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I’ to catch a trace of Jayne-Anne, when I walk straight into soets up and starts to call ets out, "Assh-" before he chokes

It’s Brad Pitt Not the actor, but ot back

I say, "Where you been, man? I’veto give this back to you"

I pull his stun gun from my pocket and zap hioes down like a sack of lug nuts and I drop the stun gun on top of hiainst what I knoill be here in a second

I’m not entirely stupid I start back for the office when security coet very far Five or six of them Buzz-cut heads and necks as wide as manhole covers They look as stupid in their suits as I do But they have uns They all dran on me, but don’t ht for me She has no idea who I am Until she does

"You’re dead," she says

"Not as dead as you’re about to be"

Jayne-Anne backs off, yelling, "Kitty! Bennett!"

A starlet-skinny blonde in an off-the-shoulder designer schy Stardust in a purple velvet suit coic It comes off them like heat ripples over desert asphalt

So, to recap: we have five or six guns, a couple of hoodoo hipster killers, an old friend ants irls, and h a shadow, but with the crazy lighting in this place, there’s nothing dark or deep enough for h

Even htning explode behind olden sparks rain down on h the suit and intooff the walls to keep frory They scrape s I can already feel blood in the back ofto outrun these idiots

I drop to h the froth in my throat Blondie and the fop stop and look at each other, a couple of good hunting dogs who just ran down the fox and are about get their reward

I’ve got their reward

I shout guttural Hellion syllables, coughing up blood with every word I push every ounce of power I have down through s I spit and my blood soaks into the expensive carpet that lines the hallway Then it’s gone So is the floor But I knew that was going to happen Jayne-Anne’s icians and her arh where the hall floor used to be, roll down the hillside and into the trees Jayne-Anne’s and ive her a little wink Then sos me back into the office that I wasn’t supposed to leave in the first place Plenty of shadows in here I grab Vidocq’s shoulder and alk out through a photo of Jayne-Anne glad-handing the pope

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death

WE STEP OUT of a shadow and into Muninn’s cavern Vidocq turns and puncheschild! You could have gotten us both killed"

This isn’t the first time Vidocq has been otten physical Good job I’m about to lose one of the few friends I have on this rock

When I don’t get up he says, "Don’t play with me I didn’t hit you that hard" Then he must see the blood "What happened to you?"

"You hurt me bad, Pepe LePew," I say

"You child," he says, and helpsaround inside ravel in a tin can

Muninn looks like a little kid on Christolden box hat looks like delicate grasshopper wings on top

"Perfect Beautiful," he says over and over He takes the box over to what looks like solid rock But with a few touches and turns to specific stones, the rock face swings away, revealing an enorolden box inside, comes back out, and seals the vault so that it’s invisible again

"You’ve done a splendid job, gentleent smile "Well, one of you has been splendid The other has ruined his suit Don’t worry I have a million of the icians as security at Avila," I say

"Are they? That’s new But you rose to the challenge and co ether"

"What else do you know about Avila? You knohat they’re hiding in that blank spot in the blueprints Don’t you?"

Muninn looks troubled

"You don’t want to know about these things I don’t want to know about them and I’ve seen whole civilizations turned to salt or buried in ice"

"What’s in there?"

Muninn shakes his head

"A bordello The secret one A celestial bordello full of creatures seldoo there, risk their lives and their souls, is for the pleasure of abusing captive angels These are the injured ones who fell to Earth during Lucifer’s uprising and new ones that they’ve captured since, though I have no idea how one goes about capturing an angel" Muninn looks at ? Will you sleep better tonight? Young s in the world so profane that their only real value is in not knowing about them"

I wipe blood off s over a bottle dusty enough to have been on Noah’s Ark He pours three drinks in three crystal glasses When he raises his, Vidocq and I follow

"To God above," he says, and tosses the drink over his right shoulder Vidocq and I do the same He pours three more drinks

"To the devil below" He tosses the drink over his left shoulder So do we

Muninn pours three more drinks, each twice as full as the first two

"To us The ones who did real work tonight while those other tere off playing tiddledywinks with poor fools’ souls" He raises his glass and knocks the whole thing off in one gulp The stuff burns like rose-flavored battery acid, but I don’t taste blood anylass, takes a blue bottle from the end of the table, and sets it in front of Vidocq

"Spiritus Dei, my friend"

Vidocq bea for"