through the wrong hole.
There’s one supertrick I want more than anything, and even if I still have the power, I don’t know how to get at it. How did Samael leave Hell? I never got a chance to ask. Maybe a hoodoo chant? Something you do in a Magic Circle? Walking through a waning arch? Maybe he just had a pair of ruby slippers like Dorothy.
I can’t stand this. Get me out of here. Take me home.
The roar and the wind hit like a hurricane. Things shoot past me, shrieking like tracer rounds. All metal and leaving trails of lights. A blue-brown twilight sky hovers above gray clouds. I smell diesel fumes and scorched engine oil. A green sign trimmed in white catches my eye. It reads CRENSHAW BOULEVARD EXIT.
I recognize this. I’m on the I-10 freeway above where I did the Black Dahlia and splattered my brains and bones on a freeway support. I can’t help it. I laugh and laugh like a lunatic way off his meds.
Mustang Sally, the beautiful sylph and goddess of the roads, is perched on the hood of a silver Mercedes 550 convertible in the breakdown lane, smoking like she’s been waiting for me the whole time I’ve been gone. She smiles and crooks a finger to my right. I turn.
A sixteen-wheeler is bearing down on me going seventy. The driver is laying on the air horn as cars flash by all around me. Right. Cars. Fuck. Standing on freeways is bad even if you’re magic.
There’s nowhere to run. I close my eyes and try to come up with some clever hoodoo but all that’s in my head is Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.
Suddenly the roar is gone and the smells with it and the sudden gusts of wind as things whiz by. When I open my eyes, all that’s left of L.A. is a faint afterimage of Mustang Sally’s Cheshire-cat smile. I’m back in the library.
My brain is whirling like it’s going to splatter itself all over the inside of my skull like carnival spin art. I was home and it wasn’t any harder than walking from one room to another. Only I think I need to maybe get more specific about what room.
My legs are shaking too much to walk. I sit crossed-legged on the cool marble floor. Stare at it, making sure it’s real.
My burned hand throbs and my chest itches and I couldn’t give less of a goddamn. Suddenly every shitty, painful moment of the last three months has been worth it. I was home and I can do it again.
Every part of me wants to go back to L.A. right now and stay there and pretend none of this ever happened. But I know if I run off, there are things that will bite large chunks out of my ass later. Take care of business and get out clean. I’m halfway home. More than halfway. Getting away clean means making nice with people I never want to lay eyes on again. I’ve got to get Brimborion in gear and start making calls.
But that can wait a minute. Until I get off the floor, which will be any minute now. After my legs stop shaking and I catch my breath. Until then I’m just going to sit here in the cool quiet with my magic yellow book and think of how many ways this freak factory can kiss my ass on its way out the door.
I spend the next day tying up loose ends. I’m expecting a lot of ritual square dancing but it turns out blowing town might be easier than I thought. I decided
