“Are you out of your mind? What if someone sees us?”
“People will pay big bucks to see you. Maybe you should go to Griffith Park and sign up at the petting zoo. Hell, you’ll be their star attraction.”
“Is this about the money? I wasn’t embezzling. I was investing it for us. The store is on its last legs, man. We’re going to need a stake when it goes under.”
“It’s not the money or the attitude or you shitting beer out your neck hole. You’ve outgrown the place. You’re a lone wolf, not a team player, and I don’t want to hold you back.”
I reach into my pocket, wad up one of Lucifer’s hundreds, and toss it at him.
“Go buy yourself some platform shoes. Tall people always get the best job offers.”
When I go back inside, he’s still sitting there with his mouth open, the hundred lying at his metal feet.
I pull the door closed and wait. Right away I hear scratching, like a stray cat trying to get in after it got locked out of the house at night. Kasabian is cursing me through the door, but not loud enough for anyone else to hear. He doesn’t want that. The kicking and cursing goes on for thirty or forty seconds, getting louder the whole time. Then it stops. I listen. Nothing.
Okay. That’s something I didn’t count on. That moneygrubbing jack-o’-lantern isn’t crazy enough to go around to the front, is he?
I run up the stairs far enough that the customers can’t see me, and step through a shadow into the alley.
At first, I don’t see him. Then I hear a scrabbling from overhead. Fuck me. The little centipede is halfway up the wall, climbing for the bathroom window on his prehensile legs. He’s slow, but he’s moving steadily. I had no idea he could do that. Something else he’s been hiding along with all the other information he’s locked away?
I start to say something. When he looks down his eyes go wide. He screams and starts to fall. I throw up the shield I used earlier in the room. Kasabian is right over the Dumpster, so I vault the side and catch him when he bounces off the shield.
He yells, “Get out! Get out now!”
“Calm down. You’ve been in plenty of dirtier places than this.”
“Look down, asshole.”
I move Kasabian’s deck to the side and look at my feet. At the bottom of the Dumpster, on a pile of JD bottles, boxes, and worn-out DVD cases is a man’s hand. There’s a few inches of bone sticking out past the torn and ragged wrist. It looks like rats have been having a Sunday buffet.
“Please take me back inside.”
“What are you so upset about? It’s not yours.”
I get out of the Dumpster and set him on the ground.
“Sorry. I can’t go carrying you through there naked again. You’re wearing a disguise this time.”
There’s a Disney box lying on top of the Dumpster junk. I grab it, drop it on top of Kasabian, and carry him inside and up to the room. I punch the power on his monitor and set him down in front of it. Black Sunday is still playing. He stares at it for a moment like he’s never seen a movie before, and then turns it off.
“Is there any beer left?” he asks.
“I think so.”
I take one from the minifridge, pop the top, and slide his bucket under him. Kasabian is still staring at the blank monitor screen.
“Did you see that fucking thing?”
“It was pretty much on my foot.”
“Where do you think it came from?”
“A guy’s arm.”
“I mean did you recognize it. Did it look familiar?”
“It looked like a hand. You want to be Sherlock Holmes? I’ll drop you back down there and you can play patty-cake with it all day.”
“Body parts lying around. That’s a bad omen for me. I can’t afford to lose anything else.”
“That’s right. The universe stopped by our trash to personally deliver you a message from the great beyond. Get a grip. Some wino probably died in the neighborhood and the dogs got at him. Or there’s medical trash on the beach again and kids are leaving legs and eyeballs all over town.”
“What a waste. A perfectly good hand like that.”
“I’ll look for the other one. You can wear ’em like angel wings.”
“I’ll never have one again. Lucifer’ll never let that happen.”
“You mean a body.”
“It’s humiliating, you know. This whole situation. I’m not even a dog. I’m half a dog. On top of that I got you and Lucifer surrounding me, gnawing my ass like it’s filet mignon. You both want information and I know someday I’m going to tell one of you something you don’t like and you’re going to throw me into the wood chipper without a second thought.”
“I can’t help you get a body. The black blade is a mean Hellion hex machine. Whatever it cuts stays cut and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t, you know.”
Kasabian picks up his beer and chugs the bottle. It drains out of his neck and into the bucket, sounding somewhere between a light summer rain and someone peeing in a Dixie cup.
“So, my options are: I can go back to Hell, be damned and tortured forever, but at least I’ll have a body, or I can be Zardoz on a skateboard up here with you forever. You’d think this would be an easy choice, but it isn’t.”
“Does the Codex say anything about someone in your situation putting a body back together?”
“No, but I’ll tell you one thing I’ve learned. Any spell cast can be broken. Any spell broken can be put back together.”
“If you want I can have a word with the boss.”
He shakes his head and drops the bottle into the recycling bin.
“Forget it. The last thing I need to get into is office politics.”
“I can see how your situation sucks, but in case you haven’t noticed, neither one of us is exactly free to go drink mai tais in Maui. Maybe if we don’t shank each other in the shower, we can do something to improve that stupid situation. I don’t know what exactly, but maybe something.”
“You’re going to improve things? I’m so fucking relieved. Just remember to tell Santa I’ll need a stepladder when he brings me that pony next Christmas.”
I get up and look for some clothes that don’t have blood on them. When I’m pulling on my boots, Kasabian says, “Beelzebub is the only one of the big generals left who hasn’t joined up with Mason’s bunch. He has all the other generals, but Beelzebub’s army is almost as big as all of theirs put together. But if he gets offed or switches sides, that’s it. Mason wins.”
“And Lucifer has nowhere to go.”
“Allegra can teach him to run a cash register. He can be night manager and we’ll be his bosses.”
