"Shadow, you don't look too good," Dean said worriedly as they sped down the blacktop.

"My shoulder is killing me," was Shadow's terse reply.

"What, from falling on it?"

"From the other night."

At Corso's puzzled look, Shadow realized the other man had been unconscious through most of that fateful evening's action. "That bitch tied me up in the graveyard so she could play with you. I dislocated it while I was getting loose."

"And you just landed on it? Ow."

"Ow is right."

"I'm so sorry, Shadow. I never thought you helping me was going to turn into...all this," he waved a hand to indicate the car. "You were just going to give me a lift to see Jess's friend and that was it. I never expected anyone to get hurt."

"Forget it, Dean. If I wasn't supposed to be involved, I never would've ended up in the seat next to you."

"You think so?" There was a pleading note in the other man's voice.

Shadow nodded, glancing over at his friend. "What, you think that's never crossed my mind? That this business has turned into a whole lot more of a road trip than either of us planned? Yeah, I've thought about it. I don't think it's a cosmic coincidence that we got hooked up, and I know enough to know how much I don't know."

Corso peered at him. "That almost made sense."

"Look, all this stuff you're going through....it's some weird shit, right? Well, what do you think the odds are that you just happened to get a seat on a plane with somebody who has coped with some pretty weird shit of his own?"

"Not just that...." The sick man was struggling to express his thoughts. "You're a good guy....you're honest and you won't let me get away with being an asshole but even when I'm being an asshole and getting you hurt and totally messing up your life, you still stick with me." He shook his head in wonderment.

This was more amazing than meeting Houdini's ghost. "Ah, come on," scoffed Shadow, uncomfortable. "You haven't totally messed up my life. I did three years in prison before I ever met you, remember?"

"I don't know why you think I'm worth it."

"Hey, I'm an overgrown Boy Scout, remember? I'm trying to get my Life Saving merit badge."

They were coming into the next town. Shadow spotted Sid and the Dakini sisters standing at the curb outside a drugstore advertising its own soda fountain. He pulled in beside their elderly truck. Sid greeted them with hugs. Shadow had to bite his lip as the fat man jovially slapped him on the back. "You are unharmed. Dean, Shadow, this is a great relief."

"We are, but I have some bad news," Shadow began, and haltingly told them the fate of Orange Crush.

"Who is this bitch, and how can I get my hands on her?" demanded Nadia. "I'll teach her to go around killing people's cats!"

"Can't you get some kind of restraining order?" Evelyn asked Corso.

"She sounds like a crazy woman to me," Sophia said to her. "You don't think a little piece of paper is going to stop someone like that, do you?"

"How do we know she isn't going to be waiting to murder us in our beds and torture us to find out where you're going?" Willette worried.

"Ladies, that's not going to happen," Corso soothed. Shadow wondered how he could be so certain.

"How do you know?" asked Willette.

"Because...." Dean bit his lip as he looked at the anxious ladies. "This is a long, complicated story--"

At that, Shadow quietly entered the drugstore. He needed a cold drink and a bottle of aspirin in the worst way. A big bottle of aspirin. He looked around the vintage interior as he scouted out the aisle with painkillers and first aid supplies. When had he last seen an old-fashioned soda fountain like this, all chrome and dark green linoleum? It looked like it should be right down the block from Jacquel and Ibis.

Out of habit, he asked for a pack of Luckies for Corso...on second thought, he upgraded it to a full carton. The fewer stops they had to make between here and Christmas, the better. God, wasn't that a helluva thing for Dean to say? "I don't know why you think I'm worth it." Shadow had finally gotten to the point where he had to concede that he and Corso were friends--and wasn't that the kind of shit friends did for each other?

"Friends? How the hell did that happen, anyway?" he thought, but their strange adventures had definitely brought him closer to Corso than he had been to anyone since...at that point, his brain hit the wall. Who? Laura? No, they'd shared love and lust and what had seemed like a happy marriage at the time, but that had been rooted in rut. Anyone? He stared blankly at the magazines in the rack by the door. Then a newspaper caught his eye, and he added it hastily to his purchases as the clerk rummaged for the cigarettes.

