Paul John Lyon is the author of THE BENNINGTON BOY and THE GIRL WHO DREAMED A WAR, amongst others. He lives in the north of England.

Find more of his stories atpauljohnlyon.com

Blackheart

Paul John Lyon

Blackheart Copyright © 2022 by Paul John Lyon. All Rights Reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To the rust.

Some things never die, and they often get way better.

Mike Watt

1

“Wake up, Kelly. No sleep for the dead.”

Kelly Blackheart stretched out of a dream she’d never remember into a world she didn’t recognize. Her hand closed over cold air instead of a warm blanket.

Where did I sleep last night?

No blanket, but she’d woken without before, and lost dreams just as easily on waking.

One eye unglued, a kitchen faded in all grey polished steel, bleached clean with LED ceiling lights. Under the light, cutlery hung on the wall like exhibition pieces in a minimalist art gallery: a cleaver, a pair of tongues, a bone saw.

Kelly wondered what kind of kitchen had a bone saw?

She forced her other eye open.

A Beverly Hills kind of kitchen, she thought. Money could buy you all the weird you wanted, and nobody would blink.

Kelly blinked. Twice.

Between one blink and the other, a man appeared. He walked out from behind her, his long coat flapping.

“Jesus Christ!” Kelly said.

“Guess again.” He smiled a black-lipped smile.

A fan, Kelly thought. Just what I need. And one who thinks he’s funny too. Kill me now.

“Oy, mate, if you want my autograph come back when I’ve got my head on. Okay?” And my clothes, too, she thought as she pushed herself up on her elbows and glanced down.

Naked from toe to belly, the only clothing Kelly wore was a flimsy white vest splattered with dried blood.

Okay, keep it together. If I don’t look, I won’t throw up.

Kelly turned her eyes away from the blood splattered shirt and to the stranger.

Oh, no. I didn’t sleep with this bloke, did I?

“Me and you, we didn’t…” she said.

The man sniggered. “Oh no, quite impossible. I’ve only just arrived.”

“What?”

“I couldn’t possibly arrive any earlier. That’s not how these things go.”

“What things?”

“Dead things.”

“Huh?”

“You’re dead, Kelly.”

“Sod off.”

Kelly wanted a cigarette. She wanted a freshly opened bottle of vodka. She wanted to go back to sleep and find the dream she’d lost.

What have I done? I’ve slept with some real beasts before, but this bloke is a whole zoo.

The stranger wore a black Victorian frock coat. His black curly hair cascaded down onto his shoulders. A diamond soul patch sat in the pale white flesh below his black painted lips.

Goth?

How’d I end up with a goth in a weird kitchen? No way I’d get with this bloke sober. Must have been one Hell of a night.

The stranger walked to the other side of the room and dragged a high stool screaming across the floor back to her side.

Kelly’s face scrunched up. “Stop it, mate. My head feels likes someone dropped an amp on it.”

He laughed. “Now that’s a way to die.”

“What?”

“Innovative. Rock ‘N’ Roll. Funny too. I do appreciate the funny ones.”

“Good for you.”

“More memorable, don’t you think? Overdose, suicide, choking to death on a hamburger, that’s all been done to death, if you’ll pardon the pun. An electrocution, or a madman’s bullet live on stage, you wouldn’t forget in a hurry.” He spoke in a voice caught somewhere between London and New York.

“You gab a lot, don’t you? Why don’t you do something useful and get me a drink,” Kelly said.

“I’m not here for such a purpose.”

“What?”

“It’s not part of my job description, young lady.”

“I’m not a lady or young, you stupid git.”

“Twenty-seven is fairly young in the grand scheme of things.”

Not in Rock ‘N’ Roll years, she thought. That was the age when you burned out instead of faded away. Joplin, Morrison, Cobain, the list went on, even if none of those stars had.

“Who the bloody Hell are you?” she said.

“Quisby,” he said. He dusted the top of the stool, flipped the tails of his Victorian coat, and sat one leg crossed over the other. “You may call me Quisby.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“I know, and as I’ve already explained, Kelly, I’m here because you’re dead. Although, if I’d known how faulty the merchandise was, I might not have bothered.” He looked her up and down, then down and up, and stopped halfway between both.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re damaged goods.”

“Hey, watch your bloody mouth.”

“Merely stating a fact.”

“Keep it up, mate, and you’ll see some damage.” Kelly clenched her tattooed knuckles. Across one set the word L O S T, on the other H O P E.

“I would strongly advise against that particular course of action,” Quisby said.

“Oh, you would, would you?”

“I would.”

“And if I don’t take your advice?”

Quisby laughed. “I might have to retract the lady part of what I said earlier.”

Kelly held up LOST and flexed HOPE. “Say that again, and see what happens.”

“Say what?”

“About me not being a lady.”

“Oh that.”

“Yeah, that. Go on.”

Quisby smiled a black-lipped smile. He cleared his throat. “You’re no lady, Kelly Blackheart.”

Kelly swung her legs out onto the floor, and the cold sting of a metal frame touched the back of her thighs, stealing the anger from her.

What the bloody Hell? Did I fall asleep on a serving cart?

She’d slept on floors, tour buses, and rooftops in her time, but never a serving cart.

“What the—” she said.

“Indeed,” Quisby said.

“Where the Hell am I?”

“No, not yet, anyway.”

She fixed on him. “Huh?”

“This isn’t Hell.” He scanned the room. “Too clean.”

“What are you blathering on about?”

“You asked, I answered. Mostly, I’m enjoying the confusion.”

“You’re gone in the head, you are.”

“Some might say that.”

“Creep.” Kelly spat the word out.

“That too.”

Did this git drug me? I don’t remember bugger all about last night. We did perform last night, didn’t we? Yeah, we did. The Blackheartz Live at The Hollywood Bowl.

She couldn’t remember the gig. Or drinking. Or how she’d ended the night in a weird kitchen with a bloody goth.

Kelly scanned the room for a hint of her location. Four serving carts sat on the stark white-tiled floor around her. Every few feet a drainage hole punched through the floor.

What kind of house needed a kitchen with drains?

It’s not a house, she thought, as she scanned the room and the true nature of her surroundings filtered in as white and obvious as the LED lights above.

And this isn’t a kitchen. It’s a—

Fuck! I’m in some sicko serial killer’s murder dungeon. This weirdo is going to chop me up.

Kelly Blackheart, lead singer of the superstar punk group The Blackheartz, brutally slain at 27.

Dead at 27. I’d be with Janis, Jim, and Jimi in the history books, but there’s no way I’m going out murdered by a goth. Not today, whatever fucking day it is, she thought.

Kelly ran full tilt and hit the rack of surgical tools on the wall with both hands.

Get a hold of something before this tit starts in with the lotion on the skin routine.

She risked a glance.

Quisby turned his head slowly and stared at her.

She yanked the bone saw off the rack and sent the rest flying. “All right, you twat! Just you try anything now.”

“Try?”

He was far too calm for Kelly’s liking. Then again, weren’t they all? She’d fallen asleep on the tour bus watching YouTube documentaries about serial killers. All of them were cold, unemotional bastards.

“I know what you’re up to. You’ll have your thing tucked between your legs and wearing my face as a mask, given half a chance.”

“Sounds highly amusing. Not my cup of tea, though.”

Kelly circled him, her eyes darting left and right in search of a door.

She found one behind her. A swinging double door like the ones they had in hospitals.

Am I in a hospital?

Doesn’t matter. Just focus on this thing-tucking, skin-wearing weirdo and how to get away from him.

Kelly backed towards the double doors.

“Leaving already?” Quisby said.

“That’s right. Don’t try to stop me, or you’ll get this.” She waved the bone saw.

“Where you off to?”

“Wherever you’re not, weirdo.”

“Won’t you need these?” Quisby held her ripped black jeans and chequerboard Converse trainers in his hand.

She’d gone bare ass in public before just for the Hell of it. This time it was for a much better cause.

“I’ll make do without, ta.”

“Won’t be much fun if you get arrested for public exposure before you even have a chance.”

Kelly took another step backward. Her bare feet slapped the cold tiles, and her bare arse felt the cold pinch of the air coming in under the double doors.

“I’ll be fine. Don’t you worry, mate,” she said.

Quisby checked his watch. “Santa Monica Blvd at six o’clock. You’re bound to catch a patrol car before you even hit North Beverly. Then it’s the rest of the night in a holding cell with all the drunks and freaks. You don’t have that kind of time.”

Santa Monica Blvd and North Beverly were both in L.A. knew the town as a blur at the edge of one tour or another. But it was L.A. at least. The goth nutter hadn’t taken her out to the wilderness to carve her up. Once she escaped the room, she could put in a call to Sloth, or Carrie, even their manager, Palazzi to come pick her up. She just had to get to a phone.

Or find her own.

Where did I have the bloody thing last?

She stared at the goth holding her jeans and knew the answer.

“Give ‘em to me,” Kelly said, waving the bone saw in front of her face.

“Gladly,” Quisby said.

“You better.”

“Of course.”

“Toss ‘em over. Don’t do anything funny.”

He’s going to rush me first chance he gets, Kelly thought.

Or not. He could be stringing me along and has something worse planned for later.

Worse?

Yeah, like I walk out that door, but on the other side is…

She glanced over her shoulder.

A way of escape only a second before, now the doors were a loaded trap.

“You must have your trousers and shoes. No fun if all the chips are stacked on my side.” Quisby flung the jeans and the Converse trainers to the floor at Kelly’s feet.

She crouched, and without looking down, she found the jeans with her palms.

Kelly shot a glance to the double doors.

What the bloody Hell has this lunatic got waiting for me out there?

“Think you’re clever, mate?” Kelly said, holding up the jeans with one hand.

“I do, yes. Vanity, I suppose, but not undeserved.”

“Well, you’re not bloody clever.”

“You don’t say?”

“I do say.”

Kelly lifted her left leg high and dropped it into the left trouser leg of the jeans. She repeated the action with the right leg. One handed, she buttoned them up. Without looking down once, she slipped both feet into the trainers.

Quisby clapped. “Impressive,” he said.

Kelly’s butt touched the double doors. “Ta-ta, wanker,” she said, pushing at the doors.

“Just one tiny detail before you leave, Kelly. What about your heart?”

She froze, butt against the door.

“What?” she said.

“Look down.”

“Look down at what?”

“Not what. What isn’t.” Quisby pointed at Kelly’s chest.

“What the bloody Hell are you talking abou—”

Kelly looked down.

The blood soaking her sleeveless vest had dried dark enough to camouflage the hole ripped through the material, and right through the middle of her chest.

What the—

Kelly dropped the bone saw. It sounded like a rung bell.

This isn’t happening. This can’t be real. How is this even possible?

Kelly’s body flushed hot then cold.

Oh, Christ! What the bloody Hell!

With trembling fingers, she reached towards the cavity in her chest.

I’m not doing this. This is impossible. People don’t walk about with a big hole in them.

Peeled back skin exposed the meat of her insides. Where there should have been a heart, now there was the hole. She dug a finger in and brought it back out again, sticky with blood.

Bugger me!

Kelly’s stomach lurched. She bent over.

Breathe. If I keep still and breathe, I won’t spew my guts up.

She’d lost count of the times she’d had the same thought in some spinning bathroom or whirling bedroom. It had never worked to stop the inevitable. It wasn’t working just then.

Kelly heaved, and a dark, bloody soup spilled out of her mouth and the hole in her chest. Her lips burned. Tears stung her eyes.

It hit her once, twice, a third time, like a hammer to the gut.

Oh, please, let it stop. Let it stop.

A fourth wretch brought up nothing but burning, clear bile.

Kelly caught her breath in gulps.

I’m hallucinating, she thought. That’s what this is. He’s spiked me with acid or mushrooms, and this is all just in my head.

“Better?” Quisby asked.

She glared at him. “Sod off.”

“I don’t suppose you want to know where your heart is, do you?”

“Sod off.”

“Wasn’t the answer I thought I’d receive, but whatever.”

“Get lost,” Kelly said.

“Would you like to know what happens if you don’t retrieve your heart?”

Kelly rose, clutching her aching stomach. “Whatever shite you gave me, I’ll come down off ’em eventually. Then I’m going to smash your face in, you creep.”

“That’s cute.” Quisby said. “You still think this isn’t real, don’t you?”

“It’s not real.”

Kelly glanced at the hole in her chest. It looked real enough.

Nausea squeezed her stomach again. She forced her eyes away.

“It’s quite real. You’re dead, and somebody stole your heart. If you don’t get it back, I can’t let you in.”

“In? What are you blathering on about?”

“Hell.”

“What?”

“No Hell for you if you’re not all in one piece. Can’t accept damaged goods.”

“That’s a good one, mate. Really funny.”

“It’s either Hell or…”

“Or what?”

“There’s always the other option.”

“What other option?”

Quisby grimaced. “Heaven.”

“You’ve got something loose up top.”

“And you’re missing a heart. I’d say that’s about even.”

“You’re high.” Kelly tightened her grip on her stomach, hoping to keep a new wave of vomit trapped there.

“I would have collected your soul at some point down the line. But not without a heart. Never without a heart. You see, I like my toys mint, still in the box.”

“Are you saying you’re the…”

Plenty of rockers, and even a few punks, bought into all the supernatural guff. They got off on the pentagram and horned goat thing. Kelly didn’t even know how to spell pentagram, let alone draw one.

“You’re the Devil?” Kelly said.

“I prefer Quisby. It’s more vibrant.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You will, eventually. So, it’s good you listen right now.”

“Listen to you spout bollocks? No thanks.”

“You don’t have much in the way of an option, the way things are going.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“With what? You’re dead. The only reason you’re standing and talking to me now is because I will it.”

“That’s a load of—”

Quisby snapped his fingers.

Kelly’s world blackened, and when it came back, she lay on the ground in a heap.

“See?” Quisby said.

“You bastard! What did you do that for?”

“To prove a point. Also, it was fun.” He laughed.

“Twat.”

“That’s as well as might be, but you made your deal with me, and if you don’t have that heart back in place by dawn, it’s Heaven for you.”

Kelly trudged through a couple of thousand drug and drink clouded nights in her memory, but couldn’t remember any part where she’d made a deal with the Devil.

“I didn’t make a bloody deal with you,” she said, pulling herself up from the ground.

Quisby pointed at her. “Your honour, I give you Exhibit A.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You got what you asked for: fame and fortune. Not my fault you can’t remember how you got it. Now, will it be Heaven or Hell for you?”

“You’re full of shit,” Kelly said.

“Heaven, or Hell?”

Kelly shook her head. “Heaven doesn’t sound so bad.”

“Do you like Country & Western music?”

“Get lost.”

“Heaven does. And not the good kind either. Not Willie Nelson or Johnny Cash.”

“What?”

“Eternity, Kelly, with Billy Ray Cyrus on repeat. That’s Heaven. Or you come to my place, and we hang out with Hendrix, and Cobain, and all the other cool kids.”

“Cobain and Hendrix are in Hell?”

Quisby nodded. “Where else?”

“And I get to hang out for eternity with them if I get my heart back?”

“If you get your heart back.”

“I don’t get in otherwise?”

“Now you’re catching on.”

“Why tomorrow? Why dawn? Why not just let me in? Not that I believe any of this bollocks, but still, why are you being such a prick about it?”

Quisby shrugged. “I’m the Devil. That’s what I do.”

“You’re messed up, mate.”

“I know.” He held up his wrist and tapped the watch there. “Twelve hours, Kelly.”

“Why don’t you just tell me where my heart is, if you’re the Devil?”

“That’s no fun.”

“Bastard.”

“Yes, I know.”

Kelly stared at the gaping hole in her chest. It didn’t turn her stomach this time, but it twisted her mind just as much.

“So, I’m dead?” she asked.

“Yep.”

Still didn’t feel real. Like a bad hangover that took a day to swim up from.

“How’d I go out?” Kelly said.

“Overdose. That’s how it’ll be reported.”

“On what?”

“The usual.”

“Bugger,” Kelly said.

Quisby held up his wrist. “Tick-tock, Kelly. Twelve hours to go.”

“So, if I find my heart, I just bring it to you? I don’t get how this works.”

“I’ll be in touch. You just find your heart.”

“You’re not going to give me a clue?”

“Nope.”

“Come on, just give me a bloody—”

Quisby clicked his fingers.

2

Kelly winced as she expected to fall into blackness again, but it never came. Eyes open, and Quisby had vanished from the stool.

Real. The Devil, Heaven and Hell, all sodding real. And I’ve got twelve hours to find a heart in a city as big as L.A. or it’s…it’s…

Billy Ray fucking Cyrus.

She winced again as some truly terrible song lyrics ran through her brain.

Okay. Got to figure out where I am, then I can go from there.

Kelly sniffed the air, and a chemical smell burned her nostrils.

Bleach?

This isn’t a hospital, but it looks and smells like one. So, what is it?

Dentist? No, no chair. A doctor’s clinic? Nah, no posters. They always had posters on the walls in those places telling you how to avoid this disease and that disease.

Then what?

She sniffed.

There was no hint of dog or cat in the air. Not even the faint whiff of piss that always lingered in a vet’s office.

Then where could it—

Kelly jumped as the metal double doors swung inward.

A young bloke in a black leather biker jacket stood before her. He wore a pair of green disposable scrubs underneath his jacket, and green slipovers on his feet.

Kelly caught a glimpse of the corridor. Thick beige carpeting led down a long narrow hall towards a door. Framed pictures of old men dotted the walls all the way down.

“Where am I?” Kelly asked.

He stared at her, both eyes wide. “You’re dead,” he said.

“Tell me something I don’t bloody well know.”

“You’re dead,” he said, shaking his head.

“Yeah, I know. Now, you tell me something useful. Where am I?”

“You’re dead.”

Kelly rolled her eyes. “Yes, I’ve already figured that one out. Listen...” She sighed, then grabbed the man by the lapels of his leather jacket and pulled him through the door. “What is this place?”

He struggled against Kelly’s grip. “You’re dead. Dead, for fuck’s sake.”

