couldn’t have predicted that.”
“It’ll get the groundlings’ attention when you walk in like that.”
He looks strange. Like he’s made of dense smoke.
“Will you come and visit?”
I feel a familiar weight inside my chest. The Key is back inside me.
“I’ll come down. Take care of yourself and Wild Bill for me. One last thing. If you were going to hide a stolen soul, where would you put it?”
He thinks for a few seconds.
“The Guff. The hall of souls. Where new souls wait to be born into bodies.”
“Someone stole Tuatha Fortune’s. Normally I wouldn’t care about the Augur’s family troubles but that seems kind of harsh even for rich bastards. If you happen to find Tuatha’s soul under the sofa cushions, maybe you could send it home.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Take care, James.”
“You too, Mr. Muninn.”
The smoke drifts apart like parting fog and Mr. Muninn is gone. There’s something in my hand. Three deformed bullets. I open my shirt. No holes. No pain.
I step through a shadow and into the Room of Thirteen Doors. It’s as cool and silent and perfect as I remember. I go through the Door of Ice, the portal to neutral places, and out into the street. I push the Hellion hog into Muninn’s cavern for safekeeping. I don’t know if I can ride it once reality gets back to normal. If I can’t, I think Mr. Muninn would like it in his collection.
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
“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.”
Kasabian crushes a beer can in one of his hellhound hands and opens another one-handed. Neat trick.
“Speak for yourself,” he says. “I’ve got my future locked. Between the Codex, your magic eyeball, and the Hellion translator you said you’re getting, I’m going to become the biggest medium on the Web. I can actually see into Hell, which is where most people’s asshole relatives are going to be. Isn’t that something? I’ll be the only honest online psychic in the world. I’ll make a fortune.”
