I slash the straight razor across his face, slicing through his cheek. Blood wells out the wound. He screams and tries to crawl away from me, but I shove the Browning harder into his temple and he freezes, shrieks turning to whimpers.

I pull a spell together. One I’ve thought about for a while but haven’t actually tried. It shouldn’t be tough. When I killed Jean Boudreau after he’d murdered my parents, I grabbed him, took him over to the other side with me, and fed him to the ghosts.

Like when I moved Werther’s car earlier, I had to take Boudreau to the other side with me. But this spell’s a little different. With Dan here, I just send him.

He disappears, leaving a vaguely person-shaped blob of light thrashing around on the other side of the veil. I can see the ghosts fine. But Dan’s not dead. Yet.

He probably has no idea where he is, or what’s happening, but I bet he’s recognizing a few faces.

And from the way they all descend on him, I think they might recognize him, too.

Chapter 22

“I thought two to three hours was being generous,” Chu says when I finally turn up on his doorstep.

“Things got a little hectic.”

“I heard,” he says, standing aside to let me in.

After delivering Dan to the ghosts I took the cop car far enough to ditch it on a side street and jack somebody else’s ride. The Cleanup Crew can only do so much. At some point the shit I do that makes their jobs harder is going to catch up to me, but I’ll deal with that when I don’t have a price on my head.

I headed back to my motel to clean off the gore, get a change of clothes, and spend some quality time with a first aid kit. Bruised, scraped, cut. I blew capillaries in my left eye and it’s bright red with blood. I think I bruised some ribs, and my back is telling me just how much of an asshole I’ve been to it.

I’m exhausted and in pain and I don’t have time to be either. So I do a suburban speedball with a handful of Vicodin and some Adderall. It’s gonna suck tomorrow, but until then at least I’ll be functional.

“Peter,” Chu calls, “can you get me and Mister Carter a whiskey, please?” He turns to me. “Neat?”

I nod and he yells back the order. Somewhere in another room I can hear the Assistant District Attorney get up and pour me a drink.

“Does he do windows, too?” I say.

“Peter’s just a generous soul, Mister Carter. Can I call you Eric? By now we should both be on a first name basis.”