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“Just don’t do anything fucking stupid. You’re a big boy, so I’m just going to worry about Allegra.”

“And bruising my ass.”

“Yep.”

“Understood,” he says.

I look around the room.

“We’ve all got skeletons in the closet, I suppose. Did I ever tell you about how I helped fake the moon landing?”

He laughs, not so drunk this time.

“No. You must enlighten me sometime.”

I’m about to say something dumb when the door opens and Allegra comes in. She looks at Vidocq, then at me, then at all the wine on the table.

“I see you two have had a productive afternoon.”

“Your old man was telling me alchemy stories. Tell her how you invented water.”

She puts down her coat and bag and sits down next to Vidocq. He puts an arm around her.

“That was you?” she says. She looks at him. “Are you keeping secrets from me?”

“Never, my dear. Never.”

I get up, feeling a little uncomfortable seeing her where Liliane was a few minutes earlier. Allegra spots the bottle of black milk and picks it up.

“You brought it back,” she says.

“Actually, that’s a new bottle.”

Vidocq sits up at that.

“James, since you now have two bottles, might we keep this one for a while?”

“I want to say no, but I also want to know more about the stuff. Keep it, but don’t let anyone know you have it.”

Allegra makes a motion at her lips like turning a key.

“Tick a lock,” she says.

We say our good-byes and I take the industrial elevator down to the Hellion hog.

Isn’t life one big bowl of what-the-fuck? I was surprised upstairs when Vidocq all but admitted that he was still in love with his killer. At that moment, I didn’t understand how he could do it. By the time I get to the bike, I know exactly. Alice and I were together for years. It wasn’t until she was dead and I met her ghost that she showed me the skeleton hanging in her closet. She’d been sent to spy on me by the Sub Rosa council. Alice was my Mata Hari, passing on our pillow talk to paranoid magicians convinced I was making murder potions with my chemistry set. But in the end, she loved me, and when I saw her after missing her all those years, it took me all of ten seconds to forgive her. I don’t know if that makes any more sense than what Vidocq said went down between him and Liliane. What I do know is that a famous dead guy once said, “Life is a bucket of shit with a barbed-wire handle.” Maybe that’s all any of this love crap comes down to. Finding someone to carry your load of shit with, even when your hands get raw and bloody. No one’s ever going to turn that into a love song, but if some lunatic did, I’d be first in line to buy a copy for Candy.

SHE GETS HOME around six, taking the night off from work and guitar lessons.

“We’re going to start getting the whole band together soon. Alessa and I have worked out a bunch of guitar parts and they’ll sound great with bass and drums.”

“I’m sure Fairuza and Cindil will be happy to hear you haven’t forgotten them.”

“I’ve been talking to both of them. They know we’re working some things out and they’re cool with it.”

“I can’t wait to hear the new songs.”

“Me too,” she says.