“I’ve been texting Osh all day. She’s fine, and he’s decided he wants to go back to school.”

“Oh, hell, no.”

He chuckled. “I don’t know what I would do without you, pumpkin.”

That sounded ominous. “Are you going somewhere?”

“I don’t think so. Just wanted you to know how much you mean to me. Oh, and if I’m late for any reason tomorrow, Officer Tang will be in charge.”

“Late? Why would you be late?”

“I have about a hundred cases at any given moment, pumpkin. There’s been movement on an old one that I need to look into. It could take me a while. But don’t worry. Just go on with the plan.”

“Okay. Be careful.”

“Always. Be good. And stay home.”

Actually, that wasn’t a bad idea. I hadn’t had an evening home alone with the ball and chain in a few days.

Reyes and I raided the coffeepot at Calamity’s, then I hoofed it to the second floor to fill Cookie in with everything as Reyes talked to his manager, Valerie. I mistook her for a coat rack once and tried to hang my jacket on her head. I thought it was funny. She did not. But there were only so many hateful glances a girl could take. The fact that I was married to her boss, a boss with whom she was hopelessly in love, was hardly my fault. I got him first. You snooze, you lose when it comes to love. Or was that war? Either way.

By the time I got up to the office, Cook had gone home for the day. I decided to get some paperwork done. Realized that was crazy talk. And went about trying to figure out how to get revenge on Mr. Reyes Farrow. Payback was such a bitch.

I came up with a hundred ideas thanks to a website called Tortures-R-Us. Oh yeah. They had some fabulous ideas. But first, now that I could do the whole dematerialize thing, I wondered if I could spy on him. Would serve him right.

I closed my eyes and let the celestial realm wash over me. It really was stunning. Then I concentrated. Went in search of my prey. Ended up on a corner on Central, in the nonprofessional sense, and watched as the two realms collided.

I was a part of everything around me. I could always feel emotions, but this went way beyond that. I knew them. Everyone who walked through me. I knew what they were going through on a much deeper level. Not that I could read their minds or anything. More like I could feel their emotions suss out their deepest desires. Their greatest worries.

It was like a high. It was like —

I stopped and thought about what I was doing. Was I pulling an Osh? Was I feeding off them somehow? Siphoning their energy to get high?

I backed off immediately and watched from afar. Actually, from up high. Reyes used to do this all the time. He would literally float around me to keep watch. But he was always covered in a massive, black, undulating robe. I’d have to ask him how he did that.

After a few minutes of people watching and taking a couple of notes – one girl was in serious trouble and on the verge of committing suicide – Reyes stole back into my mind as he was wont to do. Probably because he was walking down the street, going in the opposite direction of me.

Reyes could be visible to me or invisible, and that part I thought I’d figured out. The more I shifted onto the celestial plane, the less visible the sentient beings of this world became. I could still see them, still see their auras, but their human forms became vaguer until they disappeared completely. Perhaps it worked the other way around. Perhaps if a human could see beyond the veil between the two worlds and I shifted more and more onto the celestial plane, maybe I became invisible no matter what they could see.

I decided to test it out.

Reyes’s aura was spectacularly easy to pick out of a crowd. He was darkness and flames. I swept in behind him and watched, marveling at how his ass looked in those jeans.

Without missing a beat, he lowered his head and asked, “Are you having fun?”

I was, in fact. I brushed against him, allowing my molecules to collide with his. I wanted to feel him as I felt others. I wanted to know everything about him. All the secrets he’d tucked into the furthest corners of his mind. But it didn’t quite work that way. His emotions were still so deeply packed, so thickly entwined, that making out any one was nearly impossible.

Regaining my footing on solid ground, I followed him until he stopped, turned around, and caught me to him. Plunging his fingers into my hair, he pushed me against a storefront.

“You shouldn’t tempt me,” he said, his voice like warm bourbon.

“I beg to differ. You are the only one I should tempt.”

He’d shifted onto the celestial plane. Here his kisses were even hotter. His energy rawer. More abrasive.

He pulled at my jeans with one hand, and part of me was surprised I still wore jeans. He opened the button, ripped the zipper down, and pushed a hand inside. I bucked and grabbed his wrist. Everything was more sensitive here. Every touch more important. His fingers massaging my clit, dipping inside, had me shaking with need.

I pressed a palm to his crotch. Found the length of his erection. Molded my fingers around the outline until he sucked in a sharp breath.

“Dutch,” he said against my neck. “What are you doing to me?”

I couldn’t even begin to answer him, because whatever I was doing to him, he did to me first.

Without the slightest thought of there being a witness to our adventure, I pried the buttons of his jeans apart and wrapped my fingers around his cock.

“Motherfucker,” he said, bracing a hand on the wall behind me. And he was right. How was it all so heightened here? So extra sensitive?

The slightest bit of friction was almost orgasmic. So much so that I could hardly control my actions. My clothes were suddenly gone, as were Reyes’s, and I couldn’t remember which one of us took them off. But he pressed into me, incorporeal energy against incorporeal energy. Molecules colliding. Tendrils of heat lacing around me like ribbons.