Graves drove his stolen car westbound down Branford, with the women socked away in its small back seat. Hannah was stretched out as much as possible, with her head resting in Lia’s lap. Lia kept steady pressure on the wound that grooved Hannah’s hip, exactly as Graves had demonstrated for her.
He looked again in the rearview mirror. “I don’t see ’em,” he reported. “I don’t see anything. I think we’re in the clear, ladies.”
Lia nodded, squeezing Hannah’s hand. Her eyes were shut painfully tight. In the mirror she looked withdrawn and lost. Graves glanced over his shoulder at her in concern.
“Say,” he said, exchanging a look with Hannah, who seemed to share his worry. “Just outta curiosity, d’you know what that thing was back there? That broad with the bad reception?”
Lia had to drag herself out of her daze to think and answer. Those dark circles were starting to look tattooed under her eyes.
“That was Lyssa, I think,” she said. “The Archon of Madness and Moonlight. Like a goddess, very ancient. Greek originally. Too crazy to be scared of my tricks the way the others were. Too irrational already.”
“Yeah, that lunar chick was a lunatic, all right,” Graves agreed lightly. “Bugs in the brainpan, you ask me. Strong, though. Geez.”
He rolled his neck, cracking vertebrae all up the line. He was pleased to have drawn Lia back out of herself, even if it was only to a tiny degree. At least he knew the trauma of recent events hadn’t left her unreachable.
“So,” he said. “The sooner we get that wound hosed out, the less chance of infection there’s gonna be. Maybe you got some kinda destination in mind, dollface?”
“Head south,” Lia told him. “Over Coldwater Canyon. I know people who’ll help us, up in the hills.”
Graves nodded and made a left when they reached Coldwater, after another two blocks. When he looked over, the short man with the hat and the sunglasses who’d let him out of Hardface’s car was sitting in his passenger seat. He grinned at Graves and doffed his hat without saying a word, like he thought he was Harpo Marx or something.
“Oh,” Graves said in greeting, his capacity for surprise having been much diminished by the events of the last two days. “Hey. So you’re one of Lia’s sort of things too, huh? Guess I mighta known.”
“Who’re you talking to up there, Dexter?” Hannah asked, as he wove the fancyass car through mid-day traffic denser than any he’d ever seen. Everyone in the world had a car of their own by now, it looked like, including kids too young to enlist in the service, and all of them were on the roads all of the goddamn time.