I poured myself a couple inches of scotch and put Nina Simone on the stereo. She sang in a lower octave than most women, deep and soulful. Throughout her life, she’d struggled with the mortal demons of mental illness. Tonight, the sound of her voice soothed an ache in me. “It’s nobody’s fault but mine,” Nina sang, commiserating with my guilty conscience.

Wandering onto the porch, I watched the afterglow fade in the west, and listened to the sounds of Pemkowet on a summer evening.

It sounded just like last night.

A young man was dead, and most of the world went on, oblivious. I went back to the living room, flipped open my own case file. Thad Vanderhei stared up at me from his DMV photo, a bland smirk on his face and a faint impression of a circle flattening his hair, suggesting he’d taken off a baseball cap to have the photo taken.

On the stereo, accompanied by a spare, haunting piano arrangement, Nina confirmed in a mournful tone that if she died and her soul was lost, it was nobody’s fault but hers.

I brushed Thad’s face with one fingertip. “What did you do?” I murmured. “What were you up to, and whose fault was it?”

No one but Nina Simone answered.

Chapter Nine

Nine

Once again, I was awakened from sleep in the wee hours of the night, this time by Mogwai turning from a warm, dense ball of fur curled against my side into a hissing, spitting, feral creature uttering a low, unearthly wail. Leaping from the bed, Mogwai dashed toward the screened porch.

I sat bolt upright. “What the—”

Outside the screened porch, there was a clatter and a clash, followed by the sound of a door banging open, a rising guttural roar, an alarmed human-sounding shout, and the sound of running feet pounding down the alley.

Yanking on a pair of jeans below the tank top I slept in, I grabbed my phone, unlocked the door to my apartment, and ran downstairs.

Mrs. Browne was in the alley, a broom clutched in her gnarled hands and raised like a club. There was no trace now of the sweet little old lady she usually appeared to be. The lines on her wizened face had hardened into something ancient and fierce and dangerous, filled with all the righteous fury of a brownie protecting its household.

That was another reason I usually felt safe in my apartment at night. Left to their own devices and provided the appropriate offerings—in Mrs. Browne’s case, a fully stocked and prepped bakery kitchen—brownies are benevolent, domestic souls. When threatened, they can and will defend their chosen household with the strength of ten.

“Daisy, lass.” She lowered her broom, her expression easing. “Are ye well?”

“I’m fine, Mrs. Browne. Did you see what it was?”