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  Help me, he thought.

  Someone please help me.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  "Are you coming?" Poppy asked.

  They headed south of Market Street, the old stone of central San Francisco giving way to wooden buildings and warehouses. Poppy wasn't much of a talker, and Ramsey liked that about him. He suspected the feeling was mutual. "Down here," Poppy said, turning into a street that was little more than an alley, brick walls edged with fire escapes. A sign hung over a door: DANTE GALLERY. CLOSED FOR INSTALLATION.

  Poppy stopped, apprehension crossing his face. He banged the knocker three times.

  The door opened.

  A tall, thin man said, "Poppy. What a completely expected surprise. Come in." The man's eyes were as black as the braid of hair draped over his shoulder. Those eyes lingered on Ramsey for what seemed a very long time. Ramsey ducked his head. The man chuckled. "Is this your new friend?"

  Poppy grunted. "His name's Ramsey."

  "How very nice to meet you, Ramsey. My name is Salik."

  "Hi."

  Salik's gaze shifted to Poppy. "You must be missing your old friend. You must be missing him very much. What did you call him? Lizardboy?"

  "Lizardking. 'Cause he thought Jim Morrison was fucking God." Poppy scratched at his neck with both hands, as if he'd developed a rash. "Could we, uh, get on with it?"

  "Of course." Salik turned and led them through a passageway into the main gallery. The walls were hung with paintings in tortured colors that made Ramsey flinch even before he saw the subject matter: scenes of death, of torture: writhing bodies trapped in a dozen shades of hell.

  Salik paused in front of a man being disemboweled. "May I offer you some tea?"

  "No," Poppy said. He didn't react to the paintings. He had seen them before, Ramsey realized; he had been here many times. "We have to get going."

  "Of course."

  He crossed to a lacquered desk and extracted a notebook from the drawer. Poppy was fidgeting like a little kid. "Here we are," Salik sang out, flipping through the pages. "Yes, here's your account. You owe us a payment soon. You realize."

  Poppy mumbled something.

  Salik flashed a bright smile. His right hand moved to his left wrist and made a slight unscrewing motion. The gloved hand came away from the jacket sleeve. Salik dropped the prosthesis on the desk. From the dark silk sleeve cuff, another hand emerged: a stunted, secret hand, white as milk, a key slipping down between the tiny fingers. Salik unlocked the cabinet behind him and slid back the door. He looked at Ramsey. "Would you like to take a look?"

  A terrarium sat on the shelf just inside the cabinet; and inside the terrarium something writhed, glistening and blue. Ramsey stepped closer to get a better look, just as the creature shifted its head from behind a rock.

  As Ramsey's eyes adjusted to the strange play of light and shadow inside the tank, he could make out the black-and-yellow markings, like alien hieroglyphics, that ran up and down the creature's body. One eye opened, flashed fire-bright, looked steadily at Ramsey, then closed again.

  "It's not from this world," Salik said. "It's not from any world, really. It seems to have the remarkable ability to move through all the realms, like passing through rooms in a house. Every so often, it sheds its skin. A remarkable thing, that skin. When you crumble it beneath your fingers, add a few choice ingredients and say a few choice words, well…" Salik took a silver cigarette case from beneath the shelf and pressed it open. "You have this."

  Ramsey looked blankly at the blue powder. "What is it?"

  Salik laughed. He shut the case and tossed it to Poppy. "What is it, Poppy?"

  "Best high in the whole damn universe."

  "Not exactly what it was intended for," Salik said. "But a lucrative side benefit."

  He slid shut the cabinet door and locked it. He slipped the small, pale hand back inside his sleeve, cradled it against his chest. "Good night, young gentlemen." To Ramsey: "A pleasure to meet you."

  They were at the door when Salik called: "Ramsey?"

  Keep going, his inner voice whispered, but Ramsey couldn't help reacting to the sound of his name. He turned.

  Salik had set the notebook on the desk, the long thin fingers of his good hand stroking the cover. "Have you ever been to New York?"

  Ramsey shook his head.

  "Ever posed for a painting? Perhaps a series of paintings?"

  He felt a spasm of disgust and said, "Not interested." He turned away from Salik's widening grin and followed Poppy through the passageway, out the door, into the damp and narrow side street. "What the hell?" he said. "What was that?"

