“Hardy har. You’re hilarious, Anyan Barghest. Wait a minute,” I said, putting on a speculative face. “There’s another film I’ve seen that talks about people like you… Now what was it… There was a man, who was also a dog… I believe they called him a Mog… Ahhh, yes, Space-balls! You’re a Mog! Are you related to Barf? I do see the resemblance.”

“Once again, your grasp of classic cinema floors me, Jane.”

“You’re just jealous, you Mog. You wish you could have a giant fire hydrant all to yourself, just like Barf…”

“And the ejector seat is right around here somewhere,” the barghest replied, reaching for the buttons on the dashboard. I giggled.

“Seriously, though. Thanks for inviting me to Carl and Paige’s. They’re amazing.”

“Yeah, they’re a great couple.”

“How long have they been together?”

“Carl met Paige when she was twenty-two. They’ve been together ever since.”

“Wow. When’d they have Capitola?”

“Cappie just turned thirty-five, and they had her about five years after they got together.”

“Well, they’re a stunning family.”

“Yeah, Carl and Paige are totally dedicated to one another.”

Anyan’s voice almost sounded sad when he said that, and I was confused. “Is that a bad thing?” I asked. The barghest only frowned.

Then it hit me.

“He’s cut himself off from his power, hasn’t he?” It made sense. The fact that Carl looked older than most supes, the way I hadn’t felt him use one iota of power the entire night. “That’s why the brownie’s there. Terk protects the two of them because Carl’s stopped using his magic.”

Anyan nodded. “He did it right before they had Cappie. He cut himself off so they could get pregnant, and then never started again. He wants to die with his wife.”

“Wow,” was all I could say.

“Yup.”

“That’s intense.”

“Yup.”

“It must be really hard not to use your powers, ever, at all. What is Carl, anyway?”

“Nahual.”

“How old is he?”

“A few hundred years. About 225, I think.”

“So he’s old-ish?”

“Yeah.”

“But still. To choose to die with someone…”

Anyan stayed silent.

“That must be hard for you, as his friend.”

Anyan shrugged. The barghest shrugged a lot.

“It’s his choice, Jane. And I care for Paige, as well.”

“But still…”

Anyan smiled a sad smile. “But still, it is difficult to see him age.”

We sat in silence for a while.

“I’m surprised you think Carl’s choice is so radical, after how you reacted to losing Jason,” Anyan said eventually and very carefully.

I thought about that. There was no point in trying to downplay my rather dramatic actions after Jason’s death. Anyan, after all, had visited me in the hospital. He’d seen me strung out and tied up and bearing the bruises and stitches of all my various suicide attempts.

“I was crazy, first of all,” I replied. Anyan frowned, but I didn’t let him interrupt. “Seriously, Anyan, I was crazy. I think Jason’s death was like a dam breaking. His death was bad enough, but Jason had helped me hold everything else together. My feelings for my mom, and about my dad’s illness, and always feeling so out of place, and… everything else. He wasn’t just my friend or my lover, he was like my Prozac. Without him I just… fell.

“So the good thing about everything that’s happened,” I continued, trying to be practical Jane. She was much more fun than “drown yourself in the toilet” Jane. “The good thing is that in spite of everything that’s happened, recently, I haven’t flipped my biscuit. I mean, I did beat up you and Ryu.” The barghest grunted his agreement, causing my lips to quirk up in a smile. “But I didn’t go totally gaga. So that’s good.”

Anyan smiled at me, the streetlights letting me see his strong, crooked profile in detail. His face had so much character that I could watch him watching other things for hours.

“You have been remarkably non-gaga, Jane,” he rumbled eventually. “You have so much strength, you should give yourself more credit.”

I snorted. “Strength is what Carl’s doing. I reacted. He’s making a choice: this big, difficult, all-consuming choice that affects every aspect of his life. That’s strength.”

Anyan didn’t reply for a bit. And when he did, his always rough voice sounded rougher.

“No, that’s what love does. Some of us, it drops from a great height. The rest of us, it merely crushes.”

And with that, he was silent.

I sat there, the admittedly rather-beer-greased wheels of my mind spinning.

What the hell happened to Anyan? I wondered. And what does he have against love?

And why do I suddenly want another drink?

I was pondering those mysteries when my phone rang. I pulled it out of my pocket and checked to see who was calling. It was Amy, our local nahual waitress.

“Hey, Amy,” I said, but I was cut off before I could ask her anything else.

“Jane? Iris is missing.”

“What?” I said, sitting up in my seat as a cold blast filtered through my system.

“Iris is missing. She hasn’t been answering her phone for a few days, and so I went out to her apartment. It’s been broken into, and there’s been a fight. And she’s gone.”

“Oh my gods…”

“Can you come home now? Bring Ryu and Anyan?”

“Of course. We’ll come as soon as possible.”

“Good. Jane, I’m so scared…”

“We’ll be there soon. Go to my place. Stay with Nell and my dad.”

“I will. Get here quickly, please.”

“We will. Bye.”

I closed my phone, knowing that Anyan had heard every word with his sharp hearing. His face, when I turned to him, was dark with rage.

I started to shake as I sat there clutching my phone. Anyan’s only response was to put one big hand on the back of my neck and pull me closer. I cuddled against his solid bulk, unable to comprehend the fact that Iris was missing.

All I could feel was terror.

CHAPTER TEN

Iris’s usually neat, cozy apartment was a shambles. The furniture was overturned, the upholstery shredded. Mage balls had scorched the creamy walls, blackening her large, framed prints of somnolent Pre-Raphaelite women. Dishes had been smashed, trinkets crushed, and houseplants overturned.

I’d seen such wanton destruction only once before: at Edie’s place in Boston. The monsters responsible for the violence done to both the apartment and, later, to the women were Jarl’s lackeys: Graeme, the rapist-incubus; and Fugwat, the spriggan.

Anyan and Ryu were carefully picking over the evidence. Ryu seemed to be cataloging things and making little notations in the small moleskin notebook he carried everywhere. Anyan, however, was employing his long, crooked nose. His snuffling was the only sound to be heard in the silent apartment, although I was trapped in the cacophony created by my racing heart and the sound of the blood it sent whizzing through my system and beating against my eardrums.

“This is entirely different from the other kidnappings,” Ryu noted eventually, half to himself.

The barghest snuffled into a corner, grunted either at what he’d smelled or at the baobhan sith, then snuffled again.

“The other women were all taken without a struggle. Either off the street or from work. Very few were taken from their homes, and when they were, there was no sign of forced entry or a fight.”

My heart beat more frenetically as I came to understand what people meant when they said someone’s “blood was boiling.” Because that’s what I felt at that moment. Like my blood was simmering through my system, faster and faster, ready to blow out my ears and eyeballs and eventually out the top of my head.

“Jane, you all right?” Ryu asked.

“I’m fine, Ryu. It’s Iris who’s missing.”

Ryu frowned at me, walking over to where I stood, fists clenched.

“Jane, it’s going to be all right. We’ll get Iris back.”

“I know we will. And then I am going to neuter Jarl. I’ll do it with a spoon. Or dental floss. Something that will make it a slow, tedious process. Maybe chopsticks…”

Ryu blinked at me. “Um, Jane…”

“What, Ryu?” I demanded, rounding on my former lover. “Please don’t start the bit about Jarl’s possible innocence again. Taking Iris was done to provoke us. You said it yourselves: They didn’t take her quietly and carefully like they did the other women because they want us to know how powerful they are. They killed my mother, but that wasn’t enough. Now they’re going after everyone I care about.”

Ryu frowned. I didn’t let him start.