We spend the rest of the day in noisy silence, all thinking poison and plague rats as we do our little dances of prep. Arabella's up in the loft for most of it, crashed out on Arthur's bed practicing with the ESP cards. I try to focus on reading up on the area, browsing for local papers and the like, but almost none of them have a decent Web presence; and that, plus hearing Dr. Barg's lessons echoed with almost religious fervor, finally makes me break down and call him.

He picks up on the first ring, barking a command to speak as soon as he's sure it's really me. I mix a gimlet with my free hand and proceed to lay everything out on the line. The weariness sinks into his voice in waves.

"And that's it." I take my first slurp of gimlet; too much lime. "All I can do is hope the Big Lebowski kills me—"

"Spare me," Dr. Barg growls. "All of this in two days' time?"

"I do seem to go where the adventure is."

"You're incorrigible." I hear the creak as he leans back in his office chair. "What's your plan?"

"Confirm the hypothesis." On the second sip the lime's not too bad. "We know where a fresh tag is went up some time today, and if Kelly's data is good—"

She interrupts from the front porch: "It is."

"—then the Demon Mafia should be making its move tonight. So we show up—"

"—fight crime—" Paul calls through the door.

"—and we try to choke a little evidence out of them." More drink; showboating is thirsty work.

Dr. Barg is quiet. I can picture him lip-chewing and organizing papers, mental red-pen marks on the surface of my plan. I give it a solid five seconds; he cuts me off mid-sentence on the sixth.

"Solid plan," he says, still thoughtful. "Insane. Risky. Very you. But solid."

"Why, Dr. Barg"—my hand flutters to my chest—"I do believe that was a witticism."

"You inspire me. That seems like the closest thing to a lead you have right now, and I encourage you to pursue." Then he adds, just in case I was beaming: "But we also need to hit the Arthur angle. Make a run to Ukiah tomorrow, before lunch—"

"If we're alive," I murmur.

"You will be." And that's an order, soldier. "Make a run to Ukiah tomorrow, see if you can figure the problem out."

"Jawohl."

Barg is, as always, a duck's back. "And what about the police officer? The one you said gave you the perfectly logical recommendation that you somehow decided was weird?"

"Oh yeah," I return brightly. "I almost forgot about that. I'm looking into it."

"Right. Good. That's all I have to say, then. Best of luck tonight."

"This time, it's actually appreciated. Oh, one thing."

Barg makes a vague noise, something like a question.

"Do me a favor? Look into this Foreman guy. He's connected somehow."

"Foreman." The doc mulls this over. "Foreman. That name sounds familiar. Arthur was my main informant for that area, but...I'll see what I can do."

"Thanks boss."

In the nanosecond gap, it's almost possible he smiles. "Don't mention it. And Randall?"

I tense up. "Yes?"

"Keep an eye on Kelly."

And he hangs up.

I put the phone down, avoid giving it a second glance. I walk out of the room, away from it, and squiggle the mouse until my laptop comes back from its screen saver.

"Arabella?"

A black mop pokes out from the loft. "Yeah?"

"What was the name of that motel on the north end of town?"

"The Beachcomber?"

"Yeah." I type that into Google. "Yeah. That's it."

I get back on the phone and make a reservation for three. The guy on the other end is pleased as punch, confirms no less than three times that we'll be coming to stay the following evening. Apparently this is the off season. I hang up with a dash of pleasantry and stare toward the front door.

Paul gets my hint almost immediately; what chatter he and Kelly are making dwindles and then Paul's coming back through the door, tipping an imaginary hat to me as he drops onto the couch and picks up a book he wasn't reading. I nod to his back, tug at a collar I forgot I'm not wearing, and march out the front door. Just one more thing to do.

Kelly's smoking when I come outside, her black trenchcoat pooled up on the bench and one of Paul's cigarettes dangling out of her mouth. She stares at me, her face big and empty, as I lean against the railing, take a slug from my gimlet, and give her a long, weary look.

"So," I begin.

She pulls the cigarette from her mouth, her gaze unwavering.

"We've identified where danger is, and like a group of geniuses, we're going to drive straight into it."

She tilts her head one tiny, measured inch and flicks a spume of ashes out onto the wind.

"Which means we're risking our lives," I continue to prompt.

Smoke pours in a gray curtain from her mouth.

"Which means we need to be able to trust—"

"I won't tell you."

I almost recoil. "What?"

Smoke jets out her nostrils. "You want to know why I asked Paul if he trusted you. I won't tell you."

The wind goes straight out of my sails. God-damn demons, always interrupting you mid-posture. I sag, stick my hands in my pockets—and notice her contraction, so easy I almost forgot she doesn't use them. Game on.

