Everyone watched him go but Tucker and me; we were looking at each other.

“There’s a hole under your bed?” Jolie said, breaking the difficult silence.

For a moment, I was confused. How had she known that?

I’d included the detail in my horror story, of course.

I nodded numbly.

We all trooped into the bedroom, and Tucker and a couple of the cops pushed the bed to one side. Sure enough, the vent I’d never known was there, gaped in the floor. It was two feet square, obviously big enough for a full-grown man to climb through, a straight shot to Bert’s prized Tombstone bar.

There’s a way into your apartment.

I don’t need a key.

“You’ll want to plug that right up,” one of the younger cops said, sagely chipper.

“No shit, Sherlock,” Jolie replied.

I gave her a look. The police are our friends.

Her eyes were round with residual fear as the gravity of what I’d so narrowly escaped dawned on her.

“You have definitely gotta move,” she said. “Soon.”

I made one of those decisions that just pop into a person’s brain and right out of their mouth, unpremeditated and fully formed. “I’m going to use this place as an office,” I announced, “and reopen the bar as soon as I can score a liquor license.”

“You’re going to run a bar?” Greer asked.

“An office for what?” Jolie said, at the same time.

I sorted the jumble of words into two sensible sentences.

A look passed between Tucker and me.

“Yes, Greer,” I said, “I’m going to open a bar. I’ll call it ‘Mojo’s.’ And I’ll need an office for Sheepshanks, Sheepshanks and Sheepshanks.”

“Sheepshanks—?” Crowley began.

“Don’t ask,” Tucker counseled.

“I like it,” Jolie beamed.

“You’re both nuts,” Greer said. “Mojo, you’re coming to live with me. You can stay in the guesthouse until you find something decent.”

“Alex would love that,” I pointed out.

I was hoping Tucker would jump in and invite me to shack up, which was crazy, because if he had, I’d have refused. It was too early for that, and things were still too complicated between us.

He didn’t offer, so it was a moot point.

And it only hurt a little.

“Alex is gone,” Greer said woodenly. “He took his things and left.”

The guesthouse began to seem like a possibility.

* * *

“ANY LUCK finding Gillian?” I asked Tucker, an hour later, when he and I were standing in my kitchen. The cops were gone by then, Crowley included, and Jolie and Greer were in the living room, poking through the boxes Rotika had given me a century before, at Sunset Villa.

Tucker shook his head, leaning against the kitchen counter. “It doesn’t look good, babe. Somebody found a ballet slipper a mile from the dance school, in a vacant lot. Gillian’s name’s written inside.”