“It’s an old word. Arabic. It means ‘mother.’ The Ommahs are the Jade matriarchs. They control the whole Jade world. Set the rules. Tell them where to go and what to do.”

“When to have kids?”

“Especially that. Breeding is very important to Jades. They like to keep their lineage clean and controlled. It’s why they go for such a high price.”

“What do you mean a high price?”

“At market. When they’re sold. There are few Jades in the world. They live short, exciting lives and are gone. That’s why they’re so expensive.” The Shonin laughs. “How do you not know these things?”

“Thanks,” I say, and leave. As the door closes I can hear the Shonin.

“Seriously. How dumb is that boy?”

Apparently, dumber than even I thought.

To hell with Wells and his inkblots. I need a drink.

I go outside and call Candy. No one answers, so I leave a message that I’m going to Bamboo House of Dolls and that she should meet me there if she’s feeling better.

The rain still pounds down. A couple of agents under an awning palm their cigarettes when I come out. They whisper to each other and quietly laugh. Yes, I’m a commander of men.

Six Vigil agents in expensive golf clothes play a round under oversize umbrellas. Disguised spooks playing a fake round of a brain-dead game in a billionaire’s playpen in a monsoon while around them, the city reaches population zero. If the Angra have a sense of humor they won’t be able to invade. They’ll laugh themselves stupid and wait for us to die off pretending that nothing is wrong.

[Chapter 8]

I STEP THROUGH a shadow and come out in front of Bamboo House of Dolls. It’s my Sistine Chapel. My home away from home. The best bar in L.A. The first bar I walked into after escaping from Hell. It’s a punk tiki joint. Old Germs, Circle Jerks, Iggy and the Stooges posters on the wall. Plastic palm trees and hula girls around the liquor bottles. And there’s Carlos, the bartender, mixing drinks in a Hawaiian shirt. On the jukebox, Martin Denny is playing an exotic palm-tree version of “Winter Wonderland.”

It’s a small, damp afternoon crowd in the place. Smaller than usual. Few civilians. Mostly Lurkers. Three gloomy necromancers play bridge with a Hand of Glory filling the fourth seat. A couple of blue-skinned schoolgirl Luderes play their favorite scorpion-and-cup game. A table of excited Goth kids throw D&D dice and cop discreet glances at the crowd from the back of the room. Games for everyone. A necessary distraction when the sky is falling. Still, it’s Christmas and the mood isn’t bad. It’s a Wonderful Life crossed with Night of the Living Dead.

Carlos serves drinks wearing a Santa hat.

“The salaryman returns,” he says when I sit down at the bar. “How’s life behind a desk?”

“If anyone ever actually gets me to sit at a desk you have my permission to shoot me.”

Carlos pours me a shot of Aqua Regia from my private supply.

“It’s not so bad,” he says. “Take me. The bar is sort of my desk. I come in at pretty much the same time each day. Do my prep. Serve my bosses—you ungodly things—and go home tired and satisfied knowing that I’ve kept America watered and prosperous for one more day.”

“You’re a saint. When you die they’ll name a junior high after you and your reliquary will be full of shot glasses and lime wedges.”

“Don’t forget a boom box. I need my tunes.”

“The difference between us is one, you’re the boss. Two, you can throw out anyone you want anytime you want. And three, you have a jukebox by your desk. Me, all I have is a dead man in Liberace robes and a cowboy with a stick the size of a redwood up his ass.”

Carlos pours himself a shot and leans on the bar.

“Why don’t you have a drink and listen to the carols? That always makes me feel better.”

Someone comes in and Carlos stands, looking serious.

“Be cool,” he says, and goes to the end of the bar, where two uniformed cops have come in. The three of them speak quietly. Too quietly for me to hear over the jukebox. After a minute of chatter, Carlos hands one of the cops a Christmas card. The card is misshapen. Bulging. There’s something inside it. The three of them nod to each other and shake hands. One of them glances at me and stops like he thinks we might have gone to high school together. A second later, he turns and heads out with his partner.

“What was that?”

