Aloha from Hell (Sandman Slim 3)

“That sounds like work. Didn’t you see the sign? I’m closed for the evening.”

“You may be the boss, but I pay the beer bills a

Kasabian puffs on his cigarette and frowns. His little legs take the Malediction out of his mouth and tap ashes onto the floor.

“What do you want to know?”

“I need to know about a . . . Qlifart? Qlifuck? Screw it. Demon. This one is different. It’s confident. Maybe even smart. It does possessions, but it doesn’t automatically attack unless it feels threatened. I thought for a while it might be a Kissi, but I know them, and this doesn’t feel like their work.”

He shakes his head.

“That doesn’t make sense. If it’s a demon, it’s dumb. All demons are dumb. Which means they have an inferiority complex that makes them trigger-happy.”

“If it made sense, I wouldn’t ask you to look in the Codex.”

“Why are you dragging me into this thing? I don’t like demons. Just because you’re feeling magnanimous doesn’t mean I am.”

I sit on the end of the bed and smoke. I flick the ashes onto the carpet, too. Got to give the maid something to do when she comes in so she won’t notice the dead man on the skateboard.

“Yes, you are. Candy’s working with me on this. Do it for her. Dazzle her with your kung fu.”

“Nice try. I was kidding before.”

“She’s a Jade. You never know what kind of fetishes they have.”

Faint traces of cigarette smoke drift from the bottom of Kasabian’s neck and hang around his face like mountain mist.

“I was going to watch Blue Velvet and order chicken wings. What more could a guy want?”

“How about a body?”

His eyes narrow.

“Is this case of yours going to get me one?”

“I doubt it. But fucking off in here isn’t either. The more hoodoo work we do, the more likely one of us will stumble on a fix-it spell for your situation.”

“My situation,” he mumbles. “You put me in this situation.”

“After you shot me.”

He smacks the keyboard and the computer wakes up.

“Asshole. Here I was, talking to a pretty girl, content as Jayne Mansfield’s pasties, and you come in and want me to flip burgers on the night shift.”

“You’ll check the Codex?”

“I’ll check.”

“Cool.”

I get up to go out. He yells something at me.

“I need highly concentrated carbs to do this brain work. Get me something cold and I’ll make you Employee of the Month.”

I go to the kitchen and get a six-pack from the fridge.

I set it on his table and say, “You want a soufflé or something, too? I’ll need to warm up the oven.”