Kelly's Impala leads us past the northern exurbs of Twin Peaks Lite, over an inch-deep creek, and along a poorly-kept highway flanked by hills that seem to have forgotten what civilization even means. My mood keeps redefining the word "black".

"We passed like fifty motels," I say, as an oncoming truck vrooms homicide-close to our lane. "Why are we staying all the way out here?"

"You felt how naked that city is," Arabella says. She settles right into her proto-Barg patter. "Mendocino Village is supposed to be even worse. We can confirm people are watching for new faces; they'll be pinning down motels first."

"And being sitting ducks out in the middle of nowhere is better...how?"

"Shut the fuck up, Paul." Her stress ratchets up a notch when she realizes she was just a mid-day snack.

Kelly turns a hundred feet past where tourists give up, into a strip of suburbia cut-and-pasted onto a coastal forest. There are redwood logs abutting the road, like we just checked into a campground.

"Wish I could hum the Twin Peaks theme," Paul says.

I shake my head. "That joke was old when you mentioned the mill."

Grass and trees sift down into sand, and Kelly takes a right onto a row of beachfront houses that defy all real estate wisdom. She parks halfway down the block in front of a two-story brown cylinder that looks more like a lighthouse than a home; its floor-to-ceiling windows carry a multicolored pattern that makes my eyes strain just looking at it.

"No way," I say, as I yank on the parking brake.

"Home sweet home," Arabella says.

Paul leans up next to me, doubt kneaded into his face. "The architect make that before or after he got kicked out of college?"

Kelly ambles over to our car, a smile on her face that might be friendly if her features ever varied.

"It was cheap," she says; my quip looks for a new line of work. "Ugly and exposed but outside city limits, good visibility when you want to use it, and a gas stove." Her features shift into neutral for a second, and then it's the painted-on smile. "I mean, if you decide to try to cook something. Pretty much all we have is condiments."

I refuse to make a joke about Tyler Durden. "I'm just happy to have a place to stay." My momma would be so proud.

"And yet you are already planning to hate every minute of it."

I shrug. "Guilty." Etiquette and I never got along anyway.

Kelly's smile broadens; now it looks like it belongs on a wolverine. "Least you're honest about it. Come on in." And with that, she walks away, her face already blank.

"She's good," Arabella says, in the tone of someone better.

Paul puts a hand on my shoulder. "Eh, old Randy here just needs to stop guarding his brain with tissue paper."

"Stretching," I warn. I open the trunk and pop off my seatbelt. "Come on, let's go pretend we can get settled."

The house is in no way bigger than it looks; two stories, the downstairs a Venn diagram of kitchen, dining area, and living room, the upstairs two bedroom-sized rooms and a loft transformed into an IKEA office space. The light inside is gray verging on black, courtesy of the window decoration we saw from outside: hundreds upon hundreds of Tarot cards, from a dozen different decks, posted from ceiling to floor in numerical order. Sex and war and wise nodding all carom around in my head looking for purchase; I shut it out and long for the comfort of our lawn signs.

"Nice defenses," Paul says, pivoting to let Arabella head upstairs. "Round here I guess it doesn't stick out much?"

"The weird houses are the ones without Tarot cards in them," Kelly answers. "Well, south of here it is more common, but no-one will bat an eye. Not in the same town as the Crayola House."

I leave that campfire legend untold, and focus on digging the vodka out of our grocery bag. "But doesn't fortressing up here sort of turn you into a sore thumb?"

"All we have is orange juice, but you can have it if you want," Kelly says, looking at the bottle. "And no, not any more than a safehouse anywhere else sticks out."

Arabella comes prancing back downstairs, and shows me her impression of a vapid schoolgirl smile. "Only one bedroom."

I let out a sigh that could power a small city. I hand over Arabella's bag with a look of resignation, and go back to cracking the seal on my old friend Vitali.

"I was just starting to think how much I missed couches," I say. "Gives it that college road trip vibe."

"You care a lot about vibes, Randall," Kelly says, as she sits down in the only armchair. "Good instinct for a peacekeeper."

"Goin' back to the part before Bella pulled out the pussy whip," Paul says. "You saying that there are other safehouses around here?"

