Fox Aspen had volunteered to help find the kids, and when it turned out they’d been kidnapped by Faeries from the Winter court, he’d fought beside Poppy and the others to get them kids back safely.

  What was even more twisted was that the reason the Winter Faeries had started nabbing kids in the first place was only to draw out Taliyah. But Taliyah hadn’t even arrived in town at that point. Apparently, the whole thing involved a confused Seer, an attempted coup to seize the Winter throne, and a lot of Faerie Court politics.

  Poppy and Wanda had captured them bad faeries in a faerie ring and they was still trapped there to this day. I had no clue how much of this Taliyah was aware of, so I didn’t drag it all back up again.

  Especially since, apparently, Fox Aspen was Taliyah’s betrothed since birth. And I didn’t think she knew that part, either.

  Awkward.

  Best to focus on only one crisis at a time.

  “Someone who can wipe memories,” Taliyah repeated slowly.

  I clapped my hands together. “Yep! So, all we have to do is catch Judas Irwin in the act, and then we can sort out all the details later.”

  All we have to do is catch him in the act? Cain snapped. How exactly do you plan to do that?

  Judging by the look Taliyah gave me, she was asking herself the same question.

  Honestly, I was starting to worry about that answer.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I rolled Cain’s class ring against my thumb in a soothing, repetitive motion as I crouched behind the sofa in the living room of the duplex I used to share with Libby.

  Special Agent Riggs was in the hall closet with the door cracked open enough that he could see clearly. Taliyah had refused to be that far away, so she was standing behind the floor length curtains covering the front window.

  It had taken a lot of convincing to get an FBI agent and the chief of police to agree to my plan of playing the worst game of hide and seek in history, but they’d finally, reluctantly, agreed. Cain had been surprisingly easy to persuade. I think he just wanted to close his biggest case badly enough that he would have agreed to darn near anything.

  Cain hadn’t liked the plan at first, mostly because, if it worked, it would involve me being within ten feet of a killer. I was a little touched, until I realized Cain’s concern probably wasn’t personal. He’d have felt the same about any civilian mucking around in his stakeout, but too bad for him, if he wanted to be present, that meant I had to be, too.

  Agent Riggs had taken the most convincing.

  When he’d confirmed that Steamboat Solis was a regular visitor to Judas Irwin, actually Irwin’s only visitor other than his lawyer, he’d agreed to listen to my “mumbo jumbo”. I think he only really went along with the plan because he didn’t want to be left out, in case we were right. That probably wouldn’t look good to his FBI buddies.

  Anyhoo, Riggs didn’t take kindly to our explanation that Irwin was using magic to get into dame’s houses. He thought we were all kooks, but after Wanda helped us by using a little magical assistance to calm Riggs down and make him a little more… open minded, he stood by his word.

  Funnily enough, the person we needed the most to pull the whole shebang off agreed to helping, no problem. She was beyond grateful we’d asked for her assistance.

  Libby bustled around the kitchen under our combined watchful eyes. The sewing machine was set up on the kitchen table where she was working on putting a hem on a dress. She’d pause periodically to check on the roast she had in the oven, or stir something in one of the pots on the stovetop. All the while, she was dressed to the nines in a lilac frock and pearls, with her dark hair pinned up.

  Saliva pooled in my mouth as I sat there, smelling the roast, and a little part of me regretted moving to Cain’s. I could cook for myself, sure, but Libby’s cooking put mine to shame. Her biscuits shoulda replaced one of the Seven Wonders of the World—I mean, who cares about a chicken named Itza?

  Fortunately for us, Libby also ticked off a lot of boxes on Judas Irwin’s victim checklist:

  Brunette? check.

  Had a housemate who would discover her body, (me)? Check.

  Mostly a homemaker? Libby was quite literally a housewife from the 1950’s, so that was about eight check marks right there.

  She also had a brand new, body-length gilt-framed mirror hanging in the hallway. Taliyah and Agent Riggs had hung it up there earlier.

  Libby was already a good target, but we’d done everything we could to make her the best target. We didn’t want to risk the chance of anyone else getting hurt.

