So I swung by the police station to log my time and fill out a report for the X-Files, leaving the money I’d retrieved in the desk clerk’s keeping in case anyone came to claim it. At the risk of courting avarice, I hoped no one did. What can I say? Working irregular hours on a part-time basis, I was always short of cash. I’d collected two hundred and forty dollars from Tuggle, and if no one claimed it in three months, it was mine.

Upon returning to my apartment, I found my sunglasses placed neatly on the doorstep in the alley, each lens cracked into a perfect spiderweb. That’s what you get for messing around with hobgoblins; and I’d taken it easy on them.

“Ha ha,” I said aloud to thin air. “Very funny.” It got me more peculiar glances from a trio of middle-aged ladies passing by, their arms laden with shopping bags, but the rhododendrons lining the park rustled, sounding distinctly like a snicker.

Upstairs, I discovered that Mogwai had gotten up onto the kitchen counter. Based on the mess and the sticky pawprints, he’d explored the bowl of wet ingredients before knocking the bowl of dry ingredients onto the kitchen floor and dashing in a panic out his escape hatch on the screened porch.

At least the chocolate chips were safe. I sighed, dumped the ingredients, and cleaned up the mess.

By the time I finished, the urge to bake was a distant memory. I spent the remainder of the afternoon with my battered old laptop, looking at images of shields online and practicing the visualization Stefan had tried to teach me. It probably didn’t help that I took a break every ten minutes to trek into the kitchen for a handful of chocolate chips. And okay, yes, I also searched for information on obeah. There really wasn’t a lot out there, at least not a lot that looked credible. I jotted down a couple of obscure out-of-print book titles I came across, resolving to pursue it later.

I gave up in time to freshen my makeup, change my clothes—a black linen sheath dress, my classic fallback—and meet Sinclair at Lumière at seven o’clock.

Since it was only a few blocks away, I walked. Sinclair was waiting for me on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, his touring bicycle chained to the wrought-iron fence that hemmed the patio.

Oh, crap. I was a terrible girlfriend. Sinclair’s place was a couple miles north on the rural highway and he didn’t have a car, just the tour bus and the bike, which he used for transportation when he wasn’t working. Hence, those Tour de France–worthy thighs I mentioned earlier.

He smiled at me. “Hey, girl! There you are.”

“I’m so sorry!” I said in dismay. “I should have picked you up—”

“Daisy—”

“I just wasn’t thinking! You should have reminded—”