“She was throwing gasoline everywhere, going to torch the place,” he was telling the captain, who’d apparently ridden in the ambulance back. “She doused me, then took the stairs, sprinkling fuel as she went up. I couldn’t see what happened. I guess she just slipped. She fell down the stairs. Next thing I know, the place is burning and she’s unconscious at the bottom of the stairs with a broken neck.”

Another ambulance pulled up with the other suicide-note victim. He was alive, and they were pumping his stomach.

“Robert,” Cookie said, and when his gaze landed on her, I thought the heavens had opened up for the second time that day.

Captain Eckert let her walk beside the gurney as they rushed him inside to prep for surgery. Fortunately, the bullet hadn’t hit anything vital. I teased him that it must’ve hit his brain, then. Or his penis. He laughed, clearly relieved to be alive.

As Cookie, Garrett, and I sat in the waiting room, Reyes and Osh strolled in like they owned the place. They both wore hoodies, and Osh had donned his top hat, which looked painfully sweet when coupled with a 49ers sweatshirt. But they had to cover the duct tape somehow.

Reyes sat beside me, his heat blistering as Osh went straight for the vending machines. He walked back to us with waters for Cook and me, even though we both craved coffee like there was no tomorrow.

“How did you do that?” Reyes asked as I took a sip. He’d pushed the sleeves of the hoodie up. His forearms corded. His hands strong yet almost elegant as he gazed at them.

I turned to him with my brows raised in question.

He looked at me from beneath his lashes. “I had my hand around your wrist in the cabin. You… slipped through my fingers.”

“I had to get to Uncle Bob,” I said, mesmerized by his probing gaze.

“You did the same with the handcuff in front of the asylum,” Garrett said. “It was like you passed through it.”

“Really?” I asked, thinking back and taking another sip. “I just slipped my hand out.”

He shook his head. “You couldn’t have.”

“Hmm,” I said. I poked my wrist with my index finger to make sure it was all there, not overly worried about it either way.

Reyes took my hand in his then. He brushed his fingers over the inside of my palm, up my wrist, as though examining it, as though testing it, as a magician does when he taps his top hat before making a rabbit disappear.

“Then the knife,” Reyes said, his voice now soft, accusatory. “You tried to take your own life.”

“So did you, if you’ll remember,” I volleyed.

Frustration flared within him, but he bit it back, kept it to himself.

“You have to heal,” I said, worried about both him and Osh. He was scorching, and I was beginning to realize he grew hotter when he was injured and needed to heal. “You need to rest.”

“We need to get to safe ground first,” he said. “Hold on.” He unfolded from his chair and strode to the socialite standing in a dark corner, which normally would have made me a little testy, but she was dead. What could they do?

Captain Eckert walked up to us then, his face somber.

I froze as I tried to get a read, then jumped out of my seat in alarm. “Uncle Bob —!”

“He’s fine,” he said, urging me to sit back down. I didn’t. After a moment, he said, “The other victim didn’t make it.”

“I know,” I said, nodding to the seat on the other side of me, where one Mr. Trujillo sat petting a weary Rottweiler named Artemis. Before Reyes and Osh arrived, we’d been making plans on what to tell his wife. How to get her a message before he crossed. Like so many departed, he was more worried about his family and their well-being than about the fact that he’d just passed. He schooled me on where to find the life insurance policy and the extra keys to the Harley-Davidson he’d bought during a midlife crisis, stating explicitly that his wife could not, under any circumstances, sell it to his cousin Manny, because Manny was an asshat. His words.

The captain nodded; then his gaze darted to Reyes, a curious look on his face, before he went back to talk to a few of his officers standing nearby. He knew more than what he was telling me, and I wondered what all Uncle Bob had said to him in the ambulance. What could he have said, though, with the EMT right there?

Reyes seemed completely unconcerned. He stood in the corner, talking to the socialite. Apparently, the departed who’d helped us battle the Twelve were okay. He walked back to us, his expression grave.

“They’re still here on this plane.”

Osh nodded. “I know. I still feel them.”

I didn’t feel anything but anger at that point. What the hell would it take to kill them? And how hard was it to get one’s hands on a small nuclear device? Just in case.

“We need to leave tonight,” Osh said.

“What?” I glanced from him to Reyes. “What do you mean? Leave where?”

Reyes drew in a deep ration of air, as Cookie looked on in concern. “We need to get to sacred ground. They’re from hell. They shouldn’t be able to cross it.”

“Reyes, I can’t leave. My uncle is in the hospital. My father is missing. And someone has been taking pictures of me for what looks like years.”

Reyes gave me a look that should have had me shivering in my boots. It failed. I was not about to leave my uncle.

“We got lucky,” he said, his expression firm. “Next time, it might not be so easy.”