“I hear you, Spike, but he’s done nothing wrong. Give me a day, and if I can’t find anything, we’ll hand him over to Braxton.”

“Okay, then,” replied Spike, with a sulky air of disappointment.

“Another thing,” I said as we returned to the carpet storeroom. “My uncle Mycroft has returned as a ghost.”

“It happens,” replied Spike with a shrug. “Did he seem substantial?”

“As you or I.”

“How long was he materialized for?”

“Seven minutes, I guess.”

“Then you got him at first haunting. First-timers are always the most solid.”

“That might be so, but I’d like to know why.”

“I’m owed a few favors by the Realm of the Dead,” he said offhandedly, “so I can find out. By the way, have you told Landen about all this crazy SpecOps shit?”

“I’m telling him this evening.”

“Sure you are.”

I walked back to my office, locked the door and changed out of the less-than-appealing Acme Carpets uniform and put on something more comfortable. I would have to speak to Aornis Hades about Felix8, but she would probably tell me to go and stick it in my ear—after all, she was seven years into a thirty-year enloopment based on my testimony, and yours truly was unlikely to fill her evil little soul with any sort of heartwarming benevolence.

I finished lacing my boots, locked the door, refilled my water bottle and placed it in the shoulder bag. Acme Carpets might have been a cover for my clandestine work at SpecOps, but this itself was cover for another job that only Bowden knew about. If Landen found out about SpecOps, he’d be annoyed—if he found out about Jurisfiction, he’d go bonkers. Not long after the Minotaur’s attack following the ’88 SuperHoop, Landen and I had a heart-to-heart where I told him I was giving up Jurisfiction—my primary duty being wife and mother. And so it was agreed. Unfortunately, my other primary duty was to fiction—the make-believe. Unable to reconcile the two, I did both and lied a bit—well, a lot, actually—to plaster over the gaping crack in my loyalties. It wasn’t with an easy or light heart, but it had worked for the past fourteen years. The odd thing was, Jurisfiction didn’t earn me a penny and was dangerous and wildly unpredictable. There was another reason I liked it, too—it brought me into close contact with story. It would have been easier to get a registered cheesehead off a five-times-a-day Limburger habit than to keep me away from fiction. But, hey—I could handle it.