Butcher Bird

Richard Kadrey

© 2007 by Richard Kadrey. All rights reserved.

First appeared in Butcher Bird, published by Night Shade Books.

For N, with love

“This whole world’s wild at heart and weird on top.”

— Barry Gifford, Wild at Heart

One

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“They say that when your head gets chopped off, it can still see and hear for a few seconds, so I’ll have to go with beheading,” said Spyder Lee to Lulu Garou.

Spyder Lee was drinking shots of Patrón Añejo tequila with Lulu, his business partner, at the Bardo Lounge just off Market Street in San Francisco.

Lulu looked into her empty glass and thought for some time, took a drag off her Marlboro Light and winked at the woman tending bar. “Being beaten to death,” said Lulu. “Badly. I don’t mean like with a baseball bat or rebar so you’re out cold, but something small.” She crushed out her Marlboro in the ashtray the bartender slid in front of her. “An eight ball in a sweat sock. That’d give your killer a good workout.”

“Not if the guy hit you in the head right off,” said Spyder.

“My mama was pretty free with her hands. I’m a faster ducker,” Lulu replied. She grinned. Spyder could tell she was unimpressed with his argument.

“Burning at the stake,” he said.

“Drawn and quartered,” Lulu countered.

Rubi, the bartender, took their empty glasses away. “Exactly what are you two rattling about?”

“Worst ways to die,” said Spyder. “Being covered in honey and staked out on a red ant hill.”

“Dying of thirst. Like right now,” said Lulu.

Rubi slid her hand across the bar and took hold of Lulu’s left pinkie. “You parched, baby?”

“I’m drier than Candy Darling’s cunt.”

“Candy Darling was a man,” said Spyder.

“Exactly.”

Rubi leaned forward and kissed Lulu’s pinkie. “I’ll get you both another round. On me.” As she left to make their drinks, Lulu called after her, “That ain’t all that’s gonna be on you tonight.” Rubi stuck her tongue out at Lulu.

“Being crucified. That’s supposed to be horrible,” said Spyder.

“You’re only saying that ’cause that’s how they talk about it in movies. You ever known anyone who was crucified? Or even heard of one? Hell no. Maybe being crucified is great. Maybe it’s a fucking hoot. Maybe it’s a blow job and ice cream on your birthday.” Lulu took out another Marlboro Light and lit it with a pink fur Zippo. “Know what would really suck? Being force fed a bucket full of black widows.”

Spyder made a face, half frown and half smile. “Jesus, girl,” he said. “You’re upping the ante on me.”

It was the end of another day at the tattoo studio and piercing parlor Spyder and Lulu ran together. Spyder did the ink while Lulu handled the metal. It was a pleasant business. It let them both pretend to be artists while making money and getting a lot of tail on the side. Rubi, for instance, had been one of Lulu’s earliest and most regular customers.

“She’s got about five pounds of me on her at all times,” Lulu liked to tell friends.

Rubi brought back their drinks and set them on the bar. “What time you getting off tonight?” asked Lulu.

“Early,” said Rubi. “’Bout an hour.”

“Sweet.”

“Being eaten alive, Night of the Living Dead-style,” said Spyder.

Lulu turned to him. “You mind? We’re having a moment here.”

“Wait, better than that,” Spyder went on. “Being starved to death, but given topical anesthetic and surgical equipment, so the only way you could stay alive’d be to amputate your own limbs and eat them.”

Rubi said, “You two ought to get married. Move into the Bates Motel.” She went down the bar to serve other customers.

“Now you ruined our surprise,” Spyder called after her.

Lulu took a long pull on her tequila. “Flayed alive and drowned in pickle brine.”

Spyder looked at his hands. The back of one was covered in an intricate black tribal snake pattern while the other hand sported a cartoon red sacred heart. MANS RUIN was tattooed across the knuckles of both hands. He’d gotten the letters while doing a year in reform school for car theft. They were bullshit tats. Kid stuff. But they marked a period of his life, so he never bothered to have them lasered off. From his neck to the tops of his feet, Spyder Lee was an explosion of images and pigments. He’d never felt normal until he’d been tattooed for the first time. The ink felt like some kind of magic armor. His tattoos, even the stupid ones, made him feel bulletproof.

He was one of those lanky Texas boys you see working on cars in oil-stained driveways, a cooler full of Coors, his only concession to the summer heat. A perpetually messy mop of black hair and long arms covered in grease working on the transmission of a vintage Mustang of questionable ownership.

“Split open, your organs torn out with hooks and replaced with red hot coals,” he said.

Lulu leaned in close. “Strapped to the front of a burning boat and driven through a mile and a half of electrified razorwire in a Tabasco sauce hurricane.”

They both broke up in drunken laughter, spitting and slamming their hands on the bar.

“You’re both wrong,” said a woman sitting to Spyder’s right. He and Lulu turned to look at the woman. She was small, with fine features and the smooth grace of a dancer. The woman was drinking red wine and wearing sunglasses. In her right hand she held a white cane, the sort used by the blind.

Lulu called over Spyder’s shoulder, “Okay Ray Charles, what’s the worst way to die?”

The woman finished her wine and stood up. “To be betrayed by the one you love.”

She turned on her heels and, swinging her cane in small arcs in front of her, pushed her way through the crowd and out of the bar.

Spyder watched the door as it closed behind the woman. Lulu took a drag off her Marlboro. “Stupid bitch,” she said, and dropped the butt into the woman’s empty wine glass.

Two

The Great Divide

The Earth was born in a furnace. When the world grew strong enough, it crawled into the dark void to cool and heal itself. Soon, however, it grew too cold and shivered with ice.

The Earth looked around and found a small star to warm it up. Deciding it liked the neighborhood and the climate, there the Earth stayed.

Life appeared across the Earth, splashed in the water and glided on thermals through the sky. It didn’t take life long to grow so abundant that it began preying on itself.

Crows, bats and eagles, the lords of the air, scooped up fish from the seas and dumped them in the desert until the dry lands were piled high with their bones. These carcasses became the Earth’s first mountains.

Other animals learned to climb the trees and attack the birds as they hunted for food. The land dwellers decorated the bare trees with the birds’ feathers and painted the ground with their blood. The gray earth suddenly had color.

Every creature who lived in the sea—the fish, the whales, the seals, the crabs, the squids and the rays—met in the South Seas and beat their fins, claws and tentacles, and raised an enormous tidal wave. The wall of water shot across the earth, drowning millions of the land and air beasts. This is how the many rivers and oceans of the world were born.

After an eon or two of mass murder, when the surface of the Earth was a stinking slaughterhouse, the lords of the different realms of life met at the ancient human city of Thulamela to see if they could end the butchery. This wasn’t all that simple, since the many different creatures of the Earth were going to have to live on the same planet, but give each other plenty of room.

They divided the world into three Spheres, with each Sphere being invisible and out of the reach of the others. Humans and the most numerous animals of the land, sea and air were given one Sphere.

A Second Sphere was home to the rarest creatures—the phoenix, selkies, vampires, barbegazi, corrigans, tengus, lamias, rompos, sylphs, gorgons, volkhs, wyverns, trolls and other exotic beasts.

The last realm was left to the most glorious and dangerous inhabitants of the planet: angels and demons.

So it was that each of these groups lived and grew old and died in its own Sphere, inhabiting the same time and space as all the other Spheres, but rarely touching—unless a creature was powerful or clever enough to learn the spells of crossing over. Because the town meeting that divided the world had taken place in a human city, cities became the places where the creatures who moved from Sphere to Sphere would meet up to talk, joke, eat, exchange spells and news, make love or commit the occasional genocide.

Over the next few thousand centuries, the creatures who dwelled in the second and Third Spheres struck a kind of détente. Unfortunately for the beasts in the First Sphere (which included ninety-nine percent of humanity), they forgot about the other Spheres completely and only glimpsed them in their dreams.

Or so they thought.

Three

Strange Attractors

Later, Spyder went out the back and into the alley behind the Bardo Lounge for a quick piss.

It wasn’t Spyder’s habit to urinate in public, but at the best of times the Lounge’s toilets were questionable. Sometime during the day, Rubi told him, they had committed hara-kiri. “One summer during college I was trekking in Nepal,” Rubi said. “First night out we came to this little village and I asked this lady who ran the local teahouse where the toilets were. In Nepali she said, essentially, ‘Anywhere but here,’ and pointed to an open field.”

As Spyder unzipped in the alley, he considered the club’s name and wondered if the real afterlife would be at all like this. A tab at your favorite bar. Pretty girls to chat up. The occasional piss in an alley next to God’s own dumpster. It didn’t seem like the afterlife would be too bad a place. Spyder wondered who the bouncer in the Bardo Realm would be. The Black Bhairab, he decided. Shiva’s most wrathful form. The six-armed, crown-of-skulls-wearing Mad Max of the afterlife.

Spyder zipped up and turned to reenter the club. Like a bad dream, the Black Bhairab was right there beside him. Something big enough, strong enough and wild enough to be the Black Bhairab, though Spyder knew that these qualities were also present in many of your dedicated crackheads. This particular crackhead grabbed Spyder by the front of his shirt and lifted him off him feet, tossing him into the trashcans and empty liquor boxes at the back of the alley.

Stunned, Spyder reached for his cash, hoping this would get the guy to back off. The mugger came up and slammed his boot into Spyder’s midsection, then kept kicking, even after he’d snatched the money from Spyder’s hand. Spyder didn’t even get a decent look at the guy and that really bothered him. He wanted to see the face of the man who was about to kill him.

