The windshield explodes under the force of the bullet, safety glass cubing off over the dashboard. Arabella shrieks and dives into the footwell, and Paul roars something inhuman as he slams himself down between the seats.

I tumble prone on the sidewalk, roll back and try to cover myself behind the door. The gun crashes again, a log splinters; whatever they're firing is high-caliber enough to drop bison. I shout what I hope are coherent and tactical orders, and belly-crawl ineffectively behind the car. There's a boom as I hide; a dust cloud poofs too-too close to my ankle. I put my head down, curl my legs up, and try to decide which organs to protect.

There's movement, scuffling, grass whipping against soft cotton; there's another explosion and some kind of muffled curse, people shouting in the distance in case I needed more headaches. Then a strangled cry like someone trying to vomit air, a meaty thud and a clank of metal. No more movement; no more explosions; and as I start to uncurl from my oh-so-helpful fetal crouch, I hear Kelly shouting.

"One of you get over here and one of you call a cop!"

Arabella's up before I am, hanging back and diving into the car. I rush across the loosely-termed street toward Kelly and Paul. At their feet, writhing under a psychic assault that makes my guts ripple, is the long-haired girl from last night, her face asphyxia-blue thanks to faltering concentration. There's a rifle off to Kelly's side, a big clunky thing like Tim Burton would use to assassinate the President. My ankle throbs just looking at it.

"That's the other one," I say, here to help.

"The muggers?" Paul asks through his teeth.

"Concentrate," Kelly says. She scans the neighborhood, frowns at the people on their cell phones. "Name is Sunflower. Another local, but not one of the Albion Ridge freaks."

Paul's mental pulse buckles, and Sunflower manages to spit "Bastards!" so hard she lifts her upper torso off the ground.

"Stay," Paul says, four pupils caroming around his eyes.

"Wait." I hold up a finger. "Sunflower?"

She swivels her head to look at me, and instantly regrets it; I didn't think demons had a gag reflex. There's nothing but hate in those eyes, and the thing inside her is splayed like a mantis flashing its claws. I scratch my head as I take in the stare she's giving me.

"Sunflower"—demons get all the best names—"why exactly are you cursing my name?"

She plants a hand on the ground, digs her nails into the sand. I tap Paul's shoulder, send a jolt down the link-up for him to let her breathe. The bad thoughts curl inward just a tad.

"You killed him!" she snarls, kicking the ground in a bad try for balance. "You killed him and you fucking killed him and—"

"Him?" I ask, a second before it clicks. "Oh."

"Damn peacekeepers!" She scrabbles for the rifle, screeches when it's pulled away. "Damn peacekeepers, agreement's too limiting for you, one little toe over the line and—"

I don't need survivalist rhetoric this early. "Who told you we killed him?"

Sunflower doesn't grok that; her blue lips distend in a sneer. I think daggers at her as hard as I can, and repeat the question. Still no answer.

Arabella walks up, phone closed; she's got sirens on the brain. She's waving at stragglers and rubber-necks, trying to keep them at bay. She looks down at Sunflower and any trace of empathy is gone from her expression.

"Less than ten minutes now," she tells me. "What do we know?"

"She thinks we killed Walt," I say. I get stern with Sunflower. "Who told you?"

She tries to spit, sprays mist all over herself.

"Answer my question and my associate doesn't turn your cerebrum into a hood ornament. Who told you?"

Kelly underlines me. "Who lied?"

That hits home. Sunflower's eyes bulge, and she looks at Kelly like someone bled on her birthday cake. "What will you do to me?"

I shrug, and break off eye contact. "You own that gun?"

The answer's a croak. "No."

"Great." I look down at and on her. "Then I'm thinkin' jail. I'm stern but fair."

Sunflower goes still.

"We can't send a demon to prison," Arabella stammers.

"Sure we can. A little felony charge might straighten her out, get her—"

"Foreman," she hisses. "It was Foreman."

That's more like it.

I'm going to guess the blank look on Kelly's face is her cursing. She raises one precise eyebrow. "Where's Foreman?"

"He came by the safehouse. No idea where he's staying, nothing I can—nothing I—" She looks up at me, and all that hate in her is giving way to fear. "Don't send me to jail, don't—don't put me in with the meatheads—"

"Meatheads?" I put a hand to my chest, mock wounded. "Now I'm a meathead. Everyone saw you discharge that firearm, and I think California might not less us avoid pressing charges. But I'll see what I can do."