“I know that, you tit. Doesn’t matter how many times you say it.”

“But you’re dead.”

Kelly growled. “We’ll just go around in circles forever like this. I’m going to ask you one last time. Where am I?”

“You’re—”

“Dead, yes. Just tell me where I am.”

“Powell’s.”

“Where?”

“Powell’s Funeral Services.”

Kelly let go and gave the young bloke in the leather jacket a confused stare. “You what?”

“Powell’s Funeral Services. I knew this was a bad idea. I just knew it.”

“Knew what?”

“You.”

“Me what?”

“She said I’d get extra to keep it quiet. Now I know why.”

“Who?”

“I knew I shouldn’t have done it. Knew it was wrong.”

“Who?” Kelly said.

The same git who stole my heart, that’s who.

“I believed her. She said it was okay. She said nothing would come back on me.”

“Who? Who is she?”

He shook his head like he’d just pulled himself out of bed and was trying to decide if he was awake or not.

“I mean, this is some real messed up shit right here. I had a feeling. The whole thing creeped me out from the get-go. Put it aside though, you know, tried to forget it, and—”

Kelly pulled him close by the lapels of his leather jacket. “Who?”

His eyes widened as he fixed on the gaping hole in Kelly’s chest.

“Eyes up here, mate,” she said.

“This is messed up.”

“Yeah, it is. Now tell me who messed it up.”

“You don’t know?”

“I woke up this way. How am I supposed to know?”

“Thought that you were in on it. I suppose I let myself believe that shit too.”

Kelly shook him by the collars of his jacket. “Who? Who did this?”

“I’m a dope, right? She said you wanted all this. Couldn’t just die like a normie.”

“You’re making no sense.”

“She said you wanted to beat out the rest. Cobain, Hendrix, and Morrison. You had to go out special and—”

“Sod this.” Kelly pushed him away from her. She balled her fists and showed him LOST and HOPE. “You’re going to tell me who set me up.”

He stumbled backward, holding his hands high. “Not my fault! It wasn’t me who did all—”

Kelly stepped forward. “Last chance,” she said.

“Wait, no. Fine, fine. I’ll tell you. It was—”

His feet hit the puddle of Kelly’s bloodied vomit.

Both legs swung up under him as he dropped back hard, and his skull met the tile with a bone-crunching THWACK!

Kelly ran to his side. She pushed a hand under his head and brought it out full of blood.

Fuck!

“Hey! Hey! Can you hear me?” she said, slapping his cheeks.

Nothing.

She slapped him again. “Wake up!”

His eyelids fluttered like the beer in party cups left on a powered-up amp.

“You’re going to be okay, mate,” she said, trying to convince herself.

Not without the paramedics, he won’t. I have to call them. And when they get here, I’ll have them look at the big gaping hole in my chest too. That should be a fun conversation.

I don’t have to wait around. I’ll make the call and leg it.

Where to? she thought.

She still didn’t know where to start searching for her missing heart, and Santa Monica Blvd wasn’t the best place for a rock star to be walking around.

Especially a dead rock star with a big bloody hole in their chest.

Bloody Hell, I won’t get a block away before someone notices the blood on me.

Kelly’s gaze flicked from the downed man to the double doors and back again.

I have to make the call before I leg it, but why not make two, three calls? If I can get through to Sloth or Carrie, even that creep, Palazzi, one of them will pick me up. Or send a cab.

Or I just phone for my own bloody cab. That would work too.

Kelly stood and patted down her jeans. She even checked the tiny pockets on the front.

No phone.

“Shit,” she mumbled under her breath.

Okay, need to find a phone. Call the paramedics. Call Sloth, or Carrie, or that weasel, Palazzi. Then I’m home free.

Am I bollocks. Still got to find my bloody heart. And I won’t be doing that running around with my chest exposed all night. I wouldn’t make it a block looking the way I do.

Kelly fixed on the unconscious man and his jacket.

I can’t, can I? she thought.

She could.

“Sorry, I need to borrow this. Just long enough to get out of here and call an ambulance. You understand, right?” she said as she pulled the leather jacket from his body.

His eyelids fluttered, but she didn’t know if that was a yes or a no.

“They’ll be here soon enough,” Kelly said, as she zipped up the jacket and backed out through the double doors.

The corridor on the other side was three different shades of beige. Dour portraits of Powell’s morticians, present and past, watched her as she ran through and into the reception area.

A white phone sat on the reception desk like it had been placed there just for her.

Thank fuck for that, she thought.

Or Quisby? Thank Quisby?

He could make her drop with a click of his fingers, so why not make a phone appear when she most needed it?

A phone that wouldn’t work?

Kelly picked the receiver from its cradle like the whole thing might blow up.

She placed it at her ear and gingerly tapped in the number for the emergency services.

No explosions. No tricks. After a brief and breathless call the paramedics were on the way. She hung up and readied her finger to dial again.

Then stopped.

Kelly couldn’t remember a single personal number. She hadn’t needed to remember any of them for nearly five years. Someone else dealt with all the day-to-day stuff of living.

I’ll have to call directory assistance, she thought.

And ask them what? I don’t know the name of the bloody hotel where Sloth and Carrie are shacked up. Jesus! Why didn’t I just book in with them for the tour? Why did I have to choose a different hotel? Why did I—

Palazzi! I know where Palazzi lives. 616 Laurel Canyon Blvd.

Kelly started tapping in the number for directory assistance, but she froze when a light caught her face.

A shadow crossed the window outside Powell’s Funeral Services.

Cop? Kelly thought.

The light swung away, then vanished.

She let out a breath that couldn’t exist.

Too close, she thought as she tapped in the number for directory assistance: 411.

The phone rang at her ear.

I’ll find Palazzi’s number. Get him to pick me up. Then…then…

She wasn’t sure what would come next. Only that she needed to find the heart before dawn. The only real clue was the bloke who’d fallen flat on his back and knocked himself out. Some woman had hired him, but who was she?

I’ll call Palazzi. Then I’ll…I’ll…

What?

The paramedics would arrive any minute. Even if they revived him, Kelly knew she couldn’t hang around to ask questions or they’d ask questions of her.

I’ll just—

The light returned, brighter and bigger than before. It pooled just before the main door of Powell’s Funeral Services, as a silhouette took shape in the glass of the door.

Looked like a cop to Kelly. Cop hat, cop uniform, cop gun.

Cop gun?

She slammed the phone back in its cradle and dropped behind the reception desk.

What the fuck has he got his gun out for?

What the fuck should I care? I’m dead.

Wouldn’t stop a cop from being a pain in the ass. Dead or alive, he could still put a wrench in the works.

The front door of Powell’s opened. The cop entered, and in the backwash of the flashlight, his shadow crawled across the ceiling.

Cheeky git, she thought. Just waltzes in here like he owns the bloody place.

What kind of cop has a key to a funeral home, anyway? she wondered.

Kind of cop I don’t want to be near. Screw making the call here. I’ll bum some change once I get out and use a public pay phone. Fuck it! Maybe I’ll run into a fan, and they’ll give me a ride.

Yeah, and maybe I’ll just bang my Converse together and I’ll be back in Kansas in no time with Toto.

No such luck.

The cop’s shadow grew across the ceiling as he stalked through the reception area.

Kelly shimmied along the underside of the desk, tracking the movement of the shadow on the ceiling above her.

Once he walks down the corridor, I’ll make a run for it. A few more seconds and…

The shadow stopped. The light swung away from the corridor and spilled over the edge of the desk onto her.

She froze.

The light slid back and forth, probing until it caught the chequerboard pattern of her Converse trainers and stopped.

He’s got me. Shit!

“I can see you there. Don’t move.”

Fuck!

“Put your hands up!”

“Make up your bloody mind, mate,” she said.

“Show me your—”

Sod it, Kelly thought. I’m not spending the night in a cell. It’s not like a bullet is going to kill me, anyway.

Won’t it?

She didn’t know for sure, but there was a gaping hole in her chest that hinted at her being right.

Screw it!

Kelly leaped up from behind the desk and grabbed the phone. She hurled it directly at the cop.

He stumbled back, the flashlight tumbling high in the air before landing on the floor in a spin.

Round and round and round it goes, where it stops, nobody knows.

Kelly didn’t wait for it to stop. She ran and didn’t look back.

3

Soon the run became a trot, became a walk, as Kelly reached Hollywood Blvd.

She kept her head low and eyes down as she checked the pockets of her ripped jeans for a coin to use in a pay phone, but came up empty. She couldn’t remember the last time her pockets jingled. Palazzi handled the dosh.

The times when she’d bummed money or a ciggie off people were long in the past, but she’d not forgotten how skint she was growing up or who’d helped her out. Other poor bastards, she remembered. And the poor bastard she came across at the edge of the Hollywood Blvd crowd looked like just the type who might.

He sat cross-legged outside Madame Tussauds with his body hidden under three layers of tattered coats. His mouth was a black burn in the dry tumbleweed of his beard. Two eyes, as blue as Viagra pills, floated in the dirt of his face. A Coors Light beer can, sawed in half and filled with coins, rested against the side of a cardboard sign that read: BROTHER, CAN YOU SPARE A DIME?

“From the song?” Kelly said coming up next to him.

“What?” He asked the question through a gummy mouth.

“Brother, won’t you spare a dime? It’s from a song.”

He mumbled a bunch of nothing words, then spat at the pavement in front of himself.

“Listen, brother,” Kelly said, “can you spare a dime for someone else down on their luck?”

Not a dime, probably a few bucks, she thought. How much did it cost anyway to call directory assistance from a payphone? Was it even available?

The bum fixed Kelly with a stiff Viagra stare.

“Come on. I need a ride and I can’t make a call without some change. I’ll give you fifty bucks for five, how’s that sound?”

His eyes went limp and lost their colour. He snorted a laugh out through his nose.

“I swear to God I’m not lying,” Kelly said. “I’ve got plenty of money, just not on me.”

The bum hooked the Coors Light can with the ratty end of his boot and pulled it a few inches closer to him.

“Don’t you know who I am? Have you never seen my face before?” Kelly said.

Bloody Hell! If we were a couple of blocks down, I could just point up at one of the billboards for the gig and show him who I am. Was.

He scrunched his eyes near to closing. “Mary?”

“Mary? Who’s that?”

“Mary.”

“I’m not Mary. My name’s Kelly Blackheart. I’m the lead singer of The Blackheartz.”

“Yeah, sure,” he said.

“Listen, a few blocks that way, you’ll see my face all over a billboard, fifty feet wide.”

The bum looked off down the sidewalk and couldn’t find anything in the night crowds to confirm her story.

“Sod it. If you lend me enough change to make a call, I’ll come back here and I’ll drop a thousand bucks in that cup before the sun comes up. What do you say?”

He didn’t say anything, not for a long time. He stared at Kelly as though she was the one on the other side of crazy. Then he spat at the sidewalk next to her.

“Bloody Hell, mate. I’m not asking for your life savings here. Just lend me enough to make a call. Cross my—” She raised a hand over the zipped-up leather jacket and remembered there wasn’t any heart there to cross. “I swear on my bloody life, I’ll pay you back.”

He blew his cheeks out like a hungry squirrel, then let out a long, discouraging raspberry in her direction.

“Great. That’s bloody wonderful of you.”

Kelly shifted her gaze to the Coors Light can and then off into the crowds.

Must be a payphone somewhere in all the hustle and bustle, she thought. I just need some money.

An idea sprang into her mind.

“Is that Mary?” Kelly said, pointing off down the boulevard.

The bum whipped his head to the right, and Kelly kicked the can.

Dimes and quarters spilled out onto the sidewalk. If the more generous Angelenos had dropped any notes, they were long since stashed away.

Kelly bent low and scooped up a handful of coins.

The bum took a second or two before he noticed what was going on, then he lunged at Kelly.

She pulled back, but the bum wrapped a hand around her ankle and locked it down.

“Oy! Get off!”

“Money. My money.” He yanked at her leg, pulling her towards himself.

“Get off!” Kelly kicked at his head.

The bum dodged to the right.

Shit!

Kelly kicked again.

The bum dodged to the left.

She kicked a third time, putting all she had into it.

He caught her ankle in mid-air. “Money,” he said.

“Sod off.”

“Money!” He pulled at her legs like a wishbone.

“You want your money?”

“Money.” He kept pulling.

“Here. Take your bloody money.” Kelly flung the coins at him.

The bum let go and shielded his face, and Kelly scuttled backward on her arse.

The way he’d pulled at her legs should have hurt, but Kelly felt no pain.

The dead don’t feel, she thought. Must remember that.

Before her, the bum raked at the ground for the loose coins, and another idea sprang into Kelly’s mind.

She scrambled onto her feet and snatched up a fistful of coins that had rolled off the sidewalk a few feet away. She turned and shook the fist at the bum.

“Sod you. Should have shared like a good boy, shouldn’t you?”

It was a pissy thing to say, but she was in a pissy mood. Funny how being dead did that to you.

The bum wasn’t done yet, though. He stood, tossing off the outer layer of clothing. Squatting on the sidewalk had masked his true proportions, but unfurled he was as tall as a bear.

Kelly ran.

Four blocks later she turned to see the bear bum stalking through the crowds, head and scruffy shoulders above everyone else.

She watched, transfixed.

He’s like the bloody Terminator, she thought.

Yeah, what’s he going to terminate? I’m already dead.

Didn’t matter. He could still ruin any chances she had of finding her heart.

Kelly ran another two blocks, not looking back, until she found a working payphone outside a hardware store. She dropped all the dimes and quarters she had into the slot, and readied her finger over the '4' on the pad.

Then stopped.

She caught a glimpse of the bear bum pushing through the crowd on the opposite sidewalk like they were tall grass.

Bollocks.

Kelly turned her back, hoping he wouldn’t notice her, but she could feel the burn between her shoulders of being watched.

Just put in the call before he—

A car horn screamed. Then another. A voice shouted, “You maniac. Get out of the way!”

Kelly turned, slowly.

The bum walked out through traffic as if it didn’t exist, heading directly toward her.

Bollocks!

Kelly dropped the phone and ran, only looking back when she hit the next corner.

The bear bum remained closed behind, pushing through the crowds.

I’ll never shake him off like this, she thought. I’ll need a bike or a car to outrun him.

Or a taxi?

Sodding Hell! I should have hailed a taxi and rode up to Palazzi’s house. He’d have paid the fare when I arrived. No bloody need for a phone or change or—

Kelly scanned the streets as she hurried on along Hollywood Blvd.

Another two blocks down she saw herself.

A billboard spanning the top of a building announced: THE BLACKHEARTZ AT THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL. Kelly dominated the poster, with Sloth positioned to the left of her; his long hair covering his eyes and both drumsticks held out in an X. Carrie took a position on Kelly’s right; her ice blonde pixie-cut hair and flinty grey eyes giving her an elvish look.

They looked good. Alive.

They’ll get a kick out of me when I turn up dead. Especially Sloth. That’s if I can find a taxi.

Another block down she spied a Sunrise Palm Cab Co taxi parked up near the sidewalk.

At last, some luck, she thought.

Kelly checked her rear.

Her luck didn’t extend too far behind.

The bum bear hadn’t given up. He was still in the crowd pushing towards her.

Screw him.

Her luck didn’t extend in front either.

Kelly stepped in the direction of the taxi and some more bad luck came to visit. An LAPD cruiser rolled out in front of her, blocking the road.

Bollocks!

She stepped to the right, and the cruiser rolled forward, blocking her again.

Oh, great. I’ve got some bored copper who wants to mess with me. Anything else the universe wants to throw at me?

She stepped to the left.

The cruiser rolled back.

“What?” Kelly said, holding up her hands.

The universe had one last trick up its sleeve, as the cop leaned across the passenger seat, smiled at her and pointed to the white plaster on the bridge of his nose where he’d been cut by the phone that hit his face.

4

She’d only glimpsed the cop in the darkness of Powell’s Funeral Services, but she had no doubt it was the same one staring back at her from the cruiser.

He had that square jaw look to him all the young coppers seemed to have. He’d started to grow a cop moustache too, but it was little more than peach fuzz.

He pointed at her to stay where she was.

Kelly glanced behind her. The bear bum had vanished in the crowds.

Small mercy. One problem down, one to go.

“Let me see your hands,” the cop said, as he exited the car. His hand hovered over a green Taser on his belt as he approached.

Kelly considered legging it, but she knew she wouldn’t get far with a cop on her back. Besides, she’d been lucky not to be spotted by fans so far. If that happened, they’d swarm, and she’d have no chance of escaping.

Slowly, she raised her arms.

“Listen,” she said, and that was a word a cop never wanted to hear or take as advice.

“Keep ’em up,” he said as he strode towards her. He had a cop walk to match the jaw and the moustache fuzz.

I should run, Kelly thought. What’s he going to do to me? I’m dead.

How did I die anyway?

She couldn’t remember the night before. Even with the heaviest of hangovers, she’d usually have flashes of memory. But with this? Nothing.

“Turn around. Keep your hands in the air, where I can see them.”

Kelly turned, but stopped on the half step.

I’m wasting my time here. I’ve got a handful of hours to get my heart back. If I don’t, it’s an eternity of Billy Ray bloody Cyrus. What a way to spend the afterlife.

Kelly laughed.

“Put your hands up where I can see them!”

She faced him.

“You don’t get it, mate. I’ve got to get my heart back or it’s Billy Ray Cyrus. Forever.”

His face twisted with confusion.

Probably thinks I’m just another L.A. crazy, Kelly thought.

She’d seen her fair share of that madness, passing through. A bum taking a dump on a bus stop bench. Another crazy in a tutu, performing Swan Lake across the middle of an intersection. A seven-foot-tall bloke dressed like a purple dinosaur. The top half, anyway. The bottom half was bollock naked.

The cop had probably seen it all too.

Well, nearly all.

"Put your hands up in the—"

Kelly ignored the order and unzipped the leather jacket.

“Listen, mate, I don’t have time. If I don’t get my heart back it’s an eternity of country music!”

