“Nelli! Come back!” Along with Lucky’s shout, I heard the sound of running footsteps approaching.
“Max, MOVE!” Lopez ordered as the old mage kept himself positioned between the gun and the dog.
Nelli’s big paws were on Quinn’s shoulders, pressing him against the wall. Her bared fangs dripped saliva and she stared fiercely into his frightened, wide-eyed gaze. He was holding as still as he possibly could, but his chest was moving rapidly with his agitated breathing. When Nelli sniffed his carotid artery, he flinched a little and closed his eyes.
The footsteps that were thundering toward me stopped abruptly as Lucky and John arrived and saw what was happening.
“Nelli!” Lucky said sharply. “Sit!”
To no one’s surprise, that didn’t work. The dog snarled ferociously at Quinn and snapped at his face.
Lopez tried to circle around Max, who blocked his path, staying between him and Nelli. “Goddamn it, Max!”
About six feet tall with a lightly athletic build, Lopez had a dark golden-olive complexion, strong features, thick black hair that shone darkly under the overhead lights, and rich blue eyes—which were cold with focused anger right now.
“Don’t shoot!” Max’s voice was hoarse. “Please, detective.”
I had seen Max use his power in the past to make a weapon fly out of someone’s hand, but he didn’t attempt it here. Probably because Lopez had too firm a grip on his gun for it to work. If he felt the weapon move, he wouldn’t let go, he’d reflexively tighten his grasp—and perhaps inadvertently squeeze the trigger and put a bullet in someone.
“Put down that gun!” Lucky shouted at Lopez, sounding scandalized. “You could hurt someone!”
I was too scared to appreciate the irony of Lucky urging gun safety.
“Stay where you are!” Lopez shouted back.
An attacking dog, a cop with a gun, a Gambello killer, and a demon working overtime to inflict stress and evoke anger. This would go very badly if someone didn’t do something right now to defuse the situation.
I took a deep breath and, fueled by adrenaline, I leaped to my feet, popping up as if propelled by a spring.
“Move away, Esther!” Lopez urged.
I ignored him, lunged for Nelli, and put my hand on the familiar’s pink leather collar.
John blurted, “Esther, don’t!”
“Esther, no!” Lopez’s shout was very agitated. “Get back!”
I prayed that his stress wouldn’t produce another involuntary incendiary incident. We had enough things to deal with right now.
Natural instinct made me wary of touching Nelli, but I shook her collar to get her attention as I shouted her name. Her massive body was quivering with tension as she snarled and sniffed, growled and glared. But I maintained control of my breathing, which helped me keep control of my head.
Max had said Nelli didn’t want to hurt Quinn; she was challenging the entity that was attached to him, demanding that it confront her and do battle. So she was trying to protect the detective, I reasoned. Trying to free him from demonic oppression. Her way of expressing this, as a (very large) canine familiar was terrifying, but she hadn’t lost her head, and she wasn’t out of control. She was just trying to do her job.
This was my working theory, anyhow.
“Nelli!” I took another breath and willed myself to speak more calmly. “This won’t work. You must stop.”
She kept growling and snapping furiously at Quinn, menace in her eyes, her hair standing on end. The detective’s face was pasty white, his expression taut and tense as he avoided the dog’s fierce gaze, his chest rising and falling with his rapid breathing.
“Esther, get away!” Lopez shouted.
“Nelli, no,” I said firmly. “It will not come out and face you! Not while he gives it such a safe home.”
“No, John, stay back,” I heard Lucky say.
“But—”
“Let her handle this.”
“Nelli, are you listening?” I looked at Quinn. “He wants to keep it. It won’t confront you while he protects it!”
To my relief, the familiar reacted. I didn’t know whether it was my tone, my words, or her own realization that she wasn’t getting the response she sought, but Nelli paused and reconsidered what she was doing.
She remained where she was, her body weight pressing Quinn up against the wall, her paws still on his shoulders . . . But she ceased the terrifying growling and snapping and now just stared fiercely at the cop, as if trying to decide what to do next. She was breathing hard, her rib cage pumping in and out, her panting breaths ruffling Quinn’s red hair.
“Esther, get away from that dog,” Lopez insisted in a hard voice.
Quinn risked taking a look at Nelli and appeared to recognize that she was calming down.
“Nelli, enough,” I said. “It won’t do battle. Not like this.”
