"She said she was trying to protect me," I reminded him stiffly. "That's why she couldn't say anything."

"Protect you from what?"

"I don't know! That's what we need to find out. Can't you just reopen her case and try to find out who this boyfriend was? Surely someone somewhere saw the man! In her message, it sounded like she was hiding from someone. She said he was coming. She said she didn't think he'd let her out of the country. Obviously someone was threatening her!"

He studied me a moment, then sighed heavily. "Ms. Lane, your sister's arms had holes in them. The kind of holes that needles make."

I flew to my feet, instantly livid. "My sister's whole body had holes in it, Inspector! Not just her arms! The coroner said they looked like teeth marks!" Not of any person or animal he'd been able to identify, though. "And parts of her were just fora!" I was shaking. I hated the memory. It made me sick to my stomach. I hoped she'd been dead when it had happened. I was pretty sure she hadn't been. The sight of her had pushed Mom and Dad right over the edge. It did the same to me, but I came back from that hellish place because somebody had to.

"We examined her ourselves, Ms. Lane. Neither animal nor human teeth made those marks."

"Needles didn't either," I said furiously.

"If you'll sit back d—"

"Are you going to reopen her case or not?" I demanded.

He raised his hands, palms upturned. "Look, I can't afford to send men out on cases that have no leads when we're up to our ears in ones that do. There's been a recent spike in homicides and missing persons like we've never seen before." He looked disgusted. "It's as if half the damn city's gone crazy. We're short-staffed as it is. I can't justify putting men on your sister's case when there's nothing to go on. I'm sorry for your loss, Ms. Lane. I know what it's like to lose a loved one. But there's nothing else that I can do for you. I suggest you go home and help your family get through it." And that concluded our interview.

Feeling like a failure, needing to do something that would yield a tangible result, I trudged back to the inn and collected my trash bags, boxes, and broom, then sprang for a cab because there was no way I could carry it all to Alina's place. If I couldn't do anything else right, at least I could sweep up trash. I did every night I closed at The Brickyard and was darned good at it.

I cried the whole time I swept. Sorry for Alina, sorry for myself, sorry for the state of a world in which someone like my sister could be murdered so brutally.

When I was done sweeping and crying, I sat cross-legged on the floor and began packing. I couldn't bring myself to discard a thing, not even what I knew should get tossed, like torn clothing and broken knickknacks. Each item was lovingly crated away. Someday, years from now, I might pull the boxes from the attic at home in Georgia and sort through them more thoroughly. For now, out of sight was out of mind.

I spent the afternoon there and made a decent dent in it. It would take a few more days to finish up, clean the place, and see if there was any damage her deposit wouldn't cover. By the time I left, it was overcast and pouring rain. There were no cabs in sight. Because I had no umbrella and was starving, I splashed through puddles and ducked into the first pub I saw. I didn't know it, but I'd just closed the book on the last normal hours of my life.

He was sitting at a table about a dozen feet from my booth, opposite a petite woman in her early thirties whose drab brown hair just brushed her collar.

She was a tad easier on the eye than mousy, which was why I noticed them, because he was drop-dead gorgeous. I mean, close-your-eyes-and-wish-some-guy-that-hot-would-ever-look-at-you gorgeous. Lots of times you see it the other way around, the sultry do-me-big-boy Betty Boop with a Jack Nicholson, but you don't often see a Fabio with an Olive Oyl.

Tall and hunky, with a ripped, tanned body beneath his white T-shirt and faded blue jeans, he had long blond hair that shimmered like gold. His face had that exotic model look, his eyes were sexy brown, his mouth full and sensuous. Everything about him was gorgeous. He looked elegant yet earthy, graceful yet powerful, managed even in jeans to appear rich as Croesus.

I admit I was fascinated. Though the woman wore a frothy short skirt, a silk blouse, and was smartly accessorized and polished right down to her French-manicured toenails, the kindest anyone would ever call her was plain, yet he seemed to positively dote on her. Couldn't stop touching her.

Then one of those stupid double visions began.

I'd just finished my cheeseburger and was leaning back in my booth, taking my time with my fries (I adore fries, by the way, or I used to, anyway; I'd heavily salt and pepper the ketchup, then slather them with it and eat them slowly, one at a time, after everything else was gone), when his gestures suddenly seemed more unctuous than charming, and his face more gaunt than sculpted.

Then, abruptly, he was gone and for a split second something else occupied his chair. It happened so fast that I had no idea what had taken his place, just that it wasn't him for a moment.

I closed my eyes, rubbed them, then opened them again. The blond sex-god was back, stroking his companion's jaw with his hand, brushing his fingers to her lips—with sharp yellow talons that protruded from a hand that looked as if a thin layer of rotting gray skin had been stretched over a corpse's bones!

I shook my head brusquely, covered my face with my hands, and thoroughly rubbed my eyes this time, hard enough to smudge my mascara. I'd had two beers with my meal, and although I can usually handle three or four before copping a buzz, Guinness dark is stronger than what I drink back home. "When I open my eyes," I told myself, "I'm going to see what's really there." Meaning a man, not a hallucination.

I guess I should have specified that last part out loud, because when I opened my eyes again I nearly screamed. The sex-god was gone and the mousy woman had her mouth turned into the palm of a monster that was straight out of a horror movie, and she was kissing it.

Gaunt, emaciated to the point of death, it was tall—and I'm talking like nine feet tall. It was gray and leprous from head to toe, covered with oozing, open sores. It was sort of human, by that I mean it had the basic parts: arms, legs, head. But that was where the resemblance ended. Its face was twice as tall as a human head and squished thin, no wider than my palm. Its eyes were black with no irises or whites. When it spoke, I could see that its mouth—which consumed the entire lower half of its hideous face—wasn't pink inside, it had a tongue and gums that were the same gray color as the rest of its rotting flesh and covered with the same wet sores. It had no lips and double rows of teeth like a shark. It was, in a word, putrid.

The blond sex-god was back. And he was looking at me. Hard. He was no longer conversing with the woman, but staring straight at me. He didn't look pleased.

I blinked. I don't know how I knew what I knew in that moment; it was like it was programmed into me on a cellular level somehow. My mind was split into separate camps. The first camp was insisting what I'd just seen wasn't real. The second was demanding I scramble up, grab my purse, throw money down on the table, and run out the door as fast as I could. Camps one and two sounded mildly hysterical, even to me.

The third camp was calm, cool, composed. And icily insisting that I had better do whatever I had to do to convince whatever was sitting at that table masquerading as human that I really couldn't see what it looked like beneath its facade—or I was dead.

That was the voice I obeyed without hesitation. I forced myself to smile at him/it and duck my head as if blushingly flustered to find myself the focus of such a sex-god's attention.