Kelly exposed the hole in her chest and let the L.A. night shine through.

The cop crouched to get a better look, but lost all his confusion as he rose back to his full height.

“Neat trick. Now put your hands back up.”

“Trick?”

“Hands. Up. I won’t tell you again.”

Kelly stared down at the bloody cavity in her chest.

Is this dickhead kidding? Can’t he see?

“Are you blind, mate?”

“Are you deaf? I said—”

“Look.” Kelly poked a finger through the hole, touching night on the other side.

“Clever. Now, hands up.” He reached for the Taser.

“Or what?” she said.

She had an idea. About 50,000 volts right through her body. But what was 50,000 volts when you were dead? She was hoping the answer to that was: nothing at all.

“This is your last warning. Put your hands in the air.”

A crowd had gathered on the sidewalk opposite. Phones were out and flashing. Then a whisper passed through them, gathering noise as it went, until one of them shouted, “Kelly! That’s Kelly Blackheart!”

The cop glanced at the crowd, then returned his attention to Kelly.

“What’s your name?” he said, his hand hovering over the Taser.

Kelly nodded at the crowd. “You heard ‘em, didn’t you?”

“You’re Kelly Blackheart?”

She nodded.

“That for a show?” He pointed at the hole in her chest.

I wish, Kelly thought. I wish a lot of things. I wish I could remember what the Hell happened last night. I wish I hadn’t drunk whatever I drank, or snorted whatever it was I snorted, or smoked whatever it was I smoked. I wish I didn’t know Heaven and Hell were real, and the Devil is…

“Yeah, for a show,” she lied.

“Neat.”

Her star had struck him. She could see that same twinkle in his eyes the fans had when they were waiting in line for an autograph.

A stroke of luck, at last. Who the Hell needed a taxi when the LAPD could give you a ride?

She zipped up her jacket. “Listen, mate. I got mugged, and they took my wallet, phone, the lot. Can you give me a lift back up to the Hills?”

“A ride?” he said, and shot a nervous glance at his cruiser. “I should call it in. What did they look like? How many attacked you?”

“Just the one,” Kelly said, the bear bum flashing into her mind. “Big as a grizzly, long beard. But he’s legged it already.”

The cop shook his head. “You can make a call and have someone pick you up from the station once we have a statement.”

“Never mind, mate. I’ll get a taxi,” she said.

“To the station?”

“No, to the Hills.”

“You said you were robbed, didn’t you? Did they take your money?”

“Yeah, they did.”

“All of it?”

“Sure, why not,” Kelly said.

“How will you pay for a cab?”

With wishes and unicorns, she thought.

“My manager will foot the bill once I’m back in the Hills. Really, you don’t need to worry about me.”

His jaw tightened. “It’s my duty, Miss Blackheart.”

Just run, she thought. What’s he going to do? Shoot me? Good luck with that.

Kelly glanced over her shoulder.

Hollywood Blvd seemed longer and narrower than any other time she’d seen it before in her life. It was a tunnel, and it didn’t seem like there was any light at its end.

“Miss Blackheart? We should go. There’ll be people who want to hear from you, I’m sure.”

“Yeah,” Kelly said, still distracted.

I could go there with him, make up some shit about the mugging, and call Palazzi. It’ll get me back to the Hills just the same.

Not as quick, though.

The cop nodded at his cruiser. “Please.”

“After you. I insist,” Kelly said.

The cop led the way and opened the rear door of the cruiser like a chauffeur.

Kelly stopped at the door and waved at the crowd on the opposite sidewalk, before ducking down and slipping onto the back seat.

Flashes flashed. A few cheers rang out, and one angry fan shouted, “Fuck the police!”

That’ll give the papers something to report about tomorrow, she thought.

KELLY BLACKHEART LIVES!

The door slammed shut, and after a few fuzzy words spoken into the radio pinned to his shoulder, the cop turned to Kelly, and spoke through the reinforced grill between them.

“Ready?” he said.

His voice sounded like a pre-recorded tape getting snagged.

“Yeah.”

“Really ready?” he said, the spool tape snapping.

“I already said I was.”

"You know, Kelly, you really shouldn’t take lifts from strangers. Didn’t anybody ever tell you that?

“What the Hel—”

The cop laughed. His smile twisted and stretched out until it touched the edges of his face. Then the whole face fell in on itself like a deflated balloon, only to pop back out again with lips newly blackened and a diamond soul patch sitting just beneath.

Quisby.

“This isn’t funny,” Kelly said.

“Oh, it’s at least a little bit funny.” He pinched the air.

“Hilarious. Are you here to help me or just laugh in my face?

“Help you? Why would I do that?”

“Because you’re bored? Because the sky is blue, and water is wet?”

“Oh, no, that would be no fun.”

Kelly kicked at the metal grill separating them. “Dick head.”

“Proud of it.”

“You won’t even give me a clue? Really?”

Quisby scratched at his soul patch. “I suppose I could give you a little hint,” he said.

Kelly leaned forward. “Go on.”

Quisby grunted. “Maybe not, though. I mean, it would suck all the fun out of it for me, wouldn’t it?”

“Like I give a rat’s arse.”

“You should. I mean, what’s the point if I’m not having any fun?”

“Who the Hell can tell? You’re the one who knows all the rules. I’m just…”

Lost as usual, Kelly thought. Like every other time I stumble into crazy. Somehow it all comes together in the end, but there’s a whole lot of beginnings and middles I never quite have any control over.

“It’ll be more fun if you don’t have any help, believe me,” Quisby said. “More of an adventure.”

“I don’t want an adventure.”

“Could have fooled me,” Quisby said. “You’re the one who asked for all this in the first place.”

“What?”

“You. You’re the one who made the deal. You’re the one who set this whole thing in motion.”

Kelly rubbed at her eyes. “What are you talking about? I didn’t make a deal.”

“You really don’t remember, do you? It’s all those drugs you’ve done. They’ve fried your short-term memory.” Quisby tapped the side of his head.

Kelly couldn’t argue. What she could remember was like a scratched DVD jumping from scene to scene.

“What deal?” she said, and kicked the metal partition again.

“Never mind. It’ll come to you, in time.” Quisby said. “For now, I think I’m feeling generous, so I will give you a clue.”

“You’re so bloody helpful.”

“I know! I’m a darling, aren’t I?”

Kelly fell back in her seat, shaking her head.

I hope I wake up in a rehab clinic. I hope this is an ‘episode’ they’ll explain away once I’m sober.

It would be a rare event, she knew. There hadn’t been more than a day in the last three years when she’d been sober. And on those days, she mostly slept and ate cheesecake.

“Go on then, give me my clue.”

“Are you sure you want it?” Quisby said, still teasing.

“Yes! Just stop messing about.”

“Are you very sure.”

Kelly kicked the metal partition.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

“If I ever get into that front seat, you’ll take a boot up your arse, you annoying bastard.”

“Language.”

“Get on with it!”

Quisby laughed. “Okay, okay. Keep your hair on. I’ll tell you, but first, make some room, will you?”

“What do you mean, make som—”

The door on Kelly’s right flew off its hinges, and the bear bum stood on the other side holding it like he’d just taken the lid off a jar.

“We’ve got a new passenger,” Quisby said, and started laughing.

5

The bear bum dove onto the backseat and wrapped his hands around Kelly’s throat.

“All aboard?” Quisby asked.

“Sod off!” Kelly shouted, as she pummelled the side of the bear bum’s face.

“I’ll take that as a yes. Next stop, clue city,” Quisby said.

The cruiser peeled away, a cloud of grey smoke puffing up behind it.

“Get off me you cun—”

The bear bum tightened his grip on her throat and censored the profanity.

Kelly closed her fists and hammered them into the sides of his temples. She brought first one knee, then the other up into his groin. She nutted him a few times, and drew blood from his nose, but the bear bum didn’t flinch.

She’d had weird drug dreams eerily like her new reality. Fighting the bear bum was like running to get nowhere in a nightmare.

“Anyone for some music?” Quisby asked. “I do find these things are helped along with accompaniment.”

“Sod off,” Kelly said.

“A little ambience. Now, let’s see what’s on offer.”

The bear bum shared a confused look between Kelly and Quisby. He shook his head, but his grip remained on Kelly’s throat.

“Let go,” she said.

The bear bum stared at his hands. He applied more pressure around Kelly’s neck, but when nothing happened, he loosened his grip.

“Quisby fished a CD out of the glove box. “Oh, no, that won’t do.”

“Let go,” Kelly said, grabbing at the bear bum’s fingers. She tried to peel them back, but they were like iron hinges on a reinforced door.

“Huh?” he said, his gaze fixed on his useless hands.

“I tell you what, these cops have bad taste. Barry Manilow?” Quisby tossed the CD and reached down to pat the floor beneath the driver’s seat. “Sometimes people drop a gem and don’t even realise it. Ever notice that? Find all kinds of things under seats and behind couches.”

“What the Hell are you going on—” Kelly said.

“Bingo! Now, let’s have you.” Quisby let go of the steering wheel as his fingers touched the edge of a cassette tape beneath the seat.

The cruiser jerked to the left, then to the right.

“Nearly got it,” Quisby said. “I can feel it. Just a little bit...further…”

The cruiser swerved across one lane and into oncoming traffic.

“Quisby!” Kelly shouted.

“Nearly there. Don’t worry. We’ll have some music soon enough.”

The night had its own music; a symphony of horns and brake screeches.

“Stop the car!” Kelly shouted.

“Got you, you little bugger,” Quisby said, as he pulled the cassette tape out from beneath the seat. “Shit. This one’s Barry Manilow too.”

He held the cassette tape up against the metal partition, but left his hands off the wheel.

“It’s not even got Copacabana on the track list.”

The car rocked and shook as it hit a divider and jumped lanes.

“What kind of Barry Manilow album doesn’t have Copacabana?” He brought the tape up to look at the back of it. “At least Bermuda Triangle is on here. I suppose beggars can’t be choosers.”

The cruiser swerved away from an oncoming 4x4 and mounted the sidewalk.

Pedestrians scattered, screaming, as the car ploughed along the sidewalk, knocking over anything not bolted down. A potted plant exploded on impact. A white plastic table flipped and landed on its feet. A rainbow-coloured parasol clung to the hood of the cruiser.

“Bugger,” Quisby said. “There’s no tape deck in this bloody car. Who has a tape and no tape deck? That’s just a waste of time.”

The cruiser hit a softer target. It flew up in the air, then hit the front windshield with a soft thud. A red stain spread across the glass.

Kelly caught the colour and the shape out of the corner of her eye.

A baby? Did we just hit a baby?

Not many babies had green skin and black pips.

A watermelon. The car had hit a stand with watermelons on it.

“Tell you what,” Quisby said, “let’s do this au naturel, shall we?”

“Stop the bloody car!” Kelly shouted.

Reality finally found the bear bum. He yanked his hands away from Kelly’s throat, and stared at the rushing madness outside.

Kelly saw her opportunity and scooted back on the seat, away from the reach of his grip.

Got to get out of here, she thought. If I jump out of the car and hit the ground right, tuck and roll, I won’t hurt my—

It can’t hurt me. I’m dead. I can’t die twice.

But I can spend eternity in Heaven listening to dull music. Got to get that heart back before it’s too late.

But where from? Who from? How?

“Why do they make these things so fiddly?” Quisby said, as his hands ran over the computer screen fixed to the dash. “There it is!”

As he spoke, the sirens started up.

“Not much of a tune, I’ll grant you, but it’s got the right beat, don’t you think?” Quisby shook his head from side to side and clicked his fingers in time to the siren’s wail.

The cruiser struck a mailbox and sent the letters flying, then bumped back into traffic.

“Catchy,” Quisby said.

“Stop the bloody car, Quisby!”

Quisby turned to stare at Kelly.

“Not your kind of tune?” he asked.

“It’s not music.”

“Everyone’s a critic,” he said, then shifted his attention to the bear bum. “What about you? You seem to be quite the discerning chap. What do you think?”

“Huh?” the bear bum said.

“Not exactly a critique, but I’ll take it. You’re right, it is lacking something.”

The cruiser bounced and jerked beneath them. A horn blew. So did a tire.

“Quisby!” Kelly shouted.

“Bother,” Quisby said.

“Get a grip!”

“Too late for that.”

“What?”

“Huh?” the bear bum said.

“Well, it’s been nice, but I must be on my way,” Quisby said.

Kelly pushed herself up on the back seat. Through the front windscreen a barrier, and the dark, lost hills of Hollywood loomed.

“What do you—”

Quisby opened his side door. “Arrivederci!” he said, then jumped.

Kelly scrambled towards the bear bum who blocked the doorless side of the car.

“Move, you daft sod,” she said, but the bear bum wouldn’t budge. “Please?”

Whatever world he was in, her voice couldn’t reach him.

“Please!” Kelly shouted, but it was too late now.

The cruiser swerved and hit the barrier, flipping over the top and plunging them all into the darkness beyond.

Air rushed by Kelly’s face. L.A. twinkled like fake stars projected onto a bedroom ceiling above her.

Falling.

Falling.

About twenty feet from the ground, Kelly came to an abrupt stop. She looked down to see her Converse dangling above the ground.

Am I floating? Is this curse or whatever it is, magic? Can it make the living dead fly?

She’d never seen that before in any of Sloth’s horror movies. A flying zombie was something new to her.

She pumped both arms and kicked her legs.

Fly!

“What a sight,” Quisby shouted. He stood below her, dusting off his jacket casually.

“I’m flying. How’d you like that?” Kelly said, flapping her hands.

“Flying, are you?” Quisby placed his hands on his hips as he looked up at Kelly. “Good for you.”

“Jealous?”

Kelly flapped. She still wasn’t gaining any height, but she wasn’t losing it either.

“Enjoying yourself?” Quisby said.

“Yeah, a ton.”

Quisby’s eyes glowed as he fixed on her. “Look up, Kelly.”

“Up?”

“Look up.”

“Why?”

“Believe me, it’ll be worth it.”

“You’re trying to trick me. I know your game.”

He shrugged. “Well, it is in my nature, but this isn’t so much a trick as a…what would you call it? A good bit of luck?”

“What are you blubbering on ab—” Kelly looked up.

Above her, a tree branch had skewered the bear bum through his chest. He hung from it limply like a rotten banana.

“Now look down,” Quisby said.

She looked down. She saw her Converse and Quisby just beyond them.

“What?” Kelly said.

“A little closer to home.”

“What the Hell are you—”

Chin on chest, she finally saw the tree branch jutting out of the hole in her chest, its tip coated red in her blood.

I wasn’t flying. Shit. I’m a bloody coat on a bloodier peg.

“Bollocks,” Kelly said.

“Impressive, really.”

Kelly tapped the tip of the branch and felt its vibration run through her.

She tapped it again.

“Are you going to play around with that all day?” Quisby asked. “It’s not a toy, you know.”

“Shut up.”

“You might want to think of getting down from there before…” Quisby stared into the darkness and off towards a sunrise that hadn’t arrived yet.

“I get it. Don’t rush me.”

“Just a suggestion.”

“How about a little help instead?” Kelly pointed towards the tree branch holding her aloft.

Quisby shrugged at her. “You want me to assist you?”

“No, no. I want you to bake me a bloody cake. What do you think?”

“I was never any good at following recipes.”

Kelly strained forward, hoping to pull herself off the branch, but her blood had greased the limb, and she slid back a few inches.

“Sod it.”

“I shouldn’t really get involved,” Quisby said.

“You’re already involved.”

“Yes, but it’s not my style.”

“Is your style being an arsehole?”

Quisby shrugged. “A lot of the time, yes.”

“Can you help me or not?”

“Can, sure.”

“Will you?”

Quisby stared off into the darkness. “I guess it won’t be any fun if you’re stuck up there all night. Not much fun for me, that is.”

“Yeah, because I’m having a bloody party up here. Come on. Hurry up and help me.”

Quisby scratched at his soul patch. “I’ll meet you half way.”

“Just help me.”

“Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll weaken the branch a bit, and you can do the rest. Then it’s not like I’m cheating.”

“Cheating? Why do you care about cheating?”

Quisby straightened his jacket. “We all have our standards.”

“You’re the Devil, aren’t you? What standards?”

“You’d be surprised.”

Kelly gritted her teeth. She strained forward, only to slip a little further back down the bloody branch.

“Surprise me by helping me, you bastard.”

“Now, Kelly, no need for that language.”

“I’ve got more. Just try me.”

“Fine, fine. I’m growing bored of watching you play piñata anyway. Here.” Quisby clicked his fingers.

Kelly felt nothing change. The branch held firm.

“Well?” she said.

“It’s done.”

Kelly gave the branch a tug, and nothing happened. “What’s done?”

“Give it a second,” Quisby said.

“For the Devil, you’re not very—”

The branch snapped.

“You were saying?” Quisby said.

Kelly didn’t say anything.

She closed her eyes as she slipped off the branch and plummeted down into the darkness.

The ground never came. Something yanked on Kelly from above, and she opened an eye.

“Now that’s entertaining,” Quisby said, and he threw in a golf clap.

Kelly opened her other eye and looked down to her chest, then up. “What’s enterta—”

A string of flesh ran up from her chest and attached to the bloodied tip of the branch above her. Kelly dangled on the end like a Yo-yo.

“Bollocks.”

Quisby clapped again. “Now that’s something you don’t see every day. Glad we made our deal now. This is getting good.”

Kelly twisted, but the fleshy Yo-yo string held.

“Shit!”

“You know,” Quisby said, stroking at his chin, “you put me in mind of a Christmas decoration.”

“Merry bloody Christmas.”

“Not the angel on top of the tree, of course. No, that wouldn’t be fitting. More one of those chocolate rabbits.”

Kelly swung her body left and right, hoping to snap the fleshy string holding her in place.

“And now you remind me of Tarzan.”

“When I get down, I’ll remind you what knuckles taste like.”

“Oh, Kelly, no need for violence.”

“We’ll see about them when I’m free.”

She twisted again, but the fleshy string held strong.

