“You know the giant spider of which I speak?” I pushed to my feet, Sarge holding me under one elbow as I limped over to his bike. He got on, and I slid on behind him with a whimper.

“She’s a trickster. She wouldn’t have really hurt you,” he said. “She likes to tease those who can see her.”

Maybe it was the kick to her lady box that had pissed her off. “She said she was allowed to eat those who could see her.”

That seemed to give him pause. “No, she was just teasing.”

“I don’t like her teasing.” I wrapped my arms around his solid body and held on as the bike rumbled forward. I closed my eyes and tried not to think about the big spider. If she was a trickster, what would it be like to face down something that actually wanted to eat me? I mean, it had been a long time since I’d seen any of the monsters in the shadows and . . .

“There weren’t many monsters in the shadows in Seattle.” I shouted to be heard over the whoosh of air around us. Even when I’d been still seeing them, they had been few and far between.

“You don’t have to shout, my ears are good,” Sarge said. “And the answer is simple. There aren’t many monsters in Seattle. Not of the supernatural kind, anyway. Certain places hold a bit of a lure for the shadowed ones.”

Shadowed ones. That name rang a loud bell in my head. Gran used to say that, she used to say that the shadowed ones weren’t all good, they weren’t all bad, but a whole lot of gray, just like people.

“And Savannah is one of those places?” That felt right too, again like something Gran had said.

“New Orleans too, Salem, Gettysburg, Chicago, just to name a few. Lots of bloodshed, lots of suffering. Makes for good breeding grounds for a lot of the monsters out there.”

I had nothing to say to that. My mind wouldn’t shut off, though. All those places had monsters lurking in the shadows like Savannah did. Really?

Sarge drove us back toward the cemetery where this had all started. It was hard to believe the interview had been the night before. Felt like a week at least.

Maybe Eammon would give me the night off, maybe I’d get a break.

Yeah, I didn’t think so either.

12

Sarge pulled up to the cemetery with the address 696 Hollows Road stamped on top of the gate. Night had just started to creep up on the horizon, and it made some of the gravestones almost glow with that last bit of the sun kissing their tops.

The gate opened wide by means unknown and Sarge drove us through. At least we didn’t have to walk all the way to the entrance to the . . . “What do you call this place?”