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is still standing guard over him. I pop the latches on the case and push back the lid.
    Lying packed in a snug black foam liner is the Qomrama Om Ya.
    Color me the luckiest son of a bitch on the planet. I grab it to make sure I’m not seeing things.
    Wait. Keep the son-of-a-bitch part but forget the lucky. The 8 Ball is like the bird. A fake. The real 8 Ball radiates heavy magic that you can feel through your skin. This thing looks good, but it’s as magic as loaded dice.
    Whoever made it isn’t a complete idiot. It gives off some minor hoodoo vibes, enough to feel real if you’ve never handled the real Qomrama. It’s like how Russian gangs sell kindergarten terrorists radioactive junk and tell them it’s plutonium. The morons think they’re going to build a nuke, but all they get is cancer-therapy scrap.
    The only other thing in the case is an old book. It’s full of diagrams of the 8 Ball along with what look like instructions, but it’s in a language I’ve never seen before. I put the book in my back pocket. Father Traven might have some fun with it.
    In the bedroom, the raven squawks and flutters back to the chair. Garrett sits up. His eyes go wide when he sees me with his courier box.
    “That’s not for you!” he yells.
    “Finders keepers.”
    He starts feeling around the bed, knocking his passports and cash onto the floor. He’s looking for the gun, but it’s over on the coffee table. When he can’t find it, he swings his legs onto the floor and stumbles to his feet.
    Just to be a dick about it, I take the fake Qomrama from the case and toss it from hand to hand like a basketball. I don’t see the blinking light right away. It’s down at the bottom of the compartment that held the 8 Ball. When I do notice it I have a pretty good idea what it is and I start running. So does Garrett, but the other way. He makes it to the coffee table, snatches up the pistol, and levels it at me.
    “Give me back my merchandise,” he says.
    I’m halfway into a shadow, bent low, when the bomb goes off. The concussion blasts me the rest of the way out of the room.
    I suppose I could have been a Good Samaritan. Run back for Garrett, knocked the gun out of his hand, and pulled him into the shadow with me. But it hurt when I bent down to steal his money clip and . . . well, the bastard did shoot me.
    I HATE GOING through the Room straight into the penthouse at the Chateau Marmont. Whatever hoodoo keeps the penthouse hidden from both civilians and Sub Rosa makes me dizzy and nauseous every time I walk through it. That doesn’t matter this time. I’m already dizzy and nauseous.
    I fall near where we keep the food trays lined up buffet style against the wall. At least I don’t have to worry about Candy being concerned about my belly wound. My half-blasted-off clothes will distract her. Plus, I have the cash. And the fake Qomrama.
    I grab the edge of a table and pull myself to my feet with my prosthetic left arm. The explosion must have blown off the glove. The arm is ugly as Hell. It was given to me by a Kissi, an extinct race of mutant angels that lived in the chaos at the edge of the universe. My prosthetic looks like a bug claw crossed with the Terminator, but it handles things like explosions pretty well, so I can use it sometimes when the rest of my body isn’t cooperating.
    Before I know what’s happening, I’m being steered onto one of the leather sofas. I find half a cup of Aqua Regia on the coffee table and gulp it down. When I look up Candy is standing over me. She’s pulling off my shredded shirt, looking scared. And sees the bloody towel. Now her fear is mixed with annoyance.
    “I let you out of my sight for ten fucking minutes,” she says.
    My ears are ringing, so it takes me a second to understand what she said.
    She pulls out the black blade I gave her and cuts off the rest of the shirt and towel. When she sees the bullet wound she looks at me hard.
    Before she can say anything, I hold out the 8