Shortly before five p.m., just as I was wrapping things up, Cody swung by the station.

“Hey,” I greeted him, still trying to pretend things weren’t awkward between us. “Did you get my message?”

“Yeah, about that.” He perched on a corner of my desk. “I can’t do it tonight, Daise. I’m on duty. I called around, but there’s no one else who can cover my shift, and the chief doesn’t want the only cop on call traipsing around in the woods looking for . . . What, exactly, would we be looking for?”

“A bogle,” I informed him.

Cody blinked. “Huh. Okay.” He nodded in the direction of the conference room. “Maybe you should give me the lowdown.”

I filled him in on what I’d learned. “Don’t worry about tonight,” I added. “Sinclair offered to go with me. I’ll just take him up on it.”

Cody made a sound in the back of his throat that sounded a lot like a suppressed growl. “I’d rather you waited until I’m free, Daise. The Evanses should be safe now, right?”

“Should being the operative word, yes,” I said. “But that leaves the rest of the town vulnerable.”

“Yeah, well, the rest of the town isn’t as unstable as Scott Evans.” Cody rubbed the bronze stubble on his chin. “If you absolutely, positively insist on going, I’d rather you take Ludovic for backup,” he said reluctantly. “I don’t like him, but I’d trust him in a clinch over the fledgling Jamaican warlock.”

“Stefan’s out of town,” I said. “I could ask Cooper.”

“No.” Phosphorescent green shimmered in Cody’s eyes and his voice was adamant. “No way.”

I couldn’t exactly blame him, since the last time he’d seen Cooper, Cooper was ravening. Still . . .

“You don’t get to go all possessive alpha male on me, Cody,” I said to him. “You just don’t.”

“I know.” He looked away, his jaw tightening, then looked back at me. “Give me this one, Daise? We’re talking about over a hundred acres of woods. You could look for hours without finding a thing. But if there’s a bogle out there, I can track it.”

He had a point.

“You can track a bogle?” I asked.

“Yeah.” Cody nodded. “And I’ll twist some arms to make sure I’m free tomorrow night. Deal?”

I hesitated. “Deal.”

      Eleven

I found myself in a restless mood that night.

Part of it was the lack of action. I’d been planning on hunting a bogle, and I’d had to put my plans on hold. It made me apprehensive; worried that the Night Hag might find a way around the wards Casimir had sold the Evanses, worried that she might strike somewhere else, finding another unstable victim.

But if I was honest with myself, it had a lot to do with the fact that I’d be meeting with Daniel Dufreyne, possibly nefarious lawyer and suspected hell-spawn, late tomorrow morning.

Someone like me. Only . . . if I was right about him, he’d claimed his birthright.

It made me feel strange and shivery inside. I’d spent my whole life trying to avoid the Seven Deadlies, using the visualization techniques my mom had taught me to keep my outsize emotions in check, afraid that if I didn’t, I might succumb to one of the temptation scenarios my father offered me and breach the Inviolate Wall in the process.

What if that was wrong?

It’s not that I wanted to lay claim to my demonic heritage—or at least, not exactly. I mean, it would be nice to have powers of persuasion and all that, but I’d seen Daniel Dufreyne in passing and something about him felt downright icky. I didn’t want to be icky. I just wanted to know. What if everything I’d been taught was wrong?

It was an unnerving thought.

I rummaged through my music collection until I found something that suited my mood: an old, scratchy recording of the mostly forgotten blues singer Clara Smith. Long ago, when my mom was dating a jazz musician, I discovered that there’s something about the blues that always calms me down.

Tonight it was Clara Smith singing in a doleful warble about how she done sold her soul to the Devil and her heart done turned to stone, reminding me that whatever the truth, the bargain was never worth it.

Especially since, according to all the soothsaying that had been laid on me lately, it seemed that I was going to need to trust my heart or see with the eyes of my heart, whatever that meant.

“I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen if my heart done turned to stone, Mog,” I informed my cat, who was purring on my lap. Mogwai liked it when I was in a blues-listening mood.

I listened to the track half a dozen times, letting Clara’s mournful regret settle deep inside me, until my thoughts were quiet enough for sleep.

Speaking of sleep, the next morning I called Dawn Evans to make sure Casimir’s charms had proved effective. Good news—not only had they worked, but the peace of mind they gave Scott had allowed him to sleep through the night for the first time in ages. I breathed a sigh of relief.

After running a few errands, I made a point of arriving at the PVB office a good fifteen minutes before the scheduled meeting time. Since my last visit, the lobby had been rearranged to incorporate an additional desk: a sleek, modern, minimalist number behind which sat Stacey Brooks.

“Daisy!” Stacey practically leaped from her chair as I entered the lobby, her eyes bright with excitement. “I figured it out!”