Soon the air begins to clear. The echoes of the crash and the crazies’ screams fade away. There’s just the gentle sound of Vidocq cursing in French and Brigitte meeting him curse for curse in Czech.
“Who the fuck was that?” says Candy. “More Shoggots?”
“No. It was the construction workers. Some of them still had their hard hats and work shirts.”
“What happened to them?”
“They fucking invoked something on those stairs and then Norris and his boys invoked it again. Maybe they were going to change too, but they didn’t get the chance.”
Traven says, “Is that madness going to happen to us?”
“We didn’t walk straight down, so maybe we got around the hex.”
“Who would build something like that in here?”
“Right now I don’t really care. Let’s get out of here.”
Delon comes back and leads us to another staircase, this one with no amusing markings on it. Sore and bloody, we head down.
Right into a dead end. There’s no wreckage covering a possible exit. No windows or crawl spaces. Just a solid wall ahead and a small pile of debris behind.
“Paul,” I say.
He turns and looks at me. There’s already a trace of panic on his face. He knows where this is heading. I get a hand around his throat and shove him against the wall.
“What have you fucking done to us?”
He looks around like maybe a magic door will descend from Heaven above.
Candy puts a hand on my shoulder.
“Can’t you take us out through a shadow?”
“Take us where? Home? Disneyland? We didn’t come here for that. I want the ghost, and you, Delon, were supposed to get us to him. You’re Tykho’s spy and I went along with that as part of the deal, but you’ve been about as useful as a three-legged elephant. Why should I even explain myself to you? You’re not even a real boy.”
I reach under my coat for the black blade. But it’s not there. Candy grabs my arm.
“Stop. Just stop.”
I look at her, and for a second I see Alice’s face the first time she saw me kill someone. The moment she understood what I’d become. It didn’t feel good then and it doesn’t feel good now. I let go of Delon and he pushes past me and climbs halfway up the stairs.
“You okay?” says Candy.
“Swell. How about you?”
“Just another day in paradise.”
I want to say something more, something dumb and funny and reassuring, but in my head it’s all black and full of the snake-eyed dice and Devil heads. Bad juju. Evil thoughts. I’m not taking Delon apart right now, but that doesn’t make me want to do it any less. The only other thing I can think to do is what Candy said. Leave. Go out through a shadow and what then? Start over? Delon isn’t coming back with us, and without a guide we’ll be right where we were before we started. Maybe I could trade Tykho something for the map. Promise not to burn down her club or stake out all her toadies on the roof at sunrise. Maybe maybe maybe. It’s all bullshit. This city has done its best to keep the 8 Ball from me and I think it might have won. Maybe it’s time to go home, order room service, and wait for the end of the world in luxury.
“We are such fuckups,” I say.
“Relax. It could have been ten,” says Traven. Neither of us laughs, but I want to murder someone maybe 10 percent less. I think about what Mustang Sally said. “When you get lost keep going till you hit the end of the road. There will be something there, even if it’s not what you were looking for.” But there’s nothing here at all. Just a bunch of fools and a lot of ruins.
“Let’s go home,” I say.
“How?” says Delon. “We’re trapped. We’re fucked.”
“Does anyone know what this is?” says Traven. He holds out a blue plastic ball about five inches in diameter.
“Where did you find it?” says Brigitte.
“Back here. There are a lot more.”
We follow Traven back along the bread-crumb trail of plastic balls. It leads to the pile of debris in back. Vidocq goes down and he and Traven pull pieces of concrete and cinder blocks from the wall. Hundreds of colored plastic balls cascade out. Red. Blue. White. Green. Then the balls stop. There are so many of them that they’ve plugged up the hole they were pouring through.
“What are they?” says Candy.
“A way out?” says Traven.
I say, “Let me try something.”
They clear away from the hole. I get down right next to it and stick my Kissi arm into the wall of plastic. Nothing is going to bite the arm off, and if anyone is hiding on the other side, my bug arm will scare them off. But I don’t feel anything except more plastic balls. I pull my arm back.