“I do have a suggestion, if you’d like to hear it,” Quisby said.

Kelly swung forwards and back again. “Not like I’m going anywhere, is it?”

“Well, I’m no tailor, but I do recall they sometimes bite the stray cotton off with their teeth.”

“What?”

Quisby chattered his teeth together. “Mange! Mange! Eat, Kelly, eat.”

“Eat?”

It took a few seconds for what he was suggesting to filter through into her brain.

“Are you kidding me?”

“Or stay up there all night. Your choice.”

“Can’t you just, you know, click your fingers and—”

Quisby laughed. “No fun in that.”

“Sod you.”

Kelly stared at the string of flesh attaching her to the tree and felt a ripple of queasiness in her stomach.

Quisby tapped at his watch. “Time’s a tickin’, Kelly.”

“I know, I know.”

That smug git isn’t going to help me. He’s having too much fun watching me squirm. Shit. Why did I make a deal with him?

When did I make a deal with the bastard?

Didn’t matter. On some lost night she’d made a deal for her soul, and that deal would go south and she’d be heading north if she didn’t find her heart by dawn.

“Sod it.” Kelly gripped the length of the flesh in both hands and pulled herself up until her lips touched skin.

“Tuck in,” Quisby shouted up.

“Piss off,” Kelly said.

She opened her mouth, closed her eyes, and bit down.

Her mouth filled with blood and flesh. It tasted of pennies and salt. She’d eaten worse backstage when The Blackheartz toured Sweden.

“Yum yum,” Quisby called out. “Take your time. Make a meal of it.”

Kelly ignored him and ground the flesh faster and faster until—

The string snapped.

She fell, and on the way down, she spied Quisby.

I’ll land on you. Let’s see how you like that!

Quisby vanished just before Kelly hit the ground. She rolled in the darkness and came to a stop sitting on her arse, with the stars circling above her head.

“Ow,” she said, out of habit, but there still wasn’t any pain.

“Quisby?” she asked the darkness. “You there?”

The darkness didn’t answer.

“Oy, bastard face? Are you there?”

Nothing.

She was on her own, and he wasn’t going to help her anyway. She’d have to help herself.

Kelly got to her feet, dusted herself off, and headed into the Hills to look for her manager.

6

At Palazzi’s house, Kelly thumbed the intercom button next to the door and stared up at the cyclops CCTV eye watching just above.

“Wake up, you slimy bastard. It’s Kelly. Wake up and answer the door!”

The eye looked on, unblinking.

“Wake up! I swear, if you don’t…screw it. Screw you!”

Kelly gave the eye a two fingers salute before she ran to the side of the house and jumped the gate.

No alarms went off. No cop cars came screeching in response.

Dumb bastard probably forgot to turn the security on after he went out, Kelly thought. Or he was too wasted.

She followed the shadows at the side of the house until she reached the rear of the property and the aftermath of the night before.

Empty bottles of Cristal floated in the pool like dead fish. A line of cigarette butt soldiers stood to attention on a poolside table, only one of their comrades fallen. A Hansel and Gretel trail of spilled pills led to a set of open sliding doors.

Kelly followed and walked through.

“Palazzi? Where are you?”

The sweet stench of pot still filled the air. More dead fish flopped on the floor at her feet. On a glass table at the centre of the room, blue pills fought white pills in a chemical version of GO.

“Palazzi?”

What if he isn’t here? Kelly thought.

Managers and vampires both lived by night, and that wasn’t the only thing they had in common.

He’s probably out at a club sucking the life out of some poor bastard, Kelly thought.

Or he’s passed out in his own vomit somewhere.

“Oy! Palazzi, you fat old bastard! Wake up!” she shouted as she walked the rooms and followed the trail of the night before.

Used condoms lay on the floor like sad little jellyfish washed up on shore. Lines of coke marked every counter. More dead fish.

Must have been some party, Kelly thought.

Partying the night I died, the bastards.

Or maybe they were commiserating?

Unlikely.

The music business only saw opportunity in death. The market for everything Kelly Blackheart would skyrocket, and Palazzi would ride that rocket for all it was worth. She wouldn’t put it past him to call Zana and ask her to take the lead, if he thought he could make a few more bucks from it.

Zana.

The name came up like bile in Kelly’s throat.

Zana had fronted the band once upon a long time ago, but the camera had called and she’d dropped the mic one hot summer night on their first tour. Kelly picked up that mic, and when the band hit big, Zana had hit back with a lawsuit.

She was a bad memory now, and Palazzi was a no show.

“Wherever you are, you fat bastard, wake up!”

Kelly reached the master bedroom and stepped inside. The party ended there.

The black satin sheets were freshly tucked at every corner on the bed. Newly fluffed pillows sat at the top. A pair of slippers waited at the side for morning feet.

“You hiding in here?” Kelly said.

The walk-in closet rustled.

“Palazzi?”

Kelly pulled the doors wide.

Palazzi hunkered down in the shade of a dozen expensive, neat suits, but he didn’t mirror that money. He wore a ratty burgundy robe, cinched at the waist with a purple dress tie.

“What are you playing at?” Kelly said.

Palazzi shivered. His eyes widened, but Kelly couldn’t be sure if it was a coke stretch or not.

“You on something?” Kelly said.

“No,” he said.

“You sure? There’s enough snow in this place for two Christmases.”

He waved her words away like cobwebs. “You—you—”

“Come on. Get up. I’ll make you a coffee and—”

He pointed at her with a shaking finger. “You died.”

“I know.”

“But—”

“You want a coffee or not? Because I could do with one. Or maybe I don’t. I’m not even sure anymore.”

“You died.”

“I’ve been through this bollocks once already tonight. I’m not going through it again. Get up and get yourself sorted. I need to ask you some questions.”

She offered him a hand.

Palazzi stared at it like it might bite.

“Don’t have time for this shite,” Kelly said, grabbing his arm and pulling him up onto his feet. “Get the pot on.”

He shuffled out from the walk-in cabinet and through the house, into the kitchen.

A cappuccino machine with more dials than a NASA spacecraft, coughed and spat to life as Palazzi turned it on.

“Big party last night?” Kelly asked.

“Yup, yeah, sorta.” Palazzi shook his head and the ponytail clinging to the back of his head did a twirl.

“Big turnout?”

“Kinda.”

“Celebrating something, were you?”

He froze, two mugs in hand.

“No.”

“I mean, what’s to celebrate?” Kelly said, shrugging. “Big party like this is usually after a signing, right? Or you know, the end of a tour.”

Palazzi turned. “You died, Kelly. You died. I saw you die.”

Kelly nodded at the house. “So, you threw a party? Nice.”

“No. No. You died. I saw you die. This is impossible.”

“I’m dead, that much we both know. And you’re saying you saw me die?”

“And seventeen thousand fans too. You died on stage, Kelly. Don’t you remember?”

Anything before Powell’s Funeral Services was a blur.

“How?” Kelly said.

He placed the two cups down on the counter, still empty. The NASA machine coughed and spluttered for attention. “You don’t remember any of it? Nothing?”

“Would I be asking if I did?”

“But—”

“Just tell me what happened.”

“You finished the last song. You went off stage. They shouted for an encore. You came back. You died.”

“How?”

He looked confused. “Heart-attack, I think. That’s what Sloth and Carrie told me later. They were with you when the paramedics arrived. I was backstage trying to sort out the mess.”

“Where are they?”

“Their hotel, I think. What does that matter?”

“I need to speak to them.”

“Speak to me. Tell me what the Hell is going on?”

Yeah, Hell was about right.

Looks like I made a deal with the Devil. In exchange for everlasting fame and a place alongside Jimi, Kurt, and Janis, I give up my soul. Only, some twat took my heart, and the Devil says I need that to make good on the bargain. If I don’t get it, it’s Heaven and a shitload of country music for eternity.

She said none of that.

“I want to know if they saw anything weird,” Kelly said.

“Weird?” Palazzi’s eyes bugged out. “You died on stage. Now you’re alive. Does it get any weirder than that?”

“Maybe. Di you notice anything strange?”

“Oh, apart from you dying on stage? Apart from that?”

“Anybody weird hanging around, I mean. Young lad in a leather jacket with long hair? A woman with him, maybe?”

She remembered the poor orderly back in Powell’s. She hoped he wasn’t dead.

“Anybody weird? Oh, I don’t know, thousands of them out front clapping. Couple hundred backstage too. Anybody weird, she asks? God help me.”

“I mean anybody who stood out? Did you notice anything odd?

He shook his head and blinked. “I can’t believe this is happening. You’re sat there like nothing happened. You realize how big of a deal this is, don’t you, Kelly?”

“You’re not answering me.”

“I’m sat here looking at Lazarus and you can’t even see it.”

“Who’s Lazarus?”

“Bible? Jesus raised him from the dead? That guy?”

Kelly shrugged. “Zombie?”

“Yes, yes, Kelly, Lazarus was a God damn zombie, and so was Jesus, too. That’s not the point. Do you realize what’s happening here?”

Kelly snorted. “You’ve found religion?”

“No. We’re sitting on a gold mine.”

“That in the Bible, is it?”

Palazzi wrote a headline with his hands in the space before his face.

“Kelly Blackheart rises from the grave!” he said.

“I was never in a grave.”

“Does it matter? It’s the headline that counts. Where were you?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Hospital? Did they revive you there?”

Kelly felt the emptiness at her centre, hidden beneath the leather jacket.

“Nope.”

“What happened?”

“I thought only the headline mattered?” she said.

“To them, yeah, but I’m curious. What happened after the ambulance took you away?”

Blackness, she thought. A whole lot of blackness, then a cold slab, some nakedness, a smiling Devil, and a big bag of bollocks since.

“Not much,” she said.

“That’s not much of an answer, either.”

“What do you care?”

“Doesn’t matter if I care, it’s what they think out there.” Palazzi pointed out through the double doors towards the lights of the city twinkling down below them. “You were on top of the mountain already, but this? This shit is a ladder to Heaven.”

“I don’t like country,” Kelly said.

“What?”

“Nothing. What are you talking about?”

Palazzi threw up his hands, and the purple tie broke around his robe, exposing the pallid flab of his body beneath. “What am I talking about? I’m talking book deals, movie rights, a God damn Netflix special, and a world tour off the back of all of it.” His eyes brightened at the thought of a future and all the money it held. “We’ll call it the Lazarus tour. Yes!”

There’d be no tours. Once she had the heart back, the only tour she’d be taking was one of Hell.

“Course, there’ll be a few skunks in the media who’ll dig deeper, so we’ll have to get everything straight.”

“Forget it,” Kelly said.

“Forget it? This is sensational. You can’t buy this kind of publicity.”

“I’ve got other things on my mind.”

“Get ’em off then. We’ve got to make sure we’re all in on this shit. Can’t let a good opportunity go to waste. And this is too good an opportunity by far.”

It would do no good to argue with Palazzi when he’d sniffed a dollar. It was like trying to get a roadie to take a shower.

“Fine, but I need to figure some stuff out first,” Kelly said.

“Like what?”

“Like was there anybody shady hanging around last night at the concert?”

Palazzi waved her concern away. "Doesn’t matter now. You’re not dead, and we’ve just stumbled onto the greatest money maker any of us will ever see in our lives. Focus, Kelly.

She couldn’t. It was a deader end than her own life.

“Later,” she said. “For now, just tell me if you remember any weirdo hanging around last night. It’s important.”

“Okay, okay,” Palazzi said, holding up his hands in surrender. “I’ll try. Just for you, Kelly.”

“Thanks.”

Palazzi poured them two cups of coffee from the NASA machine and sat. He blew the heat off the top of his.

“Let me think. Last night. I’ll go through it, step by step.”

“Do it in your head.”

“No, I have to say it out loud. It helps me remember.”

Kelly pulled her coffee forward. “Whatever,” she said.

“Okay, so I got to the Bowl just after five. I met with the techs and the stage manager. I talked with the caterers. What then?”

At that point in the day, all Kelly could remember was sleeping on the tour bus.

“Let me think,” Palazzi said, drumming his fingers on the countertop.

Kelly picked up her coffee. She blew the heat off the top, and for a moment everything felt like normal. There was no death, no waking up with a missing heart, no hanging from tree tops by her own skin.

“Oh, yes! We got a parcel at around six, addressed to you.”

Kelly pulled the hot coffee away from her lips.

“Parcel?”

“Yeah. I guessed it was a bottle of something. You know, it had that kind of oblong package, tall.”

“You gave me that package.”

“I signed for it, but I gave it to a PA to give to you.”

Kelly couldn’t remember a parcel, or a bottle inside a parcel. It was as blank to her as the rest of the night.

“You thought it was strange?” she said.

“Not really, no. You get all kinds of packages. You have a lot of fans.”

“And you don’t check them, I’m guessing? Just send a PA off with them to hand them over.”

Palazzi shook his head. “Security screens them. Nothing gets to you that might be dangerous.”

“Good to know.”

“I’m not stupid, Kelly. I don’t want my best clients getting bumped off by crazy fans.”

Yeah, can’t make money off the dead, she thought, but that wasn’t true. Dead rock stars made bank. More money than Palazzi could ever imagine, she thought.

“So why do you remember this package, if I get them all the time and it’s no big deal?” Kelly said.

“Wasn’t the package, it was the guy who delivered it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Little guy. Strange looking. One eye over here, the other just doing its own thing on the rest of his face.” Palazzi did his best Hunchback of Notre Dame impression.

“So, he looked strange, that’s it?”

“Plenty of weirdos backstage, but this guy was different. He wasn’t trying to be weird; he just couldn’t help himself. His face, the UPS uniform, everything just didn’t fit right with him.”

“What else?”

“What do you mean?”

“What else did he do?”

Palazzi shrugged. “Nothing. He just looked weird.”

“He didn’t do anything else?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Look, we’re going around in circles. Just tell me what he did.”

Palazzi drummed his fingers. “I signed for the package. He said thanks. Then he left.”

“Didn’t hang around?”

“Nope.”

“Didn’t say anything weird?”

“Nope.”

“Great.”

“What is it you’re after, Kelly? What are you trying to find out?”

She walked out from the bar and stared at the L.A. night.

The city twinkled orange and white. A city of lost angels, and lost hearts. A city where someone, she didn’t know who, had hold of her ticket out of Heaven and into Hell.

“I don’t know what I’m looking for,” Kelly said. “I just know I have to keep looking ‘til I find it.”

“That’s no help. Drink your coffee. Maybe you’ll remember what it is you’re looking for after you’ve sobered up.”

Sober? I’ve been nothing but sober since I woke up dead. I’d kill for a drink, or a hit of something, but I don’t think either would work.

Kelly trudged back to the bar and picked up her coffee.

She took a long gulp and felt nothing as it slipped down her throat, but she did feel the wetness as it spilled out of the hole in her chest and onto the underside of the leather jacket.

“Sod it,” she said, as she unzipped the jacket.

“We’ll start with the big music sites, and a few of the old rags,” Palazzi said, ignoring her. “I’ll draft up a release for tomorrow. Keep ’em guessing. Won’t announce that you’re alive, just that you’re in hospital and in a serious—”

Palazzi turned just in time to see coffee spilling out of the hole in Kelly’s chest.

“Serious,” he said, then collapsed behind the bar.

“You okay?” Kelly said, but Palazzi was out cold on the floor behind the counter.

Just what I need. A bloody half-naked, unconscious manager.

She jumped over the counter and knelt beside him.

“Palazzi. Wake up,” she said, and slapped him, then slapped him again. A third slap just made his cheek redder.

She stood and took a bottle of water out from the fridge, then watered the unconscious man, head to toe.

“Wake up you bloody fool,” she said

Nothing. No reaction. Palazzi was dead to the world.

Kelly toyed with the idea of calling one of his friends, but even after five years she didn’t really know Palazzi. Did he have any friends? A boyfriend? A girlfriend? Family?

Kelly patted his robe down and found the little black book he always carried with him. Plenty of names in there, but were any of them family and friends? She didn’t know, and wasn’t about to start random dialling. A better idea formed when she discovered the address and number of the motel where Sloth and Carrie were staying.

She pocketed the book, then lifted Palazzi onto her shoulder, making sure there was no accidental cheek contact with his junk.

“We’re going for a little ride,” she said, as she hooked a set of car keys from a holder near the front door.

Palazzi grunted.

Outside, she dumped Palazzi into the back of his Porsche convertible and slipped in behind the wheel.

Where to?” she said.

Palazzi grunted.

“Good choice,” Kelly said. “That’s where I’m heading too.”

She put the car in drive and rolled out into the lost night to find a lost heart.

7

At The Palm Way Motel even the famous could lose themselves under cover of its decay.

It was rotting, from the empty pool to the empty reception. Neglect had turned everything green at the edges.

Kelly knocked on the door of room 22.

“Sloth? Carrie?”

She tapped on the window, then pressed her face against the glass.

The room was dipped in a soft amber light. Sloth and Carrie’s slow shadows crept toward the door as they heard the knocking and came to investigate.

“Get a move on. I’ve not got all night,” Kelly said.

She glanced at the sky. The stars drowned in the heavy yellow soup of city light.

It was getting on for ten o’clock. Dawn would roll around at five. Then it would be a Country & Western eternity if she hadn’t found her heart.

“Hang on, I’m coming,” Sloth said.

She watched his hunched shadow cross before the window, and even in shadow his shaggy mane of hair was noticeable.

“Who the fuck—” he said, as he opened the door.

He stopped dead, then parted his long hair to reveal two wide, and bloodshot eyes.

“Oh, shit. I’ve overdone it,” he said.

“Hey, who is it?” Carrie called from back in the room.

“I’ve taken too much, babe. I’ve really screwed myself this time.”

“What are you talking about?” Carried said,

Sloth blinked slowly and deliberately. “I’m seeing things.”

Carrie slid up behind him and leaned on his shoulder. Her eyes matched the redness of his.

“What the Hell did you take? Did I take some too?” she said.

Kelly pushed past them both and stepped into the room. “It’s me. You’re not hallucinating.”

