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want another drink?”
    â€œI believe that would be in order. Long conversations make for dry throats.”
    I leave him with his drinks, absorbed in the game once more.
    â€œLet’s try it,” Christina says when I finish my story.
    All I can do is look at her across the table, and I’ll admit that’s not hard on the eyes, even with the vinyl dress, but I can’t believe she’s taking any of this seriously.
    â€œSully’s a drunk,” I tell her.
    â€œYou said he was a priest.”
    â€œEx-priest, as in no more.”
    â€œHe knew what they were, straightaway.”
    â€œHe
said
he knew what they were. There’s a big difference. I could make up as good a story. I mean, really. Angels?”
    â€œCome on,” she says, those big eyes of hers just drawing me in.
    I’m going to tell her no?
    I have to tell you the truth here. What I said before was only partly true. We are only friends, but I’ve always had a thing for her. Who wouldn’t? She’s smart and pretty and she’s got a heart as big as the sky is wide. When she turned me down, back when we first met, I took it at face value and settled for being pals. Funny thing is, I like having her for a friend. I never had a woman for a friend before and it’s an experience I’d recommend. For one thing, I come away from our conversations with things to think about, and let me tell you, that doesn’t happen around the guys I know. Before I knew Christina, I never gave a whole lot of thought to what we’ve been doing to the world, what we do to each other. I minded my own business and asked others to do the same. But how hard is it to clean up after yourself or to look out for someone worse off than you are?
    So being friends is good, and I don’t want to lose that. But if she wants to take it to another level, I’m not going to complain.
    See, anyone I’m going to be serious with in the romance department, we’ve also got to be friends. I don’t want to end up like my parents who could barely tolerate each other. I want it to mean something, us being together. I want us to look forward to being together, instead of thinking up excuses as to why I’ve got to get out of the apartment, just to get some breathing space. That was always the old man’s line. He couldn’t breathe around Ma and us kids.
    So would I go chasing down the monsters’ victim for Christina, given that I don’t believe either he or the uglies exist? Hell, I’d go look up Lucifer, slap him silly and damn the consequences, if that’d make her happy. Which is how we end up wandering the streets long past midnight, and where I blow it because I can’t keep my mind—my intent, as Sully put it—on this victim. When I’m not thinking about Christina, I’m thinking about these monsters, how good the costumes were in the pictures, the time that had to have gone into making them, the way they set up the shots, and the next damn thing you know, we’ve got them chasing us down Williamson to the waterfront and all my doubts go out the window. Because whatever these freaks are, they’re not make-believe.
    â€œThey must’ve felt us thinking so hard about their victim,” Christina says when we duck into an alleyway that’ll take us in behind the Harbor Ritz.
    â€œI was thinking about them,” I tell her.
    She gives me a look, half angry, half scared.
    â€œJesus, Sammy. You brought them right to us. You weren’t
supposed
to be thinking about
them.”
    So she’s not all that happy with me, with good reason, and I hate the way it feels, but right now we’ve got more serious concerns on our mind. Like staying alive.
    That’s when we try hiding out behind the Dumpster and you know how well that turns out.
    Okay, I think. I’ve made a mess of things so far, but I can still make good. For Christina, anyway.
    I stand up and pull her