Maxine threw a troubled glance at Tammy. "And you go along with all this?"
"If Todd doesn't feel—"
"You were the one saying prayers out there."
"Let me finish. If Todd doesn't feel he's lived his full life, it's his choice."
"The point is: you've had all the life you're going to get," Maxine said to him. Then to Tammy, "We're talking to a dead man. Something we would not be doing outside Coldheart Canyon."
"Things are different here . . ." Todd murmured, remembering what Katya had told him.
"Damn right they are," Maxine said. "But the rules of this place end somewhere north of Sunset. And it's only because of the power that was once in this house that you're getting a chance to play this damn-fool game with God."
"A game with God," Tammy said, so quietly Maxine barely heard what she'd said.
"What?"
"I was just saying: a game with God. I didn't think you'd care about something like that. Aren't you an atheist?"
"Once, I might have—"
Todd stood up. "Hush. Hush."
The women stopped talking. Todd looked up toward the vault of the turret, with its holes that showed the night sky.
"Stay very still," he said.
As he spoke, the light came over the top of the turret, its motion eerily smooth and silent. Three beams of its silvery luminescence came in through holes in the roof. They slid over the walls, like spotlights looking for a star to illuminate. For a moment the entity seemed to settle directly on top of the turret, and one of the beams of light went all the way down the stairwell to scrutinize the debris at the bottom. Then, after a moment's perusal, it began to move off again, at the same glacial speed.
Only when it had gone completely did anybody speak again. It was Maxine who piped up first.
"Why doesn't it just come in and get you?" she said. "That's what I can't figure out. I mean, it's just a body of light. It can go anywhere it chooses, I would have thought. Under the door. Down through that hole"—she pointed up to the turret. "It's not like the house is burglar-proof."
Tammy had been thinking about that very question. "I think maybe this place makes it nervous," she said. "That's my theory, for what it's worth. All the evil this house has seen."
"I don't think angels are afraid of anything," Maxine said.
"Then maybe it's just repulsed. I mean, it's like a dog, right, sniffing out souls? Its senses are really acute. Think how this place must stink. Especially down there." She glanced down the stairwell, where the angel's light had lingered for a moment before moving on. "The Devil's Country was down there. People suffered, died, horrible deaths. If I was an angel, I'd stay out."
"If you were an angel, my love," Maxine said, "God would be in a lot of trouble."
This won a laugh out of Tammy. "All right, you've heard my theories—"
"I think you're both right," Todd said. "If the light wanted to come inside the house it could. It did once, remember? But I think between my not wanting to go and the smell of what this house has seen, it's probably figured it'll wait. Sooner or later the house is going to start falling down. And then I'll come out and it'll have me."
"That's why we should surprise it," Tammy said. "Go now, while it's least expecting anyone to leave."
"You don't know what it's expecting," Maxine put in. "It could be listening to every damn word we say, as far as you can tell."
"Well I'm going to try for it," Todd said, pushing his gun into his trousers, muzzle to muzzle. "If you don't want to come, that's fine. Maybe you could just divert it somehow. Give me a chance to get to the car."
"No, we're going," Tammy said, speaking on behalf of Maxine, whose response to this was a surrendering shrug.
"It is preposterous," she pointed out however. "Who the hell ever outran an angel?"
"How do we know?" Todd said. "Maybe people do it all the time."
They stood together at the door and listened for twenty, twenty-five minutes, seeing if there was some pattern to the motion of the light. In that time it went up onto the roof twice, and made half a circuit of the house, but then seemed to give up for no particular reason. It made no sound. Nor did its light at any point seem to alter in intensity. It was—perhaps predictably—constant and patient, like a hunter sitting by a burrow, knowing that sooner or later its occupant must show its nose.
About nine-fifteen or so, Tammy went up to the master bedroom to scan the view across the Canyon and down toward Century City. She'd scoured the kitchen for dried goods and tinned goods that had survived either the ghosts' rampages or the passage of time and had found many tins had been punctured, and the food inside was rotten; but she collected up a few cans of edible stuff: baked beans, peaches, hot dogs in brine. And then, after some digging around, found an opener, and made up a plate of unlikely gastronomic bed-fellows; and took them upstairs to the balcony.
The Canyon had gone pin-drop quiet. If she hadn't already known they had an agent of Creation's Maker in their vicinity, the spooked silence of every cicada, coyote and night bird would have confirmed the fact. It was eerie, standing there, watching the dark hollow of the Canyon, and the few stars that were visible above it, and listening to the empty dark. She could hear the click of the fork against her teeth, the noise of her throat as it swallowed the beans and bites of hot dog.
"I used to love hot dogs," came a voice from the dark room behind her. It was Todd. "You know, ordinary food. I never really got a taste for the more sophisticated stuff."
"You want some of this?" she asked him, glancing round as she proffered the plate.
"No thanks," he said. "I haven't really got an appetite anymore."
"Maybe ghosts aren't supposed to eat."
"Yeah that's what I figured," he replied, coming out onto the balcony. Then, "Do you think they fuck? Because if they don't I'm going to have to find some other way to get this down." He glanced down at the lump beneath his bath-towel.
"Cold showers."
"Yeah." He chuckled. "Everything comes full circle, doesn't it? Cold hot dogs for you. Cold showers for me. Nothing really changes."
"I don't know," she said. "This isn't normal for me. Conversations with— if you'll excuse the phrase—dead movie stars in million-dollar houses..."
"—with an angel waiting on the front doorstep—"
"Right."
She'd finished her ad hoc meal, and went back into the bedroom to set the plate down. While she was doing so she heard Todd call her name, very softly.
She went back out onto the balcony.
"What is it?"
"Look."
She looked, following the direction of his gaze. There was a glow of light in the densely-forested cleft of the Canyon. It looked as though it had settled in the fork of a tree.
"I guess Raphael must have got bored."
"Is that his name? Raphael?"
"I don't know. It's just the only angel's name I know. Angels aren't my strong point. His real name's probably Marigold. The point is: it's wandered off. We should go while we've got the opportunity. It may not stay down there very long."
"Right. I'll go and find Maxine."
"Wait," Todd said, catching hold of her arm. "Just one thing before you go."
"What's that?"
"I want your honest opinion . . ."
"On what?"
"Do you think she's right? Am I screwing with my immortal soul, trying to escape this thing?"
"You know, I was wondering about that when I was eating my hot dogs. My Aunt Jessica was a church-lady all her life. She used to go and arrange the flowers on the altar three times a week. And she used to say: God sees everything. This was when I was a little girl and she thought I'd been naughty. God sees everything, she'd say, wagging her finger. So you can't ever hide from Him. I think He can hear us right now. And at least she would have believed He could."