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“He liked to get to me through ­people I cared about.”

She takes shots of the other cars and a lone cat sitting on the trunk of a nearby Lexus.

“Too bad he’s dead. I wouldn’t mind hurting him.”

“It sounds kind of lame to say, but I’m sorry for everything that’s happened.”

She shrugs.

“ ’Course there’s another way of looking at things. I mean, making me crazy, making you angry and paranoid. If we were smart, we’d have broken up by now. But we didn’t,” says Candy. “The way I see it, we won.”

“Me too.”

“I’m hungry. Did you bring snacks?”

“I forgot them.”

“Moron.”

“Yeah.”

A door slams somewhere up the street. Maybe a second later, three men in identical clothes come running down Wonderland Avenue. In the pale light from the surrounding houses, it’s easy to see the bats and pipes in their hands. Two of the men look scared. I can’t see the third because he’s facedown in the street. The idiot tripped over the low brick boundary around a small garden in front of one of the houses. His buddies start back for him, but he gets to his feet and breaks into a stumbling run.

“You shooting?” I say, but it’s unnecessary. When I hear Candy clicking away with the camera, I hit the headlights to give her a better view of the street.

The Three Stooges freeze. They’re dressed in matching desert camo shirts and black slacks tucked into what look like paratrooper boots. Their shirts are soaked in blood I’m pretty certain isn’t theirs. With light on them, I see something else. An insignia on their shirts. Like a capital W in a white circle, and something else I can’t identify.

Their brains reconnect with their bodies and they take off. I jump from the car and run after them. Two are dead ahead, but the third one is gone.

There’s a thudding blow against my right shoulder, then a stinging sensation that spreads across my back and right up my neck. One of the Stooges was hiding behind a car and clocked me good on the back with a length of pipe. I turn just as he swings for my head and duck out of the way, letting the metal sail by, barely missing me. I’m still getting my balance when I hear footsteps moving up behind me. There’s nothing I can do but turn because I know from the sound that both of the other Stooges are back there.

I swing around, staying low, hoping Stooge Three behind me holds back, waiting for his buddies. That might give me time to hurt them just enough that I can get back to him, even with numbness spreading from my shoulder down my right arm.

I should have known better than to worry, but, you know, it’s embarrassing and distracting getting hurt that early in a fight.

The two guys coming at me don’t ever connect because they’re too distracted by their friend’s screaming. I don’t have to look to know that Candy’s back there, gone completely Jade. Red pupils sunk in black eyes. Shark teeth in a pretty mouth and claws like scythes. She’s shredding Stooge number three’s shirt and skin. One of the other Stooges, a beanpole with a baseball bat, pulls a Glock from a holster on his hip. I turn and dive, not heading for the beanpole, but going for Candy, knocking her down just as the first shot goes off. Beanpole pops off a ­couple of more rounds before he and the Stooges leg it into the shadows, disappearing between a ­couple of houses down the street. It’s too dark to know which ones.

When I let Candy up, she’s already changing back into Chihiro. By now a dozen ­people are all dialing 911, but I want to know what the hell just happened. We run up the block and spot a boxy two-­story stucco place with a blood trail all the way down the side stairs. We follow the red up, careful not to step in any, and come to an open door on the first floor. There’s just enough light reflected inside to see a sizable pool of blood and four bodies laid out like sausages in a frying pan. The weird thing is, the way their bodies are angled, it looks like they’re making a W. Candy might have called me the brains the other day, but she’s the smart one. She pulls the Vigil’s came

ra from her pocket and starts taking pictures. I have to pull her back down the stairs.

We sprint for the car. Once in, I gun it, heading back down the hill with the lights off so no one can get our license plate. When we hit Laurel Canyon Boulevard, our lights are on and I’ve settled in at the speed limit as the first cop cars blow by.

Still, I take the long way back to Max Overdrive and leave the Crown Vic parked down by Hollywood High. If someone did see us up on Wonderland tonight, maybe the cops will blame the cheerleading squad.

While we walk home Candy rubs my shoulder.

It would be sweet if she weren’t laughing at me for getting hit.

ONCE WE’RE HOME, I get out my phone. It takes all of ten minutes to fill Julie in on what happened in the canyon.

“And you’re both all right?” she says.

“We’re fine. I’ll have a bruise tomorrow, but my pride will hurt more.”

“Have Candy bring the camera by in the morning so I can download the photos. And when I say morning, I mean morning. Not two o’clock or even noon. I want you in by nine.”

“What’s the big deal? We didn’t see anything that looked like a drug den, unless they’re using cats to carry their smack. The other thing we saw, the cops will handle.”