Simon is about to knock again when he hears the sound of a bolt being thrown back, and the door opens a crack. It’s dark inside the store, but he can see eyes looking out at him.
“Cual es la contrase?a?” comes a female voice.
“What?” says Simon, thrown.
“The password, Chuck. What’s the password?”
He peers into the dark, recognizing the voice. “Louise?”
“Call me Peppermint Patty, and this is my buddy, Marcy.”
She opens the door. Simon sees Louise wearing a brown Ulysses vest over a bathing suit top and checked trousers. Duane stands behind her, waving gently. They hug as a trio, a puppy pile of relief and joy, which ends with Louise humping Simon’s leg and Duane kissing him on the mouth.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi,” says Simon, breathless. And then Story is there with the reality check.
“He’s bleeding again,” she says. “Burning up.”
The four of them walk out to the Kia.
“Let me guess,” says Louise, studying the bullet holes and smashed glass. “It was like this when you found it.”
Simon opens the back door, leans over Avon. His forehead is hot.
“Who’s the geriatric, Chuck old boy?” says Louise.
“Felix’s dad,” says Story. She grabs Duane’s hand, consumed suddenly by hope and worry. “Have you heard from him?”
Duane shakes his head.
“Just us so far,” he says, “and the Troll.”
“The what?”
Duane shrugs. “This boy Louise used to know. He told us where the Wizard is.”
Duane squeezes Story’s hands.
“I’m really sorry you got caught,” he says. “We just didn’t know how to save you.”
She nods.
“Was it cops?” he asks.
She shakes her head. The truth is far stranger and more unsettling.
“Some kind of private security. They took me to LA and had these two women watching us. At least I think they were women. They might have been witches. Simon was next door, it turned out. He blew up the house and we escaped, and then Felix’s dad was there.”
She rubs her eyes, worn out by grief. “It all feels like a dream.”
They carry Avon inside, lay him on a long Formica counter, leaving a blood trail on the concrete. The old man is unconscious again, lips pale. Duane finds some scissors, cuts his shirt open. Around them, a dozen liberated dogs bark and jump. The walls of the store are lined with cages, doors open, and it’s clear from the smell that in the last few hours the pet shop has become a bathroom for a host of animals, exotic and domestic. Duane gets a first aid kit from the office. He tells them his dad drove an ambulance for a year, the night shift, and when there were no babysitters available, Duane would ride with him.
“We used to practice stitching up pieces of pork,” he says, “mostly the tenderloin. We’d sew them together and then cook them for dinner.”
He studies the entrance and exit wounds. “Louise,” he says, “I’m going to need antiseptic, a needle and thread, and some antibiotics.”
“On it,” she says, and walks to the Amazon delivery van parked in the loading bay. Simon follows her.
“This is your ride?” he says.
“God sent us a mystery box,” she says, opening the back doors and climbing up.
“I thought the cops caught you,” Simon tells her, his voice shaking from relief and worry. “Back in Texas.”
Louise picks up a box, holds it to her forehead, as if divining the contents. “They got Story. I was taking a piss.”
Simon finds a padded envelope with AMAZON PHARMACY printed on it. He shows it to Louise.
“Open it,” she says. “I haven’t got a dud yet, though sometimes you gotta interpret the use. This is how God talks to us, I guess. In, like, riddles.”
He rips it open. Inside is a prescription bottle for doxycycline. He shows it to her.
“And then sometimes,” she says, “no interpretation required.”
She paws through a pile, chooses a small box. Inside is what looks like a lifetime supply of dental floss, unflavored.
“Any word from the Prophet?” Simon asks her.
She shakes her head.
“Nobody calls, nobody writes,” she says. “But he’s coming.”
“How do you—”
“The boxes told me,” she says, then chooses a heavy box the size of a large suitcase. Inside is a professional sewing machine with a foot pedal, scissors, and needles.