"So." Paul shrugs with his whole body. "What now?"

We're back in the house, sacked out in the living room; Towers and Emperors dance around the crown of my head. I've got a pen in my mouth that won't stop squirming, fingers that keep snapping themselves. One, two...

"Now?" I shrug, feel the mantle of leadership falling. "Now it's conjecture time."

That pleases precisely no-one; the room snaps like a power line in a hurricane.

"There's not a lot to go on," Paul replies. "Milk and Doring are hauling masked stuff for Gary, and someone or something out near where she was and where Arthur disappeared is terrified."

"Was not Arthur," Kelly interjects.

Existing hurts. "Well that answers that onrushing question..." I rub my eyes. "But what the fuck could be happening out there that we'd have felt it?"

Paul brandishes a cigarette, flips it between his fingers. "I'll be first to posit that it could just be something normal—some Second Amendment ass-hat shooting at cans almost hit his girlfriend, or something."

"Added to the list," I say.

"Some houses out there," Kelly muses. "Could have been coming from them. Doring could be visiting someone."

The thought shakes my brain like a change jar, but I have to say it. "Could she visiting Arthur?"

"Not the first time it's been said." Kelly performs resignation beautifully. "I cannot prove his loyalty."

"Unlikely, though," Arabella counters. "A peacekeeper decides to run a side business, he's not liable to go doing things that'll make peacekeepers look for him."

I take a moment to set the needle back on my mental record. Every once in a while Arabella reminds me she's a seventeen-year-old college student.

"Maybe Foreman's out there," she continues. "He could be running some kind of racket they don't want us to see. Angst-bombs, or...unwilling possession victims or something."

"Or something," Paul clucks.

Arabella narrows her eyes in response. Sometimes you just give him what he's looking for.

"Fact check." I've got a map with no legend, and my compass only points to "fucked". "We've got something weird out in Willits. We've got a video camera with a recording of two possessed muggers. And we've got an attempt on our lives, a dead demon—"

"—who was also in on the muggings—"

I point at Ara in acknowledgement. When did she get run through the sharpener? "Psychic graffiti a kid is paid to tag on a schedule, some unspecified threat to Kelly and Arthur, and some kind of skullduggery being engaged in by the right and left hand of a psychic ex-cultist." I whistle through my teeth. "And the same cop turning up at both the crime scenes I got involved in."

"We throwing that in too?" Paul chuckles.

I simper right back. "What would Holmes do?"

"Mostly cocaine." Paul flips the cigarette again, sticks in his mouth. He puts another in his hand before he talks. "Something's missing. Not sure if it's because we missed it."

I rub at my face, stare into the middle distance. When I close my eyes all I see are Sword and Pentacles.

"We're forgetting one basic fact," says Arabella.

The entire room turns to look at her. She looks at us like she just watched someone kiss her boyfriend.

"Ultimately, we don't have to know what he's doing. We just have to prove he's doing it."

Kelly's the first to start breathing. "A point."

Paul can't find fault. It does happen. "It's true. We get the men upstairs on him and they'll churn up what he's doing faster than—"

"Bullshit."

This time the room wants more of me. My skin sings as I consider my next words.

"You're not wrong," I allow, in my cold, technical voice. "You're not wrong, but you're not right either. We just let the serious angle men clean this one up, it's not getting cleaned up. It's getting swept under the rug; Kelly's getting a new partner they think won't go off the rez on them; and any time they decide the Mountain View or Mendocino contingent even thinks the word 'uppity', they'll grab the corner of the rug and tug and go 'ah ah ah'." I throw my hands up in the air. "Stories always tell you don't make a deal with the Devil, and no offense to present company, but until it's proven otherwise..."

I trail off in front of a broken audience, downcast eyes, hunched shoulders, and a burden I think I might finally be sharing. Maybe I've grown.

"We are roughly equivalent," Kelly admits. "To the Devil."

Paul has nothing to add. Arabella's eyes stay floor-bound, one toe tracing a circle as she chews on the meat of her lip. When she looks up at me I get that doghouse look, that feral shadow that tells me I'm getting choice words about this when she finds them.

"You're right." The way she says it, it sounds like a curse.

I shrug, voice much weaker. "Just politics."

Her only acknowledgement is looking away.

"So what's the plan?" Paul asks. "We're missing something, we all agree on that, and we won't turn on God mode and solve it that way. So what do we do?"

"My kind of plan." I keep it light on the theatrics. "Stick our fool necks out and see who comes out swingin'."

Paul snorts. "Right. So, Beachcomber Inn then?"

I give him a secretive smile, mostly because I know he hates it. "Can't figure out the whole equation, we might as well solve for one variable."

For all it looks like someone carved it out of driftwood, I have to hand it to the Beachcomber Inn. The inside is spacious, clean carpets, staff who actually smile with their eyes; I think they've stocked the lobby with real plants. For the first time since I came here I can't find the barest excuse to complain, which is probably good for the shaved piano wire I'm calling my nerves.

We get checked in courtesy of the same guy who took our reservation, a grinning black man with the build of a box of matches. He walks us to our room himself, asks us about our day like he cares, even seems to remember details when he hands off our key. He's gone before we can be annoyed with him, and we're left to face the spaciousness of our room. I'm not sure I remembered to thank him.

It's not a bad little place, if basic: two beds, table and chairs, a patio with a perfect view of the sea. Sunset's working overtime as we toss mostly-empty bags on the beds, throw a skirt on the floor to give it the feel of occupation. We talk minutiae as the sun goes down, talk about the things that scare us most, and touch as many bits of the room as we can manage. Paul and Kelly stay conspicuously silent, watching us with eyes that I don't usually find unnerving.

