I stop the car about ten feet before it's convenient, rock to a halt on the far side of the bridge. Arabella's out the door as soon as we lose our momentum; I feel her picking at the world around her as Paul and I clamber out of the car.

"Not up here," she murmurs, looking at the dead gray wild in front of us. "Ocean side maybe?"

"Not bloody likely," Paul replies. "No way they had time to pull off a Cliffhanger while we were out of sense range." He points, out past the bridge and into the trailer park. "'S down there."

I follow his finger, let my mind sway over to where he's pointing. There's a small argument brewing in the trailer park, resentment flying between two old minds, and a pair kids with an astounding sense of ennui—and past them, the flash of the Seal of Solomon, big and painted and ugly somewhere among the trailers.

I clutch my head. I don't like what I'm thinking. "Someone confirm?"

"Positive," Arabella says. Her eyes are steel balls.

"Great."

We pile back in the car, putter by feel down a vertiginous concrete ramp and straight into the park. The guard in the kiosk is skimming porn below the level of the window, his mind lit up with jiggling skin. I don't shake hands.

The park looks even emptier from a worm's eye view, the couple of trailers barely denting the expanse of concrete. I steer for the three trailers clustered together, reasoning our little tagger would want cover, and hit paydirt almost immediately; the tag is up on a wall, framed perfectly between two of the big aluminum wastes of space. Same thing as before: red paint on white, a pentagram with "OGRE" just below.

"Think it's a gang?" Arabella asks.

I answer with half my brain—"I'm not assuming anything that sounds normal."—and climb out of the car with the other. I all but shuffle over to the tag, peering hard at the dust of paint smeared across the retaining wall. The others pop out behind me, Paul lighting a cigarette while Arabella trails after.

"What are you thinking then?" she asks, just a dash of flirtation.

I stop right next to the tag, scratching my scalp as I stare.

"I'm thinking this town flies its freak flag somewhere in low orbit."

I slap my hand against the paint.

I get everything I'm expecting, a fairytale played on fast-forward: an Arabic man who may or may not be Jewish, an iron ring with smoky goblins scrabbling at the sight of it, Latin chanting and summoning circles and something like the smell of dust. But nothing extra.

I cock my head, peer into the graffito. It's all as expected, long airy strokes of spray paint, a ragged-cartoon style that would be background noise if it weren't for its extra payload. And then off to the side, behind one of the trailers, I catch a hoped-for flash of matte white.

"And also that whoever's doing this is an idiot."

I swing over to the trailer, lean down with my hand on the wall (someone got punched here). I'm not wrong; someone, very recently by the lack of rust, ditched a spray can into this loose scree of garbage.

"Is that—"

"White paint," I say, peering at the label. "Want to bet the painter doesn't have a receipt?"

"So you want me to—"

I don't even let her get closer. "No." My numb fingers touch down on the spray can.

They can't feel, but they sure can pick up a scent. I hear the hiss of propellant, see a sky a lot like the cotton wads hanging over our heads. I see the tag almost completed and feel a lack of satisfaction, nothing to suggest that I know what I'm doing. I sign my name, "OGRE", and stand back, looking at my handiwork. Mission accomplished. The memory ends in a clatter of metal.

"You're confused," says Arabella, as I rise up from my crouch.

"You're perceptive," I shoot back. "This isn't just a tagger."

"So the idiot theory doesn't play out?"

"Don't sell this guy long, Ara." I give her half a grin. "He's a tagger, alright, but this isn't what he likes to do. This is..." My face screws up. "This reads like work."

"Work?" Arabella scoffs. "What, he's like a freelance artist? 'Gang Signs While You Wait'?" When she talks like that she almost sounds like me.

"Back in the car," I mutter, turning on my heel. Arabella's skirt rustles behind me. "I think somebody hired this guy to plant this tag. This one and the one back in Fort Bragg. Someone—"

"—by which you mean Gary—"

"Wants these tags in place. And they want them in place over a wide range."

Arabella considers, shrugs. "So we talk to the guard. Find out who drove in and out of the area. I can handle it if you need to pick that experience out of your brains." I get a smirk as payback for jumping on the spray can.

"Have at it," I say, with a wave of my hand. "Not exactly my cup of tea."

