes in and out of favor. I haven’t heard it mentioned for perhaps two years. It sounds as if it’s coming back. I’m a bit surprised.”

“Why?”

“It’s not an easy thing to fashion. The chemistry must be precise. Even a small mistake and you will not have synthesized Akira, but a very potent neurotoxine. Also, many of the elements are not readily available. Some of the plants and herbs required can only be cultivated in native soil. A mountaintop in China. A rain forest in Brazil. You must find a reliable source of the pure ingredients even to attempt to formulate Akira.”

“How is it you know so much about it?”

“I was once asked to manufacture it. I was offered quite a large sum of money, in fact. I refused, but they asked again. Each time they asked, the amount of money increased, but I still refused.” He turns and looks out the window. “Finally I said yes. Not because I wanted the money, but because I’m a coward, and when they grew insistent, I was afraid to keep saying no.”

“Was it Mater Leeds? I heard that she and her people are big dope suppliers to the Sub Rosa.”

He shakes his head and looks at me.

“No. It was Marshal Wells. The Golden Vigil wanted Akira.”

I frown and look at Vidocq. He nods.

“What would a bunch of Homeland Security Bible-thumpers want with Akira? Were their office parties better than I thought?” I ask.

“I suspect they were interested in the drug’s psychic aspects. They had many staff psychics, but mind reading has never been a precise art and subjects can resist. Now imagine that you had a drug that made a psychic link pleasurable. A drug that made the subject being interrogated feel as merry as New Year’s Eve.”

“Wells would love that. It sounds like something Aelita would love. Or Lucifer.”

They tried something like that on me Downtown. For a while I was fighting in the arena so much that they gave me quarters in the basement. They made a big deal of it. Really it was just another holding pen, but it had four walls and a door and I had it to myself. I was so grateful I kicked and punched my guards harder than ever when they came for me. It was worth taking a beating to keep them from knowing that the filthy room made me happy.

When I was in Hell a funny thing happened. Every time I got beaten, burned, stabbed, or impaled in the arena, it just made me stronger. When I discovered I was a nephilim, it all made sense. But at the time I didn’t know why it was happening. The Hellion fight masters and soldiers wanted to know why I didn’t have anything useful to tell them and they beat me more. Which only made me stronger. Hellions aren’t always clear on cause and effect.

Then they started the mind games. They’d spike my food with a kind of Hellion Ecstasy and send in the damned soul of a pretty murderess to play concubine. We’d work each other for a while, and when I was good and relaxed the questions would start. I didn’t even realize I was being interrogated, it felt so good talking to another human. But I still couldn’t answer their questions because I didn’t have any answers. They tried young women and old ones, boys and oiled-up beefcake. They still didn’t get any answers and by then my body had grown used to the drugs. But I could fake it. When the last devil doll didn’t get any answers, a gaggle of disappointed guards bum-rushed my cell and did the hokeypokey on my head. I’d been in my Folsom Prison mansion a few weeks by then. I’d found the weak bolt in the iron door on my second night. I’d worked it out with my nails and teeth and had been sharpening it on the stone walls ever since.

I shoved it through one guard’s ankle and kept going north, peeling off his calf muscle. That caught the other guards by surprise and they stopped kicking me for a second. Just enough time for me to get hold of one and shove the bolt into his thigh, opening up an artery that painted my walls and the last two guards with glistening black Hellion blood. It looked like we’d struck oil in there. They didn’t try the pleasure principle on me again, which was nice, but a couple of days later I lost my private suite and got moved back to the bunkhouse with the other cattle. Moo, motherfucker.

“So you made it for them.”

Vidocq nods.

“Yes. To give myself just a little credit, I did it rather badly. After several attempts in which I produced mild forms of the drug and pure poison in one case, I convinced the marshal that the ingredients he had acquired were of too poor a quality. I suppose he believed me because I remained alive and unincarcerated.”

“That’s good news, then,” says Candy.

I look at her.

“If it’s so hard to make and there are so few dealers, that means it’s a small operation, right?”

“Or a bunch of lousy ones,” I say.

Vidocq shakes his head.

“No. If people had died from Akira, there would be rumors everywhere. Candy is right. Akira is a specialized business. Possibly as small as one or two labs.”

“See,” Candy says. “I’m a good detective too.”

“Just like Philip Marlowe. He’s the one with the robot glasses in The Maltese Falcon, right?”

Candy sticks her tongue out at me. The sight of it is more distracting than I want it to be.

