"Phone number?" I ask.

She nods once, and not that much. I feel her composing a rant for the drive home. I turn back to Barney before she gets an early start.

"Kind of an idiot, know that?" My words feel like cotton; I fight for my internal globe to stop spinning.

Barney's eyebrows shoot up, and I try to grin.

"All you mouth off to peacekeepers," I say, as I stumble to my feet. "Totally different thing to let a peacekeeper know you know his friend." I've got no spaces, no breaths. This speech was supposed to shine. "Totally different thing be the one guy in the room blowing off the Inquisition."

What passes for Barney's mind is prowling again, but he can’t find a hole in my defenses. "It isn't a threat," he insists. "It hasn't been a threat for ten years."

I hope my look is sufficiently rakish. "Cut into business, didn't it?"

No-one in the room likes that.

"Business?" Barney asks; but I see the fog in his eyes, the little slips in his façade.

"Randall—" Dr. Bingo starts.

I don't want to hear it. "I read Paul. I read Paul and I know what you used to do, I know you were taking money not to rat out other demons to the Inquisition." My mental cobwebs are clearing up, so I try for a Bible reference. "Thirty pieces of silver. Asshole."

Arabella lashes me with disgust before her defenses go up. I can only imagine what's festering behind those walls, which is probably the point.

"Barney?" Bingo asks. "Barney, what the hell is he talking about?"

The old man looks at his erstwhile employer. He tries for pathetic, but seeing the thing inside him really puts a cork in my sympathy. He tries this act for seconds, maybe, instants; then his eyes gloss over with cataracts, and he sags in the big guy’s arms.

"Yeah," Barney says, with a parody of a sigh. "Yeah, alright." He raises his hands as much as the grab allows him, grins, a mock surrender. "Yeah, I bullied a few people back in the Nineties. I needed money and I needed a way to cover my ass." Then he has the gall to shift his face to indignant. "Politics during crisis are not something I need to be slapped with now—"

"No, but murdering people so you can go back into business is."

Barney’s face is flat, but the feeling of invisible brushes across my neck tells me how desperately he’s trying to shut me up. Fat chance.

"You had influence then, right Barn? You had people terrified to cross you, you had money, you had everything your non-Euclidean heart desired, and then it all came down around you." I try to snap my fingers, but the numbness puts a damper on that. "That sucks, man; I've had a good time go sour too, but I didn't send a preacher to go cut people up. What, figured some Satanic murders on the news could get your war profiteering going again?"

"Yeah," Barney sneers, "and then I thought I'd get in my UFO and go help Elvis build some more pyramids. Dream on, brainstem."

I shake my head. "Nice try, Barney. But we found the killer."

"Excuse me?" Bingo hisses, his outrage on full boil.

I don't give him the satisfaction of eye contact. "We found him earlier tonight, have him tied up in our kitchen. He's a nice guy for a murdering child-immolator, really. Name’s Ozzy Kincaid." Something flares inside Barney; I turn to Kincaid. "You should meet him. And then you should notice how he can't tell the difference between a demon and a waffle iron." Not my best metaphor, but stress is always a factor.

Dr. Bingo starts to question me, but his face rumples before he can form the words.

"Kincaid's just a guy," I explain, for all the kids at home. "An inquisitor, but a guy. No talent, no open link to the astral plane. Someone aimed him."

I think Barney's feet shift backward, but I'm a little eager for signs.

"And so of course it was someone in a group of people who were uncooperative," the demon sneers. "You've scanned one too many paranoids."

I shake my head, and keep my attention on Bingo. "Doc, I want you to call a contact in San Francisco, ask about the hubbub there with SFO. Some angle man from D.C. flew in, just for the weekend, and didn't bother to check in with any local peacekeepers. East Coast," I emphasize. "Just like the runner you had installed in our favorite stiff before he got offed. Guy’s pretty powerful from what I hear, too, kind of guy who might have a stake in the Church gaining steam and a list of people he might want put down." I wish I had Bogey to deliver my lines.

Dr. Bingo licks his lips once, and looks over at the old man. His eyes are back in one piece, pale and blue and staring, which is enough for me to know I've got him.

"That's conjecture," Barney says. "That's fucking conjecture and coincidence, that's bullshit, that's—"

"Fine. Check out the cell phone." I nod back at Arabella, who is just a thin white line of anger by the door. "Dollars to donuts there’s a call to that phone from a number you recognize." I keep looking at Barney while I say it. "And call records on your phone should show a call to the Sunnyvale Police Department the night before we came—"

Thoughts blasts my head in the wake of my distraction; for the second time tonight I see Dr. Bingo’s thumb clinging to a fist-shaped pool of blood, and I nearly black out as I hear the hallway burst out in swearing.

I focus again in time to see Barney sprinting toward the back of the house, and I realize I’m the one shouting. Barney gets two steps before he lurches forward, and there's an awkward twirl as he claws for support on the kitchen counter and slaps face-first into the tile. I feel waves of concentration coming off the big guy, thoughts of illness and vertigo potent enough I shut my head down rather than feel them.

"Keep him down," Dr. Bingo snarls. He comes abreast of me as I get to my knees, holds the phone up where he's sure I can see it. "You swear to me that record is on here." His cheeks are red, his face is mostly eyes. "You swear to me that it's on here on the fucking agreement, you tell me if it's not—"

"If it's not you can cut my nuts off with piano wire." I think my jaw’s clicking, and I keep hearing people whisper my name. "And the higher-ups on Barney's side of things will verify." My gorge starts playing hopscotch. "You know, before they vivisect him."

Dr. Bingo nods, chewing on the inside of his cheek. He makes a little sucking noise as he hands me the phone.

"Here." He makes it sound like a rape charge. "You need this to cover your ass more than I do."