As if the mugger had heard Spyder’s thoughts, he felt himself being pulled up by his collar until he was standing upright. Then Spyder’s feet lifted from the dirty alley floor and he hung limp in the air at the end of the mugger’s arm. “You know how to whistle don’t you? Just put your lips together and blow,” Spyder croaked as he hung there. He punched the crackhead as hard as he could. The guy’s face gave as if there were no bones in there, just a lot of flesh-colored pudding.

The mugger’s face began to change. His skin crawled in the jittery sodium light from a streetlamp. The mugger’s eyes swelled and burst from their sockets, black and glittering with facets. His lips seemed to melt, drawing down into a long, twitching tube. Cracked, curved horns burst from the sides of his head. The mugger exhaled a fetid cloud of steaming breath. Spyder’s brain was on overload. The adrenaline rush and oxygen deprivation had him flashing on a frantic stream of schizophrenic data. Snakes. Insects. Wolves. Angels. The mugger had a smell. Overwhelmingly sweet. Vanilla roses. Rotting fish. The perfume of dead schoolgirls. Spyder thought of his room in high school. He’d had a poster on the wall, a parody of the kind of out-of-date Civil Defense instructions they used to give kids in case of nuclear attack. The last line had read: Put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye.

Spyder vomited on the mugger’s arm. The puke seemed to have some kind of mysterious juju power because at that moment the mugger’s head sheered off and rolled to the alley floor. His body, which still had a solid grip on Spyder’s collar, followed a second or two later.

When he could open his eyes, Spyder saw a pair of shiny vinyl boots in front of his face. He closed his eyes again, ready for this new intruder to finish him off.

“Get up,” came a woman’s voice.

Spyder looked up and saw the blind dancer he and Lulu had spoken to in the bar earlier that night. She was holding a long and bloody sword in her hands.

“I’m tapped out. The dead guy got all my money,” said Spyder.

“I’m not mugging you, fool. I’m saving you. Not that you deserve it.” The blind woman reached down for Spyder’s arm and helped him to his feet.

“Thanks. What the fuck just happened?”

“A Bitru demon attacked you. I killed it.”

“I don’t believe in demons.”

The woman nodded. “All right. It was a junkie with the head of an insect and possessing superhuman strength.”

“Okay,” Spyder croaked.

Spyder looked at the body at his feet. He hadn’t been hallucinating. The body wasn’t even vaguely human.

“What the fuck… Why would a demon want me?”

“A Bitru doesn’t just drop by for blood and crumpets. He doesn’t come unless he’s called.”

“I did not call any goddam bug monster thing to kick my ass. I wouldn’t even know how.”

“You must have his mark on your body. Near your heart,” said the woman. She ran both sides of her sword across the demon’s body, cleaning the blood from the blade. Planting the tip of the sword on the ground, she gave it a hard shake. The sword blurred and when she stopped shaking, it had transformed into the white cane she’d had earlier.

“Damn.” Spyder opened his shirt and looked at his chest. “I have a lot of ink on me. Geometrics. Tribal work. Religious geegaws.”

“Any runes or symbols?”

“A shitload.”

“And do you know the meanings of all those runes?”

“’Course. Some. In a Trivial Pursuit kind of way. They’re just designs.”

“So says the man covered in demon blood.” The woman moved closer to Spyder. “Did it ever occur to you that those symbols have meaning and power?”

“Where? How? I’ve done a thousand tattoos like that on people.”

“Some of them are probably going to have a dream date like the one you just had.” She laid her hand over his heart. “You don’t believe in demons, but you believe in magnetism, right? These symbols you put on your body, like the Bitru’s sigil, these are a kind of magnetism. You don’t have to understand how they work. The demons do.”

“What can I do?”

“Take it off. Change it. All the signs and symbols that you don’t know.”

“What’s your name?” asked Spyder.

The woman took her hand from his chest. “Most people just call me Shrike.”

“Thank you, Shrike.”

She ran a hand lightly over Spyder’s cheeks and jaw. “Good thing you’re pretty. You’re not the quickest little pony on the track, are you?”

“You underestimate me,” said Spyder. “This was all my clever plan to meet you. I think it went pretty well.”

“Take care of yourself,” Shrike said, moving back toward the mouth of the alley.

“My name is Spyder,” he called to her.

“Take care of yourself, Spyder.” She waved without turning around.

“Wait. Do you have a phone number or email or something? I owe you.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“But I’m madly in love with you and stuff.”

She turned gracefully and continued walking backwards, never breaking stride. “Not the quickest pony at all.”

She was gone. Spyder started after her, but when he tried to take a step, his legs shook so much that he fell against the alley wall. A few minutes later, Lulu came outside looking for him and helped him back into the Bardo Lounge. Spyder noticed that Lulu didn’t seem to see the large dead demon lying nearby in the alley. Together, Spyder and Lulu got very, very drunk.

Four

Traffic Jam

It was light out when Spyder woke up, but his eyes refused to focus, so he couldn’t read the time on the Badtz-Maru clock radio near the bed.

His head felt as if someone had scooped out his brains and filled his skull with broken glass and thumbtacks. When he tried to sit up, every part of his body ached. He rose slowly to his feet and walked stiffly to the bathroom. Spyder’s shoulder throbbed and when he switched on the bathroom light he saw why.

There was a long gash running across his shoulder and down his chest. He had a black eye, a swollen lip and his arms and ribs were spotted in livid purple bruises. Spyder remembered the scene in the alley. It wasn’t a dream. He had been mugged.

Blood from the gash had dried on his skin, gluing part of his white wife-beater to his chest. Spyder stood under the hot shower until the blood softened and the water soothed his knotted muscles.

When he stepped out of the shower, he left the wet shirt draped across the towel rack beneath the framed Lady from Shanghai poster that Jenny hated. The gash on his shoulder burned and his headache was coming on strong behind his eyes. Spyder slapped on some gauze squares and taped them down with white medical tape.

Christ, he thought, I was supposed to call Jenny last night and tell her I was going to be late. She must be pissed. Then it hit him, as it had hit him almost every morning for weeks: Jenny was gone. She’d packed up and moved the last of her stuff to LA. That’s why he’d gotten so drunk with Lulu. It was the one-month anniversary of her desertion.

No fucking way I can put ink on anyone today, he thought. It was already after one in the afternoon. Spyder didn’t want to go to the studio, but he needed to call his clients and reschedule. He dressed quickly into battered black jeans, steel-toed Docs and the largest, loosest gray Dickies shirt he could find in his closet. A pile of Jenny’s abandoned textbooks were stacked at the back, The Gnostic Gospels, Heaven and Hell in the Western Tradition, An Encyclopedia of Fallen Angels. Spyder slammed the closet door.

The warehouse Spyder rented was across town from the tattoo studio. He usually rode the Dead Man’s Ducati—the bike he’d bought cheap from a meth dealer he knew down in Tijuana; the previous owner had gone missing and did Spyder want first dibs?—but he felt too shaky for two wheels today. He called a cab and waited by the curb in the warm afternoon sun.

“Do you have the time?”

Spyder was so out of it, he hadn’t seen the tall man in the gray business suit approach him. The man was bald, but tanned and healthy-looking, with deep wind and sunburn creases on his cheeks. It took Spyder a second to answer.

“Uh, no. Sorry.”

“No worries,” the man said with a slight shrimp-on-the-barbie accent. “Lovely day.”

“Yeah. Great,” said Spyder

“You all right, mate?”

“Just a little hungover’s all.”

The businessman laughed. “That’s how you know you had a good time,” he said, and clapped Spyder on his sore shoulder. “Cheers.”

As the man walked away, Spyder saw something attached to his back. It was sort of apelike, but its head was soft, like a slug’s. It had its teeth sunk into the man’s neck and was clinging onto his back by its twisted childlike limbs. Spyder wanted to call out to the man, but his throat was locked tight in fear and disgust. The parasite’s head throbbed as it slurped something from the businessman’s spine.

Spyder took a step back and his shoulder touched a rough wooden pole planted in the ground through a section of shattered pavement. Pigeons and gray doves were nailed up and down the pole. Animal heads were staked around the top. An alligator. A Rottweiler. A horse. Other more freakish animals Spyder couldn’t identify. Each head was decorated with flower garlands and its eye sockets and mouth stuffed with incense and gold coins, like offerings.

Across the street, a griffin, its leathery wings twitching, was lazily chewing on the carcass of a fat, gray sewer rat. Emerald spiders the size of a child’s hand ran around the griffin’s legs, grabbing stray scraps of meat that fell from the beast’s jaws. The spiders scrambled up and down the griffin’s hindquarters. Gray stingray-like things flapped overhead, like a flock of knurled vultures. A coral snake lazily wrapping itself around the sacrifice pole stopped its climb long enough to call Spyder by name.

Spyder’s head spun. He stepped into the street, flashing on the demon in the alley the night before. The mugging had been real. Had the monster part been real, too? He leaned his head back. Spinning in the sky overhead were angels with the wings of eagles. Higher still crawled vast airships. Their soft balloon bodies glowed in the bright sun, presenting Spyder with profiles of fierce mythological birds of prey and gigantic lotuses.

A cab turned the corner onto Harrison Street and Spyder frantically flagged it down. “Haight and Masonic,” he said to the driver, trying not to sound as deranged as he felt. Spyder slid into the backseat and as the driver pulled away, he peered out the cab’s rear window. The businessman was on the corner, talking to three pale men in matching black suits. Their clothes and general formality reminded Spyder of bankers in an old movie.

