“But we did pull it off, and that’s the important thing,” she said, writhing around on top of me. There was nothing sexy about it to me, but she seemed pleased. “God, don’t you remember the rush from those days?”

“I know the museum eventually got The Scream back again . . .”

“But they won’t have it for long.” Mina’s laughter turned into a schoolgirl giggle. Despite the knife at my throat, it dawned on me what she had come here for. I was getting angry and my body was cramped from our position on the couch.

“I’m not going to help you steal The Scream again, Mina,” I shouted.

“I need your lock-picking skills,” she pleaded, letting the knife fall from my neck. “It’s just me this time; none of the old crew.”

I relaxed, but only by the tiniest margin. With crazy, there’s never much room for relaxation.

“You know you want to,” she said, and she jumped off me, walking like a cat in the dark, heading straight for my galley kitchen. She tucked the knife into her belt and started rooting through my refrigerator. “The Scream is on loan to the Museum of Modern Art. It’s closed right now, so it looks like I’ll have to check it out tomorrow night before it closes. Then you and I will hit it the following night. Three days. That’s all I’m asking for.”

My retractable bat was still hanging at my side and I wondered if I should use it. I could imagine pulling it free, hitting the button, and watching it telescope out to full size. The metaphor for restoring my masculinity was not lost on me. I stood up. Mina was a little bat-shit crazy, but I doubted she would really kill me. She had come here, after all, to enlist my help.

“I don’t do that sort of thing anymore, Mina,” I said. I flicked on the lights and looked with pride around the main area of my apartment. Handpicked leather couches, floor-to-ceiling windows, and an entire wall of ownerless books and antiques that I sold for a profit when I had the time to go through them psychometrically. I had an existence I had worked hard at salvaging. “Look around you. I’ve got a real life going on here now. I’ve moved on.”

Mina pulled a beer from the fridge, twisted off the top, and drank half of it down. She wandered around my gentleman’s club setup in the main room.

“You seem to be doing well for yourself,” she agreed. I couldn’t ignore the bitter bite in her voice as she said it. She stopped in front of my bookshelves, which also ran from floor to ceiling. They were full of dozens of items I had gathered over the years. “What is all this?”

“I work with antiques now,” I said, bending the truth a little. “I have an eye for things; that’s all. I’m a collector, either for myself or sometimes I sell to dealers or track down the previous owners and sell them back to them.”

Mina perused the shelves. She could have picked up any number of classy items. She ran her hand over an ornate stone incense censer, then moved on to an art deco clock I had been holding on to for far too long, before she picked up a plastic replica of the shark from Jaws. It was attached to a game board, the shark’s mouth full of tiny plastic garbage pieces. My powers had told me that the piece once belonged to a CEO at Chase Manhattan, and I had been meaning to make some bank off it. I had been slow to return it to its owner. What can I say? The game was fun.

“Pay well, does it?” she said. “Playing Sanford and Son?”

“I make my rent,” I said with a dismissive shrug.

“This allows you to pay rent?” she said, not believing me. She shook the shark as she spoke and the tiny plastic garbage fell out of its mouth. Its jaws snapped shut.

“Please put that down,” I requested, not wanting to sound too desperate.

“Sure, Candy,” she said, all rainbows and sunshine now. I wondered if I had been this bipolar back then as well. “No problem.”

“Thanks,” I said. Why was it that I had felt less threatened with a knife at my throat than when she was messing with my stuff? Something told me I had to get my priorities straight sometime in the near future.

Mina turned to face me, the knife once again in her hand.

“You are going to help me, though, Simon.”

This time I pulled my bat free, hit the switch on it, and watched it spring out to its full length.

“That’s where I think we have a problem,” I said. I rested it on my shoulder in a nonthreatening manner. “Look, I’m glad we had time for a lovely, touchy-feely reunion. Glad we had a chance to reminisce about the old days. But I’m so not going to help you.”

She smiled sweetly at me, shaking her head, her eyes going all Glenn Close.

“We’re doing this,” she said, the smile slowly fading. There was desperation in her eyes. Mina was in some kind of serious trouble.

“We are doing this,” she repeated in a slow, deliberate manner, “and you’re going to help me. You think Krueger or Myers can pick a fucking lock to save their lives? I need your talented little hands on it.”

I didn’t say a word. Little did she know that my hands held a talent greater than picking locks.

When I didn’t respond, Mina looked more and more pissed. “Wouldn’t it just be the worst luck if Krueger or Myers got wind of where you’re living now? Think of what they’d do to you if they got their psychotic little paws on you. You’d probably live, but I’m sure it would take you quite some time to heal, and you’d probably walk with a permanent limp.”

She stopped by the sofa and picked up a picture of Jane and me from the D.E.A. ice cream social a few months back.

“And I shudder to think what they’d do to this cute little number of yours,” she said. “Or perhaps I’ll just hurt the girl. Jane Clayton-Forrester, right? Lives on West Twentieth Street?”

I felt an intense wave of panic. “What synapse in your brain isn’t firing, Mina?” I said, tightening my grip on my bat. I couldn’t allow any of those sociopaths back into my life, and certainly not near Jane.

Was I really willing to strike down someone who wasn’t an actual monster or undead? Creatures were one thing, but raising my weapon against another person . . .

I wasn’t sure what I would do if Mina pressed the issue, but I also doubted I could talk her out of this heist, given the desperation in her voice. She was unpredictable on a good day, and I wanted her to get the hell out of my life as fast as possible.

“Don’t threaten me or Jane with those goons,” I said. “If I help you—and it’s a mighty big if, Mina—you’ve got to swear I’ll never see you or them again. I don’t know what the hell you’ve gotten yourself into, and maybe it’s better I don’t know, but I mean it. I help you this once and we’re through. And you certainly can’t tell Jane.”

Before Mina had a chance to answer, the door creaked open behind me.

“Can’t tell Jane what?” Jane chimed in.

I didn’t dare turn around. I looked at the clock on the wall. It was only a few minutes before midnight. If I was lucky, the shittiest day of my life was almost over. If I wasn’t, maybe my life would be. Either way, I was just looking forward to an end to it all.