Sloth turned to Carrie. “This one’s more vivid than any I’ve seen before, babe.”

“I see her too,” Carrie said.

“You do?” Sloth said.

Carrie walked back into the room, slightly hunched, head cocked as she followed Kelly.

“I do. It’s Kelly’s ghost. I knew that Ouija board we did at Palazzi’s place was a bad idea. We shouldn’t have messed with it.”

Kelly gave them both the ‘you’re out-of-tune’ look. “I’m not a ghost, and I’m not a bloody hallucination.”

Sloth slowly closed the door and tip-toed over to Carrie’s side.

“A ghost, huh? Wild.”

Carrie reached out with trembling fingers to touch Kelly’s face.

“I’m not a sodding ghost. Get a grip,” Kelly said, batting away the hand.

Did you feel that?” Sloth asked Carrie.

“Yeah.”

“Can ghosts do that, babe?”

Carrie shrugged. She waved her hand in front of her face, lost in whatever trails it left behind.

“For Christ’s sake, you two. I’m not dead. And by that, I mean, I am, sort of, but—sod it!” Kelly unzipped the leather jacket and exposed the gaping hole in her chest.

“Whoa,” Sloth said.

“Yeah, whoa,” Carrie added.

Sloth stepped forward first. He held out a finger, ready to push it through the hole.

“What are you playing at?” Kelly said.

“Just wanna see…does it hurt?”

“No, but keep your hands off,” she said, then swatted away his finger.

“You’re not a ghost?” Carrie asked.

“No, not a ghost.”

“But you’re dead?”

“Yeah.”

“So, what are you then?” Sloth asked.

“Bollocksed if I know,” Kelly said.

“Zombie,” Carrie said, in a confident tone. “Definitely a zombie.”

“Could be, babe, could be.”

“I’m not a sodding zombie.”

“Do you want to eat some brains?” Carrie asked.

“No, I do not want to eat any brains. Will you two shut up for a minute. I’ve got something I need to ask you.”

“What about flesh? Are you hungry for flesh?” Sloth asked.

“For the last sodding time, I’m not a zombie. I don’t want to eat your brains, and even if I did, there wouldn’t be enough in this room to cover a crumpet. I need you to tell me what happened last night.”

Carrie looked to Sloth and Sloth looked to Carrie.

“You died,” they said in tandem.

“Oh, you think?” Kelly gestured towards the hole in her chest. “I don’t mean that. I mean after I died. What happened then?”

Sloth trudged off to the other side of the room and picked up a joint from an ashtray. He lit it and took in a massive gulp of smoke. Then he walked back over and let it all out at once.

“You don’t remember?” he said, offering the joint to Kelly.

She grabbed it without thinking and took a long drag.

“Whoa, that’s trippy,” Sloth said.

“What is?” Kelly said.

Sloth nodded, and Kelly looked down to see the pot smoke filtering out of the hole in her chest like fog from a dry ice machine.

“Tres weird,” Carrie added.

“Do it again,” Sloth said.

“Sod off. I’m not a bloody circus monkey.” She handed the joint back to Sloth. “Now, tell me what happened after I died. Everything. Don’t leave out one bit.”

Sloth took another hit from the joint and passed it to Carrie who blinked her way through two hits. Carrie spoke first, chasing a puff of smoke with her words.

“We carried you off stage. Somebody called an ambulance, and they came.”

“That’s it?” Kelly asked.

“Yeah, just like that,” Sloth said.

“Anything weird about it?”

Sloth pointed the smoking tip of the joint towards the smoking hole in Kelly’s chest. “Compared to this shit right now, nah.”

“I mean, did you notice something strange about what went down?”

Carrie squinted through the smoke. “You died. That was weird.”

“How did you know I was dead?”

“How?” Carrie seemed confused by the question.

“You dropped hard, Kelly,” Sloth said. “I mean one minute you were singing, next—boom!”

Carrie nodded. “I didn’t see you go down, but I saw you when they put you in the back of the ambulance. You’d gone all grey.”

“Yeah,” Sloth said. “You looked like dishwater. For real.”

Kelly sat down at the edge of the motel bed.

“Did you notice anybody weird hanging around when it happened?” she said.

“Nothing but weird out there last night. I mean, that’s our crowd, Kelly,” Sloth said.

“Weird is what we do,” Carrie added.

They played pass the joint a few more times until there was nothing left to pass.

“Yeah, but anybody stand out?” Kelly said.

Sloth shrugged. “Not really.”

“Nah, well, a bit, maybe.” Carrie narrowed her eyes to red slits.

Kelly leaned forward on the edge of the bed. “Who?” she asked Carrie.

“Paramedics were weird,” Carrie said.

“Yeah, that’s right, babe. Definitely off.”

“How?” Kelly asked.

They glanced at each other and communicated in that secret silent language of couples who’d been together a long time.

“Don’t want to be cruel or nothing, but one of ’em was like tiny,” Carrie said, pinching the air.

“Really small, babe.”

Kelly jumped up off the bed. “Not a little person though, right?”

“Yeah, not a little person,” Carrie said.

“Weird face too?” Kelly asked.

Carried nodded. “Tres weird. All over the place.”

Sloth gave a thumbs up.

“Where’d they go after they took me?”

Sloth’s hair fell back over his eyes. “Where?”

“Where’d they take my body?”

“You don’t know?” Sloth said.

“I don’t think she remembers. Do you, Kelly?” Carrie said.

“No, I don’t. Tell me where they took me.”

Sloth parted his hair. “Hospital, I guess.”

Carrie nodded. “Makes sense.”

“You didn’t go with them? Neither of you?”

They weren’t best friends or anything, but somehow them not travelling with her in the ambulance upset Kelly.

“Can’t do that, can you?” Sloth asked.

Carried nodded. “Don’t think you can go if you’re not family, Kelly.”

“Did either of you even bother to ask?”

They didn’t, and it was obvious from their silence.

“Thought you were in good hands,” Sloth said.

“We tried to help at first, but I couldn’t remember the song,” Carrie said.

Kelly shot her a confused glance. “Song? What song?”

Sloth was equally confused. “Yeah, what song, babe?”

“You know? The song you’re supposed to do with the…” She placed one hand on top of the other and started pumping up and down in mid-air. “There’s a song you sing to get the right tempo, but I couldn’t remember it. Just didn’t come into my head.”

“Oh yeah,” Sloth said, “the song. I think it’s Nine to Five by Dolly Parton.”

Carrie started pumping the air and humming the tune from Nine to Five.

“Nah, that’s not it,” she said.

Sloth started humming another tune under his breath. “Is it Killer Queen?”

Kelly stared at them. “Are you two dickheads about done?”

“Maybe it was Bohemian Rhapsody, not Killer Queen?” Sloth said, ignoring Kelly.

“Could be another Dolly hit, come to think of it,” Carrie said.

Kelly gritted her teeth.

“If you’re talking about the one on the telly advert from years ago, it was Staying Alive by the Bee Gees. Get it? Staying alive?”

“Staying Alive?” Sloth said.

“Staying Alive,” Carrie repeated, then prepared her hands again for some more pantomime CPR. She started humming the old Bee Gees song as she gave the compressions.

“Ha-ha,” Carrie sang in a high-pitched voice.

“Ha-ha,” Sloth continued, higher still.

“Staying alive. Staying alive,” they sang in tandem.

“Right, shut the fuck up both of you,” Kelly said. “Any more sodding Bee Gees, and I’ll throw both of you out the window. Have either of you got a clue which hospital the ambulance took me to? Any clue at all?”

They both wagged a no with their heads.

“Any clue about a place called Powell’s? A funeral home?”

Another couple of wagging heads.

“Sodding Hell,” Kelly said. She flopped back onto the bed, crossed both her arms over her head, and closed her eyes. “I’m bollocksed then.”

Carrie sat down next to her as Sloth took a seat on the bed opposite.

“What’s the matter?” Carrie said, stroking Kelly’s hand.

“Oh, nothing. Just missing a heart and…you wouldn’t believe the rest.”

“Could give us a try?” Sloth sparked up a fresh joint poking out through the curtain of his hair, like some kind of stoner Cousin IT.

“Yeah, try us.” Carrie stroked her hand again.

“It’s too crazy,” Kelly said.

“Crazier than you dying and walking in here with a hole in your chest?” Sloth said.

“That’s the problem. Someone stole my heart.”

Sloth took a long, noisy puff on the joint. “Weird,” he said, letting the word out with the smoke.

He offered the joint to Carrie, but she waved it away. “What for?” Carrie asked.

“What for?”

“Yeah. Why would someone take your heart, Kel?”

She didn’t know. What could you do with a heart once you had it? And who would even want it? A fan? Were The Blackheartz fans that weird?

“I don’t have a clue,” Kelly said, “that’s why I came here to see if you two could give me one.”

“Sorry, Kel,” Carrie said.

“If I could just find that little bloke from the ambulance. If I knew where they’d taken me after they left the Bowl. I could…”

Sloth let out another cloud of pot. “Yeah.”

“Maybe they have pictures of the paramedics at the hospital? We could check there?” Carrie said.

“Pictures?”

“Staff. On the walls. They have them in hospitals some times. And on their websites.”

“Websites?”

Carrie nodded.

Kelly sat up. “Where’s your laptop?” she asked Sloth.

“Under the bed, there,” he said.

Kelly pulled a Macbook from beneath the bed and flipped it open. “Password?”

Sloth giggled, and out came a cloud of smoke with it. “Password,” he said.

“Wonderful.” Kelly brought up Google and did a quick search for emergency rooms near to the Hollywood Bowl. “Sodding Hell, there’s dozens of them,” she said, as all the little red bubbles popped up on the screen.

“What’s the matter, Kel?” Carrie said.

“Olympia Medical Center, Providence St Joseph, Hollywood Presbyterian, Glendale Memorial, Kaiser Permanente. All of ‘em could have sent an ambulance. That’s even if it…

“What?” Carrie said.

“If it was a real ambulance. Shit. It was probably a fake.”

“May as well check anyway,” Carrie said.

“Check for what?”

“Might have pictures on one of those websites of the staff.”

“Pictures of fake paramedics from the fake ambulance are going to be on the real website of a real hospital, are they?” Kelly said.

“What if they were real?”

Kelly doubted it.

“And if they are real,” Sloth said, between puffs, “they’ll stand out a mile. Both of them.”

Kelly brought up the Olympia Medical Centre website and was busy searching for a staff section when she stopped.

“Both of them?”

“Little bloke and the woman,” Sloth said.

Kelly looked up from the laptop. “What woman?”

“The other paramedic,” Carrie said. “You’ll get a real kick out of it when you see her. Won’t she?” Carrie nodded at Sloth.

“Oh yeah. Spitting image. Had to do a double take when I saw her behind the wheel.”

“What are you two dickheads going on about? Who are you going on about?”

“The other paramedic,” Carrie said.

“Yeah, the other one.”

“What about the other one?”

Sloth pointed the smoking end of a joint at the laptop. “If they got pictures of them on there, you’ll crack up when you see her, that’s what.”

Kelly gripped the edge of the laptop’s screen. “Why will I crack up?”

Carrie started laughing.

Sloth joined in.

“She’s a dead ringer for Zana,” Sloth said.

“Zana?” Kelly said.

“Yup,” Sloth said.

“Like a twin,” Carrie added.

A key entered a lock and it clicked open in Kelly’s brain.

“You two dickheads sure it wasn’t Zana?”

The room fell into a smoggy, pot-filled silence. Sloth was the first to break it.

“Zana’s not a paramedic, Kelly,”

“No, Kel. She’s got her own studio now. Why would she be…”

They both looked at the hole in Kelly’s chest. Two more keys fit into two more locks and both opened at the same time.

“Fuck,” Sloth said, “could be her.”

“Maybe,” Carrie said.

Kelly banged the laptop lid shut.

“Dickheads. You couldn’t have told me this earlier?”

“You didn’t ask, Kel,” Carrie said.

“Yeah.”

“I asked if anything weird happened. You don’t think Zana’s exact double driving me away in an ambulance isn’t weird?”

Sloth shrugged. “Strange, yeah, but not that weird.”

“How is it not weird?”

Sloth took another hit from his joint instead of answering.

“We just thought it was funny last night, nothing else, Kel. We didn’t realize it was important.”

“You said she’s running a studio, didn’t you?” Kelly asked Carrie.

“Yeah.”

“Do you know where it is?”

“I don’t, but…” She looked at Sloth.

He parted his hair. “Yeah. She asked me to do some sessions, but I never got back to her. I think I still have her card.” He leaned off the edge of the bed and scooped his jacket up off the floor. He reached inside and took a business card out from his wallet and handed it over to Kelly.

It was black and had the name and address on the front in bright 80’s style neon writing.

ZANADU STUDIOS

1312 E 6th St, Los Angeles, CA

“Ta,” Kelly said, heading for the door.

“Where you going?” Sloth asked.

“Where do you think?”

She went.

8

All roads led to Zanadu. Maybe.

Stupid bloody name, Kelly thought as she pulled the Porsche to a stop outside.

Stupid bloody place, too. An unlit neon sign with unlit neon palm trees hung above the door. It looked more like an 80’s wine bar than a recording studio.

Typical Zana, Kelly thought. The bitch was obsessed with 80’s crap. A few weeks before she’d run off to become the next Gwyneth Paltrow, she’d tried to get the band decked out in gaudy neon crap too.

Kelly glanced into the rear of the Porsche at Palazzi. He was out cold still. No use waking him, yet.

She turned off the engine and pocketed the key, then patted the sleeping Palazzi on the head as she left.

“Keep an eye out,” she said.

The front door was a no-go. Kelly pounded on it a few times and heard the echo of her fists returning, but the back door was a different, better story.

It looked like a heavy sigh might lift it off its hinges, but Kelly didn’t have to waste a breath. The door opened as slowly as someone who didn’t want to wake from a dream, and red light spilled out from inside. Two oddly angled eyes peered at her from just above the height of the doorhandle.

The tiny man? Was this the tiny man Sloth, and Carrie, and Palazzi had mentioned?

“Oy!” she shouted, as she ran for the door. “Keep it open.”

One of the tiny man’s eyes widened in shock. The other rattled around like a stick-on googly eye.

“Oy!”

He jumped away from the door, and ran into the studio.

As slowly as the door had opened, it was slower to close. Kelly slipped through and into the red world beyond before it reached halfway shut.

Inside, the tiny man’s footsteps echoed through the empty studio as he fled, and Kelly chased them.

“Oy! I just want to talk to you. Oy! Hold up, mate.”

The corridor led into the cold castle dungeon of a recording studio, its ceilings and walls spiked with black foam. Racks of guitars hung from their necks on one of the castle walls, and on the other an assortment of silver road cases, flayed black at their edges from years of roadie torture. An emaciated microphone stood on a large Turkish rug, and on the near wall a black window looked back into the control room.

Kelly pressed her eyes up to the glass and found the room draped with soft shadows beyond.

“Whoever you are, I’m not here to hurt you, okay? I just want to talk. You hear me?”

The shadows kept their soft edges. Nothing grew in the darkness.

Bollocks. I bet he’s already made it out on the street, Kelly thought.

She chased the idea from the studio to the locked front door, and shook it a few times.

If I can’t get out, then he can’t. So, he must still be here, somewhere.

But where?

“I just want to ask you a question,” she said, walking back into the main dungeon.

The black foam on the ceiling swallowed her voice and robbed her of even an echo in response.

“I know you’re here somewhere. Just answer me, will you?”

Nothing.

She didn’t know the layout of Zanadu, or how big it stretched above and below. There could be a dozen hiding places for a tiny man and a dozen more less obvious ones on top, and all of that took time off the time she didn’t have.

“I’m not faffing about looking for you all night, mate, if that’s what you think. This isn’t Hide and Seek, you little get. Sod you, if you don’t want to talk. I’ll find out where Zana is myself.”

She gave the silence one last chance to answer, and when it stubbornly refused, Kelly stalked out of the main studio and into the control room.

“Bloody tiny men,” she mumbled to herself as she pawed through the shadows, searching for clues.

Mother Hubbard would have been right at home in the control room; the cupboards were bare, and so were the shelves, but in one of the bottom drawers, beneath a brick-a-brac assortment of plectrums, USB sticks, and used chap sticks, lay a book.

The book was skinned in black, peeling pleather, and at its heart was the faint red ghost of a sticker that she couldn’t quite make out. The forgotten logo of a forgotten band, she assumed. Inside, black spaghetti scribbles unwound on every page, until she reached the back.

First, a message, tattooed cleanly on a fresh white page.

THREE WHO DIED. THREE TO FEAST. THREE TO LIVE FOREVER.

Kelly flicked forward and found herself.

On the last page was a clipping of Kelly from the cover of Rolling Stone. A Kelly with both eyes cut out, and her smile stitched shut by a zig-zag slash.

She shivered.

“Creepy,” she mumbled.

Two more clippings flanked her on the page; an angel and devil sitting on her shoulders. John Belushi sat on the right shoulder, and River Phoenix on the left. Below them, a ransom note of letters.

EAT

“Eat? What the bloody Hell does—”

“Don’t eat.”

Kelly jumped, dropping the book to the ground as the tiny man’s wispy voice filled the booth.

“Where are you?” she asked the shadows and the dungeon beyond.

“No. Don’t eat. Bad. It’s bad. Really, really bad.”

Kelly grabbed a mic stand from next to the mixing desk. “Come out, you little creep,” she said, lancing the dark.

“Snakes,” he said. “Stay away from the snakes. No good. Bad. Really, really bad.”

Kelly felt her mind slipping.

Am I imagining this?

If it’s all in my imagination, I’ve got a bloody good one, she thought as she reached down and touched the wet edge of the fleshy opening in her chest.

Felt real.

She lifted her fingers up to her nose and sniffed.

Smelled real.

Kelly licked her blood-wettened fingertips.

Tasted real too.

But the voice?

“Snakes. Stay away from the snakes. Really, really bad.”

