I go to where she’s parked. The Cobra’s seats are perfect. They look brand-new, but she must have logged thousands of miles in the thing. The only thing that gives away she lives and eats there is the trail of litter that stretches out behind the car for as long as I can see. Cookie boxes. Cellophane from around snack cakes. Crushed cigarette packs. Sally marks her territory and no one stops her. Not CHP. Not cops. No one.
I get back just as she grinds out the cigarette with the toe of one delicate shoe.
“I need a back door into Hell,” I say. “A way in that no one will notice.”
She curls her lips into a half smile.
“Sneaking into Hell. That’s old magic. Beginning-of-the-world stuff. Back when the different planes of existence weren’t so far apart that the residents of one don’t even believe in the existence of the other.”
“Is that a problem?”
“It depends on how you want to go in. There are places where this twelve-lane Möbius strip is the Hell parents tell kids they’ll end up in if they don’t behave. There are other places where this is Heaven.”
She smiles.
“You don’t want to go in that way. It’s too unpredictable.”
“Are there other ways in?”
“Don’t be in such a rush. Give a lady a moment to think.”
She takes another Lucky from the pack. I light it with Mason’s lighter. As she breathes in the smoke, I swear the glow behind her sunglasses brightens.
“Nice car,” I say.
“Thanks. It’s pretty but it might be time to trade it in. It’s getting too noticeable. These days, if you own something long enough, it becomes vintage and everybody wants one. In my day, when something was old, it was just old.”
“I bet it handles these roads well.”
She shrugs, unimpressed.
“Each road has its own way of going. You should have seen those few scratches in the dirt in the Fertile Crescent. The first roads that called me into being. Back then a decent pair of sandals was high tech.”
She holds out the Luckies. I hesitate.
“It’s all right,” she says. “Half the job of being a spirit is knowing when to share.”
I take the cigarette. She pulls a gold lighter from her bag and sparks the Lucky for me.
When she drops the lighter back in the bag, she says, “Do you know what it is you’re asking? Do you have any concept of what Hell is?”
“I spent eleven years Downtown, so, yeah, I have a pretty good idea.”
That gets her attention. She gives me a slow once-over with her eyes or whatever it is behind those glasses.
I say, “I was alive. The only living thing that’s ever been down there and sure as Hell the only living thing that’s ever crawled out.”
“Oh. That’s you. The monster who kills monsters.”
Her body relaxes like we’re chatting each other up in a bar.
“What a relief. For a minute there, I was afraid you were a ghost. I don’t like doing business with the dead. They leave pitiful offerings.”
“I guess being all disembodied would make you a little skittish.”
“That’s not the half of it. Ghosts are whiners. When they don’t like the answer I give them, some even try haunting me. Me. Can you imagine how annoying it is to have a ghost moaning away in your car? I banish them to road structures. Overpasses or cloverleafs. Let them watch the living go by for a hundred years or so and see if that improves their manners.”
“I wonder if the bums that live in underpasses know they’re pissing on the dead?”