Reyes, completely unalarmed, paused to watch Cookie, a curvy thirtysomething goddess with short black hair and a challenged sense of accessories, and her lovely daughter, Amber, a tall, slender, thirteen-going-on-seventy-year-old with long, dark locks and delicate, wing-shaped eyebrows, practically stumble over themselves to get inside. A quick glance told me Reyes found them amusing, if the sexy tilt of his mouth was any indication.

I, on the other hand, was still searching for my heart. I glanced back up at the ceiling. No heart there, but the blond boy dangling his feet where three thick metal beams converged was still there. He’d been hanging out since I got back a week ago and had yet to talk to me. Or anyone, for that matter. Had he always been there and we’d just never seen him? Stuck in the storerooms on the roof? Had he died there? No one found a body during the renovations that I knew of, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t have been killed there and dumped somewhere else.

Once Cookie and Amber settled in front of me—Amber’s face full of excited intrigue, Cookie’s full of horror, but that was pretty much her morning look until she got some rocket fuel in her—I tore my attention off the boy and offered it to them.

They started talking at the same time, each interrupting the other over and over until it was impossible to tell who was speaking at any given moment.

Cookie started it off with a “There’s something you have to see.”

Then Amber chimed in. “It’s everywhere.”

It went downhill from there.

“You won’t believe—”

“I think you should—”

“So many hits—”

“It’s crazy—”

“You’ll be—”

“You’ll be—”

“—famous.”

“—exposed.”

“This is awesome!”

“This is so bad.”

I finally reached up and gently placed a hand over each of their mouths. They hushed instantly, then Cookie mumbled, “Fine. Amber can tell you.”

Appeased, I lowered my hands. Amber giggled, risked a quick glance at the hotness walking back our way, then shoved her phone into my hands.

“You’ll just have to see for yourself.”

I took the phone, leaning in for a quick hug in the process. She kissed my cheek and curled me into her long arms for a solid five seconds. She’d been doing that since D-Day, the day I got back. She hadn’t been allowed to go to New York to babysit my pathetic ass. Or to try to knock some sense into my amnesiaced brain. Whichever way one wished to look at it. And the moment we got off the escalator at baggage claim, she ran past her mother and tackle-hugged me. All the way to the ground.

She hadn’t seen her mother in a month, but she’d been talking to her every day. Me, she’d had no contact with for a month, and her exuberance was proof that she liked me. Her tears were proof that she really liked me.

Which was kind of wonderful. I really liked her, too.

“Okay,” she said, pulling away. “Take a look. You’re going to die!” She clapped her hands over her mouth excitedly.

Cookie seemed to grow a little paler.

Reyes shifted for a better look, and I couldn’t help but notice where Amber’s eyes landed: at the waistband of his pajama bottoms. The waistband that hung low enough to show an inkling of the dip between hip and abdomen. That sweet spot that turned women to jelly.

It didn’t concern me that Amber was only thirteen. What concerned me was that she was thirteen and I was pretty sure her sweetheart, Quentin, had a similar dip. Hopefully she didn’t know that. Yet.

I lifted the phone, angled it so Reyes could see, and pressed PLAY.

The video read: UGANDA, AFRICA. POSSESSED GIRL AND EXORCIST.

Okay. A bit dramatic, but who was I to criticize?

Then a young African girl materialized onto the screen. A girl I recognized from my time in the Peace Corps. The shot was a close-up of her face with a night-vision camera. Her skin was covered in scratches. Her lips, cracked and bleeding, pulled tight over gnashing teeth. Her eyes solid white. Drool slid from the corners of her mouth as the camera pulled back to reveal her neck arched. Head thrown back. Chest heaving in furious pants.

She lay on a pallet on a dirt floor, her wrists and ankles bound by a very concerned, very loving father. Faraji. He’d been helping us dig a well for his village, and when I’d first met him he was distant. Wary of us newcomers. It was not unusual. Many villagers on our journey had welcomed us in an almost celebratory manner. But others, mostly men, were not so keen on having us invade their territory, Peace Corps or not. Faraji had been one of them.

I’d taken note of him instantly, not because of his standoffish behavior, but because of the deep sorrow that emanated out of him.

No, not sorrow. Fear.

Terror, actually. So much so that I found it hard to breathe around him, and digging a well without the ability to fill one’s lungs was not an easy way to dig a well.

We’d been in the village about three days when I finally followed him home one night. Or at least, I thought I was following him home. I found out later it was an abandoned hut, and he and his family had been in hiding. I felt the reason long before I got to the ramshackle hut. Like needles on my skin. Like acid in my mouth.

I’d never felt anything like it. And when I stepped inside unannounced, I’d never seen anything like it, either. His twelve-year-old daughter, Emem, lay in the throes of a heated battle with whatever had taken up residence inside her. Nkiru, Faraji’s wife, sat beside their daughter. Pressed a cool cloth to the girl’s head. Rocked back and forth in prayer.

She looked up when I stepped under the eaves of their hut that amounted to little more than a well-fortified lean-to.

“Faraji,” she said, her voice shrill and harsh. Eyes like saucers, she glared at her husband. “Get her out.” She spoke in her native language, believing I wouldn’t understand. “The elders will take our daughter.” She tightened her grip on the child’s forearm. “The elders will kill her.”

Faraji had turned and was staring at me in horror, unable to believe that I’d followed him. Or that I’d been able to follow him without being detected.

I’d wondered how long the situation had been going on. The girl looked skeletal. Dehydrated to the point of emaciation, except for her beautiful, scar-covered face. From various markings on the floor, I got the feeling they had been consulting a shaman-type healer. And why wouldn’t they? This was no medical condition. Whatever was in her burned my lungs and seared my eyes.