“I swear I’ll—”

Do what? Kill a voice inside my head? Go mad?

“Didn’t mean to. Wasn’t supposed to. Just wanted a bit of you. Just a bit. Something on the shelf.”

“Where are you?” Kelly said.

“Got to have a bit. Got to put it up there. Not real if it’s not up on the shelf. Not really really real.”

“Show yourself, you creepy git.”

“Can’t have what is, must have something close. Must have a part, if can’t have the whole. Not really really real unless I have it. Not really really real.”

It’s in my head, Kelly thought. I’m going mad, or it’s—

Quisby?

Kelly gripped the mic stand tighter.

“Get out, Quisby. I don’t need this hassle right now,” she said.

“Snakes and vipers. Too much to have and to hold. Wrong. All wrong. Really, really bad.”

“Do you hear me, Quisby? This isn’t bloody funny.”

Laughter bubbled up from below.

“Quisby, you shit! Get out of my—”

The laughter fell from above.

“You can’t break a heart and have it,” the raspy voice said. “No. Got to be all there. No use on the shelf if it’s not still in the box. Wrapping and all.”

Kelly hefted the mic stand into the air. “Right. If you don’t shut your gob right now, Quisby, I’m going to whack myself in the side of the head with this thing. You won’t be able to have any fun at all if I’m unconscious.”

The laughter rolled over her like a cold fog.

“I swear, I’ll—”

“No. No go. No eat. No snakes and no vipers. No Kelly without a heart.”

She hesitated. “What was that?”

“No car without the wheels. No night without the day. No Kelly without the heart,” the voice said, in a very sad tone. “Too late now. Too late. Snakes are out. Show must go on. It’s all really, really—”

The mouth of a roadie case burped open and slammed shut in the studio.

What the Hell?

Kelly stalked out of the control room with the mic stand cutting the air before her. She popped the lid on the gassy roadie case.

One wide eye looked up at her and one dead eye looked nowhere at all.

“You little shit!” Kelly shouted.

He held up both hands. “Please. No. I only wanted a little. Just a little. You have to believe me.”

Kelly waved the mic stand at him. “Okay, get out of there.”

“Coming. Yes. Out.” He tumbled out of the equipment case and stood before her, all three feet of him.

“Who are you?”

“Number one fan. Wanted and got. Now I have what I wished for.”

“What’s your bloody name?”

“Dee-dee. D and a D. For David Drew. Dee-dee.”

“Where’s Zana?”

His good eye looked to the spiky foam-insulated ceiling above. “Snakes. She’s with the snakes and the vipers.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Eats her fame now. Yes. But that’s really, really bad.”

“What are you going on about?”

“Zana’s hungry. Hungry and must eat. Really, really bad.”

Kelly grabbed him by the edge of his shirt. “You’re going to tell me where Zana is or I’m going to smash your face in.”

Dee-dee winced away from her. “With the vipers. She’s with the vipers now. Soon at the castle. The castle, then where the lights shine bright.”

Kelly shook him. “What does that mean?”

“Vipers then castles then lights. That’s the way it goes. That’s the way the cookie crumbles. That’s the way.”

She shook him. “That makes no sense.”

“Snakes and ladders, then castles and lights. You roll the dice, you say your prayers, and someone answers. Someone always answers if you pray hard enough.”

She dropped him. “You’re gone in the head, mate,” she said.

Dee-dee crumpled on the ground. He started sweeping things up off the rug that weren’t there, and gathering them in his arms.

“You get all the pieces and you put them together. Snakes and castles and lights. Snakes and castles and lights. Say your prayers, Kelly Blackheart. Say your prayers at night and someone always listens.”

If she’d ever said a prayer, it was so long ago she couldn’t remember.

“You’re not going to help me, are you?”

Dee-dee picked up an invisible dandelion and blew on it. He chased the spores and caught each one. “Make a wish, and it’ll come true. I swear. Snakes and castles, and lights in the morning. All wishes come true.”

Kelly wished she was Dorothy and could click her heels together.

“Is Zana coming back here?” she said.

Dee-dee shook his head violently. “Never again. No. She’s eaten her fame, and her belly will be full. Too full for here and now.”

Kelly gritted her teeth. “She’s not coming back here? You’re certain?”

“Onwards and upwards. Snakes and ladders and castles and lights. Eat your heart out.”

“That’s my problem, dickhead. I’m looking for my bloody heart and can’t seem to find the thing.”

Dee-dee wagged a yes. “Heartless Kelly Blackheart. Nothing to put on the shelf. Car without the wheels. Wheels without a car. No. Really, really, really bad.”

“You’re not going to help me, are you?”

“Castles and lights and snakes and puppy dog’s tails,” Dee-dee said.

9

With a heavy sigh, Kelly strode out to where she’d left the Porsche.

No Porsche.

“Oh, sod off!” she shouted into the sky. “Anything else? How about some thunder and lightning too?”

The sky didn’t answer. Neither did Quisby.

If that gobshite shows up right now, I’ll…I’ll…

He hadn’t appeared when she’d called him out inside Zanadu. No reason to think he was listening now.

How did you even call on the Devil, anyway?

Sloth’s shitty horror movies flashed into her mind. A collection of young girls screaming, men in masks, and blood. In amongst the noise and gore, the image of a pentagram bubbled up.

A pentagram? Was that how you did it?

Kelly ran back inside Zanadu.

If I draw a pentagram, Quisby will listen. He’ll have to, won’t he?

“Will you dance, Kelly Blackheart? Dance dance,” Dee-dee said from behind. He held an invisible partner close to his chest, closed his one good eye, and waltzed around her.

“Yeah, dance,” Kelly said as she pulled the Turkish rug back to expose the polished wood floor below.

A good enough canvas, she thought. Now all I need is a pen.

Kelly ran into the control room and rummaged through shadows already touched, then dug through the debris of drawers, and came up empty.

No pen.

No Porsche.

No heart.

It was a night of missing things.

Back in the main studio, she caught Dee-dee mid-twirl and brought him around to face her.

“Pen?” she said.

“Heartless Kelly Blackheart, always searching for something.”

“Do you know where I can find a pen, or not?”

Dee-dee giggled.

“You,” he said.

“Me what?”

“You are the ink and the nib. Nib and ink.”

“What are you—”

Dee-dee held a finger out and swirled it before Kelly’s chest.

“Ink and nib, brush and oil, and canvas too. What will you paint red, heartless Kelly Blackheart? The town?”

“Oh,” Kelly said, looking down at her chest.

She let go of Dee-dee and slowly dipped her fingers into the bloody inkwell of herself.

Now, how does it go? Five or six points in a pentagram? Does it have to be in a circle? Do I need candles to make this work? What about a spell? Do I need to know a bloody spell?

Fingers dripping with blood, Kelly crouched and painted a crude five-pointed star on the floor inside a circle, then stood back.

The symbol looked the part, at least.

Now what? Do I have to say some bollocks in Latin?

“Dance dance!” Dee-dee shouted.

“Shut up, will you?”

“Dance dance.”

“Be quiet.”

What do I say?

Kelly took a step towards the pentagram, then stopped.

Do I have to stand in the middle of it?

“Dance dance!”

“Shut up!”

Yeah, stand in the middle, then I say the magic bloody words, whatever they are.

Abracadabra? Open Sesame? Izzy wizzy let’s get busy?

Not knowing any magic words, she stepped into the middle of the bloody star and shouted, “Oy!”

Dee-dee stopped his crazed dance and gave her a chastised dog look.

“Not you,” she said.

He remained frozen in fear, staring at her.

“Forget it.” Kelly cleared her throat. “Oy! Quisby! Are you listening, you daft sod?”

Hearing Quisby’s name, Dee-dee backed towards the equipment case he’d emerged from.

“Listen,” Kelly said, addressing the ground below her, “this is bollocks. You won’t have any fun if I’m just sitting here the rest of the night twiddling my thumbs, will you?”

Nothing.

“Look. You’re the one who seems to think this is funny, so you’ll have nothing to laugh at if I just give up and sit here on my arse all night.”

Giving up sounded good, but what didn’t sound good was an eternity of whining sods in Stetsons bleating on and on about dead dogs, lost wives, and pickup trucks.

A shiver ran through Kelly.

“Oy! Quisby, you twat!”

“Can we take that one again, yah?” The voice belonged to Quisby, but had taken a detour through Chelsea and the mouth of a silver-spoon-sucker whose Daddy had bought them a recording studio.

“Sod you,” Kelly said.

“I think we need a little bit more on the low end, yah? If you can punch it up there on the next take, yah?”

Kelly squinted and saw a vague shadow moving behind the glass of the control room.

“You think this is funny?” she said.

“Oh, darling, that’s too much on the high end. We need it low for this mix, yah?”

“Stop messing about. Tell me where I need to go next.”

The microphone crackled. “Let’s get one good take in the bag, then we can do lunch, yah? I’ll send out for some sushi and a good bottle of sparkles.”

Kelly’s fists balled at her side.

“Fine. You piss about in there all night, and I’ll just sit in here doing bugger all. It’ll be fun for both of us, won’t it?”

A crackling silence followed, then Quisby broke it.

“All right then. But this isn’t a favour, remember that. I’m only helping because it’s more fun to watch you run around like a headless chicken.”

“I’m flattered.”

Quisby appeared before her.

“At your service,” he said, with a theatrical roll of his hand.

“Bollocks.”

“I know, but it’s polite to say so.”

“You, polite?”

“I try.”

“Whatever. Just stop messing about and tell me where to find my heart then—”

Quisby laughed. “What makes you think I want you to find your heart, Kelly?”

“You said you’d help me.”

Quisby took a step back. He stared at the pentagram and rubbed his chin.

“Needs work,” he said.

“Yeah. I’ll be sure to book some art courses once this is all over. Stop dawdling and help me.”

Quisby ignored her. “Of course, it’s the wrong way around. Everybody makes that mistake. They just see one of these somewhere and draw what they remember.”

Kelly shook her head. “I don’t need an art lesson. I need to know where to go next. Are you going to tell me or—”

“Circle is the key, you see. Without the circle, it doesn’t much matter, or even count. But once you draw the circle, then you either end up with two points at the top or one, and that makes all the difference.”

Kelly stared at her bloody drawing. The top point of the five-pointed star touched the circle.

She squirmed around to see the two points of the star behind her.

“Two points at the top, right?” she said.

“That’s true, yes. One point protects, two points invite the darkness into—”

Kelly turned around.

“Right. Fixed,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Now the two points are at the top from where I’m looking. Can we get on with the you giving me a bloody clue, now?”

Quisby walked the edge of the circle and found the whole sight quite amusing.

“You’re quick on your feet, Kelly.”

“We’ll see about that. Now, a clue.”

Quisby nodded. “I supposed you earned that much.”

“Finally.”

Quisby walked out before her. He shot a glance over to the equipment boxes just as one of the lids shut on it.

“I am a bit disappointed, though,” Quisby said. “I thought what Dee-dee told you would have been enough.”

Kelly fixed on the equipment case. “Him?”

“He did give you a clue or two, didn’t he?” His eyes fixed on the case where Dee-dee was hiding. “You did tell her, didn’t you?”

The case quivered.

“Dee-dee?” Quisby said in an accusing voice. “You do remember our deal, don’t you?”

The case shook again.

“And if you don’t hold your end up, you know what happens, don’t you?”

The lid of the case cracked open a bit. “Small. Stay small. Never grow up again.”

Quisby nodded like a disappointed father. “Exactly.”

Kelly looked from the tiny man to the devil, and the horror of it if fell into place.

“You did that to him?” she said.

“He did it to himself, really. Be careful what you wish for, as the saying goes.”

“He wished to be that, did he?” Kelly said.

“He got what he asked for, just not in the way he thought. It’s a monkey’s paw kind of thing.”

“What did he ask for, exactly?”

Quisby grinned. “Well, he worked around rock stars all his life, all the beautiful people, and he wanted to be the same. He called me forth and he asked to be tall and handsome.”

“Huh? He’s not tall and handsome.”

“He is tall and handsome, compared to a frog.”

“You sly bastard.”

Quisby beamed. “That’s me.”

Kelly pointed a finger at the equipment case. “He wished to be a bit gone in the head too, did he?”

“Oh, no. That was there long before I ever came on the scene.” Quisby shielded one side of his lips with a hand, and whispered, “Too much nose candy. Fried his brain a long time ago.”

“Great. That’s just great. How was he supposed to help me?” Kelly said.

“Didn’t he mention the vipers?”

“Yeah. So what?”

Quisby shook his head in faux disappointment. “You’re not much of a Poirot, are you?”

“Apart from the occasional moustache, no. What are you getting at?”

“You should have figured it out from what he told you. It’s pretty easy.”

“He didn’t tell me shit.”

“He told you everything you needed to know. You just have to put two and two together.”

“I haven’t got two of anything right now, and you’re just making it worse. Give me a clue, for God’s sake.”

“Blue,” he said.

“Blue?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of bloody clue is that?”

Quisby shrugged. “A good one if you were paying attention.”

Kelly sighed. “You’re not going to help me, are you?”

“I am helping you. You just can’t seem to see it yet.”

“No, you’re not! Just tell me where Zana is. You do know where she is, don’t you?”

Quisby inspected his long fingers. “I do,” he said.

“Well, why don’t you just tell me? You can get all the fun you want after I know where I’m going.”

“Oh, but, Kelly, there’s plenty of fun to be had in watching you try to figure out what’s happening right here, right now. Don’t you see?”

Kelly imagined smashing in his face with her clenched fists. It would be nice to wipe the smug grin off the Devil’s face, but she’d settle for painting his face red.

“I see you’re a right bastard, that’s what I see.”

“True. True. So, no need to be surprised I won’t just come out and give you what you want, right?”

He was right, and Kelly hated to admit it.

“Blue?” she said.

“Blue.”

“Blue what?”

“That’s for you to figure out. Put all the clues together and you’ll soon have your answer.”

Blue added to everything Dee-dee had told her wasn’t much of anything at all. Vipers, dancing, and blue. It made absolutely no sense.

“Blue snakes?” she said, hoping it would stir something up by saying the words.

“Not really,” Quisby said.

“Blue dancing?”

“Nope.”

“You won’t give me anything else?”

“It’s plenty enough if you think about it a little.”

Kelly’s head hurt from trying to find something in the stupid list of words. Puzzles confused her, TV quiz shows left her angry, and pub quiz nights were a recipe for violence. She could just about handle Columbo, and that was only because she knew ‘whodunit’ from the beginning.

“Vipers, dancing, blue. Vipers, dancing, blue,” she said, repeating the words like they would make more sense if only she said them enough times.

“Yes,” Quisby said.

“Bugger it. I don’t know anything about snakes, or dancing, or whatever the bloody hell blue is supposed to mean. What are you getting at? She’s gone to some blue place where there’s dancing, that it? Is it a club?”

“Ooh, getting warmer,” Quisby said, his voice teasing.

“I am?”

“Warmish.”

“How warm.”

“Like a sock you wore a half hour ago, that warm.”

“Some help you are.”

Quisby laughed. “I know. It’s wonderful, isn’t it?”

“A blue club where they dance,” Kelly said. “A blue club where they dance…”

She couldn’t think of any club in L.A. with blue in the title. Not off the top of her head.

“A club with blue in its name?”

“Okay, it’s not a club,” Quisby said.

“It’s not?”

“Nope.”

“You decided to help me now, did you?”

“Nope.”

“Then why tell me it’s not a club?”

“Because I’m getting bored, and you’re getting closer. Hurry up.”

Kelly glared at him, then bit at her lip as she thought it over.

Not a club, but it’s blue something? A blue something where they dance?

“I can’t think of a bloody thing,” she said.

“Come now, Kelly. You were on the right track there. Think about the vipers.”

She tried to think, but nothing happened. Her head was empty of snakes.

“Vipers? I don’t get it.”

“How about one?”

“One?”

“Just one snake.”

It didn’t help at all. What was the difference between one snake and a group of them? What did it even mean?

Unless it meant nothing at all.

“Are you pulling my leg again? Is that what you’re doing, you sick twat?”

Quisby pinched an inch of the air. “Only a little.”

“Bastard.”

“Yep.”

“One snake, blue, not dancing. Oh, this is bloody useless!” She threw her hands into the air.

“Okay, you might be right. Zana isn’t at the snake place anyway, now.”

Kelly shook with rage. “You what?”

“She’s gone to the other place.”

“What other place?”

“The blue place.”

“What about the snakes, and the vipers? I thought you said—”

Quisby held up a finger for silence. “Brothers,” he said.

“What?”

“That’s your clue.”

“That’s a clue, is it?”

“That’s it. That’s all I can give you, or it wouldn’t be fun. You’ve had just about enough out of me.”

“But—”

“Brothers. There. If you don’t get it from that, then you deserve all the Country & Western music coming your way.”

“But—”

“See you later, Kelly.”

“Bu—”

Quisby snapped his fingers and was gone.

“Bastard!” Kelly shouted at the top of her lungs.

Vipers, blue, dancing, brothers? How did any of that bullshit connect and point in Zana’s direction?

Maybe it was never meant to? Just another way to keep the headless chicken running around in circles.

Kelly sat down on the floor, head in her hands.

It’s over, she thought. Welcome to an eternity of Stetsons and shitty music.

“Bollocks,” she said, under her voice.

Vipers, dancing, brothers, blue. The jumble of words still made no sense to her.

She slammed the floor with a fist. “Bastard!”

Dee-dee’s mumbling voice bounced around inside the equipment case.

“What are you going on about?” Kelly said.

More mumbling.

“Open the bloody lid if you want to say something.”

The lid of the equipment case opened a crack.

“Wrong,” Dee-dee said.

“What’s wrong?”

“Order.”

“What?”

“Back to front. Turn them around. Back to front.”

“What are?”

“Brothers blue.”

“Huh?”

“Turn them around. Back to front.”

“Brothers blue? I don’t…”

It took a moment.

“Blues brothers!” Kelly shouted.

The equipment case rattled with excitement.