"He lied?" Sunflower gulps. "He lied he lied he fucking lied..."

"Keep the raygun on her," I tell Paul; the long-haired demon's quiet in under a second. I tap Kelly on the shoulder, my brain filling up with black chiggers. "Who's Foreman?"

"Local psychic. Mentally unsound. Believes all sorts of persecution stories."

"Persecu—" I flip a page in my internal thesaurus. "Conspiracy theories?"

"Those." Kelly shrugs. "He might actually believe what he told this one."

The headache's back with a vengeance; I dig my fingers into the back of my neck. "Tell me, Kelly, and please have it be what I want to hear: is there any connection between Foreman and Master Gary?"

Kelly blanks for a minute, comes back to me with a twitch of her cheek. "Both psychic. Otherwise no."

I let out a breath; whoever says exhaling relaxes you lied. "Great. Close to seven minutes now, guys, and we might have witnesses who won't corroborate. " From the ground, Sunflower groans; I almost want to kick her. "We deal with this. Then we draw up a battle plan, a couple of us to Foreman and a couple on the trail of the tagger."

"Tagger?"

"Next topic," I say with a wave. I look down at the girl, chew my lip.

Arabella puts a hand on her hip. "And how, exactly, are we going to deal with her?"

My eye twitches. The answer's swelling on my brainpan, but I don't have to like it.

"Paul, you're going to let her go in a second." I catch Sunflower's eye. "And then you're going to kick me, punch Kelly, and run away."

Confusion flatlines through the group, but not for long.

"You will do that, and then you will leave town." The words worm sour out of my throat. "The police will be looking for you, and you will be hung out to dry if they catch you. No peacekeepers, no agreement, no other angle men, no nothing. So get out of here. Are we clear?"

Her eyes wheel in their sockets; she claws at the sand.

"Are we clear?"

She clenches her teeth hard, and nods.

"Good." I look away from her and all the insane things I'm doing. "Paul?"

He shrugs, looks at me like I need meds. But he doesn't argue. "Aye aye."

The heat haze pours out of my thought process, and everyone holds their breath. There's some movement, some shuffling, and I turn around just in time for a bony leg to swing hard into my ankle.

I flip up in the air like a cartoon character, come down on my back. I hear a gasp or two from the Cleone suburbanites, enough that I think it's real. There's the red-meat thud of Sunflower punching Kelly, and the long whispers of her running through beach grass, all her thoughts on fleeing. I groan as I stand up, and I just watch her go. One of the more athletic neighbors goes after her, but when she twigs to him he doesn't last long. Hope he didn't sprain anything in the fall.

"Well that was...just," Paul murmurs. He cocks a bare inch of grin. "So now what, Sherlock?"

I look at the neighbors, all the concerned people out on their porches. A few are good enough to look embarrassed when I sight them, but there are still people watching us, wisps of worry and judgment blowing down to me from their thoughts. I can no longer find Sunflower.

"Now we wait for the cops."

The police show up in record time, two cruisers pulling around the corner with the full panoply of noises and lights. Both drivers have a partner with a shotgun. They take off north when we start pointing and are gone for a solid ten minutes. I feel sick when I hear myself praying Sunflower isn't caught.

"What's our story?" Arabella asks, as soon as the police vanish. "What do we tell them?"

Paul and Kelly come in for the huddle. I lick my lips, look at all of them, and wonder when I became the leader.

"Here's how it's going to be..."

Only one cruiser comes back to us, some woman off the set of Raising Arizona and the same black-haired slab of lawman from last night. He raises an eyebrow when he sees me, and motions to his partner to start asking around. His nametag says "Officer Kirk".

Paul steps up to talk to the lady cop, grinning like a hyena; I shoot a note down the link-up about consequences. Kirk looks at me like he's already tired of this, and flips open his notepad.

"Mr. Chatham," he drawls. "Good to see you again."

"Wish I could say the same. No offense."

He grunts. I think that means I'm funny. "Mind telling me what happened?"

I shrug. "A crazy girl. One of the muggers from last night? Turns out Kelly knows her." I cock a thumb at our native guide. "We were coming back from breakfast in town and I guess she'd figured out where I was. Decided to try to kill me to cover her tracks, or maybe she thought it'd get Jodie Foster's attention"—his mind jangles—"I don't know, point is, she came out here and went clocktower on us with that god-damn elephant gun—"

"That's a Remington rifle, sir."

