SANDMAN SLIM

"I'll remember that." I slide off the table and try out my feet. What do you know? I don't fall over or want to throw up. It's the little things that make life special. "I should go. Do you know the number of a cab company?"

"I've got one in the desk. I'll go look." He goes out and Candy and I are alone in the exam room. She gets off the table and brings me a plastic bag full of what looks like mulch.

"Doc wants you to boil this stuff and drink it once in the morning and once at night until it's gone. Don't worry. It doesn't taste any worse than a boiled doormat."

"Thanks. Is this what the doc gives you to wean you off being a Jade?"

"My tea tastes a lot worse than yours."

"How's sobriety working out for you?"

"You know. One day at a time."

"Were you bitten or something? How do you become a Jade?"

"You're born to be a Jade. The gift, or affliction, depending on who you ask, descends through the female line in the family. I can trace all my Jade ancestors back to the First Crusade."

"If it's your nature to eat people, doesn't it feel funny to go against that? And against a thousand years of your family history?"

"We drink people. We don't eat them. And giving it up isn't so bad. Everything has to evolve, right? We're monkeys in trees one day and the next we're monkeys with dental hygiene and cell phones. Best of all, we don't throw shit at each other anymore."

"Speak for yourself," I say, and Candy laughs. Her heartbeat goes up a little. "Do you think that if the doc can get you off drinking people juice, you'll feel like a regular person someday?"

"Project much, Sandman Slim? What you mean is that if doc can make me less of a monster, can he do it for you, too?"

"I didn't say you were a monster."

"But I am. By any human definition, I am a monster. And I always will be, so, no, I don't think I'll ever feel like a regular person. I'll just be a monster who chooses to be a little less monstrous. Who knows? I might fall off the wagon and start drinking people milk shakes again. But I'm going to try not to. Are you asking because you want to see if doc can turn you into a librarian when all this is over?"

I'm walking circles around the table, trying to get my sea legs back. Candy cranes her neck around to watch me. It's weird being alone with her.

"I don't know exactly what I want. I know that no one outside of Hell can stand what I am. I'm not wild about it most of the time myself. But I can't picture being something else."

"Try. Just imagine it for a few days. See how it feels."

"Why not? But I'm lazy. When it's time, I'll probably go for a simpler fix."

"Like what?"

"Going back to Hell isn't the worst thing I can imagine. I know the place. I have a rep. I can probably get my old job back, fighting in the arena."

"Are you talking about killing yourself?"

"Nah. I'm not the suicide type. I just mean that if I get to pick my moment, it might not be so bad. That was the problem last time. I wasn't ready. I didn't get to pick the moment. I could this time."

"I hate to break it to you, but planning your own violent death, whether it's you murdering yourself or letting someone else do it, is still suicide."

"You think so?" I shake my head and lean against the wall, suddenly out of breath. "Ignore me. I'm babbling. I'm tired. My only friends narced me out to Norman Bates's mom. And every time I get up close to death, I think about Alice."

"You know she's not down below. You let yourself be killed and you'll be farther away from her than ever, and it will be forever."

"Point taken. Truth is, enough people want me dead that I'm probably never going to have to make that choice."

"See? Things are looking up already."

"Let's see if my cab's here yet."

I WAKE IN the early afternoon, wander into the bathroom, and see myself in the mirror. Candy was right. Aelita's sword has given me one of my best scars. It looks like a rattler set itself on fire and did a GG Allin stage dive into my chest. This scar is a work of art. It deserves an Oscar and a star on Hollywood Boulevard. It deserves its own power ballad. Now I sort of know how Lucifer must have felt when that last thunderbolt hit and he fell out of Heaven's cotton candy clouds and into the deep, deep dark.

Aelita seems to have given me something else, too. Back in Hell, each new scar was a gift. Protection against a new attack. That attack in Aelita's chapel seems to have left me with something besides a new scar. She's given me some part of her angelic vision. Or maybe she just tore open my third eye, the one that's been sensing other people's moods and heartbeats. Whatever it is, I see with different eyes now and I see what she was trying to tell me. The Kissi are everywhere.