“I’m a healer. I can feel it. Your aura, bright white when we first met, has turned to blue. You’re not comfortable with blue. You do better with red, though I prefer white.”

D.D. pinched the bridge of her nose again. “Why are you calling, Andrew?”

“Something is coming.”

“Evil wants to take over the universe.”

“Evil always wants to take over the universe. I’m telling you that this time, it’s winning.”

“How?”

“It has a purpose, I think. The purpose has given it power.”

“What’s its purpose?”

“It wants something.”

“All right,” she said wearily. “What does it want?”

No immediate answer. Maybe Andrew had gone back to the interplanes. In the silence, it occurred to her to ask: “How’s Tika doing?”

“Tika?” Andrew echoed back. Good answer.

“Danielle Burton thought you knew her,” D.D. fished again. “You know, from the Boston psych ward.”

“She’s angry with me.”

“Tika?”

“Danielle. I want her to heal more than she wants to heal. Forgiving is hard work. It’s easier for her to hate me.”

“So you two know each other. Spend much time on the psych ward, Andrew?”

“Don’t be angry with Danielle,” he continued. “Without the children, she would be lost. Without their love, the darkness would consume her completely.”

“Why do you say that, Andrew?”

“Her story to tell.”

“But you want her to heal. Tell me, and I’ll help.”

“Do you think I’m stupid?” he said abruptly, and there was an edge to his voice she hadn’t heard before. “I lived in your world, Sergeant Warren, playing hardball with the best of them. I know a skeptic when I meet her. And I recognize bullshit when it’s shoveled at me. You’re a cop. You have no interest in healing. Your job is to judge. And you are extremely good at your job.”

In spite of herself, D.D. felt her hackles rising. “Hey, now-”

“She hurts,” he continued. “I feel Danielle’s pain and it calls to me, only because it’s so unnecessary. But not everyone wants to heal. I accept her choice, just as I accept that you will never truly believe what I say until it’s too late.”

“Too late?”

“Something’s coming. It’s powerful. It has purpose.”

“Tell me what you want, Andrew.”

“I want you to be careful, Sergeant Warren. Spirits don’t want something. They always want someone.”

Andrew clicked off the phone. Apparently, she’d pissed him off enough. Which was just as well, given that he’d confused her enough.

Negative energies, forces of evil, dark tidings.

D.D. thought of tonight’s scene, a nine-year-old girl’s forlorn body, swaying from a noose. D.D. didn’t need to be policing the spiritual interplanes. She had her hands full enough on this one.

She finally made it down the stairwell. She pushed open the heavy door, worked her away across the nearly empty space. She decided there was no sound quite as lonely as a single set of footsteps echoing through a vacant parking garage.

She was tired. She did hurt. Lightfoot had been right about some things.

She rounded a broad support pillar and discovered Alex Wilson waiting beside her vehicle. She stopped walking. They eyed each other. He had shadows under his eyes. Stubble across his cheeks. Wrinkles in his once crisp white dress shirt.

“Before… I was wrong,” D.D. said.

“Yeah?”

“Sometimes, I do need a man to take care of me.”

He nodded. “That’s okay; sometimes, I do need a woman to stroke my ego.”

“You look like hell,” she told him.

“Compliment enough for me. Come on. I’ll drive you home.”

She followed him to his car, leaving her vehicle to be retrieved later.

He drove the first five minutes in silence. It gave her a chance to lean her head against the warm window glass and close her eyes. Morning would be coming. Maybe it was already here. She could open her eyes and look for the sun, but she wasn’t ready yet. She needed this moment, dark and contained, inside herself.

“Andrew Lightfoot called,” she said presently, eyes still shut.

“What did he want?”

“To warn me that something wicked this way comes.”

“Can it fashion a noose and does it have an address?”

D.D. opened her eyes, sat up. “Excellent questions, if only I’d thought to ask them.” She sighed, rearranged herself in the seat. “I dropped Tika Solis’s name, but he didn’t bite. He definitely knows nurse Danielle, however. He requested that we not be too hard on her. Healing’s not for everyone.”

“Easy for a healer to say. Means he can charge twice his going rate.”

“Ah, but it’s a gift…”

Alex finally smiled. He drove toward the North End. “Homicide or suicide?” he asked at last.

“You’re the expert; you tell me.”

“Lack of physical evidence,” he said.

“Yeah, I got that message. Crime scene has nothing, janitor saw nothing. Sucky all the way around.”

“No, I mean lack of physical evidence. As in no latent prints. As in door handle, office chair, light switch-none of them bore prints small enough to be a nine-year-old’s. Tricky, if you think about it-a girl opening a door, turning on the light, setting up a chair, yet never leaving behind a single fingerprint.”

“Fuck,” D.D. said, a world of exhaustion behind that one word.

Alex reached over, squeezed her shoulder. “Not what you were expecting this evening-from executing routine search warrants to processing a dead body.”

“Not what I was expecting,” D.D. agreed. Alex’s hand returned to the steering wheel; she felt its loss. “I don’t… I mean… Hell. One moment I’m on a date, next I’m at a house with five dead bodies. And that leads to another house with six dead, which leads us to a psych ward where a nine-year-old child escapes and hangs herself while we’re on the property. What are the odds of that?”

“A date?” Alex asked.

“Nothing serious. Never even made it through the entrée,” she assured him.

“You gonna try again?”

“Nah. Bachelor number one’s kind of faded by the wayside.”

“Good to know. Please continue.”

“So we got five dead, plus six dead, plus one hanged. They’re connected somehow. Gotta be connected. Only thing that makes sense, except, of course, none of it makes sense. How do you go from two family annihilations to one hanged child?”

Alex didn’t say anything, just touched her shoulder again.

“Fuck,” D.D. muttered, and turned to stare out the window, where the morning sun was staining the sky.

She’d have to start monitoring her squad for burnout, she thought. Especially Phil. She couldn’t imagine going from scenes like the ones they had to tucking your kids into bed. Phil would stop talking, the first sign he was starting to fail.

And her? She wasn’t sure of her signs. Seems like she never slept when she was working a hot case and she was cranky during the best of times. Maybe she’d secretly burned out years ago, and now it didn’t matter anymore. God knows she went long periods of time without ever connecting with another human being. No hugs, no morning cuddles, no kisses on the cheek. She didn’t own a dog to walk or have a cat to pet. She didn’t even have a plant to soothe her with its pretty green leaves.

Get in touch with your inner angel, Andrew Lightfoot had said.

Asshole wouldn’t last a day in homicide.

“I think Danielle Burton is the key,” D.D. murmured after a moment. “The nurse had a little episode when I was questioning her, then her boss Karen and her boyfriend, Gym Coach Greg, closed ranks. Karen let it drop that A Bad Thing had happened to Danielle’s family and out of sheer compassion we should play nice with her. Then Andrew Lightfoot essentially said the same.”

“Gym Coach is her boyfriend?” Alex asked with interest.

“Almost positive. Definitely something above and beyond the call of duty.”

Alex smiled at her. “I feel the exact same way about you.”

D.D. laughed, which finally made her feel a little lighter on the inside.