gets it and hands it to K.W.
He looks at the photo for a minute, not sure he wants to show it to us, an intimate thing he doesn’t want to share. Finally, he hands it to me.
“See what I’m talking about?”
There’s a group of six kids. Harry Potter by way of Road Warrior. My neck hurts and my stomach is in knots. I hand him back the shot. Take out my phone and pretend to look at the time.
“Mr. Sentenza, before we go any further, I think we should talk to Father Traven. Thanks for letting us have a look around.”
“That’s it? That’s all you’re going to do?”
“We’ll know how to proceed after consulting with the father. Don’t want to piss off any spirits by coming at them the wrong way.”
“That makes sense, I guess. So, you’ll call when you know more?”
“Exactly. Thanks.” I turn to the others. “Let’s go.”
Vidocq and Candy look at each other, but follow me out. Vidocq shakes K.W.’s hand.
“Thank you for your hospitality. Please say good-bye to your wife for us.”
I’m heading for the door, leaving the two of them to catch up with me.
“You’ll call back soon, right? Hunter is still out there somewhere.”
I turn and give him what I hope is a reassuring smile.
“We’ll call right after we confer with the father.”
I head back to the Volvo and fire it up. I already have it in gear when the others get in.
“What’s wrong with you?” asks Candy. “Why are we running out on that family?”
I don’t answer until we’re down the driveway enough that I can’t see the house anymore.
“I need to get clear of that place. I’ve got to think.”
“What’s wrong?”
Vidocq is in the front seat. He’s looking at me hard.
“Thomas, the older kid in that photo? Hunter’s big brother? He’s TJ.”
“Who’s TJ?” Candy asks.
“He was in my magic Circle with Mason. He was there the night I got dragged Downtown. I never even knew his name was Tommy. I was going to kill him with the others when I came back, only Kasabian told me he’d already killed himself.”
Vidocq nods.
“It seems more likely now that the demon who sang that ‘Mr. Sandman’ song knows you after all.”
“Doesn’t it just? But I can’t think of any demons I’ve pissed off. I kill Hellions and hell beasts.”
“People, too,” says Candy.
“They usually deserve it most.”
Vidocq says, “Perhaps at Avila. Or something you did for the Golden Vigil. Perhaps you killed or injured a possessed person, ruining the demon’s host. That might be enough for it to want revenge.”
“Then why wouldn’t the demon come after me? Or you or Candy or Allegra? Even Kasabian? Someone I give a damn about.”
“Perhaps the father can answer that question. Let’s hope so.”
I cut around cars and thousand-dollar mountain bikes cruising Studio City’s quiet, privileged streets, running the Volvo away from TJ’s Haunted Mansion ride and onto the freeway. The exhaust fumes and clogged lanes are like a welcome-home party. The knots in my stomach are getting worse. I feel cold. I hold the steering wheel tight enough I feel it bend and get close to breaking. The angel in my head moves back into the dark. It recognizes this kind of anger and knows it’s not going to talk me down. If it speaks or touches, it might burn up in the heat.
“This is what I get for going soft. For backing off. I don’t kill anything for a while and the world starts coughing up this shit. Okay. I get the message loud and clear.”
“You need to calm down if we’re going to talk to the father,” Vidocq says.
“I am calm. I don’t know what exactly is going on, but what I do know is that someone or something is daring me to find them and maybe this preacher can tell me what. I’ll do it old-school. No bullets. Just the knife and the na’at, like back in the arena.”
“You scare me when you’re like this, Jimmy.”
“Not me,” says Candy quietly from the back.
“Good, because when I get this thing figured out, I’m going to bring down all kinds of Hell on these assholes and this city.”
I’VE CALMED DOWN a little when we reach Father Traven’s place near the UCLA campus.
Vidocq’s been playing navigator, running us up and down every little side street in the county. He can read a map as well as anyone, but I think he’s been buying time, hoping that if he drags out the drive long enough, I won’t storm into Traven’s place like it’s D-Day. The plan sort of works, but mostly it’s seeing where the father lives that brings down my blood pressure.
Traven has an apartment in an old art deco complex from the thirties and the place really shows its age. It was probably beautiful once, back before reality TV, when lynching and TB were the most popular pastimes. Now the building’s best quality is that it stands as a big Fuck You to all the developers who wake up with a hard-on every morning dreaming of plowing the place under and turning the land into a business park or prefab pile of overpriced condos. If I ever find out who owns the place, I’ll buy them a case of Maledictions.
Father Traven lives on the top floor. In a normal building, that would be luxury central. The penthouse suite. In this one, it’s pretty much a sock drawer with a view. The original architect had the brilliant idea of putting storage and utility areas at both the top and bottom of the building. Maybe elevators didn’t work that well back in the thirties. Maybe he was anal-retentive. Sometime in the long history of the building, someone chopped up those top-floor spaces and tried to convert them into apartments, only they weren’t designed to be a happy place for anything except rats and mops. The ceilings are too low and are at funny angles. The untreated wooden floors are warped. You’d have to call in Paul Bunyan to chain-saw the top of the building off and rebuild it from scratch to make Traven’s bachelor pad into something anyone but a ghost or an excommunicated sky pilot would love.
We take the elevator up to the floor below Traven’s and walk up a set of bare, uncarpeted stairs. Traven’s apartment door is open a few inches when we get there. I don’t like unexpected open doors. I knock and push it open, my other hand under my coat on the .460.
Traven is sitting at a desk scribbling away on yellow paper that looks old enough to have Spanish Inquisition letterhead at the top. He stops writing and lifts his head, speaks without turning around.
“Ah. You must be
