“I may have questions. ”

“That’ll be fine. I’m just. so happy to see you!” she added, forcing a hug around my chest.

I didn’t know how to respond to this mercurial monster. Was she crazy or just controlling? I didn’t know. I squirmed away. “I may want to look in other boxes,” I reminded her.

“I don’t mind,” she said. “Call before you come, though—I might be out.”

I didn’t ask what she’d be doing. I didn’t care except that it might slow me from getting what I wanted and getting out of that smog-bound lotus land and specifically away from her.

CHAPTER 5

I thought I might regret it, but I drove away from my mother’s house and around the backs of the Hollywood hills toward Mulholland Drive. I wasn’t looking forward to this meeting, either, but I had to try to talk to Cary one more time before I got any deeper into the mystery of my own past. I wanted to know why he’d popped up now and what he’d meant by “things waiting” for me.

No matter what a ghost tells you, there’s always the possibility that it’s a lie or just plain wrong. They aren’t omniscient or instantly truthful just because they’re dead. They’re as stupid and opinionated as they were in life, and even more limited in knowledge most of the time. Once in a while, they get hold of information that exists only in the Grey, and then things get a lot more complicated. I was betting that Cary had remained, in death, a lot like he’d been in life: curious, stubborn, cautious, and foolishly romantic.

I took the grumbling little car up the twisty roads of the hills until I reached the saddle where Mulholland crests the ridge from the southeast and starts down into the valley on the northwest, crossing Coldwater Canyon Road above the reservoir. I parked the car in the overlook—no more than a dusty, extra wide bit of shoulder to accommodate the desire of drivers to stop and stare at the view spreading on both sides of the road.

Just behind my car was an odd little hump where the roads met and a lone house perched at the top of the rise, glimmering through the brushy chaparral at the top of a gated road. On the other side of the turnout was the place Cary had parked the night he died so he could watch that house. I didn’t want to put my car there, so I left it where it was and stepped out, being careful of the blind traffic coming across the ridge. I walked along the crumbling edge of the packed dirt. The scent of the dust and the plants swelled in the warming afternoon air, poisoned with the acid of exhaust.

To the south I could look down into the steep, storm-forged canyons of Los Angeles and its colony of rich and famous recluses and Spanish revival houses set in the twists of the arroyo walls. To the north the broader, rolling floodplain of the San Fernando Valley offered its more sanitized and spreading estates in the descending hills of Sherman Oaks and Studio City before the valley turned into an endless bowl of suburbia smothered in smog.

I came to a boulder that had been shoved and wedged at the edge of the turnout by the last big landslide, and I sat on it, waiting. If Cary was going to show up, I figured this was the place: about a hundred feet straight up from where he’d died.

After a while of sitting in the sun and staring into the Grey, I saw him, trudging up the canyon side, trailing uncanny flame and smoke. Cary didn’t quite levitate, though his feet made no impression on the ground or plants he passed over. He reached me and stopped, swirled in fire that crackled and stunk of burning creosote and charring flesh.

I gagged, but held it down with difficulty. A desire to shake and scream and cry and hide my face crawled beneath my skin. It wasn’t just the smell but the presence of the man I used to love amid the flame and the sunshine and the odor of past and present warring in my senses. I’d never seen a ghost so horrible.

“Hiya, Slim,” he said, staying a few feet away from me as if he thought he might set me alight if he drew closer. I wasn’t sure he wouldn’t.

“Hi,” I faltered back.

“You look sad. What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I don’t know. You called me and now. things are crazy. My dad killed himself. Did you know that? Is that what you wanted me to discover about my past?” It sounded angry and accusatory, and I don’t know why I said it that way—it just came out.

“No. I don’t know what you need to find out. I just know. We’re not like you. Dead is like being locked in a room in the loony bin with only a cruddy little window some tree’s grown in front of. Sometimes you get out on the ward floor, but usually you’re just in your room. You can’t see much and you can’t go out unless someone opens the door.”

“Who opened it? Who let you out?” I thought if I knew who, I might be able to figure out what I was supposed to know.

Cary shook his burning head. The long-gone flesh was blackened and crisp, but the face was still his, though his eyes were only coals and his smile showed tombstone teeth against the inferno that engulfed him.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I had the chance and I took it, but that window’s starting to close. I’ll have to leave soon.”

“Then you’ll have to talk fast.” My voice caught in the back of my throat like smoke and stones.

“I don’t have a complete picture,” Cary said. “Just the outline. What I can see or hear from my tiny window. I heard about you when you first came here. I couldn’t believe you were dead. I tried to get to you then, but by the time I got close, you weren’t with us anymore. And then it got so much harder to get near you. There are things after you. Things near you all the time. I don’t know what to call them. They aren’t the dead and they aren’t the living. They watch you and they have been for a long time. They were watching you even when I died and since before then—a long time. Now something’s happening. Something’s. breaking. Suddenly it’s like everything is unlocked around you and the things from your past are flooding out. I snuck out with them, but I can’t stay. I don’t think they mean you any good. They’re. evil things. That sounds so crazy. ”

He was fading. I tried to reach for him, but my arms felt scorched and I jerked them back. “It’s not crazy. Cary! Don’t go!”

He put out his incorporeal hand, wreathed in fading fire, and stroked my cheek, sending a whisper of burning and chill over my face. “I’m sorry, Slim. If I told you I loved you, I lied. I miss you, but I don’t want you here. I’m. so sorry. Be careful. They come out of the past. They come. from. evil.”

“No!” I shouted as he snuffed out and disappeared into the smoggy canyon air in a dwindling stream of smoke. I snatched at the dark plume as it dissipated and got nothing but a handful of eucalyptus leaves and the odor of doused campfires.

“Cary!” I screamed, willing him to come back, knowing he was gone and I couldn’t bring him back. I was outraged and hurt and torn into pieces. I thought of Quinton’s uncomplicated affection and I hated Cary, but I kept yelling his name until I had to lay my head on my drawn-up knees and gulp my breath.

I sat huddled in the umber-tinged sunlight until the dreadful sensation of loss was bearable. Not just Cary Malloy and whatever I’d thought we’d had, but my father and my belief in my past had all been swept away at a stroke, and I howled at the gashed hurt of fresh loss. Not even thoughts of Quinton and my home and my life could stop the ache of betrayal. The sound that tore itself out of me was not just of grief, but of fury. I wanted to find the truth—whatever it was—and devour it so I could never be lied to again. No matter how it hurt I was going to hunt it down.