“I’ll catch you later, man.”

“Later.”

Candy disappeared into the back of the clinic right when we got here, but Allegra is putting things away in the treatment room.

“Welcome home. Candy says you two had an adventure today.”

“The other guys had an adventure. We had a car wreck.”

“And walked away with a couple of scratches. I’m jealous. Remember that time you took me with you to meet the dead man Johnny Thunders? I miss that kind of thing.”

“Maybe you should train some people to take a few of your shifts.”

“I am. You met Fairuza, the sweet Ludere, the other day. She’s my chief apprentice.”

“Cool. I’ll drag you and Vidocq along when the right kind of craziness comes up.”

She smiles and wraps two chunks of what look like pearly rocks in dark blue silk. Divine-light glass from the beginning of time. God broke a star and dropped the glass to Earth. One of his original fuckups. It wasn’t all bad. It turns out it heals a lot of wounds. Doc Kinski once used it on Allegra.

“You don’t know anything about the other Stark, do you? You’re a doctor. Maybe he’d tell you something he wouldn’t tell other people.”

“No. Sorry. He never told me anything.”

“Have you been getting some stabbings in here?”

“Are you talking about the girl? No. No stabbings. From what I hear, if she cuts you, you die. I heal people. She kills. There’s no point in me treating the dead.”

Candy comes in and crooks her thumb over her shoulder.

“Can I talk to you a minute?”

“Sure.”

We walk outside into the cool, crisp L.A. afternoon. The sky looks a little strange. Clouds are rolling in fast and it’s like the light is strobing behind them.

“I have to take a rain check on your suite. Rinko got a taste of blood last night and now she’s kind of in withdrawal. I need to take her home.”

“I understand.”

“Sorry. I keep seeing you and running off.”

I shrug.

“Maybe I deserve it. I ran out first. Anyway, you have to do the right thing by your friend.”

“Doing the right thing usually sucks.”

“Almost always.”

She kisses me and goes back inside. Through the glass I see her giving Rinko a potion and leading her into the treatment room.

There’s another reflection in the glass. A ghost.

I turn and the little girl is standing there. Frilly blue party dress and a knife as big as her leg. She stares at me like I’m a rat on her birthday cake.

“Who are you?” I ask.

She doesn’t say anything.

“What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you killing people? You pissed off? Hungry?”

Still nothing.

I take a step toward her. She takes one back. I take another. There’s an earth tremor, like a small earthquake. I look down at my feet. When I look up again, the girl is gone. I walk out to where she was standing. Then to the far wall. I get on my knees to look under all the vehicles. The ground gives way and I land flat on my back. I was run over by a pickup truck about thirty minutes ago. It hurt. Falling six feet onto a sore back hurts more. I lie in the fresh dirt, trying to catch my breath.

“Hi, Stark.”

The voice is breathy. Barely a whisper and hard to hear over the traffic.

I’m lying in a hole as deep as a grave. There’s another hole like a tunnel leading off into the dark. The voice is coming from there.

“What is this?”

A desiccated corpse, gray parchment skin stretched like tissue paper over brittle bones, sticks its head out of the hole like a turtle and draws it back in when the light hits it.

“Don’t you recognize me?” says the corpse.

“You’re a fucking skeleton. How am I supposed to recognize you?”

“Once upon a time you wanted to kill me. Then you wanted to save me. You didn’t do either. You let Parker murder me.”

“Cherry? Is that you?”

Cherry Moon was a member of my old Magic Circle. One of the ones who stood by and let Mason send me to Hell. For staying out of the way, Mason gave her the gift of youth. Creepy youth. Candy is into Japanese cartoons but Cherry Moon wanted to be a cartoon. A forever-prepubescent Sailor Moon love doll in a school uniform. Do you know what it’s like to get hit on by a thirty-five-year-old woman who looks like she’s twelve? No. You don’t. It’s strange and unpleasant on so many levels I can’t begin to count them.

“Was that you who dropped me into a hole in Bamboo House?”

“Do you get followed around by a lot of tunneling dead girls?”

“You saved me from getting shot.”

“Yes. You owe me. You didn’t save me when I was alive. I want you to save me now.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Kill the little girl.”

When I first saw her, I thought Cherry was a ghost cursed to stay on Earth and the hole was just a ghost projection from her mind. Seeing her skeleton crammed into the narrow tunnel, I see I was wrong. Cherry did this to herself.

“Is the girl hurting you?”

“She’s killing us. All the other ghosts and spirits in L.A. When she isn’t killing you, she hides with us in the Tenebrae. Kills us like she kills the living and we don’t know why.”

When Cherry died, she was so afraid of moving on that she made herself into a jabber. Jabbers are a kind of ghost so traumatized by death that they can’t even haunt people or places like normal ghosts. They stick close to their bodies. Literally haunt their own corpses and tunnel in them from place to place. They won’t come out of the ground because their bodies are fragile and they’re afraid of being mistaken for zombies. Jabbers are about the most pathetic thing in the world.

“I don’t know what you want me to do. I can’t get near the kid.”

“You travel between worlds. I saw you come here from Hell. Come into the Tenebrae and stop her.”

“I don’t know how.”

“Find out.”

I get nearer the hole. Cherry doesn’t back away this time. I put out my hand. Slowly she creeps her hand forward until our fingertips are just touching. I was right. She’s real. A ghost hiding in her own bones.

“Jesus, Cherry, all you have to do is let go. Get out of this body. Get out of the ghost realm. Go on to wherever it is you’re supposed to go.”

“No!” she says. “Do you think Heaven is waiting for me with open arms? We both know where I’m going, and as long as these bones hold together, I’m staying right here.”

“I can help you when you get to Hell. Like you said, I couldn’t save you when you were alive. Maybe I can help now that you’re dead. But you have to let go.”

She crawls closer to the tunnel opening. I can see her lipless smile and eye sockets full of dirt and dry plant roots. I want to look away but I don’t.

“Where do you stay when you’re not stalking me?”

“I moved into an old cemetery in a field of old cemeteries. It’s the strangest place. Full of aetheric ghosts and physical ghosts like me.”

She makes a sound that’s almost like a laugh.

“There’s practically a traffic jam with us tunnelers. We have to be careful digging or we can fall into each other’s chambers.”

“What do you mean by a field of cemeteries? What the hell is that?”

“It’s like a cemetery for cemeteries. Or a garden where some kind soul has planted the dead and where we live. Go ask Teddy Osterberg. He’s the one who collects the cemeteries. I’m just one of the flowers in his garden.”

“So the little girl is killing Sub Rosas, civilians, and now ghosts. She tried to kill the other Stark, so she’s tried to kill an angel. Do you know anything about him?”

“Other Stark? He’s prettier than you. Like you in the olden days. Now you’re a mess. A girl likes a few scars. They give a man character. But you don’t have a shot with me anymore, darling.”

“Does anyone call the Tenebrae Blue Heaven?”

“I’m afraid we’re plain old Tenebrae. Tell me you’ll help us.”

I reach into my pockets for a Malediction and remember I gave my last one away. Anyway, Cherry wouldn’t want me smoking. Dried-out corpses are perfect kindling.