Aloha from Hell (Sandman Slim 3)

She shakes her head, a knowing little smile curling the edges of her lips.

“It was an old Chordettes song. It went, ‘Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream, make him the cutest that I’ve ever seen.’ ”

I can’t help but laugh.

“That’s what this is. You think the demon knows me.”

“Any idea who it might be?”

“I haven’t had much experience with them.” I try to think. Run over all my kills. There are so many. They run together like a dark stinking river.o;Did you wear those just to torture me?”

She touches the frames and the robot song starts again.

“Not everything is about you, but yeah, pretty much. And I always wanted a robot sidekick.”

“Can it be a quiet robot?”

The song stops. She holds a finger over the frames.

“Don’t make me use my super-awesome robo powers on you again.”

Candy is like me. A monster. Specifically, she’s a Jade. Jades are sort of like vampires, only worse. They dissolve your insides and drink them like spiders. But she’s a good girl and is trying to kick the human milkshake thing with a special potion. Blood-and-bone methadone. Besides being cute and dangerous, she saved my ass from joining thdivm joinie living dead after a Drifter bit me. I was far gone and didn’t want to take the cure, so she stabbed me with a knife coated in the stuff. Yeah, it hurt. And yeah, I’m glad she did it.

I throw up my hands.

“You win. Take our lands and gold but leave me my virtue.”

“Those are my only choices?”

“If you’re going virtue hunting, you better bring a backhoe and dynamite. You’re going to have to dig deep.”

“I’ll bring a strap-on.”

I look at Vidocq in the front seat.

“Make her stop. I’m hungover and she has a robot. It’s not fair.”

“Life is fair only in the grave and in the bedroom. This, you will notice, is neither.”

“That’s why I don’t take cabs.”

I look out the window. The cabbie takes us down Hollywood Boulevard for a few blocks and then U-turns on Sunset and heads back the way we came.

“Where are we headed?”

“The Bamboo House of Dolls.”

“What the hell, man? It’s just a few blocks. We could have walked.”

“But then you might have walked away. You’ll notice I told our driver to take the long way so that I could talk to you. The woman we’re going to meet thought you’d be more comfortable discussing business there.”

“What woman?”

“Julia Sola.”

“Never heard of her.”

“Marshal Julie, you used to call her. One of Marshal Wells’s agents. You liked her. You said she was the only one in the Golden Vigil who treated you like a human being.”