“Right. Like you never left me holding the bag. Running wild up here and down below. Getting us backed into corners so that I had to figure a way out.”
I puff the Malediction and blow smoke in his direction but the wind carries it away.
“All that’s what’s changed. Being on my own Downtown, I learned to think more before I break things. I did some bad things as Lucifer but not nearly as many as I could have. I saved the place from imploding and taking a whole lot of souls down with it.”
Saint James smirks. He isn’t buying it.
“I saw you playing cowboy with Great-Granddad. How is Wild Bill?”
“You were there spying on me?”
“Checking up on you. Believe it or not, I was concerned.”
“I bet you were. You found out it’s lonely out here on your own and you want back in my head. That’s why you’re here. Forget it. I’m done with the Three Faces of Eve routine. I don’t need you.”
He looks me over. Another shirt ruined. I need a tailor or at least a clothes fairy. I wonder if Manimal Mike can make one for me.
“Are you going to wear that armor forever?” says Saint James. “You’ll never be more than half a person without me.”
“I read books when I was Downtown. I learned about the Greeks. ‘Loss is nothing but change and change is Nature’s delight.’ Marcus Aurelius said that.”
“Marcus Aurelius was Roman.”
“I know. Ain’t that a bitch?”
This time, when I blow smoke, I get him. He steps away, waving his hand at the cloud.
“This armor is why I don’t need you. I have all the power I had when we were together and even a few new tricks.”
“The armor hasn’t improved your thinking.”
“The only thing you have on me is the Thirteen Doors Key and I can live without that.”
“Really? How much longer can you ride that beast of a motorcycle before the police catch up to you? How many more cars can you steal? The police aren’t fools. Julie Sola told me they have a whole task force looking for the car-theft ring. You’re a whole criminal conspiracy.”
“A task force just for me? I’m flattered as hell. I’ve never been a gang before.”
“You realize that if you’re captured, they’ll take the armor. And since you don’t have the key, you’ll be stuck in jail. Just another mortal fool in a sea of monsters.”
I flick the cigarette butt at him and burn a small hole in his pullover before he flinches out of the way.
“You left me to the monsters when you blew Hell. Let me change what I said before. It’s not that I don’t need you. I don’t want you. Have fun in Blue Heaven.”
I get off the Volvo hood and start around to the driver’s side.
“You mean it, don’t you? This isn’t just the anger talking. You really intend to give up half of yourself forever.”
I pull up my shirtsleeve and show him the Kissi arm.
“Remember this? I lost part of me already and I learned to get along without it. I can do it again.”
“Can you honestly say you don’t miss the Room of Thirteen Doors? The quiet. The perfection. Knowing you’re at the still silent heart of the universe and that no one can touch you.”
“I miss it like a junkie misses the needle. But it’s like Herodotus said—and that guy I know is Greek: ‘Very few things happen at the right time and the rest do not happen at all.’ ”
“How does that even apply?”
“ ’Cause you’re a day late and a dollar short, so fuck off.”
He leans on the top of the Volvo.
“Without the Key you can’t get to Blue Heaven and you’ll never see me again.”
“You can travel with the Key but I have people who watch my back. What do you have besides frequent flier miles?”
“Everyone who watches your back gets shot, stabbed, or punched. How long will they put up with that?”
I get in the car. Talk to him through the open window.
“Good-bye. Say hi to Amelia Earhart for me.”
Saint James steps into a shadow and is gone.
“You know, I had to kill myself a little in Hell a few days back.”
“Maybe you’ll get it right this time,” says Kasabian.
When someone asked Willie Sutton, the safecracker, why he broke into so many banks, he said, “Because that’s where the money is.” When you want to find a ghost who tried to kill your girl (okay, not technically mine but I like her a lot), you go to the Tenebrae because that’s where the ghosts are.
I stick the tip of black blade into my arm until the blood flows.
“This is the funniest thing you’re going to see all day.”
Kasabian looks at me and turns abruptly away.
“Jesus. Give a guy some warning. Why are you doing that? You don’t have enough pain in your life?”
“It’s not the cutting that’s funny. It’s that I’m cutting the nice clean stitches the hotel doctor just put in. I need some blood.”
“What for?”
Don’t think for a second that just because I’m hard to kill, getting hit or burned or cut doesn’t hurt. It feels the same to me as it does to anybody else. It’s just that I get over it faster. When it’s happening, though, I feel every little twitch and twinge of pain. Cutting into a recent wound is an especially interesting experience. There’s a lot of internal “What the hell are you doing?” screaming.
“Remember when you tried to shoot me with that booby-trapped weapon? The Devil’s Daisy that Mason gave you?”
“Yeah,” says Kasabian. “Damn thing ruined a perfectly good surrogate body.”
“Remember that I talked to you in the deadlands when you were gone but not in Heaven or Hell yet?”
“Yeah? Is that what that’s about?”
I nod. Grimace when I dig down too deep and hit bone.
“Shit. I’m going back to the same neighborhood to talk to another ghost. She gave me this little paper cut, so I figure blood from the wound will get me close to her.”
“You cut yourself up when you came to see me?”
“Worse than this. Usually you have to slit your wrists and be at death’s door for this trick. I’m hoping I can get away with a little less blood this time.”
He takes a chance and sneaks a look in my direction. The blood is flowing and I’m dripping it around a Magic Circle I’ve carved in the tile floor. Thirteen interlocking circles and lines meeting at seventy-two points. Metatron’s Cube. The Flower of Life.
“The really funny part is that I shouldn’t even have to do this. Lucifer can hop from Hell to Earth. I bet he can get to ghost central too but I still haven’t figured out ninety-nine percent of his power.”
The circle is nearly closed with blood.
