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So I picked up the phone, and discovered—somewhat to my own amusement—that I really could remember Franz’s mother’s number, after all.

“You’re actually going to help?” He repeated, obviously amazed.

“Why not? Might be kicks.”

“Yeah, right. For who?”

“Does it matter?”

Planning it out, even as we fence

d: use a two-ring circle system, with Jen sequestered in the inner, Franz and I in the outer. Proceed from Franz’s assumption that Fleer was the demon in question, until otherwise proven; force him to vacate by offering him another rabbit-hole to jump down, one far more attractive to him than Jen’s could ever be . . .

Making the connection, then, mildly startled by the ruthless depths of my own deviousness. And observing, to myself: Now, that’s not nice.

But I knew I’d have to try it, anyway.

I gave Franz a detailed list of what I’d need, only to be utterly unsurprised when he immediately balked at both its length and its—fairly expensive—specificity.

“Why the hell don’t you ever practice straight-up Chinese magic, anyway?” He demanded. “Needles, herbs, all that good, cheap stuff . . . ”

“Same reason you don’t raise any Mennonite demons, I guess.”

He invited me to suck his dick. I gave an evil smile.

“Oh, Franz,” I said, gently. “How do you know I never did?”

Next step was getting all the appointment-book bullshit dealt with: Setting a time, date and place, with Jen’s address making the top of my list in terms of crucial missing information. According to Franz, she’d been living in some Annex hole in the ground for most of the last five years, vampire sex shows and all—though not an actual hole, mind you, or the actual ground. But only because that kind of logistical whimsy would have been way too interesting a concept, for either of them.

“And what are you planning on bringing to the party?” He asked, grumpily. To which I replied, airily:

“ . . . I’ll think of something.”

* * *

Which is how I came, a mere three hours later, to be sitting side by side with Carra in the Clarke’s inaccurately-labelled Green Room—her slump-shouldered and staring at her scars against the grey-painted wall, me trying (and failing) to stop my feet from tapping impatiently on the scuffed grey linoleum floor. We were virtually alone, aside from one nurse stationed on the door, whose eyes kept straying back to the static-spitting TV in the corner as though it exercised some sort of magnetic attraction on her, and a dusty prayer-plant whose leaves seemed permanently fused together by the utter lack of natural light.

“I need a reading,” I told Carra, briskly.

Toneless: “You know I can’t do that anymore, Jude.”

“I know you don’t.”

“Same difference.”

It seemed clear she probably sensed ulterior motives beneath my visit, even though she knew herself to be always my court of last resort, when faced with any inexplicable run of synchronicity. But she didn’t seem particularly interested in probing further, probably because this just happened to be one of those mornings when she wasn’t much into seeing people; not live ones, anyway.

“Look,” I said, “somebody’s been doing stuff, and taking my name in vain while they do it. Sleeping with Ed, even after I already kicked him to the curb. Volunteering my services to Franz, even after I already told him to take a hike.” I paused. “I even tried to do a spell, on that guy—the one from the movie?” As she nodded: “Well, that was all screwed up somehow, too. Like, just . . . weird.”

“Your magic was weird,” she repeated, evenly.

“Abnormally so.”

She looked up, brushing her bangs away. “Told you there was something about that guy,” she said, with just a sliver of her old, evilly detached, Ryerson-era grin.

I snapped my fingers. “Oh yeah, I remember now—you did, didn’t you? Just never told me what.”

“How should I know?”