“So at least this has been tried before?” Sissy asked.

“Yeah, and look at how well it turned out.” Ad shook his head. “A three-hundred-mile, one-thousand-foot-deep hole in the earth.”

“And that still did not stop him,” Colin said.

Devina glowered. “I seriously thought the bubonic plague was going to take him out.”

“That was you?” Ad asked.

“I had to do something.”

“Okay, okay, so what’s our problem?” Sissy demanded, like she was trying to refocus the group.

Adrian looked up at the ceiling and could only imagine the Creator’s reaction. “The Big Guy’s going to be pissed if we do this. There’s gonna be repercussions. Fuck the plague for real—He’ll come after us, and shit is gonna get ugly.”

With Eddie gone and a cock that no longer worked, it wasn’t like he had much to “live” for, but that didn’t mean he was happy to volunteer for suffering.

“You ready for that?” he asked Colin. “I’ve already been through the whole wrath-of-God a couple of times, and I’m way down the totem pole compared to you.”

Before the archangel could respond, Devina spoke up. “It’s going to be fine.”

Ad laughed. “You don’t have that much power, demon.”

“I’ll tell Him it’s my idea.” She stared across at Ad, then Colin. “The Creator begot me on purpose to provide chaos to His universe—otherwise utopia would exist and there would be no need for Heaven. I am His balance, the darkness to the sunshine, the bitter cold to warmth, the scorching heat to temperance. I am the disease to health and the poverty to wealth. I am the cheater who stands side by side with the honorable. This is my nature, His gift to me and the world. He cannot and will not punish what He Himself has conjured up with deliberation. If He does? Then He has failed.”

In a quick series of calculations, Ad tested the theory, looking for holes, searching for ways in which Devina’s “helpful suggestion” could come back and bite him and Colin hard. He could find nothing: Devina was a lying, cheating slut, but you could always, always put your money on her self-interest.

And out of everything in this world and the next, she wanted Jim Heron. She was clearly willing to do anything required to get him back, and she was smart enough to know that she wasn’t going to be able to shift blame at the last minute. The Creator knew her too well to buy that shit.

The Creator would, however, believe it was her idea, and Devina might just have a point. And if she didn’t? What the fuck did he care. It wasn’t his ass on the line.

“You’re prepared to go to Him,” Ad said, “after it’s through. Assuming it works.”

“I am. As soon as it’s over—and I know what He’s going to say. As if He and I haven’t been through these conversations before?”

Good point. She’d been fucking shit up on the earth for how long?

“Okay, I’m in,” Ad announced.

“Aye,” Colin said. “Myself as well.”

Sissy spoke up. “Anything I can do, I’ll help, too.”

Devina’s black eyes flashed. “Then let’s get my man back.”

Chapter Eleven

“EeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEE-eeeeeeeeEEEEEEEeeeeeEEEEEEEumumum—away—”

As nobody else was around to rock out of tune with him, Jim leaned his head back and kept yelling at the top of his lungs, “Uh-weema-way, uh-weema-way, uh-weema-way…” Left foot. Right foot. Left foot. Right foot. “In the jungle … the mighty jungle…”

He was a really fucking bad singer. Worse even than Adrian had been back in the beginning—before the angel had come clean about the fact that far from being tone-deaf, the bastard could actually give a choirboy a run for his money on the Hallelujah Chorus. Jim, on the other hand, was the real deal when it came to being the anti-American Idol.

His repertoire also sucked ass. He’d been drafted into the XOps system shortly after he’d murdered the rapists who had killed his mother—so it wasn’t like he’d had a typical late-eighties high school experience steeped in Van Halen dances and AC/DC delivered into the ears by a Sony Walkman. He did know the words to “Jingle Bells,” but that reminded him of his mother, so it was a no-go. He’d already run through “Happy Birthday” a couple of times. Next up after this one? He was weighing the pros and cons of either that thing you were supposed to sing on New Year’s Eve or the Twix commercial.

