Not to mention the fact that, after countless hours of research, we hadn't gotten any more information about the Soul Eater and what he might be up to with the Oracle. I'd called the brothel the Soul Eater had supposedly been staying at. That is to say, I called the only brothel it made sense for him to be staying at. I wasn't entirely surprised to find that March's phone number no longer existed and her establishment had been removed from the list of licensed brothels in Nevada.

"They're not going to stay put, waking for someone to come find them," Cyrus had said, an edge of taunting in his voice. "Unless you want to waste another week visiting the desert?"

And I didn't. Neither did Nathan. Though we agreed on little else, we knew that the Soul Eater moved around too much to justify going after him. And that he moved much faster than we could.

If the Soul Eater didn't want to be found, we wouldn't find him. And I had the distinct impression that when he wanted to, he would come to us.

"I've run out of ideas," I complained to Nathan as I sat beside him on his bed one morning. We hadn't made up after our fight, but for the time being we were politely ignoring the spat. It seemed he wouldn't be tempted to even consider making amends. It would probably be only a matter of time and defeating the Soul Eater before he kicked Cyrus and me onto the street.

Nathan laid his book on his chest—he would often read until I'd gone to bed, probably to avoid talking to me—and rubbed his eyes. "Don't worry about it now. It's been a long night."

"Well, I am worried about it, as we have a finite amount of time before Max and Bella find the Oracle."

Max had called that evening to update us on their status. They would reach Danvers by sunup, install themselves at a base of operations and begin networking.

Nathan agreed that it wouldn't be long before the Oracle's minions sought them out.

Nathan sighed. "I'm aware of the time issue, Carrie. But there's nothing we can do about it right now."

With a grunt of utter annoyance, I rolled onto my side so I wouldn't have to look at him. My mind wouldn't settle down, though, racing to every dead end it had already visited ad nauseum. "What about Dahlia?"

"What about her?" Nathan's voice held that weary, just-drop-it-already tone he'd perfected. "She'll kill you, and we certainly don't want her around Cyrus."

Stop talking about me like I'm not right down the hall.

I pushed Cyrus's thoughts out of my mind.

"I know. Maybe I could break in. Or something." To Cyrus, I asked, Do you have any ideas?