We take the ride back to Mountain View at a nice relaxed eighty, Paul deflecting cops while I ride the accelerator. We slow to a crawl as we make the turn onto Shoreline, then it's up Mercy and down a knotwork of dizzy little side streets 'til we're home, the driftwood-black duplex with posters of famous lunatics picketed into the lawn. I close my mind a second too late and wind up with a head full of jumbled feelings: my weekly stumble into the universal unconscious. They tell me magicians' habits were even worse when it all still worked.

We head for the back unit, neither of us wanting to break the only silence we ever get. Paul stops outside to smoke half a pack of cigarettes, while I get myself composed for the firing squad. I open my mind in time with the door, and manage to catch Arabella jumping up off the couch, looking at me like I just set off a bomb.

Our wood-paneled slice of sub-suburbia is even more of a mess than usual, newspapers and accordion files everywhere, all the whiteboards covered in doodles, and a spaghetti plate of scratch paper and USB cables on the coffee table; the only flat surface left is the dining room table, and that's only because both laptops are sitting with Arabella on the couch. The recycling bin by the kitchen door is empty, and the place smells of Simple Green. She was bored, but not that bored.

Arabella sits up straighter, and thinks the obvious question as loud as she can. I shake my head and point to the back bedroom, and leave her to think it at Paul while I head into what passes for our office.

Dr. Barg's set up at the card table nearest the office door, watching through the doorway with those taunting silver eyes. The two Macs that aren't already on are in the middle of powering up, and he's not even pretending to be occupied with whatever he's typing.

"Randall," he says, with a dip of his head. "What's wrong?"

Sometimes I wish we broadcast as well as we scanned. I give him another second of relative peace before I talk.

"Party got broken up. Whoever's brain opened up tonight is gone, and her dad's murderer holding her prisoner the good option."

Dr. Barg paws at his hairline. "That's awful," he allows. "That's really awful." He sounds almost contrite. "But what aren't you telling me?"

No sense holding it back. "The stiff wasn’t human anymore." My saliva dries up. "Angle man. No mistake."

For just a second, I get the full spike of Dr. Barg's emotions, a wellspring of adrenalin and useless sidetracking. His aura looks like thumbprints in car exhaust. Then he's all business, just his usual Zen white noise, as he looks away from me and grabs his canes out from under the table.

"What do we know?" He grimaces as he wrestles himself to his feet. I don't even bother offering anymore.

"Not much. I kept getting reads of an angel off the corpses, came at them with a, looked like a flaming sword."

"Were they burnt?" Very few can ask that question seriously.

"Just stabbed." Fewer still can give it a straight answer.

He hobbles out into the main room, leaving me to trail behind with my palms sweating. Arabella is sitting at attention, in desperate need of an answer, and Paul is that special kind of exhausted reserved for sprinters on the tail end of their high. Dr. Barg wrangles himself into one of the rolling chairs, flashes Arabella a quick question, and then looks high and expectant at Paul. I see tiny speed lines of fear in that candy-flip he calls an aura.

Dr. Barg settles back into the chair. I hear his vertebrae go up like bubble wrap. "So. We have a problem."

"Hard to say how big," Arabella says, like she's reciting for the teacher. "Too many variables."

Barg nods. His mouth gets small and puppety, and his hands worry at the grips of the canes. First question goes to Paul. "Cops."

"We pocketed the obvious stuff," Paul says. "And I kept them off until we'd been through once. It'll probably get passed off as normal, but that's 'probably', yeah?"

"Yeah." Doc's eyes are on me now, as he reaches out his hand. "Give me the full story."

Time does a hopscotch as we touch fingers. I feel Dr. Barg surfing through my recent memories, grabbing a ride on the odd hypothesis. All I get in return is that one constant image of a cliff over an ocean, the psychic Post-It Note that reminds me why he's in charge. Then we're back in the room, and I'm wishing like hell he'd stop watching me.

"Right." Dr. Barg taps out a ditty on his cane. His aura shows a squiggle or two, just enough to let you know he's not a robot. "Arabella." She sits up as he looks at her. "You're here with me, we're on news watch."

She gives me a meaningful look as she flits off into the office, and Dr. Barg turns full force to the two of us. There's steel in his eyes and a clear ban on nonsense.

"This is getting in the paper, period." There's not a loose asshole in the house. "But we might be able to keep the angle men from going on the warpath, and frankly, that's a lot more worrisome. Questions on this one are like accelerant on a fire, we only spray them around when we're sure of the results."

"Metaphor's labored," I say.

Dr. Barg chuckles, and the rattle in it tells me it's the last witticism I'm adding to this conversation. "Think, people. Where can we start that's safe?"

Silence and knots; all our auras go brown. We're all looking at each other like they must have a good idea already. Arabella's typing is just loud enough to rub a cheese grater over my neck.