The ruse set up and the room patted down, I check in with everybody and make sure they're ready. When I get three nods I take the phone off the nightstand and give a call to our friendly Officer Kirk.

I get a secretary about as animate as a stapler, all business without any of that pesky affect. I'm put through to Kirk without much trouble, once she knows I'm the guy from "that mugging". I'm not sure whether to be prideful or scared. Kirk comes on the line in a storm of crunching, some fried excuse for dinner still in his mouth.

"Officer Kirk."

"Officer," I say brightly. "It's Randall Chatham."

"Randall..." he drawls, suddenly getting it. "Randall Chatham! Right! Sorry, forgot you for a second."

Of course you did. "No problem."

"Something else happen?" he asks me, a little too guttural to be teasing.

"No, no," I say, half a teaspoon of nerves in the mix. "No." I clear my throat, get a bemused stare from Arabella. "Just wanted to tell you, took me a night or so but I gave it some thought, and...I checked into a hotel, like you asked. Just...wanted you to know, you know? In case you thought I left town."

"Of course." The pause here is way too long. "Of course. Appreciate it. Can I ask where you're staying?"

"Oh yeah." I give a thumbs up. "Beachcomber Inn, the place north of town."

"I know the one," he says, nonplussed. "Good call, I think, people like that can be repeat offenders."

"Thank you Officer. And also thank you."

That doesn't really click with him. "Yeah," he says, distracted. "I'll call there if I need ya."

"I'll keep my cell on."

"Yeah." This guy has the funny bone of a sedated lion. "Talk to you later."

"Later." I'm off the phone and full of stress within a second.

Paul looks at me, arms crossed. "And your thesis?"

"Good as proven." I'm not precisely enthused. "Right, so..." I reach into my bag, pull out a battered deck of cards. "Who's up for poker?"

Cards flop. The sun slouches off into the background. We slide back into minutiae as Arabella preps a Tarot spread on one of the beds, but there's always that snake laying coiled, the little shadow in our minds that keeps us glancing toward the door. We keep it up, normal as can be, tension present but lacking focus, until we feel a blazing-blue portrait of Mr. Clean rolling toward us down the hallway.

"Ready to hit the hay?" I ask Arabella, cues taken from a much different life.

Paul's off into the closet; Kelly ducks into the bathroom. They've both got Tarot cards in their pockets, their signals scrambled up in the spread left for us by Arabella; it's so cluttered in here I almost can't sense the mask in the hall. Arabella sits on the bed nearest the door, out of sight of the little front hallway; I sit down across from her, my back a steel rod as I turn achingly away from the entrance. She murmurs something about the next morning, some vague question I dismiss with a grunt. We're muttering false goodnights to each other when whoever our visitor is knocks.

I keep muttering, throw in a giggle; Arabella squeals like I'm tickling her. The visitor hesitates; Mr. Clean's vacuum grin sticks glowing in my head; but then there's another knock, a muted exclamation: "Police."

"Police?" I call to the door. I try to align my mental chessboard as I walk over, a glance to either side as I mutter in falsified amazement.

"Coming," I say, and open the door to a gun.

Officer Kirk keeps the gun trained on me, some enormous piece of ordnance that I'm pretty sure is meant to be mounted on satellites. The blackest part of it is pointed at my guts. Arabella sends wide eyes and old seaweed slogging down the remains of our link-up. I raise my hands nice and slow, like in the movies, and try not to think about the way a bullet might feel.

"Into the room," Kirk orders, his face all angry porcelain.

I nod, frantic, leave my head as loose and rubbery as I can. Every inch of me has a pulse. "Okay. Okay. Into the room. Into the room." I back up, spewing prey-animal fear every direction.

Kirk follows me all the way down the hallway, gestures me toward the bed. His face is strained, but I can't read his mood through the mask.

"Wha-wha-what is it Officer?" I stammer. I put a hand on the foot of the bed, start to sit down. "How can we—what do you need from u—"

"Shut up." He puts both hands on the gun now, trains it right at my legs. "Shut up."

"Shutting up."

"Hands on your head." He covers me first, swings the gun toward Arabella. She goes electric when the barrel's aimed at her. "Both of you."

We do as we're told. I'm very, very glad this plan had a loose script.

"Right." Kirk breathes; fingers squirm along the edge of the gun. "Right. You." He thrusts the gun toward me. "Get up."

"Okay," I say with damaged calm. "Okay, see...I'm getting up..." The bed creaks under my weight as I unfold. "I'm getting up..." The back of my throat is a washcloth. "I'm getting up, I—shit!"

I fall between the beds, smack the carpet hard with my hand. Kirk isn't fast enough to take the shot, but he's fast enough to respond; he shuffles toward me with a bark and stops as the bathroom and closet both slam open.

Kirk spins, legs twisted round each other as he tries to process this change. A strangled question's all he gets before the room fills with sharp edges and beetles, a thousand unpleasant thoughts that put Kirk down hard on his face.

Kelly's on him as he falls, grabbing the gun; I thank every curve of probability as it somehow doesn't fire.

"Oh shit," the big man wheezes. "Oh shit."

I pop to my feet, march over to our new friend. Kelly hands me the gun with rehearsed motion, plops it square into my hand. I look at it for half a second before I point it nonchalantly at Kirk's head.

"So." I finger the hammer. Is this where I feel triumphant? "I guess it's time to ask you who sent you."