God, and it had been so close. If Jojo hadn’t chosen that exact moment to intervene, my plan would have worked. Mrs. Palmer hadn’t expected anyone to just try to snatch her precious pickle jar. Hell, it had worked when I tried it the second time with the cowry shell charm. Take one foulmouthed, love-struck fairy out of the equation, and I’d be getting praise instead of a dressing-down.

Just . . . gah!

Flopping onto my futon, I allowed myself a good long seethe laced with equal parts self-pity and castigation, finishing with a firm resolution to trust my own instincts in the future. Then I set my alarm, so I could get to the hardware store as soon as it opened, and went to bed. I probably ought to own a hammer and nails anyway.

As it happened, I didn’t need the alarm.

My phone rang at six thirty in the morning. It was still pitch-dark out and I had to fumble around on my nightstand to find the phone.

“Daisy.” The chief’s voice was grim. “Get out to the cemetery. Now.”

Shit.

I sat bolt upright. “Is it ghosts? Or zombies?”

“Neither.” He hung up.

I threw on yesterday’s clothes, buckled dauda-dagr around my waist, grabbed the spirit lantern just in case, and hustled out to the cemetery in the predawn darkness through a light rain.

The chief hadn’t told me where to meet him, but it was a small cemetery. Even if it hadn’t been, I could have guessed. As soon as I turned onto the two-track, I saw a pair of cruisers parked under the pines in front of Talman Brannigan’s mausoleum. The door to the mausoleum was ajar, and there were lights moving inside it. I got out of the car, my stomach sinking.

Chief Bryant and Ken Levitt, one of the younger officers with whom I was on good terms, emerged from the mausoleum, flashlights in hand.

“What is it?” I asked apprehensively.

“Grave’s been robbed.” The chief beckoned to me. “Come have a look.”

I fingered dauda-dagr’s hilt. “You’re sure it’s not zombies?”

He pointed at a rusty padlock hanging from the door of the mausoleum. One side of the U-shaped shackle had been sheared clean through. “Not unless they were using bolt-cutters.”

Inside, there were more signs of human vandalism. Someone had used a crowbar or something like it to pry the lid off the huge sarcophagus, leaving clean scratches in the discolored old marble. The dusty floor of the mausoleum had been swept to obliterate footprints, and there were smears of something dark.

“Blood?” I asked.

The chief shook his head. “More like grease.”