Carlos says, “Exactly what it looked like. Protection. But for real. Do you know how many cops are left in the city? They’re splitting town just like everybody else. The cops that are left, they need a little extra motivation to answer the phone if there’s trouble.”

“A nice racket.”

Carlos shakes his head and throws back his drink.

“The price of doing business in L.A.”

He pours us both another round and holds up his glass for a toast.

“Merry Christmas.”

We clink glasses and drink. I shake my head.

“I can’t believe it’s Christmas again. How do you people stand having the same holidays over and over? In Hell they only have holidays when Lucifer feels like it, so it’s always a surprise and all the little goblins are giddy as kindergartners.”

“You going back to the old country for the holidays?”

“Yeah, I’m Hell’s Secret Santa, bringing all the good little imps coal and fruitcake.”

“How do you tell the difference?” says someone behind me.

I turn and find Eugène Vidocq, besides Candy probably my best friend on this stupid planet. He doesn’t like talking about his age and swears he isn’t a day over a hundred and fifty, but I know he’s well over two hundred. He’s also immortal. And a thief. And after being in the States for more than a hundred years, he still has a French accent thick enough to slice Brie, a last remnant of his home that he won’t ever let go of.

He claps me on the back and nods to Carlos. Orders a couple of drinks. He isn’t alone. Brigitte Bardo is with him. She gives me a quick peck on the cheek. Brigitte is Czech. She was a skilled zombie hunter back in the day and used to do porn to support her hunting habit. These days she’s working her way into regular Hollywood films. But it’s slow. She still has an accent and it’s, you know, the end of the world, so there’s fewer films in production. When she’s not auditioning, she helps out at Allegra’s Lurker clinic.

Carlos brings Vidocq whiskey and Brigitte red wine.

“Where’s Candy?” she says.

“She wasn’t feeling well. Did you find anything wrong with her when she stopped by yesterday?”

“Nothing that I know of. She just took her Jade potion and left. She seemed fine.”

“Maybe I should call her again.”

“Leave her alone. This time of year can put people into odd moods.”

“Don’t I know it,” says Carlos. “It was just about a year ago that you wandered in here the first time. You were looking a little bleary, Mr. Stark.”

“As I recall, I’d just crawled out of a cemetery and was wearing stolen clothes.”

“You always make an impressive entrance,” says Vidocq. “As I recall, after your return you were going to shoot me the first time we saw each other.”

“Total misunderstanding. And sorry.”

He holds up his glass.

“Whiskey under the bridge.”

“You kicked a bunch of skinheads’ asses for me, remember?” says Carlos. “I didn’t know about any of you Sub Rosas or Lurkers back then. If those fuckers came in here these days, I’d give them a faceful of this.”

He holds up a potion from behind the bar.

I look at Vidocq.

“One of yours?”

“You’re not the only one who barters for drinks,” he says.

“Rumor has it you’re doing some freelance work for the Vigil these days too. How does it feel to be back?”

Vidocq shakes his head. Regards his drink.

“Strange. As strange as I bet it is for you.”

“I’m still not sure it’s the right thing to be doing, but if I wasn’t working for them I don’t know if I’d be doing anything at all.”

“Confusion. Strange alliances. God’s new deluge. These are the things the world has been reduced to. Apocalypse. Le merdier. So let’s drink to the void.”

Brigitte sighs and picks up her wine.

“You boys are too grim for me. I’m going to find more congenial company.”

I say, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be a drag.”

“You’re never a drag, Jimmy, but I see a studio friend I met when I first came here. A girl must maintain her connections, mustn’t she? Maybe I can be in the last movie before the world ends.”

“Now who’s the drag?”

She shrugs extravagantly.

“Knock ’em dead,” I tell her.

I turn back to the bar and pick up my drink. I haven’t had a cigarette in hours. My lungs are aching for abuse.

“Tell me the truth. Are we good enough for this? Look at us. What a bunch of fuckups.”

“What choice do we have?” says Vidocq. “Who else will do this if not us?”

“The government.”

“Save us from our saviors.”

I sip my Aqua Regia and Carlos moves off to serve other customers.

“I don’t trust the Vigil much more than the Angra. What’s more important to them, saving the world or controlling whatever’s left when this is over?”