“Thanks for the talk. I think I’ve got things clearer. Now both of you get out. I’m doing this thing alone.”

Silence. Then Vidocq pipes up.

“Do you think that’s wise? You’re not in the best frame of mind today.”

“That’s why you’re not coming. Call a cab.”

“Stark—” says Candy. I cut her off.

“I mean it. You’re both reasonable and I don’t want reasonable around when I talk to an Akira dealer.”

Neither of them moves. Candy’s up front with me. I reach across her and open the door.

“Go. I’ll talk to you later.”

“I’m calling you in one hour,” she says. “If you don’t like it, tough.”

Candy and Vidocq get out. I leave them on the curb and head for the 405.

I can already picture Carolyn as one of those seductive damned souls that used to hover around my room under the arena. Getting me high. Getting me talking. Treating me like the soft fool I was back then. I’m not soft now and I’m even less forgiving. I don’t know if Carolyn’s blood is red or black, but if things go right, I just might find out.

CAROLYN MCCOY LIVES on Cantara Street in a run-down tract home surrounded by a low metal fence and a half-dead lawn where patches of bleak grass break through the bare soil. Her house is right across the street from Sun Valley Park. Prime real estate for a small-time dealer.

I knock on her front door. It takes a while for anything to happen. I can hear someone banging around inside. I surprised her. She’s hiding her stash.

The front door opens. Carolyn doesn’t open the screen door, but stands there blinking in the sun like a not very bright groundhog. I’ve seen exhumed corpses with better tans.

“Who the fuck are you?” she says.

I lean close to the screen and smile.

“Hi. I’m a young college student trying to earn extra money selling magazine subscriptions door-to-door. Would you be interested in a ten- to twenty-year subscription to Possession with Intent to Sell, and its sister publication, I’m Going to Burn Your House Down While You’re Asleep in Bed Tonight?”

She stares, her mouth open a little, like she’s trying to form a question but forgot how to speak English in the last three seconds. I pull the screen door open and brush past her inside. She stands there, turns, and watches me invade her living room.

Carolyn has short dry hair that frames her face perfectly. She’d be pretty if she didn’t have deep bruise-colored rings around her eyes and her skin wasn’t the texture of sandpaper. There are red welts on the inside of her arms where she’s been compulsively picking at the skin. I can smell not-quite-metabolized meth in her sweat. Her heart’s jacked up and her eyes are pinpricks, but that’s the drugs and not me. The angel in my head wants me to go easy so the back of her skull doesn’t blow off and take her brain with it. That’s a good idea. On the other hand, she’s dealing DHS black-box psychic poison to teenyboppers who don’t have a clue that demons, Kissi, and other brain-sucking assholes are out there waiting to get a claw hold in their cortex.

Carolyn stands by the door, arms crossed. When the clockwork in her brain kicks back in, she follows me into an avocado-and-orange living room with overstuffed chairs, throw pillows, and a long rattan sofa. It looks like the set for a seventies snuff film. She stops a few feet away and looks at me with a jittery stare, trying to figure out if she should know me. If she owes me money. If I owe her.

“Sit down,” I say.

She doesn’t. I take a step toward her.

“Sit down,” I say again.

She walks around me and sits on the sofa, knees together, hands folded in her lap like she just graduated from charm school. I sit across from her on a cushioned green chair. I pull it over to the sofa so we’re sitting face-to-face. The chair springs are long gone and my ass tries to sink below my knees. Not a good look when you want to come across as intimidating. I slide forward and sit on the edge of the chair.

“Are you a cop?” she asks.

“Do you think I’m a cop?”

“No.”

“Then maybe we should go from there and see where it takes us. Is that all right with you, Carolyn?”

“Fine. Whatever. If you’re not a cop, who are you?”

“I lied earlier. I’m not a college student.”

She starts picking at the skin on her left arm.

“Stop that. You dig that arm open and you’re going to get gangrene in a dusty shithole like this.”

“What do you care?”

“I don’t, but it’s annoying to look at.”

“What the fuck is it you want? You want money? Do I look like I have any money? Look around.”

She waves a hand at the general wreckage. It’s not so much that the place is a mess, it’s that nothing is where any sane person would put it. It’s like everything she owns, from furniture to coffee cups, she’s used once and then dropped where she was when she was done with it.

“I don’t have to look, Carolyn. I know that whatever kind of pig wallow you live in, you have money because you’re a dealer,” I say. “I can see it in your eyes and hear it in the tiny catches in your voice. You’re also strung out and about six months from a fatal stroke. You know you have high blood pressure, don’t you? That doesn’t mix well with meth.”

