I CHECKED IN with Paige before meeting the Nasts, an excuse to collect my thoughts. She gave me a brief update. Besides the glamour spell, she’d found only two explanations. Carlos could have been demonically possessed, which would explain why he denied being at the crime scenes. For Guy, the only answer was zombification, which would explain the use of cologne—to cover any stench of death. But a gunshot to the CNS would have meant he wouldn’t have been able to walk normally, no matter what a necromancer commanded.

While she returned to her research, I tried to put the pieces together, but they only slid farther apart.

The lab had found no trace evidence to indicate Carlos had been at any crime scene except the one with the young woman. When I finally wrested a story from him, he claimed that he hadn’t killed our brothers or attempted to assassinate our father. He’d never even been at Hector’s. Nor had he spoken to Troy, much less shot him. Why tell such obvious lies when we had eyewitness accounts?

The death of the young woman was one murder he wasn’t denying. He wasn’t admitting to it either, but seemed to presume his silence answered my questions. He said she’d been a half-demon he’d met a few times, and that she’d lured him into a trap. I was left to assume that he’d realized he’d been tricked, killed her while trying to extract information under torture and hid when the others came.

If he’d caught a glimpse of whoever came after him, he was keeping it to himself. Suspicious, yes. But knowing Carlos, he’d have panicked, been unable to muster the courage to climb out a window and hidden in the closet using a blur spell. He wasn’t about to admit to such cowardice…even if it might help find his brothers’ killers.

There was one piece of evidence that clearly spoke in his favor. The timeline. There was no way he could have traveled to all three locations in the time allotted, demonically possessed or not.

When I looked up from my notes, Paige glanced my way.

“I hate to give you one more thing to do, but have you called your mother?” she asked.

I must have winced, because she hurried on.

“I can do it. I just thought—”

“No, you’re right. It should come from me.” I really didn’t want my mother to hear about the death of my half-brothers on the news.

“Oh, and I spoke to Savannah,” Paige said. “She and Adam want to come down and help out.”

“I’d rather—”

“They stay put and mind the shop. That’s what I told them.”

“Thank you.”