“She’s got money. Rumor has it, she has a share in the club. But I think her real job’s in art somehow. She found the artist for the murals here. You might check galleries if you’re hunting her. It wouldn’t surprise me to find she owned one, ran one, patronized one.”

Sylvie sighed. “That’s specific,” she said. “She might be named Lily, or not. She’s got money, or access to it. She likes art—”

“Some art,” JK interrupted. “Do not get her started on traditional religious iconography. That woman can seriously hate.”

“And she might own, work in, or hang out at one of the hundreds of galleries in and around Chicago,” Sylvie finished.

“She travels, too,” JK said.

Sylvie threw her hands up, giving him the reaction he was teasing for, but she didn’t find it funny at all. JK, while being helpful, had told her nothing immediately useful. Some of that leaked into her voice despite her efforts. Inside her head, a clock kept a countdown, and she felt like it was heading fast to single digits. Part of it was Erinya; the Fury stalked the bar, back and forth, back and forth, like a caged animal.

“Look, JK, it’s really important that I find her. Anyone else who might know more?”

“You might ask Wolf,” JK said. “She hung out with him a lot.”

Shock hit Sylvie. Of course Lily had hung out with Brandon. What better way to learn about your victim than to befriend him?

“Eye candy, I thought, when she first brought him in. Thought it’d be awful. Some no-talent hack with a line of bull and a pretty face, but turned out he could really paint. And she backed off some once his boyfriend showed up.”

“Yeah?” Sylvie asked, and if JK thought her accepting the shift in focus was strange, he didn’t say so. Truth was, Sylvie felt safer not saying Lily’s name aloud. There could be more scrying-glass televisions, charmed to a mention of Lily’s name. Sylvie shivered at the weight of unseen eyes on her skin, reminded herself that paranoia was a dangerous friend.

If Lily had seen her kill Auguste, or was watching Sylvie question her acquaintances, surely she would have already acted on it.

“Big guy. Quiet. Older. Dropped him off once or twice; I bet just to prove Wolf was taken.” JK fidgeted, dragged out his cigarettes, tapped one out, stuck it in his mouth.

“So, what did Wolf think about her?”

JK lipped his cigarette as if it were lit, then let it drop into his lap. He chased it, studied it, avoiding her eyes.

“What?” Sylvie said. “You can’t tell me you didn’t get a chance to talk to him. I saw those murals. He was here for a month, minimum. And you were around enough to see Lily and him together.”

“That doesn’t mean I talked to him,” JK said, picking up her Coke, melting ice and all, and taking a drink as if his throat hurt.

“JK, you always talk,” Sylvie said. “I’ve only known you for minutes, and strangely, I’m sure of that.”

“Look,” he said. His voice dropped; his cheeks reddened. “I don’t have anything against fags, I really don’t, it’s just that I couldn’t—”

“Talk to one?” Sylvie finished in irritation.

“Couldn’t deal with the fact that I wanted him, okay?” he snapped, then blushed again. “God. I watched him, you know, more entertaining than mopping up last night’s stale beer. He just—there was just something. His hands were covered in paint, green, blue, gold, and I saw him forget, push his hair out of his way. He got paint on his face, in his hair, and he looked so surprised. Like he couldn’t figure out how it got there, and then he just laughed. I wanted him so bad. . . . I stayed the hell away from him.”

Sylvie let the silence lie while JK picked up the cigarette, and with a furtive glance at the bar, lit it.

“So,” Sylvie said, “confession being good for the soul and all that, you feel better?”

“If by better, you mean mortified, sure,” JK said, stubbing out the cigarette after two quick, deep puffs. He put it out on her business card. “I just—I don’t swing that way. It freaked me out. So, really, I don’t have a clue what he thought about Lily. I mean, she disappeared after his boyfriend came in, so maybe Wolf was annoyed with her hanging around and asked him to discourage her. I didn’t see much of her after that.”

He wouldn’t, Sylvie thought. If Lily had gone after Bran to punish Dunne, she had to have some connection with Dunne, maybe even a history—though in that case, Sylvie would have expected Dunne to put her at the top of the suspect list. He didn’t seem to have anyone there at all. Or maybe he hadn’t shared.

“Look, I’m glad to talk to you. Mostly,” he said, with a wry twist to his mouth for his confession. “But the person you really need to talk to is Auguste or Wolf. I can give you Auguste’s address.”

“Thanks,” Sylvie said. “Would you do one thing for me?”

“Maybe,” he said. A little wary now.

“Call me if you see her.”

He hesitated; Sylvie stifled familiar exasperation. Always the sudden withdrawal. Talking was okay, just gossip, ultimately harmless. People could always reassure themselves that they weren’t the only ones who would talk, finding both anonymity and absolution in the thought. But calling her? That brought them right into the picture, and worse, lobbed a bit of the responsibility directly their way. No one wanted that.

“Call me,” Sylvie said, laying out a new card beside the scorched one.

A massive crunch cut the air, followed by a patter of falling glass. Sylvie whirled. Erinya crouched on the bar top, the bartender back against the mirrored wall, at the center of a new starburst of cracks.

Erinya reached for him, hefting his weight with inhuman ease. Along her back, muscles shifted and spikes snagged and stretched out Erinya’s mesh shirt like a porcupine-quill coat.

“Shit,” Sylvie swore, taking off at a run.

“Erinya,” Sylvie snapped, even as the bartender’s face went slack with terror. “Stop it!”

Erinya backhanded her, hitting her jaw with stunning force. Sylvie went down to the taste of rust, seeing stars. She crouched on the floor and shook long bangs out of her face.

Get up, the voice told her. Make her pay.

Sylvie drew the gun; a man near her yelped in surprise, and Sylvie whirled. JK gaped at her.

“Back off,” she growled. Without waiting to see that he did, she jammed the gun barrel into Erinya’s rib cage, snugging it in amidst the wide-spaced mesh of her shirt, nestling it into quills that pricked at her skin, and said, “Let him down.”

“He wants her dead. . . . Wants to kill his mother—for her house . . .”

“Wanting isn’t doing,” Sylvie said. “One more warning, Erinya.”

“Fuck you,” Erinya said. “I’m doing my job—”

“You’re interfering with mine.” Sylvie fired, once, twice, and again.

Blood splashed her hands, more rust scent in the air, beginning to compete with the sting of shattered glass and high-proof alcohol. Erinya stiffened; then she lashed out, one-handed again. Sylvie managed to duck, warned by the tiny adjustment of muscles along Erinya’s neck. Erinya’s nails tore strands of her hair from her temple with a distinct and delicate sting.

The knit mesh of Erinya’s shirt shifted to scale and covered the burned and cored flesh, the bloody gouges that the bullets had torn.

“You dare shoot a god?” Erinya said, shoving the bartender away. He dropped and scuttled for the front door. Erinya hissed, and he froze. “Not done with you yet, matricide.”

Sylvie grinned, her own temper shining as bright and as sharp as diamond. “I’ve been stupid. I started to believe, to see gods everywhere. Dunne may be what he claims to be, but you—you and your sisters are no gods. You’re nothing more than shaped power. Like angels. Like demons. I can destroy you.” She raised the gun again, peered through her bangs, her narrowed vision like a gunsight.

“It might take some careful doing, I admit.”