“I come and I go.”

“Danny,” she said. Neither a question or statement. His presence seemed to wilt her further, to sap the brief surge of fight she’d demonstrated.

“Can you see him, Linda?” I said. “Sean presented the symptoms of early-onset dementia. Rare, but there’s precedent and it fit his behavior. I believed my theory. My lying eyes were wrong. He was afflicted by something else. Danny knows. Don’t you? Danny knows why you’re sick and growing sicker. Can you see him now?”

“See what?” she said. Uncertain. Very, very uncertain.

“Yeah, see what?” he said. “See what, Detective? What should she see?” He oozed closer with each utterance.

The light-headedness was back. Waves of pain coursed through my arm. Sweat covered my face. I leaned on the chair and tried not to make my weakness obvious.

“Sean’s condition developed when he took up with your boyfriend,” I said. “If you did an inventory, you’d find your symptoms are eerily similar. Mental fragility, mental fatigue. Names slip. Dates slip. Days. Physical weakness. Lingering cough. Most important—you’re psychologically vulnerable. You’d have to be to consider this bozo a catch.”

“I’m unwell,” she said. Looking at Buckhalter. Really looking at him.

I spoke in a soothing tone, coaxing.

“The money is dwindling, so the romance is too. Love and money aren’t the only forms of sustenance. There’s light and heat. There’s whatever animates you.”

Buckhalter’s sneer faded.

“Detective. Detective—”

“Drugs. Psychological warfare. Hypnotic suggestion. When was the last time you changed your clothes? The last time you bathed? Your breath could peel paint. When he hands you a mason jar of deer’s blood or a slab of raw meat, does it even register?”

Her gaze went back and forth. Her mouth moved as if she were reading aloud.

Buckhalter trembled. That would be the rage kicking in. He’d seen me handle his partners in Horseheads. He knew he couldn’t take me, not without help, not without getting into character. What had Mandibole called the feral side of the Mares? The Aspect of Night.

He made a shushing gesture. A plea.

“Detective. You should stop. I called him before I came down. The man is on his way.”

“Maybe he’s an emotional vampire,” I said to her. “Maybe he pokes a straw into your jugular while you’re sleeping and has a slurp. Maybe it’s a combination.”

“Danny, what is this,” she said. Again, a statement. Flat, rhetorical. She’d gained her feet. We formed the vertices of a triangle. The atmosphere hummed with a gathering electrical charge.

“I can’t explain how he did it to Sean then or how he’s doing it to you now. He is draining you. Your husband was meat, and so are you, lady. You’ve got to wake the fuck up and see him.” I said it in the rhythm of a right reverend driving home the psychological dagger. My own attempt at hypnotic suggestion, but in the service of revelation, of tearing away the mask.

Something had to give.