A few days travel after the worm incident the mule train comes to Lost Angels. As they approach it, the terrain becomes less of a dry but beautiful desert and more of a blasted, god-forsaken desert. Thorny plants and vast clumps of prickly pear compete with gnarled, scrubby trees. Water sources are briny and have a ring of evaporated salt. Here and there skinny farmers try to scratch a crop out of the soil with crude tools.

Their guide leaves them at a bar outside of town called "The Vestibule". They decide to go in as well and find their guide already telling the story of the crazy bastards who fought the rattlers. This gets them free drinks and free meals from the bartender. They also find out that the man they're supposed to deliver their packet to, John McCray, is dead. Which is just as well, since the packet ended up in a worm with most of the rest of Tobey's belongings.

They spend a little while trying to find out what happened to John, going to his old address. The city is if anything drier and more disturbing than the countryside. Everywhere people are watching them as they walk through the city, judging them... or sizing them up hungrily. Over it all looms the dark mass of the cathedral, and robed Guardian Angels walk the streets as well. Elder Tanner tries to talk with the Mexican landlady at McCray's residence, but says something wrong and gets run off. They decide to get a couple of rooms at a hotel and turn in early. Bart takes the opportunity to go buy an extremely expensive steak, and Cady loses some money gambling when she is bushwhacked by a professional.

Meanwhile a trio of Guardian Angels turn up at the hotel, looking for "the people who saved the pilgrims from the worms." Those who are there admit to being the same, and they are invited to dinner at Grimme's house. They decide not to refuse. Their innkeeper, a devoted member of the Church of Lost Angels, hears this and gives them a free tub of bath-water (water being at least two bits a gallon).

Grimme's house is large and has pillars in front, being done in a greco-roman revival style. Guardian Angels are on guard out front and suggest that the posse leave their guns, but don't actually object when James wants to hang on to his. Inside, the place is decorated with a lot of cross-stitching done by church members (with questionable taste and artistic ability), and simple but well-made furniture and rag rugs. Grimme himself awaits them in the main dining room and offers them before-dinner wine, or water if they prefer.

He seems friendly to the posse, calling them heroes and wanting to hear how they rescued the pilgrims from the rattlers. He wears a severe black suit and starched white collar, and his white hair stands out a bit from his head. They tell him the chicken story as well as the worm story (leaving out the end bit when they all got paralyzed), and talk about the founding of the city over a simple chicken dinner. Grimme tells them about having a vision of the city after the quake, and his sincerity is obvious (though his vision is of course unverifiable). Grimme also talks about the evil and greed so prevalent in the maze, and how the Church struggles against it as much as it can. He especially singles out the railroads as evil - not that trains themselves are evil, but that they are now inseparable from greed, like the snake wrapped around the apple.

After dinner Elder Tanner asks if there is anything they can do to help Grimme. He says he was hoping God had sent them to the city to help: some members of the church found a great gem while mining - a diamond as big as a fist - but it was taken from them by pirates on their way back to the city. They meant it to go into the cathedral, and Grimme wants to recover it but his Guardian Angels are not tricky enough to be able to take on the pirates without great loss of life. The posse agrees to think about it. Then they ask about John McCray, and Grimme says that his body would have been taken by a special group of Guardian Angels so that it would be buried with proper respect. (He studiously avoids implying that anyone in Lost Angels would resort to cannibalism.)

With a pass from Grimme, they go to talk to Brother Reginald, who heads this group. He refers to a large notebook and tells them that McCray was shot in the back with a small caliber firearm, and robbed of most of his possessions but not his boots. From this he draws the conclusion that McCray was shot by a professional and not someone truly desperate. He thinks McCray was a spy, although who for he cannot say. Afterwards, the posse debates a little helping Grimme, though only Tobey seriously objects (on the grounds that retrieving a gem isn't really saving people like they normally do).

The next day everyone except Tobey goes to Grimme's sermon, and finds it quite rousing (although for Elder Tanner, a bit wrong-headed). Afterwards, they go have the free stew, which is bland. There has been some idle speculation that it is made of people, and Cady really works on that as they all ride out to the graveyard. She's the only one who actually feels queasy afterwards, though.

The graveyard is large and well-organized, and after finding McCray's grave Cady does her seeing-through-things spell. It works all too well, and leaves her seeing the skeletons of everyone. There do, however, seem to be skeletons in the graves. Cady can't tell if they've been used as stew-meat first, as she doesn't know what sort of marks a butcher leaves on bones.

When they get back they go see Grimme to agree to help him. Cady finds that Grimme, alone of everyone, does not appear as a skeleton - instead he appears as normal in black suit and collar, and quickly thereafter the spirit leaves her and she is seeing normally. She decides this means he's the real deal.

Grimme is pleased and has one of his archangels, Brother Gabriel, brief them on what is known about the pirates - the Skull gang. They live in caves at the base of Skull island, which has a smoking skull cave higher up (an ignited ghost rock seam provides the smoke). There are perhaps twenty of them. The jewel was hidden in a barrel of lard, so hopefully they haven't discovered it yet. A boat will be arranged for the posse, as well as extra Guardian Angel muscle should they require it.