Having faced down the dragon in her den, I went to the station to write up a report on the orgy. Since I was there, the desk clerk, Patty Rogan, gave me a stack of yesterday’s reports to file.

I browsed through them first, looking for signs of eldritch involvement. That’s how I had come by my unique role in the department in the first place, which led to Hel’s invitation to serve as her liaison to mundane authorities. Nothing jumped out at me in the first few reports—a minor fender bender, an altercation outside a bar, a citation for public urination—but the fourth one intrigued me. Some irate tourists had come in to file a complaint about being pickpocketed after playing a shell game that a pair of kids was running on the dock.

“Did you take this one?” I asked Patty. “The shell game?”

“Yeah.” She smiled. “I thought that one might interest you. There are a couple of others like it.”

I flipped through the paperwork and found them. In all three instances, the complainant had won money at the shell game, only to find nothing but dry, brittle leaves in his or her wallet afterward. “Anyone check it out?”

Patty nodded. “Oh, sure, but the kids running the game were long gone.” She raised her eyebrows. “If they were kids in the first place.”

“Right.” Since I’d been going through the files, other members of the department had gotten more savvy about spotting eldritch signs. The dead leaves were a dead giveaway. “Give me a call if you get another complaint.”

“Will do.”

I took a stroll down the dock anyway. No sign of the kids this morning, but I stopped by a few of the restaurants and bars along the river and asked the managers to call me if the kids returned. My phone buzzed with a reply from Jen, offering to meet me for lunch at Callahan’s Café at twelve thirty. After sending a confirmation, I swung by the Sisters of Selene, Pemkowet’s local occult store, to pick the Fabulous Casimir’s brain.

Technically, I guess Casimir is a drag queen, although his cross-dressing has to do with the shamanic tradition, too. Either way, he cuts an imposing figure. He’s over six feet tall without the wig, and the towering Marie Antoinette number he was sporting today put him closer to seven.

He caught my eye as I entered. I waited patiently while he finished ringing up a purchase and the store emptied for a moment.

“Hey, Miss Daisy.” Casimir fussed with a display of charmed crystals that the last batch of tourists had disturbed. “Whatever went down at Rainbow’s End last night, I hope you know none of my people were involved.” He gave a little shiver. “From what I heard, that was no love spell.”

“No, I know,” I said. “It was a satyr.”

“A satyr?”