One of the bankers stepped forward, reached into the businessman’s chest and pulled out his heart. Turning stiffly, he dropped the organ into an attaché case held up by another of the trio. That done, the third banker used a knife to carefully peel the businessman’s face off. The cab turned the corner and Spyder lost sight of them.

Five

Communication Breakdown

“How you voting on Prop 18?”

Spyder looked up. The cabbie looked exhausted, Spyder thought. One of those guys in his forties with eyes that make him look ten years older. His skin hung loosely on a gray, unshaven face.

“The companies make it sound like it’ll put more cabs on the street, but really it’s just going to screw up the medallion system even worse and give all the power to the big cab companies. We aren’t employees, you know. All us cabbies are freelance. I owe money the moment I take my cab out. The moment I touch it. A cab driver has the job security of a crack whore. Worse than slaves, even. We’re up at the big house begging the master for more cotton to pick.”

“I’m sorry, said Spyder. “I don’t know anything about Prop 18. I don’t vote…ever.”

The driver shook his head. His black hair stuck out at odd angles, as if he’d been sleeping on it just a few minutes earlier. “Voting’s not a right, you know. It’s not a privilege. It’s your duty. My daddy died in the war so you could vote.”

“Hey driver, uh,” Spyder looked at the name on the man’s taxi license, “Barry. Do you want to play a game?”

“I don’t think so.”

“There’s a $20 tip in it for you. “

“Are you a cop?”

“No.”

“Fag?”

“No.”

“You from the cab company?”

“No, Barry.”

“What kind of game?”

“Don’t rush getting me to the Haight,” Spyder said. He leaned his head against the window. It was cool on his forehead. “Take your time. Let the meter run. As we hit each corner, you’re going to tell me what you see.

“What’s on the corners you mean? Like buildings and people?”

“Exactly. Big or small. Whatever strikes your fancy.”

“Give me a for instance,” said Barry. “Like this corner.”

“Okay,” said Spyder leaning forward to peer out the windshield. “That semi up ahead. The blonde eating a taco in front of a bodega. The mailbox painted like a Mexican flag. That blimp shaped like Garuda.”

“What’s a Garuda?”

“A bird-beaked messenger deity from Thailand.”

“I don’t see nothing like that.”

“Tell me what you see.”

Barry breathed deeply and craned his head on the end of his long, doughy neck. “Some bums with shopping carts. Some hookers. Mexican or Asian, maybe. Can’t tell from here. They got on high heels and the littlest goddam skirts. You can see all the way to Bangkok when they bend over.”

“Keep going,” said Spyder.

“Just stuff?”

“Just stuff.”

“A Goodwill. A closed down porn theater. Cholos drinking forty-ouncers by a low-rider. A cop car stopping near ’em…” Barry fell into a singsong pattern, reciting as they drove. “A mom with her kid in a stroller. A couple a dogs fucking. Get some, boy! Some dope dealers. Bunch of teenyboppers cutting school. Little shits. Don’t learn to read and we end up paying their welfare so they can have babies.” Barry glanced into the rearview mirror at Spyder. “This is kind of a stupid game, buddy. When is it your turn?”

“My turn?” Spyder lit a cigarette, his first of the morning. “Everything you saw, I saw. But there were other things, too.

“Dazzle me.”

“A winged horse. A lion turning into a golden bird, then into smoke. An angel sharing a cigarette with a horned girl whose skin’s blue and hard, like topaz.”

“Jesus fuck, man,” said Barry. Spyder saw the driver’s eyes widen in the mirror. “Are you on drugs or do you need drugs?”

“There’s a naked, burned man walking down the street. No, not burned. Cooked. Glazed and cooked like a ham. There’s a swarm of little sort of bat things flying around him taking bites. He doesn’t seem to mind.”

“I’m letting you out at the corner, guy.”

“Keep going or you don’t get your tip.”

Barry shook his head. “Keep it. Getting stabbed by some psycho fuck isn’t worth twenty dollars.”

“Do I seem like a psycho to you, Barry?” asked Spyder.

“I dunno. Sure talk like one.”

“I understand. This is weird for me, too.”

“Then maybe you just want to be quiet and not talk about it anymore,” Barry said. “Anyway, we’re almost to your drop.”

“Do you see that building on the corner? I can’t tell what it’s made of. It’s like pink quartz, but the walls are shifting like the whole thing is liquid,” said Spyder.

“It’s a vacant lot, man.”

“Maybe I’m just dreaming.”

“If it’s a dream, you can give me a fifty-dollar tip instead of twenty.”

Spyder smiled. “Or I could stab you in the head, suck out your eyes and skull fuck you. I mean, if this is just a dream.”

The cab screeched to a stop. “Get out.”

“Let me get my money,” said Spyder.

Barry turned around to face him. He had a lime green windbreaker draped over his arm to hide the old Browning .45 automatic he was holding. “Get the fuck out.”

“Jesus, Barry. Tell me that’s not your daddy’s gun,” said Spyder. “Pretty Freudian, don’t you think?” The cabbie’s eyes narrowed. “I’m kidding, man. I’m just having a weird day. Let me give you some money.”

“Keep your hands where I can see them and get out. I’ll shoot you and tell the cops you tried to rob me. When they find all the dope in your blood, they’ll believe me.”

“Sorry I scared you.”

“You didn’t scare me, you pissed me off,” said Barry. “Can’t you tell the difference?”

Spyder got out of the cab and leaned in the front passenger window. Barry kept the gun pointed at him. “Funny, my ex said something like that when she split.”

Barry gave Spyder the finger, gunned his engine and shot straight down Haight Street before being caught at the next corner by a half-dozen jaywalking punks.

That guy was going to shoot me, thought Spyder. He considered that as he walked the last half block to the studio. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad option. The hallucinations weren’t letting up. Maybe being shot was what he needed to kick his brain out of the peculiar abyss into which it had fallen. Spyder had the feeling that the day wasn’t going to get any better.

Six

A Trick of the Light

Spyder walked with his head down, not allowing himself to look around no matter how odd or enticing the visions: black hooves, crows chatting with rats, the suddenly sinister insect-silhouettes of panhandlers he’d seen a thousand times before.

He smelled musk and ambergris, cook fires and sewage. It reminded him of the Moroccan souks, but he was very far away from Morocco. In fact, very far away from anything familiar right now.

A sense of relief came over Spyder when he entered the tattoo studio and closed the door behind him. A couple of college girls were inspecting the flash designs on the walls and giggling nervously to each other. They didn’t have wings or horns or extra eyes. They were a beautiful sight. Spyder could hear Lulu in the back with one of her piercing customers. “You’ll feel some pressure, then a slight sting,” she said. “Just like popping your cherry.”

Hungry for a normal moment he spoke to the college girls. “If you have any questions about the tattoo work, that’s what I do around here, so you can ask me.”

The girls looked at him and the taller one, a café-au-lait brunette with bright green eyes, said, “How much for the black panther? That’s a real traditional one, right?”

“Yeah. All the pieces on that wall go way back. And we charge by the hour, so the price depends on how big and where you want it. We have a hundred-dollar minimum.”

The girls whispered to each other, then turned to Spyder. “We’re going to think about it. Do you have a card?”

Spyder went behind the counter and found one of the studio’s cards. He felt self-conscious handing it to the brunette. The card had a symbol on it. Spyder knew it was something Celtic, but he had no idea what it meant.

“Thanks,” said the dark-haired girl, letting her fingertips brush against Spyder’s as she accepted the card. Under normal circumstances, Spyder would have taken that as a signal to go into his charming act, complete with self-effacing patter and a certain calculated awkwardness that gave him the look of someone who might need just a little looking after. Today, however, all he could muster was a tired smile. “Any time,” he said, and turned away from the girls, looking for his appointment book so he could cancel everyone set for that day. Maybe for the rest of the week, he thought.

His head and body ached and his hands shook a little as he leafed through the appointments. “Every rabbit hole has a bottom,” he said quietly, remembering something that Sara Durango had told him after giving him his first hit of acid when he was fourteen.

Lulu and her female client were coming out of the back room when Spyder settled on the numbers he needed to call. He didn’t look up, not ready to deal with the world, much less make eye contact with Lulu or the girl.

“Remember,” said Lulu, “you’re going to want to soak in a sea salt bath and use that antibiotic cream every day.”

“Every day,” said the other woman. Spyder heard the little bell over the door ring as she left.

Spyder had to concentrate to make his fingers punch the right numbers into the phone. It rang a few times then gave a subtle click as it switched over to voice mail. “Hi. This is Spyder Lee over at Route 666 Tattoos. Sorry, but I have to cancel our appointment for this afternoon.” He settled back in his seat, giving Lulu a pained smile. “I’m not feeling that well and…holy shit….”

Spyder set down the receiver and stood up, coming around the counter. Something was terribly wrong. He took Lulu gently by the arm. “Goddam,” said Spyder leading her to a chair. “What happened to you?”

Lulu looked at him, puzzled. “Nothing happened to me. You’re the one who got stomped, ’member sugar?” She laid her hand on his cheek. The hand was cold and the skin was stiff, like dried-out leather.

“What happened to you?” Spyder repeated more insistently.

Lulu kept smiling. She had to. She had no lips. All the flesh from the lower part of her face had been cut neatly away, leaving her with a permanent leer. She wore a T-shirt cut low from the neck, and her dry white skin was crisscrossed with old scars and stained stitching. Spyder thought of the cheap boots and vests he’d bought on teenage road trips to Juarez, across the border from El Paso. Bad leather sewn together crudely and carelessly. Worst of all were Lulu’s eyes. They were gone. Over her empty sockets torn scraps of paper were taped in place, each with a smeared, childlike drawing of an eye.

