The Trouble with Twelfth Grave (Charley Davidson #12)(52)

“Cookie, I’ve seen her. Look at the date of that picture.” I sat back in thought. “Remember when we first met Quentin?”

“Of course, poor baby. He’d been possessed by a demon because he could see into the supernatural realm. Several demons had possessed people sensitive to their world. Because only those people could see you, and they were after you. They wanted to kill you.”

“Yes,” I said, pointing to Indigo. “Cook, she was one of them. I remember her that night.”

“You mean during the fight in front of our apartment building?”

“The demons were using humans as both bloodhounds and shields so they could try to kill me. To kill Beep. My light wouldn’t hurt them as long as they were inside a human. We had to literally pull them out before we could kill them.”

I stopped and studied Indigo’s features, her large eyes and long, dark hair, and I remembered her from that night. Sitting off to the side during the battle. Rocking back and forth, trying so desperately to shake off the demon inside her.

“She was one of them, Cook. She fought the demon with everything she had, but it still managed to control her to some degree. After the fight, after we killed all the demons, she ran off. I never found out her name or where she was from. Nothing. And she was right here in Albuquerque the entire time.”

“And now she’s gone,” Cookie added. “Despite surviving that nightmarish ordeal, she’s gone.”

“Exactly. What if you’re right? What if it works the other way? What if the same people who can see into the supernatural realm can be seen by the supernatural realm? What if they are targets because of it?”

“It would explain why both Indigo and Nicolette were attacked by a supernatural entity.”

“And it could explain the others. We have no way of knowing. Unless…”

I thought back to the case of Joyce Blomme and the haunted house. I had been curious as to why Joyce, the departed grandmother and great-grandmother of the current occupants, could only see two of the three people in the house that night.

“I need to run an errand. To interview a potential witness.” I could have called Chanel Newell, but I wanted to interview her face-to-face. To gauge her reaction to my questions, because most people who are sensitive to the otherworld had a difficult time admitting it, even to someone like me.

“Again?” Cookie asked. “You get to have all the fun.”

“It’s the woman from the other night whose grandmother was haunting her house but the grandmother thought that the granddaughter was haunting her house and I had to tell the grandmother that she had died thirty-eight years ago and that she was, in fact, the haunter, not the hauntee.”

“Oh,” Cookie said, standing to walk back to her desk. “Okay, then. I’m good here.”

“Thought so,” I said, unable to suppress a slight giggle.

I headed that way. Or tried to. The door opened before I could get to it, and one Detective Forrest Joplin stepped into the humble offices of Davidson Investigations.

I tensed. Mostly because he hated me with a fiery passion. He didn’t understand how I solved cases. Thought Uncle Bob indulged me too much. Thought I used nefarious means.

He was right. I used any means necessary, but that was no reason to hate my innards. My innards had nothing to do with my cases.

“Detective,” I said, sweet as could be. My world may have been coming to an end, my friends may have been attacked and suspected of foul play, my husband may have been turned into a volatile god, and I may not have slept in several days, but no way was I letting Detective Joplin know any of that. I beamed at him. “Fancy meeting you here.”

Agitated, probably by my mere presence, he glanced at Cookie, then back at me. “Can we talk in your office?”

My smile widened. “Of course. As long as Cookie can be in there as well. I may need a witness.”

“A witness?”

“You seem miffed. If I get another heated scolding because I solved one of your cases behind your back, I need a witness. You know, for when I file a complaint.”

He raked a hand through his military buzz. “I’m not here to scold you, Davidson. I’m here to warn you.”

I clapped in excitement. “Even better. Can we record it?”

He stepped closer to me. “Your uncle is snooping around my case, and if he’s snooping, odds are you put him up to it.”

I looked over at Cookie. Her face turned an odd shade of purple.

“Cook, you talked to Uncle Bob already? I thought that was going to be, you know, pillow talk.”

“It was. That was the plan, but then—”

“Cookie,” I said with a gasp, beaming at her with pride. “You got a quickie?”

“Charley, I hardly think this is the time.”

I propped a hip on her desk. “Oh, it’s the perfect time.”

“I just asked him if he could check into that thing we were talking about when we were talking about, you know, that thing.” God, she was good at collusion.

After another moment of awkwardness in an already awkward stalemate, my quota for the day had been filled, and I let her off the hook.

I turned to the surly detective. “Yes, I was just wondering if you had a COD on one of your victims. A man named Hector Felix.”