Fort Bragg slams into us out of nowhere, after an hour-long tunnel of redwoods and feed stores. My first impressions are a statue of a fisherman and an inn with a courtyard that looks like a golf course fucking a salmon run. The drive over their nouveau-old-time bridge doesn't improve my opinion; the whole town feels exhausted, so drab the sunlight looks gray.

"No wonder we don't keep the place staffed," I mutter. "It feels like Christmas in a suicide ward."

Paul snorts at the back of his throat. "Place took a tumble when the mill closed. No shit. I figure saccharine violins played under the announcement."

"Duty calls, boys," Arabella says, ever the teacher's pet. "Brains open, dust for trouble."

I decide against correcting her metaphor. The main street is made up of dingy storefronts and unadorned restaurants, populated by tourists just barely outpacing middle-age spread, rednecks who could probably shave with their boot-tips, and a man I'm pretty sure is Frank Zappa. I shake my head in perfect condescension, and drop my mind out into the thick of it.

First comes the echo, Arabella feeling Paul feeling Randall, all of us shaky and taut. Arabella is cooling lava, beautiful in its danger; Paul's a pit of half-prepared barbs, an undercurrent of thrashing and squawks. Then we wash out into angers, sweats, a sea of passing eyes as we dance through Fort Bragg's thoughts.

It's small-town America with a dash of the Sixties: Forced laughter on the street corner, worry and tears from the early-bird drunks. There's a young man selling drugs with his aura done up in spikes, and a fifteen-year-old girl who just figured out her boyfriend's cheating. I check for symbolic resonance and get Golden Arches, one casually-worn crucifix. My brain puckers; back in the real world we've all gone silent.

"No way," Paul says. "Absolutely no way."

Arabella keeps staring out the window, tensed like she's birthing a truck. I decide against bugging her.

"Paul?" I glance in the rear view. "You get anything?"

"Yeah," he mutters. "This American Life." He's got the same look as Arabella, pinched and waiting for release. "No masks up, no blocks ..."

Nausea climbs down my throat. "The whole town's unshielded?"

"Yes." Arabella leans back, and shoots a dirty look at Paul. "Don't even start that argument." Someday she'll raise a wonderfully henpecked child. "That can't be right. No psychics in town, nobody scanning for this Gary guy? Nobody hiding after a peacekeeper went missing?"

I'm still scanning, in between not wrapping us around the bumper of a Tacoma. I feel nothing but naked minds, no hint or twist of something stronger. I get a whiff of Tarot cards about halfway through town, but only the usual cross spread, mundane in the extreme.

"Could be Kelly hasn't told 'em?" Paul suggests. "Could be nobody cares? Or it could be that Fort Bragg is a psychic ghost town and Mister Chuckles here"—there's a hand on my headrest—"was right about being shoved onto the back burne—"

"Paul." I might as well humor him. "Just leave oh shit."

The light, in a rare show of good coincidence, turns red, and I pull up to the crosswalk successfully. I look around—bowling alley on one side, Denny's on the other, nothing but trees stretching north—

"What?" Arabella gasps. Her eyebrows are hiding in her hairline. "What?"

Paul sneers. "See a mouse?"

I hold up a finger, which buys me enough time to get my heart out of the kettle drum it's trapped in. My brain feels like a dull cheese grater, but I take a nice, tight grip on the wheel and swing my thoughts back over the town. I see a John Deere logo, a Chevy, a waft of inebriation from one of the side streets—and a Seal of Solomon, stark amid paint and fear.

"Fuck me running," I groan, images of a dead man's fist close to mind.

Questions hit my ears, but I'm too busy; I nudge over with an apology to the Explorer behind me and make a wide turn onto a postage stamp of bare street, my mind questing for the symbol.

"What is it, Lassie?" Paul asks, leaning up between the seats again.

"Timmy might've just fucked us in the ass," is my reply.

"I feel it too," Arabella says. One finger slips across my hand. "Seal, right?"

"Seal?" Paul's spine whips straight. "Oh."

I take another right at the corner, into the chain-link and tarnish of what I think is their warehouse district. There are long, low buildings studded with lights, brightly-colored towers whose contents I'm uncertain of. The Seal is burning, stuck to the front of my thoughts; when I focus on it I see white dust, hurried hands, the kind of breathing that comes with whines and glances over the shoulder.

"Nearby," Arabella says.

"Real nearby," adds Paul.

I start to lose track of the road; the Seal's coming up on me, bringing old desert voices, languages I don't know, adrenalin spikes from confrontations I never had.

Paul cuts in on my reverie. "Brakes."

I do the wrong thing, slam my foot down; the Cav lurches, and I find myself idling in the middle of the road, on a block that looks exactly like the other blocks except for the tang of power of in the air.

"Seals don't work anymore," I insist. "Seals don't do jack anymore..."

Paul rolls down his window, and leans out to look at the warehouse on our left. "But they do look like pentagrams."

I turn, follow his pointing finger. On the warehouse's sloped roof, just a little shy of the edge, is a massive white piece of graffiti: the word "OGRE", all caps, with the first letter shaped into what they probably thought was a Satanic symbol. I blink, and slam my head into the steering wheel.

"Fuck." I give my skull another thump. "Fuck piss shit Rottweiler knickers." I look at the graffito like it just told me my mom is sexy. "You are kidding me."