“The hole is big enough to get through. I’m going in.”
“Like hell you are,” says Candy. “You’re hurt, you can’t do magic, and you’re probably out of bullets by now.”
“Someone has to go through and see what’s on the other side of this wall. And it’s not going to be Vasco de Asshole over there,” I say, looking at Delon.
“I’ll go,” says Brigitte. “My gun has some shots left.”
“Please don’t,” says Traven.
“It’s fine. There’s probably nothing there and I’ll be back in two seconds.”
Traven lets go of her arm. Brigitte gets out her pistol, kneels by the opening, and worms her way inside. More balls pour into the room. When she’s up to her waist, she’s still burrowing. Then only her feet are showing and she disappears.
A whoop comes through from the other side of the wall. Balls begin to fall again. In a few seconds Brigitte has dug back far enough to stick her head back into the room.
“Come through,” she says. “It’s incredible.”
Before I can say anything, Candy dives in after her. I shove Delon through next. I follow him and Traven and Vidocq follow me.
It’s not much of a climb. Only a few feet. I’m suspended in plastic balls for a second when I hear Candy say, “Put your feet down, dummy.”
I shift around until I clear enough balls under me to move my feet down and touch a floor. When I straighten up I find myself waist-deep in the plastic balls. The others pop up behind me.
The room is dark and smells of mold and something sweet. Like old soft-drink syrup spilled and left to go bad in wet carpets. Brigitte has her flashlight on. I can make out shapes under the collapsed ceiling. Booths. Pool tables. Pinball and motorcycle-racing machines against the walls.
“What the hell is this place?” I say.
“It’s one of those family joints,” says Candy. “You know. The family fills up on pizza and the kids get to run around and play games, including climbing around in ball pits.”
She bounces some of the plastic balls off my chest.
“We’re saved by America’s shitty eating habits,” she says.
Brigitte leads the way out of the pit and we follow her through the restaurant. The aluminum doors have long since been knocked down. We step over them and a small sea of broken glass and then we’re back in the main floor of the mall.
I say, “Hallelujah. Back where we started.”
“Not quite,” says Delon.
He’s standing by one of the upright mall maps.
“According to this, we’re one floor above the baths.”
“Lead the way,” I say.
He starts down a long flight of marble stairs. There’s a wet breeze coming from below and the smell of salt. Seawater?
WE COME DOWN into the middle of a whole spa complex. Massages. Manicures. Hair salons. Skin salons. Probably designer blood transfusions too. But it looks more like we landed in Dracula’s forgotten root cellar. Mushrooms sprout from mist-covered cracks in the marble floor. Small, stunted palm trees and bromeliads sprout along the hall. It looks like this entire level of the mall is rotting in the salt air. The walls and ceiling have buckled from the moisture. Dripping vines dangle from the metal grid that once held ceiling tiles. In our feeble lights it looks like no one has been down here in a thousand years.
Underneath the vines and mold on one wall is a sign pointing the way to the Roman baths. As we head down there I move the bones from my pocket into the lining of my coat. Stick the SIG in my pocket. If I can’t throw any hoodoo, I’m sure as shit going be ready to blast every Shoggot and monster Morlock piece of shit in Kill City.
There’s a cool wind blowing between the doors to the baths. Maybe a hole that’s letting in a sea breeze. Thin, dawn light filters through filthy windows in the ceiling several floors above the main bath, turning it into a strange ceremonial space. Somewhere to come for a baptism or human sacrifice after getting a perm.
There’s a fake Roman temple at one end of the bathing area. The main pool is octagonal, with three tiered steps down to a foot of tea-colored water full of loose tiles and broken furniture. Delon heads for the temple. The others circle the pool, staring into the scummy water like maybe the 8 Ball will float to the surface like Excalibur and fling itself into our arms. I sit down on the top step of the pool and take out a Malediction. The flare from the lighter gets everyone’s attention, but when they see it’s just me, they go back to looking disappointed.
