The scene of the crime? her little dark voice suggested slyly.

. . . the explanation she owed Wright that she’d left the list behind.

Her nerves jittered without her taking a single caffeinated sip. Alex was a minefield of potential questions, and Sylvie wasn’t ready to answer anything that might touch on Demalion’s inexplicable return.

“Thanks,” she said, lifting herself from the side of her truck, where she’d been slouched against the warm metal, tipping the coffee cup in Etienne’s direction.

“De nada,” Etienne said. He disappeared back into the bar on a waft of air-conditioning that mingled spilled alcohol with the cloying, chemical bite of Freon.

She sidled around the truck, slurping at her own coffee, scalding her tongue as always, but hell, impatience was a familiar flaw. The front door was locked; she kicked at the metal surround, rattle and clang, and shouted, “Alex!”

Alex popped the latches, a series of clicks and snaps one after another, and said. “Dammit, I knew you’d be in. I could have been sleeping.”

Sylvie waved the coffee cup, and Alex’s attention derailed. She pounced on it, and Sylvie said, “So, I’m a bad boss, made you get up early, and asked you for info that kept you up. You got anything useful?”

“List’s on the desk,” Alex said. “Organized for driving ease since there’s nothing much else to go on. All the neighborhoods are nice, no one reported a car stolen, and none of the owners have criminal records. How’d it go with Wright?”

Sylvie considered telling Alex exactly how it had gone, down to the little groan he’d made when her nails grazed his throat. Then she imagined the result: an impromptu lecture on the psychology of grief-driven behaviors as seen on Oprah, and god help her, but probably some type of client-employee counseling as scripted by Alex. Instead, Sylvie bit it all back, and said, “About as you would expect.”

Alex looked down at the murky froth of her de-lidded coffee, and said, “Jimmies, this needs jimmies,” and disappeared into the kitchenette with suspicious alacrity.

Sylvie eyed the computer, thought about her list, and followed Alex. Alex had her head buried in the cabinets, hunting candy toppings they didn’t have, and Sylvie leaned up against the counter. “Something you need to say, Alex? About Wright’s case?”

Alex pulled her head out of the cabinet, wiping a stray cobweb from her hair. “We’ve got to clean—”

“Alex.”

“Is he possessed?”

“You had doubts, and you force-fed me the case anyway?”

Alex slumped against the counter. “I did a search on him before I said yes to his case. No red flags. Cop right out of high school, wife in insurance, apartment, kid. A few small commendations for the job, but he’s looking at beat cop for a while longer. I couldn’t see any reason he would lie; it’s not the right type of lie for a cop, but you always say to look for real-world reasoning first. And I might have skipped that step.”

Alex poked morosely at the foam on her coffee, the better to flavor the fingernail she began to chew. “He was just so desperate, I guess I got caught up in his fear, then in selling him to you. I didn’t start worrying until later.”

“You lucked out,” Sylvie said. “He’s possessed.” As soon as the words, sure and decisive, left her mouth, she grimaced. Red flag to a bull.

“Oh, good!” Alex said, then backtracked. “I mean, bad. For him. Good I didn’t waste your time with galloping PTSD or a really special case of dissociative identity disorder. So what’d you find out? What’s up with the ghost? What does it want?”

“I’ll catch you up later,” Sylvie said. “I just came by for the list. Since you’re in, can I assume that you’ve added useful facts to my info?”

“C’mon, Syl, I’ve never seen possession before.”

“It’s not a game or a collectible card,” Sylvie snapped. “It’s a man’s life.” Two men’s lives. Her breath tightened in her chest again.

Alex went white, set down her coffee, and passed Sylvie the list. It had grown in her hands, gone from sketchy information to a page-long dossier on each car and owner.

Sylvie tucked the sheets into her jacket, the slick denim reminding her—“Zoe come back yet?”

Alex shook her head, still silent. Still upset.

“Crap,” Sylvie said, wondering where her sister had washed up. Bella’s? Not likely, given their apparent spat, but teenage fights healed as fast as they happened. Jasmyn? Ariel? “She’s probably hanging out at one of the princess pack’s homes. Or off bumping uglies with Raul—”

“Carter, I think,” Alex offered. Her voice was small, uncertain.

Sylvie felt guilt sting her. She let out her breath, and said, “Drink your coffee before it gets cold. And it’s not Carter. It’s Carson. God help us all. Basically she could be anywhere.” Sylvie shook her head. A sulking Zoe could disappear for days, staying with one friend or another. She’d done it before. But she’d be back soon enough for her stuff. The material girl wouldn’t go far without her phone. The burglars, on the other hand, needed finding, preferably before the cops blundered in and scared them into hiding, or worse—caught them and made all Sylvie’s hours unbillable.

She patted the list in her pocket, snagged a handful of candy from the kitchenette, and headed back out with a final admonition to Alex. “If Zoe comes wandering back? Keep her here.”

Alex nodded, then said, “What about Wright’s case? You want me to see if I can get a line on an exorcist?”

Sylvie froze midstep, her heart racing. It made it hard to keep her tone level, but she managed. “Exorcists hunt demons exclusively. We’ll have to think of something else.”

“I could call Val Cassavetes. Even if she’s still licking her wounds, she’s a smart witch. She can—”

“She’s not answering our calls, remember? Shadows Inquiries is x-ed right out of her little black book.”

“But this is different,” Alex persisted. “It’s not a favor to you; it’s to help—”

“Leave it,” Sylvie said, and fled the office before Alex could really dig in and start working the angle Sylvie didn’t want to think about. Getting rid of the ghost would mean getting rid of Demalion, and that turned her stomach, made her shake.

This is trouble, the little dark voice said. Real trouble.

She slammed into her truck, reversed gears, and slipped back into morning traffic with only two horns going off and one person insulting her parentage. Sylvie just waved a hand in a vicious salute, thinking they had no idea.

The list blew on her dash, its edges dancing in the air-conditioning, and she put a hand on it. First stop? The beach and the Audi.

She found the house easily, but the cops had beaten her there, were speaking to a woman who looked more than displeased to be explaining herself to them. Even at a distance, Sylvie could see the stacked gold bracelets on her arms flash as she told the two uniforms exactly what she thought of them, with plenty of emphatic gestures and a shrillness that carried in the early-morning air.

South Beach, Sylvie thought, turning her truck around at the intersection, where women put their jewelry on before their clothes. The cops would be a while yet; the morning sunlight and the woman’s white-silk robe did little to hide the skin beneath, and ogling her was a more pleasant way for them to begin their shift than rousting drunks.

She left them to it and headed across the water to the Grove, home to a silver Navigator.

At ten o’clock in the morning, Coconut Grove was peaceful and pristine. The sun glazed the stucco, greened the trees, dusted the Mexican-tiled roofs with gold. The air was still and lazy, and Sylvie’s battered diesel truck rumbled through the streets like sluggish thunder. For once, her truck wasn’t out of place; all around her, the street grew battered trucks, bringing men and their machines to work: lawn mowers, pool cleaners, window washers, house painters, coming to get the job done before the peak heat of the day. Coconut Grove was a mecca for laborers, full of homeowners too busy to maintain their houses themselves, well-off enough to hire someone to do it, and penny-wise enough to want it done cheaply.