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“If I don’t, have Willem tell Audsley Ishii better luck next time.”

“I’ll be sure to pass it along,” Abbot says.

“One more thing. For a blue-blood, pretty-boy asshole, you’re not the worst person I ever met.”

“For a terrifying reprobate, neither are you.”

“See you in the funny papers.”

I hang up. Candy yawns and opens her eyes. I pour us both more coffee.

BRIGITTE CALLS IN the afternoon. Mysteriously, production on her movie has gone into a “temporary pause.” I guess Pieter Ligotti lit out of Dodge on the Wormwood Express like the others. I’m sorry it screws up Brigitte’s job, but it works out better for us.

“You can pull guard duty on Vidocq and Allegra?”

“Of course,” she says. “Will she want to see me, though? I feel like all this is my fault.”

“Allegra knows it wasn’t your fault. Wormwood used everyone. She needs her friends right now.”

“Of course I’ll be there. Where will you be?”

“Candy and I are taking a trip. We’ll be back in a couple of days. Kill anyone who tries to get in that isn’t us.”

“With pleasure.”

IT TAKES FOR fucking ever for the sun to go down.

I go to a nearby gas station and hit the little grocery inside. It’s all road food, grease, and sweets in here. I pick up a carton of unfiltered Luckies on the way out. The clerk gives me a look. I lost the Hellion hog’s saddlebags when I rode it back from Hell, and I don’t have a backpack, so I have to use one of Candy’s. I stare right back at the clerk and strap on a Badtz-Maru pack. Get on the Hellion hog and head south on the Hollywood Freeway to where it forms a crossroads with the 110.

It’s early evening and the road is jammed with traffic. Not the best time to do what I’m about to, but I’m sick of waiting around.

I pull onto the shoulder and get out the black blade. Carve an intricate sigil into the roadbed. Then I light a Malediction. Nothing to do now but wait.

It doesn’t take long before I get an answer to my distress call.

She burns down the road, doing ninety in the bumper-to-bumper traffic. Every little space between the crawling cars, every opening where someone changes lanes, she blows through them without a care in the world.

After all, these are her roads.

Mustang Sally is the highway sylph. The queen of the freeways, the surface roads, and the filthy side streets. A spirit that’s been around in one form or other since the earliest humans left the first mud trails in the ground. She drives L.A.’s roads 24/7 and only stops when bums like me lure her over with tributes.

Tonight, she’s in a Porsche 550 Spyder. The car that killed James Dean and a lot of nameless other morons who couldn’t handle the horsepower.

Sally gives me a big smile as she stops. But she doesn’t get out of the car. Just fixes her hair in the rearview mirror. It takes me a minute to figure it out. Sally has helped me out plenty, but you always have to pay the toll.

I walk to the Porsche and open the door for her. She gives me her hand as she steps out.

“Hello, handsome. That’s a new look for you.”

I forgot that I still have Badtz-Maru on my back. I shrug off the pack and hand it to her.

“It’s for you, Sally.”

She opens it and peeks inside.

“Yummy,” she says, and tosses the pack onto the passenger seat. Then she walks past me.

“Love the wheels.”