SANDMAN SLIM

The walls, ceiling, and floor are covered in twisting, spiky ideograms and letters, intertwined with endless spirals. Spirit faces or maybe images of God the Father, looking more like some saucer-eyed alien than a deity, are smeared around the room. The colors run from rust to a snaky, metallic green, but I've smelled enough dried blood in my time to know what the basic ingredient in all these pigments is.

I stop and I listen, waiting for something. The nosy neighbor is so freaked out, I can feel his heart and breathing. Don't stroke out, guy. We've got enough problems here.

Or not. I don't feel anything. There's nothing alive in the apartment. I can't read the Kissi, but between my own heightened senses and the new sight that Aelita has given me, I think I'd know if there was a Kissi lurking in the corner with a lamp shade on its head. As much as I don't want to wrestle anything magic for a while, not finding a single Kissi is a letdown. Finding the body is worse.

It's a man's body. Naked. Nailed face-first to the wall about six feet off the ground. Someone has carefully peeled back the outer layers of skin. Let them fall back like pale, fleshy leaves on a plant, leaving the muscles and bones untouched. There are only two or three drops of blood on the floor. At least I know where the blood for the frescoes came from. And that whoever peeled and drained a body that cleanly really knew what he or she or they were doing.

The body is nailed the wrong way around for me to see the face. I can tell from here that it's the body of a middle-aged man. Vidocq has been in his fifties for two hundred years. Is that still middle-aged? I wish the old bastard had some tattoos I could look for. The body is too badly beaten up to look for scars.

I know I should take the body down. All I have to do is stand on a chair, yank the nails from the hands, and it's taken care of. But I don't want to get near it. I can't look away, either. I had the same reaction seeing my father at the funeral home. I couldn't get near him and I couldn't move away. My brain knew that I needed to react, but my body wouldn't go along with any of it. I only got over it by forcing myself to go to my father's body and touch his face. Looking just vapor-locked my brain. I had to feel that he was dead.

There's a stepladder next to the refrigerator in the kitchen. I bring it to the living room and open it up right below the body. Before I can start the dirty work, out of the corner of my eye I see the nosy neighbor sticking his nosy face in where it shouldn't be.

"Oh God. Oh my God. I'm calling the cops."

I move fast. Fast enough that I scare him more than the body does. Before he can finish dialing, I snatch the cell phone out of his hand and perp-walk him to a window. Lean him out and make him watch as I drop his phone into a Dumpster several floors below.

I say, "Go get it. Then you can call."

Nosy Neighbor looks at me like I just told him that I'm Darth Vader and I fucked his sister, but he doesn't say a word. He heads straight for the stairs.

Back at the body, I pull the nails from the feet first. They're some kind of heavy concrete nail. Perfect for going through muscle and bone and into a wall stud.

With the feet free, I can get the body down on the ground. I climb onto the top step of the stepladder. Yank one nail out of one hand and the other out of the other. Suddenly free, the body drops heavily into my arms. The limbs flop. The head tilts, snaps, and falls off.

Too much. I let go and it hits the ground.

I should have seen it the moment I started to move the body, but I was distracted, trying to decide between collapsing into a queasy heap or pulling a John Wayne to see what was right in front of me.

Kasabian's corpse is lying on the floor. That's why the body is so beaten up. The Kissi didn't torture Vidocq. They just stitched back together what Parker blew apart last night.

How do you steal and clean a body from the bottom of a ten-thousand-year-old tar pit? Why do you steal and clean a body from the bottom of a ten-thousand-year-old tar pit?

And if Kasabian's boomerang corpse is here on the floor, where are Vidocq and Allegra?

My phone rings. I thumb it on.

"Boo. Fooled you with your own dead guy." It's Parker. "I bet right about now you're wondering where your friends are."

"How are you seeing me?"

"Look around you, shit for brains. There's eyes everywhere."

"The paintings."

"There's this thing called magic. Maybe you've heard of it."

"Where are Vidocq and Allegra?"

"Relax, sweetheart. They're fine. In fact, we're having a New Year's party tonight and you're invited."

"At Avila?"

"How do you walk around with that big brain? Yeah, Avila. It'll be a blast. We're gonna raise a little hell. Get your ass there before midnight."

"I'll be there."

"This is a personal invitation. No guests. No plus ones. If I see a cloud of dust behind you, Senor Frog and that little slice of cherry pie go right in the wood chipper."