“Dance dance,” Dee-dee said.

“Blues Brothers. Bloody hell.”

Everything clicked into place. Well, almost everything.

10

Only one place Kelly knew in L.A. where a Blues Brother would be, or had been, and that was where that Blues Brother died: Chateau Marmont.

Why Zana had picked the place was a whole other mystery. John Belushi had died there in 1981, but what he and the whole mess of a night had in common, Kelly wasn’t sure of yet.

“Big,” Dee-dee said as they tumbled out of a cab in front of the famous hotel.

“Real big.”

The Marmont rose before them like Dracula’s castle, turrets and all, but Kelly’s attention soon skipped away from the hotel to the cars parked up outside.

One car. Palazzi’s Porsche convertible rested at the curb.

Kelly walked over and ran a hand over the bonnet. Still warm.

What’s your angle, Palazzi? Kelly thought. Where are you?

Kelly found out a moment later as Palazzi crashed through a window on the third floor.

She turned, hands over her face, as Palazzi and glass rained down from above.

A soft thud followed, and Kelly turned to see Palazzi sat in the passenger seat of the Porsche.

“Fuck me,” she said.

Drunk with shock, Palazzi wiped shards of glass out of his hair like bits of confetti. It took him a blinking minute to focus in on Kelly and Dee-dee.

“Oh, you’re here.”

“You okay?” Kelly said.

Palazzi looked himself over as if he was searching for a mustard stain.

“Seem to be.”

“You sure?”

Palazzi ignored her. “My fault,” he said. “Should have known not to trust a crazy bitch like her. Should have known.”

“Zana?”

“I’ve had some real weird clients on my books, boy have I. And they’ve asked me to do all kinds of strange shit, but this? Ooh-wee.”

“Hey, Palazzi!” Kelly said, waving a hand in front of his face. “Where’s Zana?”

“I had one guy who wanted me to buy him a damned tiger so he could ride that fucker around his mansion. Real crazy. But a heart? Who wants you to bring them a heart?”

Kelly grabbed Palazzi by his shirt collar and shook him until his eyes rattled about in his head like a doll.

“My heart? Are you talking about my heart?”

“Shit. I just thought she was going to burn it. How could I have known she’d go full nutso on me? I mean, you don’t expect that shit, do you?”

Kelly rattled him again.

“Where’s Zana? Does she have my heart, or what?”

“I remember all that heavy metal bullshit back in the 80’s with the satanic rituals, but I never thought it was real. Not in a million God-damn years. Oooh-wee!”

Kelly slapped him hard enough to make him cross-eyed.

“Zana? Where is she?”

Palazzi glanced to the broken window he’d just come through.

“What’s the room number?” Kelly said.

“Don’t go in there.”

“Room number.”

“Thirty-three, but I’m serious, don’t go in there. She’s gone nutso.”

Kelly let him drop back into the seat.

“Look after him, will you?” she said to Dee-dee.

The tiny man saluted, then jumped into the driver’s seat next to Palazzi.

“Kelly’s going dancing! Dance-dance-dance,” he said.

“Yeah, dancing,” Kelly said as she stared at the broken window. More of a stomp, though, she reckoned.

Kelly pressed her ear against the door of room 33 and heard muffled chanting. The words weren’t distinct, but the voice was.

Zana.

The stupid valley girl tone, even wrapped around a weird chant, was clear enough.

What’s she doing in there?

Going nutso, if Palazzi is right. Going nutso with my heart.

Kelly banged on the door. “Oy! Zana!”

The chant stopped.

“I know you’re in there. Open up,” Kelly said, then hit the door a few more times.

Nothing.

Kelly pressed her ear against the door.

“I know you’re in—"

A carving knife splintered the wood and burst through, piercing Kelly’s left earlobe.

Kelly grabbed at her bleeding ear as she jumped away from the door.

“Bitch,” she said. “I’ll get you for that.”

Zana laughed.

Kelly kicked the door. “Open up, you dozy tart!”

Zana laughed harder.

Kelly searched the hall for a weapon and saw a fire extinguisher hanging on the wall.

She strode over and yanked it down.

The instructions on the side were clear enough, but Kelly didn’t want to put out a fire. She flipped the extinguisher around and slammed it hard into the door handle of room 33.

The handle dropped off as if held on by sticky tape, and Kelly launched a boot at the door, but it didn’t budge.

“Sod it,” she said.

Zana laughed again.

“You won’t be laughing soon, you bitch,” Kelly said as she slammed the fire extinguisher into the side of the door near the hinges.

Once.

Twice.

Splinters of wood flew off, but the door remained intact.

Zana’s laughing grew.

Kelly lifted the extinguisher high and slammed it as hard as she could into the side of the door near the hinges.

The door still wouldn’t budge

“Sod it,” she said, through clenched teeth.

She tossed the extinguisher aside and crouched before the door. Through the hole where the handle used to be, she saw the room. Blood-daubed symbols adorned the walls. On the tile beneath the torn carpet, a bloody pentagram marked the floor, red candles burning at all five of its corners. Under their flickering light, a centrepiece was revealed.

A heart.

Kelly’s heart.

She watched as Zana stood at the edge of the circle, both her arms raised, chanting.

The candle lights flickered on and off in rhythm with Zana’s chants. The heart pulsed, following the tempo.

“Fuck,” Kelly said, as impressed as she was shocked.

The heart jumped up from the floor and stopped mid-air.

“Fuck.”

Palazzi was right. It was nutso.

Not for much longer.

Kelly grabbed the extinguisher from the floor. She fed the hose through the hole in the door and pulled the ring pin out, then clamped down on the lever.

A cloudy jet of foam covered the room, snuffing out the candles.

“Take it, bitch!” Kelly said.

“I’ll kill you!” Zana roared.

“Try it, you dozy cow!”

A silence as thick as fire-retardant foam followed.

“Give up?” Kelly shouted.

The foam thickened.

“Want some more?”

Kelly waggled the hose until it gave a last sputter.

“Do you hear me, bitch?” Kelly said.

Silence.

Kelly pressed an eye to the keyhole just in time to see Zana’s boot fly at her from the other side.

She dove and landed a few feet away as the door crashed to the ground in the hall.

Zana emerged from the room cradling the heart under her arm like an American football player would a ball. Only this ball was a beating bloody mess.

They stared at each other like two rams about to lock horns.

“Give that back. It’s mine,” Kelly said nodding at the heart.

“Screw you, Kel.”

“Don’t call me Kel.”

“Kel. Kel. Kel. Kel.”

Kelly’s fists balled.

“I’m going to make you eat those bloody words.”

“I’ll eat, but not words.” Zana looked at the heart and licked her lips.

“What’s that supposed to—”

Before the question finished, Zana broke into a run, head low, and rammed into Kelly’s chest.

The impact flung Kelly ten feet across the hallway.

Dazed, she picked herself up.

“How’d did you do that?” she said.

Zana hunkered down, clutching the heart tighter.

Go on, Kelly thought. Make your move. I know this dance. I know it off by heart. When I had a heart.

She’d danced this dance in a thousand mosh-pits. She’d had her nose bloodied and bloodied a thousand noses in return. One more wouldn’t hurt. Literally.

“Well?” Kelly said.

Zana rushed forward.

Kelly matched her speed.

Just before they collided, Kelly spun to the right and started windmilling her arms.

LOST and HOPE connected with the back of Zana’s skull and sent her crashing into, and through the nearest wall.

Kelly paused to stare at her fists.

Shit. Maybe we’re both superheroes now or something? she thought.

The wall crumbled and framed Zana in a room where an older gent and his younger companion stared at the strange interloper laying across the foot of their bed.

“Excuse me?” the old gent said, as though asking someone to move their luggage.

Kelly rushed through the hole in the wall and yanked Zana off the bed by her hair. She twisted the woman around until they were face to face, then drove a fistful of HOPE into Zana’s nose.

Bones crunched. Blood splattered over the letters on Kelly’s knuckles, and HOPE sank beneath the spill.

Before Zana could make another move, Kelly hit her with a handful of LOST.

The nose broke in a different direction, taking a lean to the right. Not as much blood to spill this time, but enough to cover the letters again. Where HOPE was lost, LOST was also.

Kelly dragged Zana out of the room and back towards room 33.

“You’re gonna’ tell me what’s going on. You’re gonna’ tell me what you were doing with my bloody heart, you crazy bitch,” she said.

As they reached the room, Zana snorted a laugh that splattered Kelly’s face in crimson.

“What’s so funny?”

Zana splattered Kelly with another laugh.

Kelly held up a bloodied fist before Zana’s face.

“Want some more, do you?” she said. “If you don’t tell me—”

Zana’s eyes flashed red as a hangover.

“Too late,” she said.

“What is?”

She stared a hole through Kelly’s head and out the back.

“It’s over.”

“I swear—”

Zana tipped her head back and the laughter consumed her. When her head dropped back, she had words.

“You always thought you were the big star, didn’t you, Kel? Top of the mountain. Golden girl.”

“You’re barmy.”

“Everybody loved Kelly Blackheart. Couldn’t set a foot wrong, could you? Golden girl on top of the mountain.”

Kelly yanked Zana into the room.

“Shut up,” she said.

“Don’t like the truth, do you, Kel?”

Kelly’s fist clenched around Zana’s hair.

“Shut up.”

“You were never any good. You know that? Your voice is terrible, but you were pretty enough, and that’s all that matters, right?”

Kelly pulled Zana towards the pentagram.

Is she right? All the fame and fortune, is it because of how I look?

“If you’d looked like me, Kel, you wouldn’t have stood a chance. You were always one blonde dye away from being a pop star, Princess Kelly.”

Kelly yanked Zana around and launched a fist into what was left of Zana’s nose.

In a blink, Zana stood aside, and the fist met air.

“Too late, Princess Kelly,” Zana said.

“Hold still!” Kelly launched an upper cut, but Zana was gone before fist could meet chin.

Kelly turned to see Zana running toward the smashed window where Palazzi had exited earlier.

“It’s over, Kel. You’re too late,” Zana said as she reached the window, and looked back. “I’ll have everything. Everything, and you’ll be nothing!”

Zana dove out the window.

“What the—”

Kelly ran to the window and stuck her head out into the night. Below, Zana ran across the forecourt of the Chateau Marmont towards the line of cars parked at the curb.

One car.

Zana jumped into the passenger seat of Palazzi’s convertible. She slapped him over the back of the head a few times and shouted at him to drive.

Bollocks!

Kelly stared at the distance from the window to the ground below. One part of her brain told her it was impossible to land safely. The other part reminded her she was dead with a hole in her chest you could see the night through.

Kelly took a few steps back, then rushed forward and dove through the window.

The side of an awning pole grabbed her before she hit the ground. She pinwheeled twice before it lost its grasp and she dropped.

Kelly slammed into the concrete with both feet and a crack rang out like a dead limb snapping off a tree.

She looked down.

A shard of bone jutted out of the flesh just above her ankle.

No pain, but a wet sock of blood covered the foot. Her stomach, not quite up to par with the rest of the crazy night, flipped and threatened to empty itself.

“Bollocks!” Kelly shouted, but Zana’s voice diverted her stare.

“Drive! Drive!” she shouted.

In the Porsche, Palazzi sat like a mannequin behind the wheel.

“Drive, I said. Hurry up!”

He couldn’t move.

Kelly hobbled towards them.

“If you don’t get this car moving, I’ll—” Zana said.

Palazzi snapped out of his trance. The car growled as he put it in drive and dropped his foot on the gas.

“Go! Go!” Zana shouted.

Kelly hopped, skipped, and jumped, just as the Porsche peeled away from the curb.

11

Kelly’s fingers found the edge of the door, then slipped off. She lashed out with her other hand, and this time clamped onto the edge of the passenger side door.

Zana caught Kelly’s eye, then she slowly reached for the steering wheel under Palazzi’s hands. Smiling, she jerked the wheel hard to the right.

The Porsche zig-zagged across the road, and Kelly felt her fingers slipping again.

Kelly dug her nails in and pulled herself up over the edge of the door like a rock climber reaching the shelf of a mountain.

From the cramped back seat of the Porsche, Dee-dee raised his head out of the shadows.

“You coming?” he said.

The car swerved wildly across both lanes, but Kelly pulled herself up the last of the way and toppled into the back seat.

“Coming, yes,” Dee-dee said, happy.

Kelly un-pretzeled herself and spied her heart. It sat in Zana’s lap like a sleeping Chihuahua.

She lunged for it.

Zana yanked the wheel hard right and sent Kelly flying across the rear seat.

“That’s mine! Give it back.” Kelly lunged for the heart again, and her fingers brushed the sleeping dog. It felt warm and impossibly moist at the same time. It was familiar and yet alien. Like a Halloween game where you blindfolded yourself and dipped your hands into bowls of eyeball eggs and intestine pasta.

“May-maybe we can work something out?” Palazzi said, stuttering his way into the middle of the mess. “A-a deal? Every-everybody wins.”

Zana shot him down with a glance.

“No deal then. I was-was just thinking out loud, that’s all.”

Kelly brought both her booted feet up in line with the back of Zana’s head.

“Hey! Bitch!” she shouted.

Zana turned and Kelly launched both feet into her face.

What should have happened was a lot of crunching of bones and plenty of blood.

No crunching. No Blood.

Kelly’s feet bounced off Zana like the woman was rock.

“Loser. You can’t hurt me. I have the power now,” Zana said.

“What are you? Bloody He-Man?”

“I’m a winner, and you’re the loser.”

“We’ll see,” Kelly said.

Boots weren’t going to work, but maybe a lie would. Years of backstage bullshit with PR people had taught Kelly a trick or two.

“Fine, you win,” Kelly said, throwing in a defeated shrug.

“I know I do. Say it again. I want to hear it again, Kel,” Zana said.

Through gritted teeth, Kelly uttered the bitter words, “You win.”

“Music to my ears, and better than any of the music you made too.”

LOST and HOPE burned on Kelly’s knuckles.

“What now?” Kelly said.

“Now?” Zana laughed. “Now you fade into obscurity. Now you’re the one who’s forgotten, and I’m the one who’s remembered, Kel.”

Palazzi craned his head around. “You Know, there’s a way we can all make bank from this if we just—”

“Car!” Zana shouted at him.

Palazzi jerked around and turned the wheel just before the Porsche hit an oncoming SUV.

“Oooh-wee! Close call,” he said.

“Remembered?” Kelly said.

“Of course, Kel! Why else would I do all this?”

“Money?”

“Useless,” Zana said. “Totally useless. It’s the fame, Kel. The fame. Everybody wants it, and I’m going to have it. You know how?”

“I guess you’re going to tell me.”

Zana reached between her legs and brought the beating heart up in front of her face.

“I’m going to take what’s yours and with just a little help from—”

Kelly saw her chance. She snatched the heart from Zana and dropped back.

“Mine!” Zana shouted, as she threw herself over the seat and onto Kelly.

One of Zana’s feet clipped Palazzi in the back of the head. His body went limp as he blacked out for a second and lost control of the car, sending it crashing onto the sidewalk.

Zana tore at Kelly’s wrists, trying to pry her hands away from the beating heart.

Kelly twisted, and brought both feet up into Zana’s stomach, then pushed.

Zana toppled backwards into the passenger seat, kicking, and Kelly saw her chance.

She clambered over the rear of the convertible, and readied herself to drop.

Just like falling off a bicycle, you never forgot, she thought.

One.

Two.

Three!

Kelly closed her eyes and jumped, expecting the hard road to kiss her face, but just then the car hit a mail box and bumped back onto the road.

Kelly tumbled into the rear seat of the convertible, a snowfall of letters on top of her.

“Bollocks!” she shouted.

“Hello,” Dee-dee said, waving at her.

Kelly twisted and turned, trying to get herself back into the seat.

“Coming?” Dee-dee asked.

“Going,” Kelly said, as she swung both legs around and sat up.

So did Zana, righting herself in the passenger seat.

They locked eyes.

“You won’t do that again, bitch,” Zana said.

“Sod you.” Kelly jumped onto the rear of the Porsche again. She tumbled forward and readied herself for body to meet road.

Nothing.

She wasn’t moving. Something had a hold of her. Some one.

Zana!

“For fuck’s sake!” Kelly shook her leg like a dog fresh from pissing. “Let go!”

“Give me the heart and I will,” Zana said.

“It’s mine,” Kelly said, shaking her leg again.

“Not anymore it ain’t, Kel. I bought it fair and square.”

“Off that little toad?” Kelly said, eyeing Palazzi.

The agent blinked himself out of the blackness he’d fallen into.

“Someone say my name?” he asked.

“You weren’t using it, Kel. You were dead. So, it’s mine now. I paid for it. I’m the one who’ll put it to good use.”

“You can’t buy a heart, you crazy bitch.”

“I did.”

“No, no you didn’t. You paid someone to steal it, that’s what you did.”

“Nu-hu!”

“Shit!” Palazzi said, as he fully came to and grabbed the steering wheel.

The Porsche bumped off the sidewalk and back onto the road.

“You can’t win, Kel. I’m going to get what’s mine. I’m going to get what you took from me.”

“I didn’t take shit from you.”

“Sure! You weren’t the one who had me kicked out of the band, right? You’re all heart!”

I’m not, Kelly thought. I’ve got a bloody big hole in my chest and—

A picture flashed into Kelly’s mind of the children’s board game OPERATION! In the game, the contestants lowered plastic organs into the cartoon body of a man with a set of metal tweezers, hoping not to touch the sides and set of an electric buzzer.

Kelly gripped her heart and rammed it down as hard as she could into the hole in her chest.

It wasn’t a kid’s game now, but the shock was the same as she touched the sides. It ran through her whole body and ended in Zana’s closed fist.

“What was that?” Zana said, shaking her hand like it was on fire.

Kelly sat up. She looked down at her chest.

Her heart ticked from side to side, suspended inside the cavity like a pendulum in a grandfather clock.

Am I done? I have the heart back, so I’m all good for getting into Hell now, right? Where’s Quisby? Do I have to call him? Do I have to do another stupid fucking routine like the one back at the recording studio?

