“How could you tell?”

“The luggage was secured with leather straps and padlocks.” Ineke handed back the photo. “I don’t mind guests having secrets or wearing the perfume of mystery. We all have secrets, and everyone should have a little mystery in their lives. But those padlocks and his talk about Vicki squatting at The Jumble when we’d all watched her pump money and sweat into the place didn’t sit right. If Cartwright hadn’t been killed, I was going to tell him to find another place to stay.”

“There isn’t another place to stay in Sproing.”

She gave him a predatory smile. “Exactly.” She waved a hand at the photo. “Detectives Reynolds and Baker had a tie clip like that. So did Detective Swinn.”

“What about the bank manager?”

Ineke narrowed her eyes. “I never had a reason to pay attention, so I can’t say for sure.”

“Thanks for your help.” Grimshaw started to turn away, then stopped.

Ineke picked up a large straw basket that held a rolled beach towel, a bottle of water, and a small purse. “Something else?”

He hesitated, then decided to ask the question. “What do you think will happen if Vicki DeVine leaves The Jumble?”

“I think that will depend on why she leaves.”

* * *

• • •

“Do I look like I wear a tie?”

Grimshaw looked up at Gershwin Jones, the owner of Grace Notes, Sproing’s store for all things musical. Looking up at someone was a novel experience he didn’t enjoy.

“No, you don’t,” Grimshaw replied. “But I’m asking business owners if they’ve seen a tie clip like this.”

Gershwin Jones was a large, well-proportioned man. A first-generation Thaisian whose parents had emigrated from the Eastern Storm Islands, he had brown skin and dark eyes. He wore his dark hair in dreadlocks that fell below his shoulder blades, and the knee-length caftan he wore over sand-colored trousers looked like a rainbow that had overdosed on caffeine.

“All the business owners or a select few?”

Like Julian Farrow, Gershwin Jones was a newcomer, someone who had moved to Sproing last fall after so many people in small, isolated places like this one had died or bolted to towns that were human controlled—or at least provided more of an illusion that there was a boundary between them and the terra indigene.

Grimshaw might not sense things like Julian did, but a cop had his own kind of intuition. “A select few—the people who moved into the area within the past year. Lots of people have been looking for new opportunities, looking for a different place to settle down. You’ve got Simple Life folk running the livery, and I understand that a few Intuits have become residents of Sproing.” And I think you’re one of them, he added silently.

Jones went over to the bins of sheet music and began straightening the already tidy bins. “Julian says you’re a friend of his, says you’re open-minded about the gifts that come to a person at birth.”

Which just confirmed his thought that Jones was an Intuit. “I try to be open-minded about things that don’t hurt another person or break the law.”

Jones just kept tidying the bins. Finally he stopped but didn’t look at Grimshaw. “I have a feeling the men who wear that tie clip wouldn’t be doing business with someone like me. They don’t feel the rhythm of a place or the people who live there. They don’t have a feel for anything but profit. You hear what I’m saying? Those detectives causing trouble for Miss Vicki. They didn’t come in, but Officer Osgood has come in to look at the sheet music, look at the instruments I have for sale. He feels the rhythm.”

Well, asking people about the tie clips had been a long shot.

A faraway look came into Jones’s eyes. Then he focused on Grimshaw. “You got a connection to any of the special girls?”

For a moment, Grimshaw’s body clenched. Special girls. Blood prophets. The cassandra sangue. Girls who could see the future when their skin was cut.

“No, I don’t have a connection to any of those girls,” he said. Not directly, anyway.

Some of the girls still lived in the compounds where they had been raised and trained. Others had left that “benevolent ownership” and tried to survive in the chaotic everyday world. Many hadn’t survived, and the ones who had were hidden away.

If you wanted to hide vulnerable girls, you’d ask someone who had an intuitive sense about a place to find communities where those girls would be safe. And Grimshaw didn’t know anyone who was better at sensing a place than Julian Farrow.

“Thanks for your help,” Grimshaw said. He hurried out of Grace Notes and went straight to Lettuce Reed.

“You alone?” he asked Julian as soon as he walked into the store.

“For the moment,” Julian replied. “Had a run on romantic suspense novels an hour ago. Probably not the type of story that is of interest to you.”

Grimshaw waved off the comment. “I need help answering a question. I need a special kind of help.” Too cryptic? No. Julian knew exactly what, or who, he was talking about—and said nothing. Expecting that to be Julian’s response, he added, “I know a man who knows a man who might know a blood prophet.”

Julian looked away. “What are we playing? Six degrees of separation or connect the dots?”

“Maybe both. What do detectives working in Putney, a bank manager in Sproing, and a businessman living in Hubb NE have in common?”

“You tell me.”

“They all have the same tie clip, which could be coincidence or could be a connection.”

Julian said nothing.

Grimshaw decided to push. “You helped hide some of those girls, didn’t you? Before you opened the store here.”

“We’re not talking about it. Ever,” Julian said fiercely.

No, Julian wouldn’t talk. Blood prophets were worth a fortune because of their ability to see the future, and a man who admitted that he knew where to find even one of them would be wearing a target on his back.

But there was one blood prophet who might be within reach.

“Captain Hargreaves knows a patrol captain in Lakeside. He might be able to reach out.” He didn’t want to ask Hargreaves to call in another favor on his behalf, but he also didn’t want this trouble at The Jumble to be the incident that started the next Great Predation.

“Do you really need this?”

“Gershwin Jones seems to think I do. He’s the one who asked if I knew any of the special girls.”

A crackling silence. Finally Julian sighed. “Some Intuits have a private information exchange. There’s been talk that some of the special girls are exploring ways to reveal prophecy without their skin being cut.” He smiled grimly. “I know a man who knows a Wolf who knows a girl who might be able to answer a question by reading cards.”

“If you could reach out,” Grimshaw said. “I trust Captain Hargreaves, but Swinn’s involvement raises the question of who else might be connected to this mess.”

“Work out exactly what you want to ask, and I’ll send the question. Might help if I can e-mail the photo of the tie clip too.”

“Thanks. I’ll be back.”

Grimshaw crossed the street and went inside the police station. Osgood was there, reading one of the books he’d purchased at Lettuce Reed.

“Why don’t you do a foot patrol?” Grimshaw said. He pulled out his wallet and handed Osgood a couple of bills. “Pick up some lunch for the two of us while you’re out and about.”

“Yes, sir.” Osgood hesitated. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to take some alone time to consider a question.”

CHAPTER 25

Vicki

Firesday, Juin 16

We were trapped in a building. Lots of pipes overhead and exposed steel support beams. Something was in there with us, hunting us. We’d found Dominique Xavier lying in a pool of her own blood, her blank eyes staring at us as we turned and ran, searching for a way out, desperate to escape the monster.

Ineke, Paige, and I fled in the same direction. As I swung around a corner, I heard Paige scream. I turned back, but Ineke shouted, “Run, Vicki, run! Get help!”