Talk about needing a break.

“EeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEeeeeEEEEEEEeeeeeeeee-uh-umum-away…”

He’d tried flat-out yelling Nigel’s name for how long? But he’d had to give that up—not that his vocal stylings were fixing the sand problem, but the songs kept him going better than just the name.

“…darling, don’t fear”—a spasm of coughing cut the verse off—“my darling…”

Shit, his voice was drying up.

Gray, powdery ground. Relentless dusty wind. A never-ending horizon where the sky was one with everything else. Jesus Christ, this brought new meaning to the word hell, but as long as he didn’t sit down, as long as he didn’t let the cold whip his legs out from under him, as long as he kept going …

Yeah, what, he thought. What then.

It was impossible not to wonder how many of the souls before him had motivated themselves into exactly this kind of aimless amble. And in all the distance he’d covered, he hadn’t seen one goddamn sign of life … or Nigel.

To keep himself from going completely insane, he pictured the only thing that could bring him back from the brink: his Sissy. Her long blond hair. Her eyes that reminded him of the blue snapdragons his mother had grown around their farmhouse. Her voice that had this freaky way of grounding him and sending him flying at the same time. Her clean scent and the mole on the side of her neck and the fact that she had a wonky fingernail on the pinkie of her left hand.

He pictured the way she tended to fiddle with the collar of whatever shirt she was wearing, as if maybe she’d forced herself to stop chewing her lip or the quick of her nails and needed to burn off the twitch.

He remembered how straight her two front teeth were, and how crooked her bottom six were.

When he thought about her, it was as if he recalled every breath she had ever drawn and expelled, even before he’d known she existed.

Great. After all these years, he finally grew a romantic bone in his body … and his girl was on the far side of the moon for all he could get to her—

Oh, come on, what was he going on about? Even if she were walking side by side with him? It wasn’t like that was the way things were going to go for them.

The saddest thing about ending up here, apart from the fact that he’d fucked up the war, potentially lost his mother’s place in Heaven, and was going to spend eternity blowing around a Star Trek set like some red shirt left behind by the Enterprise, was that he’d never told Sissy he loved her.

Then again, maybe he’d done her a favor. Like she needed his bullcrap?

He stared up at the gray sky as his boots sank into the ground one after the other, as his legs strained to keep the stride up, as his body yearned for a sit-down. The isolation made him feel everything so much more deeply … until the loneliness and the regrets were as though the sun itself had settled in the center of his chest.

Burning him. Singeing him.

Keeping him both warm against the cold and in utter agony.

For the love of God, was there nothing here, he thought—

At first he ignored the sound, but eventually, the persistence of it registered more than its volume. He stopped and clapped his mouth shut.

Instead of looking at whatever it was, he turned so that his better ear, the left one, was pointing in that direction.

Rhythmic. That was all he got, but it was enough to get him motivated: Even if it was an enemy, at least fighting would give him the sense of getting somewhere, doing something. Dear God, the monotony was almost as bad as the sense that time was running out.

And the memory of everything he’d left behind …

Man, if he had the chance to do it all over again, he’d tell her he loved her. He wouldn’t make the same mistake again. He wouldn’t … not tell her.

That was all.

Well, shit, he thought. Guess he wasn’t making it out of here, was he. Because a man like him made a vow like that only when he knew he’d never have to live up to it.

In the meantime, he needed to get moving again.

When he went to take a step forward, his heels seemed to have become nailed to the fluffy ground cover. Gritting his teeth, he leaned into his legs and yanked so hard that when shit came free, he actually looked behind to make sure his foot and the stub of his ankle hadn’t been left behind.

Nope, he was walking. But there wasn’t going to be any stopping again.

Following the only noise other than the wind, he made as much time as he could toward that rhythmic sound, passing by statues of the dead that crumbled as he strode by, holding the bottom of his shirt up to his mouth so he could breathe without having his larynx sandblasted.