I could feel the tension in her big body, every fiber of her being protesting against simply letting the entity leave this place, free and unvanquished.
“We’re just making it stronger,” I warned her. The fear, tension, and anger among us now was so active, it felt like a small tornado was whirling around us. The walls practically vibrated with our negative emotions. “We must stop feeding it, Nelli. Right now.”
“Max, if you don’t get out of the way . . .” Lopez warned coldly.
Quinn met my gaze for a moment, and then he looked at the dog again. “Get d . . .” He cleared his throat and tried once more. His voice was faint, but functional. “Get down, Nelli. All you’re doing is . . . scaring me.”
Nelli looked at him for a long moment, then let me pull her off him. My hand still on her collar, we backed away from Quinn, who sagged with relief.
With Nelli’s teeth no longer so perilously close to a human throat, Lopez risked agitating her by knocking down Max. As the old mage hit the floor with a loud grunt, Lopez trained his gun on Nelli’s head. “Get away from that dog, Esther!”
Quinn suddenly moved and staggered into Lopez’s path, putting a hand on his shoulder to halt him. “No!”
I stepped in front of Nelli, just in case. Max started crawling toward us.
“Don’t,” Quinn said to Lopez, still breathing hard. “Leave her be.”
“Are you crazy?” Lopez tried to shake him off, but Quinn didn’t let him.
“It’s all right now,” Quinn insisted. “Just a little mis . . . misunder . . .”
“You’re in shock. Go outside and sit in the car.” Lopez tried to shove him aside and get to Nelli, but Quinn used both hands to grip his partner now.
“Oh, that’s right, Mr. Sensitivity,” I said to Lopez, my own negative reaction welling up as fear subsided. “Tell someone who’s in shock to go sit alone in the cold and the dark.”
“You go with him,” Lopez snapped at me. “While I deal with this dog.”
“You stay away from her!” I said.
“Yeah,” said Lucky, wisely staying at his end of the corridor. “Pulling a gun on our dog? Jesus, they’ll give a gold shield to anyone, won’t they?”
John brushed past Lucky and came toward me. “Esther, are you okay?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?” Lopez asked me, shedding his anger enough to be concerned for a moment.
“I’m fine.”
“I’m fine, too,” Quinn piped up. “In case anyone was wondering.”
“Andy, you should get out of this building,” Lopez said, eyeing Nelli.
John seemed to be thinking of the cadavers inside the building when he said, “Detective Lopez is right. You should go outside. Right away.”
“For chrissake, could I just take a minute?” the redheaded cop said irritably. “I’m trying to catch my breath!”
Max rose to his feet and finished staggering to Nelli’s side. He grasped her collar as his gaze met mine. I released her and gave Max a nod. He kept on moving, pulling her with him, clearly intending to get her out of Lopez’s sight and the demon’s immediate presence.
“Stop!” Lopez ordered.
He tried to follow them, but Quinn grabbed him again and insisted, “Let her go.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Lopez demanded, glaring at Quinn.
“Come on, Nelli,” Lucky crooned, putting a hand on her head when she was close enough. “Let’s get away from the mean man with the gun. Good girl.”
Nelli turned, gave Quinn a last look and snarled once more at the demonic presence that hovered around him, warning the entity that this wasn’t over.
“I’m calling animal control,” Lopez said firmly. “That dog is too dangerous to—”
“She was protecting the premises,” I said with sudden inspiration, while Lucky and Max led Nelli back to the working area of the mortuary, safely out of range of both Quinn and Lopez. “She mistook your partner for a trespasser.”
“Why are you even wasting your breath on that story, Esther?” Lopez said in exasperation as he holstered his gun. His heavy winter coat was hanging open, probably because he’d been sitting in an idling car with the heater on.
John was at my side, so I gave him a gentle jab with my elbow, alerting him that I needed support.
“Huh? Why are you—Oh! Um. Okay.” He said awkwardly, “That’s right, Nelli is our . . . our watchdog!” John nodded, apparently thinking he sounded convincing.
“Yeah, right.” Lopez reached into his pocket for his phone.
“She is,” I insisted. “Nelli was guarding this place against an intruder.”
“Yes,” said John, trying so hard to help. “We need her here. Where she roams free to protect our valuable, um . . . corpses. And stuff.”
And him such an educated boy, too.
Lopez said to John, “You’re not an actor, are you?”
“No, I’m scientist.”