“What the fuck happened to you?”

The exposed muscles around Lulu’s mouth twitched a little. She reflexively pulled away from Spyder and covered her face with her hands, then quickly lowered them. “Oh my god, “ she said. “You really had your brains rearranged last night.”

“Tell me I’m fucked up,” Spyder said. “I’ve been seeing the most horrible shit all day. Monsters. Buildings that aren’t there. Dead people.”

“Not dead, most likely,” Lulu said. “There’s a whole lot more range between dead and alive than they taught us when we were kids, Spyder.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s a lot no one taught us. Deep, dark secrets. Other worlds. Other kinds of people. Hidden, but right in front of us.”

“This is a mistake.”

“I wish. There’s monsters in the world. Some of ’em were born and some were made. I was made.”

“This isn’t happening. I’m still in the alley. I’m knocked out and I’m dreaming.”

“I’m so sorry, darlin’. You’re not ready for this. You were never supposed to see or know about it.”

“Know about what?” Spyder shouted. “What are you?”

“I’m Lulu, baby. Just Lulu.” She sat down next to him again, a horrible, broken toy. “You’re just seeing another part of me. And I’m so sorry for that.” Tears fell from her empty eye sockets, staining the paper drawings taped there.

Spyder walked across the room and sat on the floor with his back against the counter. “I refuse to accept any of this,” he said.

Lulu got up and locked the door to the studio, then sat back in the chair in front of Spyder. “Darlin’, we’ve known each other since we were six years old. You’re the first person I came out to,” she said. “I guess I’m coming out again.”

“As what?”

Lulu leaned forward and laid her hand on his knee. “Please don’t touch me,” Spyder said. She withdrew the hand.

“I’m not really a monster,” said Lulu. “I’m a damned fool, but I’m not a monster. I just got into something a little over my head.”

“That part’s obvious.”

“I just had my eyes opened, so to speak,” she said, pulling her exposed muscles into a smile. “Just like you.” She slid down next to him on the floor, careful not to let her body touch his. Spyder shifted away from her a few inches.

“Remember four, five years back when I was all messed up on Oxy? I couldn’t work. Couldn’t do much of anything but steal and score.”

“You still owe me a CD player,” Spyder said.

Lulu let out an airy laugh, like wind through a keyhole. “Cheapass county rehab didn’t work. Then, I met some people through this dealer. They said they could get me clean. Make my hands steady, so I could work again. Of course, I said Yes.”

“When was this? I remember you getting better in rehab,” said Spyder.

“Jesus, Spyder. I didn’t last ten days in there,” Lulu said. “I wouldn’t let you visit, remember? I always called you? I checked out and was on the street scoring until I met these people.”

“Who were they?”

“Monsters. Real ones,” she said. “’Course I didn’t know that back then. They offered me the deal of a lifetime. I’d get clean, get my brain and get my hands back. Can you imagine what that meant to me back then?”

“How’d you end up like this?”

“You know how is it with dealers. First one’s always free. Then the price just keeps going up. You got a cigarette?”

Spyder pulled a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, took one, gave one to Lulu and lit them both. They smoked in silence for a few moments.

Lulu blew a series of small smoke rings through the center of bigger rings, something Spyder had been watching her do since junior high. “The price for giving me back my life was my eyes,” she said. “They said that sight’s mostly in the brain and they could make it so I’d see better without them.” Lulu took a long drag off the American Spirit. Spyder wanted her to stop talking. “They were right, only they didn’t tell me it wouldn’t last. Every year or so, my sight would start to go and they’d show up, ready to deal. They’d already taken my eyes, so they took something else each time. Stomach. Liver. Skin. I don’t know what all anymore. But not my heart. You’d be surprised what you can live without, but not your heart.” Another long drag. A cloud of blue smoke. “Each time, they’d do their little voodoo so my body’d keep going, till the next visit. No one ever noticed the difference. When they took my eyes I saw a whole new world. The world, I guess, you’re seeing now. Shit, Spyder, no one knows anything. All the teachers and cops and priests and shrinks they sent us to, they don’t know what’s really going on. When I saw the real world, knowing how long I’d been blind scared me a lot more than the monsters.”

“You think this is some kind of goddam gift?” asked Spyder.

“For you it is. You got it for free. It cost me a little more.”

“Fuck this world and fuck this gift.”

“I’d rather fuck your sister.”

“I’ll trade you for your mom.”

“Deal,” said Lulu.

“Goddam,” said Spyder. “It is you, isn’t it?”

“’Fraid so.”

Spyder slid his arm around Lulu’s shoulders and pulled her to him. She relaxed and lay her head on his shoulder. They sat on the floor until the sun went down and the studio was dark. People knocked on the door, but they didn’t answer.

Seven

Shadows

Many years ago, Ishtama was the mother of birds, Setuum was the mother of fishes, and in a golden city in the south, Coatlique, the Lady of the Skirt of Snakes—her body decorated with skulls, serpents and lacerated hands—gave birth to the first man, Mixcoatl.

Mixcoatl’s sisters were the stars in the sky and he brought one to Earth to be his wife. Their children were the human race.

As much as Mixcoatl’s wife loved him, she missed her sisters and longed to visit them in the sky. Mixcoatl went to Apsu, the lord of the birds, to ask him to fly his wife back to Heaven. When Mixcoatl arrived, however, Apsu wasn’t there. Apsu’s wife, Tiamut, told Mixcoatl that his Shadow Brother, Marduk, had murdered Apsu. Apsu was a friend and Mixcoatl grew very angry at this news. He climbed to the top of the tallest mountain in the world and cut out Marduk’s heart with an obsidian knife, throwing the Shadow Brother’s body into a deep gorge that led to the center of the world.

When Mixcoatl went home, he told his wife what he had done. She was afraid. “Our mother, Coatlique, the Lady of the Skirt of Snakes, is dead. Your Shadow Brother, Huitzilopochtli, burst from her breast in battle armor and a bone sword.”

Mixcoatl told his wife, “I have no brother, shadow or otherwise.”

His wife said, “Before she died, our mother warned that at some moment in our life, all men and women create their shadow form, born from their desire and rage. These shadow forms do not manifest themselves in flesh unless called into being by an act of violence or madness, a blow at creation itself. When you rashly killed Marduk, you brought forth your Shadow Brother and released pure chaos into the world. Huitzilopochtli is you reborn as a soulless void. If you do not destroy him, he will kill you and take your place.”

Mixcoatl put on his armor, called his sons to his side and took them to war. For years they roamed the earth looking for Huitzilopochtli, but they didn’t find him. At night Mixcoatl had terrible dreams and awoke in the morning pale and weak. Finally, Mixcoatl grew sick and his army rested by the banks of the frozen sea at the bottom of the world.

One night, Mixcoatl awoke from fevered dreams to find Huitzilopochtli sitting on his chest. Mixcoatl was too weak to resist and Huitzilopochtli cut out his heart saying, “I’ve eaten you piece by piece in your dreams, Brother, but don’t hate me. I’m not your enemy. I have no choice in killing you and if I smile as I do it, remember it’s only the joy a humble servant feels when he restores order to a disordered house, because, of course, there can’t be two of us walking the earth.”

Huitzilopochtli took his brother’s place on the throne of the world. His flightiness and endless cruelties inspired many beings to unwittingly turn their shadows into flesh through acts of treachery or revenge. The different Shadow Brothers—kings and farmers, birds, fish and horses—ruled the Earth. This was the era of blood and massacres that caused the world to be divided into Spheres, because no matter how the Shadow Brothers tried to reason together, they couldn’t. They were soulless voids, and even the most cordial exchanges usually ended in murder.

Thousands of years passed before the living things of the earth rose up and killed all the Shadow Brothers in power. To make sure that shadow forms never ruled again, each realm of life appointed auditors to keep the world in balance. These celestial officers had the power of life and death and could roam all the Spheres at will. They had different names among the different animal tribes—such as Soul Weavers, Holy Clerks, Black Scribes, and others. These beings didn’t destroy the Shadow Brothers, but they kept their influence in check, even when they sometimes had to collaborate with individual Shadow Brothers to set the world right. The loyalties of these auditors weren’t to animal, plant or man, but to the universe. And like the gods themselves, their plans were their own, subtle and unknowable.

They were thought to be beyond the influence of any god or beast in the universe, and this was true. What no one considered were things outside the universe.

Eight

Slow Children

“Did you ever feel like you were a million miles from where you’d thought you’d be when you grew up? Like you thought you were heading for a weekend in Vegas, but ended up in Mongolia instead?”

Lulu was lying across the three wooden garage-sale chairs they kept up front for customers. Her arm hung down and a lit American Spirit between her fingers pointed at the floor, illuminating the scars on her arm with a faint red light.

“Sometimes,” said Spyder. “But then I remember the scariest truth about being a grown up: that no one really knows anything. Maybe where most people want to be is as wrong as where they end up.”

“We’ve been taking our happy pills, I see,” said Lulu. “Know what we never, ever talked about: What did you really want to be when we were kids?”

Spyder stood up and stretched, saying, “That’s easy. A private detective. You know, a Sam Spade thing. The whole world’d be in black and white and the streets would be slick with rain and lit like a film noir set.”

“Sam Spade was always lonely and miserable, least in the movies.”

“But at least he knew something. That makes him the exception.”

