A woman ran up to me and thrust a piece of paper into my hand. I glanced at it. A bill for eighty-two thousand dollars. “What the hell is this?”

“The cost of the destroyed vampire,” the journeywoman chirped. “Have a nice day.”

•   •   •

I REFUSED TO leave until the earring had been found. It took four hours for Biohazard to sift through the gory carcass, quarantining each section of the corpse they had removed. I sat on the edge of the Mole Hole and watched them do it. Julie fell asleep in the car. For a while the People’s lawyers and Biohazard’s lawyers squabbled over who would get the earring when it was finally found, but eventually they too grew quiet and just watched.

Biohazard techs gingerly placed it into a box carved from a cube of salt, which was then placed into a plastic box lined with volcanic rock. Volcanic rock had been exposed to such high temperatures that magically it was found to be inert and impervious to all types of fire magic.

The techs sealed the box and then Nick promptly confiscated it.

“You can’t do that!” If Luther got any more worked up, he would suffer apoplexy right here. He was wearing a biohazard containment suit, and he’d taken his helmet off to talk. “It needs to be examined and studied.”

“Examined how?” Nick asked. “Are you planning on having tea with it and asking it about its family? We know it’s a djinn. We must contain it. That’s all that matters.”

Luther turned to his lawyers, who by now had lost all semblance of professionalism and lounged on blankets next to the People’s lawyers, who were sharing their coffee. “Can he do this?”

“Yep,” a Hispanic female lawyer said, pushing her glasses up her nose.

“How?”

“You gave him that power when you signed the petition,” a thin, dark-skinned, male lawyer told him. “I told you not to sign it.”

Nick placed the box in his saddlebag.

“The corpses exhibited reactive metamorphosis in every single case,” I told him loud enough for Luther to hear. “Except this one. That means the djinn wants you to have that box. He wants a more capable host and we don’t know what his endgame is. Nick, do not put it into the Vault where every knight can have access to it.”

Nick ignored me. Right. I guess we knew where we stood. I had a feeling my parentage and the fact that he somehow shared his last name with my deceased guardian had a great deal to do with it, but now wasn’t the time or the place to discuss any of it.

“Whatever you think of me, you know I wouldn’t lie to you about it. Do not put that box on a shelf in the Vault where anybody can get to it.”

Nothing. Big blank wall. God, this night sucked so much.