The Dirty Streets of Heaven

Fortunately for Candy he was telling the truth. As we emerged from the apartment building garage, I saw a long car with black windows idling under a streetlight. The driver’s window was open, and Cinnamon was sitting there in all his cookie-dustered glory. He sneered at me as Candy opened the back door and gestured for me to get in.

I didn’t like turning my back on Candy-didn’t like it at all-so I shoved my gun against his belly as I leaned down to look inside. The Countess gazed back at me. Her eyes were big as a doe’s under the dome light, but none of Bambi’s relations ever had a gleam like that. Satisfied that at least Candy and Cinnamon weren’t on some kind of freelance revenge trip, I slid in. The door thumped shut behind me, making my ears pop.

“Hiya, Countess,” I said. “Or does you following me around at this time of the night mean we’re good enough friends that I can start calling you Ca-”

I didn’t finish my sentence because she slapped me so hard it nearly dislocated my jaw. I stared at her for a moment, stunned. “Hang on…!” I began, then she smacked me again, and this time I felt her nails dig into my cheek like fishhooks. When little lights stopped flashing in front of my eyes I reached up and dabbed at the wetness I felt there. Yep, blood. “What the hell was that for?” I asked.

“I knew you were self-absorbed and self-satisfied, Mr. Dollar.” The dome light was still on; she was showing a little color high on her cheeks, something I hadn’t seen before. You’ll probably think me hopelessly shallow when I confess that I liked it, despite the pain I’d had to endure to see it. “What I didn’t realize is that you were also suicidal.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.

“Oh, I think you do.”

“On the contrary, and I feel like I know less and less every second.” What was with this woman? — no, this demon, I reminded myself. I couldn’t figure her out at all. Most of the denizens of Hell I meet make it very clear they wish they could immediately start killing you in a complex, painful way and are only prevented from doing so by the Tartarean Convention, but I couldn’t figure out what the Countess wanted at all. “Why don’t you ask me some questions next time before you start hurting me?”

“You think that hurt? Believe me, if I ever decide to inflict pain on you, Dollar, you’ll know.”

“Look, just tell me what’s going on.” Bodyguard Two had just climbed out from behind the wheel to share a smoke with Bodyguard One under the streetlight, so we were alone in the car. “Is this something to do with that Foxy character?”

“The little Japanese freak?” She leaned back in the seat. She was wearing a black dress, very short, and showing a lot of long, smooth leg. I dragged my attention back up to her face. It’s not real, Bobby, I reminded myself. Strip away the illusion, and she probably looks like some kind of giant slug. “No,” she said, “this is about you, angel. Word is all over the street that you’ve got hold of something big-and I’m not talking about the street you can see from your cruddy little apartment.”

“Ah. You’ve seen it, then. I’m planning to redecorate-you know, ferns, Scandinavian Modern furniture in natural woods…”

“Shut up. I’m talking about the word on the Via Dolorosa.” Which was one name for the main drag of Pandaemonium, the capital of Hell. “That you’ve got hold of something important and you’re looking for a buyer. A once-in-an-epoch piece of merchandise.”

“But I don’t-!”

“Shut up. And they’re also whispering all over Dis Pater Square and the rest of the city that you got this something important from me. Which means on top of everything else I have Chancellor Urgulap and his investigation poking into all my affairs, making my life miserable. I am not happy.”

That stopped me dead for a second. I looked at her and for the first time saw not an impossibly beautiful temptress or an evil spirit in disguise but somebody who might just be as worried about the current state of play as I was. And I sure didn’t envy anybody who had that horrible melted giant bug I’d met at Walker’s place breathing down her neck.

“Okay, lady,” I said. “You’ve had your say. Now listen to mine.” I held my hand up to forestall an interruption and to my amazement it worked. “I don’t know anything about any special something except that a dancing albino Asian asked me today if I wanted to sell it, and you seem to think I’ve been bragging that I have it. But like I said, I don’t even know what I’m supposed to have, and if I’ve got it, I’m not aware of it. Hang on-I’m not done.” I raised my hand again when she started to speak, but instead of slapping her as she’d done to me I reached forward and gently touched my finger to her red, red lips. I don’t know exactly why I did it, I just did. She knocked my hand aside, but in a strange, uncaring way quite different from the way she’d slugged me just a minute earlier. “Right,” I said. “Now, here’s the next part. You remember the scorchmark I showed you- that handprint something burned into my door? Well, now I’ve seen that something up close and in person. In fact it tried to kill me last night, and nearly succeeded. When you saw that picture, I could tell it meant something to you- you’ve seen something like it before, haven’t you? So instead of busting my chops again, why don’t you show a little good faith and tell me what you know for a change? Something’s got you upset, Countess-let’s see if we can do each other some good. Is all this craziness about the Walker case?”

She stared at me for a long time, and all of a sudden the inspiration that had carried me along deserted me. What did I think I was doing here? I couldn’t trust this tarted-up hellbitch even if she decided to trust me, and she would never trust me. Not to mention what would happen if my bosses found out I was sitting in a car in the middle of the night volunteering to share information with the Countess of Cold Hands, one of Hell’s fixers. The next summons I got would be to a heavenly court martial (if they didn’t just incinerate me without a trial). This kind of shit just wasn’t done without archangelic supervision, and I had already been warned to stay on the straight and narrow. But things had started moving too fast for me, and I was tired of playing blind man’s bluff, weary of trying to figure out the shape of what was going on by feel alone.

“It’s not all about the Walker case,” she said slowly. “But Walker has got my masters shaken up.”

“Really? It’s not just something they’ve done to drive Heaven crazy?”

She shook her head. “Doesn’t seem to be. As far as I can tell, they’re really worried. And there have been more souls lost since that happened.”

I felt a little chime of reassurance. I knew I was probably crazy for even entertaining the possibility, but maybe she really was being straight with me-or as straight as she knew. “I’ve heard that too. But if both sides are freaking out, where did Walker go? Where did any of them go?”

She pulled a compact from her purse and gave herself a quick once-over in the mirror. “Don’t know,” she said. “And to be honest, I don’t care, even though I’ve been questioned about it nonstop ever since it happened. I’ve got enough problems of my own.”

“Like what?”

Her eyes flashed, and I’m not saying that poetically: something sparked red in the depths. “None of your fucking business, Dollar.”

“Okay, fair enough. But what about the thing that burned the crap out of my apartment door?”

“It’s a ghallu,” she said, sounding like an English Home Counties schoolgirl reciting what she’d learned in a particularly dreary class, “a living piece of Old Night, which is another word for Chaos, in case you crashed and burned your afterlife exams. Expensive to summon, nearly impossible to stop. And, yes, I’ve seen that mark before.”

“Where? And who sent it after me?”

“The answer to the first is, again, none of your business, Dollar. As to the second, I don’t know, but it’s bad news. If you really don’t know what’s going on with any of this, I strongly suggest you get out of the way, as far away and for as long as possible. No good can come of it.”

Now it was my turn to stare. For the first time since the conversation started I didn’t believe what she was saying, at least the part about not knowing who sent the ghallu. Still, she had been amazingly open, so I decided not to push my luck. Well, not too much.

“Okay, then, Countess. Only one more question, I guess. What about us?”

Her eyes opened wide. “What?” But she sounded more surprised than angry. “What’s that supposed to mean, angel?”

“We’re helping each other, right? Well, what if I find out something you should know? I’m not just going to