"Sure," I said. "Tell yourself that if it makes things easier to mask."

"Please go," said Shelby politely, lifting her magazine again. "I'm tired and in a lot of pain."

"I'm going to figure out who did this," I said. "Whether you help me or not."

Shelby didn't reply.

I left the hospital in a p.i.s.sed-off state that was rare even for me. So my partner was no help, and probably hated my guts even more than she had at the beginning of our dysfunctional little alliance. n.o.body who knew anything would talk to me. Not only was I an outsider, I hated magick to my core and it probably showed.

Of course, I realized almost immediately that I was being stupid. There was was a witch who would help me, if only out of his own desires for vengeance. It would have to be good enough for now. a witch who would help me, if only out of his own desires for vengeance. It would have to be good enough for now.

In my car he appeared to me, a flare of gold in the rearview mirror. I swerved and almost went off the overpa.s.s on the Appleby Expressway. "Hex me!"

"What are you running toward, Insoli?"

"Leave me alone!" I shouted at Asmodeus, pulling over and putting on my blinkers.

"The Skull of Mathias is not your provenance, Insoli. You will bring down exactly what you seek to hide from if you go toward it."

"Cryptic much?" I snapped at him. Where was a good exorcist when you needed one?

"I am drawn to convergences, Insoli, and one is happening as we speak. Dark magick. Magick that kills. You would do well to stay away." am drawn to convergences, Insoli, and one is happening as we speak. Dark magick. Magick that kills. You would do well to stay away."

Before I could shout at him to leave again, a tractor-trailer blew by with its horn blaring. Wind rattled the Fairlane and when I looked back into the rear seat Asmodeus was gone.

"Hex me," I muttered again as I tried to stop my hands from shaking. The tight sense in my chest, the sense that Asmodeus had been right, eased after a few minutes and I drove on.

After all, everyone knew you couldn't trust a daemon.

The Blackburns' building didn't look any better in daylight. In fact, I could see the cracked brick and peeling paint and garbage all over the sidewalk, so it was measurably worse.

I pounded on the door and got the same surly guard, in what was probably the same ugly mesh shirt and studded jeans. "I need to see Victor," I said. "It's urgent."

He raised an eyebrow at me, but stepped aside without comment and pointed up the stairs. "Be my guest. Cop," he added as an afterthought. I had the feeling I was supposed to be insulted, but didn't dwell on it.

Scratchy cla.s.sical music drifted from the top floor of the apartments, and I pushed open the door to see Victor nodding in his armchair. He looked very old, used up and spat out by the power that ran in his blood.

The moment my foot landed inside the door, his eyes snapped open and fixated on me. "Does anyone in your generation knock, Ms. Wilder?"

"Sorry," I said without thinking. Once he was awake, the sheer force of his will animated his face and body with the intensity of a wildfire.

He sighed. "Never mind. Valerie's running wilder by the day. Soon she'll be exactly like you. Tea?"

I took my cue to sit down across from him. "Coffee, if you have it."

Victor picked up an old-fashioned servant's bell and jangled it, then sat back and steepled his fingers. "I take it you're not here socially."

"No," I said. "But I am here asking a favor."

He frowned. "You know, according to magickal law, I can-"

"You can compel a favor in return, I know," I snapped. "What'll it be?" Yet another reason I hated most witches. They're so d.a.m.n OCD about balance and favors and all that c.r.a.p.

"I can, can, but I but I won't won't," said Victor patiently. "You don't have anything I want."

"Well.. . well, fine," I said, blushing. "Don't ask, then."

"You don't like witches very much, do you?" said Victor. I snorted.

"What gave you that idea?"

"I don't blame you," he said. "We're an untrustworthy, self-serving, insular bunch." The creepy servant came in and brought a tray of steaming mugs. Victor added sugar to his tea and sipped. I tried my coffee after a discreet sniff to make sure it wasn't riddled with poison. It wasn't half bad.

"I need to get some information," I said. "And you're the only person I know of that will give me the straight truth."

"Very well," said Victor. "Ask away."

I bit my lip. "What is the Skull of Mathias?"

At first, I thought Victor was having a heart attack. He froze with his cup halfway to his lips and stared at me, absolutely still, his breathing as rapid and shallow as a hummingbird's. "Victor?" I said cautiously. "You okay?"