  "Just Salik. He's weird, I know, but he's harmless."

  "He isn't," Ramsey said. "And you know it."

  Poppy shrugged.

  Ramsey said, "What really happened to Lizardking?"

  Poppy shrugged again.

  They came to an intersection blazing with traffic lights. Ramsey felt relief to be on a main street again. Poppy approached a man with dreadlocks and a purple baseball cap, slouching beside the convenience store. They spoke for a moment, then Poppy rejoined Ramsey: "We're looking for a guy in a yellow baseball cap two blocks over," he reported.

  They walked along the uneven sidewalk, the wind gusting around them, the street gray and noisy with traffic. The guy in the yellow cap was sitting on the curb, blowing into a harmonica. As Poppy approached, the guy paused in mid-note and smirked up at him.

  Poppy sauntered back to Ramsey, looking smug. "The password," he announced, "is Hellrider."

  * * * *

  The party was in a warehouse down by the railroad tracks, the lines of trains snaking out from the station, shadowed and stilled for the night. They took a freight elevator to the top floor. People, mostly kids, mostly underage, thronged in the corners, gyrated on the dance floor, gathered around the makeshift bars where girls in hot pants and bikini tops served beer and water from vats of ice. Two DJs were set up in a booth in the back. Kids lounged in front of the whirring industrial fans, sipping water, shaking their hair back, sucking on lollipops. A girl brushed past Ramsey, cutting her eyes at him, popping a pill into her red mouth.

  Poppy was grinning. "Oh yeah."

  As they moved through the room, Ramsey began noticing something else: some of the kids had glittering blue symbols painted on their skin, on bare shoulders and midriffs and sometimes their faces. They looked at Ramsey with shining eyes. He was familiar with the thousand-yard stare of someone high on ecstasy: pupils wide and pinned and burnt out from within, like a light bulb exploded at the core. But these kids seemed… lit … a moonstone sheen lifting up through their skin. They looked at Ramsey as he passed among them and one by one they smiled, and even though they weren't speaking to him, or each other—were only swaying and dancing inside the music—Ramsey's head filled with a whispering, voices overlapping just inside his ears:

  Ramsey. You've finally come. Welcome.

  Welcome, Ramsey.

  Dance with us. Be one of us.

  Come feel the love, Ramsey. Be part of us.

  Love us and let us love you.

  "Are you coming!" Poppy shouted, looking over his shoulder. His face was damp and glowing. Ramsey wasn't sure he wanted to be here, but he also wasn't sure where else he had to go. He didn't want to be alone. He didn't want the chance to think about those strange wounds that had opened up along his back—and then, just as suddenly, healed and closed.

  Besides, the music was good.

  The music was very good.

  And good music always made him stay.

  * * * *

  They went through a doorless doorway into a room lined with beanbag chairs and slouchy purple couches. It was darker in here, hazed with smoke, fragrant with weed.

  "Poppy," a girl's voice squealed from the end of the room.

  She was skinny and blonde, wearing low-slung jeans, straps of a thong pulled high on her hips. She was sprawled on a couch beside another girl, this one short and deep-breast
ed, black hair tangling out beneath a cowboy hat. In the chair across from them slumped a boy in zebra-striped velvet pants, one leg tossed over the armrest.

  "Poppy," the blonde girl said, "you finally showed. So what is it? Do you like girls or boys tonight?"

  Poppy only grinned and sat down beside her.

  "Like me," the girl said huskily, furling her arms around his neck in what seemed uncomfortably close to a stranglehold. "Like me tonight."

  "This is Nemesis," Poppy said.

  "Hi, Nemesis."

  Poppy said, "Nemesis, this is Echo." He squeezed the girl's left breast and she squealed and slapped at his hand. He pointed to the girl in the cowboy hat. "This is Sweetums." To the boy in the zebra-striped pants, "And this is Jacko."

  "Hi," Ramsey said.

  Sweetums said, "Nemesis. Sit by me." She made space for him on the couch. Echo was whispering and giggling in Poppy's ear.

  Jacko showed his teeth in what Ramsey assumed was a smile, then lit a cigarette and, still grinning, put out the match on his tongue. "Poppy," he called. "You got the stuff?"