“When I was a girl, I wanted to be Mary Magdalene,” said Lulu. “The most hated woman in the world, but Jesus saw her true heart and loved her for it. I wanted that so much. To be hated by the riffraff, but loved by that one perfect, bright-eyed soul who knew me from the inside out. I used to jerk off to the picture of Jesus over my bed. He looked just like Jim Morrison before the alcohol bloat.” Lulu took a drag off her cigarette. Spyder still wasn’t sure how she was able to smoke with no lips. “When I realized I liked girls more, I jerked off imagining Jesus fucking Mary Magdalene. I was Jesus, of course. I wonder, does that make me narcissistic?”

“No, you’re more like Mother Teresa.”

“I’d have fucked Mother Teresa.”

“You’d have fucked Nancy Reagan if she’d of held still.”

“If she was in that pink Jackie O outfit she wore to Ronnie’s second inauguration, hell yes. I’d’ve bent her over the big desk in the Oval Office and slipped her the high hard one next to the Bible Ronnie had Oliver North give the Iranians. Hell, I’d have bent Ollie over, too. Gotta love a man in a uniform.”

“You’re a damned pervert, Lulu.”

“What’s Dennis Hopper say in Blue Velvet? ‘Don’t toast to my health, toast to my fuck.’”

“I wouldn’t be Dennis Hopper,” said Spyder. “I’d be Orson Welles. He can act, write, direct, he married Rita Hayworth and you know, deep in his heart, he’s a stone killer.”

“That arty fuck never has happy endings. He’s always dead or betrayed.”

“Yeah, but we all end up there if we live long enough. I love the guy’s certainty. He was willing to ruin himself for whatever he was doing. That’s the definition of balls.” Spyder checked the door again to make sure it was locked, then turned on the light in the studio.

Lulu shielded her paper eyes and softly said, “Shit.”

“So, what happens now?” asked Spyder. “Do we open up tomorrow like nothing’s different?”

“Things are only different if you act like they’re different.”

“Bullshit. Everything’s different.”

“I’ve been exactly what I am for years and it didn’t affect things. Why should that change now?”

“That was before,” Spyder said, groping for words. “I was going to say the world has changed, but it hasn’t. I’m changed. And I fucking hate it. I take back what I said about Sam Spade and knowing things. I enjoyed my ignorance. Give me three wishes and that’s what I’d ask for first.”

“Reality sucks,” said Lulu sitting up on the chairs. “But, if you wait long enough, everything becomes normal. You’ll see.”

Looking out the studio window onto Haight Street, Spyder watched the people outside going through their happy, blind lives. Couples were going to dinner, ducking into bars. On the corner, a girl with blue hair was kissing a boy in a cop shirt and vinyl shorts. Softly Spyder sang, “When I’m lyin’ in my bed at night, I don’t wanna grow up, Nothin’ ever seems to turn out right, I don’t wanna grow up.” He looked at Lulu. “Know that song?”

“Tom Waits. Jenny gave me the CD for my birthday.”

“When I see the price that you pay, I don’t wanna grown up, I don’t ever wanna be that way, I don’t wanna grow up…” For the first time, Spyder was glad that Jenny had left him. He couldn’t imagine trying to explain all this to her. Where was she right that second? Was she happy? He hoped so.

Nine

Hard Thanks

Spyder straightened up when he realized that he and Lulu were no longer alone.

Three smiling men, dressed like bankers in an old movie, were standing in the studio. One of the men carried a large snakeskin ledger. All three men were very pale and carried long, curved knives in their belts. The banker in the middle was wearing the face of the businessman Spyder had spoken to in the street that morning. The face was held in place on the banker’s head by shiny brass clasps that stretched the skin like taffy.

“You are not alone?” said the banker in the middle, the one with the book.

“Who the fuck are you?” asked Spyder.

Lulu stood up and pushed him against the wall. “Shut up, Spyder.” She looked at the bankers. “I wasn’t expecting you. It’s not time yet. I can still see fine.”

All three men were wearing skin masks. From under the stolen meat, their flesh seemed to give off a cold chemical glow, like fungus on the walls of a cavern. There was nothing at all human about the men’s presence, Spyder thought.

“This visit is not for you,” said the banker in the middle.

“It is for us,” said the one on the left.

“For accounts balance?” said the one on the right.

“I don’t owe you nothing. My account is balanced,” said Lulu.

“For now,” said the banker in the middle, who appeared to be the leader. “Our concern lies with the future?”

“I saw what you did to that guy. Get the fuck out of here!” said Spyder, grabbing one of the chairs and starting at the men.

The banker with the ledger calmly pulled his knife and pointed the blade at Spyder. “This is not for you, young man. Please do not interfere.”

“Look at her. She doesn’t have anything left to give you.”

The three pale men nodded and laughed. “She lives and breathes? Yes. There is always something. Her heart?”

Spyder looked at Lulu. “You said they didn’t take hearts.”

“We take hearts, when life is not honored or appreciated. But the oblation can not live without one, so we take them last.”

Spyder weighed the chair in his hands, knowing the moment to hit someone had passed. When he set the chair down, the middle banker put the knife back in his belt.

“You can’t have her,” said Spyder. “But from what she told me, you don’t care about that. You just want a payment, right?”

“Accounts must be balanced. This is our burden,” said the one on the right.

“Any will do, if given freely?” said the one on the left.

Spyder nodded, still trying to parse their odd, singsong speech. “Then take something from me.”

“Shut up, Spyder!” shouted Lulu.

The middle banker said, “You owe us nothing. If we took from you, we would be in your debt?”

“No. You’d leave Lulu alone, so we’d be even.”

“This is possible.”

“And you said this was for the future, so you wouldn’t need anything from me right now…?” Spyder asked.

“Correct.”

“Okay then. It’s a deal. I’ll see you down the fucking road. The door is that way. Use it.”

“There is no deal yet,” said the middle banker. He stepped forward and grabbed Spyder’s arm with shocking speed and strength. With his knife the banker cut a symbol into the underside of Spyder’s left wrist. “Now we have a deal.” He smiled at Spyder. The flesh the banker wore didn’t quite synch with his muscles, so the smile came in stages. First the facial muscles worked, then the teeth appeared, and then the outside flesh stretched into something a schizophrenic might call a smile. “So that you will not forget? And no one else can claim you.”

Spyder had been tattooed, pierced and had a ritual scar on his chest, but nothing he’d ever done prepared him for the pain of the banker’s knife. It managed to be freezing and branding-iron hot at the same time. And it didn’t feel as if the blade was cutting, but raking away large sections of skin and muscle. However, when Spyder looked there was a small, neat incision that was already cauterized.

“Pardon us?” said the banker, and all three men started toward the back of the shop.

“Hey, Barry White, tell me something,” said Spyder. “You knew she wasn’t alone, didn’t you? This whole scene was just a vaudeville act. You weren’t here to collect from her, but to rope in someone new.”

The middle banker nodded to his companions, then to Spyder. “You. The girl. This does not matter. The debt matters. The restoration of balance? This is our burden.” One by one, the three men entered the little bathroom at the back of the studio. When Spyder opened the door a moment later, they were gone.

“What was that word he called you just now?” Spyder asked Lulu.

“Oblation,” she said. “It’s a kind of sacrifice. The kind you’re supposed to give with thanks.”

“It’s not enough they zombify you. You’re supposed to send them a thank you card, too?”

“Pretty much. You wouldn’t think it to look at them, but the Black Clerks are all about having a good time.” Lulu put her hand lightly on Spyder’s shoulder. “You have no idea what you just got yourself into.”

Spyder kissed the top of her head. “It’s all right. I think I know someone who can help.”

Ten

DOA

After dropping Lulu at home, Spyder took at cab to the Bardo Lounge. He’d always preferred the night, but now he was falling in love with it.

Spyder couldn’t really deny the angels in the sky or the anacondas with the faces of crying children hiding in the palm trees along Dolores Street, but in the dark the smaller curiosities were swallowed by shadows, mostly invisible. Besides, night had always seemed a time of madness and possibility. The visions just felt more natural at night.

The neighborhood around the Bardo Lounge had taken on a heavy, wet jungle feel, as if the cab had stumbled into the abandoned set of some expensive dinosaur movie. There were always a lot of film crews in town and, for a moment, Spyder thought that they might have genuinely rolled onto a set. But sacrifice poles dotted the corners, animal heads and flowers dripping in the thick, humid air.

The Bardo Lounge was packed. Rubi was serving drinks. She gave Spyder a kiss on the cheek and brought him a tequila. He was relieved to see that she was entirely normal, with none of Lulu’s mutilations.

The bar was alive with a happy, drunken weekend crowd. Leather-clad boys and girls with hair in cotton-candy colors and lips shining brighter than their vinyl skirts. Spyder wanted to wade out and dive into their beauty, and be baptized by their sweat and saliva. But for the first time since he was an awkward teenager, he couldn’t think of anything to say to them. He felt as removed from the crowd as the monsters he’d been seeing in the streets all day. Spyder turned away and drank his tequila.

There was a demon sitting on the stool next to Spyder. It was a huge bare-chested olive-skinned man, his features lost beneath cascading rolls of glistening fat. White geometric designs covered his arms and chest, some kind of tribal markings. Considering everything, he didn’t look too bad, Spyder thought. Pretty human, in fact. Not at all like the monsters in Jenny’s mythology textbooks. The demon stole the beer of the girl sitting next to him and poured the whole thing into a wide, toothless mouth that split open in the middle of his chest.

Spyder sighed and the demon caught him looking. The demon leaned in close and said, “How do you get twelve humans to wear one hat?”

“How?” asked Spyder.

“You bite the heads off eleven.”

Spyder turned back to his drink. “Sorry for not laughing, but I’m going to be over here ignoring you.”

