Graves' end

lovely ones, in the classical sense). Ingrid couldn’t even guess at what they must’ve looked like out there in the realworld, as strange and vast as they were.

“Well?” Mickey said.

Together, Nyx and Lyssa answered: “He has returned to the cold womb of the earth, Mictlantecuhtli.”

Ingrid suppressed a satisfied smile.

“He’s what?” Mickey said.

“Returned to the cold womb of the earth, Mictlantecuhtli.” Again in unison, with submissively downcast eyes.

“I heard you the first time!” Mickey shouted.

Lyssa and Nyx wisely stayed quiet. The King jumped up, knocking over his throne, and commenced to pace. Ingrid watched him wearily.

“What are you telling me?” he demanded of his playmates. “That he dumped himself back in a hole and pulled the dirt in on top?”

Nyx and Lyssa exchanged a look and a shrug. “Yes, Mictlantecuhtli,” they said together. “We no longer feel his presence.”

The King righted his throne and parked his ass, pouting. He sighed. “I did not expect that,” he said.

“Nor did we, Mictlantecuhtli,” the Archons echoed.

“I might’ve guessed,” Ingrid said. Everyone looked over at her, draped elegantly across her chaise. She shrugged. “If history’s any precedent,” she explained.

The illusion of a man that called itself ‘Miguel Caradura’ sneered. He stood again, knocking over his throne for a second time. “Go ahead and laugh, witch!” he barked down at Ingrid. “You’ve got plenty of time for jokes.”

Ingrid swung up into a sitting position, taking a moment to arrange her skirt. “Relax a little, why don’t you?” she suggested, glancing up at Mickey. “So they’re smarter than you thought they’d be. I’m sure your ‘companions’ will find them for you soon enough.”

“Yes, you should keep on hoping that,” the King said.

“Oh, come on, Mickey!” Ingrid cried, finally raising her voice in frustration. She was more than a bit amazed that he hadn’t blown this deal already by trying to get a glimpse of the witch called Lia Flores, perhaps to see if the newer model had a body he might enjoy possessing. “This has nothing to do with me anymore,” Ingrid insisted. “And we had a deal.”

“I am altering the terms of that deal.”

Ingrid rolled her eyes. “Then I’ll just pray you don’t alter them further, Lord Vader,” she said, trying to chide him with a joke, but Mickey turned on her with nuclear rage burning in his eyes.

“Who is this Vader?'” he demanded. “You call me by the name of another man? Who is this person? I will eat his skin while savoring the music of his screams!”

“Mickey, my god, have a drink,” Ingrid said, raising an eyebrow. “Winston?”

Winston brought over a martini on a tray. A spiral curl of citrus peel clung to the rim of the frosty glass. Mickey refused to take it. He continued to glare at Ingrid, actually expecting an answer, it seemed.

“It was a line from a movie, okay?” Ingrid told him, forcing herself not to sigh. “Remember I told you about movies? The dreams the realworlders share in common? What you said sounded like a line from one, is all.” When the King didn’t respond, she flashed her bright blue eyes at him and said, emphatically: “There is no ‘Vader,’ Mickey.”

Mollified, King Caradura finally took Winston’s proffered martini. He looked to Lyssa and Nyx, who had cringed during his outburst, but hadn’t moved from where they knelt upon the ground.

“Can you find again the place where he is buried?” he said to them, after sipping his drink and nodding his approval of it to Winston. “Are you that much smarter than my idiot Tzitzimime?”

“We… we believe so, Mictlantecuhtli,” the sinister sisters replied.

Mickey looked to Ingrid. “Well, that’s something then, isn’t it?” he said.

Chapter Seventeen

About a third of the impossible thing that called itself Dexter Graves sat in the middle of Bag End’s cold concrete floor, intently organizing the rest of his bones. His torn trenchcoat was still in place around his ribs and shoulders. The ragged garment had held those bones together when he fell down the tube, leaving his arms attached at the torso and in proper working order. He sang softly to himself while he sorted:

“Soooo… the knee bone’s connected to the / leg bone, and the leg bone’s connected to the / hip bone, and the hip bone’s connected to this / other bone / but I still can’t tell / what this one iiiiis… ”

Lia stepped out from behind a folding shoji screen in comfy flannel pajama pants and a faded, laundry-thinned t-shirt, and paused to watch the decayed detective for a moment. Hannah was lying on her side on Lia’s bed, assembling a skeletal foot while munching cereal straight from the box. She glanced up at Lia, clearly suppressing her own laughter.

“Mr. Graves?” Lia asked politely. “Is that really helping?”

“Yeah, sure it is,” Graves said. “What am I, a goddamn osteopath over here? I gotta figure this out somehow. There’s about a thousand bones in the human body, y’know.”

“There are two hundred and six,” Lia informed him, “and not all of yours even came apart.”

“Then you figure out where they all go, you know so goddamn much,” Graves grumbled, crossing his arms in a show of weary petulance.

“All right, all right, relax already,” Lia said, pulling her bobbed hair back into a blunt little ponytail that bristled like a makeup brush at the nape of her neck. “I’ll help.” She stepped in front of him, looking down at him squarely. “Just don’t go freaking out on me again, or I’ll have to put you back under glass. Understood?”

“Ha!” Graves exclaimed. “Fat chance, sister. You’re not getting anywhere near my lighter again.” He frantically pawed at the front of his coat, searching for the item in question.

Lia raised her eyebrows. She walked over to the shelf the lighter had been sitting on, underneath a waterglass, when last she’d seen it. “No? You sure about that?”

“Of course I’m sure about that,” Graves shot back. “I rose from the dead to get that lighter. You can’t seriously think I’m gonna… gonna forget… oh.”

He trailed off when Lia retrieved the Zippo from the scrim of broken glass it was still lying under up on the bookshelf, then held it aloft and waggled it.

“Damn it all to hell,” Graves muttered, sounding defeated.

Hannah did her best to muffle a snicker.

“Well, what do you expect?” Graves said irritably. “My brains turned to mush a long time ago.”

Hannah laughed aloud at that. Graves sulked. Lia smiled and tossed him his lighter. He caught it on the fly and looked up at her, more than a bit surprised.

“You know this means I’m trusting you, Mr. Graves,” Lia said. “I expect your best behavior.”

Graves stared at the lighter for a long moment before he put it away inside his coat, on the lefthand side, over the place where his heart used to be. It glowed warmly through the fabric for a pulse or two before fading away, Lia noticed.

“My word is my bond, dollface,” Graves swore, looking up at her earnestly. He seemed unable to keep a faint note of emotion out of his voice, and that made her smile. She knew how good it could feel to be trusted. “Dontcha ever let anybody tell ya different,” the skeleton continued. “And… you did promise to call me Dexter, if I recall.”

“All right, then, Dexter.” Lia’s smile twisted into a mischievous grin as she nodded toward the little, leftover bone in his hand that he hadn’t been able to identify. “And that one’s your coccyx, by the way,” she said.

“My what?” Graves yelped.

“Your tailbone.”

“Oh. Right.” Graves-Dexter-examined the little calcified nub. “Didn’t think what I thought had an actual bone