Paige and Lucas took Savannah home a few minutes later. Kristof led me around the back of the building and we walked the trails there for about an hour, saying nothing. I couldn’t stop thinking about that moment in the art room when Lily had lifted the gun, playing it and replaying it as I searched for a solution, something I could have done. There was an answer. One answer. Become an angel.

As I turned to Kristof, the words were on my lips. I could protect her, Kris. If I became an angel, I could protect her. I could have stopped Lily and the Nix. But as I imagined saying it, I knew his response. He’d see it not as the perfect solution, but as another step down into the quagmire—giving up my afterlife to serve as an angel so I could protect our daughter.

So instead I said, “Maybe I can’t help Savannah, but I can show the Nix that this little ‘demonstration’ hasn’t done anything but piss me off.”

A tiny smile. “And that’s never good.”

“Which she is about to find out.” I glanced back toward the community center. “I’d better go find Trsiel.” I looked at Kristof. “I guess this is good-bye again, for a little while.”

“I’m never far,” he said. “You need me, I’ll be there. You know that.”

I squeezed his hand. “I do.”

Heartfelt vows of vengeance are easy to make, but rarely easy to carry out. I roared back into hunt mode, ready to track down this demon-bitch and send her soul to the deepest, darkest hell I could find. Instead, I found myself billeted to Lizzie Borden’s living room, while Trsiel hung out with Amanda Sullivan.

Trsiel did his best to placate me, reminding me that so long as Amanda Sullivan saw nothing, the Nix wasn’t in the living world. Fat lot of reassurance that was—the last time Sullivan saw a vision, it’d taken less than six hours for the Nix to persuade her partner to act—less than six hours before three people were dead.

I couldn’t imagine how she’d accomplished that—finding a partner so quickly. Not just any partner, but one who would be in the same building as my daughter that day. Was it that easy to find someone with a motive for murder? Someone who lacked only the guts to follow through on their impulses?

Trsiel’s theory was that the Nix hadn’t been nearly as surprised to find me tracking her as she’d pretended, that she’d known I’d been on her trail, found out who I was, and scouted a few potential partners in the periphery of Savannah’s life, women she could leap into if I got too close and needed a demonstration of her power.