“I’m Bilal,” said the demon, “ You’re the little prince, aren’t you? The one Shrike killed for. What’s your story?”

“There is no story. I’m just an inker who had to take a leak.”

“That’s beautiful. Maybe they’ll carve that on your tombstone? You’ll be an inspiration to future generations.” A stoned couple stumbled by and Bilal delicately plucked the cigarette from the mouth of a cadaverous, lavender-lipped boy. The demon sniffed the cigarette once and dropped it into his chest-mouth. “Though I was really hoping you could justify your existence. Like maybe you were some minor deity on pilgrimage. Or a diplomat off to a secret rendezvous to stop a war.”

Bilal blew out a long puff of smoke out through his regular mouth.

“What’s it like being a demon here in a place like this?” asked Spyder.

“I don’t know. What’s it like being a human?”

Spyder looked in the mirror behind the bar, taking in the crowd. There were other demons, mostly talking to each other. A couple of guys playing pool were cut up in a way that looked like the work of the Black Clerks. “Weird and getting weirder,” Spyder said. “Like Salvador Dali weird, all melting clocks and checkerboard deserts.”

“Welcome to the world, boy. As for my personal complaints, you can add having to deal with idiot talking meat like you.” Bilal pocketed a two-dollar tip someone had left for Rubi. “See, that demon who died last night was Nebiros. He was a friend of mine. In fact, my best friend in this sorry Sphere.” Bilal put his hand on Spyder’s arm. Each of the demon’s fingers was tipped with a scaly lizard mouth lined with tiny needle teeth. The lizards bit into Spyder as Bilal squeezed his arm. “You owe Nebiros a life, and me, well, I miss my friend and that makes me mad. You know what I mean?”

The enormous mouth opened wetly in the demon’s chest and he pulled Spyder closer. A leathery, black tongue darted out, licking Spyder’s face. “Shit!” yelled Bilal, slurping the enormous tongue back into his chest. He turned Spyder’s arm over, revealing the Black Clerk’s mark.

“You must shit candy and piss champagne, son. Everyone wants a piece of you,” said Bilal.

“You mean you can’t hurt me because of this mark?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“It sure as hell looked like it.”

“Smile while you still have lips. The Clerks have you penciled in. What they’ll do to you is a hundred times worse than anything I’d do.”

“I’m looking for Shrike,” said Spyder.

“Just because I’m not eating you doesn’t mean I’m your pal.”

“Yeah, but if I find her and get her to help me, maybe she’ll get in trouble with the Clerks, too. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“Shrike’s not that stupid,” Bilal said. He took the last of Spyder’s tequila and swallowed it, glass and all. “Still, she likes them pretty and dumb. You might drag her down to your level.” Bilal spat broken glass onto the ground at Spyder’s feet. “She’s got a room at the Coma Gardens. It’s a flophouse down by Pier 31.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“It’s not for your kind.”

“Right. Thanks.”

“Go to Hell.”

Rubi asked Spyder if he wanted another drink. He shook his head. “You okay?” she asked. “You’ve been here muttering to yourself all night.”

“Just replaying that last fight with Jenny. I keep trying it different ways hoping it comes out right.”

“You poor thing,” said Rubi.

“I’ve seen you in here a hundred times before. I’ve stolen your drinks and I’ve spit in them. But you’ve never seen me,” Bilal said to Spyder. “How does it feel to suddenly have to live in the real world?”

“It’s the worst thing that ever happened to me.”

“Good.” All of the demon’s mouths smiled. “I’ve been around and I can tell the ones who are going to make it once they get the Sight and you’re not one of them. You’ll be dead by Christmas. A bullet. Maybe you’ll cut your wrists. I don’t see you as the hanging type.”

“I’m going to kill myself just because I see uglies like you? Not likely, princess.”

“No, you’re going to kill yourself because you can’t stand the real world. Reality is a two-ton weight strapped to your balls. And they just keep getting heavier.”

“I’m going back to ignoring you now.”

“I’ve seen it a hundred times. You’re changed and there’s no going back. And everyone knows it. Look around. All those pretty girls who used to flirt with you, your friend behind the bar, they’re all watching you having a nice chat with an empty barstool. They’re already starting to wonder about you. Tomorrow they’ll tell their friends. Maybe I can’t hurt you, but I have friends who can influence mortal minds. Reinforce the doubt that’s already there. By Monday, you’re going to be Charles Manson to these people,” said Bilal. “Yeah, you’re going to kill yourself.”

“Tell me something, when you jerk off, do those little lizards on your hands bite? I bet you like that.”

“And then there are the Clerks. They’ve claimed you and you know what that means. They’re going to pick you apart like a maggot-covered carcass. Could you feel them slicing you up with their eyes, deciding what piece they’ll take first?”

Nick Cave’s “Red Right Hand” came on the jukebox. A girl whooped drunkenly and Rubi turned the song up loud.

“I take it back. You won’t make it till Christmas,” said Bilal. “You won’t even make it to Halloween.”

“Get a costume and come on over. I’ll put razor blades in some apples for you. Enough for all your mouths.”

Bilal leaned over the bar and used the lizard mouths on his fingertips to spear some cherries from Rubi’s drink set-ups. The demon popped the cherries into his face-mouth one at a time. “Give Shrike a big kiss from me. She’ll be so happy to see you, little prince.”

Spyder got up from his stool and started for the door. He couldn’t help noticing that people were pointedly getting out of his way. At the door Spyder heard Bilal yell, “An OD! You’re going to OD! How could I have missed that?”

Eleven

The Voice of the Sphinx

Spyder wondered what time it was. He was in another cab and doing his best to ignore the chatty driver. It pained Spyder that he hadn’t ridden his bike that morning. Without the bike, he always felt tied up and weighed down.

Ever since he could ride, Spyder had always had a motorcycle of some kind. “You never know when you’re going to need to get the hell out of Dodge,” he told friends. “And you can only run so far in a cab.” He told the driver to pull over.

“This ain’t even near the piers,” said the cabbie.

“I feel like walking.” Spyder paid the man and got out. He checked out the landscape as the cab made a U turn and headed back the way they’d come. Spyder had lived in San Francisco for ten years and during a brief breaking-and-entering period in his early twenties, had prided himself on knowing every backstreet, alley and bypass in the city. Right now, however, he didn’t know where the hell he was.

Ahead of him, where he was certain the waterfront warehouses should lead to the Fisherman’s Wharf tourist traps, were well-trodden sand dunes sloped down to San Francisco Bay. A lot of the city had been built on reclaimed beach. This, he was certain, was what the waterfront probably looked like a couple of hundred years ago. Spyder’s reflexes told him that ahead, past the dunes, was where the piers lay. But his eyes told him that there was nothing but shifting beach and black water. Then he saw a flicker—an orange light from the far side of the shifting sands. In that moment of illumination, Spyder could see a line of silhouettes moving along the edge of the dunes, heading over them. Some of the silhouettes carried burdens on their backs. Others were merely misshapen. It was enough. Spyder’s started walking.

At the top of the last big dune Spyder looked down onto a maze of market stalls that sprawled down to the water’s edge. As he got closer, sounds and smells hit him: the screams of hawkers, a dozen different musics pouring from out-of-tune instruments and cracked speakers, the heavy smell of roasting meat, spices and creosote. There were toys and piles of mismatched shoes, fresh vegetables, dried chameleons and flowers that sighed when you smelled them. There were orreries and telescopes, cracked eyeglasses and black eggs that hatched kittens who (according to their seller) spoke perfect ecclesiastical Latin. Sellers tugged at Spyder’s arm and waved squirming things, glittering things and mechanical things at him.

By a stall selling decomposing medical books and sex toys made of black lacquer and amber (some with ominous-looking beetles sealed inside) Spyder bumped shoulders with a tall, handsome man.

“Sorry,” said Spyder. “My fault.”

“You should watch your step, little brother,” said the big man. “Not everyone in the market is as reasonable as I. Some are downright belligerent.” The man’s voice sounded the way black velvet looked and felt. Spyder wondered if it might be some kind of magic trick. Not that he actually believed in magic, but he was beyond ruling out that much anymore.

Though they were physically the opposite, the tall man reminded Spyder of Shrike. He held himself with the kind of grace that Spyder had seen in the swordswoman. But the man was huge, more than a head taller than Spyder. His face, while classically handsome, was marked with deep scars that, at first, Spyder thought might be ritual, but then decided were some terrible accident. Chainmail covered the man’s upper body and he wore pants that seemed to Spyder like modified motorcycle leathers. Metal plates and studs had been affixed along the legs, which were tucked into heavy steel-toed boots. At his side, the man wore a wide-bladed Kan Dao sword like ones Spyder had seen in maybe a thousand kung fu movies.

“Do I know you, little brother?” asked the big man.

“I don’t think so,” said Spyder. “I’m new here.”

“Still, you seem familiar.”

“I’ve got one of those faces.”

“Perhaps that’s it.”

The tall man picked up a particularly elaborate sex toy from the stall and shook it. Six little legs sprang from the bottom and some kind of spring-wound plunger popped from the top and began pumping the air vigorously. The little legs kicked as if looking for something to grab on to. When the tall man laughed at the thing, Spyder noticed that color on his face was unnaturally intense. He realized that the man was wearing makeup, trying to cover his scars. The sudden insight made Spyder feel oddly more at home. Even here, down the rabbit hole or wherever the hell he’d ended up, people still had egos and still worried about how they looked.

“I’m looking for a place called the Coma Gardens. Do you know it?” Spyder asked the man.

