“More like consulting. We have a plan. Maybe you could help?”

“I am so there.”

He nodded, but his anger was still present, simmering just under his curmudgeonly surface. “Are you okay, Uncle Bob?”

He looked pointedly at Cookie. “I’m fine. I have to get to a meeting.”

When he left, I turned back to Cookie and shrugged. She shrugged back at me, thanked her date, and nodded toward the back door, indicating she was headed home. I followed her out, my shoes still squishy.

“Your uncle seemed upset,” she said when I caught up to her.

“He did, didn’t he? Oddly upset, but in the wrong way.”

We passed the alley where Reyes’s muscle car had been only a little while earlier. I wondered where he was keeping her parked. Any man who would risk his paint job for the feel of a woman was a winner in my book. I decided to check on him before hitting the sack.

The next thing I remembered was Reyes smiling down at me as the sun filtered into his apartment, his hair mussed, his lids hooded with the thick remnants of sleep. I stretched as those three little words that every girl longs to hear slipped from his mouth with effortless ease. As though they did it every day. As though they didn’t mean the world to me.

With one corner of his mouth tipping sensually, he asked, “Want some coffee?”

And I fell.

I fell hard.

15

The most important thing is to not be on fire.

Ask someone who is on fire, and they will tell you

that the most important thing is to not be on fire.

—TRUE FACT

The first thing on my agenda, besides finding out who trashed my place, was to confront Captain Kangaroo. Oh, and I had to get ahold of Garrett and set up a meet with the Dealer so they could do their homework together. They were taking Vague Prophecies and Muddy Supernatural Innuendos 101, but that class didn’t really get interesting until the second semester in VPMSI 102.

Now that my mind was on the subject, I’d never managed to figure out where Garrett found the knife. He said his acquisition of the dagger wasn’t one of his finer moments. That could’ve meant anything from a museum heist to an illegal excavation of a dig in Romania to a con to swindle it out of an elderly investor.

Or maybe he stole it from a temple. Of doom! That would be cool.

His vagueness only made me all the more curious. Like he didn’t know that would happen. The butt. I wanted so very much to ask him about his family, too. Another area he’d been very vague about. According to the research Cook and I had done behind his back, his great-grandmother was a true voodoo princess, quite a renowned one. She was born in New Orleans and practiced her art openly to become one of the most famous voodoo priestesses in history.

Our research uncovered the fact that his grandmother’s gift was passed down to an aunt of Garrett’s and possibly his sister. A sister! It was hard to imagine Garrett with a sister. Still, I wondered if a little of that gift hadn’t been passed on to him. He was such a skilled tracker. His methods often went beyond the average interviews and Internet searches. He seemed to have a sixth sense where his job was concerned. Something a voodoo prince might possess, as it were.

He didn’t talk about his family much, but that didn’t stop me from finding out about them. Honestly, he couldn’t tell me something like some of his family was sensitive to otherworldly occurrences and expect me not to follow up on that. Seriously? Did he not know me at all?

When I arrived at the police station, I was told the captain was in a meeting and that I would have to wait in the lobby. Fine. I could wait him out. If I had to sit there all day, I was not leaving this station until I knew what the captain was up to.

I dived into my bag and fished out my phone so I could at least do something semi-productive while I waited. After I found my favorite icon, I waited for Bejeweled to load and proceeded to kick some sparkling ass.

A voice filtered toward me through my mesmerizing grid of jewels.

“Your aura is very bright.”

I glanced up at the woman sitting across from me. She looked normal enough, with short blond hair and sensible shoes, but most people who mentioned auras weren’t that normal.

“Thanks,” I said, going back to my game.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” she continued, despite my super big hint that would suggest she not.

“Really? That’s weird.”

“Actually,” she said, “I know who you are. We’re a lot alike. I’m here to help them with a case, too.”

I nodded.

“What I mean to say is, I know you’re psychic.”

I finally paused the game and asked, “Are you punking me?”

“No, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’m psychic, too.”

“Is Pari punking me?”

She pulled her bag closer to her chest. “No.”

“Is Cookie punking me? It’s not in her nature to punk, but I find everyone has a little bit of punk buried deep down inside them.”

“No.”

“Is Swopes punking me?”

“No, I actually am a psychic.”

“Is—?”

“No!” she said, her voice echoing throughout the room A nice couple who looked like they’d done one too many hits of methamphetamines looked over at us. She lowered her voice to a hissy whisper. “Nobody’s punking you!”

“Gah, testy.”

She loosened her hold on her bag and smoothed her pants with one hand. “I just thought maybe we could work together sometime. We both provide a service for law enforcement. Like the case they called me in for. We could team up and solve it together.”