Nick dropped me off at about two-thirty in the morning, not remotely discouraged, although it looked to me like his leads hadn't panned out. At least he was being (relatively) friendly again, so I didn't say anything to wreck it. I just waved good-bye and trudged into the mansion.

Where a grim Sinclair and a fretful Jessica were waiting for me.

"Whaaaat?" I whined, moodily pulling off my Herrera boots. "What'd I do? I didn't do it. I'm pretty sure it was Marc. No, wait. Cathie!" Cathie, the ghost-gone-walkabout, who I could actually use to help me with the hunt. She was usually convenient for blame. Of course, if she'd been there, I never would have gotten away with it.

She'd been killed by a serial killer (who was later killed by my sister, Laura, who had a spectacular temper tantrum in the killer's basement) and, even after his death, had hung around being my ghostly secretary of sorts. If ghosts showed up needing help, Cathie would try to help them herself... and only if she couldn't would she then let the ghost bother me. Plus, she was super funny and nice. I missed having her around. Even more so now that the Ant was pestering me.

"Sinclair told me," Jessica said without preamble.

"About what?" I asked, totally at a loss. Man, I'd have to drink some blood soon. I was getting dumber by the hour.

"About Nick's little murder project," she said grimly, and I winced.

"That wasn't nice," I said to Sinclair, the reproach quite clear in my tone.

" 'Nice' is the least of my concerns, or interests. He is trying to get you killed, or at least cares not if you're hurt. If I could tell his superior without jeopardizing our secret, I would."

"You'd tattle to his boss! Oooh, that's really mean." I walked into the parlor and carefully flopped down onto a fainting couch, which someone had probably lugged over on the Mayflower.

"I'll deal with him later," she swore, and I almost felt sorry for the guy. "I just wanted to make sure you got back all right."

"Sure I did. Heck, it didn't even pan out. It was an evening of driving around, basically. Feel bad for him, he was the one trapped in a car with me." In fact, a couple of times he had rolled his window down and hung out his head like a dog, screaming into the wind. Heh.

"And I," Sinclair said, "wished to attempt to convince you, once again, to leave police matters to the police. We have other things to attend to."

"Oh, like I would have been any help to you and Tina tonight."

Sinclair lifted his left shoulder up about half a centimeter, which, for him, was the same as a shrug of agreement.

"Like I said, it was one big safe boring evening. No problems. And," I added, looking around the small, peach-colored parlor, "I assume the Fiends haven't been back?"

"No, thank God."

"Did you and Tina learn anything?"

"Oh, this and that," Sinclair said vaguely, which either meant (a) he had gobs of tidbits he didn't want to spill in front of Jessica, (b) he had nothing, or (c) he had plenty, but didn't want to worry me.

"So. Let's go to bed?"

"Do that," Jessica muttered, turning around like a soldier doing an about-face and marching out of the parlor. "I've got to call Nick."

"Very, very mean," I told my husband, as I followed him up the stairs. "Ratting Nick out like third graders squealing about who stole the chocolate milk. Nice!"

Sinclair shrugged again. I pulled our bedroom door shut and jumped on his back.

"Ah?" he managed, looking around for his suit hanger.

"I'm starving," I purred into his left ear.

The hanger, which he had just picked up, went sailing over our right shoulders. Then he reached back, got my coat in a fist, and yanked me off of him, over him, and flopped me onto the bed.

"Then let's eat," he said, and fell upon me like a scary fairy-tale monster, only a whole lot sexier and, let's face it, better dressed.