“When you see me come back, it would be swell if you helped me out by breaking the circle. Just wipe up a little blood.”
“I was just sitting here thinking that what I’d love to do after a nice lunch is wipe up your body fluids.”
I toss off my sliced shirt and strip naked except for the armor.
“The Tin Man comes out of the closet at last.”
I toss him the ripped shirt.
“Shut up, and when you see me twitch, you can use that to break the circle.”
“You’re not going anywhere, are you? This is just some kind of frat hazing where I have to stare at your sack while standing on one leg and reciting the alphabet backward.”
He picks up a chair, limps over, and sets it down a few feet from me.
“Don’t get lost over there. Candy will find me and break my other leg.”
“That’s the trick. Anyone can go over. It’s the smart ones who come back.”
“I never thought of you as one of the smart ones.”
“Me neither. That’s why there’s Plan B.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ll let you know when I think of it. Hand me that bottle of Aqua Regia.”
He does and I take a big swig.
“One for the road.”
I put the bloody blade between my teeth. Normally I’d use a crow or raven feather for something like this but the wet knife will have to do.
Bleeding myself has left me light-headed. I lie down and wait for a little touch of death. I drift and sink and it swallows me up.
I open my eyes underground in a subway tunnel. L.A.’s subway system isn’t a system so much as a miniature golf course spread over a few miles and connected with trains. New Yorkers laugh when they see our puny line but it’s ours and we love it and mostly ignore it. This is L.A. Sitting in traffic in your own car is much more chic than actually getting anywhere. Only squares want to be places.
The tunnel looks clean but unused. There’s a layer of dust on walls and platform. I climb down to the tracks and walk toward a light maybe a quarter of a mile ahead. I bounce off the walls a couple of times and trip on the damned rails. I’m still woozy from the trip down, but when I reach the platform, it’s worth it. The sign above the tracks reads TENEBRAE STATION.
The escalator has come completely off its track, so I take the worn stone stairs up to the street.
Travelers only ever go to the open deadlands. No one except necromancers and fetishists ever goes to the populated areas. Now I see why.
I’m still in L.A. The Tenebrae might be another Convergence. Whatever it is, it looks like all the landfills west of the Mississippi have been dumping their trash here since the beginning of time. I stumble through debris like an arctic explorer in a snowstorm. Garbage drifts down the long boulevards of abandoned buildings and forms loose drifts of newspapers, parking tickets, menus, and shopping lists. Swarms of flies move through the streets like flights of migrating birds. I’m on Broadway near the old Chinatown gate. Burned-out cars lie everywhere in heaps like a giant kid got bored and dropped them here. If I can’t save a few of the dreamers, L.A. is going to look like this place soon. If we don’t fall into the Twilight Zone like Catalina.
Ghosts are funny. They have a lot of self-esteem issues. The Tenebrae place looks like some of the shittier neighborhoods in Hell, which is ironic since most ghosts are here because they’re afraid of crossing over.
It doesn’t take long before I’m noticed. Ghosts lying curled up on benches or sitting in windowless coffee shops stare at me. Some take a few tentative steps in my direction before losing strength or interest or both. Most look as windblown and worn out as the empty buildings. Most but not all.
I recognize Cherry Moon from all the way across Chinatown Plaza. Her spirit is still strong enough to look better than the other ragged ghosts. Closer to her ideal form, which for her is a walking, talking anime schoolgirl complete with loose socks and pigtails. That kind of thing was creepy enough when she was alive, but it looks worse now that she’s dead. Her skin is a pale gray and her eyes are bloodshot. She looks like Sailor Moon’s evil twin. Cherry comes over and looks up at me coquettishly like she’s practiced the move a thousand times in front of a mirror. At least she doesn’t smell as bad as she looks.
“You came. I can hardly believe it. My slightly smudged white knight.”
“Hi, Cherry. It’s nice to see you with a face.”
“Are my eyes still the mirrors of my soul?”
“Sadly, yes. Having skin must be nice. I love what you’ve done with the place.”
“God’s little acre.”
“Of shit.”
She touches my nose with the tip of her index finger.
“Don’t be mean, James.”
She loops her arm in mine and we walk through the endless garbage dump.
“This isn’t the afterlife. This isn’t anywhere. You can leave anytime you like.”
“Is that how it works? How kind of you to explain.”
“If I’m inconveniencing you, I can go.”
She tightens her arm around mine.
“Please, James. Play nice. You don’t know what it’s like here. We all died once and now we have to do it again because of that little bitch. It looks like it hurts even more the second time around.”
“I’m not killing the Imp until I talk to her, so don’t get your pigtails knotted up if I don’t go in like Bruce Lee.”
We turn out of the plaza and head downtown.
“She’s a monster. She kills us. Hurt her for me, James.”
“You know that back in the world I’m lying in a pool of my own blood. I’d really like to get things rolling before I muss my hair.”
“Cool your jets, jet boy. We’re almost there.”
A mob is following us. I must be the most interesting thing that’s happened here since the girl. How sad for these dopes. How terrified do you have to be to put up with this dismal trailer-park universe? If I had time, I’d make every one of these assholes a deal. Let go. Come to Hell. You can camp out in Eleusis, the town God built for righteous pre-Jesus pagans. It’s still the nicest place down south. Crap parking but no torture and other reasonable souls to pal around with. I’d do it just to clear out this shit sink. But none of them would do it. They’re too chewed up by the demons in their own brains. I want to blame God for these losers. For not making Himself known and available to humans, but I wonder if it would make a difference to this crowd. There’s something willful about this kind of self-punishment. Without realizing it, they’ve made their own second-rate sitcom Hell.
Cherry says, “I hear you killed Mason.”
“Nope. He killed himself.”