  Plus, Steamboat knew all about Libby already. Over the last couple of days, I’d talked about Libby and me living together every time I saw Steamboat in the office. And, no, I wasn’t doing a great job of staying in hiding, like Wanda and Poppy had advised. But Mr. Howard wasn’t exactly the understanding type when it came to missing work at a job I’d just started. Besides, the anointed candle burning for the past few days was definitely helping to curb my bad luck—now I mostly just found myself getting papercuts and stubbing my toes—that sort of thing.

  But back to Steamboat and all the information I was divulging about Libby… I’d ramble on about how Libby liked making just about anything on her sewing machine, and insisted on us sitting down for a meal together on Sundays, how she considered cleaning the house to be a sport—and one for which she could win a medal.

  And I was also counting on one other thing—if Steamboat was so angry with me over a perceived slight that she’d blast me with one heckofa bad luck curse, then it stood to reason she was mad enough to deliberately target my roommate.

  And on that subject, my fingers curled into fists. I’d never wanted to bop someone in the smeller more in my life. As regards the information I’d fed Steamboat, I’d been selective. There had been a couple things I definitely hadn’t mentioned at work, or anywhere, really. Like the fact that Libby was already dead.

  As zombies went, Libby was in terrific shape. Poppy’s potions had fixed her up real well. She didn’t rot or smell or lose bits of flesh. Sunday dinners or not, I couldn’t have been roommates with her if she did. Talk about icky.

  To someone meeting Libby for the first time, you’d never be able to tell she wasn’t alive, unless you got up close and personal enough to see that she wasn’t breathing. Oh, and she was also extraordinarily strong. That was one of the reasons she made such a good housecleaner—she could easily lift the couch to Hoover underneath it (something Libby only told me about because whenever that Hoover came out, so Darla came out too—outside, because I was still terrified of being Hoovered).

  The fact that Libby was already dead and couldn’t be killed again was the only reason Taliyah had agreed to go along with the whole plan.

  And now as we were sitting here, minutes ticked by as slow as molasses in December. My skin was prickling, muscles twitching with a horrible mixture of anticipation and unease. Everything was getting tenser by the second, and if something didn’t happen soon, I was afraid I was going to scream.

  Easy, Cain murmured in my head. You’ll wear yourself out or make yourself sick. Try to relax into the waiting.

  With some effort, I managed not to snort.

  Easy for him to say when he didn’t have a body that felt like it was made out of violin strings and barbed wire. The worst he was getting was secondhand feelings from me.

  He was the expert, though, so I tried to relax, taking in a deep breath through my schnozzle and letting it out real slow like.

  Fifteen long, gut-twisting, nail-biting minutes crawled by, and nothing happened. I was starting to worry I’d goofed up. I’d been so sure Steamboat was in on these murders, that she and Judas Irwin wouldn’t be able to pass up our perfect Libby-shaped bait.

  Had I been wrong? What if Steamboat hadn’t been the one who cursed me after all? Wanda said Steamboat didn’t have that kind of power. What if this string of bad luck hadn’t been nothing more than a big coincidence? And I’d dragged not only Cain and Taliyah out here, to hide in my living room, but an FBI agent, too? Yikes.

  I was working my way up to a full-scale tizzy, when something in the air shifted. The downy fine hairs on my arms lifted, the room suddenly feeling electric. It was like standing outside in a storm right before a lightning strike.

  The mirror in the hallway rippled, glinting like sunlight on water, and my breath froze in my pipes.

  A denim-clad leg pushed its way through the wavy glass surface as we watched, stepping down onto the hall rug. That stilt was quickly followed by a pale hand with shell-pink nails, parting the mirror like it was a curtain to be swept outta the way.

  Steamboat Solis stepped through the mirror and into the duplex’s front hall as my heart stopped in my chest and then started beating like it was in the midst of running a marathon.

  Meanwhile, Steamboat glanced around. Her thick lashes gave her peepers a sleepy look, but it didn’t hide the nasty little smirk hovering at the corner of her kisser.

