Lemuria was a large and ancient island nation in the Pacific, similar to Atlantis, but with better sushi and Wi-Fi. When Lemuria, also like Atlantis, sank (following a series of explosions from one particularly disastrous experiment aimed at using volcanoes to power Lemurialand, an amusement park that went bankrupt in a year because Lemurians were a dour people who left fun to those Atlantis creeps), the survivors sailed to what would someday be called Los Angeles. Finding the flatlands boring, the Lemurians settled in the canyons, which were much more like their island home. Not a people to leave well enough alone, they immediately began terraforming the land to make it even more like Lemuria. Although they were a scientifically advanced civilization, they weren’t big on seismology. After a few years of shifting hills, diverting underground rivers, and generally screwing around with the surface and substrata of the canyon, one afternoon they became intimately acquainted with a large fault line that cut straight through the canyon and swallowed the Lemurian survivors and most of their sprawling castles.

While almost no physical evidence of their civilization remains, the one thing the Lemurians did leave behind was a psychic imprint on the land, a ghostly desire to build the biggest, gaudiest mansions imaginable. This spirit haunts Laurel Canyon to this day. You won’t find a larger collection of wildly expensive and funny-looking houses outside of parts of Beverly Hills, which was settled by an even dumber ancient race that there isn’t time to go into right now.

It took forty-five minutes of driving, backtracking, cursing, praying to nonexistent travel gods, dumb luck, and pure fury for Coop and Giselle to find the address the sharkskin suit had given them back in Jinx Town. When they found the place—a hulking mansion, part Spanish Revival with smaller Roman temples clinging to the sides, a fever-dream version of San Simeon—they pulled over onto the grassy shoulder of the road a quarter of a mile away and looked the place over.

“Sure is big,” said Coop.

“And ugly,” said Giselle.

“At least Babylon has the biggest house around. That’s lucky.”

“How do you figure?”

“He doesn’t have to go outside and see how ridiculous it is.”

Giselle took a set of binoculars from the glove compartment. They weren’t ordinary binoculars. They were more like goggles, with extra colored lenses that rotated in and out of place over the large lenses.

“You look like a nearsighted fly,” said Coop.

“You’re just jealous that I have all the good toys.”

“I’m jealous you have toys at all. I miss my Vin Mariani.”

“Lush.”

“Coop.”

Coop squinted at the hilltop monstrosity, but it was too far away to make out any details. “Did you get those from the DOPS or SkyMall?”

“They’re what good little agents who work hard and don’t get coked up and start riots get.”