I check the drawers in the bedside table looking for something to smoke. I check my pockets for the electronic cigarette and then remember that I tossed it into a canal in the ballroom. Sometimes we do dumb things to amuse women.
“There’s something else.”
“Don’t tell me. Mason has a herpes gun. Or a bomb that gives everyone a fat ass and they get depressed and sit around eating ice cream all day while he takes over.”
“Mason is working on something all right. He’s got his own Manhattan Project going with alchemists, sorcerers, witches—human and Hellion—all working together. One of Beelzebub’s spies found out and passed the word along. From what I heard, right after that, he ended up in Tartarus.”
“You can hear things when Lucifer talks with other Hellions?”
“Not always and not everything. But I heard enough of this.”
I shrug and give up on finding smokes. That’s okay. I need to get out of here and walk off some of the knots in my legs and side.
“This isn’t news. Mason’s always got two or three things going at the same time.”
“Yeah, but nothing like this before.”
“What is it?”
“He’s trying to make a new key to the Room of Thirteen Doors.”
I don’t know what I was expecting to hear, but that wasn’t it. But it makes sense. What’s worse is that the prick is talented and relentless enough to actually do it.
“Is that what you didn’t want to tell me?”
“You shot at me once. You threatened to drop me in the ocean and throw me to the coyotes, so I had some concerns you might overreact.”
“You weren’t holding back because you thought you could cut a deal with Mason?”
“Make a deal with the guy who blew me up and left me like this? He’s right at the top of my people-to-trust list.”
“Okay. Thanks for coming clean.”
“You’re taking it pretty well.”
“No. I’m not.”
I head for a shadow next to the closet door, stop, and turn back to Kasabian.
“No one’s going to look out for us but us. We’re just bugs on God’s windshield. You need to get serious and work with me on this or we’re both going to end up in Tartarus.”
“What the Hell is in Tartarus? Even the Codex doesn’t say.”
“I don’t know, but I figure anything that scares Hellions ought to scare me. We need to talk some more, but I need some alone time to clear my head.”
“Me, too.”
“By the way, what happened out back? I wouldn’t have left you out there.”
“Yeah, you would have.”
“Only if I thought you were going to dick me around forever. Then yeah, but only then.”
“Lucky me some schmuck lost a hand.”
“You were wrong, see? Turns out it was a good omen.”
Kasabian scuttles around and hits the eject button on the DVD player.
“You got enough devil movies for tonight?”
“Suddenly I’m out of the mood for those. Maybe I’ll watch The Great Silence.”
“Do one more devil movie. Bedazzled. The original. It makes facing down Lucifer easier if you picture him in a Brit burger joint in a silly cape.”
“Maybe I’ll do that.”
“I’ll be going by Bamboo House later. Want me to bring you back something?”
“A burrito. Carnitas. Hot. Not those old-lady ones you get. Lots of salsa and green peppers.”
“Anything else, boss?”
“Thanks for not doing a slice-and-dice when I told you about Mason cooking up a new key.”
“You’ve got good timing. I was going to try and not kill all those other people out in the world, but that’s on hold since they’re trying to kill me. That means you get to be my no-kill project.”
“Lucky me.”
“Lucky us. We might be doomed, but we’re not in pieces in a Dumpster.”
I STEP OUT of a shadow into the hallway by Vidocq’s apartment. Vidocq and Allegra’s. I need to start thinking about it that way. I love the old man, but the thought of him rattling around in there alone used to bother me. Now that he’s with Allegra, it’s different. I don’t know why. Yeah, I do. I don’t want that place to be something else Mason has ruined.
I knock on the apartment door and Allegra answers. She looks at me.
“Since when do you knock?”
“Last time I was here, you said I only came over when I wanted a potion or needed to get sewn up, so I thought I’d come over and try to act like a person for a while.”
She steps back and opens the door more.
“Come in.”
Vidocq comes over, wiping his hands on a black rag that I’m guessing didn’t start out that color. He grabs me in a bear hug.
“Good to see you, my boy. And look, no blood. We need some wine to celebrate.”
“Thanks.”
As he grabs a wine bottle and glasses off the counter, he says, “Allegra was going to call you. Tell him.”
She smiles at me.
“The Cupbearer’s elixir is ready. We finished it maybe an hour ago.”
Vidocq comes back with the bottle, hands out glasses, and pours wine for everyone.
“Allegra figured it out. Often, when those old witches wrote their potions down, they would leave out a step or two to preserve their secrets. We worked all night, but the mixture wouldn’t hold together. Then Allegra intuited a solution. You want to preserve your body, so that’s what we gave it. I found one of your bloody shirts in the trash, cut a piece, and dropped it in. That’s the trick. The elixir must be made for each individual. And this one is yours.”
He hands me a small amber-colored antique apothecary bottle. Like something Mattie Earp would use to hide her laudanum from Wyatt.
“Thanks. I mean it.”
Vidocq stands next to Allegra, puts his arm around her, and kisses her on the temple.
“She will replace us all soon. And you, you’ll be back to yourself, as scarred and lined as Lucifer’s scrotum.”
What can you say to that? I hold up my glass.
“To the devil’s balls.”
Allegra and Vidocq hold up theirs.
He says, “Pour les bourses du diable.”
Vidocq and I drain our glasses. Allegra sips hers politely.
She says, “Speaking of the devil, is it true you’re working for him?”
I put my hand over the wound where the bullet went in.
“Looks that way. I saved the bastard’s life last night.”
Allegra is looking at me like a disapproving schoolmarm, but Vidocq leans in for a close look at the bullet hole.
“Saint Raphael’s silk. Les petites araignées do beautiful work, don’t they?”