“Nigel, where the hell are you…”

He asked the question out of habit. Not because he thought he was going to find the guy.

As Sissy watched the demon fawn over Jim’s remains, that explosive anger came back, clawing into her chest and giving her heartburn along with the urge to kill. But who was she going to go after? They needed Devina for this miracle idea.

Which might not in fact work. And might end up with the four of them in trouble with God Himself.

Plus, based on what they’d said? If things did go as planned, the parlor, if not the whole house, might be incinerated in the process. Maybe they’d create another Grand Canyon.

The Dead Sea being the starter set, as it were.

As the demon bent down again to whisper something in Jim’s ear, Sissy turned away. It was either that or go Real Housewives on the bitch. And with the heavy book still in her hands, she opened things up just to give her eyes somewhere to go other than all the really-frickin’-creepy across the way.

The words were so easy to read now, the sentences flowing together, the logic behind the topics making more sense than it had. She was in what she thought of as the inventory section—it was page after page of objects arranged by date and type of metal. After the inventory came a list of places all over the world. There were dates for the locations as well as precise coordinates—

“Yo, Sis.”

Startled, she twisted around toward Adrian. “Yes?”

“You might as well stand over here with me by the window. If shit gets critical, we can Hollywood-stuntman it out of the line of fire.”

“Maybe that should be ‘when,’ huh?”

As she followed Ad’s lead and settled in beside the angel’s heft, she closed the book and put it against her chest. There was comfort in having the weight against her heart, like the thing might act as a shield or something—and then Devina finally got up on her ridiculous high heels and stepped away from Jim. Not exactly something to jump up and down with joy about, but better than the show the demon had been putting on.

And when Colin got to his feet as well, Sissy was reminded that he actually was a good-looking man—not that he was a man. He was slightly leaner than Adrian, but he had the quick eyes of a fighter who was comfortable playing dirty, and the confidence of someone who was rarely, if ever, surprised.

Jim had been able to get a rise out of him, though. All it had taken was that blade across his throat.

The memory was enough to make her nauseous, and every time she blinked, she saw Jim just before he did it, staring at her, his eyes fixated like he was taking her image over the divide and into eternity with him.

“I just want to go back,” she whispered.

“To where?” Ad asked.

“Normal.” She shook her head and wanted to cry. But refused to let herself. “I just want to worry about school again. And whether my mom will give me her car. I want to get excited about my birthday. Goddamn it … I should have enjoyed all of that more.”

As the inside of her chest struggled to keep up with the waves of her emotions, she thought, Jesus, this was like she had the worst case of PMS in the world. Infuriated. In mourning. Out of her mind. All in the space of minutes.

Then again, it was hard to believe any of this was really happening. The horror was too much, the new rules of existence too many, the fear and the anger spiking in such rapid rotation now, she couldn’t label them anymore.

“Do you think this is going to work?” she asked hoarsely as Colin took one side of the parlor and Devina the other.

“I don’t know. I really … don’t fucking know.” Then Adrian spoke up loudly. “Wait, the blood! We need the blood.”

Sissy had to turn away and stare out the window as that little detail was arranged. Leaning her forehead into the bubbly old glass, she watched a lone car go down the lane, its headlights two beacons that disappeared all too soon in the dimness: The crush of midnight dark that had arrived with Devina and those gruesome creatures had lifted only slightly, the residual gloaming outside as if the demon’s presence continued to strip sunlight from the air.

Or maybe it was just later than she thought? God, that was another thing to mourn: the days when fifteen minutes had actually felt like fifteen minutes. Now time was either going like the wind or not moving at all.

Adrian shuffled back over to her. “It’s done.”

As she turned around again, he was keeping something out of sight. “Let’s do this,” the angel called out to the two … well, combatants. Devina had braced herself, which was ridiculous in those heels—although somehow she managed to look like Wonder Woman, capable of withstanding all assault even in fuck-me pumps and that black leather jumpsuit thing. Colin, likewise, was in a defensive crouch, looking as grim as death.