Now, he looked me up and down and gave a snort of disgust. “I’m not even going to ask.”

“Are you here to arrest me?” I said coolly. I quit trying to pretend I had a heel and leaned lopsidedly against the door. My calves and feet hurt.

“Maybe.”

“That was a yes or no question, Jayne. Try again.” He didn’t say anything and we both knew what that meant. “Then go away. The store is closed. That makes it private property right now. You’re trespassing.”

“Either we talk tonight, or I come back in the morning when you have customers. You want a homicide detective hanging around, interrogating your clientele?”

“You don’t have any right to interrogate my clientele.”

“I’m the Garda, lady. That gives me all the rights I need. I can and will make your life miserable. Try me.”

“What do you want?” I growled.

“It’s cold and wet out here.” He cupped his hands, blew on them. “How about a cup of tea?”

“How about you go screw yourself?” I flashed him a saccharine smile.

“What, my overweight, middle-aged brother-in-law was good enough for you, but I’m not?”

“I did not have sex with your brother-in-law,” I snapped.

“Then what the fuck was he doing with you?” he snapped back.

“We’ve already been through this. I told you. If you want to interrogate me again, you’re going to have to arrest me, and this time I’m not saying a word without an attorney.” I glanced over his shoulder. The Shades were moving restlessly, vigorously, as if stirred up by our discord. Our arguing seemed to be . . . exciting them. I wondered if anger or passion made us taste even better to them. I forced the macabre thought from my mind.

“Your answers were no answers at all, and you know it.”

“You don’t want the real answers.” I didn’t want the real answers. Unfortunately, I was stuck with them.

“Maybe, I do. However . . . difficult to believe . . . they might seem.”

I gave him a sharp look. Though he wore his usual determined dog-with-a-bone expression, there was a subtle new component to it that I’d missed before. It was the same component I’d glimpsed in O’Duffy’s eyes the morning he’d come to see me, the morning he’d died, a wary, maybe-my-world-isn’t-quite-what-I-thought-it-was look. A sure sign that, like O’Duffy, Jayne was about to start poking into matters that were probably going to get him killed. Although O’Duffy’s method of death seemed to imply a human murderer, I had no doubt he’d been killed for what he’d been learning about the new kids in town—the Fae.