I wanted to tell him to stuff it, but instead just went up the stairs, each one creaking under me as much as an announcement of my presence as my voice. “Gran?”

A whiff of her perfume tugged me forward and I hurried toward what had been her bedroom. She paced the room, a bit more transparent than she’d been the other day, but that could be the shaft of sunlight that slid through the arched window behind her.

“Gran, I need your help.” I sat on the edge of the bed, a small puff of dust rolling up.

“And I need yours.” Her voice wasn’t as strong as before either. I frowned, wanting to reach out for her, but I refrained as she looked me up and down. “What have you been doing, playing in the swamp?”

I looked down at my clothing, splattered with mud and bits of moss and other foliage. “Yes.” Her eyebrows went up and her body faded a little more even as I watched. “Gran, what’s happening to you?”

“Tell me your woes first, honey girl,” she said, waving a hand at me to go on.

I took a breath and gathered my thoughts. “Someone attacked a half-man for his fur about six months ago, then two months later his blood, and now they are still hunting him which can only mean they want his death. I have to keep him safe. And I think maybe they are using demons?” That was a stretch there because I wasn’t sure, but running into two demons in one day, I wasn’t going to discount it, especially since the chains of one had been on Eric’s property. Really, it made no sense to me as to why a demon would be after a half-man when it was obvious that a person with a gun was shooting at Eric. But I wasn’t as familiar with the shadow world of Savannah as Gran had been, and where the intricacies would lie.

She tapped a finger against her chin while holding her elbow with the other hand. Classic Gran thinking pose.

“Anything else?” she asked.

“The demons have chains of some sort with them.”

“What kind of metal?”

I grimaced. “You want me to guess?”

She shot me a sharp glance. “No, as good as you are at that, I think this is not the time for guesses.”

I thought about the chains left behind by the demon at Crash’s place. “I can find out.”

She nodded. “That will help pin down what is happening, and it’ll give me time to think on it. Without my book, I . . . well, it’s nothing.”

I grinned. “The red leather book? I have it! I bought it on Death Row!”

She clapped her hands together. Okay, she made the motion and my brain supplied the sound that should have issued from her hands. “Excellent. Bring it here tonight, we need it.”

I could do that. “Midnight, or the witching hour?”