“What happens now?” says Traven. “Does anyone know how to summon the ghost?”
All their beady little eyes turn in my direction. I shake my head.
“Don’t look at me. I couldn’t pull a bunny out of a hat right now.”
“Anybody else?” says Traven. “Brigitte. You worked with the dead. Do you know anything?”
She squats at the top of the pool and flicks in a pea-size piece of concrete with her thumb.
“This is the wrong type of dead. I know nothing about ghosts.”
“Vidocq? Do you have any tricks or potions?”
Vidocq raises his hands and drops them to his sides, a gesture of exasperation.
“Rien. Nothing.”
“We can’t have come all this way for nothing.”
Candy comes over and hands me her water bottle. I didn’t even know I was thirsty, but once I start drinking, it’s hard to stop. I hand her back the bottle.
“Any ideas?” she says.
“One.”
“You better act on it before you have a mutiny.”
I take a puff of the Malediction.
“Hey, asshole,” I yell. “Come out, come out, or I’m going to burn Kill City down. Also, Aelita sent us for the Qomrama.”
A gust of wind stirs the water. The light from the ceiling dims for a moment.
“Liar,” comes a disembodied male voice. “Aelita wouldn’t let you pick up her laundry.”
“If I say your name three times, will you show us your pretty face, Bloody Mary?”
“Why? I’m happy this way.”
“Are you afraid of us?”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
“You’re afraid of something,” I say.
“So are you, sonny. Being afraid is one of the realities of existence.”
Delon is back by the pool. He looks around the room, trying to pinpoint the ghost voice. Brigitte and Traven are as wide-eyed as starstruck teenyboppers. Vidocq, Candy, and I have all run into ghosts before. The others have never been in a real haunted house. Welcome to the Loudmouthed Dead Club.
“You know, for someone people keep telling us is a madman, you don’t sound all that crazy. Say something batshit for me so I know it’s really you.”
Silence. The cold wind blows in from a door at the back of the room.
“Samael is back in Hell. I don’t know if that’s exactly crazy, but it’s pretty funny. Also, one of you isn’t what he seems.”
No shit, Casper. It’s a real effort not to look at Delon.
I say, “I know all about that. How do you know about Samael?”
“The same way I know when and where you got that nasty Kissi arm.”
Slowly, he comes into focus, like an image on a video screen. First, the general shape forms and then it finally sharpens.
He’s entirely green—head, hair, and skin. And maybe a little taller than his brothers. Definitely not as round. Calling him buff would be stretching it, but by the family standards, the guy is Captain America.
“Fuck me. I should have known one of you was behind this bullshit. Does Muninn know you’re here?”
The ghost’s face splits into a wide grin. Not ghost. Mr. Muninn’s almost-twin. One of the God brothers.
“The five of us share some thoughts and knowledge in common, but we each have our secrets. This is one of mine.”
I get up and flick the Malediction into the pool a couple of feet from him.
“Hey, Father. Let me make some introductions. Father Traven, meet God. God, meet Father Traven.”
Traven’s eyes narrow at me. He can’t tell if I’m kidding or not. But he’s a smart enough guy and we’ve talked enough and he’s read enough arcana to work out the rest for himself.
“You’re God?” he says.
“A piece of the pie, yes. You look disappointed. Turn that around, multiply it by a million, and you’ll know how I feel about you people.”
I stand next to Traven in case he decides to freak out or faint.
“Remember how I told you that God had a nervous breakdown and broke into little pieces? The Mr. Muninn part is in Hell. Ruach is driving everyone crazy in Heaven. Neshamah is dead. That leaves two. Which one are you?”
“Nefesh,” he says, and mimes doffing a hat. “The smart one. The one no one even looks for because he’s an incorporeal, crazy old spook in a town teeming with them.”