"That can't be coincidence," Arabella insists, her face one big wrinkle. "That can't be coincidence."

"Look at this town," I say, too pissed for internal fact checks. "This kind of place only exists on the Discovery Channel. If there's anywhere a little Satanic imagery can still shock someone it's gonna be here."

"Town's not psychic but the graffiti is." Paul scoffs in the back of his throat. "Brilliant."

But Arabella's still shaking her head. "I'm not getting Bible Belt from this place, guys. More like Rust Belt. And regardless, you think that if peacekeepers felt a Seal on the side of a building they'd let it stand?" I can tell she's enjoying this, but she still puts on a show of being disgusted. "This is fresh."

"And nonsensical." I nudge the gas pedal and start to pull away.

"You don't want to get out and look?" She's somewhere between surprised and relieved.

I give her a glance that's trying hard for meaningful. "We've gotten tagged by part of an astral dragnet and then almost had a car accident looking for psychic graffiti. I'm voting the next step is a shower and a call to Dr. Barg so we can all practice screaming 'what the hell' as loud as we can."

"But—"

Something slams into the window.

No training prepares you for that; no dojo or boot camp or NLP seminar can get you to do much different when hands and a face snap horror-movie big into your peripheral vision. I yank against my seatbelt, all but crawl onto the e-brake as Arabella grabs my shoulders; I process plum-red hair, round face, skinny but female. Page two of the panic readout says she's worried.

Arabella gets to the words first. "Demon."

Page three says: blue aura with green highlights, a double helix with horns curled up against her chest plate. I want to know when my mind decided the word "demon" would be relieving.

The possessed girl gives us all a once-over—I feel cobwebs spinning at the corner of my brain. She slinks back from the car and jabs a thumb against her chest. "Kelly."

"Kelly?" My whole face curls when I say it. That body—that girl—is at most sixteen. I pop the door open, my mind clapped up in iron. "Kelly?"

"Randall?" the girl asks. She looks into the backseat. "And that must be Paul McCartney in there."

"Just Paul," he calls back to her.

She attempts a wry smile; I try to shake the white roaring from my mind. Paul and Kelly don't seem to notice, but the way Arabella's fingers knead my back suggests my stress is a little obvious.

"Sorry for the shock," she says. "Thought I recognized you, wasn't sure how else to say hi—"

"There's this thing called a cell phone?" Arabella suggests.

"You were right there," she says with a shrug. "And I forgot to save Randall's number."

One of the lamps clicks on in my heart. Dr. Barg gave her my number?

Paul snickers from the backseat. "Plus it scared the shit out of us, yeah? Goin' hungry or just wantin' a snack?"

Kelly stares at Paul for a second, and turns around to stare at the "OGRE" tag.

"This what got your attention?" she asks, Paul's comment left to die alone. "Can't imagine you came back here for the scenery." There's something not quite right about her smile.

"It's the only thing in this town putting out a signal," I say. "I mean, unless you—"

"Tarot card in my pocket," Kelly replies. "Not new to this job."

"No, but that body is," I say, with a withering look.

She blinks at me. Why do all demons try to blink? "Yeah, it is young. Sorry if it bothers you."

I ignore Arabella's hand on my shoulder. "Isn't it against the agreement to possess teenagers?"

"The girl was sick." She says it the way her body should talk about shopping. "Got grandfathered in."

"I love your word choice."

"Very funny," she says, in time with Paul's scoff.

I opt for a defensive change of topic. "So what's with the tag? Fort Bragg's graffiti usually psychic or is this an exception?"

"An exception. Showed up this morning when I was driving into town, must have been put up last night." She furrows her brow for our benefit. "I am guessing demons put it up, some kind of flag marker for a meeting place."

"Demons?" Paul leans over to peer at it out the window. "Didn't know your local parasites had balls the size of church bells."

"They've been getting cocky. As you can imagine." Kelly looks into the back seat. "Why don't we head back to my place? You will be staying with me while you're here."

"You have a place?" Arabella asks.

"Emancipated minor. Or I was." She shrugs again. "Anyway. It will be safer to talk there. Streets have ears." She tugs on a lobe for emphasis.

"I love Big Brother," I chirp. "You drive or fly around on a broomstick?"

"You are not very funny. I am parked over there"—she points at what looks like a gas station—"and we are headed north. Meet you out on the highway."

She lopes down the street toward a white Impala, leaving me to shut the door and give meaningful looks to my compatriots. Paul's examining his nails, but Arabella's got the same mote of concern that's burning up my insides.

"Kelly doesn't seem particularly busted up about that graffiti," she says.

"I'm pretty sure she wouldn't get busted up about thermonuclear war. Her emotions aren't coming across well." I wave a hand across my face. "Body's new, I think."

"We're all peacekeepers," Arabella says, a firm grip on my subtext.

"If you think that automatically equals trust," I say, "I have a tired joke about bridges to tell you."

Arabella cocks her head at me. "Kelly's right."

"Hm?"

"You're not funny."

My jaw locks. On that note, I start the car up again, and roll us back out to Fort Bragg's main street, bumper angled north.

Now added to today's ingredients: a deadpan demon in a teenager suit who feeds off shock, a town completely devoid of psychics, and astrally resonant graffiti.

I think I miss getting punched in the face.