“I hate to interrupt,” he said, and for once he looked like he actually meant it. “But we have a couple of pressing problems to deal with.”

“The shifter could come back,” I said. My voice sounded rusty.

Beezle nodded. “Since Daharan appears to be missing in action, you and Nathaniel are going to have to combine your magic and figure out a way to lay some better protection over the house.”

“Otherwise the shifter could stand out in the street and kill us all without even coming inside,” I said. “I know.”

“Also, there’s the matter of the . . .” He trailed off, looking at Samiel uncertainly.

Body, Samiel signed. I’ll take care of her. It should be me.

“No,” I said. “Absolutely not. I don’t want you down there at all.”

I have the right to see her.

I thought of the room, all of Chloe’s inside parts on the outside. “You don’t want to remember her that way.”

Just what did the shifter do to her? Nathaniel wouldn’t say. Samiel stood up, helping me to my feet.

“Can’t you just trust me?” I said. “Do you have to see the horror for yourself?”

Something in my face must have convinced him, because he stared at me for a long time, then nodded.

“All right, then,” I said, relieved. “Oh, and I might have left Jack Dabrowski locked in the second storage unit.”

“Might have?” Beezle asked.

“I wasn’t sure what to do about him,” I said. “He’s only going to run straight home and get on the computer, and I don’t think it’s in the public interest for the whistle to be blown on a freaky shapeshifter right now.”

“I agree,” Beezle said. “But you can’t keep him in the storage unit forever. And you can’t have him living in the house. He’ll only pick up more intel that you won’t want disseminated on the Internet.”

“Have you been reading?” I asked. “You didn’t learn such fancy words on TV.”

“You’d be surprised what you can learn from TV,” Beezle said loftily.

We went into the living room, where Nathaniel and Jude were watching the news with grim faces. I knew both of them had heard every word that was spoken in the kitchen. That was the advantage of supernatural hearing.

“It’s already begun,” Jude said, indicating the screen.

The film showed several people handcuffed with black bags over their faces being led away by police. The voice-over said that the individuals were a family of supernatural origin and that police had been led to the offending family by a tip from their neighbors.

“It’s not just the shapeshifter we’ve got to worry about,” I said. “My neighbors know unnatural things happen in and around this house all the time. J.B. and the Agency used to make sure all the nine-one-one calls were intercepted so I wouldn’t be arrested. Whatever protection spell we use has got to deflect the human authorities as well. Otherwise we’ll be on the news with black bags over our heads.”

There was something else to consider, too. Lucifer was rather possessive of me, and his responses to different situations tended to be unpredictable. If by some strange chance the police managed to arrest me and lock me up, Lucifer might lose his mind and, say, smash the entire city of Chicago into oblivion. So it was definitely in my best interest as well as the people of the city that I not get taken.

Jude stood up. “Since night has fallen, we should dispose of Chloe’s remains while the shadows can hide us.”

You’re just going to throw her away like garbage? Samiel signed, his face angry.

“I don’t want to,” I said. “But what else can we do? We can’t risk someone finding her in the basement, and we can’t bury her in the backyard. Freshly turned soil is kind of a giveaway that you’ve been up to no good.”

“It would be safest to burn her,” Nathaniel said. “That way nothing will remain to direct the authorities to us.”

“It will be like cremation,” I said to Samiel. I could hear the pleading tone in my voice even if he could not. “You’ll be able to keep her ashes.”

“Of course, a giant conflagration in the yard might attract attention,” Beezle said.

“There are two fireplaces in this building,” Nathaniel said. “There is no reason to bring her outside.”

I sat down abruptly on the couch, my stomach churning. “This is sick. This is sick and horrible. Why are we standing here talking about burning Chloe like she’s just a logistical problem we need to work around? What is the matter with us?”

I expected Samiel to have another angry outburst, but he surprised me again by sitting beside me and taking my hand. It’s okay. I understand. I do. Something horrible has happened, and we’re not in a position to behave normally about it. You can’t call the police; you can’t have a funeral. Nathaniel’s right. Burning is the best way. It’s only her body, anyway, right? Her soul has gone through the Door.

My fists clenched involuntarily as I was seized by a flash of panic. What if her soul hadn’t gone through the Door? What if her death was so strange and unnatural that her ghost would stay and haunt me forever? For the second time that day, I wished J.B. were still at the Agency. He would be able to check the paperwork and verify that she had been taken by an Agent. I didn’t even want to consider what my former colleagues might think of one of their own being brutally murdered in my basement. And that led to another panicked thought. What if word spread around the Agency about what happened to Chloe, and I got blamed? What if a bunch of Agents were on their way here in the form of an angry lynch mob?