Devil Said Bang (Sandman Slim 4)

“No hard feelings at all. I’m just happy to be back. You know, on the way over I was going to ask you to look at my jaw ’cause it hurt. Then I remembered I’ve been speaking nothing but Hellion for three months.”

“You’ll get plenty of practice at people talk when you tell us everything that happened.”

I’m not talking to anyone about everything that happened, but that still leaves a lot to tell.

Candy turns and steps away from me. I hear her heart rate jump. Smell the faint beginning of tension sweat.

“Stark, this is Rinko.”

Rinko is a couple of inches taller than Candy. Like her, Rinko is pretty, with dark almond eyes and black hair down to her waist. On her right shoulder is a tattoo of a rainbow-striped Oni. Lower down she has Astro Boy wearing a leather biker cap and chaps.

At least Candy hasn’t been alone all this time.

Candy motions Rinko over and I shake her hand. There’s a certain coolness to her skin.

“You’re a Jade,” I say.

Her eyes get hard.

“Something wrong with that?”

“No. I just never met any besides Candy. It’s funny finally running into one.”

“Hmm.”

If Rinko could breathe fire I’d be crispy bacon by now. The girl can’t stand the sight of me. It’s probably how I would have been around some of Alice’s exes.

Candy takes Rinko by the arm and walks her to the back of the waiting room. They have a fast, intense conversation. All stage whispers and hand waving.

Inside the clinic it’s both familiar and not. There’s the same cheap plastic chairs in the waiting room but the walls have been painted a pale blue. The same overflowing bookcase. The rickety old desk has been replaced with a shiny IKEA one.

Candy’s conversation ends with Rinko throwing up her hands and stomping away into a back room, keeping her eyes down and away from me. Candy gets a jacket off the desk chair and says to Allegra, “I’m gone for the rest of the night. That cool?”

“Très cool,” says Allegra. She gives us a little wave on the way out.

“Let’s go,” she says. “Are they still holding a room for you at the Beat Hotel?”

“I doubt it but cash is the magic anyone can do, and tonight I’m Houdini.”

She stops when she sees the Hellion hog.

“Yours?”

“Yep. Like it?”

“It’s almost as cool as the arm.”

A girl to come back from Hell for.

Turns out Kasabian was right and Pope Joan is on duty. It takes $200 to get the old room but I’d rather get inside than haggle, so I give her the money and get the key.

Inside, Candy pushes me down on the bed and climbs on top.

“On the way over, I wasn’t sure I was going to fuck you but then I thought that Rinko is going to be mad at me no matter what, so I’d rather get blamed for doing something than doing nothing.”

She throws off her jacket and shirt and unzips my pants. I pull off my shirt, pants, and boots but not the armor.

“Um. You keeping that on?”