Lopez searched for something on his phone’s screen as he said absently, “Yeah, you don’t have her flair for improvisation. Though this isn’t one of her better efforts.”
I gave Quinn a look, silently urging him to do something more constructive than stand around catching his breath.
Quinn just shrugged, his expression indicating that this wasn’t his problem anymore. Apparently stopping Lopez from shooting Nelli was as much damage control as he felt obliged to contribute.
Well, we’d see about that.
I said, looking right at him, “I guess we should explain everything that’s happened this evening and exactly why Nelli thinks Detective Quinn is a threat to our safety.”
Lopez paused and looked up from his phone, his expression skeptical. “Is there going to be a single word of truth to this?”
Standing a little behind him, Quinn was emphatically shaking his head at me.
“Your partner wasn’t answering his phone,” I said to Lopez, “because it’s gone dead. Isn’t that an amazing coincidence?”
Quinn ran his hand sideways across his throat in a frantic gesture signaling that I should cut! cut!
Or maybe he was threatening to kill me if I kept talking. It was hard to tell.
“Jesus, your phone’s gone dead?” Lopez said over his shoulder. “What the hell is going on around here?”
“We can explain what’s going on, can’t we, Andy?” I said, raising my brows.
Quinn glared at me.
“I know you wouldn’t want our dog to be blamed for your problems,” I prodded, returning his glare.
No way was Nelli getting impounded because Quinn was hauling a demon around with him.
But Lopez was off and running. “Jesus, doesn’t anyone make anything that works anymore? What is this, the decline and fall of Western civilization? How the hell are we supposed to function if nothing around us functions? Between the two of us, that’s three goddamn phones that have broken down in just a few weeks!”
I asked Quinn, “Should we introduce him to Grace Chu?”
“Yikes,” said John.
“No,” said Quinn.
Lopez said, “I mean, who can work like this? I’m not a Bow Street Runner or a sheriff in the Old West, for God’s sake! I’m an NYPD cop in the digital age, and I need a working phone! Also a police radio! And a car that doesn’t keep breaking down! And a computer that works! Why is that too much to ask?”
Yeah, his stress level was off the charts all right. That demon had figured out exactly how to play him.
I said firmly to Quinn, “Convince him to leave Nelli alone.”
“Is this all because of outsourcing?” Lopez wondered, lost in his own fresh hell. “Is this what happens when a country surrenders its manufacturing industry to the greed of global conglomerates?”
“Please tell me,” John said, looking at Lopez, “that this isn’t about to turn into a diatribe about ‘Made in China.’”
“You wouldn’t believe how much of this I’ve had to listen to lately,” Quinn said wearily.
“All right, everyone stop,” I insisted. “We need to focus.”
To my relief, they all shut up and looked at me.
“Why is it always up to actors to get things done?” I said in exasperation. “I have to clean up this situation, and Nolan’s tailing your suspect, while you two stand around bitching and moaning. Well, I suppose it’s because we’re trained to focus, but I really would have thought that—”
“Where did you say Nolan is?” Lopez interrupted.
“Oh, actually, I guess he’s done tailing him now.” I remembered the phone call. “Nolan’s gone home for the night, safe and sound.”
“Who was he tailing?” Quinn asked in confusion.
“Nolan was tailing a suspect?” Lopez turned on Quinn. “You were supposed to babysit him! Don’t I have enough problems without a TV star getting killed on my shift?”
“That guy with you was a TV star?” John said to Quinn in surprise. “I thought he was a cop.”
“What suspect?” Quinn looked at me. “Who are we talking about?”
“Danny Teng,” I said.
“Nolan is tailing Danny Teng?” Lopez said in horror. “Well, there goes my badge.”
“No, I told you, he’s done for the night. Nolan called me a little while ago,” I said. “By now, he’s probably at home, fondling his treadmill one last time before he goes to bed.”
“Who’s Danny Teng and why is Nolan tailing him?” Quinn wondered.
“He’s done tailing—”
“Danny is dai lo of the Red Daggers,” said Lopez. “Well, until the Ning funeral is over, anyhow. He was Uncle Six’s boy, and no one likes him.”
“Go figure,” said John.
“So there’s bound to be some jostling for his spot now that the old man is gone. And when Chinatown gangbangers jostle . . .”
“Run for cover,” Quinn concluded. “So why the hell did Nolan tail him?”
