To dream of a coyote is strong medicine, so Roland sits up with miserable, sweaty little Daphne and prods his subconscious. He reads about mating habits and urban adaptation; he listens to an mp3 of call-and-response with yelping humans. He reads aloud, to Daphne, about how Coyote stole fire from the gods.
At last he dozes and starts awake, clutching the ragged scrap of image: a bushy tail disappearing behind a graffiti-scrawled tree. He leans close to his daughter and breathes the dream into her ear.
Daphne squirms and rolls over, gripping his shirt in one greedy fist.
“Next time, think twice before you cross the Tetrazini brothers,” snarls Big T. “Oops, I forgot–no twice!”
One boot sends Bernard out the cargo door. He falls and falls and screams and WHMP, a silver figure slams into him from one side, falling with equal velocity.
“Elmer?” gasps Bernard. “M-my State Farm agent?”
“Parachute agent, today,” shouts Elmer. “Put this on! We’ve got twelve seconds left to rip!”
Bernard struggles in, goggling. “I can’t believe it’s worth this much to keep me alive!”
“You bought a million-dollar policy,” says Elmer grimly. “How much do you think it’s worth?”
“I was reduced to doing birthday parties for a while,” muses William Shatner. “Me. Five hundred dollars a pop.”
Shriek into the gag.
“I know,” he’ll say. “Canadian dollars.” He’ll spread a clanking roll of velvet on the stone beside you. Bloody your wrists against the ropes as he admires the light on surgical steel.
“I thought it was luck when things picked up again, until Nerine… poor Nerine.” He sighs. “I understood, then. Do you know the term ‘cult of celebrity?'”
Gurgle in the affirmative.
“Like any cult,” he’ll say, “it requires sacrifices,” and will begin to excise your liver.
“I just wonder if the whole thing has something to do with the fact that my dad was travelling so much–”
“That doesn’t make much sense,” says Oatman sharply. “He couldn’t have known you’d end up in this situation, could he?”
Dakota blinks. “Well,” he says, “no.”
“No sense in blaming him, then.”
“What kind of therapy is this?” asks Dakota.
“Reverse psychiatry,” says Oatman, quite pleased. “Didn’t you read the door stencil?”
“It was backwards,” mutters Dakota.
“Let’s move on to this ennui you’ve felt lately,” says Oatman. “Do you think it will start when James dumps you next month?”
The Justin followed the shiver of reedy torchlight to a great stone hall, where in the judge’s seat sat a man garbed in deepest black.
“Anubis?” asked the Justin.
“Perhaps,” said the god. “What do you seek, living man?”
“My friend Ptah.”
“Then you know nothing,” the god said, “but we will judge you all the same.” He gestured, and there were scales, and a feather, and a hungry crocohippolion.
The Justin placed his heart on the scales.
“How can you do that, living man?” asked the god curiously.
“Oh,” said the Justin sadly, “the Girl tore it out years ago.”
Riot backpedals its dragon wings and lands next to the gray stone talons of loneliness; the scents of snow, fried eggs and sweat wriggle among them in a desperate thrash of neon worms. Coffee skitters with gecko toes up the table leg and under a book. The fog, of course, creeps in on kittenfeet.
Amidst all of them, Johann toils onwards; he’s deep in the metaphysical guts of the siren ape and he’s not going to look up any time soon. One by one his poor forgotten bits of city resign themselves to another night of scrounging. Only the stone remains.
The first time Staunton saves his family from terrorists, he has to set his broken leg himself, then walk up ten flights of stairs. He’s a media hero; he says it was just another day on the job.
The second time, he drives a car bomb off a bridge, rolling out the door at the last second. The third–one day before retirement–he guns down fifty trained assassins, while falling out a window.
The fourth time he punches out a cruise missile.
“What’s happening to me?” he whispers, terrified, in the confession booth.
“Miracles,” the priest says. “Sainthood takes three.”
The new mask is nameless.
“If nothing comes of the dance, we’ll dispose of it,” says Middle Mother, hovering, obviously longing to take a licked handkerchief to Cehrazad’s underface. “If something does… well, we’ll talk about that then.”
Cehrazad is afraid to do more than cradle it: it’s molded perfectly, spun of iridescent glass as thin as spiderwebs. “Dispose of it,” she whispers.
“Well, it’s hardly for everyday use, hmm?” Middle Mother raises the handkerchief, and Cehrazad has to put the mask on in self-defense.
Through the glass, everything’s edged with rainbows; her hands are mirrored, multiplied, like insect eyes.
When Elias ran away to join the wandering mage, rucksack on a shoulder and need in his eyes, he expected to endure danger: loose demons, dimensions of shadow, infinite walking brooms. He didn’t expect to spend two weeks huddled amidst turnip sacks in a rickety wagon.
“You said you were an itineromancer,” he scowls at his ersatz teacher.
“Yes, when I want to be,” says Domingo.
“But!” bursts Elias. “That’s the whole–does this work at all? Can’t you go wherever you want with your magic?”
“Sure I can,” says Domingo placidly, settling back. “As long as I’ve been there before.”