it works.”
I watch Daja until she steps into a city bus blaring smoke and music. The smoke from whatever they’re cooking doesn’t smell bad.
I look at Traven.
“Am I going to have to kill Daja?”
“Please don’t,” he says, his eyes going a little wide. “And don’t talk that way around here. She is powerful and respected.”
“I was afraid of that. The worst kind of boss: a good one. Don’t worry. I’m not killing anybody. I’m just making conversation. It would put you on the Magistrate’s shit list and me back where I started.”
“Which is?”
“Dead, lost, and with only half a pack of smokes. The dictionary definition of Hell.”
“Amen to that,” Traven says. He goes into the camper and I follow him.
IN A FEW minutes, he goes out and comes back with a couple of plates heaped with Hellion meat and something that’s sort of like gluey mashed potatoes. The meat is a little gamy, but I dive in headfirst and don’t come up until I’ve finished every scrap on the plate. Traven offers me some of his dinner, but I wave a hand at him.
“I don’t want you eating my sins and I’m sure not eating yours.”
He laughs and goes back to his food.
When he’s through, we smoke and talk. I tell him more about Brigitte. Everything I can think of. Later I explain how we had to fake Candy’s death and how she’s Chihiro now. When Traven asks about my murder I tell him what little I know. Ishii. Me letting down my guard. The funny hoodoo knife he used.
“If Ishii is the lowlife you describe, where would he get a knife like that?” says Traven.
Why the hell didn’t I think of that?
I sit there like a dummy trying to come up with an answer. Did he buy it off some witch with a grudge? Maybe from the White Light Legion? There was also one of the Augur, Thomas Abbot’s bodyguards, who didn’t like me. What was his name? Maybe he could come up with a weapon like that. Then something else occurs to me.
Wormwood.
I lay it out for Traven as simply as I can.
Wormwood is like a mob-run bank if the mob was a Hellion horde and the bank was the world. They make money when the stock market goes up and when currencies collapse and a few million poor slobs starve to death. They make money on terrorist bombs, and where and when the next Ebola outbreak kills the most people. They make money on who is or isn’t damned.
And they make money on me.
Who I kill. Who I don’t. Whether I’m a good boy or bad, they make a profit. And it pisses me off. I can’t say for sure that they’re behind my murder, but I know this: someone just made a fortune off my currently decaying ass.
MY EYES HAVEN’T completely focused yet, but I can make out a silhouette in the door of Traven’s camper. It’s a man and he has a knife in his hand. I kick him with my good leg and he bounces off the camper’s roof and comes down onto me.
The guy stinks. Like a T-bone steak that’s been left out in the sun and gone maggoty. He wheezes while he tries to shove the knife through my throat. He doesn’t feel that strong, but he’s on top of me with all of his weight centered on the blade.
My eyes finally focus, but it’s too dark in the van to see who it is. This seems like as good a time as any to see how strong I am and toss the killer’s ass outside. Of course, if my aim is off, he’s just going to land on me again, and maybe get lucky with the knife and my throat.
I shouldn’t have had that Hellion wine with Traven. Between it and my murder jet lag, my reflexes are all off. There’s nothing subtle I can do from this position, so I just work on pushing the fucker off me.
I’m able to move Mac the Knife’s body without too much effort. Good news. I’m still strong. Bad news. There’s something wrong with the guy’s skin. A big piece of his left arm slides off like a snake shedding its skin and the bastard comes down hard, knocking the wind out of me. While I’m trying to catch my breath, he rears back with the knife, ready to pig-stick me.
Instead, he stays up there and just twitches. A couple of big shudders. Then he sighs and does a backward swan dive out of the camper. By now, Traven is awake.
“What’s happening? Are you all right?” he says.
Mac the Knife is gone. There’s someone else silhouetted in the door, and she’s holding a knife. I’m sure it’s Daja, but instead of attacking me, the silhouette pulls off a respirator mask and says, “Jimmy, you are such an asshole.”
I squint at her through the dark. Something about the voice …
“Cherry Moon?”
She glances around and steps into the camper. Still wrapped in the ragged fur coat, she drops onto her knees and slithers over me like a shaggy snake.
“Seeing as how we’re both dead, can we finally fuck?” she says. “Right here. In front of the preacher.”
I push her off me.
“Thanks, but I’m busy bleeding right now.”
She glances back at the stab wound in my leg.
“I’ve seen you with worse. Now get that ass in the air and call me Mommy. And don’t pretend you’re not a bottom. I knew it the first time I met you.”
She climbs back on top of me, jamming her stupid knee into my knife wound. I reach up to push her off and she slides my hands over her breasts. She’s laughing when I notice Traven’s head looming over us in the dark. He looks confused.
“Wait,” he says. “You know the oracle?”
“She’s no oracle,” I say. “She’s Cherry Moon. A lunatic from my dim, dark past.”
Cherry was part of the magic circle I was in when Mason Faim sent me Downtown. She used the hoodoo he gave her to turn herself into an underage Lolita manga fuck doll. And alive or dead, she’s been screwing with me ever since.
Traven stares at Cherry grinding away on my crotch. He looks like the most puzzled holy man since Jesus saw Judas order fajitas at the Last Supper.
“No. She is the oracle,” he says.
“Oh, all right,” says Cherry. “Everybody get their pants off. You too, choirboy.”
She pinches Traven’s cheek.
“Me love you long time.”
I finally shove her off me. Cherry slams into the wall, shaking the camper. She’s still laughing.
“If the house is rocking, don’t bother knocking!”
I sit up and check my leg wound. It’s deep, but not too wide, like the knife went straight in. It’ll heal in no time.
“Stark, what is going on here?” says Traven, then corrects himself. “Pitts.”
“Don’t bother, Father,” I say. “Cherry knows me. She’s known it was me this whole time. What I don’t get is why she didn’t give me away.”
Cherry sits up, takes her time adjusting her miniskirt and coat. I pull the camper door closed.
“ZaSu Pitts. That’s the best you could come up with?” she says. “And why the funny name at all? Every asshole in Hell is afraid of Sandman Slim. Don’t you want that? Fuck, you could probably kick the Magistrate out and take over. We could ride the havoc all over Hell. One big party till the end of time.”
Traven looks at Cherry.
“You’re not a real oracle?” he says.
Cherry rolls her eyes and shoves one of her high heels into my leg. Like all my dealings with