She lifts her head, still eyeing me.

“How do you know that?”

She gnaws on her thumb. Her fingernails have all been chewed down to the quick. There’s plaster dust on her fingertips.

“It’s just a trick I do. I know things about people. Like how all the money you say you don’t have is stuffed in a hiding place in the wall.”

The look she gives me is halfway between anger and dumb wonder.

“When did you come in my house?”

“I’ve never been here before. That was just to show you that lying isn’t going to get you anywhere fun.”

“If you want the money, take it. I’m sick. I can’t stop you.”

“I don’t want your money. I just want a name or two.”

“What name?”

“Before we get to that, did you sell Akira to Hunter Sentenza?”

She leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees, jacked up and exhausted at the same time.

“I didn’t sell it to him. I gave it to him. We’re like, you know, friends. We’re going to get clean together.”

I look at her. Her brain is vibrating so fast I can’t read her. I go another way.

“Why not? You’ve got yourself a nice rich-boy client who was going to pay for your treatment. What was the plan? You take a walk your second day in and pocket whatever refund money you can con out of the clinic?”

She shakes her head and her straw-dry hair sways around her cheeks.

“It’s not like that. Hunter and me are friends. We’re going to do it together. For real this time.”

“Then you haven’t heard about him.”

She sits up. Alert and for the first time somewhat focused.

“Something happened to Hunter?”

“He’s missing. It was that last dose of Akira. His brain threw a rod. He jumped through a window and now he’s missing.”

“Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.”

She covers her face with her hands. That was dumb. Never tell meth heads the truth. The whole reason they’re high is they’re severely reality-phobic. I snap my fingers in front of Carolyn’s face. Lightly slap her arms.

“Come back to earth, Carolyn. We need you. Hunter needs you.”

“Will he be okay?”

“I don’t know. It depends entirely on what you can tell me. I need the name of your supplier.”

“Why do you need that? Why aren’t you out looking for him?”

“Do you know where to start looking?”

“No.”

“Neither do we. What we do know is that Hunter used Akira without any problems and then all of a sudden he went psychobilly. I have a bad feeling that maybe there was something wrong with that last batch. Hunter’s reaction wasn’t a regular OD. It was real specific, so I want to know what was in there, who put it in there, and why.”

She sits up and shakes her head. Draws her hands close to her body.

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Yes, you can. You’re Hunter’s friend and you want him found so the two of you can get better together.”

“I can’t.”

I scoot forward on the chair and lean close to Carolyn. She freezes, trying to keep her eyes from meeting mine.

“Or maybe you’re not Hunter’s friend and you gave him a hot shot. Is that what you did, Carolyn? Did someone give you a special dose of Akira just for Hunter?”

Stop digging, boys, we struck oil.

Carolyn’s brain is still humming like a tuning fork, but at least she’s focused on something now. It’s there in her eyes. She’s beating herself silly trying to make all the contradictions and lies in her life add up to something sane. She really believes she’s Hunter’s friend, but the meth fog she lives in lets her justify giving Hunter drugs she knew were bad because someone up the food chain promised her more drugs or more money or the chance to settle a long-standing debt. Whatever her reasons, she feels guilty as hell. The addict self-pity tears start pumping out of her red and bruised eyes. I want to smack her to see if it snaps her brain back into gear, but I just pat her lightly on the shoulder. I keep my voice low, like I’m speaking to a child.

“Who gave you the special Akira?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Sure you can. Just give me a name, I’ll go, and you can get back to turning your brain to fish food.”

“Fuck you.”

She practically spits the words. Her whole body changes. She was a limp jellyfish a second ago and now she’s ready to put her fist through the wall. We’re on to the next step in this soap opera. She’s not thinking like a tame little user now. She’s moved into dealer mode. Hard-core. Defiant.

“Do you believe in magic, Carolyn?”

“Get out of my house, faggot.”

“I don’t mean kid-party magic. I mean the real thing. Witches on brooms. Love potions. Hexes and demons. Do you believe in that?”

“You know, one phone call and you’ll be smoked before you get back to Hollywood.”

I run through some ideas. There are a lot of scary things I learned in the arena, but I only used them on Hellions and Lurkers. Ninety-nine percent of what I learned I’ve never tried on a civilian and I don’t particularly want to because I’m pretty sure they’d go off like a gerbil in a microwave.

Her hands are shaking from the drugs, but she’s past scared and is deep into gangster territory.