Paul's the first in. "Caring Tommy."

"He'd call us if he had something," I say, with a shake of my head, "but good start. Father Jessica?"

"Same deal," Paul shoots back, "and if it's someone Jessica wants hidden, they'll bloody well stay hidden. Better not to risk tipping her off."

Shrugging's a lot harder than it should be. "Boys?"

"The Devil's Hippie?" Paul scoffs.

"Paul," Dr. Barg barks. "It's not dinnertime."

Paul becomes engrossed with the motion of his thumbs.

"But he's right," the doc adds. He tugs at his shirt collar. "Boysenberry runs off wider knowledge, this can't have come her way yet."

"And for this," I admit, "she'd also call us."

The doctor nods. "Square One, gentlemen."

Paul's silent; Dr. Barg's mind is hunting but I can tell the game is thin on the ground. The only one who seems productive is Arabella, and I'd bet even money she's just typing another journal entry onto her thumb drive while she watches the RSS feeds cycle. My whole brain is tied in knots; I can just touch the texture of the missing puzzle piece, but I know jack all about its shape. I sink into my chair, and I watch the sunlight fail.

"Vic's a glove-job," I blurt, after a long and neck-wrenching fight.

"Vic?" Paul asks, teeth bared cheek-to-cheek.

"Victim," I grind out. "More slang." I give him a wink with all the sweetness of road gravel.

"Check your zippers," Arabella calls from the other room. "I think they're loose."

"People," Dr. Barg warns. "Randall, what do you mean?"

His tone is a little airy, like he's quizzing me, so I come at him with the full treatment. "The guy's a glove-job, and whoever did him in knew enough to mask his ego before he did the deed."

"Could be a broken contract," Paul suggests, "body farmer cutting his losses on someone who didn't dance the right steps once he had a skin."

I pretend my stomach is just growling. "So, if we ask around to the, the body farmers"—nice job, Randall, score one for a bravura front—"we might find our way to whoever helped that guy get his body. If it's internal to the angle men it's a whole different kind of easy. And this way"—I'm on a roll—"the rumor we're sniffing around gets out about the same time the murder does. It might still rain shit, but at least then we'll have umbrellas." I lean against the wall, and strangle the urge to say more.

The Doc gives me a smirk. If this was a test, I seem to have passed. "You have the right idea. Paul, talk to me about body farming."

"Only one local guy who does it freelance, yeah." Paul's aura is a little muted; I think he might be relaxing. "If he didn't do it or know who did it, we're back to square one anyway, shakin' up cults and casters 'til the break of dawn."

"Then that's where we start." Dr. Barg nods to us as he uncrumples from his chair. "Best of luck out there."

I sigh as I flap the wrinkles out of my pea-coat. "We few, we lonely few."

"Randall," Dr. Barg calls, as he hobbles toward the kitchen.

My muscles lock into Attention Mode.

"A word."

I glance back at Paul, proving I somehow enjoy his smirking. I walk into the kitchenette, and lean against the doorjamb while the doc makes himself a cup of hot chocolate.

"You wanted a word?" I ask.

"No jokes please," Dr. Barg says.

"But I so enjoy pissing you off," I whine.

There's a shine in his eyes that tells me I'm getting a pass on that one, and then a low vibration of upset. "Arabella wanted me to talk to you," he says, turning to me.

I squint at the outer room, listen to the typing for a second. "Huh?"

"Oh," he reaches for my shoulder, "you know how teenage girls can be—"

He claps me on the shoulder in a gesture of male bonding, and I get a special delivery uploaded straight to my forebrain: a shot of Paul, unshaven and bloody in a gutter, aura full of rejection; and then Dr. Barg's looking at me in real-time and mouthing the words "remember where he came from", and I get a blurry conjecture-cast of Paul, all hyena grins, shoving paper and Ziploc bags into a fire.

"She wants to start up on real field-work," Dr. Barg says. "She was hoping maybe the next party, or this one if it smoothes out a little. Copacetic?"

I start blustering. "Unmuddied lake, crystals in a clear window in deep summer, looking-glass right after spring cleaning, you know. Good." Smiling at him is better than all the swearing I want to do.

"Good," he echoes, and swings back to preparing hot chocolate. "Paul's driving again. You're still too drunk."

I focus on being irritated as I hand Paul the keys, and tuck back into the silence as we go up the driveway. Paul looks over at me, raises an eyebrow, and I manage to insist I'm fine. Then there's a flash of Napoleon Bonaparte, and I'm thinking about the read off that demon in the apartment, and the way Paul looked amused when Barg pictured him burning evidence, and the cinnamon-and-forest-fire smell of the Inquisitors' coats. Paul watches me the entire time. It's really hard not to let an astral entity know you're worried.