Dean leaned against their car, waving good-bye to the girls' departing truck as Shadow came out of the drugstore with his purchases. "What've you got there?" he asked, accepting the cigarettes and looking at the white paper bag in Shadow's hand. "Aspirin? Jesus, Shadow, I've still got enough pain pills in my suitcase to give Hunter S. Thompson a wet dream."

"I don't need to be zonked behind the wheel." Shadow shook his head.

"You're twice my size," Dean said. "Take half of one, that ought to make things bearable without knocking you out."

"Let me see how the aspirin works," Shadow temporized. "Maybe I'll take one tonight. Have a look at this." He held out the newspaper.

"E.T.'S AT WORK IN ARKANSAS" trumpeted the headline over the picture of a design burned into a field of young crops. Dean whistled as the newsprint showed them a bird's eye view of the ritual's effects. There was a charred circle ringing a patch of unscorched stalks, then a spiral, which Shadow had surmised, but he hadn't realized that the outer band bore flame-like ripples fanning out around its perimeter. Looking closely at the details, it was obvious that the 'exit' to the spiral was obligingly close to the cemetery wall. Sitting ducks, and we walked right into it, Shadow thought, shaking his head.

Once they were underway again, he filled Corso in on what had happened after he'd lost consciousness outside the circle: the long trek though the smoking field and The Blonde's ambush in the bone orchard.

"That ritual was probably like blood in the water to a shark," the tainted man said regretfully. "That's why I'm not too worried that she's going to go after Sid and the twins. She can find me without resorting to that. So much for 'We're here, we might as well'! One minutewe were outin the field, then I woke up stark naked with her groping me."

"I could hear you screaming," Shadow said. "Trouble is, I was tied up like a turkey and couldn't do much about it. And then the damnedest thing happened...." He recounted his meeting with Houdini's ghost.

Corso listened with his mouth hanging open.

"You know, a couple years ago, if anyone had told me a story like that, I would've thought they were nuts." Corso lit a cigarette and took a single puff. "Now--?" He shook his head, stubbed out the Lucky. "I believe you. I absolutely 100 believe you. Houdini's ghost? Crop circles? Talking cats, Egyptian gods?" He laughed a little hysterically. "I'm surprised we haven't run into any aliens--or pod people or Elvis or the Loch Ness monster! Ah, but what the hell, it's not over yet!"

Shadow felt a stab of unease. Dean sounded like he was about to lose it. Sure, the whole situation was somewhere to the left of crazy....but then, Shadow had been wandering in the weirdness for so long now that he'd forgotten how weird it really was.

"It gets better," he said, hoping that keeping it light would help. The business with Houdini...that was just cool. No other word for it.

"Uh-huh."

Shadow had tucked "On Magic" into the storage slot on his door. He retrieved it and handed it to Corso. "Remember the autograph on the title page? Take a look."

Dean whistled as he peered at the writing in the slim volume. Holding the book at an angle, the book dealer looked over his glasses at the inscription and turned the page to look at both sides. "There is no way you could match that ink," he said thoughtfully. "Or the pen strokes. It looks like it was there all along--but it wasn't, was it?"

"Nope."

"Damn."

They were both quiet for several miles. Then Corso chuckled. He looked less stressed this time. "It's good to know that there's a book out there that's on my side!"

"Good thing I didn't sell it to you for fifty bucks."

That struck them both as funny for some reason. Shadow reached out and rested his hand on Corso's frail arm. "Hang on, Dean. We'll get you through this."

"I believe you'll try," said the other man, closing his eyes and leaning back against the headrest. The setting sun glinted off the silver of his hair. He looked old and tired, and Shadow's right foot moved closer to the floor of its own accord.

Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion in the next installment of "Wisdom's Gate"!