“Very well,” he replied. “Go down this aisle and turn toward the water at the Sphinx. Be sure not to speak to her. She will never let you go. Keep walking and when you see the Volt Eater, the Coma Gardens lie just beyond. You can’t miss it.”

“Thanks,” said Spyder, desperately wanting to ask what the hell a Sphinx and a Volt Eater were, but thinking the better of it. He knew he’d find out soon enough.

He wasn’t disappointed. Following the crowd in the direction the tall man had pointed, Spyder saw a Sphinx. A living, breathing Sphinx, like the sculptures in Golden Gate Park. The Sphinx sat up on its haunches, its lion body acorn brown, muscled and sleek as a cruise missile. Gathered around the Sphinx was a rapt crowd. They were clearly in awe, maybe hypnotized, thought Spyder. The Sphinx’s face—the face of a human woman—was easily the most beautiful he had ever seen. Spyder looked away when he caught himself staring, but the Sphinx had already noticed him.

“Don’t be shy, my friend. Come closer. I can answer all your questions and tell you your destiny.”

Spyder half-turned in her direction. “Nope. Sorry. No thanks,” he said.

The Sphinx’s eyes narrowed with sudden interest and the crowd turned to see who she was looking at. “Yes, you should keep moving,” she said to Spyder. “Don’t let anything or anyone stop you from getting where you’re going.” Lowering her voice, the Sphinx spoke to her adoring crowd. Spyder slowed his gait, listening to her words. “See what passes, my children. A blind fool. A golden champion. What could he be seeking under Heaven’s rough gaze? We have a mystery in our midst.” When Spyder turned to sneak a last look at the Sphinx, she was staring him right in the eye. The beautiful beast gave him a smile and a wink. “It looks as if heroes are coming smaller this year.”

Spyder’s head spun. He turned away and hurried down the aisle. At the end, he found what he figured must be the Volt Eater. An exotic bare-breasted beauty, her skin oiled and gleaming, she was inhaling in long draughts from a wrist-thick cable attached to a gas-powered generator. After each breath, she spat lighting bolts, snaking and crackling, over the heads of the happily screaming crowd. People threw money at the Volt Eater’s feet after each demonstration of her electric skills. It made Spyder a little sad to see her. On any other night, she would have been the hands-down highlight. He would have been in temporary love and dreamed about her as he went home with whomever he was with that night. Tonight, however, the Volt Eater was just a pretty girl spitting watts, no more or less miraculous than Bible-quoting kittens or the lion-woman who’d just pronounced him both a fool and a hero.

Just when Spyder thought he would never be surprised again, he came to the edge of the market and saw the Coma Gardens. Bathed in light the color of blood and pumpkins, the whole building was engulfed in a spectacular fire. Part of the roof collapsed and flames shot fifty feet into the night sky. The only thing more shocking than the fire was the fact that no one in the market was paying the slightest attention to it. They went on with their selling and haggling even as the whole structure cracked and caved in on itself.

Twelve

Cyanide Recall

The Coma Gardens kept on burning. The beams glowed as if they’d been injected with magma, shedding hot jets of flame and debris over the sales stalls. Spyder walked along the cement broadway between the market and burning hotel, unsure what to do.

If Jenny hadn’t taken the cell phone, Spyder thought, he could call 911. Of course, he wasn’t sure exactly where he was. Still, all he’d have to tell them is that there was a burning building on the pier. The fire trucks would be able to see it from all the way down at Fisherman’s Wharf. In fact, someone had probably already called the fire in, which was both good and bad. It was good in that the fire department would put it out. It was bad in that it brought Spyder back to the fact that he had no idea what he would do if Shrike was inside the burning building. He didn’t want to think about it. Spyder turned around one more time to see if anyone in the market was forming a bucket brigade. The market went on as it had all evening—oblivious, a world unto itself.

Then Spyder saw someone at the edge of the crowd. She was talking to a man wearing an enormous, jeweled bird mask, one that covered his entire head (or actually was his head, Spyder later thought). The woman wore her shades, and moved her white cane from one hand to the other so she could shake the birdman’s feathered mitt. Spyder ran to her through the smoke of the smoldering Coma Gardens.

“Shrike!” he yelled. The woman turned her head toward him as the birdman walked away. Spyder ran up and grabbed her happily by the shoulders. “It’s me, Spyder. You saved my life the other night.”

The blind woman gave him a crooked smile. “Oh yes. The pretty pony boy. How are you?”

“I’m…” He started to answer, but realized he had no idea what to say. He felt giddy at having found her, but there was the accumulating wreckage of the rest of his life. “I’m fine,” he said. “I can see things now. The real world. That’s how I found the market. And you.”

“Good for you,” she said. “Maybe you’re more clever than I thought. A trick pony. Me, I’m off to find new lodgings.”

“I can see why,” said Spyder.

“What do you mean?”

“What do I mean? Look! Your hotel is an in-fucking-ferno.”

“No, it’s not. I would be able to feel the heat.”

“Of course it is. I can see it burning from here.”

“Really? Because the Coma Gardens isn’t going to be built for another fifty years,” she said. “And it’s not going to burn for another twenty after that.”

“Then how were you staying in there?”

Shrike breathed deeply and nodded. “You can see things now. And it’s all brand new and you don’t know what to think of it, do you? Take a walk with me.” Shrike reached out and took one of his hands and led him through the crowded market, swinging her white cane gently in front of her feet. The effect of that cane was less that of a blind person feeling her way along than her warning people that she was coming, Spyder thought. Everyone and everything got out of her way.

“People are afraid of you,” said Spyder when they reached a less crowded part of the market.

“They’re afraid of rumors and tall tales. And I let them be afraid. It makes my job easier.”

“What is your job?”

Shrike sniffed the air as they passed a perfumer’s stall. “Smell that? Raw ambergris. There’s nothing else that smells like that. It’s one of those magical substances that makes everyone—humans, demons, angels, ghosts and your little dog Toto—all swoon. There are merchants whose entire trade is delivering ambergris to the markets in Purgatory.”

“A couple of days ago, I would have considered that a very odd thing to say.”

Shrike nodded. “Yes. Your little vision problem,” she said. “First of all, that burning hotel you saw… I’m sure by now you’ve noticed that the world is a much more flexible place than you’re used to. Time isn’t the same everywhere you go. And space can change depending on what time it is. Understand?”

“Hello. My name is Spyder and I’m five years old. Have you seen my mommy?”

Shrike smiled and looped her arm around his. Spyder liked how she felt. “Listen,” she said, “the waterfront is one of the places where the edges of all the Spheres, the planes of existence in which we live, meet. It’s why the market’s here. I was able to stay at a hotel that hasn’t been built yet in this Sphere of existence because it’s already been built in another Sphere. Unfortunately, time being a slippery and relative thing here, the hotel has already burned down in another Sphere. That’s what you saw. For me, though, it hadn’t burned down. I was booted for an exorcism trade show.”

“You went into the future, but you went into the wrong future?”

“Close enough. I was already in the future and the future I didn’t want, the one with exorcists in party hats, drifted close enough to make my room reservation disappear. I have to find another place to sleep.”

“You can crash at my place,” Spyder said.

“No, thanks.”

“I’m not coming on to you. My girlfriend’s moved out. There’s plenty of room.”

Shrike removed her arm from his and leaned over to retie one of her boots. “I’m sorry about your girlfriend, but my client isn’t expecting to find me in some cozy Victorian flat. Don’t take it personally. This is a work-related rejection.”

“What the hell is that?” said Spyder. They were at the back of the market, walking back in the direction Spyder had come earlier that night. San Francisco was white and chilly with fog. Looming out of the mist exactly where it shouldn’t be was a gigantic stone archway sporting Roman columns. On top was a tarnished copper chariot being pulled by four enormous horses. Shrike sniffed the air, turning her head this way and that.

“It smells like Berlin,” she said. “Near the Brandenburg Gate.”

“Berlin? Like, the real Berlin?” asked Spyder. “I always wanted to go there.”

“Here’s another secret for your scrapbook. There is no difference between San Francisco and Berlin. In all the world, there is only one city. Because of how mortals perceive things, the one city appears as different cities, broken up and scattered all over the globe. But if you know the right doors to open, the right turns to make, the right tunnels and rocks to look behind, even mortals can find their way from one city to every other city. There are maps and trackers, ancient, hidden smuggling routes that only a few in the thieving guilds know.”

“That’s supposed to make me feel better? I almost had enough frequent flyer miles to take Jenny to Prague. Now, she’s gone and we could have walked there all along.” Spyder stood in the quiet beyond the market, looking up at the gate. When he looked down again, mist was beading on his jacket and he was growing cold. “I can’t do this,” he said. “I need help. Can you put me back the way I was?”

“I’m sorry. I can’t.”

“Can anyone?”

“Maybe.”

It might have been better if that thing had gutted me at the club, Spyder thought. He said, “Why did you help me the other night?”

“I don’t know. I just had to. You were so clueless.”

“Why can’t you help me now?”

“I’m on my way to meet a client.”

“You didn’t answer me when I asked you earlier. What exactly do you do?”

“You’ve seen what I do. I kill things,” Shrike said. “People. Beasts. Demons. Whatever a client wants dead.”

“The Black Clerks?”

“No one kills the Black Clerks. They’re elemental forces. Killing them is like trying to kill wind or light. Why do you want to know?”

Spyder pushed up his jacket sleeve and put her hand on the scar on his arm.

“Damn,” she said. “By the pike, you’re a fool.”

“There’s nothing to be done about this?”

“Not by me. When they come for you, offer the Clerks a better deal.”

“I could offer them you.”