"Why not?"

Now this look I can decipher; Kelly's "withering stare" is the same as Arabella's. "That really how you are playing?"

I lean in, close enough she knows I mean business. "I'm not playing."

"Course you are not." She takes a drag, spews smoke up toward the roof. "But I will still not tell you."

I'm not getting anger from Kelly, but then I'm not getting much of anything; she's just sitting there and smoking, looking at me the same way she looks at interesting clouds. It's like conversing with a squirrel. Fortunately, two years with Paul has taught me to run on pure annoyance.

"And I still wonder, why not? You had that conversation for a reason, Kelly. You needed me to think you didn't trust me—"

"I don't trust you—"

"And you needed me to know it," I finish.

"I was practicing my humanity," she insists, her aura coruscating. "You woke up and you—"

"Bullshit. You wanted me to hear you say that, and you wanted me to hear it so I would wonder why you were talking about it out loud." Heat crawls up the back of my neck; I fight to keep my words civil. "You wanted to have this conversation, Kelly. So are we going to have it? Or do you still need to work off your snark surplus?"

Kelly opens her mouth, but whatever cheek she borrowed from Ara has been depleted. She looks at her cigarette like it's a failed experiment and flicks the millimeter of ash off the end.

"Was hoping you would just decide to not trust me."

"Because you still refuse to tell me?" I snipe.

"Because I should not."

"Because you want me to be scared?" My voice rises; if the neighbors weren't already staring they are now. "Because you want me to be all edgy so you've got a midnight snack stored up for later?"

"I should not." She looks me hard in the eye. "And if I do, you will not like it."

My shoulders hunch. "And how is that your decision?"

She stares just long enough for me to find it maddening, pulls both her feet up under her. If she were human the effect might be coquettish and distracting. I take another drink, watching her over the glass so she knows her trick isn't working. She sighs bathetically and kicks her feet up onto the railing.

"Fine." She grinds the cigarette against the bench, gives me a practiced smirk. "I was ordered not to trust you."

Reality jumps to the right, gets ready to give me the next answer. It's already on the tip of my brain. "Ordered by who?"

Her timing's perfect. "The Pocket."

There's the final blow, right to the skull! The champ is down!

"The Pocket?" I can actually feel my eyes widen.

She looks down at the dead cigarette. "He told everyone who could hear what you did, before the peacekeepers went after him. Told us you were a danger to our kind." She gives me a meaningful stare. "Told us you're the enemy."

I squint at her sidelong. "The enemy. You're a peacekeeper, and you think I'm the enemy."

She tries on that smirk again. This one works. "Hierarchies are hierarchies, and the Pocket could squash me like a bug. I had to listen."

I'm having trouble finding words. "The Pocket told you, personally—well, sort of personally"—my thoughts are a bag of Scrabble tiles—"told you to act like you didn't trust me?"

"He did not. A woman working for him did. I did not ask why."

"So you don't know that it was—"

"I know that I do not like taking orders." She cocks her head. "And that you are observant."

One blink and I've caught a chill. Even when it's in your favor, there's nothing like the sensation of being played.

"You were given orders, and you screwed up and tipped me off." My face scrunches. "On purpose?"

"I definitely screwed up."

My hands clench. "What the hell—"

"Facts." She holds up a hand and one by one extends her fingers. "I do not like taking orders." One. "I had a conversation out loud, which I say was me practicing my English." Two (One, two...). "I like the taste of scared." Three. "You have options."

"Options." I shiver. "I ask for an answer, and I get options. What, you afraid the Pocket will hurt you if you tell me straight?"

Kelly's head cocks all the way to one side. She flows up from the bench without taking her eyes off me, touches me just once on the arm.

"I warned you"—she beats some dust off her coat—"that you would not like it."

The coat billows around her as she walks back inside, leaving me to grip the railing until the world stops spinning. Contrary to popular opinion, the vodka does not help; I dump the last of the gimlet into the grass and shuffle back into the house. Paul's looking my way as I enter, a grin chiseled into that pasty white face.

"Told you you should—"

"Shut up."

Beat. "Well, gentle reader? Think you can solve the mystery of Kelly's conversation before the detective does?"

"Shut up."

I drop into the arm chair and bury my face in my laptop. I can feel Paul's grin beating down on me the whole time.

It's a long afternoon.

We get in the car as soon as the night is more than a vague blue filter, Paul driving while I swat the flies out of my brainpan. Arabella sits in the backseat with the thousand-yard stare of a scan on her face; Kelly's opted to stay home.