“Pull over!” An authoritarian voice shouted from the LAPD cruiser that rode up alongside the Porsche.

Kelly glanced to the officer behind the wheel just as his face slipped off like melted wax and Quisby’s face replaced it.

“Or don’t,” Quisby said over the speaker. “It’s much more fun watching this mess if you don’t, to be honest. A car crash is always entertaining, I find.”

Now both Kelly and Zana’s eyes found the demon driving the car.

“Hello, ladies,” Quisby said, waving at them. “Having a good evening, are we?”

Kelly pointed at the precarious heart lodged in her chest. “I’m done!” she shouted. “Snap your fingers or whatever and end this.”

Quisby tutted. “Nowhere near done, my dear Kelly. That’s not the deal we made.”

“All I know is I woke up and you were there! I can’t remember shit about a deal, or anything before that.”

Quisby nodded towards Zana. “She does.”

“She does?” Kelly said, throwing an accusatory glance at Zana.

“I’m not a god-damn washout like you, Kel. Of course I know.”

“Somebody going to tell me, or what?” Kelly said.

Quisby leaned back in his police officer’s body, and for a second the confused officer popped out, then popped back in again.

“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt. Nothing does though, when you’re dead. That’s one of the perks of death. You don’t feel so bad.”

Kelly glanced at her ravaged and bloody body, at the heart beating impossibly within her chest.

“Tell me about it,” she said.

“I will.” Quisby jerked forward in the seat. “Okay, then. I suppose you’ve earned yourself an explanation. Stop the car and—”

Too late.

Palazzi shouted, “Truck!”, and jerked the wheel hard right to avoid an ice cream truck parked at the curb.

He couldn’t avoid mounting the sidewalk, or the building the convertible bounced off. He couldn’t avoid losing his grip, or the convertible turning and heading directly for the ice cream truck he’d tried to avoid in the first place.

The convertible struck the back end of the ice cream truck and opened it up like a fresh tub of Haagen Daass. The contents of the van spilled out, as the contents of the convertible were thrown up high into the air.

The world passed in slow motion before Kelly’s eyes.

The heart fell from her chest. She grabbed for it and missed.

Palazzi passed beneath her; his face white with shock and ice-cream. Then Dee-dee followed, his face beaming with delight. He shouted, “Weeee!”

Then she was falling. Falling to the hard ground and nothing between her and the grey concrete below.

Well, there was something.

Her heart.

Kelly tried to twist and turn, and stop the momentum before she landed on the heart and destroyed it.

No luck. She was going to crush it, and that would be the end of it all.

Kelly closed her eyes.

She hit the ground with a hard, dry thud. No squish to it.

She rolled over, opened her eyes, then felt beneath her for a wet spot where a heart used to be.

No wet spot.

No heart.

Kelly pulled herself up onto her knees and patted the ground. She checked to the sides, to see if it had rolled under any of the cars like a lost penny.

No sign of it.

So, where the bloody Hell was—

“Ooh, tough break there, Kel,” Quisby said, as he pulled the police cruiser up beside her.

Kelly scanned the ground again, ignoring him.

There was no sight of the heart where it was just moments before she landed. It was as if it had vanished into thin air.

Kelly shot an accusing look at Quisby. “Did you get rid of it, huh?”

Quisby placed a hand on his chest in mock shock. “Moi? Why, that wouldn’t be sporting, would it?”

“Did you, or didn’t you?”

“Swear to—” Quisby crossed himself over the chest, then sent both eyes up towards the heavens. “Him. Swear to Him that I didn’t.”

“Bollocks.”

Quisby let an arm dangle out of the cruiser’s window and drummed his fingers over the Protect and Serve logo. “Looking like a Country and Western eternity for you, Kel.”

“Fuck you.”

Kelly searched her surroundings again for any sign of the heart.

The smashed-up ice-cream van had made a white mess of the convertible and under all that was a curly whip of a man sat on the sidewalk.

Palazzi.

He wiped the whip from his eyes, and removed a few wafers from the top of his head.

“Ooh-weee,” he said.

Kelly got onto her feet and stalked over to him.

“Did you see where my heart went?” she asked him.

He wiped some more whip from his face. “I didn’t see shit. My eyes are full of ice-cream.”

“This is your fault,” she said.

“Why?” he said.

She crouched before him. “Because, you sold my heart to that crazy bitch.”

Palazzi hung his head, but whatever shame had put the weight on him was gone in an instant.

“That’s my job,” he said.

“Your job is to be a sick slimeball, is it?”

He shrugged and a wafer fell to the ground. “Hey, I see an angle, I play it. You were dead, she said she’d take your place if I got the heart. We made a deal. That’s all. I didn’t know she was crazy.”

“You didn’t know the woman who bought my heart from you was crazy? That’s what you’re telling me?”

“Sure, I thought it was weird. But the crazy only came later, you got to believe me, Kelly. She never said nothing about the cannibal thing.”

“Weird? Are you out of your—wait, what? What cannibal thing?”

“The cannibal thing. Ooh-wee. Now that’s padded room and straightjacket kind of crazy, I’ll give you that.”

Kelly grabbed him by his creamy shoulders and shook some of the whip off him.

“What the fuck are you talking about, Palazzi? What cannibal thing?”

He looked at her like she was the crazy one.

“You know, eating the heart. The whole night tour thing. The Viper Rooms, The Marmont, the Bowl. The whole deal.”

“Viper Rooms?” She shook some more whip off him. “What are you talking about?”

“Zana. The whole thing, the ritual. She ate a bit of the heart out there where River Phoenix died, then ate a little bit more at the Marmont, then she eats the whole thing at the Bowl. That’s the thing. The whole thing.”

Kelly tried to blink something real back into her life.

“Are you kidding me?”

He tried to cross his heart, but only managed to wipe off some more whip onto his fingers. “Swear to God I’m—"

Kelly dropped him to the ground and stalked back to Quisby and the cop car.

“She’s going to eat my heart?”

Quisby licked his lips. “Delicious, isn’t it?”

“She’s got it, right? She’s got my heart. That’s why I couldn’t find it, because that bitch took it?”

He winked and gave her a trigger finger. “Bingo!”

“And she’s going to the Bowl to…to…”

“Go on, nearly there, Kelly. Nearly there.”

It slotted into place.

River Phoenix died on the street outside the Viper Rooms. John Belushi at the Mormont. And Kelly Blackheart…

“Fuck!” Kelly said.

“Yep.”

“I still have time, don’t I?”

Quisby checked his watch. “An hour or two, give or take.”

“Fuck.”

“Yep.”

“How about a ride to the Bowl then?” Kelly said.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do…” Quisby said.

His body jerked, and the cop he’d controlled came back confused and angry.

Somewhere in the lost L.A. night, Quisby laughed.

12

Kelly flashed the cop the hole in her chest, and when he lost his words, she stuffed his face full of HOPE.

"Soz, mate," she said, as she dragged the unconscious copper out of the car and jumped in behind the wheel.

Black rubber painted the floor and a grey smog of tire clouds kicked up as she took off in the direction of the Hollywood Bowl. L.A. rushed by her like the blur at the edge of a good trip.

Soon the blur ended and the fires began.

Bright orange flames licked at the roof of the Bowl and spat down, lighting the decorative tiki torches hemming the stage below. Palm trees mimicked their tiny cousins and lit up in the hills above. At the centre of this ring of fire stood Zana in a newly drawn pentagram, Kelly’s heart resting, beating at her feet.

“Oy!” Kelly shouted, as she rushed down the amphitheatre steps. "I said, ‘Oy!’

Zana tilted her head back, ignorant of Kelly’s approach, more concerned with the burning skies above, and the ancient words on her lips. She spoke in that same strange language Kelly had heard back at the Mormont.

“I said, ‘Oy!’, bitch!”

Zana finished her words, licked her lips, and opened her lids to catch Kelly in eyes as red as the skies above.

“It’s over, Kel,” she said. “Too late for you.”

“Nah.”

“The deal is done. It’s all just a matter of time now. See? Look at the sky. It’s nearly dawn.” Zana pointed to a spot beyond and behind Kelly.

Kelly felt the golden push of morning, beckoning her like an impatient child to look, look, at what it was doing.

“Dawn?”

“Whoever possesses the heart at daybreak, wins his favour.”

“Him?” Kelly asked, but the answer was an echo in her head.

Quisby.

The bastard.

“You know who I’m talking about,” Zana said.

“We’ll see soon enough,” Kelly said, as she glanced over her shoulder.

The burning skies cooled yellow at the edges. Dawn spilled molten gold over the seats at the rear of the Bowl.

Screw this, Kelly thought.

“Tell you what—” she said.

Kelly didn’t tell her what. She jumped up on the stage and dove for her heart.

She hit the ground at a slide and snatched the heart from the centre of the pentagram before she came to a stop.

Got you!

Kelly rolled and popped up onto her feet. She stood at the opposite end of the pentagram; the heart swaddled in her arms like a new-born.

“I win!” she said, glaring at Zana.

“Do you?”

Kelly resisted holding her beating heart up like a trophy. “Whoever possesses the heart, remember?”

“You?”

“So, I win.”

“Do you?”

Kelly ground her teeth over some words. “Shut up, bitch. You lost. Get over it.”

“Did I?”

“It’s dawn, isn’t it? I have the heart. I—”

Zana moved like the blur at the edge of a bad trip and rammed Kelly in the stomach.

Both arms windmilling, Kelly fell off the stage, the heart tossed high into the air above.

Slow motion.

Everything in slow motion again, yet Zana seemed to move at a normal speed within the drunken stagger of reality.

She stood at the edge of the stage, one hand extended, and caught the falling heart like a fly ball at a baseball game.

“See, Kel? I win,” Zana shouted down after her.

No way!

Kelly righted herself and jumped up onto the stage. She snatched one of the fiery tiki torches from the stage and thrust it at Zana.

“Give it back, bitch!”

Zana dodged the first strike, and the second, and the third was no match for her supernatural speed, but Kelly shifted from a thrust to a wave and the flame caught the edge of Zana’s skirt like the blue touch paper on a firework.

The fire was a quicker blur than Zana. She danced wildly within its burning embrace, hands waving, patting, and the heart dropped out like a gobstopper from a gumball machine.

Kelly tossed the torch aside and scooped the heart up from the ground. It was a hot cake fresh from the oven, but she ignored the burn and took off towards the rear of the stage.

Zana’s scream followed closely behind.

Kelly didn’t look behind. She hit the exit door at a run.

And bounced off it.

Shut! Fucking shut!

Kelly whirled around and ran for the door on the opposite side.

Who locked the door? It’s supposed to be open in case of a fire. Who—

The answer walked towards her now. A burning torch of a woman, leaving a trail of flame in her wake.

“Mine,” Zara said, extending a fiery hand.

Kelly hit the second exit door with one foot extended.

Be open! Be open! Be—

Closed.

Kelly reeled back.

“Mine. Give it,” Zana said.

“Sod off.”

Kelly unzipped her jacket and played a second round of OPERATION! She jammed the heart into the hole in her chest, and ignored the buzzer as it went off, then zipped up the jacket to keep the heart in its place.

“Mine,” Zara said.

Kelly hunkered down.

“On your marks,” she said.

Zana stopped.

“Get set,” Kelly said.

“Mine,” Zana said.

“Go!”

Kelly rushed forward, head low, and sent the flaming woman into a spin as she passed.

More flames waited on the other side of Zana.

Fire fought the dawn for ownership of the seats inside the Bowl. Kelly jumped down into the burning front rows and became the second human candle lit that night.

She flailed, and gave herself a terrified pat-down, but the flames licked higher, engulfing her head.

A charred hand grabbed Kelly’s collar.

“Mine,” Zana said, her voice a roaring bonfire.

Kelly grabbed the zipper on her leather jacket and branded her thumb and fingers as she pulled. She shrugged out of the flaming leather and the world got a lot clearer.

The fires had spread in a zig zag pattern across the seats, leaving an open path towards the exit tunnel, and a way out of the Bowl.

She ran, both hands over her chest to keep the heart in place, and dodged left to right, right to left, an audience of fire reaching out, but never quite touching her.

Dawn’s touch was more successful. It welcomed her with cool arms as she reached the tunnel entrance.

I’m going to make it!

“Sorry. We’re closed.”

A janitor in blue coveralls and a blue cap held up a mop to bar the way.

“Out of the way!” Kelly said.

“Sorry, miss. Can’t let you through. It’ rules, you see. Rules.”

Kelly stepped forward.

He slammed the mop onto the ground, then jumped up and perched atop it like a bird.

Kelly stopped dead.

“Did you forget the rules, Kelly?” Quisby said, as the janitor’s uniform melted away and left behind a Victorian frock coat.

“Oh, piss off!” Kelly said, and glanced behind.

The Bowl was a bonfire, and strolling out of its burning centre was the blackened shadow of Zana.

Kelly turned back to Quisby.

“This isn’t funny, you know.”

Quisby took a slice out of the air with his finger and thumb. “It is, a little.”

“Bastard.”

“Well, yes, but that’s just the nature of things.”

“Look, I have the bloody heart, don’t I? It’s dawn, isn’t it? I win, don’t I?”

Quisby shrugged. “Technically,” he said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, if you were alone, I’d give it to you. Sure. You’d win by default. No need for all the rest. But…” Quisby nodded towards the burning shadow of Zana sliding towards them like melted tar on a hot afternoon.

“I have the bloody heart. What more do you want?”

“It’s what you do with it, that counts,” Quisby said, winking.

“What I do with it? What the Hell are you talking about?”

Quisby hopped down off his perch. He became very interested in the blackened lengths of his nails. “Ever see one of those eating competitions, Kelly?”

“What?”

“You know. How many hot dogs some fat bastard can cram in their gob, that kind of thing?”

“What has that got to do with—with—”

The night flashed behind her eyes, and one word snagged there. The single word she’d read in the book back at Zanadu Studios.

EAT

“You’re having a laugh, aren’t you?” she said.

“It will be funny, but you know, it’s the rules.”

“What rules? You never said anything about...about…” She couldn’t bring herself to say the words out loud.

“You never asked,” Quisby said.

“And if I had?”

“Well, I would have told you, of course.”

“Would you?”

“Maybe.”

“Piss off.”

Kelly glanced over her shoulder. The burned shadow was only a few feet away now, hand extended, repeating the word ‘Mine’.

“This is bollocks,” Kelly said.

“But necessary.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Unless you know…” Quisby clicked his fingers and a black Stetson appeared on his head. A second click conjured up a guitar in his hands. He plucked at the strings, and the familiar bars of a song Kelly wished she’d never heard echoed through the exit tunnel.

“Okay, okay. I get it. Jesus. Just stop it with that bloody racket.”

Quisby clicked his fingers. “Done,” he said, his garb and instrument now vanished.

Kelly shook her head as she reached inside the bloody cavity of her chest and plucked the heart out

“You’re getting a real kick out of this, aren’t you?”

A bag of popcorn appeared in Quisby’s hands. He shovelled a handful in his mouth.

“Carry on. Don’t let me interrupt you.”

“If I do this I go to Hell? My legacy is intact, yeah?”

Through a mouth stuffed with popcorn, Quisby said. “Mange! Mange!”

“Fuck.”

Kelly brought the beating heart up to her lips.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she said.

Behind her, the charred shadow of Zana became enraged. “MINE! MINE!” she screamed.

Kelly opened her mouth, then closed it.

“Do I have to eat the whole thing?” she said.

Quisby pinched the air again. “A nibble will do.”

“Fuck.”

Kelly held the heart up, closed her eyes, and chomped down.

It tasted of nothing. Like a warm sponge. She chewed quickly and swallowed.

“Hahahaah!” Quisby’s laugh opened her eyes.

“It’s not funny,” she said.

“That is,” he said, pointing at the hole in her chest where the chewed-up piece of heart had dropped down like a ball in a pachinko machine.

Kelly stared at the little bit of gristle caught at the bottom of the cavity.

“Bloody Hell. Does this mean I have to do it again?” she said.

Quisby shook his head. “Nah. I’ll be honest, you didn’t have to do it at all.”

“What?”

Quisby clicked his fingers.

The fires engulfing the Bowl vanished, and the tunnel lit up around them with flames.

Quisby clicked his fingers a second time and Zana’s shadow blew away.

A third click made a door appear at the end of the tunnel.

“Just thought it’d be fun, you know,” Quisby said.

“What?”

“The whole eating the heart thing, running about all over the place looking for it. All that jazz. Fun.”

“You mean—”

Quisby laughed. “Yeah.”

“Didn’t have to do any of this shit? None of it?”

“Nah. You made your deal. You would have always got what you wanted. Twenty-seven and dead. Live fast, die young, leave behind a…well, a halfway decent looking corpse,” Quisby nodded at the hole in Kelly’s chest.

“You bastard!”

“Yep.”

“Why did you do all that?”

He shrugged. “I’m the Devil. What else would you have me do, Kelly?”

13

“What’s that sound?” Kelly Blackheart asked.

Faint at first, the twang of a guitar grew louder as she walked the long burning tunnel with Quisby towards the door at the far end.

“The sound you’ll hear forever more,” Quisby said.

“I can’t quite make it out. What the bloody Hell is it?”

With each step the guitar became more pronounced, the rhythm of it awfully familiar. It wasn’t any kind of tempo Kelly Blackheart liked. Too slow. Too—

“Country?”

Quisby opened the door, and the sound became a song.

“Achy Breaky Heart?” Kelly Blackheart said, defeated.

“Welcome to Hell,” Quisby said, and waved her through.

About the Author

Paul John Lyon's passion for fiction began at the age of ten when his grandfather gave him a box of well-thumbed paperbacks. Between the yellowed pages of those books, he discovered tales of detectives and criminals, spies and lovers, grand victories and grander defeats. More importantly, in that box were the seeds of a love affair that has lasted a lifetime. A few years later he was gifted a typewriter and began writing. He hasn't stopped since.