Kelly takes a book off the end table next to her, leaves it unopened on her lap. "The people in the know all live in the smaller towns, farther out where the police don't go. The city's not big enough to hide them from a casual scan."

"And the angle men?" My job involves the very best questions.

"Only come out at night."

"Not quite right," Paul says. "You need to say it more Romanian, maybe throw your cape up over your face—"

Kelly just stares at him. "I know what you feed on, Paul McCartney."

When I'm the one who has to rescue the conversation, you know it's in bad shape. "So. Arthur." I walk into the kitchen, pull a glass out of the dishwasher. "When did you figure out he was missing?" There is nothing so musical as booze leaving the bottle.

"Arthur." Kelly's hand slides onto the book. "He left over the weekend to go down to Ukiah, family visit. He didn't come back Monday, parents said he left Saturday. No sign of him anywhere in Fort Bragg."

Dragnet time.

"And we heard about this on...Tuesday?" I squint, pretending to not remember. "You really waited all that time to tell us?"

Just once, Kelly's fingers glide over the book. "I'll admit I was partially concerned for myself."

Through some force of God, I don't scoff. Kelly doesn't react to me—not that I'd know—but Paul is right there with the long and pointy gaze.

Kelly breezes on like nothing is happening. "I am, it is no shameful secret, the more powerful of the two of us." She flips on a smile. "It comes of being not human, you know? So I feel..."

"Responsible," Paul finishes for her.

"That is the word." She shows the smile to him before it goes. "I tried to look for Arthur myself, at first. Tried to find him before it became a bigger issue. I did not want to trouble others, did not want—"

"To lose your job," I say.

Kelly spins and looks at me with that dead-nerve face. Anyone else feel cold? "I don't like to be seen as incompetent. It would not be healthy for me."

It is just possible I'm deciphering this girl's appetite. I take a long sip of iced vodka and enjoy the medicinal shiver.

"She's not wrong," Arabella says, as she comes strolling back into the room. "Peacekeepers lose points with the exact people whose opinions you really care about." She's says it without reflection, like she's just stating a fact. One, two... "I could understand a little butt-covering." She nods to Kelly, sisters in solidarity.

Kelly takes far too long finding the right words. "Thank you."

Topic dead; I shift gears before I start to hear crickets. "So what do we know about the disappearance? Besides time, I mean."

Again, those fingers on that book. "Not a great deal," she says. "I took two trips down Highway 20, between here and Ukiah. Scanned the whole thing." Something twinges in her aura, but reading her is like conjugating Portuguese. "I can confirm he has made several visits recently to his parents' house, and I know he stopped at the Jack in the Box just before you get on the road into Fort Bragg proper. But...you understand, I can't pinpoint how recently."

"Sure." Apparently, Arabella will be playing the good cop. "Was there anything unusual happening before he disappeared? Any weird assignments you went on, any kind of threats?"

"Anything weird?" Paul giggles. "You noticed you're talking to two creatures made out of pure thought possessing—"

"Paul, you're the opposite of interesting." Arabella's aura I don't need to read.

Kelly considers, stock still for a handful of seconds. It takes me half again that long to figure out she's trying to shake her head.

"No. Nothing"—there's a smile again, though not as adventurous—"for-us sort of weird." She's a little too eager for us to laugh at that.

"What was your last job?" Arabella asks, unrelenting. "What did they have you doing?"

Kelly cocks her head. "They?"

Arabella stammers. If she could, she'd get more pale. "Your...whoever gives you your cases."

"They do things different in these parts," Paul says. If I thought the Beatles accent was painful, it's because I'd never heard him try Southerner.

"Nothing special," Kelly says, just this side of insistent. She stares at Paul with what might be indignation. "Young demon, freshly embodied, thought he could milk a little extra bliss dealing marijuana to high schoolers. Arthur scared him off the ploy. He used to be a cop," she says, as an aside to me.

"And yet Barg gets along with him," I mutter to myself. "Really, nothing weird? Nothing at all out of the ordinary?"

"Just what we'd call ordinary." She puts on that same pretty smile, and it's pretty clear this topic is also dead.

I pour a little more vodka into my glass, and just listen to the ice crack. We all get lost in our own little peccadilloes: Arabella staring into space, Paul blanked as he goes over how to annoy us, me with the stiff and unnecessary drink. And then there's Kelly, still fingering away at that book.