Vidocq looks at his hands. Flexes his fingers. He looks good for two hundred. Not more than his forties.

“I was twenty-five when I faced my first apocalypse. When the bloated corpse of the eighteenth century rolled into its grave, making way for the wonders of the nineteenth. You should have seen Paris. Half the city praying, flagellating, and prostrating themselves before Notre-Dame and images of the Madonna. The other half whoring and drunk while fireworks burned brighter than all of Heaven.”

“I wonder which group you were with?”

“The Madonna and I had parted ways many years before that, I’m afraid.”

I look around the room and spot Brigitte sitting at a table with a group of network executives decked out in designer faux-military gear and safari vests like they’re running off to a Brentwood Red Dawn key party. But like a few million others, they’re just headed out of town with the family jewels sewn into the lining of their bulletproof trench coats. Brigitte laughs as the gray-haired alpha wolf exec lays some of his survival gear on the table. Lengths of paracord. Sapper gloves. A multicaliber pistol. Condoms in Bubble Wrap. A multitool with more moving parts than a Stealth bomber. Watching her smile, I wonder if Brigitte is pulling out of her depression or if she’s just an actress playing at being all right.

“There were suicides and riots. Fury and ecstatic joy, and all for the same reason. The world would end or be transformed, and unlike now, in this age of science and desperate rationality, there was nothing we could do about it. So each of us did what made sense. Drink. Pray. Stay with loved ones or sail off to the ends of the earth.”

“And here you are.”

“And here I am. Alive and not quite yet mad.”

He finishes his drink and holds up the empty glass for another.

“The point is that I believe we will survive. Or enough of us will to make the world worth fighting for.”

“It better be. I’m not kickboxing monsters so the Vigil and Homeland Security can turn L.A. into one big It’s a Small World ride.”

One of the Luderes gives a little shriek. She’s been stung by one of the scorpions. The shrieker gives the room a little wave.

“Sorry. Everyone’s fine. Carry on.”

She and her friend crack up.

I turn back to Vidocq, but there’s someone in the way. One of the Goth boys from the table in the back has joined us. He’s dressed in a long high-collared coat and has wild Robert Smith hair. He looks vaguely like a mad scientist disguised as a priest. There’s something funny about his eyes. I glance over at his friends. They look as surprised as I am.

“No autographs today, kid,” I say. “I’m with friends.”

The kid takes a step. Stumbles and slams into the bar. I have to grab his arm to keep him from falling over.

He says, “It’s not going to stop. No matter what you do.”

“What are you talking about?”

“That’s my message to you. It’s never going to stop.”

I know what’s wrong with his eyes. He’s possessed. In Hell there’s a key. If you know how to use it, and not many down there do, you can temporarily take possession of a body up here. Someone is riding this kid like he’s a carousel pony.

“He isn’t Death. Or God or the Devil. He is the Hand. Cut one off and another takes his place. He is many-bodied. Many-handed. A hand for each soul on Earth.”

I slap the kid. Shake him. His eyes stay vacant and dead.

“Who are you? Who gave you the message?”

“Come out and see,” he says.

Vidocq puts a hand on my arm.

“Don’t you dare go anywhere with this boy. He is dangerous.”

“I know. But if there’s something out there I can’t stay here.”

“Don’t be stupid,” says Carlos. “Let me call the cops. This is why I pay the fuckers.”

I nod.

“Maybe calling them isn’t a bad idea.”

I turn to Vidocq.

“Keep everyone else inside.”

The kid is still holding on to me.

“Let’s go,” I say.

I get up and the kid lets go of me, leading the way outside. I put my hand under the coat and slip out my na’at.

We go out into the rain. Smokers huddle under the awning. A few of the regulars nod and wave. I don’t wave back.

The kid walks all the way to the curb. I stay a couple of steps behind him. We stand there in the rain like a couple of assholes. He steps into the street between two cars, looking around like he’s waiting for a cab.

“You saw a golden woman in the water. There,” he says, pointing west to the Pacific.

“I remember.”

