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When all that nonsense is over, Ray puts the marriage license on the bar. Allegra signs as one of the witnesses, then everybody looks at me.

I crook a finger at Fuck Hollywood.

“Are you a felon or anything?”

“No.”

“Can you write?”

“Yeah,” she says sarcastically.

“Then here’s your first job. Be a witness.”

She grabs the pen and signs.

“Cool. I’ve never done this before.”

Carlos says, “Welcome to Bamboo House of Dolls, girlie. Stick around here and you’ll end up doing lots weirder things than that before it’s over.”

I bark a little Hellion and hoodoo up a knife that I give to Fuck Hollywood.

“Whoa,” she says.

“Here’s your second job. You can cut the cake and serve it.”

But I don’t think she hears me. She just turns the gleaming white knife over in her hands.

“What kind of knife is this?”

“It’s a chip from the chicken legs that hold up Baba Yaga’s house. A good-luck charm. Keep it if you want. Just don’t tell Baba Yaga you got it from me.”

She looks at me with great intensity.

“That’s. So. Metal.”

We drink and eat for another hour before Carlos has Fuck Hollywood take the sign down to let in the afternoon crowd. They devour the last of the cake and buy Janet and Brigitte drinks for hours.

Vidocq would have loved it.

I get back to the flying saucer house around ten. The others are still partying, but after all that’s happened I need a break. I take a PTSD pill and put on some coffee in the kitchen.

When I go into the living room Samantha is waiting for me. She’s perched on the back of the sofa with her wings wrapped around her like a giant bird of prey. She’s wearing Thivierge’s emerald earrings and still looking like she’s not a day over twenty-five. So, she’s not a Drifter.

She’s Samael’s lost angel.

“Hello, Zadkiel.”

She says, “Hello, Abomination.”

I lean against the wall.

“Save that ‘Abomination’ crap for someone who cares. You look ridiculous like that.”

“You really are as thick as they say. A big mouth and no sense of the inevitable.”

“Which is what exactly?”

She raises her head in the annoying imperious way angels do.