“Why the hell didn’t you control Nolan?” Lopez snapped at Quinn.
I resisted the urge to bang their heads together. “Quinn got sick when he got here and had to lie down,” I said. “Nolan was at the wake alone when Danny showed up and made a scene, claiming that he knows who killed Uncle Six and will have vengeance. With no police around, Nolan decided to tail him when he left, to see if there was anything behind his boasting.”
“Oh, my God,” Quinn groaned. “There goes my badge, too.”
“Nothing happened,” I said. “Nolan is fine.”
“Wait . . . Danny Teng says Joe Ning was murdered, and he knows who did it?” Lopez asked, making sure he’d understood my rushed account of events. “I need to talk to him.”
“No, I should talk to him,” said Quinn. “You’re supposed to stay away from anything to do with Ning, remember?”
“That would include skipping the wake, right?” John asked. “The whole Ning family is here tonight. Well, except for Paul. I guess they don’t let you out of maximum security for a funeral?”
“Don’t worry, I’m not planning on attending. That’s why I told Quinn I’d pick him up outside Antonelli’s. So no one would see me.” Lopez added darkly, “But I was expecting to pick up Quinn and Mr. Congeniality.”
“Esther says Nolan is fine.” Quinn promptly changed the subject. “You were right, by the way. Goldman’s at the wake.”
“Of course he is, that reptile,” muttered Lopez. “Probably slithering all over the Ning family even as we speak.”
“I wish he wasn’t Jewish,” I grumbled.
“Let it go, Esther,” said Lopez.
“You mean Alan Goldman?” asked John. “That guy who’s all over the media today, talking about Uncle Six like he was a paragon of virtue and claiming that you . . . uh . . .”
Lopez’s expression was resigned. “Yep.”
John cleared his throat and said to me, “If things are under control here, I should probably go help Dad. He’s been on the floor running things alone ever since I heard the barking and the sh . . . Uh, I should go help him.”
I nodded. “Go ahead, John.”
“When I got here, I thought maybe seeing Goldman was what suddenly made me want to vomit,” Quinn said to Lopez as John headed back the same direction that Lucky and Max had taken Nelli.
“And when I got here, I thought you were going to have your throat ripped out. Speaking of which . . .” Lopez returned his attention to the call he intended to make.
I made a reflexive motion, but Quinn beat me to it. He covered Lopez’s phone with his hand and shook his head.
“The dog is not a problem,” he said firmly.
“Are you kidding me?” Lopez said.
“Look, she doesn’t like me, and tonight I was on her turf and I scared her.” He decided to leave it at that. “Don’t call it in. I want the dog left alone.”
“Why?” Lopez frowned at him. “What about the next person she attacks, Andy?”
I said, “There won’t be a next—”
“Shut up,” said Lopez. “I’ll get to you in a minute.”
“We’re not calling it in,” Quinn said firmly.
“Andy—”
“And I’m calling it a night,” he said, turning in the same direction John had gone a few moments ago. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Where are you going?” Lopez said in alarm. “The dog is in that direction.”
“So is my coat, and I’m not leaving without it.”
“I’ll get your coat,” said Lopez. “And then I’ll take you home.”
“No, thanks,” said Quinn. “I think I’ll stop and get a new phone on the way home.”
“I’ve got a car,” said Lopez. “I can drop you—”
“No, you and Esther stay here and make up. Or fight. Whatever. Kind of hard to tell the difference, with you two.” He snickered a little. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow. And I guess I should talk to Danny Teng tomorrow, too. I’ve got a few questions for him, that’s for sure. And it sounds like Nolan knows where to find the guy.”
“Andy—”
“Wouldn’t it be great if Joe Ning really was murdered and we can prove it? That would get rid of Goldman, wouldn’t it? Or am I just a cockeyed optimist?” He was at the door to the back rooms by now. “Well, goodnight.”
And then he was gone.
Lopez stood with his back to me, staring at the door through which his partner had just left the elegant old Italian funeral home for the workrooms where Nelli had been taken minutes ago. I could tell he was very puzzled by Quinn’s behavior.
“I don’t think Danny actually knows anything,” I said. “Nolan told me that—”
“I don’t want to talk about Danny Teng with you.” He turned to face me. “I don’t even want to talk about Nolan.”
“No, I guess Nolan does enough talking about Nolan to fill up the . . . Never mind.”
