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She smiles.

“He’s all right. He just had the wind knocked out of him.”

“Is he a member of this secret glee club?”

Maria nods. “You shouldn’t judge things you don’t understand.”

“Wow. You could write fortune cookies.”

I take a breath and look at the doom twins.

“I’m in, but you have to agree to one thing.”

“What’s that?” says Dan.

“No more scampering around in these tunnels.”

“Done,” says Juliette a split second after the words are out of my mouth.

“Actually, there’s one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Stop killing so goddamn many people. You’re making me look bad. This next excursion, take the ducklings to Disneyland or something.”

“Also done,” says Juliette.

Dan holds out his hand.

“Welcome to the Lodge Within the Lodge. I think you’ll have a lot of exciting and mysterious times ahead of you.”

Because I need more of that in my life.

Candy calls the next afternoon and I hope it’s about what we said to each other at the drive-in, only it’s anything but.

She says, “You should get over here right away. Kasabian was in a hit-and-run accident and he’s in bad shape.”

“He doesn’t want to see me.”

“He doesn’t want to see anyone,” says Candy, sounding even more anxious. “I mean, how many friends does he have? Alessa and I have tried talking to him, but he starts crying and gets embarrassed, which makes everything even wor

se. Maybe you can try talking to him?”

“He’s not going to let me in.”

“I’m going to let you in. Please.”

This is exactly what I need right now. Kas getting weepy about a couple of dents in his undercarriage.

“Okay. I’ll be over in a few minutes.”

I make it to Max Overdrive a half hour later and go straight into Kasabian’s room.

He’s laid out on his crummy little single bed. The covers are spattered with traces of blood. Kas has a serious black eye and his face is covered in welts and scratches. Worse, his legs are bent at weird angles and one arm is hanging on by a few thin strips of metal. I wait for him to go off at me, but he’s too depressed to be angry.

“Come to see the dog-face boy?” he says. “That’ll be a quarter, asshole.”

“I only have hundreds.”