He gave me a long, curious look, then made an an-noyed noise and let go of my arm as he squatted down to study the ash circle. "I told you I didn't kill her. I'm not going to harm you. Your fear of me is senseless."

What is it about scorn of any sort that makes your bravado fire up? My chin lifted at the arrogant tone in his back-to-being-sexy voice. "Yeah? Who said I was afraid of you?"

"I can smell your fear. What do you make of this?"

He gestured toward the ash circle. I glanced toward it and crossed my arms over my chest, trying to sniff the air around my armpit region without it being obvious I was doing a BO check. "It's an ash circle, inscribed with the twelve symbols of Ashtaroth. What does fear smell like, exactly?"

He frowned at the circle but didn't touch it. "Sexy."

I blinked a couple of times. (Like that was going to make me think better?) "What?"

He straightened up and turned toward me, and once again I was very much aware that I was alone in an apartment with a dead woman and a mysterious man who was much too handsome for my peace of mind. "It brings out the predator in me."

My eyes widened as he leaned toward me, his eyes a mesmerizing green that seemed to suck me into their cool depths. There was something about him that made every atom within me aware that he was a

man, and I was a woman, and there were certain fundamental differences between us that my body very much wanted to explore, regardless of the fact that he might be a murderer. "Oy."

He nodded, the thick black of his lashes emphasizing the purity of the green irises. "And because of the mas-culine nature of my reaction, you feel threatened on a feminine level. Thus you make jokes as a defense when others might feel it inappropriate to do so."

"Are you saying there's a guy/girl thing going on be-tween us?" Various parts of my body were pleading for just such an eventuality, but I firmly told those parts to behave themselves, and remember that the man they were lusting after was probably a murderer. "Are you saying that I'm afraid because you're a man and I'm a woman, and not at all because we're standing in front of a woman who was quite obviously murdered?"

His lips quirked. He looked back toward Mme. Deauxville. "No, I am not saying that. Is this circle closed or open?"

I looked down. It looked whole. "Looks closed to me. Um. Who are you?"

His gaze flickered around the room. "I might ask the same question of you."

"You might," I said, watching as he gave the circle a generous berth. He stopped on the other side of the body, in front of a gold-and-scarlet couch that matched the two other chairs in the room, frowning down at it. "But I asked first. So, who are you? Not that you have lo tell me, but I expect the police are going to want to know, so I thought you might just want to practice your alibi on me."

He gave me another one of his impatient looks, then reached into the breast pocket of his black leather jacket and pulled out a wallet, flipping it open to flash an official-looking identity card at me. "Drake Vireo. Interpol."

My mouth hung open in fly-catching position for a cou-ple of seconds before I realized it. "Interpol? The one that's like the international Scotland Yard? You're a detective?"

"Of a sort." He started to close his wallet.

"Wait a minute," I said, carefully skirting around the circle and Mme. Deauxville. "I didn't just fall off the stu-pid wagon. I want to see that up close."

He waved it toward the couch as I moved over next to him. "If the circle is still closed, how did the demon es-cape?"

There are times when a girl just has to have a good goggle. This was one of them. I stared, goggle-eyed. "What is it with everyone in this country, you're all demon-obsessed or something? What demon? What are you talking about?"

He made atck noise in the back of his throat. It ex-pressed all sorts of annoyance and impatience, with just a smidgen of an implied eye roll. "I am asking you what happened to the demon that was summoned by whoever drew the circle. If the circle is closed, as you say it is, then it would be impossible for the demon to leave, and yet the proof is before our eyes."

I looked at where he was pointing his wallet. Between the couch and the wall there was a black smudge on the floor, as if someone had rubbed charcoal on it. I looked at it for a moment, then back at Drake,

unsure of whether he was totally and completely mad, or if I was. I decided that since I'd known him the least amount of time, he got to be //. "You're serious, aren't you? You really think a demon has something to do with this? I'll admit that who-ever killed Mme. Deauxville did so in a manner that makes it look like the ritual destruction of a demon, but that doesn't mean that there was an actual demon in-volved."

One glossy black eyebrow cocked. "Ritual destruc-tion? How so?"

I gestured toward the body, pleased that all those years spent on my little hobby finally had a payoff. "The Circle of Ashtaroth beneath her feet with the twelve symbols of summoning, the way the body is hung from her hands bound behind her, and I'm willing to bet if you bend down and look at her chest, you'll find something made of silver piercing her heart. In other words, she was mur-dered in the style of the first of the Three Demon Deaths, only this woman was not a demon, which really is no surprise, since demons are nothing more than fiction."

Drake looked amused. "You don't believe in demons?"

"I'll take no for five hundred, Alex. Demons don't exist outside the minds of some pretty twisted and con-fused people."

His nostrils flared again. If I weren't so convinced he was stark, staring mad, I'd have admitted to myself that he even did a nostril flare well. "Are you trying to tell me that despite the evidence before us, you do not believe that a demon was recently called to this apartment?"

I pursed my lips, slowly moving away from him. No quick movements; everyone knew that was the key to keeping dangerously mad people calm. Slow and easy was the plan. "OK, you know what? I'm going to just scoot over to the desk where the phone is and call the po-lice. You can do your detective stuff while I'm calling."

"I've already called the police. They should be here in four minutes. Why do you hesitate to tell me what hap-pened to the demon? Did you have something to do with Aurora Deauxville's death?"

I stopped before the desk, trying to figure out whether I could make it to the door before he grabbed me. My gaze dropped to the case sitting on the chair. Rats. I wouldn't be able to make it without the aquamanile. "No, I just got here. I'm a courier. I was supposed to deliver a package to her. I don't know anything about demons or who would want Mme. Deauxville dead. But as we're on the subject, just what areyou doing here? I assume you aren't here in a professional capacity, because if you were, the homicide squad would be here, too. So, if you didn't kill her, you must have seen who did. She doesn't look like she's been dead too long."