Hardin called, not five minutes after the show ended.

“You’ve got a plan. I want in on it,” she said.

I sighed and started to argue with her, because the last thing I wanted was another person in the line of fire. Trouble was, she’d keep pestering me until I told her, or she’d sic a patrol car on me. She’d probably already dug up the trail of accident reports from all our adventures this week and could check those locations as places we’d likely turn up again. The thought of arguing with Hardin made me tired.

Then again, another ally in the fight was always a good thing.

“Any chance you could get a fire truck on the scene?” I asked. “Just in case?”

She paused. “I do not like the sound of this.”

“When do you ever?”

I told her where we were headed without going into too much detail about what we’d be doing there. Hardin promised me a fire truck.

“Hardin, right?” Ben said after I’d hung up. “Don’t tell me the cops are going to be there.”

“It looks like the cops are going to be there.”

“I’m glad we’re married so I don’t have to be your official lawyer anymore. I don’t envy whoever has to deal with it when you get charged with something.”

Oh, God forbid, I didn’t even want to think of it. “We’re not breaking any laws. If anything, having the cops there makes it better, right?”

“If you say so.”

Soon after talking to Hardin, I called Peter’s phone. And got no answer, which meant he was probably in trouble along with Grant. I couldn’t help them right now, though. Get through the next hour, then worry about them.

We all arrived at Flint House within a half an hour of each other. We each had a job and we set to work, anxious to get this over with. Gary and the PI production crew were at it again, setting up their cameras and monitors in a quest for elusive documentation. The hour was god-awful late at night, par for the course when doing battle with the supernatural. Typical creature-of-the-night bullshit. Didn’t a standoff at high noon mean anything to these beings?

“I don’t like this,” Ben said, following me, not willing to let me out of his sight. I tried not to snap at him over it. He had a right to be worried, after everything that had happened. “I don’t like going into this with a half-baked plan.”

“It’s not half-baked,” I said. “It’s mostly baked. Just a little soft in the middle.” Actually, that was bravado.

“This’ll work,” Tina said, helping Gary with some of the remote cameras. Her nervous fidgeting belied her chipper demeanor.

I retrieved the latest batch of Grant’s protection potion from the trunk of the car. I hoped this wasn’t like antibiotics, that overusing it wouldn’t encourage some sort of spell-resistant superdemon. I’d have to ask Grant about it. I felt a pang at that—I hoped Grant was okay, so that I could ask him about it. I dripped the potion in a circle around the house, like I’d done with every other building in my life. This time, though, I left an opening, a six-foot gap in the circle in front of the door, giving the djinn a way in. Our way.

Inside, Jules had more of the potion, which he used to mark out a path: from the front door, into the parlor, where more marks funneled the path to a circle in the middle of the floor.

“Are we sure we want to be doing this inside?” I said. Inside this very old house made of dry and flammable wood, I didn’t need to add.

“We want it in a confined area,” Jules said.

At least no one lived here.

Jules paused in his work. “Here’s my problem. I’m a scientist. We’re in the business of studying these phenomena. Investigating, collecting data, analyzing. We’re not in the business of doing battle with them. We’re not exorcists or crusaders.”

“Maybe we should be,” Tina said, leaning on the rickety banister near the foyer, regarding our handiwork rather than addressing anyone in particular. “You remember that house in Savannah? The two-hundred-year-old cottage that was supposed to be haunted by a murdered little girl? We recorded some sounds but didn’t find anything definitive, like what usually happens. But I felt something. The place was old, and more than just one little girl had died there. The old woman who lived in the house was scared, really scared. She lived by herself on a tiny income, didn’t have any family, and couldn’t afford to move. She lived every day in fear that this spirit wanted to harm her. Maybe she was just paranoid, but if I could have done anything to convince her that the house wasn’t haunted, or that we’d found a way to drive the spirit out, I would have. Who knows? If this works, maybe we’ll discover there’s a market for this sort of thing. We’ll go from Paradox PI to Paranormal Exterminators. ”

I shook my head. “I so wish I was recording this. Are you guys recording this? The birth of a new show?”

Tina smiled. “If we start a new show, you’ll be the first to know. I promise.”

Hardin arrived with her fire truck, as well as a couple of patrol cars; her people had blocked off the street, to keep innocents from intruding, and to keep watch in case anything should happen. Like what? We all kept asking. If we knew, we’d be able to plan a little better.

The detective marched into the house, lit cigarette in one hand, cup of steaming Starbucks in the other, and announced, “I can’t decide if I want something to happen to prove I’m not nuts, or if I don’t want anything to happen because of the mess it would make,” she grumbled. “But if I hear my boss humming the I Dream of Jeannie theme one more time, I’ll kill him.”

Daaaaa-dum, da dum da dum dum...

“Great, now you’ve got it stuck in my head,” I said. The music was way too jolly for this situation.

“American television,” Jules hmphed derisively.

Everyone took their places. Hardin, Gary, and their people waited outside. Ben was stationed near the door of the parlor with a fire extinguisher. Jules was waiting outside the circle in the parlor. Tina and I were by the front door. Playing bait. That was the plan: Announce our presence, summon it, like had happened the other times, then piss it off enough that it would stumble into the trap.

“I still don’t like this,” Ben muttered for the umpteenth time. “I don’t like you putting yourself in the way of this thing.” His expression had gone taut and snarly. He was pacing back and forth along the wall like a wolf in a cage. I didn’t point this out to him, since I was doing the same thing.