crossed the threshold.
“This way,” Alligator said. Parker broke off for parts unknown, and Jack found himself escorted through a high-ceilinged sitting room where dust filled his nose, and out to the ubiquitous pool. This one was surrounded by statues, pitted and chipped from wind and sun to be faceless and in many cases limbless. A thin scrim of algae floated on top of the pool and a dead squirrel bumped against the filter.
A single figure stood with his back to them, looking out over the water and to the drop into the canyon beyond.
“Mr. Winter,” he said, and turned. “Thanks so much for agreeing to meet me.”
“He didn’t exactly agree, boss,” said Alligator. “Had to dose him up.”
“That’s unfortunate.” The man approached Jack and turned his head this way and that with a strong, tanned hand. “You five by five, Winter?”
“I’ve felt a lot worse,” Jack said. Nothing sparked when they touched. So far nobody except Parker had pinged his radar as talented in any way besides paying people to do dirty errands for them.
“Good to hear,” said the man. “Give us a minute.”
Alligator glared at Jack from under his thick eyebrows, but he drew back into the sitting room, watching Jack from behind the stained-glass French doors.
“Sorry about my man,” Jack’s host said. He went to a poolside bar and dropped two ice cubes into a glass, covering them with scotch. “Drink?”
“You’ll forgive me if I don’t want to go any further down the rabbit hole,” Jack said. He was still slow and sounded as if he were shouting at himself from down a long tunnel, but he could at least move and speak under his own power. Running and screaming might soon have to follow, so he was counting the small favors.
“That wasn’t my intention,” the man said. He sipped the scotch, nodded as if it had said all the right things, and gestured Jack into a high-backed wicker chair poolside. It creaked under his weight and smelled of mold. “I have to say,” his host said, “it really is a thrill to have you sitting here.”
“Your life’s not very exciting then, is it?” Jack asked. “Who the fuck are you, mate? What do you want with me?”
“My name’s Harlan Sanford,” the man said. “I’m what’s called a money man, or a silent partner—I finance films, but I don’t need to get jerked off by having my name scroll up the screen.”
“Nice for you,” Jack said. He shoved his chair back and stood up. “I’ll just be finding my way home now.”
“Oh, I don’t think you’re going home any time soon,” Sanford said. “There’s a cash bounty on your head over there in the UK—not to mention bragging rights as the one who offed Jack Winter.” He held out his hand. “Sit. I promise we have things in common and a lot to talk about.”
Standing wasn’t working out very well, so Jack sat back down. Vertigo rippled at the edges of his vision.
“The film business is just a job for me,” Sanford said. “I reinvest, and I’m a collector. I think under different circumstances you and I could have had a nice afternoon chatting about magic.”
Jack tipped his head back. The sun was coming up, and it sent jets of sickly green light refracting from the pool into his face. “What are we chatting about instead?”
Sanford tossed back the rest of his scotch. “I know that Belial’s been in contact with you. Slippery bastard, isn’t he?”
Jack lifted one eyebrow. “You and he pals, then?”
“Oh, not at all,” Sanford said. “Hate fucking demons. Never had a transaction with one that didn’t end in a big hassle for me and some fork-tongued son of a bitch trying to screw me out of what I was owed. Like dealing with studio execs, except demons have better manners.” He took a pack of gum from his pocket and shoved a wad into his mouth. “Quitting smoking,” he explained. “Belial is a moron,” Sanford continued. “A power-grubbing, shortsighted moron, and greedy even for a demon, which should tell you something.”
Jack laughed. Sanford was either insane or stupid, and he’d find out soon enough that demons had a way of finding out when humans mocked them.
“I know why he’s here,” Sanford said. “He wants what I want, and that means you and I want the same thing, and we can help each other.”
Jack rubbed his forehead. “No offense, mate, but when somebody offers me an out that’s too good to be true, it usually means something worse is just out of sight.”
Sanford laughed. “Cynical bastard, aren’t you?” He stood up. “Come with me, Jack.”
He led Jack back inside, past Alligator, who grinned and nodded at him. Despite the stuffy air of the house, Alligator was wrapped in a ribbed, shiny turtleneck that stretched nearly transparent over his pot belly.
“Again, sorry about them,” Sanford said. “But in my line, good security is worth its weight.”
“And what is your line, exactly?” Jack said.
Sanford stopped at a door with a keypad and punched in a long sequence. “I told you,” he said. “I’m a collector.”
The door revealed a set of stairs leading down, cut directly into the stone beneath the mansion. “Wine cellar,” Sanford said. “This house was one of the first built on this stretch of Sunset. Doug Fairbanks lived here at one point. Very nice address.”
“If you want a round of applause,” Jack said, “I’ll try to muster it up.”
Sanford flipped a big old-fashioned circuit, the kind used to fry a bloke in an electric chair. “I started collecting when I was twelve,” he said. “I was a dumb kid from Ohio, and a neighbor down the street died. My friends and I went poking around the yard sale, and I found a little box, a box full of bones.
“She was a witch,” Sanford continued, as lights flickered on, bulbs strung along the length of the stairs, “and they were children’s knucklebones.”
Another door was set into the rock at the bottom of the stairs, brand new brushed steel, locked with a keypad and a submarine-hatch wheel. “I don’t have much in the way of my own talents,” Sanford said. “But I knew those bones had power, and I wanted it. I started looking for more, going out for weeks at a time in this old rusted-out pickup, all over the Midwest, poking through barns, pawing through junk shops, talking my way into dying men’s bedrooms and dark secrets.”
Sanford punched in another code and spun the hatch open. “This is my life’s work. Not many people ever see it.”
The small room under the rock was crammed stiflingly full, wooden shelves running floor to ceiling, with a glass display case filling the center. A small reading table, chair, and lamp were shoved into a corner. Rather than the somber atmosphere of a museum, or the crammed comfort of Jack’s own flat, this place was full and filthy, dust piled inches thick on top of the cases, the scent of closed-up air and human sweat wafting in Jack’s face. He’d never been so reminded of a troll cave in his life.
Sanford hit another switch and lights bloomed from hidden alcoves. “What do you think?”
Jack sneezed. “Your maid’s not doing a bang-up job, is she?”
Sanford spread his hands. “Los Angeles is a nexus of power, Jack. It’s why when the lines were drawn, neither side claimed it. Nobody wanted to constantly defend their territory, so it became neutral ground. It draws these objects in like a tornado, and people, too. Los Angeles has serial killers and mass murderers like some cities have coffee shops and sports teams. I find them where I can, the relics and the memorabilia, and I keep them safe.” He sat at the desk and pulled a red cloth book to him. “Do you know the name Basil Locke?”
Jack examined the crammed shelves. Most of the objects whispered against his sight, and a few screamed. Sanford might be full of shit, but he was right about his collection. There was power here, bad mojo, enough of it to light up the Sunset Strip. “No,” he said. “Should I?”
“Movie star in the 1930s, mostly B pictures, crime stuff and screwball comedies,” said Sanford. “He never caught on the way Grant and Gable did. Birth name was Brian Chernik. Russian Jew, raised in England, fell in with a bad crowd.” Sanford shoved the book across the table. “Our old boy Basil kept a grimoire, detailing all his attempts to summon and control the forces of Hell.”
“Demons,” Jack said. Many of the things Sanford had collected seemed innocuous—costume jewelry, photographs of crime scenes and autopsies, one bloodstained woman’s pump—but they all vibrated, malignancy and terror bleeding through from the Black. The man knew the power of objects that had been in close proximity to death. “I’m guessing that ended well for him.”