  Poppy slipped the thin silver case from his pocket. He held it up, announced, "Magic. Magic for everyone," and handed it to Echo, who was sucking on her little finger. She yanked it from her mouth with a small popping sound, slipped it in the blue powder. She traced one side, and then the other, of Poppy's face, leaving streaks of blue. "My beautiful boy," she said, and giggled.

  "Careful with that stuff," Poppy said, "I don't want to be fucking paralyzed. A little goes a long way."

  Sweetums said, "… Psycho like him?"

  Ramsey's gaze was fixated on the blue streaks on Poppy's face, glittering there like crushed-up diamonds. It took him a moment to realize the girl in the cowboy hat was talking to him. "Sorry?"

  Sweetums popped her gum. "I said what's a nice kid like you doing with some low-class freak-headed shabby slut-psycho like Poppy here?"

  Poppy squawked, "Who the fuck you calling shabby?"

  "I was looking for someone," Ramsey said.

  "Let me guess," Sweetums said, and adjusted her cowboy hat. "You were looking for Lizardking."

  "Yeah."

  " 'Cause everybody's looking for Lizardking."

  "What is that stuff called?" Ramsey asked, his eyes intent on the silver case as Poppy handed it to Sweetums.

  Sweetums grinned. "It's jax," she said. "You ever done it before?"

  "No."

  "Wanna try?"

  "No."

  "Your loss, baby. Believe me when I say that."

  Jacko tossed his long body across the end of the couch, dropped his head into Sweetums' lap and closed his eyes submissively. Sweetums dabbed at Jacko's eyelids, painted them blue.

  Ramsey said, "So Lizardking—"

  "He's dead," Echo said.

  Her voice was matter-of-fact. The others looked at her—Sweetums pausing in the act of drawing a fat tear below Jacko's right eye—and Echo shrugged and flipped her hair. "Of course he's dead."

  "He went to the desert," Jacko said, nestling the back of his head into Sweetums' plump lap. "He went without us. That's what I think."

  Echo shook her head. "No way."

  "That's what I think."

  "No fucking way."

  "People are already heading out there," Jacko said. "Yvonne and her group headed out a few days ago. I think he went with them. He was impatient. You saw how fucking impatient he was. The early ones will be rewarded. That's what he said, remember?"

  "How?" Echo said. "How will they be rewarded?"

  Ramsey interjected, "What, exactly, is happening in the desert?"

  Sweetums looked at him. "You really don't know? Isn't that why you came looking for him? You wanted to join us, right? He invited you?"

  " 'Cause he invited us," Echo said. "He's the one who hooked us all together. That's why he wouldn't leave us unless he was D-E-A-D."

  Jacko folded his arms across his chest and staring up at the ceiling. "This thing in the desert. It's like, you know, an alternative community—"

  "Party," Echo said, and grinned. "No cops. No laws. No rules."

  "Trans is gonna play," Jacko said. "They're gonna put on shows every night. And people are setting up, like, special theme camps and rave tents and stuff. It should be wild."

  Echo sighed and snuggled her head on Poppy's shoulder. Her face was turning slack, blissful. There was jax streaked along her inner forearms: shining, glittering: and Ramsey remembered the strange and scaled little creature in Salik's gallery. Poppy was also turning drowsy, relaxing against the couch.

  "You should really try it," Sweetums whispered in Ramsey's ear. "You have to know what it's like. Words can't describe it. When you're jaxed up, you can, like, touch the heart of the universe. You can understand things. You can send your thoughts out to other people."

  "What, like acid or something?"

  "Not like acid," Sweetums insisted. "That's what I'm saying. It's not like anything. Just a little bit at first… you shouldn't do too much… you hang out and be blissful… and then the energy hits you… and you dance…" She reached over and touched his hand. "It's like heaven," she said, and traced a small line of jax on his skin.

  Ramsey jerked away. "It burns," he said.

  "What?"

  "It fucking burns—"

  "Well it shouldn't." Sweetums blinked in puzzlement. Then: "Oh," she said, "Oh, honey," and Ramsey saw her face change. A blissful, drowsy look stole over her features, but it was more than that; as if a light had turned on beneath her skin, flooding up through her eyes. She reached out for him and he moved away from her but she caught hold of his shirt, breathed, "Oh, I see. It works differently for you. I see you now. They took your wings, didn't they? Took them away. And it still hurts so much."

