The idea that maybe I can save Candy the way I couldn’t save Alice is what lets me sleep at night. My friends are what make me wake up and start punching things because there’s no way I’m going to lie down and let some old gods or whoever is hiding the 8 Ball walk away without a limp. I’ll die and crawl out of Hell and do it again and again until there’s nothing left of one of us. Unto the fucking end of fucking time. Hallelujah.

A COUPLE OF days later, Candy and I are walking back to the Chateau after I ditch the Audi we used to crash a necromancer key party. You haven’t lived until you’ve busted in on a bunch of naked, pasty-ass necromancers going Playboy After Dark on a roomful of reanimated corpses. I don’t have to make any threats at this point. Everyone knows what I’m there for. Candy and I just steal some beers and leave them to their smelly fun.

It’s early evening. The streetlights have just come on. There’s a crowd in front of the Chateau. The police have the front of the place cordoned off. Techs from the bomb squad are packing up and a hazmat team is surveying the area with handheld poison detectors. It reminds me of a Vigil operation.

Someone has staked a nithing pole in front of the hotel, a little up the driveway from where it turns off Sunset.

The pole is ten feet tall, with runes carved down its sides. On top there’s a hog’s head, with the skin from the body draped underneath it. Your usual nithing pole uses a horse’s head. I guess the hog is supposed to be some kind of insult to go along with the curse, but really the little feet dangling in the air, bathed in the blue and red disco lights from the cop cars . . . it’s more funny than it is menacing.

From across the street, Candy and I watch as the hazmat team goes to work. They put up a plastic-wrapped ladder and carefully lift the head off the pole. Put it in a double-thick plastic bag and seal it like the hog is made of plutonium.

“Who uses a nithstang anymore?”

“Seriously. Someone’s in big trouble with PETA,” says Candy.

“There’s symbols carved into the pole. Can you see them?”

“It’s too far away.”

“Damn. I wonder if I can pickpocket a camera from one of the looky-loos.”

“My phone has a pretty good zoom. I’ll try to get some shots.”

We cross the street and blend in with the crowd. Candy snaps away. When she’s done I take her through the shadow at the corner and we come out in the hotel garage.

It’s a long walk through the hotel lobby. I want to slink my way through. No one says anything, but I know the staff blames Mr. Macheath and his weirdo friends for bringing a cursing pole to their front door. I almost want to apologize. Instead, I pull Candy into the first elevator that opens and we head upstairs. I know I shouldn’t order room service tonight, but seeing that hog made me hungry for pork ribs.

As soon as we get in the room Candy e-mails the photos to Kasabian.

She says, “I’m going to take a shower. I need to wash off the smell of lube and dead titties.”

I go over to where Kasabian is working. The big screen is turned to a news channel. There’s an aerial shot of the scene out front. Ghost-suited hazmat workers skulking around Hollywood with ritually slaughtered animal parts. Little starbursts as tourists snap away with phones and cameras. They came here hoping to see some movie stars and now they’re getting a full-fledged L.A. freak show.

“Candy just sent you close-ups of the pole outside. You should get them anytime—”

“I already have them.”

“Can you have a look around online and see what they mean.”

“Don’t have to. I already know.”

He opens up some photos on the screen. The first one is a group of smiling people in what look like shitty homemade Renn Faire robes.

“Recognize anyone?”

“Nope.”

Kasabian zooms in on one of the faces.

“Now?”

He has a beard but I can make him out.

“It’s Trevor Moseley. What’s he got to do with this?”

“Look at his robes, Sherlock. The symbols match the pole.”

“I could barely see the pole.”

“Oh.”

He calls up Candy’s pole shots and puts one beside Moseley. He’s right. A lot of the badly cut and stitched symbols on his cheap robes match what’s on the pole.

“So, what do they mean?”

“I’m not done. Look at this. You’d have saved some time if you’d paid more attention to Traven.”

He pulls up the shot I took of Moseley’s half-crushed corpse. Zooms in on a tattoo half covered in blood. It matches one of the symbols on his robes and the pole.

“Is that what I think it is?”

Kasabian nods.

“Your boy Trevor’s last walk down the Yellow Brick Road was with an Angra cult. It was right there in front of you the whole time.”

“But I’ve only been going after tinhorn bad guys. I wouldn’t know where to begin looking for Angra worshippers.”

“Maybe you spooked them, running all over town pissing in everybody’s dream home.”

He puts the three photos side by side on the screen. The answer was in front of me the whole time. But it brings up another question. Why was a clockwork Trevor Moseley playing footsie with an Angra cult? Maybe the Trevor in the photo is real—I don’t know if an automaton can grow a beard—but now I’m surer than ever that the one that stepped in front of the bus wasn’t any more human than the ones we found with Atticus. It also explains why Samael didn’t see any sin sign on him. He wasn’t human, so technically nothing he did was sinful.

I light a Malediction.

“At least I’m getting through to someone. These gangsters are getting boring. By the way, don’t look for Trevor anymore. He’s not going to be in Hell.”

“Are you saying he’s in Heaven?”

“I’m saying he doesn’t have a soul.”

“Lucky duck.”

I puff the Malediction. Something bothers me.

“When did I send you the shot of Moseley?”

“You didn’t. I took it.”

“You hacked my phone?”

He looks up at me. His hellhound body whirs and clicks quietly when his head moves.

“You ask me to hack things and then you’re surprised when I do it? By the way, your idea of online security wouldn’t stop a mollusk with a TRS-80. If you ever want to get serious about protection, ask me.”

I want to be mad, but stealing the image did answer some important questions. And if I’m going to be pissing people off, maybe I ought to learn more about security.

“What’s going on with your swami gig? You ever track down that guy’s hoarder brother?”

“As a matter of fact I did. He’s with the misers and small-time grifters.”

“Good luck getting any information out of him. Brush up on your sign language.”

“I was going to ask you about that. Seeing as you’re pretty acquainted with Hell—”

“No. I won’t be your carrier pigeon.”

“This isn’t a favor, like you’re always asking me to do. It’s a business proposition. You’d get paid for taking messages back and forth.”

“I don’t think Mr. Muninn would like it.”

“Right. I forgot how sensitive you are to what other people think of you. Having fun breaking thumbs?”

I tap the ash of the Malediction into an empty bottle of champagne I don’t remember drinking.

“As a matter of fact I am. I might have to pencil in a rampage or two a year. It’s like going on vacation.”

“I remember your little moods every time I look down at where the rest of me used to be.”

“You’re the one that blew up your body. I just separated you from it.”

“Right. How uncool of me to be upset.”

Kasabian finishes off a can of beer sitting on his desk. Crushes it in his metal paw.

“You still have all that money you said you hid from Saint Stark?”

Saint Stark is my angelic half. He got loose a few months ago and went around L.A. doing good deeds and generally making himself a pain. Among his many good works was giving away most of the money a vampire collective, the Dark Eternal, gave me.