There was, by then, nobody but invisible Tom around to hear, but still she asked:
“Will one of you please find an axe?”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Graves drove his stolen car westbound down Branford, with the women socked away in its small back seat. Hannah was stretched out as much as possible, with her head resting in Lia’s lap. Lia kept steady pressure on the wound that grooved Hannah’s hip, exactly as Graves had demonstrated for her.
He looked again in the rearview mirror. “I don’t see ’em,” he reported. “I don’t see anything. I think we’re in the clear, ladies.”
Lia nodded, squeezing Hannah’s hand. Her eyes were shut painfully tight. In the mirror she looked withdrawn and lost. Graves glanced over his shoulder at her in concern.
“Say,” he said, exchanging a look with Hannah, who seemed to share his worry. “Just outta curiosity, d’you know what that thing was back there? That broad with the bad reception?”
Lia had to drag herself out of her daze to think and answer. Those dark circles were starting to look tattooed under her eyes.
“That was Lyssa, I think,” she said. “The Archon of Madness and Moonlight. Like a goddess, very ancient. Greek originally. Too crazy to be scared of my tricks the way the others were. Too irrational already.”
“Yeah, that lunar chick was a lunatic, all right,” Graves agreed lightly. “Bugs in the brainpan, you ask me. Strong, though. Geez.”
He rolled his neck, cracking vertebrae all up the line. He was pleased to have drawn Lia back out of herself, even if it was only to a tiny degree. At least he knew the trauma of recent events hadn’t left her unreachable.
“So,” he said. “The sooner we get that wound hosed out, the less chance of infection there’s gonna be. Maybe you got some kinda destination in mind, dollface?”
“Head south,” Lia told him. “Over Coldwater Canyon. I know people who’ll help us, up in the hills.”
Graves nodded and made a left when they reached Coldwater, after another two blocks. When he looked over, the short man with the hat and the sunglasses who’d let him out of Hardface’s car was sitting in his passenger seat. He grinned at Graves and doffed his hat without saying a word, like he thought he was Harpo Marx or something.
“Oh,” Graves said in greeting, his capacity for surprise having been much diminished by the events of the last two days. “Hey. So you’re one of Lia’s sort of things too, huh? Guess I mighta known.”
“Who’re you talking to up there, Dexter?” Hannah asked, as he wove the fancyass car through mid-day traffic denser than any he’d ever seen. Everyone in the world had a car of their own by now, it looked like, including kids too young to enlist in the service, and all of them were on the roads all of the goddamn time.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Ingrid watched as Winston the bony butler finished knotting Miguel Caradura’s fine silk tie, then stepped back from the King. ‘Caradura’ turned to admire himself in a full-length mirror that appeared upon the gray plain in perfectly-timed anticipation of his desire for it.
The King had materialized another elegant, modern-day suit, Italian cut, which he now wore with his golden Aztec armbands over the sleeves and his owl-feather headdress perched upon his brow. The necklace of eyeballs was, as ever, his signature statement. If the vitreous humor that dribbled from the holes they were strung through stained his new clothes, well, then that was just as it had to be.
He turned away from the mirror. “Do you like my suit, my love?” he asked.
Ingrid looked him up and down, from where she sat reclining on her chaise. The step pyramid stood tall against the gray horizon far behind him, like a jagged Mount Fuji. “I do,” she answered, truthfully enough. “You always did know how to wear your clothes, Mickey.”
El Rey grinned. Ingrid figured it probably wasn’t the moment to point out that his taste in accessories did detract somewhat from his outfit’s overall effect.
Nyx, who was still kneeling on the bare ground, stirred and looked pained. She remained dressed in her simple linen and wore her hair in a fat, dark braid, as was her prerogative on this side of reality.
“Mic- Mictlantecuhtli?” she said.
“Yes, Nyx?”
“My sister-daughter… will not be returning, Mictlantecuhtli.”
Mickey blinked calmly, several times. “And why might that be, Nyx?”
“The witchgirl grew a tree down through her head and rooted her to the earth,” the anxious Archon explained. “She… she is quite uncomfortable, Mictlantecuhtli.”
“I always wonder what really happened when they come out with surrealist shit like that,” Ingrid said.
Mickey frowned, and Ingrid instantly regretted having spoken her mind. “Do you say their descriptions are not accurate?” the King queried. “They do not illustrate the events of the actualworld?”
“They tend to be… colorful, let’s say,” Ingrid said. “That’s all.”
“Foreigners,” the King spat, sneering down at his kneebound concubine. “I wasted my efforts when I conquered your sphere, Nyx. But you were weak and it was easy, so I figured ‘what the hell?’”
“I apologize, Mictlantecuhtli,” Nyx said, without raising her eyes. Ingrid actually felt a little bit bad for her. “I will free my sister-daughter at dusk, if it pleases you.”
“Yes, yes,” Mickey said dismissively. “Now leave me. It will please me more not to look upon you for a while.”
“Yes, Mictlantecuhtli,” Nyx said, and vanished.
The King turned to Ingrid. “Did I use that right?” he asked. “A ‘while?’ The vocabulary of time remains academic for me.”
“It was perfect, Mickey,” Ingrid said. “Spot on.”
“Like an incarnation would say it? An actualperson, not a nonbody pretending?”
“Exactly like.”
“It wasn’t ‘colorful?’”
“Mickey…” Ingrid had to make an effort not to get frustrated with him. “It was just right. Do I have to drop to my knees in admiration before you believe me?”
She illustrated by doing so, at a distance from his pelvis that was far more suggestive than it was respectful. She looked up the silk-suited front of him, batting her lashes and making her blue eyes as large and innocent as she possibly could. “Does this make you happy?”
“Stand up, Ingrid Redstone,” the King said, sounding stern and not at all amused. “Those games ended between us when you elected not to become my Queen.”
“Yes, Mictlantecuhtli,” Ingrid said, in perfect imitation of Nyx and Lyssa’s fawning subservience.
“Stop it.” Mickey shook his head, looking disgusted. “Foreign women,” he mused aloud. “I should never have strayed beyond the ministrations of my Tzitzimime.”
“Sure, if you like handjobs,” Ingrid said, getting to her feet and brushing off her knees. “Plenty of extra limbs. I’d steer clear of those mandibles though, if I were you.”
“Do not forget your place, Ingrid Redstone,” the King murmured. “Do not insult my sphere or those native to it.
“As if I could ever forget it,” Ingrid said.
That seemed to give Mickey an idea. He paced, thinking aloud. “And yet you
“What’s your point?” Ingrid asked, leading him a little, but not too much. She had to play this very carefully now. He would never send her on this errand if he had any inkling that she wanted to go.
“You could get them,” the King said. “Find them, bring them. You could do this, my love.”
