The gas-station employee, a teenager with greasy hair, looked up from his magazine. His eyes flicked from Lon’s face to my face to my breasts. Lovely. “Can I help you?”

“You have a pay phone?” Lon asked. He sounded pretty irritated. It almost made me think he might be pissed that the boy was ogling me. See? Decent, stand-up guy—just like I said.

“By the restrooms.” The boy lifted his chin, pointing us there with minimal effort.

I pasted on a smile. If greasy-headed delinquent here was interested in the modest amount of goods I had up top, he shouldn’t be hard to manipulate. “You wouldn’t happen to know where we could find Robert Wildeye’s office, would you?”

“Who?”

“A private investigator,” Lon filled in. “Here in Golden Peak.”

“PI?” The boy’s face twisted up. He clearly thought we were idiots. “You sure you got the right town?”

“Positive.” Lon was clearly wishing he could take a belt to the kid’s ass, but he needed to pull back on the grumble.

“We just don’t know the street address,” I added. “Sure it doesn’t ring a bell?”

“Uh, I doubt there’s much cause for any business like that here in the winter,” the boy said. “We got a lot of rich people with summer homes. They come up from L.A. in June. Maybe he’s one of those.” He shrugged.

“No one named Wildeye at all? Not even a retired cop or anything?”

“Sorry. Never heard it. I spend the summers with my mom in Sacramento, so I’m not the best person to ask.”

“Anyone else who might be able to help us out?” I said. “Town gossip or something?”

“You might ask around at the Redwood Diner. A waitress there, June, knows everyone in town. She’s lived here, like, forever.”

Well, that was something, at least, and I was damn sure starving. But the diners I’d seen were all closed. “When does it open?”

“Five a.m.”

Crap. “Is there anything open right now?”

“Sierra Woodland. That’s the motel on Main, between downtown and the park. If you want nightlife, you came to the wrong place, believe me.”

“Not even a dive bar?” Lon asked.

“Are you kidding? You can’t even buy beer,” he said, gesturing to the refrigerated cases at the side of the shop. “Only thing here is a feral cat colony and a bunch of hippies who like to backpack and paint pictures of the waterfall.”

I hear ya, kid. Godspeed getting yourself to a bigger town, where you can use that apathetic attitude to charm someone just as depressed and misunderstood.

We thanked him and headed to the restrooms. Lon volunteered to call. I kept an eye on the kid to make sure he wasn’t listening in on us. But there was no need; he couldn’t have given less of a shit. Soon after inserting a few coins, Lon hung up and reported that all he got was a voice-mail greeting. “It said he was currently in the office and taking cases,” Lon reported. “But otherwise just directed the caller to leave a name and number and said he’d return the call within twenty-four hours.”

I groaned. I really didn’t want to spend an entire night here. “It’s only ten. We have seven hours before the diner opens. What do we do now? Can’t drive back home. We’d just have to turn around and come right back. Maybe this whole thing was a lousy idea.”

His eyes sparkled with something close to humor. “Patience, witch.”

Since when did I get a nickname? Or had he called me that before? Either way, I was amused, and sort of happy that he wasn’t feeling as hopeless about all this as I was.

He glanced at the kid behind the counter before squinting down at me. “Maybe I’ve been thinking about this all wrong.”

Jupe nearly fell off his bed when the voice spoke.

May I show myself?

“No,” he answered. “Go. Away.”

For the love of God, couldn’t a guy have some peace and quiet? It was after ten. Not that he was sleeping; his official school-night bedtime was midnight, not that Mr. and Mrs. Holiday were awake to enforce it. He was, however, busy trying to crack the new password for the parental controls on their internet connection.

Important shit.

His dad used to use a brand of film for all his passwords. Like that was smart. Everyone knew his father was a famous photographer. Might as well have just used his own birthday. For that matter, might as well have just used “PASSWORD.”

When the telltale ball of light appeared at the foot of his bed, he barely had time to slam down the screen of his laptop before Priya’s gigantic wings materialized.

“Don’t you understand the meaning of ‘go away’? Hey, watch it!”

The creature’s wings created a brief vortex of wind that scattered loose pages of his math homework and fluttered his hair.

“You almost knocked over my Frankenstein’s Laboratory model,” Jupe complained as Priya’s wings folded behind his back. “It took me an entire week to paint that. And while we’re at it, you owe me for ripping the corner off my Foxy Brown poster last time you showed up. Dad got that signed for me by Pam Grier. Which means it’s one of a kind. Unreplaceable.” That didn’t sound quite right. He quickly corrected himself. “Irreplaceable. Whatever. It’s priceless.”

“I don’t have time for your nonsense, Kerub. This is important.”