"How do you know about the Skull?" he whispered, setting his mug back in the saucer. China rattled as his hands shook.

"Doesn't matter," I said. "What does is that you people yanked me into the middle of your idiot feud over this thing, and I want to know what it is, close my case, and return to a world that has at least a veneer of normality." I set down my coffee and leaned toward Victor, who still looked like the reaper was standing on his grave. "You owe it to your son. He deserves to rest. And Valerie deserves to know who killed her brother and why." I didn't say anything about what Victor deserved-he'd killed Patrick O'Halloran, or ordered it done. Even if I could never prove it, he was guilty as a crooked priest.

Victor was composed again, bright eyes missing nothing. Only a tight jaw and a line of white around his mouth betrayed the shock he'd had. "I can see why you've lasted so long as an Insoli," he said finally. "You never give up."

"Not until I'm dead," I agreed. Victor sighed, pulling out a battered silver flask from his pants pocket and adding the contents to his teacup. The liquid was black and oily. I decided it would be better if I didn't scrutinize the smell too closely.

"How much do you know about daemons?" he asked me finally.

Asmodeus flashed into my mind, the implacable gold eyes searing through my skin and into my thoughts. "More than I want to."

"One time, they walked among men," said Victor. "Gifting the nonmagickal with abilities to kill or destroy. The caster witches did not appreciate the implied challenge, and cast the daemons into their shadow realm."

I knew all of this. I also knew that not all all the daemons had been cast from ye olde mortal coil. Unfortunately for me. "So what's the twist ending here, Victor?" I said. the daemons had been cast from ye olde mortal coil. Unfortunately for me. "So what's the twist ending here, Victor?" I said.

He rubbed his chin. "Mathias was the sole human given permanent magick, the power to draw workings from his own body. His descendants diluted and abused the power until they were reduced to using their own blood, or the blood of victims, to focus the terrible gifts the daemon gave their ancestor."

'The first blood witch," I said.

"Yes, but also not a blood witch," said Victor. "Mathias needed no blood, just as a daemon needs no focus or buffer. When he was killed a follower inscribed every working and spell he had conceived onto the master's own skull."

There are those questions that you just don't want to ask, because you know the answer will send you down a path that no sane person would walk. But in my job, you ask them anyway and walk into the dark forest willingly. "What would happen if a modern-day witch got hold of the skull?"

"Nothing," said Victor, "because the means to read the carvings are lost. My family inherited bits and pieces of translations made through the ages, but the key to reading the symbols was destroyed. By the d.a.m.n caster witches, of course."

"Going hypothetical," I said, even though I wished we weren't, "what can the Skull do?"

"You'd have no need for blood," said Victor with a sigh. "No need to rely on donors or your own frailty. As much magick as you could ever want ripped directly from the ether."

Just like a daemon.

"Thank you," I said. "I'm sorry to take up so much of your time." Amazing how you can be all Miss Manners when your thoughts are whirling and you feel like you might pa.s.s out. The compulsion spell used on Joubert was daemon magick, the same kind I'd seen during the Duncan case. If the O'Hallorans had figured that much out, how close were they to unlocking the skull?

What would happen if a human being wielded inhuman magick? My experience led me to conclude nothing pretty.

"No bother," said Victor. "I was waiting for Valerie to come home so she can a.s.sist me in a working." He checked a watch on a chain, tarnished like everything else about the Blackburns' home. "Where is she?"

Something ugly twisted in the back of my mind, that instinct for bad that cops develop after any time in the field. "When did she leave? Where did she go?"

Victor tucked the watch away. "She went shopping, I believe. One of the bodyguards, Calvin, was with her."

"Calvin has a cell phone?"

Victor nodded.

"Call him." What kind of father let his daughter wander around in the middle of a gang war? Unbidden, the image of Vincent's body jumped into my mind and I pulped my temples with my fingers to make it go away. Valerie wasn't dead yet. I hoped.

"No answer," said Victor, setting down a rotary phone. "You don't think..."

I grabbed him by the elbow and headed for the stairs. "Let's go."

Victor balked against me. He was strong for a man who looked like death's door, but I was stronger. "You don't have to involve yourself, Detective," he said as we speed-walked down the creaky wooden stairwell. "This is between me and the O'Hallorans."

"I'm not doing this for you, you stupid old man," I said, shouldering open the door to the lobby. "I'm just not in the habit of letting innocent people die."