  I froze, too afraid to breathe as her peepers swept over the room.

  The back of my throat tickled, but I held my sneeze in.

  Libby took the presence of dust as a personal offence, so I knew the couch didn’t have a speck on it to choke me up. I wanted to swear. It was probably the hex acting up, trying to get me to give myself away. The tickle grew, and I swallowed carefully, refusing to sneeze, cough, or otherwise make any other sounds.

  Hold it in, Darla, Cain warned.

  Steamboat didn’t call out an alarm, or dive back through the mirror, which meant she hadn’t seen me crouched behind the couch and she hadn’t heard my heart hammering away at my ribs. By the time I dared another peek around the armrest, she’d stepped back to place her palm against the liquid surface of the glass. And when she pulled away, she left a palm shaped print on the otherwise glassy surface.

  My eyes flew open even wider than they already were as I remembered the handprint on the mirror at the Mulberry Way house! I’d been right when I’d thought it was important. I owed Agent Riggs so many ‘I told you so’s’ it wasn’t even funny. And he’d even joked about the mirror having a secret passageway, too, the rat bastard! That little joke of his had proven truer than any of us could have guessed.

  The mirror twitched under Steamboat’s hand, rippling like a disturbed pond. She stepped aside, standing next to the gilt frame like she was holding a door open for someone. I realized with a lurch that that was exactly what she was doing. And soon, another person came through the mirror behind her.

  Tall, with broad shoulders and clean features, I immediately felt the buck of Cain within me and figured this had to be Judas Irwin.

  There wasn’t anything noteworthy to set him apart from any other fella. No horns, no cloven hooves, no outward sign of the evil he was capable of. People like him shoulda been marked in some way, I figured, so the rest of the world could see what they really were. But Irwin didn’t look anything like what I’d expected a serial killer to look like. He was someone I could’ve walked past on the street and never thought twice about it.

  Except for the orange jumpsuit.

  Irwin was still dressed in his prison clothes, a black number ‘8’ stark against his eye-searing neon-orange shirt pocket. He really was coming straight from the can. He musta found a surface shiny enough in his cell to use as a mirror for Steamboat to shuttle him around.

  You bastard, Cain thought, and I couldn’t agree more.

  Irwin’s gaze swept the room, and fear slid down my spine like drops of icy rain.

  His eyes were dark and flat, like a shark’s.

  I’d met a lotta supernaturals in my second chance at life. Even a few that didn’t look anything close to human. But looking at Judas Irwin, standing in my home, was the first time I’d ever truly seen a monster.

  I shivered, skin crawling like it wanted to alley-oop right off my body and flee the house. I could relate.

  Steady. Cain’s voice was hard, but not unkind.

  Steamboat stepped up to Irwin with a sultry smile, and slid her mitt up around the back of his neck. She used that grip to tug him down into a brief, but disturbingly thorough smacker.

  I felt sick. How could she bear to touch him, let alone mesh kissers with him?

  “Don’t forget,” she murmured. “Bring me her hair for the spell. If I can’t harvest their deaths for my magic, we won’t be able to keep seeing each other like this.”

  Anger spiked through me when I thought about the dame she was talking about—Libby. And the way Steamboat mentioned Libby, it was as casual and offhand as if she was talking about the weather, not offing my roommate. And then I thought about the fact that Steamboat had just admitted to her goal—wanting to bump up her magic. I got angry all over again and then this feeling of justification seized me and if I’d had any doubts about what I was planning, all those doubts were gone now. Steamboat truly was just as horrible as I’d worried she was.

  She giggled then, a high breathy sound, and I gagged.

  She was helping Irwin murder dames to boost her own power. There was nothing more disrespectable, nothing more vile and wholly abhorrent than that. In the eyes of the local covens, that made her even worse than a Blood Witch. From what Wanda told me, the covens might be nasty, competitive places where dames constantly jockeyed for position, but they drew the line at actual murder.

  People were dying because Steamboat Solis wanted more magic!

  And Libby was next on her list!

