Devil Said Bang (Sandman Slim 4)

“As long as she’s gone.”

“Agreed.”

“Are you fishing for compliments?”

“No. Just thinking about things. Back in Hell, Great-Great-Great-Granddad told me to pick and choose my fights. I agree with him but sometimes it’s hard to pick which fights because you don’t know what they are until you start. I thought I was Elvis on Ice when I stopped Mason’s war with Heaven. But I left all those Hellions worse off because they thought they were going to get free from Hell. Then I come back to L.A. to find Candy off with someone else, Aelita is back, there’s a murdering ghost on the loose, and a scar-faced skinhead’s looking to kill me all because I cut off a Kissi’s head a year ago. He deserved it but that doesn’t matter in the big picture. What matters is everything down the line that killing him triggered. But how do you know what bad juju you’re shaking loose before you start shaking things up?”

Cherry turns her hollow eye sockets up at me.

“And the point of your eloquent speech?”

“I don’t exactly know. Maybe we need to be more careful about the messes we leave behind. Try to tidy things up a bit when the bullets stop flying.”

“Maybe you could cut off fewer heads.”

“That too. Muninn told me to forgive part of myself, and as much as I hate that healing-your-inner-child yammer, I’m trying. You need to let go and move on. Look at you. You were a sad sight when you were in one piece. Now you’re not even a skeleton. Just a sack of random bones. Come out of there. Even if you don’t want to pass on entirely, have a little dignity. Be a ghost and not a burrowing bug.”

“I am a ghost.”

“I mean a real ghost. Ditch the skeleton and do a regular haunting. How about the Lollipop Dolls store? Think of it. A high-end J-pop place with its own ghost. It’ll be like Kwaidan with pigtails.”

She’s quiet for a minute. If she had a face, she’d look lost in thought.

“I couldn’t just move in. I’d have to ask the girls.”

“I hardly know anything about that anime stuff but Candy has a Ph.D. I bet she’d talk to them for you.”

“Why are you going out of your way to help me?”

“Because you and me have a past too. You thought I could save you when you were alive and I didn’t. I figure getting you out of that hole might make up for that a little.”

“Maybe it will,” she says. “Have your friend talk to the girls.”

“I will. See you around, Cherry.”

But she’s already gone.

I throw the rest of the cigarette into the hole and start back inside when my phone rings. It’s a blocked number. Sure, why not?

It’s a man voice this time.

“I haven’t seen it myself but I hear you ruined Lucifer’s armor.”>I step back into a shadow, feeling at home again. I can’t hear Saint James in my head, but with luck, he feels it too.

I come out of a shadow in the hallway in the Chateau with the grandfather clock. I step through. Kasabian is watching Major Dundee on the big screen. He glances over his shoulder when I come in then turns back to the screen.

“I think we’ll have to clear out of here soon.”

“When?”

“Not until they figure out I’m not Macheath anymore. A few days. Maybe a week. I don’t know.”

He nods, not taking his eyes off the screen.

“I had a feeling this was too good to be true. Okay. They haven’t sent up any food for a while. Tell them to bring a few carts. Start stockpiling so we can take it with us when we get the bum’s rush.”

I sit on the arm of the leather sofa, suddenly very tired.

“I can’t keep doing this. Saving the world and ending up broke and homeless.”