She puts on her best Scarface sneer and says, “You just going to sit there staring at me? I know you. Pussies like you talk and talk, but you won’t do anything. You don’t know the kind of people I know. They have balls.”

She sniffs and wipes the snot from her nose with the back of her hand.

I take out Mason’s lighter, thumb it open, and spark a flame. Her eyes flicker to mine and then zero in on the lighter.

“I’d like to show you a magic trick. Would you like to see a magic trick, Carolyn?”

She gets up. I grab her arm. She twists and tries to sucker punch me. Puts her whole body into it. I don’t try to stop her. I’m faster than any civilian, so she’s moving in exquisite slo-mo. When she’s a few inches from making contact, I lean back slightly and let her fist sail past. Grab the wrist and twist so her arm bends out like a chicken wing and every muscle and tendon in her shoulder feels like it’s going to snap. Carolyn goes down face-first onto the sofa and rolls herself into a little ball, squeezing her aching shoulder. I wait. Eventually, she sits up. There’s a half-finished cigarette in an ashtray on the arm of the sofa. She takes it, puts it between her lips, and starts looking around for matches. I’m still holding the lighter. I hold the flame out to her. She leans forward. I pull the lighter back and she follows a few inches. When she realizes I’m fucking with her, she stops and gives me a dirty look.

I say, “Let me get that for you for real.”

There’s one thing you have to remember about threats: when you make one, mean it. This is especially true with addicts. Their brains aren’t designed to absorb new information and they’re used to being slapped and stomped, so that doesn’t scare them anymore. If you need to impress upon an addict the gravity of their situation, you need to make a threat that doesn’t seem like a threat, but more like God pissing on them from a mountaintop.

I hold the lighter to my hand and my skin bursts into flames. Fire is fire and this isn’t fun hoodoo, but I can stand the pain long enough to make my point.

Carolyn jumps back at the sight of my burning mitt. I play it up. Let the meat cook black until it flakes, and crispy skin drifts onto the carpet. I could let it get down to the bone, but I really don’t want to do that. I move my hand toward Carolyn. She presses herself against the back of the sofa, trying to put as much distance as she can between us. I touch the tip of a finger to her cigarette until it glows.

“This is what I meant by magic. I know worse tricks than this, but let’s focus on this one for the moment. What do you think would happen if I held you with this hand and used you to mop up this messy, messy house? Does that sound like fun? I think it would hurt. Maybe as much as it hurt Hunter when that shit you gave him turned him into a demon’s chew toy. I’m going to ask you one more time, and if you fuck with me, things are going to get drastic. Who gave you the Akira for Hunter?”

“Cale,” she says.

She takes a long breath after she says it. Rubs the sores on her arms. She wants to pick at them, but she knows I don’t like that.

“Cale what?”

She shrugs.

“I don’t know. Just Cale.” She nods at my still-burning hand. “I’ve seen him do weird shit like that, too. Like magic and shit.”

“Where can I find Cale?”

“Downtown. At Dead Set. It’s a club on Traction Avenue near Hewitt. You can’t miss it. At night they show old zombie movies on the side of the building.”

“What’s Cale look like?”

“Tall. Skinny. He wears big boots to look taller and he wears one of those, like, Nazi-officer trench coats. His hair is bleached all white and there’s like these runes or some kind of voodoo shit tattooed on the sides of his head.”

I whisper some Hellion and the flames on my hand flutter and disappear. There’s most of a flat can of beer on the floor next to the sofa. I pour it over my aching hand. The beer bubbles and steams away. I hand Carolyn the empty can. She clutches it to herself like it’s a holy relic. I wipe the beer off my hand on the sofa and get up.

“Remember what I said, Carolyn. Go see a doctor about your blood pressure. You’re about to lose your supplier, so your job is going to evaporate. The good news is that Cale won’t be asking for any of that money you have in the wall. Take it and use it to clean yourself up. Dying isn’t the worst thing in the world, but dying because you’re stupid is.”

I head out the front door. I’m halfway across the doomed lawn when I hear Carolyn yell something. I go back to the house. Behind the bright mesh of the screen door Carolyn looks like a ghost child.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

She leans forward so that her face is almost touching the screen and whispers, “Tell Hunter I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to … you know.”

I nod.

“Sure. I’ll tell him.”

WHEN I GET back to the hotel, I find Candy in the room and Kasabian holding forth on Terrence Malick’s Badlands.

