“Yeah, but it’s two in the morning. No one was around. And I didn’t want to be sitting ducks for any hellhounds that might happen along.”

“And you drove through the university campus where there are no streets.”

“Yet plenty of sidewalk.”

Osh grabbed the shovels out of the back and followed us to Lacey’s grave.

“Hey, guys,” she said with a wave. “Who’s the hunk?”

Osh grinned, and if the departed could blush, she would have.

“Um, sorry. I didn’t know you could hear me.”

“Not at all. Which one?”

“Oh. Over here.”

Lacey led Osh to her gravesite.

Cookie and I lagged behind, partly so I could ask her something and partly because we were hoping Osh would do all the work.

“Have you noticed anything strange about your daughter?” I asked Cook, not certain how to bring up tonight’s event.

“Something?” she asked. “As in only one thing?”

I chuckled and relayed what had happened at the carnival to an astonished Cookie.

“Yeah, I was right there, too.” I stopped her and put a hand on her arm. “She’s special, Cook. And I don’t mean a little. I think we were destined to meet. I think she’s going to somehow be a key player in my daughter’s life.”

Cookie sat on a headstone, and while normally that would be a tad profane, I understood her need to sit down. “I don’t know what to say.”

“I don’t either. I was floored, Cook. She was amazing. And those cards? Where did she learn to do that?”

“I asked her that, too.”

“And?”

“Prison, apparently.”

“She’s such a smart-ass.”

“Tell me about it.”

I summoned Angel and made him and Lacey be the lookouts. “No flirting either,” I said in warning. “I need lookouts, not make-outs. Got it?”

“Sheesh, pendeja, chill your blue jeans. She’s so bossy,” Angel said to Lacey, hooking a thumb toward me.

And again with the almost blushing as they went off to be our lookouts.

Luckily, Lacey was right. The ground had recently been disturbed, so digging was way easier than I thought it would be, which still meant it was one of the hardest, most effortful things I’d ever done in my life. I’d dug a lot in Uganda, but apparently I was in much better shape then.

Osh sat against a headstone, scanning the area while Cookie and I dug. It was my own fault. I should have blackmailed him into actually helping, but I got the feeling he was enjoying the Cookie and Charley Show.

We were getting somewhat of a rhythm, though. Two hours later, Cookie was wheezing and involuntarily moaning every time she swung the shovel, like a tennis player every time she hit the ball, while I just sweated like a running back during Super Bowl. Every once in a while, I’d accidentally dump a shovelful of dirt on Cook’s head. It seemed to upset her tremendously, and never one to take an insult lying down, she would accidently dump a shovelful of dirt on my head, too.

“Wouldn’t it suck if we did all this work and Lacey’s body was still in there?”

“Bite your tongue.”

“I heard that!” Lacey said from afar. Dead people had really good hearing.

Osh strolled up to us, chewing on a blade of grass like we had all the time in the world. Reyes would figure out I wasn’t back home soon enough; then I’d have hell to pay. Literally.

“So, you two have been at this for two hours and —”

“Dog!” Lacey screeched in the distance. She’d been doing that all night, scared to death one of the hellhounds would show up.

“— and you’ve managed to shave off only the top layer of dirt.”

I gaped at him. “This is much more than the top layer. This is at least —” I held up a hand to get a visual calculation. “— four and a half inches.”

“Out.”

Cookie and I couldn’t have scrambled out of the grave fast enough. Which, at four and a half inches deep, wasn’t difficult.

Osh took both shovels, tested their weight and balance, chose one, and then went to work.

An hour later, Cookie, Lacey, and I sat in the graveyard, watching a slave demon who looked like a nineteen-year-old kid – a very well-built nineteen-year-old kid – dig up a grave shirtless, his wide shoulders shimmering in the moonlight.

“I’m going to hell,” Cookie said, unable to rip her gaze off him.

“Well, if you go, there are probably others who look like that. It might not be such a bad place.”

“I want to have his demon babies,” Lacey said.

Angel scoffed behind us, the only one besides Osh actually doing his job.

Just then we heard a thunk, and Osh looked up over the grave. “Found it.”

We hustled over as he scraped dirt off the coffin and opened it. Sure enough, no body.

“Told you,” Lacey said. “You know, the more I think about it, the more it had to be Joshua, my ex. Maybe he hid my body somewhere else. He was so obsessed with it when I was alive. Can I haunt him?”

“You sure can. I advise it, actually. It’s very therapeutic. But I’m not sure it’s him.”

“What do you mean?” she asked as Osh jumped out of the grave. Like literally. Freaking demons.

“You said there are two more graves with missing bodies?”

“Yes, I can show you.”