The two guys I tossed out of the van weren't complete idiots after all. They did a decent job of bypassing the Escalade's alarm and cutting into the van's keyless ignition. I twist a couple of exposed wires together and the Escalade purrs to life. Stepping on the accelerator, I cut the van across two lanes of traffic, twist the wheel, and aim the Escalade down Hollywood to where it crosses Sunset.
This isn't a situation where red lights, yellow lights, or anything that slows us down are acceptable. But what kind of a spell do you use to change the timing on traffic lights? If I wasn't such a freak-show attraction, I'd know something like that. Or I'd be able to fake it the way I faked my way through magic in the old days. All I can think of right now is a Hellion controlling spell, something I'd throw at an opponent in the arena to take control of their body and keep them from murdering me for a little while longer.
As the light turns yellow at the intersection ahead, I bark out the spell. Literally bark. High Hellion is mostly a bunch of low, guttural verbs and nouns strung together with growling adjective gristle. It sounds like a wolf with throat cancer.
I get the spell out as the light goes from yellow to red. As I finish the spell, it flips back to yellow. Then the light explodes, the housing suddenly white-hot shrapnel that hits the Escalade's roof like metal hailstones. The light's support pole is pretty much gone. So are the overhead lines that send juice to electric buses below.
Sorry, commuters. Tell your boss to fuck off tomorrow. Some terrorist asshole blew up all your vital crosswalk signals.
The second and third lights explode, too. The fourth just kind of sizzles, spits sparks, and goes out. I don't even look after that. It's flare guns and Roman candles all the way down to Sunset.
THE ADDRESS CANDY gave me is in a strip mall that hadn't been there before I went Downtown. I pull the Escalade into the parking lot and help Allegra out of the back. She insists on walking on her own, which I choose to see as a good sign. Doc Kinski's office is tucked between a fried-chicken franchise and a nail salon with signs in Vietnamese and dyslexic English. I double-check the address. It checks out.
The office is a blank storefront with blinds covering all the windows and the words EXISTENTIAL HEALING on the door in gold peel-and-stick letters. I try the door, but it's locked. I start pounding and the door swings open almost immediately. A tiny shaggy-haired brunette in tattered black jeans and Chuck Taylors stands there.
"Candy?"
"Stark?"
From the way she talked on the phone, I was expecting a big blond Judy Holliday type, not Joan Jett's little sister.
"Bring her inside. Doc is waiting."
The inside of the clinic is as bare as the outside. A couple of junkyard desks, with a not very new-looking laptop on top of one. A file cabinet covered in real estate stickers, Half a dozen metal folding chairs and a pile of Sports Illustrated and Cosmopolitans, probably pulled from the Dumpster behind the nail salon.
This is the office of Vidocq's angel of mercy?
I'm seriously thinking about taking Allegra out of here and to a real hospital, no matter what I promised her. Then Kinski walks out of his exam room.
"What are you waiting for? Get the girl in here," he tells me. I do.
Kinski is as impressive as his office isn't. He's tall. A little taller than me. Like me, he'd been a lanky boy, but the years have added a few pounds to his middle and etched lines like a desert riverbed around his eyes. But he's still handsome. You can tell that when he was young he'd been the kind of good-looking that made girls forget about their boyfriends for the night and made guys want to punch him in the face on principle.
Allegra is too wobbly to walk anymore. I pick her up, follow Kinski into the next room, and set her down on a padded exam table.
He touches her head and cheeks. Takes her pulse at her wrist and her neck and moves each lid back for a look at her eyes. Allegra squirms on the table and tries to push him away.
"You hurting?" he asks.
"Yeah. My head."
"Anywhere else?"
Allegra shakes her head.
"Okay. I want you to try and relax. Just breathe in and out real deeply. Can you do that?"
She nods, takes in long breaths, and lets them out slowly. Kinski puts one hand lightly on her forehead and keeps it there. He pats himself down and finds something like a piece of blackened jerky from his breast pocket.
"Chew on this," he says, putting the jerky between her lips.
"What is it?" she asks.
"You'll like it. It's dried fruit. Tastes good."
She chews and he keeps his hand on her, staring down like he's listening for something. I hear it, too. Her breathing and heartbeat slow abruptly. Her body relaxes. Kinski shoots me a quick glance like he knows that I can hear it, too.
"She's out," he says to Candy, and turns back to me. "What really happened to her?"