Shrike moved close to Spyder. She smelled of musk and jasmine. She whispered in his ear. “If I didn’t know you were such a fool that remark could cost you your head.”

“I’m sorry,” said Spyder backing away from her. “I’m falling apart. I would never do something like that.”

“I know that. I have a pretty good nose for treachery and dangerous folk.”

“Where do I fit on the danger scale? Say that one is a pretty little butterfly and ten is the thing that beat me like a two-dollar drum the other night.”

Shrike thought for a moment, then reached into the pocket of her coat. “I don’t know exactly what you call one of these. It was a present from my niece.” She held out a blue plastic rabbit that fit snuggly in the palm of her hand. Shrike wound the rabbit up with a silver key in its side and the toy started to vibrate while a little bell jangled inside. “I suppose this could get stuck in an enemy’s throat and choke him, so it’s a one. You’re a bit bigger and a little smarter, though. I rate around a two.” The toy wound down and Shrike dropped it back into her pocket.

“You’re Death Valley. You know that? Beautiful, but harsh,” said Spyder. He sat down on a sand dune and Shrike sat beside him. “I never got to ask, if you’re blind how did you kill that demon?”

“I’ve trained for this all my life. My father taught me. Then a friend, before he turned out to be exactly the bastard I’d been told he was. Besides,” she said, “there’s blind and there’s blind.”

“What does that mean?”

“Just what I said.”

“My head is spinning. I have this magic juju sight and’ve seen such demented shit in the last twenty-four hours. I wouldn’t mind being blind for a while.”

“It’s not really magic sight, you know,” Shrike said.

“Then what is it?”

“Memory,” she replied. “When that demon had you, some part of it—saliva, a fragment of tooth, a fingernail—infected your blood. Everything you’re seeing now you’ve seen all your life only you’ve chosen to forget it an instant later. If you remembered anything of this part of the world, it was in your dreams and nightmares.” Shrike pulled up Spyder and started walking. “Don’t feel bad. Forgetting is the way it is with almost every living thing in this Sphere. But now you can’t look away and you can’t forget.”

“Poisoned with memory. And you can’t help me.”

“That’s right.”

“Can you at least point the way back to civilization?”

Shrike pointed back at the market with her cane. “Follow the stalls to the right until you come to a café in an old railroad car. You’ll see streetcar tracks just beyond. Follow them along the waterfront and they’ll take you all the way to more familiar territory.”

“Thanks,” said Spyder. “Good luck with your client.”

“Take care. You know, I forgot to ask you. Are you Spider Clan?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Which is probably the perfect way for us to say goodbye.”

“Take care, pony boy.”

Spyder walked slowly back to the market, following the route Shrike had described to him. He passed horse traders and what looked like a kind of sidewalk surgery, with a hand-lettered cardboard sign describing procedures, from amputations to nose jobs, along with prices. Spyder found the train car café a few minutes later. He was colder now. His body ached from his injuries and his shoulders were knotted with tension. Somewhere in the dim back of his brain he knew he should be worried about the Clerks and what he was going to do with Lulu and how he was going to open up the shop tomorrow, but none of it got through the fog of exhaustion that was narrowing the universe to thoughts of walking and sleep.

At the edge of the market, by the last big dune, some teenagers were juggling fire without moving their hands. They stared silently and the balls of flame moved through the air all by themselves. Spyder started walking up the dune, when he heard someone call his name.

“Spyder, are you there? It’s me!”

He turned and saw Shrike running after him through the sand.

“I’m here,” he said quietly, and she hurried toward his voice, to the base of the dune.

“I’ve been thinking about it and I have a proposition for you,” Shrike said, a little out of breath. “This client I’m meeting, she’s expecting me to have a partner. But my partner isn’t here. Stand in for him and I’ll pay you.”

“My rent’s covered. I want my life back.”

“I can’t give you that. But some of the people I work with have power. If this client is who I think it is, she might be able to help you.”

“Might?”

“It’s the best I can do.”

“What would I be? Your bodyguard? Your windup rabbit?”

“Your job will be to stand next to me and say absolutely nothing,” said Shrike. “I’ll do all the talking.”

“I’m a mute?”

“People interpret silence as strength. In your case, the less you say, the better you get. I need you to look more dangerous than you really are.”

“And maybe she can help me.”

“No guarantees.”

Spyder walked down the dune to where Shrike was waiting. He stood a little above her in the sand. “I’ll help you get your bags from the hotel,” he said.

“That’s not necessary,” Shrike said. She removed a battered leather book from an inside pocket of her coat. “Everything I need is right here.” She opened it and little paper shapes stood up from the pages. Horses. Swords. Things that might have been exotic fruits or vegetables. To Spyder, it looked like a kid’s pop-up book.

Shrike put the book away and led Spyder over the dune in the opposite direction. “Jean-Philippe, the bird-man, told me about a lovely deserted warehouse where we can spend the night.”

“Feel that fog? We’ll be ice pops by morning,” said Spyder.

“Don’t worry. I’ll read to you,” said Shrike. “A good book will always keep you warm.”

Thirteen

Journey Into Fear

Shrike led Spyder over the dunes toward North Beach, the old Barbary Coast, for two hundred years the traditional haunt of pirates, thieves and the kind of regular citizens who want to vanish into oblivion or into newly invented lives.

Behind an abandoned furniture warehouse under the Bay Bridge, they ducked through a hole in the hurricane fence and stomped through weeds and smashed glass to the back of the building.

Spyder, who had broken into more than his share of warehouses, spotted a smashed window near a rusting fire escape on the second floor. “Looks like we can get in through an upstairs window,” he said to Shrike.

Shrike was feeling her way along the back wall of the warehouse. When she came to a door, she jiggled the knob, but the door was locked.

“Hey, there’s an open window,” said Spyder.

Shrike kicked in the door with her big boots. Her cane had already flicked up and transformed into a sword. She held it in striking position as she strode into the warehouse. Spyder was impressed, but kept quiet.

“Stay behind me,” she whispered.

“Hear anything?”

“Rats. People. Shh.”

The interior of the warehouse was a black hole decorated with a few grimed windows inlaid with chicken wire and decorated with graffiti. Shrike moved cautiously, but quickly, seemingly sensing where the trash and broken furniture lay and avoiding it. Spyder stumbled along behind her trying to keep up.

“Is it all open down here or are there any rooms?” Shrike asked him.

Spyder tried to see as deeply as possible into the dark. “I can’t see much, but it looks all open down here. I think I can see some offices upstairs.”

“Show me.”

Spyder led Shrike upstairs and she checked all the rooms until she found one that was still locked.

“Move back,” she told Spyder.

Faster than his eye could register, Shrike brought her sword arcing down and sliced the padlock off the door. The lock clattered to the floor noisily. Half of it skipped way and rattled down the stairs. Spyder heard low voices as doors leading to some of the other rooms opened.

Shrike turned toward the darkness, holding her sword at waist-level. “You’re all welcome to stay here, but anyone stupid enough to come through this door will end up like that lock.”

The interior of the office was dusty and littered with paper and rat turds. It looked as if it might have been a records office. Old filing cabinets stood against one wall along with a tilting, three-legged desk. Spyder had stayed in worse places, but not recently. He described the scene to Shrike, who walked from wall to wall, pacing off the room.

“Would you push the old furniture into a corner?” she asked.

When he’d dragged the rusting junk out of the way, Spyder said, “There were some old sofa cushions and maybe a futon out there. I’ll go get them.”

“If you want to sleep on mildewed trash, feel free. I prefer something clean.”

Shrike had her pop-up book open to a page that, in the dark, looked like a scene from The Thief of Bagdad. She whispered a few words and the storage room was flooded in light and warmth.

The light came from burning braziers set at each corner of the room. The floors were covered with Persian carpets and bright pillows. There was an enormous bed against one wall and storage vessels and cabinets against the opposite. The place smelled instantly of incense and spices.

“Welcome to my home away from home,” Shrike said.

“When I was five, I had a metal folding cup that I thought was the coolest thing in the world,” said Spyder. “But I was wrong.”

“I’m glad you like it. You’re my guest. Please sit down. Are you hungry?”

“Now that you ask, yes.”

Shrike dropped her coat and sword onto the big bed and went to the cabinets without hesitation. Spyder sat down on the edge of the bed watching her sure movements. Even though it was occupying an alien space, he thought, this was clearly her room.

“I’ve been on the road for a while, so I’m not really Suzy Homemaker these days,” said Shrike, opening and closing the cabinets. She came back to the bed with a couple of bundles. “All I have is some wine and focaccia.”

“The breakfast of champions,” Spyder said.

“My glasses are all broken, so we’re going to have to share the bottle,” Shrike said.

“That’s okay. It’ll give me a chance to look butch for once tonight.”

Shrike smiled and sliced the wax and cork from the top of the bottle with the edge of her sword, then handed the wine to Spyder. It tasted like wind felt at the top of a hill on a summer night. He handed the bottle back to Shrike. “Wow,” he said.

Shrike took a long drink. “Don’t forget to eat, too. Give it a chance, and this wine will leave you half-naked, shoeless and wearing a dog collar, with only a vague memory of how you got that way.”

“Does the wine have a sister?”

“You wish.”

Between bites of spicy focaccia Spyder said, “You’re not at the Coma Gardens. How is your client going to find you?”

“Magic.”

“You’re not much like most girls.”

“I’m going to take that as a compliment.”

“That’s how it’s meant.”

“Slow down on the wine, pony boy. You don’t want your mouth getting too far ahead of your brain.”

“How long have you been living like this? Out of yo