"Right." I want to stare so very bad. "Point is, she tried to turn us into Swiss cheese and we're just lucky she was a horrible shot. Though she did manage to slay my car."

He wants to laugh at that one, but professionalism forbids him having fun. He runs a thumb along his forehead in lieu of emotion.

"So, you said one of the muggers?" He sucks at his cheek as I nod. "What'd she look like?"

For one bleak second I don't want to be honest. "Medium height, like five and a half feet. Blonde hair she could use to sweep her tracks up behind her, big green eyes, kind of a wide vacant face. Like Paris Hilton dressed as Janis for Halloween."

That one sails right over his head; anger makes a barbed-wire fence around his thoughts. "Yeah. Right." He flits back through his notebook. "Long blonde hair, short?" He drops to a murmur. "Fits..."

"Fits?"

Kirk claps the notebook shut, exhales hard through his nostrils. He's looking at me like I'm asking to drive his cruiser.

"Your little friend, the one with the lazy drive-by? Yeah, she's wanted for a couple assaults around these parts. Must've twigged you weren't local and decided to target you next."

"Or maybe she was angry I crimped their Bonny and Clyde style." My brain's hooking on that phrase: "couple assaults."

"Or that." He's still not amused. "What did you say happened?"

"My man Paul"—I gesture his direction—"side-tackled her, got her knocked down; we were trying to pin her down while you showed up and she got rough and ran. Left the gun, though."

"You touch it?"

"Hell no." I think that breaks his little NRA heart.

"Right." His mental dust settles. "You said she fired three times?"

We're back into minutiae; time for the pop quiz. I give him the story as straight as I can, minus the encounter with Master Gary and that niggling appearance at a crime scene. He takes it all down dutifully, confused whenever I talk like there's a brain in my head, and eventually puts the notebook away. Nothing interesting. And nothing useful.

"That should be it. We've got a couple guesses where she might head, but, for your safety—is that where you're staying?" He points at the Tarot house with a raised eyebrow. This is the mundane in its natural habitat.

"Staying is a fancy word for it, but yeah." I love confusing him.

"Right," he coughs, "well, for your safety, you might want to stay in a hotel tonight."

My head fills with white noise. "Hotel?"

The officer shrugs. "Just an idea. We've got a few nice ones in town, and our friend won't know where to find you if she gets her hands on another 'elephant gun'." I get a wise cowboy smile with that one.

"Hotel." I scratch at my head. Something he said isn't right. "Right. Yeah. Not a bad idea."

He shrugs. "Just callin' what I see. Anyway, that's all I need. The number you gave me still good if you stay elsewhere?"

My skull's full of alarm bells. "Yeah, yeah," I say with a nod. "No problem, you call if you need anything else."

"Will do, Mr. Chatham." His partner walks past him; he kind of wants to stare at her ass. Again, thumb on the forehead. "You alright?"

"Totally fine."

"Right." He turns away, swerves a look over the rest of us. "Well, glad you ain't hurt."

Somehow I don't scoff. "Thanks." And I cash in my chips. "Hey?"

He turns, stares at me.

"You said..." I step in closer. "You said the lady was a suspect in other crimes?"

He cocks an eyebrow, purses a lip. "Sure did. Why?"

"Oh, just curious. Good to know if I'm helping capture a multiple criminal, y'know. Anyway..." I stick my hand out. "Thanks for coming out so quick."

"Yeah." He puts his hand in mine. "You watch out for yourself."

His thoughts pour into mine through his palm. I keep my face calm and collected and very, very still.

"Have a good day, officer."

He detaches, shrugs. He can tell something went down, because I'm getting stink-eye like there's no tomorrow. "G'day, Mr. Chatham."

"Day."

And he's back in his cruiser, driving away in confusion with a heap of duty bearing down on his shoulders. I avoid watching him go for the sake of my freedom, and try to process all the images he just threw my way. I go through the conjecture-cast of screams and running and see a dozen layered crime scenes, three of them first-person vivid, including his talk with me. And threaded through all of them, bright and glowing against a background of question marks, is one image: a pentagram, extra-Satanic in his memory, and one blurry, hooked, horrifying word:

OGRE.