“See, what Malick did wasn’t tell us the story of a couple of kids on a cross-country murder spree, but to tell us a dream about it. Like the whole thing is a shared fantasy in the kids’ heads and ours, which, from what I’ve heard, is pretty close to what it was like for Charlie Starkweather to kill all those people.”

She smiles up at me from the foot of the bed as I come in.

“Hey there. I’m getting Film 101 from your boss.”

“My boss?”

“That’s what he said.”

I look at Kasabian.

He says, “What do you know about accounting, insurance, inventory control, and, you know, running a video store besides watching movies all day?”

“Not much.”

“Then I’m the boss.”

I sit down next to Candy.

“You can’t argue with that logic,” she says.

“I could, but it would end in tears and divorce lawyers, and I can’t stand paperwork.”

Candy leans gently into me so our shoulders are touching.

I pull a wad of cash from my pocket and hand it to her.

“Why don’t you get us another room where we can talk? If the night manager gets weird, use my name and give him too much money. He’ll set you up.”

She bounces off the bed onto her feet and goes to the door. On her way out she blows Kasabian a kiss.

“I’ll be back for your master class on Monte Hellman.”

He beams at her as she leaves.

“Now that’s the kind of girl you shoplift beer for.”

He whizzes around on his skateboard to face me.

“Good thing you got here when you did. I was going to rock her world with some surfboard moves. She would have been mine.”

“You’re the boss and I don’t surf. You could probably have her in Mexico by now with a preacher and a cut-up fishnet stocking for a wedding veil and a donkey for the witness.”

“Badlands was probably too cerebral for a first date. I should have gone with something sexy and scary like Suspiria. Next time.”

“Sure. Next time.”

I start to say something about delusions of grandeur, but keep my mouth shut. I haven’t seen Kasabian this happy in probably ever.

I’m out of cigarettes. I reach into the nightstand and get a fresh pack of Maledictions. There aren’t too many packs left. Kasabian’s happy. He doesn’t need to know that. I light two and stick one between Kasabian’s lips.

“I need you to look up something for me in the Codex.”

“That sounds like work. Didn’t you see the sign? I’m closed for the evening.”

“You may be the boss, but I pay the beer bills and rent, so pull a little overtime for me.”

Kasabian puffs on his cigarette and frowns. His little legs take the Malediction out of his mouth and tap ashes onto the floor.

“What do you want to know?”

“I need to know about a … Qlifart? Qlifuck? Screw it. Demon. This one is different. It’s confident. Maybe even smart. It does possessions, but it doesn’t automatically attack unless it feels threatened. I thought for a while it might be a Kissi, but I know them, and this doesn’t feel like their work.”

He shakes his head.

“That doesn’t make sense. If it’s a demon, it’s dumb. All demons are dumb. Which means they have an inferiority complex that makes them trigger-happy.”

“If it made sense, I wouldn’t ask you to look in the Codex.”

“Why are you dragging me into this thing? I don’t like demons. Just because you’re feeling magnanimous doesn’t mean I am.”

I sit on the end of the bed and smoke. I flick the ashes onto the carpet, too. Got to give the maid something to do when she comes in so she won’t notice the dead man on the skateboard.

“Yes, you are. Candy’s working with me on this. Do it for her. Dazzle her with your kung fu.”

“Nice try. I was kidding before.”

“She’s a Jade. You never know what kind of fetishes they have.”

Faint traces of cigarette smoke drift from the bottom of Kasabian’s neck and hang around his face like mountain mist.

“I was going to watch Blue Velvet and order chicken wings. What more could a guy want?”

“How about a body?”

His eyes narrow.

“Is this case of yours going to get me one?”

“I doubt it. But fucking off in here isn’t either. The more hoodoo work we do, the more likely one of us will stumble on a fix-it spell for your situation.”

“My situation,” he mumbles. “You put me in this situation.”

“After you shot me.”

He smacks the keyboard and the computer wakes up.

“Asshole. Here I was, talking to a pretty girl, content as Jayne Mansfield’s pasties, and you come in and want me to flip burgers on the night shift.”

“You’ll check the Codex?”

“I’ll check.”

“Cool.”

I get up to go out. He yells something at me.

“I need highly concentrated carbs to do this brain work. Get me something cold and I’ll make you Employee of the Month.”

I go to the kitchen and get a six-pack from the fridge.

I set it on his table and say, “You want a soufflé or something, too? I’ll need to warm up the oven.”

“This will do. Don’t forget to punch out when you leave.”

“I’m about to punch something.”