That was a short conversation. I leaned back against a column and said, “Rocket, I have a name for you.”

“I have too many.”

“Too many names?”

“Yes. Too too many.”

“I’m sorry. Can you check on one for me?”

“I don’t think so, Miss Charlotte.”

“Why ever not?” I asked, massaging the pain.

“I have too many.”

“That was a beautiful wedding.” Strawberry stood beside me, holding her bald Barbie doll. “Cookie was so pretty. I wish I could have done her hair.”

A sharp stab of horror washed over me at the thought. “Is Blue here, too?” I had yet to see Rocket’s little sister. That girl was the best at hide-and-seek I’d ever seen.

“Yes, she’s in the round room.”

I frowned in thought. “What round room?”

“The tiny one.”

“What tiny one?”

“The one downstairs nobody knows about.”

This could go on for days. “Okay,” I said, acquiescing. “Well, I just hope she’s having fun.”

“She likes it in there. It’s quiet.”

“Wonderful.” I suddenly wondered if she was talking about the closet we couldn’t get open. There was a door to a closet or a room or pantry in the laundry room off the kitchen. A door that was stuck. Or locked. Or both. Even Reyes couldn’t open it. It became quite the challenge for a while; then we moved on to other, more interesting things.

What no one understood was that nothing, nothing, is more interesting than a locked door nobody could open. I had every intention of getting inside that room. I just didn’t know how yet.

“Okay, seriously, Rocket. I need you to check on Faris Martina Waters.”

He seemed to sadden. “Not on my list.”

“Oh,” I said, brightening. “That’s good.”

“Yet,” he added.

That was bad. “So, soon?” I asked, knowing the answer.

“No breaking rules, Miss Charlotte.” He continued to claw at the drywall.

And though I also knew the answer to my next question, I tried anyway. “Do you know where she is, Rocket?”

“Not where, only if. No breaking rules.”

Damn it. “For your information, rules were made to be broken. Just whose rules are these, Rocket? Who gave them to you?”

He looked at me as though I were on the low end of the IQ totem pole. “Nurse Hobbs.”

“Okay, and when Nurse Hobbs gave you these rules, what was she talking about?”

“Everything,” he said, throwing his arms out wide. “But mostly pudding.”

I had to ask. “Why pudding?”

“Because of that one time I tried to explain to her that the pudding disappeared yesterday and that Rubin took it, but she gave me the rules: Not when. Not who. Just if.”

This conversation was not turning out as I’d imagined. “If?”

“If I took it.”

I gaped at him. For, like, ten minutes. Was he kidding? After all this time, the rules weren’t even about the departed or how he knew the names of everyone who’d ever passed, but about pudding? After absorbing that little nugget of gold, I said, “Rocket, I don’t think those rules apply here.”

A loud gasp echoed around me. “Miss Charlotte,” he said, chastising me, “the rules apply everywhere. I told you. It wasn’t just the pudding, but the corn bread, the honey, the turtle named Blossom—but that was only that one time—and the Thorazine.”

I could not believe what I was hearing. All this time, I’d thought Rocket’s rules came from some celestial manual or guideline or flowchart, something official—but all along, they were from a nurse at the mental asylum where he’d lived most of his life? Visions of the charge nurse in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest came to mind. She was scary.

“Rocket, Nurse Hobbs was not talking about people who have passed away. You can tell me anything about them you want to.”

“No breaking rules. You already broke all the rules.”

He was scolding me for using my supernatural mojo to heal a little boy—and a few other people—in the hospital a few months back. He felt that using my gift to heal people was breaking the rules, but I saved people all the time. I found murderers and missing children and solved cases incessantly. How was that any different from healing a sick kid?

“Rocket, so I saved that little boy by touching him. So I saved a few sick people. How is that any different from what I do every day? I save people using my supernatural connections every other day. How is one breaking the rules and one not?”

“You probably shouldn’t yell at him,” Strawberry said, petting her doll’s head.

I ignored her. “And I know darned good and well, Nurse Hobbs did not give you any rules regarding me, since I wouldn’t be born for decades when you knew her.”

“Nurse Hobbs was very smart,” he countered as he scratched a K into the wall.

I decided to give it one more shot. “Okay, if. You can tell me if. So, if Faris Waters is going to pass away soon, where will it happen?”

“Not where. Only—”

“That’s it!” I said, blowing up. “The next time you mention the rules to me, I’m going to take those rules, crumple them in my fists, and set them on fire with my laser vision.” I didn’t really have laser vision, but it would rock if I did.

Rocket gasped. “Miss Charlotte, you can’t do that.”

“Oh, I can. Just you wait and see.” I rolled onto my tiptoes until we were nose to nose. “Just you wait and see.”

He dissipated before me, his eyes saucers.

“You so don’t have laser vision,” Strawberry said.

“I might. I’m a god, in case you haven’t heard.”

She didn’t buy it for a second. “Unless you’re Superman, you don’t have laser vision.”

Before I could argue further, she followed Rocket’s lead and left me standing alone in a dusty attic.

I looked up at the name he’d been carving into the wall and stilled. Earl James Walker. The man—the monster—who’d raised Reyes. He was currently living out the rest of his days drinking his meals through a straw in a nursing home. Reyes severed his spine when he’d tortured and tried to kill me a few months back, and now Walker was going to die.

I stood in shock a few seconds, wondering why the man was about to kick, before I realized it was rude to look a gift horse in the mouth.

*   *   *

The first thing I did when I got back to the bedroom was call Kit. She needed to know that her FedEx’s niece was still alive. But I felt obligated to tell her that while we had some time, we didn’t have much. We needed a break in the case soon.

They didn’t have any more information, and all the leads they did have led to a dead end. They were going to question her classmates again, just to make sure they didn’t miss anything.

“Charley,” Kit said before we hung up, “you have to do your thing. We have to find her.”

“I’m working on it. Promise.”

I fetched my laptop, the file on Faris Waters, and a hot chocolate, and stretched out onto David Beckham to give my back a break. The pain in my abdomen was almost gone, but it was at that moment precisely that Beep decided to try out for the Olympics, showcasing her floor routine for the judges. I patted what I assumed was her bottom as I scanned the case file on Agent Waters’s niece.

I had the distinct feeling I was being watched, but I’d had that feeling a lot lately, so I pretty much ignored it and kept reading the file. I read through all her texts and highlighted the ones that caught my attention. Cookie was working downstairs in my makeshift office. After a while, my hot chocolate got cold. I needed to check up on Cookie’s progress anyway, so I went downstairs.

The place was almost good as new. Only a few of the wedding guests remained, and they were all in the kitchen or out back where the grill was. Thankfully, Cookie’s cousin Lucille had gone. I headed toward the office but was cut off by Uncle Bob.

“Are you free?” he asked.

“No, but I’m on sale for a dollar ninety-nine.”

He sighed, adding fuel to the fire.