Hollywood Dead (Sandman Slim 10)

“Exactly.”

“That means you don’t know where it will happen.”

“Correct.”

“But you’re absolutely sure it will happen Sunday.”

“On the new moon, yes,” says Sinclair.

I look at them both. They’re still telling the truth.

“What day is it now?”

“Wednesday evening.”

“Wednesday? Why didn’t you bring me back sooner?”

“You don’t just snatch a soul from the afterlife willy-nilly,” says Jonathan Howard, their necromancer. “It needs to happen at the right time.”

He’s taller than me. British, with wire-rim glasses. He carries the weird smell of death that all necromancers have. Rotting flesh. Nasty hoodoo potions. They try to cover it up with cologne, but that just makes it worse.

I walk over to him.

“What about fixing my body? Does that need to happen at some super-special time too?”

He leans back from me a little.

“No. That can happen anytime.”

“You sure?”

“Completely.”

I pat him on the arm.

“You better be, Johnny, ’cause I’m not going back to Hell alone.”

I turn back to Sandoval.

“Let’s hit the fucking road. Where do we go? Who do I kill first?”

“I have no idea,” she says. “We thought we’d leave that up to you. You seem to have a knack for these things.”

I look at Sinclair.

“Is she serious? You don’t have a where or a who?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Okay. How do you contact the faction? A phone number. A name.”

“They’ve hidden themselves well. We don’t have anything.”

“Fuck.”

I look over at the roaches. They’re no help. Not a flicker of intelligence anywhere in the bunch.

“Here I was expecting Lex Luthor and what I get is a bunch of runaways picking pockets at the bus station.”