When Kill City collapsed into the ocean a few weeks ago, I was in it. Something that looked like a woman covered in gold swam up from the wreckage and tried to pull me down.

“She served the Hand. She was beautiful.”

“Except for the part where half her face was missing.”

He nods. His long hair is plastered to his head, covering one eye.

“She was incomplete. That won’t happen again.”

“You couldn’t tell me this inside, where it’s dry?”

He holds his hands out wide.

“You don’t understand what’s happening and even if you did you can’t stop it. The old ones are coming. They will bless us with annihilation.”

A delivery truck speeds up the street. It swerves toward the curb. Hits the cars the kid is standing between. The impact drives both cars up onto the sidewalk. The kid is still between them, but now he’s in two pieces. A girl screams and keeps on screaming.

The kid’s friends must have followed us outside. A couple of the other Goth kids run to the curb like maybe they can put their friend back together again. I climb over the trunk of one of the wrecked cars. Go to the truck and pull the driver-side door open. The driver half falls out, held in place by his seat belt. His head is pulped from smashing into the windshield. I test his seat belt. It’s locked right across his body. It doesn’t make sense that he could have hit the inside of the windshield. Unless someone else belted him in after his head was in pieces and he was dead. I step up onto the running board to check out his body. His right arm is gone. Cut off neatly at the shoulder. Another Angra groupie? I can see why he’d sacrifice himself, but why take out the kid? No way he was looking to die.

I start back into the bar. The kid’s phone rings. He had it in his hand the whole time.

“Don’t touch it,” I say.

I kneel down and pry it from his hand. One of the boys vomits into the street. I go back inside the bar and head straight for the men’s room, where it’s quieter. No one is inside. I shove a trash can under the doorknob so no one can get in. Where the number of the caller should be displayed it says blocked. I thumb the phone on.

“He’s right, you know. You can’t stop it.”

There’s static on the line, but I know the voice. This isn’t the first time he’s crank-called me from Hell.

“Fuck you, Merihim.”

Merihim is head of the Hell’s one official church. But it was all a ruse. He’s also in a Hellion Angra cult. A lot of the fallen angels want the old gods back so that they’ll destroy the universe, hoping it will relieve them of the torments of Hell. It’s the biggest suicide pact in the history of creation.

“Try again. Do you think there’s only one who can speak through mortals?”

The line static clears up.

“Deumos?”

She’s another fallen angel. She ran another underground, radical church in Hell. Except it was all a con job. She was working with Merihim to bring the Angra back. I guess you can’t trust Hellions or preachers. Who would have guessed?

“The who doesn’t matter. The what matters. Return the Qomrama Om Ya. That’s the only way the killing will end.”

“So you can summon the Angra? I know how you want things to end.”

“Admit it. You’re as exhausted by existence as we are. Help us end it.”

“Hello? Say that again. It’s hard to hear you over the bullshit.”

There’s a pause. I start to think that the line has gone dead.

“Hello?”

“You’ll find each other sooner or later, and when you do, you’ll see how pointless your cowboy antics really are.”

I hear a click and the call is over. I drop the kid’s phone in my pocket and take out my own. I hit redial and call Candy.

It rings twice and she picks up.

“You all right?” I say.

“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“No reason. You weren’t feeling well earlier.”

“Where are you?”

“Bamboo House.”

“I’ll be there soon.”

“Don’t bother. Cops are on the way.”

“Are you okay?”

I switch the phone to my left hand. There must have been blood on the kid’s phone. I wipe my right hand on my coat.

“I’m fine,” I say. “You stay put, lock up the store, and I’ll bring home some donuts.”

“Yum.”

I try to slip out the front of the bar, but the cops are already there. It’s the two that were in the bar earlier. When they try the bully-boy routine, I use the only weapon I can think of. One that might backfire in my face. I flash my Vigil credentials at them. They back off. Reluctantly, but they back off.

“I understand you removed evidence from the accident scene,” says one. The one who looked at me funny before. He’s still looking at me kind of like I’m a talking lobster.

“I’m taking in a cell phone to the Vigil’s labs.”

“You don’t think this was a traffic accident?”

“I don’t know what it is, but I know the kid is a person of interest in a Vigil investigation, so I’m keeping the phone.”

