"You could look in the phone book," Jim suggested, lifting a big paw to examine it.

"Dragons don't list themselves in phone books," I said dismissively, an idea blossoming as I spoke. I thought about it for a while, gave it a long, hard look, and decided it was a good one. "Drake told me that the answer I sought was in the circle, so I'm going to take him at his word. Come on, Demon Jim. We're going back to the scene of the crime."

"Give me a couple of minutes. You're not going to be-lieve what I found I can do," Jim said, its voice muffled as it engaged in a bit of groinal hygiene.

'The ew factor on that is borderline vomit territory," I said, tugging on its leash until the great furry black head emerged from the depths of its crotch. I ignored the glazed look in Jim's eyes and got to my feet, heading out of the park and toward the nearest Metro stop. "Come on, you'll like the Metro. As a dog, you've got carte blanche to smell strangers' crotches."

"Really? That's something, although not nearly as good as licking my own—'¦"

"When we get to Mme. Deauxville's house," I inter-rupted, not wanting to hear the rest of that sentence, "I want you to look around and see if anything strikes you as odd. Drake was convinced that a demon was sum-moned by the circle. Maybe you can tell me who it was."

A half hour later we crossed the five-arched stone Pont Marie bridge from the right bank to the He Saint-Louis, and turned onto the Rue Sang des Innocents. The street was back to normal, I was pleased to note, no longer in the grip of whatever it was that had left it so lifeless and quiet.

"Remember, you're a dog whenever people are around," I said a bit nervously as we approached Mme. Deauxville's building.

"The wordsdemon andstupid aren't interchangeable," Jim said, in a bit of a pout because a woman on the Metro objected to having her butt snuffled.

"Just remember that," I warned, and taking a deep breath, pushed on the buzzer for the name above Mme. Deauxville's.

"Alld?"

"J'ai une grenouille dans non bidet,"I mumbled in-coherently, praying the person whose apartment I buzzed would assume something was wrong with the intercom and open the door for me. Luck, for a change, was with me, because without any further interrogation or ques-tions about frogs, the door clicked open.

I hustled Jim up the carpeted stairs in case the person on the third floor came out to the landing to see who was buzzing them. I stopped just long enough to tap on Mme. Deauxville's door, making sure no one was inside before hurrying down the tiny hall to the back door.

"Bet it's locked," Jim said.

"Hush. Of course it's locked, but I am not my father's daughter for nothing," I said, breathing a sigh of relief. The lock on the back door was an older one, not a dead bolt. I pulled out my maxed-out credit card and used it.

"You've got to be kidding," Jim said, disbelief ram-pant in its eyes.

"Nope. Daddy was a locksmith. The best locksmith in Santa Barbara. The things he taught me would astound you."

"I doubt that," Jim started to say, then closed his fuzzy lips when I swept open the door with a grand gesture. "Hrmph. Youdo know that what you're doing is illegal?"

"I'm suspected of murdering a woman I don't even know," I hissed, waving the demon into the dark, musty room, checking the hallway before closing the door. "Breaking and entering is the least of my worries. This must be the laundry room. The living room is to the left. Don't touch anything!"

The delicate tinkle of glass hitting linoleum was the answer to my command.

"Jim!"

"Sorry. Thought it was something to eat. When's lunch?"

"So help me, if I live through this …" I crept on tippy-toes through a tall-ceilinged bedroom with a four-poster bed swathed in white and gold gauze, a color scheme that was carried throughout the room. An antique gold faint-ing couch sat along one wall, a huge ebony armoire op-posite. Bouquets of near-dead lilies were scattered around the room, making the musty air even mustier with their heavy decaying scent. The curtains were drawn, but the closed apartment retained the heat of the day.

"Antiques, very nice. This is what I call proper living, not at all like the pit of a hotel room you've been happy in."

"Shut. Up." I opened the door to the living room cau-tiously, my nose wrinkling with the stale smell of the room. "OK, no one's here. That's the circle. Drake wanted to know if it was opened or closed. What do you think?"

"You're the Guardian. You should know."

I thought momentarily about grinding my teeth, but decided the dentist bills weren't worth the satisfaction it would give me. I crossed the room and squatted down next to the circle, Jim beside me. "I'm kind of

new to the Guardian business." Jim snorted. I ignored the snort and held my hand above the circle. The air around it tingled slightly. I examined the ash circle, noting that the salt had sunk deep into the fibers of the carpet while the ash re-mained on top. "I think it's closed. It feels … active. Un-finished. Almost as if it's waiting for something."

Jim nosed around the couch, pausing to sniff the black mark on the carpet that Drake had pointed out.

"Was that made by a demon?"

"Not any demon I know," Jim said, moving over to look out the tall windows.

I sat back on my heels, more than a little surprised by the answer. "It wasn't a demon? Are you sure?"

The look Jim shot me spoke volumes. "I may be pow-erless, but I'm not totally inept. That mark wasn't made by a demon. Take a look at it yourself. It's just charcoal, not demon smoke."

I crawled over to it, swearing to myself. If a demon hadn't actually been summoned by whoever had killed Mme. Deauxville, then someone wanted it tolook like one had been called. But that didn't make sense, because I had felt that something was wrong even before I entered the apartment, so a demon must have been here. I looked at the black mark on the carpet feeling totally at sea, com-pletely overwhelmed by forces I couldn't even begin to understand. Why had I thought it was such a good idea to tackle this strange new world when I was almost com-pletely clueless?

Pride, that's why.

"Brazen be damned, I'm going to ask for some help," I swore, kneeling by the circle to make a sketch of the exact arrangement of the symbols in the small notebook I'd borrowed from Amelie. Once that was done, I stared down at the circle, unsure of what else I was supposed to see in it. Drake sounded so positive when he said I'd find the answers in it.