“Are you kidding? This is my new bedtime teddy bear. You and Rinko can move over. I’m snuggling with this cuddly puppy every night.”
I don’t bother pointing out that she hasn’t spent more than a few hours at a time with me, much less an entire night.
We ride in the hotel limo to Max Overdrive. The driver doesn’t talk to us. Doesn’t even look at the rearview mirror. He must have heard about Lucifer’s last driver. The one who ended up with his lips sewn together.
The side door at Max Overdrive looks like an angry drunk beat it to death with a sledgehammer. The store area on the first floor is as trashed as an empty room can be. Every rack and piece of shelving has been tossed around and smashed. That answers one question. It would have taken at least a half hour for one person to do this much damage. So, there was more than one. How many are left? I take out the Sig and start upstairs.
The door is half open. I push it the rest of the way with the toe of my boot.
Kasabian sits on the floor sipping a beer, his back to the minifridge. The bedroom is trashed but in better shape than the store. Nothing looks particularly broken. Just turned over and dumped on the floor. When Kasabian moves, one of his leg’s gears scrape and crunch together. His left leg is bent to the side just below the knee. Hellhounds aren’t dainty devices. It took a lot of strength to do that kind of damage.
“Goddamn,” I say.
“Careful in case one of them is still around. They were very picky about blasphemy,” says Kasabian.
“Hey, Kas,” says Candy. “Does your leg hurt?”
“Only when I breathe or think.”
Candy and I sit on the bed. Kasabian holds out a beer. We shake our heads.
“This wouldn’t have anything to do with you and your beef with King Cairo, would it?”
“I don’t know. Did they say what they wanted?” I ask.
“There wasn’t a lot of chitchat. Mostly it was crashing and throwing and then a couple of them that bounced up and down on my leg asking where it was.”
“Did they say what ‘it’ was?”
“I thought they meant the money. I told them where it was, and when they found it, they left it and took off. Two hundred grand in cash and they just walked away.”
A pack of Maledictions lies next to the overturned desk. I get the smokes and light a couple, passing one to him.
“They’re good Christian boys. Thou shall not steal and all that Ten Commandments hoodoo. The new Golden Vigil. Smashing the place and fucking up your leg is for the greater good but taking a nickel is a mortal sin.”
Kasabian sets down his beer and tries to stand. The leg collapses the moment he puts weight on it. He lies down on his back.
“Look at me. I should have stayed on my skateboard.”
“It’s okay. I met a guy and he owes me a favor. He’ll finish your body.”
Kasabian props himself up on his elbows.
“And then what? I wait around for the next Curious George to come through the door and break my other leg? Everything was quiet and boring and fine until you came back, and now it’s all shit again.”
“That’s pretty harsh and it’s not even true,” says Candy.
“So says the pretty girl with two working legs. If it wasn’t for you, he would have been here to kick those guys’ asses.”
I say, “Don’t go blaming her. You’re the one who wanted me gone, Old Yeller.”
“And you’re the one who should’ve ignored me like you used to. What do I know? I’m a head on a stick. I get emotional.”
The Magic 8 Ball and the singularity are still in the duffel at the Beat Hotel. I need to move them to the Chateau.
Kasabian tosses the beer can into a small pile across the room. He opens the fridge and takes out another.
“I’ve been watching Hell on your peeper, by the way. Without sound I can’t understand everything, so maybe you can help me. Are burning churches a good thing or a bad thing?”
Shit. Merihim works fast. Deumos isn’t going to take an attack lying down. I wonder if Semyazah let it happen to lure me back. That’s not going to happen.
“Anything else?”
“Lots. I keep wondering about the uglies in uniform kicking the shit out of other uglies in red pants. Are red pants like a no-white-after-Labor-Day thing down there?”
“I need to get some things from the hotel to a safe place. If you don’t want to stay here, you can come with us.”
