Then they dragged him up the ladder by a pulley. A pulley system on an old track high up in the warehouse ceiling – way they moved things around before forklifts.

Skelly patted him on his head, and then stole his tin of Blue. That crafty twat. He could’ve used that to feel better – a temporary fix, but a fix just the same.

After that, she tossed him out onto the sidewalk. Wound a chain around the broken lock and then popped a fresh padlock on it. Then: she was gone.

Now: everything hurts.

His head pulses like a balloon someone’s flicking with an annoying finger. Thwump thwump thwump. He tastes his own blood. Spits it out – with it comes a tooth that clatters into the street just as an off-duty street sweeper truck passes by. He hopes that it’s his dead tooth, but it’s probably not. His luck it’s probably one of the still-good ones.

He can barely stand. His leg is shaky, the pain almost liquid now. Sloshing up and down from heel to hip. He’s not sure anything’s broken. But something’s torn.

Into the car. Glove compartment. Got a bottle of Vicodin. Pop the cap. Dry-crunch a couple like they’re Tic-Tacs.

His phone rings.

Haversham.

Werth answers, starts to say, “You wouldn’t believe–”

“Things have changed,” Haversham says.

Werth listens, and it feels like the floor is dropping out from under him again – falling, falling, his guts, his heart, his head.

“OK,” Werth says. Voice raw.

“We need you back. Come to the house.”

“The house. Yeah.”

Haversham ends the call.

Werth sits for a few minutes. Staring at the center of his steering wheel. Like it’s an eye staring back, or a mouth trying to draw him close in order to eat him.

Finally he breaks the spell, starts the car, and gets the fuck out of there.

Chapter 12

12