“You have your own file,” he said.

As if she were a car and he were keeping her maintenance records so the warranty held up.

Extracting a thick portfolio tied with a band, he sat down as he dove into the paperwork, and she wondered how it was so voluminous.

“I saved all of your school reports and test scores,” he said as if he read her mind.

Why, she wanted to ask. Then again, maybe he thought he might need them if he sought to return her to the hospital she had been born in.

Watching his spindly fingers pick through the pages he had retained, she reflected on how frail he seemed, his thin body bent, his narrow shoulders hunched. For some reason, his physical weakness made her think about all of the propriety he always insisted upon, and how his protocols had defined her childhood and early adulthood, presented to her as a test of morality or worthiness she had to pass. Funny—now, she saw all of the arbitrary rules as the defense mechanisms of a feeble and conflict-averse man, one who had muddled through life with a remarkable lack of personal distinction for all the historical distinction of his pedigree.

“Here,” he said. “His name and number.”

Her father held out a business card and Jo took it. Robert J. Temple, Esq. With a downtown Philadelphia address and an original 215 area code. No firm name listed.

Putting the stiff little rectangle on the leather blotter, she got her phone out and snapped a photo of it.

“Thank you,” she said as she handed the thing back.

“You are welcome.”

Jo felt as though she had to wait as the business card went back into the portfolio, and the flap was battened down once again with the band. Her father then returned the collection of documents to the lower drawer and got to his feet. As if the business meeting were over.

“Do give Mother my regards,” Jo said.

Now, the man smiled. “Oh, I most certainly will. And she will return them to you, I’m sure.”

He was pleased because that was an appropriate thing to say and do. Which would provide him with an appropriate thing to communicate to his wife when the subject of the unannounced visit came up.

“Oh, do you need a ride somewhere?” Chance Early asked. “I didn’t see a car in the drive.”

“No, I’ll get a Lyft.”

“From whom? Tom can take you where you need to go.”

Of course the man had never heard of Lyft or Uber.

“A taxi, I mean.” She one-strapped her backpack. “I’m just going to wait on the front step after I call for it. I will enjoy the fresh air and sunshine.”

The relief on her father’s face wasn’t something he bothered to hide. “Very well. It has been lovely to see you again, Josephine. I look forward to our next meeting.”

He stuck his hand out.

Jo shook what she was offered, finding his palm bone dry and skeletal. “Thank you. I’ll see myself out so that your breakfast is not unduly interrupted.”

“That is most considerate.”

As Jo left the house, she got out her phone again. A number not in her contacts had called and left a message, but she ignored the notification as she went into the Lyft app.

She was leaning back against the warm stone of the house, her face lifted to the sun, when a Nissan Stanza pulled up. Getting in the back, she declined mints, control over the Sirius radio, and an alteration— hotter or cooler—of the air temperature. The driver was chatty and she was glad. As he hit the gas, she had the sense she was not ever going back to her parents’ house again and she needed a distraction from that conclusion.

Except of course she would go back. She had visited her parents for Christmas just three months ago. And Christmas would be coming back around in another eight. So surely she would return . . .

Jo didn’t remember much about the drive back to the 30th Street Station. Or precisely how she came to be on a train again.

At least she managed to get another window seat.

As she settled in and hoped that she would continue to have the car mostly to herself, she took out her phone and checked again to see if Syn had called. She was disappointed to find that he hadn’t. Then again, she needed to reach out to him first, didn’t she.

Instead of calling him, she went into Safari and did a Google search on the lawyer her parents had used—and found the man’s obituary. He had died ten years ago.

Naturally.

To pass the time before the train started moving and she could fall asleep against the window, she played the voice mail that had been left by the unknown number, expecting it to be a scam offer for health insurance or maybe a fake program to help her with student loans she didn’t have.

Hi, Ms. Early. This is St. Francis Urgent Care. You were here about seventy-two hours ago? You left us a blood sample? Well, it turns out that it was contaminated in the lab somehow. We hate to ask you to do this, but could you come in and let us take some more? Again, we’re really sorry. We’ve never had this happen before. It must have been a screwup on their part, but they’re saying they couldn’t read what they had. Thanks. Oh, our telephone number is—

Jo cut the message off. All of that was so not on her list of things to worry about. Besides, she’d essentially been cleared by the doctor and—

Frowning, she rubbed at her nose, a terrible smell invading her nostrils. When there seemed to be no escape from the stench, she leaned out into the aisle. Two men had entered the car at the far end, and it had to be them.