  Now, don’t get me wrong, living with that zombie wasn’t no walk in the park. Most days, she irritated me like no one’s business. But she was still my zombie and my roommate and no one was gonna try to kill her, least of all Steamboat Static Solis.

  “I never forget.” Irwin’s voice was shockingly mild, like he was promising to pick up milk on his way home. It made me squirm like spiders were crawling all over me.

  Irwin drew away from Steamboat, moving silently into the living room. My heart moved double time, kicking against the inside of my ribs like a trapped thing trying to break free, as I watched him prowl closer to me.

  And my heart leapt into an absolute gallop when I realized where Irwin was angling toward—the big window. To where Taliyah was hiding right behind the curtain.

  I don’t know if I would have actually leaped to my feet and given us all away, but the second my muscles tensed, Cain clamped down, keeping me in place.

  Just stay still.

  He’s heading right towards her!

  And Taliyah knows what she’s doing. She’s a first-rate cop. She can handle herself.

  For the first time, that gruff, no nonsense voice was comforting instead of just plain aggravating.

  There wasn’t so much as a ripple in the fabric to indicate there was anyone behind the curtains. And Irwin was more interested in tugging the cream cord we’d used to tie back the floral curtains free from its hook. There was a reason he was termed the ‘Curtain Back Killer’.

  He stepped away from the window, and I let out a shaky exhale.

  In a chillingly methodical motion, Irwin wrapped the cord around his fists until it was pulled taut between his hands. The creamy cotton looked stark against his tan fingers.

  My face and fingers were numb.

  It was horrifying to watch Judas Irwin in action. He was calm, detached, like he was showing up to work his shift at some ordinary job. But the look in his peepers—I’d seen it before.

  In Frank’s.

  Yet, when Frank had shot me, he’d been in a rage, sure that I’d been stepping out on him with some Hollywood big cheese. Regardless, they both had the peepers of killers.

  Crouching there, behind my soft blue sofa watching that… that thief of lives prowl through my home, intent on hurting someone I loved like it was a hobby, ice water filled my veins.

  On silent feet, he slipped into the kitchen.

  The angle of the doorway kept me from seeing into the whole room, but I knew Libby was standing at the stove. I could hear her humming the same tired song she always hummed—something, now that I thought about it, that was actually fitting for Steamboat—‘Yakety Yak’. Only, Steamboat always talked back.

  Libby stirred something, the wooden spoon scraping against the bottom of the pot as she moved her hips to and fro to the song playing in her head.

  “Yakety yak, yakety yak!”

  I couldn’t see Irwin when he came up behind her.

  Or when he slipped the cord around her throat.

  But her sudden, choked gasp was deafening in the silent house.

  I’d tried to give Libby some impromptu acting lessons once we’d settled on this plan. The problem was, Libby wasn’t great at lying, and she didn’t actually need to breathe, so it was doubly hard for her to fake being strangled. She’d done a decent job at the end and really, the biggest thing she had to work on was not overpowering Irwin with her insane strength.

  Even knowing he couldn’t hurt her, that choking-spluttering sound was still awful to listen to.

  A pan clattered off the stove, spraying gravy across the kitchen floor. Cupboards thumped like someone was kicking them, heels drumming against the ground. It certainly sounded convincing from where I hid and I half wondered if she was really okay until I reminded myself she was already dead and the worst Irwin could do is muss up her hair or rumple her duds.

  Steamboat stood back in the hallway, her peepers sparkling with excitement. When she turned to check her lipstick in the still-wavy mirror, my hands itched to grab a double fistful of her dark hair and yank it out by the roots.

  Everything fell quiet in the kitchen then.

  I swallowed carefully and glanced back.

  Libby was lying on the floor.

  I couldn’t see her face, just her lilac skirts with their crinoline slip puddled on the ground. Her knees were bent, and I could see the heels of her shoes, carefully dyed to match her dress. She looked like a flower crumpled by a careless hand. It was a good thing Irwin wasn’t paying attention to her face ‘cause she was making this real strange expression—her tongue sticking outta her mouth and her eyes open yet twitching. We hadn’t reviewed what sorta expression she should make and that little oversight could end up being a big one.