  "How…"

  "So very very much."

  "—Do you know this?"

  Sweetums smiled dreamily at him. "You have to be careful," she said. "The jax is the net they use to catch a bird like you."

  Ramsey whispered, "Who? Lizardking?"

  "No. Lizzie was an innocent. He was in love with the music."

  "How do you know this? Any of this?"

  Her hand fell away from his shirt.

  "How did I know what?" Sweetums giggled. "What did I say? You want some gum?"

  "The wings—and Lizardking—"

  "I have lots of gum."

  Ramsey glanced round at the others. They were all zoning out, nodding off, losing themselves in whatever the hell it was this drug did to you. Echo and Poppy were staring intently at each other, Echo smiling and sometimes nodding a little. You can understand things. You can read minds. Jacko had his eyes closed, tapping the toes of his boots together to some interior rhythm. Sweetums broke into laughter at what seemed to be nothing, but then Jacko said, "Yeah, girl, that's right," and Sweetums laughed again. They were all connected, Ramsey saw, tangled in a happy invisible web of each other. He envied them. He looked at the thin silver case that rested on the couch by Sweetums's plump thigh.

  Magic for everyone.

  A voice spoke up so suddenly inside Ramsey it was as if a stone had struck his own bones. Not for you. Keep away from it.

  He wrapped his arms around himself, hugged himself tightly.

  Keep away from it. Or you will betray yourself.

  His back was starting to itch again.

  Starting to hurt. To burn.

  Oh, honey. They took your wings.

  He moved to the end of the couch, away from Sweetums, so that he wasn't touching anybody. There's nothing wrong with you, he told himself. You're a little fucked in the head, maybe, but really no different from anybody else, not really, not at the core. He buried his head in his arms and closed his eyes. He thought of Lauren. He imagined that she was beside him on the couch right now, they would go home together, everything would be all right. There's nothing wrong with you, this imaginary Lauren was telling him. You don't need to be so alone. Loneliness sucks. It just grinds and grinds an
d grinds you down, doesn't it? He didn't open his eyes again until what felt like years later, when Poppy was snaking him and telling him it was time to head out, and then, when Sweetums offered him the last bit of blue powder, he felt a thin, pale burst of defiance, of anger, and took it, even when it burned.

  * * * *

  "Shortcut," Poppy said.

  He ducked into an alley. Ramsey trailed after him. He was getting so out of it he could no longer lift his feet, sneakers dragging in the dirt. Dawn seeped through the sky, sending weak, watery light into the alley.

  "Hold up," Poppy muttered beneath his breath.

  Ramsey stopped, lifted his head.

  The man stood in silhouette in the mouth of the alley.

  His body like a blade, so tall and thin, a silver-tipped walking cane in one hand. He came towards them, passing through patches of shadow and light.

  "Hello, my young gentlemen," Salik said.

  Fuck this, Ramsey thought, and spun on his heel, about to walk off.

  Except a dark van was rolling up, blocking off that end of the alley.

  He turned and looked at Salik. His head felt thicker all the time, like someone was stuffing it with rags.

  "Poppy," he muttered, injecting scorn in his voice to hide the note of fear, "who exactly is this loser?"

  "Shut up," Poppy snapped. "Salik," he called, "Salik, let's just do this and get it over with. Here." He took something from his pocket and held it out to the other man. "It's his." Ramsey realized it was the photograph of Lauren as soon as it exchanged hands—the photograph he had leaned against the wall in Poppy's squalid little apartment.

  "Hey," Ramsey said. "What the fuck? What the—"

  "Shut up."

  Salik cocked his head to one side. He lifted his cane in both hands, tapped the silver tip against his open palm. "You owe me much more than last time," he said pleasantly. "Much more. But I think…" His gaze lingered on Ramsey. "Yes. I think this one's quite the treasure."

  Ramsey became aware of Poppy stepping away from him, putting distance between them, saying, "So it's enough? We're good, then?"

  He heard the sound of a van door sliding open behind him, the heavy thump of feet as someone jumped to the ground.