Assuming the pair had strung dead skunks around their necks under their coats.

Jo blinked her eyes and rubbed her nose again. God, she’d never smelled anything so awful. It was like baby powder and roadkill—

All at once, her headache came on with a vengeance, her skull pounding with pain. Clearly, the stink was the trigger.

Nope. Not gonna do this for two hours, she decided. No matter how rude it is to move.

Grabbing her backpack, she got to her feet and shuffled up to the next car in line—and thank God that whatever the smell was didn’t carry into the other space.

Just as the train bumped and started forward, she sat down at a new window seat and massaged her temples. As the agony continued to build, she refused to submit to it. For some reason, she had the feeling it was trying to distract her. Get her off some kind of thought trail.

Even though that was crazy talk. Anthropomorphizing a migraine? Really?

Still . . . that stench. What about the stench—

Even as the vise cranked down harder on her skull, she probed further the conviction that she had smelled that horrible stink before. Sometime recently. Very recently . . .

Going into her phone, she went to her call log. Without knowing what she was looking for, she checked what had come in on, and gone out of, her phone over the last couple of days. Lot of calls back and forth with McCordle. Then there was Dougie looking for money. Telemarketing bullcrap—

Jo sat up.

What the hell had she been doing, talking to Bill at ten p.m. A number of times?

She’d been home at the time. Or should have been. And yet she had no memory of speaking to him then. Sure, they regularly chatted about their little extracurricular hobby with the supernatural—but not after ten o’clock on a proverbial school night. And not over and over again within such a short period of time . . .

No, wait, she thought. She’d been out somewhere. She had gone in search of . . . something.

Yes, in her car. It had been raining—

Moaning, Jo shut her phone down and had to let her head fall back against the seat rest. As she breathed in a shallow way, she vowed to find out where the hell she had gone and why she had called her friend.

She was done with the knowledge holes in her life.

At least a simple mystery like where she had been when she had spoken with Bill had to be solvable.

It just had to be.

Thirty minutes after nightfall, Butch parked the R8 in the downtown garage—and this time, he did not expect to meet with anyone. Not Mel. Not his roommate. Not his roommate’s estranged mother.

Yup, he wasn’t interested in crossing paths with anybody.

And FFS, it sure would be handy to dematerialize.

Instead, he hoofed it. Stepping out of the garage, he popped the collar on his leather jacket, ducked his head, and started making time. The rest of the Brotherhood were still back at the mansion, doing a weapons check—something he technically should have been involved with. But whatever. He needed a little personal time before—

As his phone started going off, he took it out and killed the vibration without bothering to check to see who was calling. This wasn’t going to take long, and as soon as he was finished, he’d hit the home team up, pull a mea culpa, and proceed with the regularly scheduled program.

It took him six minutes to get to his destination, and as he stared up at the twenty-story office building, it occurred to him that he had no memory of how he and Mel had gotten inside the night before. She must have had a key. Had it been through the front entrance? That seemed unlikely given that there were revolving doors that had been locked in place because it was after hours.

Around back?

Unease prickled up the nape of his neck, and he palmed one of his guns as he went down the side of the building. In the middle of the block, he found an unmarked entrance, but it was bolted closed with no wiggle room whatsoever.

Hell, the damn thing didn’t have a lock to pick or even a card reader. Had to be an emergency exit.

Rounding the far corner and facing off at the back of the property, he hoped for a receiving dock in the shallow parking area—and had his prayers answered. But that was as far as the good news went. He couldn’t get into anything. Not the bay doors that were all rolled down tight, and not the three regular doors with their electronic key readers for which—duh—he had no pass card.

He went around the footprint of the building. Twice.

Before he caved.

Taking out his phone, he was cursing as he hit send on the call. No reason to go into his contacts to find the number. The fucker in question had been the last person who had called him. Three times in a row. In the last three and a half minutes—