I lean close to the screen and smile.

“Hi. I’m a young college student trying to earn extra money selling magazine subscriptions door-to-door. Would you be interested in a ten- to twenty-year subscription to Possession with Intent to Sell, and its sister publication, I’m Going to Burn Your House Down While You’re Asleep in Bed Tonight?”

She stares, her mouth open a little, like she’s trying to form a question but forgot how to speak English in the last three seconds. I pull the screen door open and brush past her inside. She stands there, turns, and watches me invade her living room.

Carolyn has short dry hair that frames her face perfectly. She’d be pretty if she dids ty if sdn’t have deep bruise-colored rings around her eyes and her skin wasn’t the texture of sandpaper. There are red welts on the inside of her arms where she’s been compulsively picking at the skin. I can smell not-quite-metabolized meth in her sweat. Her heart’s jacked up and her eyes are pinpricks, but that’s the drugs and not me. The angel in my head wants me to go easy so the back of her skull doesn’t blow off and take her brain with it. That’s a good idea. On the other hand, she’s dealing DHS black-box psychic poison to teenyboppers who don’t have a clue that demons, Kissi, and other brain-sucking assholes are out there waiting to get a claw hold in their cortex.

Carolyn stands by the door, arms crossed. When the clockwork in her brain kicks back in, she follows me into an avocado-and-orange living room with overstuffed chairs, throw pillows, and a long rattan sofa. It looks like the set for a seventies snuff film. She stops a few feet away and looks at me with a jittery stare, trying to figure out if she should know me. If she owes me money. If I owe her.

“Sit down,” I say.

She doesn’t. I take a step toward her.

“Sit down,” I say again.

She walks around me and sits on the sofa, knees together, hands folded in her lap like she just graduated from charm school. I sit across from her on a cushioned green chair. I pull it over to the sofa so we’re sitting face-to-face. The chair springs are long gone and my ass tries to sink below my knees. Not a good look when you want to come across as intimidating. I slide forward and sit on the edge of the chair.

“Are you a cop?” she asks.

“Do you think I’m a cop?”

“No.”

“Then maybe we should go from there and see where it takes us. Is that all right with you, Carolyn?”

“Fine. Whatever. If you’re not a cop, who are you?”

“I lied earlier. I’m not a college student.”

She starts picking at the skin on her left arm.

“Stop that. You dig that arm open and you’re going to get gangrene in a dusty shithole like this.”

“What do you care?”

“I don’t, but it’s annoying to look at.”

“What the fuck is it you want? You want money? Do I look like I have any money? Look around.”

She waves a hand at the general wreckage. It’s not so much that the place is a mess, itl rs a mes’s that nothing is where any sane person would put it. It’s like everything she owns, from furniture to coffee cups, she’s used once and then dropped where she was when she was done with it.

“I don’t have to look, Carolyn. I know that whatever kind of pig wallow you live in, you have money because you’re a dealer,” I say. “I can see it in your eyes and hear it in the tiny catches in your voice. You’re also strung out and about six months from a fatal stroke. You know you have high blood pressure, don’t you? That doesn’t mix well with meth.”

She lifts her head, still eyeing me.

“How do you know that?”

She gnaws on her thumb. Her fingernails have all been chewed down to the quick. There’s plaster dust on her fingertips.

“It’s just a trick I do. I know things about people. Like how all the money you say you don’t have is stuffed in a hiding place in the wall.”

The look she gives me is halfway between anger and dumb wonder.

“When did you come in my house?”

“I’ve never been here before. That was just to show you that lying isn’t going to get you anywhere fun.”

“If you want the money, take it. I’m sick. I can’t stop you.”

“I don’t want your money. I just want a name or two.”

“What name?”

“Before we get to that, did you sell Akira to Hunter Sentenza?”

She leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees, jacked up and exhausted at the same time.

“I didn’t sell it to him. I gave it to him. We’re like, you know, friends. We’re going to get clean together.”

I look at her. Her brain is vibrating so fast I can’t read her. I go another way.

“Why not? You’ve got yourself a nice rich-boy client who was going to pay for your treatment. What was the plan? You take a walk your second day in and pocket whatever refund money you can con out of the clinic?”

She shakes her head and her straw-dry hair sways around her cheeks.

“It’s not like that. Hunter and me are friends. We’re going to do it together. For real this time.”

“Then you haven’t heard about him.ȏonut him.1D;

She sits up. Alert and for the first time somewhat focused.

“Something happened to Hunter?”

“He’s missing. It was that last dose of Akira. His brain threw a rod. He jumped through a window and now he’s missing.”

“Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.”

She covers her face with her hands. That was dumb. Never tell meth heads the truth. The whole reason they’re high is they’re severely reality-phobic. I snap my fingers in front of Carolyn’s face. Lightly slap her arms.

“Come back to earth, Carolyn. We need you. Hunter needs you.”

“Will he be okay?”

“I don’t know. It depends entirely on what you can tell me. I need the name of your supplier.”

“Why do you need that? Why aren’t you out looking for him?”

“Do you know where to start looking?”

“No.”

“Neither do we. What we do know is that Hunter used Akira without any problems and then all of a sudden he went psychobilly. I have a bad feeling that maybe there was something wrong with that last batch. Hunter’s reaction wasn’t a regular OD. It was real specific, so I want to know what was in there, who put it in there, and why.”

She sits up and shakes her head. Draws her hands close to her body.

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Yes, you can. You’re Hunter’s friend and you want him found so the two of you can get better together.”

“I can’t.”

I scoot forward on the chair and lean close to Carolyn. She freezes, trying to keep her eyes from meeting mine.

“Or maybe you’re not Hunter’s friend and you gave him a hot shot. Is that what you did, Carolyn? Did someone give you a special dose of Akira just for Hunter?”

Stop digging, boys, we struck oil.

Carolyn’s brain is still humming like a tuning fork, but at least she’s focused on something now. It’s there in her eyes. She’s beating herself silly trying to make all the contradictions and lies in her life add up to something sane. She really believes she’s Hunter’s friend, but the meth fog she livdiv fog shes in lets her justify giving Hunter drugs she knew were bad because someone up the food chain promised her more drugs or more money or the chance to settle a long-standing debt. Whatever her reasons, she feels guilty as hell. The addict self-pity tears start pumping out of her red and bruised eyes. I want to smack her to see if it snaps her brain back into gear, but I just pat her lightly on the shoulder. I keep my voice low, like I’m speaking to a child.

“Who gave you the special Akira?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Sure you can. Just give me a name, I’ll go, and you can get back to turning your brain to fish food.”

“Fuck you.”

She practically spits the words. Her whole body changes. She was a limp jellyfish a second ago and now she’s ready to put her fist through the wall. We’re on to the next step in this soap opera. She’s not thinking like a tame little user now. She’s moved into dealer mode. Hard-core. Defiant.