"Given that it involves adults?" Arabella just outright sticks her tongue out at me, and fluffs off in a swirl of skirt.

I try not to watch her go. Paul pulls the cigarette out of his mouth, fires a plume of smoke that could give two or three kids a tumor, and regards me the same way lizards regard the crickets released into their cage.

"What?" I ask the leer.

Paul shrugs. "Just wonderin' how long until you admit it to yourself."

In my mind's eye, I'm swigging from a flash. "Nothing to admit."

"Anymore. So what's your guess, eh?"

"Purposeful. This tagger's being played by someone who wants Seals of Solomon all over the county."

"All over." Paul takes a puff. "That's quite an extrapolation."

I shrug. "Point is, this isn't just a gangbanger going it alone. This has purpose behind it, and I'm betting Arthur knew what."

"Or was close enough to be dangerous," Paul suggests. "So how you think Master Gary fits into it?"

"I'm guessing the order stems from him. But I can't figure out why."

"There's the rub—" Paul barely finishes his sentence, swallows like his cigarette just slid down his trachea. The color green and a maelstrom of spiders come crawling down the link-up.

"Paul, man, what the hell—"

"Jackpot," Arabella says, coming around the side of the Cavalier. "Teenage kid, dyed red hair, came through—what the hell?" She pauses as the feeling washes over her, puts a hand on the hood for balance.

"Kelly?" I ask, once Paul seems to be back in working order.

He nods. "Kelly. Wants to know why you aren't answering your phone."

Fucking dead zones. "So she drops in to your brain to say hello?"

"Something about a body."

I pop the driver's side door without further comment.

I drive with one eye on my cell phone, my hair standing straight as I rocket around the curves. Two bars snap into life somewhere north of Mendocino Village, and within seconds I'm getting blitzed with alerts for text and voicemail. Arabella pulls the phone out of my hand before I do something embarrassing and lethal.

"Kelly," she says, eyes staring at nothing. She lights up, horrified. "Fort Bragg, north side—uh, uh, something on West Street—"

She curses in a whisper, drums her fingers as the voicemail plays out. I decelerate to just under the speed limit, watching for cop cars along the side roads.

"561 West Street," Arabella says with finality. Her face is gray. "She thinks...she thinks it's connected?"

If that doesn't kill conversation, it at least leaves it to writhe and bleed on the floor. We ignore it, all sunk into our own gravy-brown tensions.

West Street is a block past the Fort Bragg Brewery; I'm thinking about Gary as I make the left off Main. The street terminates in a chain link fence and a good half-mile of dirt, the sea just beyond like someone thought it would make the blight scenic. I park the Cav on the street just short of the fence, getting the stink-eye from an Aryan man with a buzz-cut as I walk away. I think he might be a neighbor.

561 is nondescript, two stories, white with green trim. The only thing that sticks out is the image of Jimi Hendrix that burns my brain every time I try to scan it. I pop open the front gate in tandem with Kelly opening the front door. She stands on the porch for a second, and gestures with her head for us to come in. It's a surprisingly human move.

The house is all hardwood and drywall, basic furniture with a Craigslist chic. I walk through the front room carefully, my eye on the big room to my left; there are Hendrix posters all over both rooms, filling my brain with kaleidoscopic guitars.

"In here," Kelly says, pointing into the kitchen.

I duck through the adjoining door, and stop as I come around the corner. Splayed out on the dining room table, face frozen and eyes rolled up, is the bearded man from last night. His chest is like a steak caught in a blender, red and black and unsettling white churned into a choking mess. The room smells like copper.

"Oh fuck", I gurgle, as the sight and smell punch into my cortex.

"Fuck me," says Paul, wandering in from the adjoining room.

I give him a pointed look. "That was the guy that jumped me." I gag. "That was a demon."

Paul stares back at me, empty. I get a smirk. "Was."

"Name was Walt," Kelly says. "Local, lived in Albion."

"Ate fear?" I ask.

"No."

Arabella slinks past me, puts a sleeve-covered hand on the dead man's ankle. She tenses, but it doesn't last long.

"No read," she says with a sneer. "Fight wasn't a surprise, there was a struggle, but whoever did it was wearing a mask."

"Figures." I snap my fingers in frustration. "What kind of mask?"

"Tarot card," Arabella and Kelly say in unison.

