“If you’re not going to help me you can save the bullshit for some gang-banger who’s impressed with it,” Jack said. “I know what the Morrigan wants from me. It’s the same thing she’s always wanted, and my answer is the same, too: you death-cunts can fuck off. The lot of you.”
The snakes were thick around his ankles now, worming their way up his legs, spilling over the altar. The statue cackled, plaster teeth clacking and raining dust down on the heaving backs of her serpents.
The statue froze again, and Jack came back to himself. He wasn’t sitting, but on the floor, and the girl crouched beside him, wearing human skin once again. “What did you see?” she said.
“Snakes,” Jack muttered. The scent of incense and the taste of tequila in his throat mixed, and he retched, bile running in rivulets across the dirty, wax-covered floor. “You put something in my fucking drink.”
“It’s nothing I wouldn’t give my grandmother,” Ana said. “Just a little encouragement to help you see. You’re a stubborn boy. You wouldn’t look unless you had help taking the ride.”
“That wasn’t a ride,” Jack said. He sat up, swiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. His tongue and throat still burned. “That was dragged behind a fucking lorry. What was that shit?”
“It’ll wear off soon,” Ana said. “What did she say to you?
“A lot of bollocks,” Jack muttered. “Riddles, just like the bitch I usually deal with. What is it about death that makes you such a cryptic slag?”
“This body and
“‘Lucy is buried behind Paramount, looking at the lake,’” Jack grumbled. “How is that in any way useful? I ask you.”
Ana, or the thing that had once been Ana, cocked an eyebrow. “Paramount, the studio? In Hollywood?”
“Dunno,” Jack muttered. “Guess so.”
“There’s a cemetery behind Paramount,” Ana said. “The Hollywood Forever. And there’s a big man-made lake inside, which is usually full of garbage and goose shit. It stinks. Douglas Fairbanks has a huge crypt on this island in the middle. Bigger than this fucking apartment.”
“This town seriously has a boneyard calling itself ‘Hollywood Forever’?” Jack said. Standing was a risky proposition, but he managed, by clawing hand over hand along the faded wallpaper.
“Hey, man,” Ana said. “This is LA.”
“Thanks,” Jack said. “I sincerely hope I never see you or Little Miss Skeletor again, but I suppose that’d be too much to ask.”
“You can avoid her,” Ana said. “But she’s waiting for you at the end of the road. For all of us. Sooner or later you’re gonna take that last ride.”
“Cheers, luv,” Jack said, and ducked through the twin sets of curtains to the front of the shop. The last thing he saw before the door swung shut was Santa Muerte, grinning her frozen grin.
CHAPTER 28
“Took you bloody long enough,” Belial said. “You’re going to cost me my weight in car fare.” He examined Jack under the dome light of the taxi. “You look like shit.”
“Just drive.” Jack ignored him. He felt like shit—hammered, flattened shit. His head throbbed, and all of the bumps and blows he’d taken in the past days were catching up with him. He needed a drink, some sleep, or preferably a hit of smack. But that wasn’t an option, not until they’d found Abbadon, and by extension found Pete, so he told the cabbie to take them to Hollywood and put his head back against the seat, watching the neon and palm trees and faces pass by.
Hollywood Forever sat on a quiet stretch of Santa Monica, nearly deserted after dark. The cemetery was closed, but Belial walked straight ahead, across the car park and past the chapel.
In the dark, the cemetery was full of stone spirits, white mausoleums and graves scattered across flawless green lawns. Cemeteries in London were wild, overgrown, crowded to the brim with the dead. Too little land and too many bodies. Here, the dead went on forever.
“By the pond,” Jack told Belial. He smelled it before he saw it—goose shit and algae, just as Ana had said. The Fairbanks mausoleum loomed over the water, reflecting its own ghost into the dank water.
Belial walked from tomb to tomb until he stopped at a small flat-roofed Egyptian box, then kicked his foot against the iron door. “This one.”
Jack examined the unassuming tomb. The grass was mowed, but all of the flowers placed on the steps were dead, and somebody had graffitied the ironwork on the doors. “You sure? I don’t really fancy getting pinched for cracking open some random bird’s final rest.”
“Haven Carstairs.” Belial pointed at the brass nameplate bolted to the granite, rust rivulets running down the face of the tomb. “One of her characters. Gangster boyfriend shoots her to death after she finds Jesus behind the settee or some rot. On-screen death scene. Decent stuff.”
“Great.” Jack rattled the doors. “Locked, too.”
“Your particular talent, isn’t it?” Belial said. “I’m a demon, not a petty thief.”
“You lot are useless, you know that?” Jack said. “Amazed you don’t just get flattened by a bus.”
“I’ve been walking this earth a lot longer than you and I’ll be walking it often,” said Belial. “Open the fucking tomb, will you? I haven’t got all night.”
Jack placed his hand over the lock and let his talent flow into it. After his time in Hell and in the void of Locke’s mansion, it felt like cool water filling the space behind his eyes to feel the Black again. It was strong here, a dark vein of power running under the cemetery, fed by both the restless dead and the living of Los Angeles.
The lock popped open and Jack shoved the door wide.
Lucinda’s coffin was encased in cement, which had cracked across the top. Cobwebs drifted back and forth in the draft from the door, but otherwise the tomb was undisturbed. Belial pushed a chunk of concrete off the coffin with a clatter and swiped the dust from the nameplate with his sleeve.
“Lanchester was a stage name,” Belial said. “She was from Waukegan. Not really surprised she cut a deal. Miserable place.”
“I have seen
Belial grabbed one end of the coffin by its pallbearer handle and tugged. “Come on, Winter. Help me get this dead bitch out and about.”
The coffin was heavy, in the way that old things were heavy, and landed on the floor of the tomb with a crash. Jack felt something spasm in his back and let his end go. “Try not to alert the entire city, yeah? I can’t exactly nip back to the Pit when the cops show up.”
“You’re a great nanny,” Belial said. “I remember the days when you had balls.” He grinned, and Jack could see the gleam of his teeth as the demon went about prying open the coffin. “The dad-to-be bit softened you up, has it? Made you all gooey on the inside? I tell you, the thought of a little Winter toddling about got me excited, rightly enough. Imagining what your blood and the Weir’s will do together is one of my favorite daydreams.”
Jack moved without thinking, moved because the cold was in his blood again, and slammed Belial into the broken concrete, holding him there with fingers clasped around his windpipe. “You shut your fucking mouth or it’ll be the last thing you live to regret saying,” he whispered. On the backs of his hands, the Morrigan’s marks writhed, and where he touched Belial, the demon’s skin went pasty and blue, like he’d contracted a bad case of frostbite.
“You need a good wank, mate,” Belial croaked. “You are wound