“And be crippled and a third wheel in your little love nest? No thanks. Cairo’s Muppets know there’s nothing here. They won’t come back.”
“I hope you’re right. I’m going to put the side door up and lay down some hexes there and in the alley. You want to leave, you do it through the front door. I’ll lay down some lighter hexes there.”
“I hope I remember all that when I go to meet the cool kids at the Viper Room.”
“Is there any Spiritus Dei around here?”
“There’s a small bottle in the medicine cabinet.”
On the way back to the Chateau, we make a quick stop at the Beat Hotel. I feel bad about Kasabian. If I’m a shit magnet, he’s a getting-stomped magnet. Maybe I should’ve forced him to come with us. He would’ve loved that. One more thing to complain about.
At the Chateau, Candy and I break more furniture and afterward I try to figure out what to do next. The sofa won’t budge. It sits like an iceberg surrounded by a sinking Titanic of broken furniture.
I go to the window to have a smoke. Something that might be an iceberg slides down Sunset Boulevard, tearing up the road, smashing windows in the buildings across the street, and crushing cars. Then it slips silently out of sight. The stars overhead blink on and off like colored Christmas-tree lights. In the distance, there’s the glow of fire and sound of sirens. What’s that line from The Outlaw Josie Wales? “Get ready, little lady. Hell is coming for breakfast.”
It comes to me sometime around dawn. Fuck Saint James. I don’t need him. I want the Key to the Room of Thirteen Doors but I’m doing fine without it. It’s sure not enough to put up with this carousel of bullshit. An apple-cheeked ghost that has everyone jumpy as a chicken on an electric fence. A pushy skeleton whining like the clingiest girlfriend since Ophelia. A fruit bat in Malibu who has high tea with skeletons. Downtown is turning to shit again and L.A. is on fire. And I know things are only going to get worse. If Semyazah can’t handle Hell, how am I supposed to? I don’t need any of it. Fuck Saint James. Aelita and King Cairo are the ones I need to worry about and by “worry about,” I mean kill.
We’re sitting in a stolen Ford soccer-mom SUV between a hipster art gallery and a costume store.
“So this is your idea of a double date,” says Allegra.
“You wanted back in the field. Welcome to the exciting world of trench warfare.”
“We’re just sitting here.”
“We’re waiting for the order to advance. Then we run straight into the enemy’s machine guns and barbed wire.”
“But until then, we have teriyaki, gyoza, and miso soup,” says Candy, passing around Styrofoam cartons.
“And sake,” says Vidocq. “I will light a candle for the lovely goddess Matsuo to honor every bottle she has given to us over the years.”
Candy says, “That’s going to be a fire hazard.”
“What’s life without risk?” says Vidocq.
“Long,” says Allegra. “And with a lot of time to be grateful for the stupid things you didn’t do. Like staking out a killer’s apartment.”
“We’re not staking out Cairo’s apartment. I think he owns the whole building.”
“I feel better knowing we’re after a man with real estate. It makes the whole thing seem friendlier,” says Candy.
Allegra dunks a gyoza in soy sauce with her chopstick and feeds it to Vidocq. He smiles and kisses her lightly on the lips.
He says, “The good father tells me that you witnessed the Via Dolorosa yesterday.”
I nod, keeping my eye on a doorway across the street.
“That I did. Traven’s turning into a real bruiser. He’s done that to other people? After Amanda stopped by, he wanted to come with me to meet Teddy Osterberg. That would have been a lot of laughs.”
Vidocq shakes his head. Sips more sake.
“The father is a good and serious man. He would never abuse his power.”
“If you say so. I just hope he isn’t a kid with a loaded gun.”
Candy stops eating for a second.
“Is that crack aimed at me?”
“Your gun is unloaded. I checked.”
She turns to Allegra.
“Stark is going to take me shooting. You and Eugène should come with us.”
“That sounds like fun.”
Candy frowns.
“Father Traven isn’t Sub Rosa, is he?”