They look at each other; Kelly shrugs. It's unnerving on her, somehow.

"Read him before you came," Kelly says.

Arabella's arms cross, and uncross almost as fast. She looks blank, but she's embarrassed. "Either way, no lead there. Every jackass uses Tarot to cover their tracks."

"Including us," purrs Paul.

Arabella closes her eyes; I didn't think she had that many tension lines.

"Any thoughts on how he was killed?" I ask, angling for some kind of data. "Anybody at all?"

"Brutally," Paul says. "I mean it, I'm not a detective but it's like he took an outboard motor to the sternum."

"That jive with any locals?" I ask Kelly. "Any demons who go in for that kind of thing?"

"Randy—" Paul starts, but Kelly's in the groove before he can stop her.

"Torturing to death is banned under the agreement," she says.

"And marijuana is illegal," I respond. My gorge doesn't even heave. "Now answer my question."

Kelly looks at the demon's—the man's—eviscerated torso, her body language zeroed out.

"Walt," she says, fixing me with those glassy eyes. "He would definitely have done something like this."

"Live by the sword," Paul murmurs.

"McCartney." Kelly says it with a dash of smile, but none of it comes my way. "Others, too. Back in the woods, far away from civilization. We make them stay out there, keep their habits from spilling out too much."

"Keep foreigners from finding out about axe-happy angle men," I cut in.

"Nice alliteration," says Paul.

Arabella smirks at him. "Lunch time already?"

I shake my head. The room is filling with angry bees, everyone ratcheting up as the conversation continues. And we're five feet from a dead body.

"Let's get moving," I casually suggest. "Arabella, call the cops once we're northbound, Paul, Kelly, make sure we didn't leave any echoes. We've got shit to do."

"Your plan?" Kelly asks, as she and Paul sweep through the front rooms.

I shrug. My head's still throbbing. "We go back to your place and talk private, and then try to ferret out possible candidates. Someone nasty did this, and we need to find him before the other angle men have a shit fit." I manage not to consider what that implies about my morals.

We file out of the house, Arabella, then me, with the demons taking up the rear. They nod and shrug as we depart; nothing left behind we should worry about. Paul comes abreast of me on the porch, leering in that way I want to punch.

"So," he says, all teeth, "what the hell, huh? What's with our job that we keep finding demon corpses?"

"Shut up, Paul."

"Theories," I say, as Kelly's Impala speeds down 1 ahead of us.

Arabella is curled up in the passenger seat, tracing lopsided designs on the windshield. "His partner killed him. The other demon you stopped. She was annoyed that a peacekeeper saw them and the argument got nasty."

"Noted," I say, drumming on the wheel.

Paul leans forward, his cigarette dangled out the window. "I know what Randall wants to hear. He wants to hear Gary called a hit out. Some nutcase with a nickname like Frankie the Bat who worked Walt over until he looked like a Giger painting?"

I smirk to myself as I drive. "What I want to hear is that this case has solved itself and we're all headed north to a tea party. But yes, that's my going theory."

"But why would Gary take out a demon?" Arabella asks. "Especially right as he's telling us he wants to work with them."

"That's the part I'm trying to figure," I mutter, as we make the turn into what Cleone calls its streets. "It's too blatant, too inelegant. He's not quite that stupid."

"He's stupid enough to go up against the agreement," Paul says. "Assuming that he's half of what you think." He shrugs. "Maybe he had Milk do the deed?"

I shake my head. "Entirely possible, but not likely. He was home and clean when we showed up, and they wouldn't have had warning to get him back there from Fort Bragg. Unless the hit was already out..."

Arabella shrugs. "Maybe because they were dumb enough to mug a girl in the middle of a street. Harsh justice."

"Point." We turn onto the long, sandy stretch in front of Kelly's house. "Discussion tabled for now. Focus on possible culprits; let's just try to take this one rung up the ladder and see if we can't choke an answer out of them."

Paul snickers at me. "Aye aye, Dr. Barg."

I catch his eye in the rear-view. "You saying I've put on weight?"

There's a little chuckle at that, Paul and I way less nervous than Arabella. We go quiet, park behind Kelly as she's walking from the car to the house. I ooch the Cav into a nice parallel position, plenty of space behind us for another car.

And as I put on the parking brake, we get shot at.