"You can come in," Chalk said, looking like he was chewing on a lemon, "if you want." He crossed his arms, which made his t-shirt strain. It was a black, tight piece, the type people with bigger egos than muscles wore to show off. However, the guy looked like Vin Diesel's bearded twin had fucked an action figure, which just made it ridiculous for different reasons.

I scoffed, rolling my eyes. He just finished explaining why I might or might not want to stay away, in case I felt awkward or anything. "Don't need a reason to ditch your asses," I replied blandly. "The hell do you think I am? Social?"

Chalk grunted-he did that a lot; he was actually fluent in caveman to a degree that made me sound smart, which no illusionist could have bullshitted you into believing-and went to prepare for his double date.

I've never understood the appeal of that shit. You're with the one person you feel safe to open up to in public, so you bring a pair of lovesick randos around cuz you're pals? That would be like if Candy and I went out and decided to tag along with, I don't know, Brigitte and Traven.

You could tell that was a make-believe scenario because it involved me and Candy getting back together, har har. It also involved me being enough of a boorish dick to blunder my way into Traven and Brigitte's special moment.

Thinking about doing that brought my mood down even more than thinking about Traven in general did. I knew where the sin-eater had ended up back home, and damn if it didn't make me wince. Nah. He didn't need Stark-brand 'help'. He needed help.

I peered across realities when not bumming around Chalk's world (and why did that sound like a weird perv joint?), and every reminder of the exiled priest left both me and Saint James brooding. Him more than me, though you'd have been hard-pressed to notice the difference. He was mushy like that. I was just an asshole not as guilt-proof as I'd have liked to believe.

So Chalk and Tiff (his squeeze; she was this younger chick who'd once gotten some ink from him, who he'd later helped when she was involved with some vampires), Larson and Kat (Larson's squeeze. By how Chalk described her, she was his little clique's geek girl, though I think that was just him being mystified by anything more technical than banging rocks together, a struggle I could relate to) went to this restaurant, about as ritzy a place as you could find in fucking Atlanta, while I remained outside, sitting on a bench with one leg over the other and pretending to do crossword puzzles.

Luckily, no one here really knew what an angry dumbass I was. Kas would have never believed I was actually focused on that rag, unless I was ripping it up because I stumbled over something with more than two letters.

But I digress.

See, I still don't know why I'm here. I mean, to piss people off (obviously), but I don't have even the faintest idea what threat I'm supposed to prevent from reaching its full potential in Chalk's reality. Given how useless my hoodoo senses are being, I can only guess it hasn't started yet, and wouldn't it have been awfully nice if my lily white ass got dropped here when there was something I could kill?

Instead, I got stuck scaring off assorted supernatural gangsta wannabes and watching Larson putter about in his wheelchair, playing doctor to were kids. And I couldn't do that for long, because I got bored and James kept pestering me to wheel him around.

I'm going crazier, I swear. I'll stop drinking and buy a bus pass next, maybe even stop smoking.

I'm saved from having to clutch my pearls any longer by a disturbance in the Force. Nah, but seriously, it's something from inside the restaurant, a spark of juju from what I vaguely recognize as Larson's aura.

In my mind, I give James a withering look. I told you he's wheelchair Jesus.

No, he deadpans, utterly calm, as if wheelchair Jesus is ever going to save sinners like him.

The power around (inside? Directions are always hard to pinpoint when magic's involved, not to mention I'm inherently allergic to them as a guy) Larson flared up briefly, but is now gone, so subdued I can barely tell where it no longer is. I used to have outbursts like that as an ankle-biter, when I got excited and my magic flared up, but I got better at hiding it over the years. Sure, the fact I spent more time hanging around vanilla mortals than magicians helped, and I rarely was around spellslingers I didn't soon try to kill for one reason or another (sometimes they even tried first, giving me an excuse. So polite), but signaling that you had power just tended to draw pains in the ass to you.

I'm halfway through filling in a world that already looks like Greek spelled by a wino when I feel an explosion rattle my bones, the sound reaching me shortly after the blast wave. With my clothes flattened against my body and the newspaper in tatters, I stand up from the suddenly rickety bench, which slumps to the ground, three of the metal legs bent like funny string.

There's a hole in the building you could drive a semi through, edges glowing with magical light, and what I can see of the interior is covered in debris and people laying across the floor, in various states of mutilation. Some are dead, I can smell it from here, but more are hurt, too hurt to even scream. I run inside, so fast a human's legs would break in half, and spend a few moments looking for Chalk and co. Meanwhile, the vanillas are trying to get the hell outta dodge through the backdoor.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

I find them soon enough, guided by the splinter of angelic power jammed firmly up Chalk's ass and into the core of his being. Apparently, the guy got an ichor transfusion from an angel he saved. The chick brought him back to life and even gave him powers. Me, last time I saved some halo-polishers, I just got more shit dumped onto my plate. It's genetic, you see. I'm half ape, half pigeon, so all trouble. And that's leaving aside the dumpster fire I was handed 'cause they were out of personalities.

