“I guess. Wait! Can you at least tell me when it happened?”

“Davidson,” he said in warning.

“Come on, Gossett. For old times’ sake.”

“You hated me during those old times.”

“I didn’t hate you. I just found you exceedingly annoying.”

“I intimidated you, didn’t I?”

I snorted. “Stop trying to change the subject.”

“Oh, man,” he said, his voice whinier than usual. “I can’t remember exactly. I’d say maybe five, six years ago? They all blur together. There was this one time…”

He started to tell me a story about an inmate who’d accidentally severed his own artery with a spoon, but he’d lost me at “five, six years ago.” My husband had another child.

* * *

I lay draped over a bar, my head resting on an arm thrown across it. It had been comfortable until the bar started spinning. I curled my fingers around its edges. I’d never been fond of merry-go-rounds.

Caroline walked over to me with my next mixed drink. She announced last call and then started to set it down. She hesitated. I lifted my head, tried to focus on her face, but there were just so many of them.

Caroline was an adorable redhead with a short bob and a button nose. Or at least she was adorable until she said, “I think you’ve had enough caffeine for one night,” and took my drink away.

“What?” I asked, the depth of my outrage knowing no bounds. “I’ve only had five.”

“Mmm-hmm,” she said, taking the grande mocha latte, extra whipped cream, extra hot away.

A male voice met my ears then. Bryan. That boy could brew like he’d been conceived and incubated in an espresso machine, and he was my second-favorite person on earth. Or he would’ve been if he’d given me my drink.

“Tell her I’m okay, Bryan. I have a strong heart. I can take it.”

He grinned. “I called her husband.”

“You know Reyes?” I asked, my words slurring but just ever so slightly. “He’s the son of Satan.”

“Oh no,” Caroline said as they cleaned up for the night. “Did you guys get into a fight?”

“I bet they did. I’ve called my boyfriend worse,” Bryan said.

“Just one more. I promise I’ll get help in the morning. I’ll go to counseling and support groups and—”

“What stage is bargaining?” Bryan asked.

“It’s somewhere in the middle,” Caroline said, and then straightened, her face brightening. Only one guy did that to every girl and every other guy I knew.

It was him. He was here.

“Thanks for calling,” Reyes said, his voice like smooth bourbon.

I’d gone back to resting my head on the bar. It had gotten so heavy over the last couple of hours. So all I could see when the son of evil incarnate walked up was his crotch. The same crotch that got Miz Clay pregnant. The same crotch that I craved like a heroin addict craved, well, heroin.

“You ready to come home?”

“No.” I held up a finger. No idea why. “I’m hanging out with my friends Caroline and Bryan. And I have no idea who you are. I already told you that once today.”

I heard the humor in Reyes’s voice when he said, “Dutch, do I need to bend you over my knee?”

When he took my hand and started to drag me off my barstool, I yelled to no one in particular, “Stranger danger!”

Sadly, both Caroline and Bryan were too busy passing flirtatious glances Reyes’s way to call the cops. Damn them. No, damn him!

He stopped and lifted my face off the bar. “Are you actually drunk?”

“I think she may have been doctoring her mocha latte,” Caroline said, her face all soft and sparkly. “We aren’t supposed to have alcohol on the premises.”

He searched my pockets, causing a stir deep in my belly, and found my flask. “Sorry about this,” he said.

Just kidding. I didn’t have a flask. Like a tiny flask would get me drunk. I’d had to stop by a package store and buy a fifth of Jack. I downed half before I even walked in, then I smuggled the pint that had come with it in my jacket.

“Oh no. No problem,” Caroline said, waving off the very idea. “I think she’s had a hard day.”

“You, my friend,” I said, pointing at her, “have no idea. First, I find this homeless girl who’s been cursed and is going to die soon. Then I find out not one, but two ghost-hunting teams are following me. Stalking me. EMFing me.”