"Speaking of awkward segues," I say to the room at large. "I never did hunt down that lunch." I look at Arabella. "Interested in some Purina Fleshbag Chow?"

She gives me a smirk. "I'm driving."

Paul looks at her, and at me, and gives us the same quick flash over the link-up: him and Kelly, stilted conversation in an empty, Tarot-choked room. "I already ate."

The nature of our job prevents me from giving him a smile. I toss back the rest of my drink, and hold the door open for a pink and red blur I'm pretty sure is Arabella.

"Back soon," I say.

Kelly stares at me. "Bye."

I'm thinking about cheeseburgers the whole way out the door: melting Cheddar, crisp lettuce, the kind of thing that stirs up hungry bears in the pit of your stomach. It's cheeseburgers as Arabella gathers her coat, cheeseburgers as we're shuffling out the door. It's cheeseburgers as I hand her the keys, and it's cheeseburgers until I'm sitting in front of the Tarot card on the passenger-side dashboard and watching the town of Cleone shrink in the rear-view. Arabella starts to laugh.

"Could you be less subtle?" she jabs. "I'm put off by your ninjitsu-level social skills."

I hiss like an angry tomcat. "You're such a delight."

Her only response is a simper. I sink into my seat, and enjoy what Mendocino County calls scenery. There's a pickup truck parked on the bucolic hill I saw driving up; I'm pretty sure the driver's drinking beer.

"So what do you think?" Arabella asks me, once I'm tuned out enough it'll be shocking. "About Kelly?"

I shrug. "Hiding something. But not necessarily more than anyone else in this business is." I make sure my look is nothing like pointed.

"The book, yeah?" Arabella. "She was pawing that thing like it was her journal."

"Don't go spinning on wild theories," I caution. "But yeah, that book's important."

She drives for a little while in silence. But only a little.

"You think she disappeared Arthur?"

"Again, she's not exceptional. Creepy," I admit. "But not exceptional. Whatever she's hiding, I don't think it's guilt." I paw at my face, gather the greased billiard balls of my thoughts. "I think it's their last job. Could just be another mess like Kincaid where she just doesn't want to talk about it—but I think she's a little too ready to tell us the last job wasn't special."

"What makes you say that?"

I gesture in front of myself, hands curling as I try to find the words.

"Her...contractions." Those were the exact words I didn't want to use. "She doesn't use them," I hasten to say, before her retort is more than a ball of thought. "She doesn't use them in her normal speech, she's not used to thinking like that. It's too casual. Too much like real speech."

Arabella's unimpressed. "I think in contractions."

"You're also human. And Kelly's explanation of their last case? Full of contractions."

Arabella's eyes widen. "Like she practiced."

"Like she wanted to sound casual."

Arabella's not wholly convinced, but she's not going to say so. Instead she'll think it really loud.

"You don't believe me."

She shrugs, like I can't tell what's happening in that head. "It's just good to know that we're hinging our case on your English degree." The smile I get from her is at least a degree warmer. "So what's our plan of action, Mr. Loose Cannon?"

I lean my seat back, and try to stretch out my shoulders. I'm not stressed right now, but my whole body's getting ready for it. Sometimes my muscles are smarter than my head.

"First," I declare, "I want a cheeseburger."

She can't help but chuckle at that.

"Then," I declare again, "I want to get a read on Kelly's pet book. Have Paul scan it too, if possible. I might need you to go help her with something, she seems to think she's supposed to be your friend."

"Sad how hard some of them play dolls, isn't it?"

Arabella was far too ready to act superior. I tamp down the urge to shiver.

"The book might change the plan. But I suspect I'll want to talk to Kelly about what we find there. And after that, I want her to find an address for this Master Gary guy, and have a talk with him about slapping his big small-town dick all over our life-preserving agreement."

The city comes up on us out of nowhere, a strip of motel and then the buildings, so few and all at once so numerous. That stupid graffiti glares out at me on the left, and I feel another nerve unwind.

"But for now, cheeseburger," I'm very quick to say. "Cheeseburger, and talk about the drive up here, and nothing about demons or psychics or missing persons. We'll get to the next step tomorrow, but for now, let's just forget it."

Neither of us do.