There was a long, uncomfortable silence between us. His face—interesting, intelligent, and good-looking without being pretty—looked strained and tired. I could see his tension and fatigue, now that we were looking at each other silently, without sparring and bickering.
The demon is really working on him, I thought.
Max was right, I realized. Whatever the entity’s goal was, it didn’t want Lopez interfering. So wearing him down had become almost as important as harassing Quinn. The demon had recognized the steel inside of him and knew he could pose a problem if not sufficiently distracted and misdirected.
“Two things,” he said wearily, the veil of his black lashes fluttering down over his blue eyes for a moment. “I asked you to do just two things.”
“Huh?”
“Leave Quinn alone, and do something about that dog.”
“Oh.”
“Esther . . .” He spread his hands, and I could see that he was bemused, stressed, and fed up. “What are you doing?”
I thought about denying that I had acted in direct opposition to his instructions to leave Quinn alone, but there really didn’t seem much point, since he’d found me here with the guy.
“You didn’t sic Nolan on us to punish me, did you?” Lopez shook his head. “I should have known better.”
“About thinking I’d punish you?”
“About thinking I can figure you out. About thinking I have the faintest idea how your mind works,” he said. “I should have remembered that my first guess is never right where you’re concerned.”
When I didn’t respond, he said, “It wasn’t about me at all, was it? You manipulated Nolan into shadowing us so you could monitor Andy.”
“Yes.” Keeping my voice calm and reasonable, I said, “There’s something not right about Andy. He’s not a bad man, and I think he can be helped. But right now, he’s dangerous.”
“So am I, if someone pushes me far enough.” There was an edge to his voice now.
“This isn’t about you,” I said. “Well, okay, in a way it is. I’m that much more worried because you’re the person he’s with most of the time, rather than some stranger I don’t—”
“As soon as you found out he and I had gone off in separate directions today, you used Nolan to track down Andy.” It bothered me, how cold his voice was now. “And what a coincidence, as soon as he gets here, Andy suddenly gets so sick, he has to go lie down.”
“It wasn’t exactly a coinci . . .” I met his hard gaze and realized what he was implying. “Oh, my God, you think we did something to him?”
“And then you, Max, and Lucky all show up here together.”
“No, Lucky was already here.” But that probably wasn’t the point.
“When I got here, that neurotic dog was about to rip out Andy’s throat.” He asked darkly, “What would have happened to him if I hadn’t arrived when I did? Would he be lying dead on the floor now?”
“No, of course not! He was on his way out the door when you got here. We were asking him not to leave, but no one was trying to prevent him. Ask him if you don’t believe me!”
I remembered belatedly that we had taken Quinn hostage and discussed sneaking him out of here in a coffin. So it wouldn’t be a good idea to encourage Lopez to probe into our behavior tonight. I tried a different path. “Anyhow, didn’t Quinn just tell you he wants Nelli left alone? He’s obviously not seek—”
“He’s obviously not in his right mind!”
“No, he’s not,” I agreed. “Though not in the way that you mean.”
“Did you have Nolan slip him something during dinner?” Lopez demanded. “Something that took effect when Andy got here?”
“No!”
“Who’s idea was it? Max’s?” He took me by the shoulders. “Yours?”
“We didn’t slip him anything!”
“You want me to believe that he walked through the door of a place where you were all lying in wait for him—”
“We weren’t lying in wait!”
“—and suddenly fell ill?”
“We followed him!”
“So you followed him when Nolan told you where he was going. And then what. You improvised?” he prodded, giving me a shake, his grip tight on my arms. “You’re good at that. What did you do to him, Esther?”
“Nothing!” This wasn’t strictly true, but it seemed best not to go into details. Especially given the mood Lopez was in. “He’s fine. You can see he’s fine!” I gestured to the door through which Quinn had recently departed. “So stop this! You’ve got to stop.”
I was uncomfortable by now. Lopez was right; when pushed, he seemed dangerous.
He looked down at each of his hands, gripping my shoulders, and in that moment, we both realized how tightly he was holding me. He let go abruptly as he drew in a sharp breath and fell back a step.
Our eyes met. His expression went from cold anger and frustration to shock, followed by regret. Then sad resignation.
“I think I do need to stop.” His voice sounded hollow. Looking very tired, he rubbed a hand over his face, stood very still for a long moment, then shoved both hands into his pockets. “Yeah. I’ve got to stop, Esther.”
