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Ball.
    “Look, baby, I brought you a present.”
    Then I pass out.
    I WAKE UP in bed naked and wrapped in a sheet. There’s a stain where my blood and something else has soaked through. Candy sits beside me, playing a game on her pink laptop.
    Vidocq is in a chair nearby, smoking, his feet propped on a corner of the bed. Spirited Away plays on the big screen. It’s what Candy always watches whenever she’s upset. A young girl sits on a train. Some kind of Japanese folk spirit sits beside her. White oval face. All draped in black.
    “Where did that come from?” I say, nodding at the laptop.
    She doesn’t look up from whatever she’s playing. It pings and pops. Plays a silly little tune.
    “I don’t think she’s speaking to you at the moment,” says Vidocq in his smooth French accent.
    I look at her. She doesn’t take her eyes off the screen.
    “I guess not.”
    I’m blistered from the explosion. I lean down and sniff the stain on the sheet. It’s a strange mild acid reek with something sweet. Maybe even a little Spiritus Dei. A complicated potion. I look at Vidocq.
    “One of yours?”
    He smiles and inclines his head in a little bow.
    “Thanks,” I say.
    “De rien.”
    Vidocq is an alchemist and a thief. He’s also a hundred and fifty years old. You’d think after living in this country for a hundred years, he would have lost the accent. I don’t think he wants to. It’s all he has left of France. It’s not like he can ever go back. Where does a hundred-and-fifty-year-old thief and murderer—he killed a couple of guys way back when. Don’t worry. They deserved it—get a birth certificate? A driver’s license? A passport? Yeah, he could get fake documents like Garrett had in his room, but Vidocq is too proud for that. Unless he can go back as himself, I don’t think he’ll ever set foot in the old country again.
    I glance back at Candy. She still won’t look at me. I put a finger on the top of her laptop and start to close it.
    “Don’t,” she says. “I just got to this level and I’ll lose it.”
    “Your computer is dead. Whose is this?”
    “Mine. Samael said he’d get me a new one and he did. It’s a newer model too. Lots more memory and a faster processor. Good for games.”
    I lie down on my back.
    “So all in all a good day for you.”
    “Shut up,” she says.
    I move closer to her. Put my hand on her leg.
    “This is going to happen sometimes. It’s how my life works. You can’t always come with me and I can’t dodge every bullet. Just remember that bastards tried to kill me for eleven years in Hell and almost a year up here and no one’s done it.”
    She says, “That’s not true. You’ve died a couple of times.”
    “Not like lying-there-getting-smelly kind of dead. Just technically dead.”
    She hits the keyboard harder. She still won’t look at me. I really want one of Vidocq’s cigarettes.
    “You’ve got to understand that if this is going to work between us.”
    “I don’t want to,” she says.
    “I don’t always either. But it’s how things are. ‘Death smiles at us all and all a man can do is smile back.’ ”
    “Where did you hear that crap?”
    “I read it in a book Downtown. It’s Marcus Aurelius.”
    She nods.
    “Quote a dead guy. Real smooth.”
    I kiss her leg and get up. I stink from sweat and burned skin and need a shower.
    On my way to the bathroom I say, “I’m going Downtown to see Mr. Muninn. You can come with me or you can stay here and sulk.”
    I stand under the hot water for a long time, washing off the grime and dead skin. The wound has already closed, though I can feel the bullet inside me.
    I put on a robe and go back into the bedroom.
    Candy has closed the laptop. She and Vidocq are quietly watching the movie. I sit down beside her on the bed. She balls up her fist and punches my real arm.
    “Ow.”
    “I wasn’t sulking. I was mad. And not entirely at you.”
    “I know. Trust me. If I could, I’d be the most boring bastard