“I don’t think that our befuddled Inspectre has any dark secrets to hide, Connor.”

As we moved farther into the apartment, the sounds of Connor fumbling in the dark came from off to my left somewhere, sounding not unlike a herd of elephants.

“Those old boysall have dark secrets to hide,” he said. “That’s probably half the reason F.O.G. exists, so they can have one collective burial ground for all their bad mojo.”

I shook my head, another gesture wasted in the darkness.

My arm bumped into something tall, slender, and lamp-like, and I groped around it until I found a switch. With the tiniest of clicks, a Tiffany floor lamp-much like the one sitting half unpacked back home-sprang to life, its stained glass dragonflies sparkling with color. Both of us gasped as the small pool of light lit up a section of the large room. We had expected spacious, which it was. I had expected elegant, which it was. Neither of us had expected for the place to be thoroughly and abusively trashed from floor to ceiling, which sadly, it was.

I felt like someone had sucker punched me in the stomach. The similarity to my place was so striking that it was like seeing my own apartment ransacked. Tasteful antiques littered the floor, many of them now broken or overturned. Irene’s tastes definitely ran in the same circles as mine. Seeing a broken Venini bowl, a midcentury George III card table missing a leg, countless scattered books, and a shredded seat cushion on a late-eighteenth-century Highback-it all drove the pain home.

Irene Blatt might have been struck down by a cab yesterday morning, but someone had gone just as medieval on her apartment. It would be foolish to assume that the two were not connected. “My God…”

Connor whistled, and stepped carefully through the disarray as he looked around. “I know. D.E.A.’s not going to like the overtime on this one.” We started poking through all the destruction. I was a bit confused about what I was supposed to be looking for, but when I asked Connor, he just said, “You’ll know it when you find it, kid,” so I didn’t feel too bad.

“And remember, even though we got in a little practice with your powers at the Antiques Annex, use them sparingly if you have to, got it? This clutter could probably overwhelm you psychometrically.”

I nodded, slipped my gloves back on, and started poring over the scattered books, smashed relics, and broken antiques in the living room before venturing farther back into the apartment. I slowly waded through the knee-deep clutter of books, papers, and boxes, looking for any kind of sign. Most of Irene’s possessions, although broken, gave me greater insight into the living person she had been. I found myself liking her more and more, especially when I unearthed the worn-out box cover of an old board game.Hungry Hungry Hippos. A woman after my own juvenile heart.

I couldn’t resist pushing my power into it. I took my gloves off and placed a tentative finger on the head of the yellow hippo. I tried to envision Irene as a child playing the game-or maybe I’d see that she had kids or a family that she played the game with. Either way, it might offer a clue to our case. Instead, my psychometry skipped all that and jumped straight to showing me the last person who had handled it.

In my mind’s eye, the apartment was only partly trashed, but a figure in a dark robe opened the game box warily looking for something-but what? He tore the contents of the box out, smashing the plastic tray and sending the four rainbow-colored plastic hippos flying. The bottom of the box held nothing and the figure threw the whole game against the wall in frustration before heading farther down the hall, which was where I intended to go as well.

I pulled out of the vision-slightly weary-and helped myself to more of my Life Savers before wading down the hall to the first room on my left. I could probably read half the apartment with my power, but all I’d get was mental footage of that figure trashing it. I decided to conserve my power for now and entered the room on my left.

Irene had definitely been a packrat in life. The room was filled with overturned boxes, and every last article, book, or meticulously catalogued item she had ever come across was stored in them. There were other doors farther along the back hall of the massive apartment, and I imagined more of the same behind them. Whatever manner these items had originally been organized in was now lost to reckless vandalism.

A cracked frame showed a picture of Irene against a background of Italian architecture. In it, she wore a thick cable knit turtleneck sweater. The photo, at last, confirmed for us that my ghostly friend was indeed Irene Blatt, and that this trashed mess had once been her apartment. I slipped the picture from the frame and slid it into my jacket pocket, wondering who had snapped the shot. A boyfriend or maybe just a passerby. This didn’t count as stealing, I told myself, but checked the door guiltily anyway.

I was relieved to find the next room empty, and I heard the sounds of Connor searching another room close by. I turned my focus back to my immediate surroundings. There were two closets at the far end of the room I had to check out. Simply moving was a distraction, so much so that when I finally reached the closets, I didn’t even register the fact that the dark-robed figure from my vision was hiding in there-until he sprang out at me. He pushed me down in his effort to escape, and as I fell, I winced painfully as the pointy corner of a book jabbed into my lower back.

“Connor!” I shouted. “There’s someone here!”

I floundered for several seconds in the sea of scattered books and crumpled papers. The dark-robed figure rushed nimbly across the top of the debris without sinking in before racing out of the room. I hoped Connor was having better luck navigating the apartment than I was.

Clumsily, I got back on my feet and waded as quickly as I could out into the main hall. The sound of a struggle came from the direction of the living room. As the hall opened up onto the main room, I saw Connor and his assailant grappling as the two of them toppled over onto an overturned couch. When they regained their footing, I noticed two things-one strange and one dangerous. The strange thing was a large, dark wooden fish that the intruder clutched close to his body. The dangerous thing was a heavy, curved dagger he held in his other hand. I had seen its kind before, unique in that its sharpened edge was along the inside of the weapon’s curve.

A kukri,I thought. It was the calling card for someone prepared to perform ritualistic sacrifice.That’s a cultist if I ever saw one.

“Knife!” I shouted to Connor, who looked down at the blade for the first time. He moved to pry the wooden fish from the cultist’s hand. When the figure flicked the blade at Connor, he moved back to avoid its swinging arc. The blade ripped through the fabric of his shirt. Thanks to Connor’s awkward positioning, he stumbled out of reach, but not before the backs of his knees hit the couch. His arms spun out of control with the momentum and his legs flew up in the air, toppling him over once again, but saving him from his attacker’s next swipe.

For a second, the madman lifted the blade high overhead and I thought he was going to finish Connor off, so I shouted unintelligibly. It sounded ridiculous, but it did the trick and the robed figure paused and turned from the couch. I pulled my retractable bat from inside my coat and extended it, daring him to come after me.

Instead of attacking, however, the cultist flicked his wrist, and with a barely audible click, the blade disappeared up one of his voluminous sleeves. Connor reached up from behind the couch and made a grab for him, but he kicked Connor’s hand away, turned, and dashed out the apartment door.

Connor groaned as he lifted himself slowly up from behind the couch. His free hand rubbed the back of his head. He seemed on the verge of falling over again, but he grabbed the edge of the couch and steadied himself.