The Getaway God (Sandman Slim 6)

“Go home,” she says. “And stay in. Both of you.”

“That’s the plan.”

I start out and stop.

“Candy is going to be okay, right?”

Allegra washes her hands.

“She’ll be fine. I’m sure it’s just a Jade-­specific virus or something. I’m reading up on it now. Don’t worry so much.”

I nod and head out the front.

“Tell Kas I’ll see him tonight,” says Fairuza.

“Have him show you his new hat. And make him tell you where it came from.”

I DON’T EXACTLY lie about who fixed up my neck when I get home, but when Candy guesses it was a Vigil medic, I don’t correct her. It will bug her if she knows I’ve been talking to Allegra, and after her being sick and my discovering I’m a serial killer suspect, it would be nice to have a few hours free from drama.

I listen to Candy practicing guitar downstairs in the rehearsal room. Fairuza comes over around eight and disappears with Kasabian into his inner sanctum. Chinese delivery shows up soon after. I watch Three Extremes upstairs. It’s all gloriously boring.

Candy comes up around eleven, bright-­eyed and sweaty from practice. I haven’t seen her this happy in days. The sofa is wobbly from when we broke the leg, so we head for the bedroom, where the furniture is sturdier. The only casualty is a bedside lamp shaped like the Cowboy Bebop spaceship. Personally, I’m not sorry to see it go.

“I think you did that on purpose,” she says.

“I’d never do something that underhanded.”

“Right. Don’t worry. I intend to replace it with something more hideous and embarrassing.”

“I hope it doesn’t get broken too.”

“You better. Each new lamp I have to get will be worse than the one before. Trust me. I know where to get more cute kittens, talking robots, and pink monsters than you can shake your ass at.”

“Understood. I’ll guard future lamps with my very life.”

“Good boy,” she says, then kisses me and lies down.

For a while, lying in the dark, it feels like nothing is wrong at all. Then I hear the rain battering the window and I remember that pretty much everything is wrong.

I don’t remember falling asleep. I’m just lying beside Candy and then I’m somewhere else.

It’s a strange mix of the Angra subway cavern and the scene at the hospital. The meat chapel is surrounded by rough, raw stone, the bone sigils bright red in the reflected blood light.

The thirteen crucified bodies writhe on their inverted crosses, crying and gasping for air like they aren’t quite dead.

I look at the walls, but can’t see the sigils. They jitter like liquid mercury, forming and re-­forming themselves into new shapes. They don’t hold any one long enough to make sense and then I understand that I’m not looking at their symbols, but at the Angra themselves.

From a spiral of skulls all shattered on one side steps a golden woman. Her skin is patterned like circuit boards and snake scales. On her head is a headdress with swept-­back wings. Half of her face is missing. An empty eye socket above a nonexistent cheek and a jaw stripped of its golden flesh are all that’s left on her right side. Though she’s in pain, with half her skull revealed she’s stuck in a perpetual half smile.

I say, “I remember you.”

She nods.

“We met in the water, as the building fell into the ocean.”

“Yeah. Kill City. You grabbed my leg. You tried to drown me,” I say.

The other side of her face smiles. She folds her hands.