“Let me see that ID again.”

I pull it out but keep it close enough that he can’t grab it from me.

He writes down my ID number and closes his notebook.

“We’ll be in touch,” he says.

“I’ll count the seconds.”

I walk around the corner into the alley next to Bamboo House. The headlights of the cop car throw a nice shadow on the wall. As I step through I catch the cop with the notebook watching me. I keep going. This is Hollywood. Fuck him if he can’t deal with a little street magic.

[Chapter 9]

I’M HOME MAYBE twenty minutes when someone pounds on the front door of Max Overdrive. I grab my Colt and head downstairs. The front of the store is all glass, so if someone really wanted to get in they could. Still, I’d like to know who I’m dealing with. I flip on the outside light and go behind the counter. We installed a surveillance camera over the door when Kasabian and I had the place fixed up. Except tonight all I can see is the outline of a body outside and heavy rain. More pounding on the door.

“Stark. I know you’re in there. Open up, dammit.”

It’s a woman’s voice.

I take a chance and look around the shade that covers the door and recognize Marshal Julie Sola. I stuff the Colt in my waistband and unlock the door. She brushes past me to get out of the rain. She’s in a long slicker raincoat with the hood pulled up over her head. Still, she’s drenched and making a puddle on the floor. I point to the peg on the wall where people can hang their raincoats. She gives a soft “Ah,” takes off her coat, and hangs it up.

Her hair is long and dark, pulled up high and pinned in place. It was, at least. Now it’s a wet rat’s nest. She’s dressed in light, loose-fitting sportswear, a kind of idiot camouflage the Vigil makes many agents wear to try and blend in with their country-club location. She looks vaguely embarrassed, but quickly shakes it off.

“Thanks,” she says. “I thought I’d find you here.”

“You’re half drowned. Why didn’t you wait till I came in tomorrow?”

“Would you have really come to see me?”

“Maybe not first thing, but sure. I like you fine.”

“That isn’t what I mean,” she says. “This is what I mean.”

She hands me the manila envelope she’s been holding. She had it under the jacket, but the front is still damp.

I open the envelope and find official Vigil stationery and forms. Many pages of forms. It’s my psych evaluation.

“I have to do all this?”

“Ah no. This is just part one. There are three parts.”

“Fuck me,” I say. The pages are full of word problems, shapes I’m supposed to group together, drawings, and questions about my parents.

“I can help you,” she says. “I know the right answers to give so Washington won’t ask any questions.”

“You think Washington is going to buy it if I come off like Mike Brady?”

She smiles and rubs her hands together to get the circulation going.

“So we’ll leave some rough edges on. The point is you’ll pass. We need you.”

I drop the envelope on the counter.

“Why are you back working with them? Last I saw you, you were happy in the Mike Hammer PI biz.”

She shrugs.

“Look at things. The world is too crazy to want one more inexperienced private investigator. Don’t get me wrong, I was good at my job, but I was slowly starving to death. Eating through my savings and playing a lot of Tetris waiting for the phone to ring.”

“Bad timing, I guess.”

“To say the least. When Marshal Wells called and offered me my old job back, it wasn’t hard to say yes. What about you?”

“Not so different. But he told me he knew how to work a weapon, something to fight the Angra with. Turns out it was a fib. He has a bag of bones working on it. Maybe he’ll figure it out.”

“I met him once. Creepy guy. He called me ‘tubby.’ I don’t look fat to you, do I?”

“I don’t know. He called me ‘lardass’ last time I saw him.”

Candy comes down the stairs.

“Is this where the party is?”

“Candy, this is Julie Sola. Marshal Sola these days. Julie, this is Candy.”

Candy comes down and they shake hands. She has powdered sugar on her fingers and it rubs off on Julie.

“Sorry,” she says, and holds out the bag she’s holding. “Want a donut?”

“No thanks. I was just dropping off some paperwork.”

Candy says, “You’re the private eye he talked about. You got him onto the zombie case.”

Julie nods.

“Yeah. We thought it was a simple demon possession at the time. He saved us.”

“Yeah, he does that.”