Someone’s dropped a coat on the ground. I pick it up, take Candy by the arm, and walk her around the corner. When we’re out of sight of the club, I use the coat to wipe Cale’s blood from her face and hands.

I say, “Thanks for saving me back there.”

Her eyes are a little vacant.

“Wow. I haven’t done that to a person for a long fan for a time.”

“How are you feeling?”

“A little spacey, but okay. Are you okay? We should get you to see Allegra to get the bullet out.”

“I’m fine. It barely grazed me and I’ve already stopped bleeding.”

She leans against the wall, a little out of breath.

“He shot you. I wouldn’t have done what I did if he hadn’t shot you.”

“I know.”

She stares at me, her eyes still a little unfocused, but she’s coming back to earth.

“Did I go too far?”

I shrug.

“Technically he did shoot me. And he did kill his friend, so we can assume he would have kept shooting until he killed me or I got him. So, yeah, you saved me, and from my point of view that’s a good thing.” I pause. “Next time, though, maybe you can just snack on the bad guys a little until we see just how much fight they have in them. We probably don’t need to kill all of them.”

“Don’t kill everyone. Got it. You sure you’re okay?”

“The arm’s fine. The coat took most of the damage. It was brand-new. Now it’s like all my damn clothes. Shot up and bled on.”

She cups my face in her hands and kisses me hard. I kiss her back.

“What happens now?” Candy says.

“We go see Hunahpu. I know where the address is. We can leave the bike.”

“How are we going to get there?”

I pull her away from the wall.

“Have you ever walked through a shadow?” I ask.

“Uh, no.”

“Want to?”

“Sure.”

“Don’t let go of my hand.”

I step into the ripe black darkness in the recess by a loading-bay door, pulling Candy with me into the Room of Thirteen Doors.

I take her out again near the address the kid gignss the ave me. It’s on Fairfax a little north of Beverly Boulevard.

As we step from the shadow, Candy says, “Holy fucking goddamn fuck, that’s cool. What was that room we went through?”

“It’s called the Room of Thirteen Doors. I can go anywhere in the universe through those doors, even to Heaven and Hell.”

“Why did we drive to the club? If I had something that cool, I’d be running in and out of it all day and night just to mess with people.”

I believe her. I’m glad I have the key and she doesn’t.

“It feels weird using it in the city when I’m going somewhere the first time. Like the club tonight. I didn’t know where it was or what was going to be there when we arrived. I like to drive because I like to get a look at a place the first time I go there.”

“Why don’t you just get your own car?”

“Are you kidding? People steal them.”

UP THE STREET is a white two-story office building plastered together to look vaguely colonial. It’s as bland and forgetful as any real-estate office.

The first floor is dark, but there are lights behind the windows on the second. It’s almost three and there’s barely any traffic in either direction. Candy and I walk across the street to the glass-and-aluminum front doors. BIO-SPECIALTIES GROUP is painted on the door in a reassuringly scientific-looking serif font.

In theory, I could step into a shadow here and come out on the second floor near the lights, but I don’t want to do that. Drug cookers tend to be on the jumpy side and I’ve already been shot at once tonight. I take Candy around the side of the building and we use a shadow to get into the lobby. No alarms go off, so they don’t have motion detectors down here. So far so good.

There’s a locked wooden door at the top of the stairs with the company’s name on it. I stand there for a minute.

“What are we doing?” asks Candy.

“Shh.”

Light leaks from beneath the door where it doesn’t quite touch the floor. I watch for moving shadows to see if people are moving around and how many there might be. Nothing moves past the door. I let the angel’s senses expand.

There are voices off to my right. Seven, maybe eight. The clinks and taps of metal and glass. The whir of machines and whisper of small gas flames. That will be the lab. Off to my left, closer to the street, I get nothing. Probably offices, unoccupied at this hour. Everyone seems to be beeneems tounched up in the lab.

I say, “Keep your head down when we get inside.” Then I take her hand and we slip inside through a shadow on the wall.

Behind the door is a reception area with a desk, computer, and phone. Wrought-iron letters spell out BIO-SPECIALTIES GROUP on the wall above the receptionist’s desk. Either the company deals with a lot of amnesiacs or they really, really like the sound of their own name.

The office at the front of the building overlooking the street isn’t set up to impress, but at least it looks like the lab is a legit business. It must do everything by courier or pickup them. There’s a plain wooden desk that you’d see in any high school principal’s office, piled with receipts, schedules, and undelivered lab results. A business phone with about ninety buttons, most unlabeled. A combination fax and copy machine. In the corner is a plant with shiny green leaves. It looks like the only thing in the office the occupant cares about.

We go into the next office. Hallelujah. This one is decked out for a bank president. Dark green walls with light trim. Very Victorian. An oak desk with inlaid leather, big enough to land cargo planes. A plasma TV on one wall and a glass-fronted cabinet on the other filled with framed certificates and trophies. It’s all very nice and respectable looking and copied straight out of an executive furniture catalog, I bet. The wall to the left of the desk is why the nice office is back here and not up front with a view. This one has a window looking right into the lab.

I was right. There are eight people on the night shift. A collection of clean-cut MIT types and scruffy old-school meth cookers who have enough brain cells left to move up the food chain to the exotica market.

What’s really interesting isn’t the people but their gear. It isn’t ordinary college-surplus Bunsen burners and Dr. Frankenstein bubbling flasks. The place is decked out like a TV starship. Smooth, sexy, and at times translucent Golden Vigil gear, a collection of advanced human tech tweaked by angels recruited by Aelita, the Vigil’s psycho angel queen. The last time I saw her, she was quitting the Vigil so she could return to Heaven and, no shit, kill God, the dead-eyed neglectful dad who she thought had outlived his usefulness. Aelita might be the most vicious and craziest thing with wings I’ve ever met, but you’ve got to give her credit for ambition.

The window looking into the lab must be one-way glass because no one in there has noticed us. Candy has probably seen drug cookers and I know she’s never seen anything like Golden Vigil tech. She’s got her nose pressed against the window like it’s her first visit to the zoo.

I sit down at the desk and dial Hunahpu’s number from his office phone. That ought to get his attention. I look through the lab window, hoping Hunahpu is inside with the techs. I hear the cell ring, but none of the techs pulls out a cell phone. After the few rings, Hunahpu’s phone cuts off. No voice-mail message. Nothing. A minute later the desk phone rings. I wait. A few rings and a recorder built into the phone kicks in. An amplified voice comes through the unectrough tit’s speaker.

“Stark. Pick up. I know you’re there.”

Damn.

I pick up the receiver.

“Who is this?”

“It’s who you wanted to speak to. So speak.”

“How did you know I’d be here?”

“I know you saw Carolyn. And I know you’re the kind of persuasive person who would get her to talk about Cale. If you have my cell and are calling from my office, something tells me you found him, too. Is he dead?”