“Stop . . . ?” I had a feeling the subject had just changed abruptly.
“I should have been stronger.” He shook his head. “Should have stayed away in the first place. I tried, but . . . And I still feel like I can’t . . .” He fell silent, staring at the floor, then said, “No, I have to be stronger than this.”
My heart was thudding and my throat felt tight. I took a few deep breaths so my voice would hold steady as I asked, “Is this the talk we’ve been meaning to have? About us?”
He kept looking at the floor. “I think it is.”
“And you’re saying . . .” My voice shook a little this time, so I fell silent.
“I have to stop. Stop chasing my tail. Stop. . . . being this quarreling, miserable idiot I’ve turned into.” Now he met my eyes. “And stop being a cop who hides things and prevaricates and puts fiction into his reports, all because of a woman.”
A few weeks ago, he had buried evidence—albeit only for a day or two—proving that my longtime employer, restaurant owner Stella Butera, was laundering money for the Gambellos. He did it because he knew that shutting down her business would be tough on me. Lopez corrected his misstep, but he tormented himself over it, and it led to more tension between us. I found out about it the same day Joe Ning died. Since then, I hadn’t let myself think about what Lopez had done, but deep under my skin, I had been worried.
Now I said, “I never asked you to—”
“I know. But it’s convenient for you that I’m so crazy about you I keep kicking things under the carpet for your sake. Again and again.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Maybe not.” He shrugged. “Does it make a difference that it’s not fair? Does that change anything?”
I supposed not. I felt a weight pressing down on me, and I wanted to cling to him. But I didn’t.
“So you’re saying you want to walk away from this?” I pressed my lips together for a moment. “From me?”
“No, I’m saying I think I have to.”
I heard the finality in his voice, and I wanted to cry. So I called on anger, because I didn’t want him to see my tears. “Then you’re right,” I said, my voice a little rough with my effort to keep it from breaking. “You should have stayed away.”
I’d been on an emotional roller coaster for months—and for what? To wind up right back here, a moment I had no desire to revisit—a moment when most of my internal organs seemed to drop through the floor because he had decided to dump me. Again.
Nursing a little self-righteous indignation, I said, “After you broke up with me the first time, you should have left me alone. You should never have called me again.”
“You called me,” he reminded me.
“No, I didn’t, I . . . Oh.” Actually, he was right about that. “Whatever.”
I’d had a little trouble with the police one night last summer, and Lopez came to my rescue when I asked. I tried to work out now why that was his fault, but nothing was coming to me.
“Look, I didn’t mean to do this here and now, or like this,” he said apologetically. “Maybe we should talk some more another time, when we’re both more—”
“Why?” I said coldly. “Will it make a difference if we talk more? Will it change anything?”
“I’m pretty stressed right now,” he said. “This isn’t what I thought I was going to say. Or how I thought—”
“Which part?” I asked. “The bit where you accused me of lying in wait for your partner and drugging him?”
“But, of course, I didn’t even expect to see you here.” He was veering back toward anger. “What the hell were you doing with Andy? What’s going on?”
Oh, just tell him, I thought. What does it even matter now?
“We think he’s being haunted by an archaic Aramaic demon that, for reasons best known to itself, wants to reanimate cadavers.”
Quinn wouldn’t appreciate my candor, but I didn’t care anymore.
Lopez looked at me like I’d confirmed his worst fears about my sanity. I didn’t care about that anymore, either.
The man I’d been obsessed with since last spring was dumping me, and I just wanted to curl up in a ball and hide until the pain passed. His opinion of my statement didn’t seem important right now, not compared to the ache in my chest and the roaring in my ears.
“Okay, I don’t think there’s much point in us talking about that,” Lopez said after a long moment. “So we’ll skip it. I’m just going to tell you—very seriously, Esther—that you need to—”
“Oh, need to do what?” I snapped. “Seek psychiatric help? Get drug testing? Give up my friends? Commit myself to a mental ward? What?”
“You need to stay away from Detective Quinn,” he said, keeping his voice level.
“You’re making it awfully tempting,” I muttered.
Fine, I’ll let the demon do whatever it wants to you. And to him. What do I care?
“I hope I’m making it awfully clear,” he said. “You can’t mess around with people like this, Esther. Something terrible could have happened here tonight. Something that can’t be fixed.”
I looked at him, my heart breaking, and said, “Something terrible has happened here tonight. Something that can’t be fixed.”