Allegra glances from me and back to the flames, her eyes wide and staring. She reaches over my burning fingertips and snatches her hand back a second later.

"It's hot."

"That's why they call it fire. Put up your hand," I tell her. "Palm toward me."

She holds up her right hand. I touch my hand to hers and say a few words. The flames drift down my fingertips and over to hers.

"Blow on your fingers lightly."

She does it. The flames disappear.

"Do it again, only blow harder this time."

She puffs her cheeks and blows. The flames reignite.

"I can feel it. It's warm, but it doesn't hurt."

"Blow really hard."

The flames flare, from one to six inches. The moment she stops blowing, they shrink back to birthday candles.

"Is that magic enough for you?"

"Yeah, I'd say that covers it."

I blow lightly on her fingertips and the flames fade away.

"Now you've got a little charm on your hand and you can do that fire trick anytime you want. So, next time you start doubting, you'll know that what you're seeing is real because part of you is magic, too."

She stares at her unburned hand for a minute.

"Tell me about Mr. Kasabian's head. Is he dead? Did you do that to him?"

"No to the first question, and yes to the second."

"Tell me about it."

For the second time tonight, I'm confessing my sins. This time it's easier because it's not just my bad moments, but also Mason's, Kasabian's, and the rest of the Circle's. Plus, I'm lying. Just a little. I tell her that Mason sold me out, sent me to a dark and rotten place. I just leave out Hell and the hitman part.

"So, that guy tonight-Parker-he killed your girl?" she asks.

"That's what Kasabian said."

"Damn. Was Mr. Kasabian in on it?"

"He's too much of a jellyfish for murder. And he's too afraid of me to lie about it. But he was there for the rest of it."

"I'd have cut off more than his head if he'd done that to me or mine."

"Then you know why I'm back."

"You're Clint Eastwood in the Outlaw Josie Wales. Max von Sydow in Virgin Spring."

"I don't know who that second one is, but if he was out to fuck up the people who fucked up someone he cared about, then, yeah, okay, I'm Max. And that's why I'm leaving."

"You're giving up?"

"No. I'm leaving Max Overdrive. I'll crash with the meth heads in Griffith Park. I'm too dangerous to be around actual human beings. I should have left that first night."

"No way. No damned way," says Allegra. "I'm in."

"In what I'm doing? No way, girlie."

She crawls off the beanbag chair and sits beside me on the floor. "Listen, I've been looking for something extraordinary my whole life, but I kept getting it wrong. I ended up in bad places with bad people, bad drugs, bad lovers, and a lot of other bad shit I don't want to think about. But this, right here, this is it. You're it. The thing I've been looking for all my life. I want in."

"Tough. I didn't come back here to be your guidance counselor."

"Yes, you did. That's exactly what you're here for. Maybe not the whole reason, but part of it."

"You're not a killer and you don't have any magic. You manage a video store."

"So, teach me."

"Teach you what? I can show you a few tricks, but when it comes to the hardcore fuck-you-up magic, you're born with that or you aren't."

"What about your friend, Vidocq?"

"He's an alchemist. It's not the same thing."

"I could learn that."

"You could have died tonight."

"I don't care."

"I'm not dragging you into this."

"You already did. And you'll take me along cause you need me."

I don't say anything. I get up so that I'm standing right over her. Earlier, I'd set the bone blade beside me on the floor. I pick it up and scabbard it inside my jacket.

"For eleven years, I've been worked over and abused in ways you can't imagine by things you don't want to know about. I've killed every kind of vile, black-souled, dead-eyed nightmare that ever made you piss your pj's and cry for mommy in the middle of the night. I kill monsters and, if I wanted, I could say a word and burn you to powder from the inside out. I can tear any human you ever met to wet rags with my bare hands. Give me one reason why I could possibly need you?"

She looks straight up at me, not blinking. No fear in her eyes.

"Because, you might be the Tasmanian Devil and the Angel of Death all rolled into one, but you don't even know how to get a phone."

I hate to admit it, but she has a point.

LATE AFTERNOON THE next day, I knock on Vidocq's door, which I still can't help thinking of as my door, which makes my brain spin around like a blender full of ball bearings. Fortunately, I'm good at ignoring a lot of what my brain does.

Beside me, Allegra bounces on the balls of her feet. She's wearing shiny boots with thick soles and a belly-revealing T-shirt tight enough to be have been spray-painted on. Probably because I told her that Vidocq is French. She looks cute enough, but one side of her face still sports a dark purple bruise and her cheeks and jaw are a little puffy, so she's also trying to distract people's eyes from her face to her body. It's working.

She's doing a lot better than me. I crashed at her place to keep an eye on her. All I can tell you is to never fall asleep on a beanbag chair. My back feels like someone beat me with a pillowcase full of tuna-fish cans.

Vidocq opens the door and does a comical little eyebrow raise.

"There you are. And you've brought a friend."

Allegra puts out her hand and gives Vidocq a smile that would make a dead man swoon.

"I'm Allegra," she says. "Stark's new zookeeper."

"I'm Franjois Eugene Vidocq. Lovely to meet you."

She looks over his shoulder into the crowded room. "Are all those books and potions yours?" She steps past him into the room like she'd just bought the place. Vidocq turns and gives me a conspiratorial look.

"Forget it. Just a friend," I say.

"Then you are a very foolish boy." He nods at her examining his ingredient racks. "What happened to her face?"

"Parker."

"Brave girl."

"It's why I bought her here. If Parker knows who she is, then she's already part of this. But she's a civilian. She doesn't know magic or charms or anything. Think you could teach her some of what you do?"

"You want to trust her with me? After what I've done to myself?"

"If she's on Parker's list, she could do worse than be cursed with immortality. And she needs something. I can't teach her what I do. I won't."

"What's this?" Allegra asks. She holds a small vial up to the light. It's red, but it shimmers like mercury.

"That's the blood of a Chimera. A rare beast that, it's said, can change its shape to anything it eats. It's also said that its blood can give a man that power, too, but I've never been able to make it work."

"You have so many amazing and beautiful things here. I don't know how you can remember them all."

"The trick is not to try and remember. You learn what the ingredients are and how to use them, what to mix or never to mix. You learn how to distill the essence and find the true heart of each ingredient and potion. As you learn those things, you learn the names and the methods, which books are good for one type of potion, which instruments produce the best results. You don't try to remember. You just learn. Once you've done that, your hands will remember what to take and what to use and which books to open."

She picks up a parchment scroll and opens it. It's a diagram of a woman's body, but she has wings and an eagle's head. There are diagrams and small, precise handwritten notes all around the drawing.

Still holding the scroll, Allegra asks, "You can read Greek, too?"