"How white-knight of you," he murmured. I turned a glare on him.

"Like you'd know anything about that." I was fishing for the Fairlane's keys with my free hand, the sharp air of the outside scratching at my face.

"What did you do, Detective, to inspire this headlong urge to champion the helpless?" Victor asked. I stopped and faced him. My memory, already hyperactive from returning to Ghosttown and seeing Blackburn, exploded with a vision of b.l.o.o.d.y screams and torn flesh, more sounds and scents than sight, blurry and soaked in red.

Victor hissed and I knew my eyes had gone gold. "Do you really want to know?" I whispered.

He considered for a moment and then shrugged. "At the moment, I am grateful to accept your help in finding my daughter."

"Good," I said shortly, blinking away the were from my vision. No one knew about Joshua and that first full moon except for Sunny and Dmitri. Even they didn't know the whole truth. In a way, killing Alistair Duncan during the phase had been a blessing, because the memory of his blood and screams covered up something older and darker that I tried to bury deep down, where even my dreams couldn't find it.

My key was in the Fairlane's door when I saw the man staggering down the sidewalk toward us, dragging himself like a Romero zombie. I put my right hand on my gun, holding it down at my side in a neutral position. This was Ghosttown, after all-jumping to con-elusions about someone's creepiness rarely stood you in good stead.

Victor solved my dilemma for me by rushing forward to catch the man before he fell. "Calvin!" he shouted. It wasn't a shout of concern, more like one a sweatshop owner might give if a worker dropped dead during the height of holiday shopping.

I ran over and got Calvin onto his back. He was shaking and his pupils were pinpoint, b.l.o.o.d.y spittle around his mouth. "s.h.i.t. He's in shock." I dashed back to the Fairlane and popped the trunk, got a blanket and threw it over poor Calvin, who had started to wheeze like a set of defective bagpipes. "Lift his feet," I snapped at Victor. I stuck my fingers down Calvin's gullet to check for airway obstructions, and jerked back when I felt his throat clamp down around the digit.

"What's wrong?" Victor demanded.

"He's dying," I said shortly. Victor shook Calvin's legs.

"Where's Valerie? Where's my daughter?"

Calvin's eyes rolled toward us as his limbs began the tachy twitch of flesh deprived of oxygen. "They ..." he gasped out. "Have her. Have ... Valerie."

"You're not dying!" Victor shouted, dropping Calvin's legs and grabbing him by the hair. "You failed! You don't get to escape that easily!"

I sat back on my heels as Calvin's last breath wuffed out. "Too late, Victor."

"d.a.m.n him!" He let Calvin's head drop back to the pavement. "He was supposed to be protecting her."

I examined Calvin's body cursorily, and saw the swollen red puncture mark on his neck. "Well, at least we know who took her," I said. The O'Hallorans were getting arrogant.

Victor grabbed my arm, so hard I knew I'd see bruises when I took off my shirt. "Find my daughter, Detective Wilder. Get her back from those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds or I swear I'll burn this city to the ground."

And of course, I didn't tell Victor Blackburn that he had to follow proper channels, that my hands were tied by the legal system. That Valerie might already be a sacrifice to the O'Hallorans' struggle to unlock the Skull. I just nodded and helped him up. I was a cop, but I was a were too, and this time my were side won the battle between duty and the older blood code between creatures other than humans.

"I'll find her."

Victor watched me grimly as I got into the Fairlane and gunned the engine. "You'd better."

CHAPTER 21.

Nocturne City General informed me that Shelby had checked herself out and gone home, against her doctor's advice. Dispatch gave me a sw.a.n.ky apartment tower in Mainline, not fifteen blocks from the family's tower. Seven h.e.l.ls, the O'Hallorans probably owned the apartments too.

I hit the buzzer marked "1023-S. O'Halloran" repeatedly, keeping up a sustained rhythm until Shelby's irritable and sleep-deepened voice demanded, "What do you want?"

"Let me in," I said.

"Luna?"

"No, it's the shoe fairy. I come bearing Prada. Just open the d.a.m.n door."

The intercom clicked off and there was almost a full minute before the door buzzed at me and I pushed into the marble-and-bland lobby, complete with faux Italian fountain and soft cla.s.sical music.

A minute is a long time. Shelby could be going over the balcony. She could be loading a shotgun for my knock on her door.