“I want you to take that sack over to Inga’s, upend it on the bar so that it spills all over, and tell Inga I want it all credited to your account. Tell her that I figure it will cover home delivery of whatever you and I order for at least a week.” Dek grinned. “We’ll let someone else do the cooking and errand running. That’s the ‘juice’ I was referring to.”

“Why do I think you’re a scoundrel?”

“Because I am a Taglioni. It’s self-explanatory.” He stopped, and she saw something flicker behind his eyes. “Well, I was.”

“And that bad old Derek Taglioni slowly faded away to nothingness during those years aboard Ashanti?”

“Oh, he’s still in here. Along with . . .” He squinted as if something distracted him. “Along with whatever the hell is getting in the way of my thinking straight. Now it’s whispering something about . . . Shit. I can’t quite get it.”

His eyes went vacant. “Seeing Kylee now. She’s a kid. Young. Golden hair. In the forest. Familiar forest. Seeing her with . . . what the? Like looking through three eyes. The feeling inside. Excited.”

“That’s Rocket,” she told him walking over to settle on the side of the bed. “You’ll be getting images of his from when they were both little.”

“Got another. Like it just blurred out of the old one. Seeing a boy. Kylee’s hiding. The boy is terrified, calling for her. He’s on the point of panic.”

“I’ve got that one, too. Kylee told me she was punishing her big brother Damien when he was supposed to keep her safe.” She clenched a fist. “Tell me you don’t have any memories with me in them.”

He hesitated a moment, let his eyes drift to one side. “Riding the death cart over here, watching you walk ahead of us on the avenue. Just a flash. You. Standing in a grave, struggling to lower Mitch’s body into it. And it shifted. You were in another grave, lowering another body. Young woman you really loved. Trish. You weren’t talking, but I could hear your thoughts. How sorry you were that you’d grown apart. The pain and grief. Regret that you’d lied about her mother’s rape and murder. I could feel your—”

“Enough,” Talina snapped. “I hate this shit!”

“You think it’s easy on my end? I’ve got things inside my head. Things that are not me. Half the time I think I’m going psychotic. Something’s reading my thoughts. Hey, I’ve done some pretty shitty things. Stuff that I’d like to forget. And this thing keeps digging it up.”

“Demon’s looking for a handle, a lever it can use to manipulate you. And if it finds it, turns you into a weapon . . .” Talina let it hang, but fixed her eyes on his so that he knew she was dead serious.