After dark that night, Fiji saw that the pawnshop lights were on, and she walked over to the store. She needed some company. She was too wired up to read or to watch television.

Lemuel was at his post. Fiji was not at all surprised to find that Olivia had come up from her apartment to keep him company. There was a customer, too. Lemuel appeared to be striking a bargain with a strange, hunched man.

The most interesting people come in at night, Fiji thought. She stepped past the men to sit by Olivia in the two chairs that matched a breakfast table.

“I could kick myself now that I know about Aubrey,” Olivia muttered to Fiji, as Lemuel and the hunched man agreed on terms. “I should have investigated her, when it became obvious that she didn’t fit in.”

Fiji didn’t ask any questions about what qualified Olivia to investigate or how she would have gone about such a thing. If you were going to live in Midnight, there were some subjects you didn’t delve into. “When were you sure you didn’t like her?” she asked, trying not to sound too eager to know the answer.

“After she’d been here a couple of weeks,” Olivia replied without hesitation.

Fiji suppressed a triumphant smile. Her spell had been effective, maybe! Though if it had really worked, if Olivia had understood Aubrey’s true nature as Fiji had hoped everyone would do, Aubrey’s true nature hadn’t seemed quite as repulsive to Olivia (or anyone else) as Fiji had hoped. For a moment, Fiji didn’t think well of herself. If it required a spell for Aubrey’s true nature to become apparent . . . didn’t that mean her false one was pretty damn good? In fact, close to being true? Was Fiji’s spell-casting only an exhibition of sour grapes? What if her own true character was open to everyone’s interpretation? Thinking of her many failings and weaknesses, Fiji shrank from the idea.

“What can we do to help Bobo?” she said.

“Aside from saying we saw her after he left? I didn’t know you could lie so convincingly,” Olivia said. “I think that’s a pretty damn good thing, that we did that.”

“If he did it, I don’t care,” Fiji said. “Especially in view of what we’ve learned about Aubrey.”

“I wouldn’t have cared even if she’d been a saint,” Olivia said calmly. “I’m sure our focus should be on who else could have killed Aubrey, and if we find another viable suspect . . .”

The hunched man had left, and now Lemuel spun around on the stool behind the counter. “Yes,” he said. “That’s what we must do. The gun is worrying me. From Olivia’s description, I remember it. It was here in the shop for years.” Lemuel’s icy eyes glinted with excitement.