“No.”
“Then how can he do the Dolorosa?”
I shrug and take a bite of teriyaki chicken.
“Allegra isn’t Sub Rosa and I taught her to make fire with her hands.”
Allegra waves her chopsticks like shaking her head.
“You didn’t teach me that magic. You gave it to me.”
“Fair enough. But there are some kinds of old hoodoo that even civilians can do if they learn the right spells and make the right sacrifices. Which is the problem. They didn’t grow up around real magic and they don’t understand the power they’re playing with.”
Vidocq says, “Plus, much of the most common old magic is Baleful. That’s what Father Traven used.”
“What’s Baleful magic?” says Candy.
“It’s what Sub Rosas call black magic,” I say.
Vidocq says, “The Sub Rosa believe in four systems of magic. The Aethereal, which describes psychic abilities, scrying, telekinesis, and the like.”
“In other words, standing-there magic,” I say.
“There’s Corporeal magic. Physical magic.”
“Touchy-feely magic.”
“Magic with the hands,” says Vidocq. “Potions. Healing. Charm making. The reading of objects. And there’s Baleful.”
“Which is the most popular. Especially with kids. That’s why even owning most of the old Baleful books is illegal and Traven has piles of them.”
“What’s the fourth kind of magic?” asks Candy.
Vidocq says, “Theoretical magic.”
“What’s theoretical?”
“God,” I say. “The angels. The stuff that holds the universe together and makes it run. It might not even be magic the way we understand it. That’s why it’s theoretical.”
Candy punches me lightly on the arm.
“Why don’t you tell me these things?”
“I don’t think about them. Why should I bug you? If you want to know more, talk to the Frenchman or borrow one of his books.”
Vidocq makes a small bow, his mouth full of chicken. He swallows and says, “I’d be honored to loan you one or two.”
“Just history. Nothing practical,” I say.
Allegra laughs like she just got something over on her little sister.
“You can learn some magic after you learn to shoot,” I say.
“Thanks, Daddy. You going to get me that two-wheeler for my birthday?”
“For that, I thought I’d teach you how to steal cars.”
“I’m glad to see that this relationship is keeping you both out of trouble,” says Allegra.
Candy puts her hand on Allegra’s arm.
“Did he tell you where he’s crashing?”
“Later. I’ll tell her about it myself.”
“Lucifer’s private suite in the Chateau Marmont,” Candy says.
Allegra looks at her food, moving it around the container with her chopsticks.
“You two must still be tight if he’s loaning you his apartment.”
Allegra had a tsunami-size freak-out when I was Samael’s bodyguard while he was in town working on a movie. We barely spoke for a while. I didn’t even say good-bye when I went back to Hell.
“I don’t know how they’d be tighter,” says Candy. She laughs.
“Shut up.”
Candy looks at me, then at Allegra.
“Oh. Shit. I’m sorry.”
She puts down her food.
“That’s why I wanted to tell her,” I say.
“Tell me what?” Allegra says.
I sit there like an idiot. My mouth won’t open. I know what will happen when it does.
Vidocq says, “Darling, things have changed a great deal while Stark was in Hell.”
Allegra’s hand moves halfway to her mouth. A gesture of fear or concern or maybe she’s just stifling a burp.
“My God. You didn’t sell him your soul to get out, did you?”
“No,” I say.
I keep looking across the street at Cairo’s place.
“I am Lucifer.”
I turn and Allegra is looking at me like I answered her in Urdu.
I say, “I didn’t ask for it and I don’t want it. Lucifer, the one you know about, dumped the job on me. I had to protect Alice and the other souls down there. I didn’t have a choice.”
She sets down her chopsticks.
“So now you take souls and lead people into sin.”
“Mostly I just handle paperwork.”
She looks at Vidocq.
“You knew about this?”
He nods.
“It wasn’t my place. He wanted to tell you himself.”
She looks at Candy.
