I start for the platform. Candy puts her hand on my shoulder. I shrug her off. She thinks I’m going to charge Hunter. I’m not. I just want to get close to see who I’m talking to.

Mason understands and kneels down so that we’re eye to eye.

He says, “Now you have it. Your invitation. You have exactly three days from when I leave this body to find Alice and take her . . . well, I really don’t care what you do with her. In the meantime, don’t worry. She’s in the safest place in town. The penthouse suite of the big asylum. Most of the inmates escaped weeks ago. The dangerous ones. Of course, the place is home to them, so they tend to wander back.”

I can see him looking back at me through Hunter’s eyes. No demon. It really is Mason.

“What’s it going to be? Are you going to play my game or are you going to stay safe in L.A. playing Gary Cooper and wasting your time saving people who don’t deserve it from things they’ll never understand?”

I lean in close to Hunter’s ear. Mason leans in to listen. I say a word in Hellion and he flies back, bouncing off the shield on the far side of the platform like he was hit with a sledgehammer. Vidocq and Candy get me from behind, throwing their full weight into me. Pulling me down. I let them. I don’t want to kill Hunter because of what’s inside him.

Mason staggers to his feet.

“You got me good, Jimbo. But that’s all right. I’ll take that as a yes. It’ll be good to see you again.”

He twitches.

“Jim? Are you still there? What’s happening? I . . .”

And Alice is gone. Hunter collapses onto the platform. It’s over.

Traven rubs away some of the binding hex marks. He and Vidocq lift Hunter from the platform and lay him out on the floor.

I’m stuck where I am. I feel a sucking sensation in my chest and for a second I can’t breathe. Gradually I feel Candy’s armsowix2019;s around me. I squeeze her hand and she lets me up.

Hunter is breathing. His eyes flicker open and closed. He doesn’t look like he’s going to drop dead this minute, but he’s still pretty Linda Blair. Traven isn’t looking so good either. He’s pale and his neck is dark with bruises and broken blood vessels where Hunter grabbed him.

I pick Hunter up and tell Candy and Vidocq to help Traven.

“We’re going out the fast way.”

They get their arms around Traven’s shoulders and steady him. Vidocq is closest to me, so I grab his arm and walk the few steps to the wall. We disappear into a shadow.

Come out again in the minimall parking lot. Pedestrians pass us on the way to their cars with take-out pizza and new manicures. A few of them stare. They must have seen us. Fuck ’em. The way we look, no one is going to tell anyone about it without a doctor shoving Thorazine down their throat.

We head across the lot for Kinski’s old hoodoo clinic. The place Allegra has taken over. A sign on the door reads EXISTENTIAL HEALING. Vidocq gets out his cell and dials Allegra. I don’t wait. I start pounding on the door.

A few good raps later, someone opens the doors looking pissed. It’s Allegra. She looks at Hunter and her eyes narrow. Then she sees Vidocq and Candy holding up Father Traven.

“Jesus, Stark. You’re like the Antichrist Santa Claus. Bring in the presents.”

We get Hunter inside and on the exam table. Allegra takes over, looking at Hunter’s eyes, shining a light into his blackened mouth. She turns and takes things out of a drawer. She presses one of them to Hunter’s forehead. A silver crucifix. Nothing happens. Then she touches iron. Gold. A mixture of garlic and holy water. Nothing happens with any of them.

“Good,” she says.

She rubs a yellowish salve on the inside of a mortar and tosses in thistle leaves, white ash bark, and things I can’t identify. She holds a match to the gloop and the whole thing goes up in a whoosh of fire, leaving only ash. She dumps it into her hands and rubs the ashes across Hunter’s forehead and eyes.

“Get me the glass, will you, Candy?” she says.

Traven is standing on his own now, so she leaves him and lifts several bundles of purple silk from a cabinet. Allegra takes one as Candy sets the rest on the exam table.

Allegra unwraps the first one and sets it over Hunter’s heart. It looks like a heavy white stone. She sets other pieces of glass on Hunter’s hands and diaphragm.

The stones are really pieces of ancientanys of an glass vessels saturated in divine light. Shards of the first stars. Kinski once used six of them to save Allegra. Now Allegra is the doctor, using them to save a kid she’s never seen before and has no reason to care about. But she does it like she’d die, too, if the kid doesn’t make it. It’s a funny world.

Hunter shudders and opens his mouth. Vapor drifts from his mouth again, but it’s the same gray now as the ash. Allegra nods.

“Whatever was in him is gone.”

“You sure?”

She looks at me.

“I know what possession looks like. This one took more stones than usual. What was in him?”

I don’t want to tell her. I’m feeling stupid and the last thing I want to do is have to hang around and explain anything.

“Candy and Vidocq can tell you.”

“Well, whatever it was, it’s gone now.”

“Good.”

She nods at Traven.

“What happened to him?”

“That’s Father Traven, the exorcist. No hoodoo injuries. The demon just grabbed his throat and squeezed like it was trying to make orange juice.”

Allegra looks past me at the father.

“Set him down in the lobby and let me get my instruments. I don’t want to move the boy for a while.”

Traven makes it to the lobby under his own steam, though Candy and I walk behind to catch him if he falls. He drops onto one of the plastic chairs. He leans forward, resting his face in his hands.

“I think I left my bag at that place,” he says.

“Don’t worry, Father. We’ll retrieve it for you,” says Vidocq.

I hand him Allegra’s car keys.

“Sorry. I’d like to go back and get it, but I have things I need to do.”

“I understand,” he says. He looks at me like I’m ice and someone is about to toss boiling water on me. Will I explode or just melt?

He says, “We all heard what the demon said back at Avila. Don’t do anything insane based on the word of a creature like that, Jimmy. They are masters of lies.”

ont>

I shake my head.

“That wasn’t the demon talking. That really was Mason. And he has Alice. I’m not going to do anything crazy. I’m going to do what I should have done all along.”

“What?” he says, but I ignore the question.

“Call Hunter’s parents,” I say. “Tell them he’s all right and give them the address. I need to go.”

I catch Candy’s eye and she follows me out into the parking lot.

“Where are you going?” she asks. There’s a little catch in her voice.

I get close and say, “I know this is the most fucked situation I could have dragged you into, but I need to talk to someone. Please trust me. I’ll meet you back at the hotel as soon as I can.”

She looks up at me.

“You’re coming back, right?”

“Of course.”

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

She kisses me. I kiss her back, though in the back of my mind I’m already going to do what I have to do.

She takes a step back.

“You’re going back, aren’t you? Back to Hell.”

“I don’t have any choice. They snatched Alice out of Heaven because of me. I can’t leave her down there.”

Candy nods.

“I know. You have to do the right thing. Ride into the sunset and do your Good, the Bad and the Ugly thing. I think that’s why I like you. You do the most fucked-up things for the best reasons.”

“I’ll see you back at the hotel. Scout’s honor.”

“Where are you going?”

“I need to talk to Mustang Sally.”

BY THE TIME I make the corner, my hands are shaking. Even the angel is pissed, and that’s not easy to do. I want someone to try to pick my pocket or pull a knife. I want an excuse. All I need is an excuse.