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“Of course. But if you ever do, you can always call. Anyway, I have to go before I’m missed. Good luck with your brooding or whatever it is you’re doing out here.”

“If you were me, considering my situation with Candy and whatever’s going on with Janet, what would you do?”

Samael puts a hand on my shoulder.

“You’re a mess, Stark. Give those women and yourself a break.”

He heads back down the hill.

“Wait. What does that mean?” I yell.

He keeps walking but calls back over his shoulder.

“One more thing. You’ll want to find Father’s lost lamb soon. He’s on the verge of giving up.”

“What do you mean giving up?”

“The war. He has this idea that if he can stop the fighting now the rebels will be more reasonable in the future.”

“What do you think?”

He gives me a sly look.

“You know what I think. Anyway, get cracking on the search. You have a week. Maybe a smidge more.”

“I didn’t promise anything,” I say, but he’s already vanished.

I sit down and lean against a marble Buddha. Finish my Malediction and smoke another, waiting for the sun to go down.

Mr. Muninn is giving up? That’s insane. But Samael is right. Muninn would rather talk than fight, and if he thinks he’s losing, maybe that’s all he has left. Now that Samael has asked me to help, if I don’t do it and Muninn gives up, I’ll be as guilty as the old man when Heaven slams closed forever.

I don’t like this pressure right now. And I can’t help but wonder if Samael was being completely straight with me. He can talk around the edges of things and draw me into trouble he doesn’t want to face himself.

And there’s the rest of my ridiculous life.

Give those women and yourself a break.

What the hell does that mean? I should walk away from everything? Become a monk, watch movies, grow old, and complain about the old days when we had real movies and not 3-D holograms? I hate 3-D almost as much as I hate soup.

This whole setup bugs me and I keep wondering why an angel was watching porn on Hollywood Boulevard forty years ago in the first place. Maybe the Pussycat had extra-good popcorn. Or maybe, like Samael said, it was because of some exotic friends.

Goddamn it. Why am I even thinking about this? I have Candy and Janet to worry about. Not getting knifed by Alessa. And who the hell is going to cook a turkey for me? Whoever said Hell is other people was wrong. Hell is other people in your house.

I’m so fucked.

I hang around Teddy’s playground just smoking and thinking until sunset. Finally, bored with myself and all the bullshit swirling around me, I fire up the Hog and head back to L.A. The only stop I make is on a cliff overlooking the Pacific. I throw the road rage pistol far out into the water. Let the fish have it. They have more sense than some people, including me.

It’s a normal, boring ride back home. Then around Studio City, traffic slows. I pull off onto the feeder road that runs a little above the freeway. But just south of where Lankershim Boulevard meets the 101 something weird is happening. I stop the bike and look down on the scene.

Two stretch limos are parked in the center breakdown lane. Twelve, maybe fifteen people mill around in front of the lead limo. They’re all in tuxes and ball gowns like they were on their way to a million-dollar wedding. The strange part is that none of them seem that upset to be stuck on the side of the freeway with traffic blasting exhaust and road grit all over their precious formal wear. In fact, it looks like they’re having a party, passing around joints and bottles of champagne. After a few minutes, one couple—a man and woman—herd the partiers together for some kind of announcement. I figure they’re giving the others an ETA on tow trucks, so I start to drive off. Only, then something really strange happens.

The couple move among the other wedding guests, standing behind them, looping something around their faces and tying it at the back. It almost looks like they’re putting blindfolds on everyone. When they’ve trussed up the last guest, the couple lines them up along the edge of the median facing the road.

Then, one by one, they run straight into traffic.

The first few do surprisingly well, making it across three lanes before the first one—a blonde in a powder-blue floor-length gown—flies rag-doll-like off the front bumper of a Ford F-150 truck. When she finally hits the road, she flops around looking boneless, like a fashionable squid. But none of the wedding guests see her go down and they head straight into the speeding cars.

By now, tires are squealing as drivers hit the brakes. Metal crunches on metal as cars and trucks rear-end each other. But the batshit-crazy suicide prom keeps running. A few—the lucky ones—end up in places where cars have stopped o