"We turn our backs on you. `Get thee behind me, Satan.'" He turned and spoke over his shoulder.

"Prepare yourself for Judgment, `for the Lord shall descend from Heaven with a Shout!'"

"I'll buy earplugs. Beat it."

He pursed his lips in repressed fury. "A lake of burning brimstone is waiting for you and your kind." He walked toward the exit as if in a daze.

Without so much as a parting shot, the rest of the flock ambled out of the shop. They mumbled among one another like JDs dispersed by a cop.

I turned around to see Ann standing a couple of feet behind me. I'd almost smacked into her. She had her hands over head, her fingers pointing forward. A smile of triumph spread across her lips.

"You can lower them now," I said. "This wasn't a stickup."

She smiled even wider until she took a look at the mess.

"Damned fishheads." Kasmira rose from behind the counter to start recovering the salvageable items. "It happens every year, right after Hallowmas," she quietly muttered.

"It looks like World War III," Ann said, stooping to pick up a red candle molded in the shape of a woman. She gazed at it with a sad frown.

"Bridget's all right," she said to Kasmira. "She's just exhausted. Do you have insurance?"

A weary voice from the back said, "Of course we do-through Bautista. Oh, shit." Bridget stared at the devastation.

"It's not too bad, Grandmother." Kasmira used a dustpan to scoop up multihued piles of incense. "Just a couple of windows and the main counter. They didn't take anything, and the expensive stuff's OK."

"Damned Christian of `em." The old woman paused to give me a twice-over. "You're a bright bit of luck that's stumbled into our lives. Beat it before I lose my womanly grace."

I glanced at Ann for a clue to my next action. She busied herself helping Kasmira.

"Go on," Bridget fumed. "You may not realize it, but you've got work to do!"

"Such as?" I asked.

"First, you've got to decipher what I relayed to you." She leaned against her cane, striving to look inscrutable.

"Why don't you save us all a good deal of time and tell me?"

"Because," she said with a sly smile, "I don't know what it means. I'm simply a vessel. I convey a message, using the best images I can. It's garbled by its transference through various spheres and planes of reality."

"I never cared for parlor games, lady."

"Mr. Ammo." Her voice was suddenly placating-almost friendly. "This game you've chosen to play involves far more than one mere parlor. This one is for the entire world and all it reflects."

I picked up a couple of bruised candles from the floor, dusted them off, and placed them by the cash register.

"The whole ball of wax. Right, lady?" I nodded to Ann and turned to leave. Blondie stayed put.

"Hang on, Dell. I've got a question." She turned to Bridget. "Is there a new moon coming up soon?"

"It's tonight. Saturday morning, actually."

"That clinches it." Her demeanor changed to intense determination. She turned and beat me out the door. Her hair shone in the sunlight like ropes of gold chain. "Thanks for everything!" she called back to Bridget. "I owe you a million!"

She glanced back at me. "Let's go, Dell."

"Where?"

"Your office, for starters."

"It's a long walk downtown. Or would you prefer to go back for the Porsche?"

She blanched.

"Besides," I said, "the car's hot. It probably has a want out on it by now, and I know lots of old associates who'd love to see me put away for a minor felony. It'd be a great joke."

I shook my head. A Santa Ana wind had turned the day pleasantly warm outside. We strolled east on the boulevard. The Bible-thumpers had made themselves scarce.

We walked down to the freeway bus stop and waited for the connection to Old Downtown to show up. Unlike the true believers in the store, passersby didn't pay us much notice. Quite a few of them still seemed to be wandering around in shock.

Ann sat down on the bench beneath the overpass. She seemed unconcerned about the dust and city grime. "The important thing to do now," she said as if continuing some other conversation, "is to decode what Bridget said."

I sat down, stretching my legs out. "She said that even she didn't know what she meant."

She stared up at the grey concrete overhead. "The blood was the blood of the Maiden, the Virgin. A girl's first menstrual period. She said that it was the First Blood and linked it to the cycles of the Moon. That was pretty explicit. The cramps I experienced confirms that. Severe menstrual cramps, and I'm nowhere near my own period."

I nodded politely and watched the traffic speed by. I wasn't too interested in women's medical problems.

"Dell," she said finally, "We're going to encounter a lot of things that seem strange or inconsequential on the surface. We have to be aware of every little detail. The phenomena that a lot of people call `magic' consist of methods to unlock selected portions of the human mind. Once open, these parts of the mind can perform astonishing feats and induce powerful changes in the outside world. After what happened to us, you can't deny that there are certain people who can see things that others can't."

I didn't like it. It sounded too self-consciously mystical. "I could still be tripping on the drugs," I said.

"Not many people see an RTD bus stop on acid."

"Could be a bum trip."

"Dell-just because most people can't integrate a variable across an interval doesn't mean that a mathematician is a magician simply because he can."

"It would have a thousand years ago."

"Yes, but we see the difference now. The mathematician has merely been trained to use a part of his mind in a specific manner. A… whatever you want to call her-a witch-is trained to manipulate a different set of symbols for the same purpose: to understand and utilize nature."

The bus arrived. I flagged it down.

Ann stood and stretched like a gold and turquoise cat. She wasn't concerned with any reply I might have made. We were both tired.

The bus lumbered off the freeway and slowed. It was an aging thing, wary of its movements. It hissed and grumbled to a halt, its brakes creaking like old muscles.

Ann paid for both of us. I picked seats near the rear exit. The only other passengers were an old woman behind the driver and a young bum behind us. The old lady wore a rotting brown cloth coat and held a paper bag full of paper bags to her chest. She muttered quietly to the outside world, damning it for her grief.

The young man sat reading a trashy pornoplaque, the cleanest thing about him. Sweat stained his denim jacket in twin circles under his arms. He chewed on something that occasionally dripped past his lips into his ruddy beard, disappearing from sight.

After several minutes of uncomfortable silence, Ann asked, "Do you believe in god? Really believe?"

"No. It wasn't part of my upbringing."

"Do you believe in satan?"

"It's a package deal, sister. I don't believe in either one. If I need to see the devil, I only have to look as far as a local precinct house where a cop beats out confessions. Or a government office where nicely dressed agents take your money to line their pockets. Or the city streets where some punk would kick his grandmother's head in for a quarter."

"Humanity's not all that bad, Dell."

"Sure," I said, "I know-somewhere there glows the pure fire of truth, reason, justice, and hope." I drew a cigarette from my pack and lit it. "I'd like to find it someday."

The old lady at the front looked at me and pointed at the No Smoking sign. She coughed into her hand, looked at it, and wiped it on her coat.

Ann didn't notice. She smiled at me. "You may have your chance yet."

"Yeah. And pigs may fly." I gazed out the window. "Speaking of which, that police helicopter's been circling Van Ness for quite some time."