This time was different, but it wasn’t something I could explain to anyone who hadn’t lived through what Cody and I had experienced that day. I’m not saying it compared to the sort of PTSD-inducing trauma that soldiers in combat and some police officers experience in the line of duty, but it was rough enough that I got why they don’t want to talk about it with someone who hadn’t been there.

And, too, there was a Casablanca factor that kept me from feeling inclined to discuss it. Between the relentless manifestations of the dead and the fact that Halloween was approaching and we were no closer to finding Grandpa Morgan’s duppy than we had been weeks ago, it was fair to say that the problems of one little hell-spawn and a werewolf on the down-low didn’t amount to a hill of beans.

Well, not the romantic problems, anyway. The actual problems—those were my responsibility.

Damn, I was tired. Smoothing my dress in place, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the birch-bark-framed mirror on Cody’s bedroom wall. I looked a bit like a stranger to myself—bone-weary, yet sexually satiated. Determined, yet uncertain. Things that didn’t add up to a coherent whole.

Which was pretty much how I felt. Well, here’s looking at you, kid, I thought to myself. If I’d had a fedora, I would have tipped the brim in salute.

On the bed, Cody lay sprawled, loose-limbed in the abandon of sleep, dark circles of exhaustion under his eyes. There was no trace of the wolf in him tonight except for the light of the lamp on his bedside table glinting on the bronze stubble that grew faster than a mortal man’s. I ought to know—I had the beard rash to prove it.

“Sleep tight, partner,” I murmured, leaning over the bed to kiss his rough-bristled cheek. “But when this is over, assuming we all survive whatever the hell is coming, we are going to talk.”

There was no answer, not even a snore.

Turning off the lamp, I let myself out.

Forty-three

Altogether, Cody and I laid thirty-seven spirits to rest during the days and nights leading up to Halloween, and as far as I was concerned, that was reason enough to ensure that the gate between the realm of the living and the dead was closed.

It was exhausting, draining, and downright soul-wearying.

Some were easier than others. God help me, but I actually got inured to the ones who had died quickly or unexpectedly without much suffering—the bar patron shot in a lovers’ quarrel, the drunk settler who froze to death in a blizzard, the victims of a head-on collision who died instantaneously, the elderly cat lady who died of carbon monoxide poisoning in her sleep.

Others were harder.

Children were harder, just because. Any cop who’s ever worked homicide will tell you. Children just are.