“If you don’t kill her, I’ll never leave you alone. I’ll pull the floor out from under you and drop you so low you’ll be a cripple . . .”

I get in the Metro while Cherry is still talking. Traven looks a little alarmed.

“You were talking to a hole. Why?”

“Sometimes you need to remind the dead to stay dead. Maybe I hurt her feelings. She’ll get over it.”

“Who?”

“After we deal with Teddy, I’ll tell you all about it. Now please, can we just fucking go?”

Traven starts the car and pulls away from Blackburn’s, aiming us at Malibu.

“Why do we hate Teddy so much that we have to go there now instead of patching you up?”

“Teddy kills people and eats them and I don’t know if he does it in that order. And if he keeps killing dreamers, the world is over.”

Traven nods.

“I understand. But maybe we could stop and at least get you some bandages?”

“Also, Teddy seems to have a real taste for kids.”

Traven stops the car.

“Drive, Father.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t just leave you bleeding. I have towels in the trunk. You can at least staunch your wounds.”

“Fine.”

Traven pops the trunk and Candy grabs a couple of towels. I stuff them under the armor. The pressure feels good but I can’t help wondering a little if Traven doesn’t want me leaking all over the back of his car.

While Traven drives, Candy reaches between the seats and squeezes my bloody hand. I squeeze hers back.

What am I supposed to think about someone like Teddy Osterberg? I want to kill him but I want to understand him. Maybe that makes me weak. Maybe it’s just self-serving. Teddy is a stone-cold son-of-a-bitch killer. I want to look into his eyes and cross my fingers and hope I don’t see myself looking back. Which me would it be? Stark? Sandman Slim? Lucifer?

As much as I hate this guy, I can’t get rid of the image of those Hellion skins hanging loose and limp around the palace in Pandemonium. Maybe that’s the joke and has been all along. I go after a ghoul with all kinds of righteous fury, but looking back at all the things I’ve done, what if I’m there too, gnawing on skulls right along with Teddy? Just another ghoul in love with the dead.

I hid a lot of myself from Alice and I’ve hidden what I did in Hell from Candy. I know the monster part of myself. I love it and I hate it. Sometimes I’m ashamed of it. I don’t want to be Teddy, sitting on a hill by himself with only his ghosts and corpses for company. Being a real monster is easy enough on your own but not so much when you have something to lose. When this is over, I’m taking Candy back to the Chateau Marmont and get good and drunk and tell her a long story about how I spent my summer vacation in Hell. I should have done it earlier. It’s one thing to congratulate yourself for saving Wild Bill and maybe a couple of other souls from torture but it’s another to let someone who thinks they know you in on your dirty secrets about the bodies in gibbets and wet skins flapping like flags on the Fourth of July. That’s how you don’t become Teddy. You lay it all out and let others decide if they want to hang around the graveyard with you or catch the bus back to town.

Thank God for whiskey or the world would be so full of secrets the weight would spin us into the sun.

The front door is open when we reach Teddy’s Malibu mansion. The sky has stopped pulsing. Now clouds spin like airborne tornados, coming together in a single funnel cloud as big as the sky and then falling apart into islands of minitwisters that skim along the top of the ocean. A rain of fish, birds, and smooth ocean stones falls like hail when we reach the door. We don’t have any choice but to run inside or be brained.

Like the first time I was here, it’s mausoleum dark inside. We leave the door open for a little light but there’s not much to see besides the spindly foyer tables and Teddy’s bone sculptures. I take out the .45 and head into one of the side rooms to look for Teddy.

I left the towels in the car. It’s hard intimidating people with fluffy white towel corners sticking out from under your shirt. I feel a little liquid in my chest when I take deep breaths. Maybe a bullet sliced into my lung. The armor is holding me together, but whenever I cough there’s blood in it. Besides Teddy, my biggest worry is not letting Candy see it. I wish I had some Aqua Regia. That stuff is better than a swimming pool full of penicillin.

Something small shoots past my ear. A hand grabs my shoulder and slides down my back. When I turn, Candy is lying on the polished marble floor.

“Wow. She really is a Jade. I wasn’t sure.”

I kneel by Candy. Hold my fingers to her throat. She’s still breathing and her heart is beating.

I look around for the voice.

“This stuff doesn’t do anything to regular people but it’s like curare to Jades. Completely paralyzing. Amazing stuff.”

I turn slowly while Teddy talks, listening for where he might be. I hear him reloading the tranq gun but the foyer echoes, making him hard to pinpoint.

“Are you going to play with your gun all day or do something?”

“Come for me,” he says.

Traven leans down beside me and says, “There.”

In the dark, I can make out someone at the foot of the sweeping staircase with his hands up like a bank robber surrendering in a movie.

I charge him. Fish and rocks smash and splat outside and in my head I see Teddy hitting the ground and splitting open with them. Maybe I’ll toss him off the roof.

I fall. But it’s not really a fall. More like I’m a piece of iron sucked down by a magnet the size of Arizona. I land on my injured side on a big square of canvas, coughing up an impressive fountain of blood. Something is holding me to the floor like two-ton shackles. Lying here isn’t so bad. It’s hard to catch my breath, so I doubt I could stand right now anyway.

Traven moves from Candy to kneel beside me. He tries pulling me up but I don’t budge.

Teddy flicks a switch and a crystal chandelier lights up the foyer. There’s someone with him. She’s on the stairs above him, so even though she’s smaller, she towers over him. She has a pistol in her hand.

“You. Priest. Get away from them. Over by the wall.”

She moves the barrel of the gun to indicate where she wants Traven to stand.

Teddy opens his hands wide.

“Two-for-two. I’ve never been so lucky. You’re a gem. Do you know that? Poison for the Jade and a binding circle to trap the Devil.”

He looks at Traven and frowns.

“We didn’t expect a civilian. All there is for you is the gun. How boring.”

I can move just enough to crane my head around and see the woman. I’m low and from this angle can only see her upside down but I know those scars. It’s Lula Hawks.

Teddy comes over from the stairs. I haven’t seen him like this before. Happy and animated. The crazy fuck is practically skipping like a little kid to dinner. He walks right past me to Candy. I try to turn my head but I’m stuck.

“I’m keeping this one alive,” he says. “She’ll go into one of the Gnostic graves until she’s ripe. I won’t eat her all at once. How often does one get to eat a Jade? I have to make her last.”

All I can see are his calfskin loafers as he circles in front of me. He bends at the waist and looks down so we’re eye to eye.

“Cat got your tongue?” he says.

He looks at Lula and brightens.

“Can I have his tongue? You can have the rest. I just want one little taste.”

“No,” she says. “The deal was you get the girl and I get the monster.”

She comes around next to Teddy, one hand on Traven’s arm and the other holding the gun.

“You know me now but do you remember me from before King’s place? Before Blackburn’s? Before I got these scars?”

“Didn’t I scrape you off my boots at a Fresno dairy farm?”

Teddy laughs. All worked up like this, he sounds creepily like the little girl.