“I’m going to go shoot myself now. I just remembered that the worst part of drinking is the sobering up. Did I already tell you to fuck yourself? I hope so, ‘cause my head hurts too much to say it now.”
And then he’d hung up.
Believe it or not, this was a good thing, despite the death’s-door sound effects. This was Sam forgiving me, in his own Samlike way, and telling me how to join him in Kainos. Which was good, because a plan I’d been thinking about for the last few hours was beginning to take practical shape, and I really did think I was going to need to visit Sam’s compromised paradise. The plan was a completely crazy one with almost no chance of working, but time was running out. So, as far as useful ideas, well, let’s just say the new one didn’t have much competition.
The more I thought about it as I made my way south on the rain-slicked freeway, the more certain I became that I was either a genius or the biggest idiot ever to tape a “Just Kill Me” sign to his own back. And not only was the idea itself astoundingly dangerous, every step on the way to implementing it was crazy suicidal, too. But it was the first decent possibility that had occurred to me since we’d escaped the Stanford Museum, bloodied, beaten, and carrying nothing but the dead body of a young Ukrainian woman.
Look, let’s be honest, I don’t have that many ideas. I don’t have any good ones (as Sam would be the first to tell you) but even if you ignore quality, I don’t have that many of them, so I wanted to start putting this one together. Unfortunately, I realized as I was passing the first of the San Judas exits, I needed one major component to make it work, and that wasn’t going to be easy to get. It would require me striking a bargain with someone who might be even stronger than Anaita, and who had certainly proved that he hated me as much as she did.
Yeah, you see where this is going, and yeah, you’re right. It was stupid in dozens of different ways. Suicidal, too. But it’s not like I had a lot to lose. One way or another, someone was going to rip my soul out of my body soon—mainly just a question of who and when and how official it would be—so heading for Five Page Mill to visit Grand Duke Eligor was just giving the executioner a choice of weapons.
That doesn’t mean I wasn’t terrified, of course. Doesn’t mean that at all.
forty:
devil you know
I HADN’T BEEN inside Five Page Mill since my first meeting with its owner, which had ended badly (with me being dragged out by the police) but much less badly than it could have, since only a few minutes earlier I had been dangling in the neck-grip of a very, very angry archdemon, Eligor the Horseman. And now I was going back. It would have been questionable strategy even if I hadn’t had several encounters with Eligor since, including a long stint in Hell as his prisoner, during which he tortured me continuously for what felt like months, burning me, shredding me, feeding me to things I couldn’t even describe, and resurrecting me each time to start over again with something new. So now I was going to visit him again. See what I mean? Would you like yours Regular Stupid, sir, or Extra Stupid? But beggars, choosers, blah blah blah.
I’d gone in stealthy the first time, and it had turned out very badly. Today I was going to try something different. In fact, the only thing I did by the normal Bobby book was leave my hideous yellow ex-taxicab out on the Camino Real, since I didn’t want my current ride to be known to every creature in San Judas with a picture of Satan on its office wall. But once I’d reached the front walkway I just moseyed inside and went straight to the main reception desk. It was now behind bulletproof glass, which was probably because of me, but that didn’t keep the young man behind it from giving me a pleasant smile.
“How may I help you?”
“I’m here to see Mr. Vald.”
He gave the smallest hint of a surprised look, but for frontline office cannon-fodder, he coped pretty well. “Let me just check. Do you have an appointment, sir?”
“No, I don’t think so. But he’ll want to see me.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to arrange it through Mr. Vald’s executive assistant.”
“No, you’ll do that for me.” I put one of my cards through the slot, the kind that only has a name and a phone number on it. I don’t think that number even works any more. “Tell them it’s Bobby Dollar to see Ken Vald. I’ll wait right here.”
And I did. The receptionist’s phone conversation, which I observed from a discreet distance, looked a bit heated. My guess was that the person on the other end had started out, “Who?” and then quickly got to, “What the fuck is he doing here?”
When the kid hung up, I strolled forward again. “Shall I go up?”
His smile was sickly, but he was still doing his best, bless him. I hoped he was a regular human and didn’t know who his boss really was. He seemed like a go-getter. “If you’ll just wait a moment, Mr. Dollar, someone will be out to see you.”
“I’m sure,” I said, returning his smile with more confidence than I actually felt. But that’s how it works when you’re on Hell’s home ground, even if it’s just an embassy on Earth. You have to stay confident, or at least seem that way. You cannot flinch. You definitely do not want to panic, because they really do smell fear.
It was a minute at the longest before a dark-haired female security agent appeared out of one of the lobby’s interior doors. She was attractive, if you liked faces hard as stone temple carvings, and wore the same black suit as the male agents, but with a buttoned collar and no tie. Her nametag said “Kilburn.”
“Mr. Dollar?” she asked. “Bobby Dollar?” You’d have thought from the way she said it that I’d announced myself as something filthy. “I think you’d better come with me.”
“I think first you’d better tell me where, Officer Kilburn.” I gave her my best array of charm-teeth, my friendliest grin. “The last time I was here, I had a bit of a misunderstanding with security. I’d hate that to happen again.”
Zero amusement. Less than that, actually. If a cold fog could reach out from someone and suck the enjoyment out of others, that’s what she was emanating. “I’m sure you would, Mr. Dollar. I’m taking you to my supervisor. Come along.”
She turned and walked back toward the door. She didn’t look to see if I was coming, and didn’t seem to care if I did. I followed her anyway, since that was why I was there.
A whole complex of narrow halls and rooms lay hidden behind the lobby wall, almost a second building inside Five Page Mill, like a piece of pipe shoved inside a larger pipe. She led me down a corridor that must have run more or less parallel to the lobby’s inner walls, then stopped outside a door no different than the half dozen others we’d passed. She opened it and indicated I should go inside. “Mr. Felderscarp will be with you in a moment.”
I stepped inside. She closed the door. It was a small, unremarkable office—a desk, chairs on either side of it, no pictures. Just as I’d figured out that Felderscarp must be Fiddlescrape, Eligor’s latest demon bodyguard, replacement for the very much unlamented Howlingfell, the door opened again behind me. I turned in time to get hit so hard in the stomach that I thought someone had fired a rocket launcher right into my gut. I slammed back against the wall and for a second everything went black. Then the little sparkle-lights appeared, and I could hear well enough again to detect the sound of someone strangling to death trying to swallow a porcupine. That was me, I realized a couple of seconds later, trying to get some air into my body.
Something very large stood over me, flexing giant claws. It seemed to tower yards and yards above me—not possible in that small office. Only as the first of the new oxygen got into my cells, and my brain coughed back into more or less working condition, did I realize it was only tall Fiddlescrape, with his huge fists and his small head, which made my perspective from the floor even stranger.