We head south through the city and beyond, the moth-ears of cypress branches swaying overhead. Arabella mutters here and there about psychics, little disturbances at the corners of her mind. I feel them as we leave Fort Bragg, again near Road 409, then it's all silence for a few miles past that, just narrow highway and big sweeping embankments making you feel like the world's going to fall on you. We actually make it a record two minutes of uneventful, spring-loaded silence before one of them goes for the kill.

"Enjoyed your talk with Kelly, then?" Paul asks as he leans on the wheel.

I keep the expression flat, give him my best sidelong stare. "Laugh a minute thrill ride. Why do you ask?"

Arabella's kimono rustles in the backseat. "Your drinking is proportional to your buried annoyance. Freud would've loved you."

"Great minds think alike," I chuckle. But tonight she doesn't want to flirt back. I shrug and power through, words surfing a wave of vodka. "What Kelly told me—"

"We know," Arabella responds. "The Pocket sent word out you weren't to be trusted. And Kelly told you."

"It's entirely possible that he intended for her to tell me so I'd get spooked." I raise an empathic finger. "Spooked. Which is to say, scared. Not hurt. Not fired. Scared." I scoff. "If that's the best Don Satanoné has in his arsenal I'm really not sweating."

"He might have said it hoping our contacts would dry up because of you," Arabella counters, "which I would note they sort of did, or are you forgetting that we have to send Paul alone to talk to Boysenberry? Or he could just be hoping you'll get jumpy and let your guard down at the wrong moment so the real mess-makers can come inside and play."

"She's not lying," Paul says, once Ara's done being upsetting. "I can guarantee you the Pocket tried to put you on a demon blacklist, at least; he's in trouble and going down, but he isn't neutered."

"Thanks Paul, because I needed to think about a demon's testicles." There's a power surge happening directly between my eyeballs. "Look." I try for deep breaths. "What she said spooked me, yeah, alright. But she's on our side and the Pocket doesn't have anything else up his sleeve that she knows of; she told me that as best she could."

"As best she could," Arabella repeats. She leans in close to the back of my seat. "That's the problem, Randy. Someone, a being, who makes what you and I do look like a card trick is scared to openly warn you about danger. You're talking about an enemy who has outposts in everyone's head. And he's just proven he isn't down for the count."

"And I didn't expect him to be." I'm Cool Hand Luke, John McClane, a swagger and a product-placed cigarette. "I did what I did because he and his bitch-buddies were starting some seriously bad shit, not because I thought I'd be safe. It's not like I’m safe from anything these days, I mean, being that I have the capacity to think."

"Does look a little grim for you monkeys," Paul remarks.

"Paul, no mocking when we're trying to be supportive." She sighs like he's a kid on too much sugar. "Point is, Randy, Kelly must have you paranoid and we just want to—"

"Help?" I turn, give her a smile. "Ara, sweetie, I'm not sure you can—"

"—tell you you're not alone," she finishes.

Approximately sixty imperial tons of emotional weight make their absence known; my eyes get uncomfortably warm. I duck back around the seat, look out the window as hard and as wholly as I can manage.

"Thank you," I squeak, and take the mature tack of occupying myself with scanning for psychics.

"Hey," Paul says. "Least I can do after you decided not to spy for Dr. Barg." He shakes his head. "Demons spying on psychics, psychics spying on demons...and people thought the Cold War was a laugh riot."

Normally I'd have a comeback, but our view of the ocean is especially interesting all of a sudden. Arabella reaches under the headrest to scritch my neck, and the subject is dropped.

We hit a few more psychics in Mendocino, an attempt at a scan that just makes Paul mutter about amateurs. Then it's the coastal road and a clean astral plane, nothing but our Tarot cards burning on through the night. But stereotype or not, there's such a thing as too quiet; by the time we're shooting past the flower explosion between Mendocino and Albion my nerves are humming like Jimi's guitar strings.

"Think they know we're coming?" Arabella asks.

I shake my head. "If they did we'd have eaten a bullet."

Paul slaps the wheel. "Well someone's cheery!"

The trailer park rolls by below us, pools of light in the emptiness to my left. Paul steers the Impala down the concrete pinball chute to the kiosk, makes some noise to the college kid on guard. He's drunk on the job and not even subtle about it, all his movements tacking on an extra sway. I can see why our perps chose this night for their caper.

Paul cuts the headlights as we turn onto the main drag of the trailer park, just another cheap car driving casual speed through the trailer park, the whole car quiet as we scan over the area.

The park's done up in black, gray, and garish, the only colors the yellow of the streetlights and the odd backlit pink or purple from a trailer's curtain. I hear sitcoms, one or two arguments, dark and tinny through the sides of the trailers, but nothing like a scream or a struggle; the only symbols burning on my scan are a couple of crucifixes and the Seal of Solomon four trailers down.

