“What did you do?”

“I looked.” He opened the door.

“And?”

“And I saw my eyes.”

“Holy cow, Swopes. Have you done any digging? Pulled up his birth certificate?”

“Unknown.” He laughed humorlessly. “She listed his father as unknown. She was scared to death I’d figure it out. It was all over her face.”

“Why wouldn’t she want you to know?” I narrowed my eyes suspiciously. “Is she afraid of you?”

“No. Why the hell would she be afraid of me?”

“I don’t know. You just said —”

“We dated only a couple of times.” He grew agitated. “All she wanted was sex, actually. It was kind of nice. She’d show up. We’d do it. She’d leave. Then she just stopped. I never saw her again. Figured she’d moved on.”

I took a long, leisurely look at the man standing before me. At the lean, muscular limbs, the wide shoulders, the perfect mocha-colored skin, and the shimmering silvery gray eyes. “Maybe she wanted to get pregtastic. If I were looking for a baby daddy, you’d definitely be on the list.”

His gaze slid past me. “Are you serious? She wanted to get pregnant?”

“Pregtastic,” I corrected. I put a hand on his. “And I don’t know, Swopes, I’m just saying. That could have been her motive all along. Do you want me to look into it?”

“Not just yet. I have an idea, and since you owe me —”

“What?” I said, cutting him off right then and there. “I don’t owe you. Since when do I owe you?” When he did that deadpan thing, I said, “Okay, I owe you. Let me know what I can do.”

He nodded and started out the door before turning back to me. “I still don’t trust him.”

“Your own son?” I asked, appalled.

Unruffled, Garrett looked toward Reyes’s door, then back at me. “Just be careful. I won’t hesitate to bury that dagger in him for real.”

“That looked pretty real to me, Swopes.”

“Yeah, but next time I’ll make sure it stays buried.”

Exasperated, I nudged him out the door and closed it. Freaking men. It didn’t matter what the problem was, they saw only three solutions to it: food, sex, war.

Since dawn waited just around the corner and my mind raced too fast to sleep, I decided a shower wasn’t out of the question, especially since I had my annual appointment with the girl-parts doctor. One couldn’t be too clean for these things. Thankfully, the woman who’d taken up residence in my shower had moved. I figured with the recent vacancy, Artemis would be chasing water droplets as I washed, but she must’ve still been napping. Why would a departed dog need sleep? I added that to the twenty million other questions I was saving for when I finally met someone in the know. Like Santa. Or, no, God! Yeah, probably God.

The world had gone mad. That was the gist of what I figured out as a blast of scorching water eased the tension from my neck and steam rose around me. The world had gone berserk. There was a knife that could kill Reyes. Lucifer wanted me dead. Garrett might or might not have a son. Kim Millar was an arsonist. Nicolette was not a zombie, sadly, but some kind of prophet, which was almost as cool. A serial killer was running loose on the streets of – well, I had no idea where, but somewhere. And I had a house full of departed women I didn’t know what to do with. I should probably have gone back to bed, but I had a big day ahead of me.

After I rinsed, I stood in the shower a bit longer to let the heat pulsate on my neck and down my spine, and ran down my to-do list. Girl-parts doctor. Work magic for Kim. And find a serial killer. Another one. I’d just found one a few days prior. Surely there was someone out there better equipped to hunt down serial killers.

Oh, and try not to obsess too much over Reyes. I needed to stay frosty. Alert. And figure out why I suddenly had blond hair mixed in with my brown. My gaze traveled up until it landed on the girl, the pixie from under my bed, hanging from the ceiling, staring down at me. Her dirty-blond hair hung in matted strips, her huge eyes peering out from behind them. Before I could say anything, she lashed out at me. Her nails raked across my face with the speed of a cobra.

“Son of a bitch,” I said, falling back out of the girl’s reach. The sting spread instantly and blood dripped in the water to become tiny red clouds swirling around the drain. I turned off the shower and stumbled to the mirror to inspect the damage. Three lines of blood streaked across my face. I grabbed a towel and held it to them.

Then the girl appeared behind me. I tensed, waiting to see what she would do next. With her eyes barely visible as she peered around me, she reached up, pulled down the towel, and pointed to my cheek. I tried not to react, to cringe away from her or push her back. I stood there, realizing she was trying to send me a message. She held up three fingers in the mirror and waited until I nodded.

“Got it,” I said. “Three. Are you trying to tell me —?”

She disappeared before I could question her further, but she couldn’t have gone far. And even if her message wasn’t quite sinking in, she gave me a pretty vital clue. She held up the number three, but not like most people do, not like hearing people do. She held up the number three the way Deaf people do, a thumb, an index and a middle finger. Could she have been Deaf? Or perhaps she had a parent or sibling who was Deaf?

After applying ointment to my already-healing cheek, I hurried to the phone to call Uncle Bob.