The spell I'm casting on myself would leave me blurry even if I wasn't moving around like a cheetah on crack, but what I'm interested in is how stealthy it makes me, hiding me from most beings' senses. Over a decade ago, I learned this trick to avoid Hellions with sharp hearing and nosy hellhounds. Once you meet one of those, you can never get far away enough from them. You don't even need a pack of 'em to make you their bitch (though, to my knowledge, I'm the only guy a buncha hellhounds used to get their rocks off at the same time who didn't die halfway through, so most people don't need to avoid them after, really) to get sick of them.

When I spot the merry gang, Chalk and Tiff are already up. She's a small chick with dark chestnut hair and a thing for angry skinheads, for some reason, but if Chalk's existence hasn't turned her into a lesbian, I'm not gonna waste my time telling her how she's wasting hers. They're both covered in small cuts, with him having a glass shard in one shoulder and her a longer cut starting between her her breasts and going up to her throat, but they seem fine, otherwise.

Larson's kneeling besides his date, who's lying on the floor, and before I can wonder how the goddamn hell he's outta his wheelchair, I notice he didn't get away from the blast, either, which just makes it stand out more. His hair is singed and blown to one side, and there's a cut on one of his cheeks. He's filled out some since I met him, but he was a skinny fuck to begin with, which only makes the blood more noticeable.

I try to focus my senses on him, remembering the earlier pulse of energy, and...aw, man...

Chalk strides to the ginger/blondie power couple while Larson helps Kat to her feet. "Are you two ok?" he asks, sounding suspicious, but not about what he's asking, I bet.

"Nothing broken. I can't hear a damn thing out of my left ear, though." Larson turns his head.

Kat reaches up, turning his face back toward her. "Your eardrum is burst. It'll heal."

They're pulling out their guns: a colt .45 1911 for Chalk, a Glock for Larson-and fuck me, I bet he's gonna start driving a Corvette too now that he can apparently walk; but I'll get back to that-, a 9mm for Kat and a Taurus Judge for Tiff. By their postures, they're obviously waiting for me to burst in. As I drop the spell, I'm briefly reminded of that funny vampire anime Candy likes, with that chick who loves big guns.

A mirror of Chalk's gun appears in my left hand, turned from thought to matter by Deep School juju, while my right one pulls my na'at out of my trench coat. The shapeshifting weapon, named after a shortened version of the Hellion word for the bush they made Jesus' crown of thorns from, is something of an inside joke among them. With a flick of my wrist, it can become a blade, a spear or a whip that can flay a rhino in one swing (as I know from...hearsay).

Just as I'm about to ask what happened, a a magician steps through the wreckage and into the restaurant. She's an older chubby broad in a green dress flickering weirdly, and she pulls a pair of thin lace gloves off as she looks through the restaurant. Knowing her eyes would quickly zero in on the scarred jagoff in the rainbow coat, I disguise myself as a nondescript guy in a monkey suit before she can get a good look in our direction. The weapons remain, but I don't want her to not know I'm armed. I just want to give her the runaround if I don't kill her, for whatever reason.

But my Assistant Inspectre sense is tinglin', and I can feel James is about to launch into an explanation of how she's probably the reason I'm here, or related to it. I mentally flip him the bird and step behind Chalk, cowering like my spine is making a getaway. Let her think he's the biggest threat. Actually, let him threaten more than my peace of mind, for once.

Apparently, in Chalk's universe, magic ("magick", but you know where he can shove that "k"?) turns people into raving psychopaths, who get worse and worse the more they use it, like it's glittery turbocrack. Which it tends to do back home as well, but not, you know, inherently. Most magicians are power mongering money-grubbers, but they start out that way long before they learn to bend spoons.

After he learned about my Hellion magic, it took him a while to decide he wouldn't kill me on principle. I might have promised to beat him with Tiff's corpse until he bent in half, can't remember. Not knowing me, he glared at me like he believed I needed a dead body to flatten people. It was too much work to beat a motherfucker with another motherfucker, and I didn't even hate her.

She's dressed like an aristocrat from a British soap opera, with heavy skirts and puffy sleeves, but what draws my attention is the silver pentagram around her nearly invisible neck, with a snarling goat's heat carved into it. It's so fucking tryhard I'm surprised I haven't worn something like it yet.

Two figures step in to stand at her sides. The first backup dancer looks like Jafar in a cassock, with spiky jewelry on his fingers and a silver goat's head pentagram beneath his wild beard. His eyes are small and deep-set beneath a pair of thick eyebrows, and he looks like he's not himself when he's hungry.

The other is a lanky girl about my height, with a strip of white hair about as thick as my wrist cutting through her long red hair from one side of her forehead. Her face is a skinnier version of the aristo toad's, thinner but with the same venomous eyes. Seems Umbridge is bringing her crotch goblin to work tonight.

She's wearing a pair of red leather pants that show more than they hide. A silver pentagram, buckled to her flat, bony chest, completes the trio.

I peek out from behind Chalk like I'm the fourth stooge, whistling at the edgy beanpole ."Damn, kid! The hell are those?" I gesture at the leather straps keeping her pentagram in place and partly concealing her breasts. "I have bigger reasons to cover myself."

She's snarling about three words in, and I can't help but smirk. Women really can't keep quiet once I start talking to 'em.

And they said my mom lied.