"It's dead," I say, somewhere between relieved and disappointed.

I feel Arabella's mind twitch as she comes back to full attention. "Scanners must've sent out an alert." She picks angrily at the upholstery. "They must've figured out who we were, I knew we needed different masks—"

"Breathe, Ara. Don't try to perfect." How do I keep winding up in charge? "We haven't hit the Seal yet, there's still what a sadist might call hope." My thoughts slide off into shadow.

We come up abreast of the trailers with the graffiti between them, get ready to open our doors. Paul rolls us forward the couple of feet, and we see—nothing. Not even a faint black-on-black bit of movement. Behind us, the argument goes into full swing; a screen door bangs as some fat man rampages out into the parking lot, screaming about money and whores.

"Did we find the legendary stereotypes' graveyard?" I mutter. "The only crime in this complex is noise violations."

"Wait..." Arabella cocks her head, breezes out for a second. "Wait, I think I feel...it's faint, and there's that mark in the way, what the hell is..."

The shouting peaks, a woman adding her voice to the man's—and from one trailer ahead of us the shadows under the streetlight move, accompanied by a bang like an M-80 in a wastebasket.

"The argument covered them up!" Arabella gasps.

"Out!" I hiss, of course fumbling with the lock.

Paul's the first one out, Arabella after him; I take up the rear as we all run forward, wrenching around the far corner beyond the Seal into a different but identical trailer-flanked cul-de-sac. Two men stand over a fat kid in a Sharks jersey with duct tape gleaming over his mouth: one's gangly, one's porky, both with beards, ginger hair, and demons crawling inside them. At their feet, drawn in white smears of chalk, is a pentagram.

I'm too drunk to help myself. "What the fuck?"

They both turn, shoulders squared as they look at the three newcomers. The thinner one glares at me, snorts.

"What, angels?" He says it with comic-book derision.

The question blindsides me, and that moment of wondering's all he needs. I hit the floor with my mind full of maggots, the demon lurching toward me until he reels back and lands on his knees.

"Fuck!" he shouts, more frustrated than pained. He's up and running within a second.

Paul runs behind him a few feet, his brain unspooling hard. The fat one gives Paul a second look and bolts, slams into a trailer on his way. Paul stops running, lets his attack go. It's no good—the demons are locked up iron-clad.

"You can't stop us!" the fat one shouts. "You can't stop the servants of Satan!"

"Servants of..." Paul looks disgusted. "As a former Satanist, I'm insulted!"

Arabella kneels by the kid, puts a questioning hand on his shoulder. He's got no pain in him that I can feel, just a jackhammer in his chest and the raw spots from being manhandled onto the ground. She nods, satisfied, and rips the duct tape off his mouth.

"They were—" the boy shakes his head, disbelieving. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." There's a smile, but it's brief. "You live near here?"

"Two trailers down."

"Good. Go home." She catches his wrist as he rises. "Don't tell anyone about us."

The beginnings of hero-worship kindle in his eyes. He nods to her, repeatedly, and sprints off, shock and adrenalin propelling him home.

"Don't tell anyone about us," I repeat. "That won't fuck that kid's fantasy life up any."

"Maybe he'll name a D&D character after you," Paul mutters.

"Be still my heart." Arabella looks at the pentagram, scuffs it with a toe. "What the hell were they up to?"

"Satanic ritual?" I suggest. "Okay, it sounds stupid out loud, too. Glad I got that cleared up."

I look away from the crime scene, shaking my head, and catch a sudden glint from behind the trailers across from us, followed quickly by an explosion of footsteps.

I shout without words and start sprinting, angled to block the runner as they hit the main road; but the shadow darts behind another trailer, slaps metal as it makes a hasty turn.

"Hey!"

I lunge between the trailers, reach out and get a fist full of waterproof jacket. I hold on, tugging—there's a crack of something hard hitting cement—and then the jacket comes off in my hand and there's just worried breaths and footsteps chuffing off out of my sight. I toss the jacket, keep going, until I hear the whumph and slam of a car door. I slump against a trailer to the sound of screeching tires.

"You get him?" Paul asks, peering between the metal walls.

"I'm not even sure it's a him." I get very tired. "Ran like a champ, though. And had a car waiting."

"Accomplice?" Paul suggests. "Back-up mugger?"

I ignore him, focused on the shoebox-sized black thing the runner dropped as he made his escape. There's bits scattered where it hit the cement; I kneel down, peering at circuits and plastic, and add yet another question to the pile.

The runner dropped a video camera.