“I kinda traded in my old one,” Butters told me as I got in, going straight through the door. I didn’t make any noise about the discomfort. Not in front of Butters. It would totally blow my ghostly cool.

“For another old one,” I said. My voice issued out of the radio he slipped into a clip attached to the car’s sun visor.

“I like steel better than fiberglass,” he said. “The Fomor and the faeries are apparently related. Neither one of them likes the touch of any metal with iron in it.”

Bob’s skull rested in a container that had been custom mounted on the Road Runner’s dash—a wooden frame set on a plate that made the skull wobble back and forth like a bobblehead doll. “Lot of interbreeding there,” Bob said. “Back in the old, old, old days. Before the Sidhe Wars.”

I lifted my eyebrows. “I haven’t heard much about it.”

“Crazy stuff,” Bob said with tremendous enthusiasm. “Even before my time, but I’ve heard all kinds of stories. The Daoine Sidhe, the Tuatha, the Fomor, the Tylwyth Teg, the Shen. Epic alliances, epic betrayals, epic battles, epic weddings, epic sex—”

“Epic sex?” I sputtered. “By what standards, precisely, is sex judged to be epic?”

“And tons and tons of mortal simps like you used as pawns.” Bob sighed happily, ignoring my question. “There are no words. It was like The Lord of the Rings and All My Children made a baby with the Macho Man Randy Savage and a Whac-A-Mole machine.”

Butters sputtered at that image.

But… I mean, Hell’s bells. Who wouldn’t?

“Anyway,” he choked out a moment later, “the Fomor have a lot of faerie blood in their makeup. I like having Detroit steel around me when I drive.”

“Murphy said something about the Fomor last night,” I said. “I take it they’ve been moving in on the town?”

His face grew more remote. “Big-time. I’ve been busy.” He exhaled a slow breath. “Um. Look, man. It’s really you?”

“What’s left of me,” I said tiredly. “Yeah.”

He nodded. “Um. There’s a problem with Molly.”

“I saw,” I said.

“You didn’t see,” he said. “I mean, I heard that Murphy told you she was a couple bubbles off plumb last night, but there’s more than that.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Seventeen people murdered in the past three months,” he replied in a steady voice.

I didn’t say anything for a couple of blocks. Then I said, “Who?”

“Scum,” he said candidly. “Mostly. A cop who was maybe raping a prostitute. Petty criminals. Muggers. She doesn’t even try to avoid being seen. She’s gone totally Dark Knight. Witnesses left and right have reported a tall woman dressed in layers and layers of ragged, cast-off clothing. Took the papers about two weeks to name her the Rag Lady. People call her various versions, to make fun, to show her they aren’t afraid, but…”

“A lot of people get killed in this town,” I said. “Doesn’t mean it’s Molly.”