So busy. So preoccupied. So small. He hadn’t chosen this particular downtown roof for any real reason. One seemed as good as another. To the west, beyond L.A.’s sprawl and its famed beaches, the sun lay buried in a haze of smog and smoke. The hills above Malibu were burning again. The scene reminded him too much of Hell, and he returned his gaze to the streets below. Something just as fiery caught his eye. He sharpened his focus, narrowing in on the slender form of a young woman who had paused outside one of the businesses across the street. Copper hair glowed bright against the simple dark clothing she wore. The color could have come from a dye bottle; in this city of artifice, such things were to be expected. But somehow he thought hers was natural. The business was a bar or nightclub. Smartly dressed men and women, most in their twenties or thirties, were entering the building, although Samael noticed they tended to go in one at a time, not in couples. Even from this distance he could see the young woman’s obvious diffidence.
