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“I believe she’s rather a problem for all of us.” Victor shimmied deeper into the tight space, dancing with Daisy, and I followed, closing the door behind us. Under the single naked bulb, we all shuffled in.

“Demon, move over,” Victor urged.

“I can’t.” Zee had already squished himself into a gap between two shelves.

“I need to place the body behind you,” Victor explained. “To do that, you have to step aside.”

“I’m fuckin’ trying.” He scooted to his right, shuffling around, and Victor scooted to his right, also shuffling, with Daisy pinned between them in some sort of macabre threesome waltz.

“This is a terrible idea,” I muttered, and spied a cabinet at the back. It wasn’t big, and only came up to Zee’s hip, but it could hold a folded corpse. “Try the cabinet,” I told them.

They shuffled some more, bumping and growling. A wooden broom skidded sideways along the wall. A shelf unit rattled under Zee’s elbow, spilling cleaning bottles. This room had seemed a lot larger without four people in it.

Zee bent, opened the cabinet door, then promptly shut it again. He straightened, eyebrows pinched close. “Uh, okay, but you know there’s a portal in there, right?”

“A what?”

“Big swirly hole?”

I sighed and rubbed my face. Why did all our problems have to happen at once? You try to do one simple little murder . . . and it always ends up complicated. “Wait. Let me see.” For me to get anywhere near it, we all had to shuffle around in a jerking circle of bodies until I finally reached the cabinet, and opened it.

It’s not that I hadn’t believed Zee—portals weren’t new to us. But now?!

Sure enough, inside was a swirling, heaving, beating mass, just like the one that had hovered over my bed not so long ago. At least this one was much smaller.

I shut the door again.

Zee side-eyed Victor.

“The portal has nothing to do with me,” Victor replied, hiking Daisy higher against his chest.

“Like it wasn’t anything to do with you last time?” Zee huffed.

“The simple solution is to go through it,” Victor said. “You’ll not find Reynard Technologies at the other end because if you recall, we destroyed it.”

“Go through it?” Zee exclaimed. “Can you not see my fabulous red suit? Naw dawg, I’ve watched this movie and the demon gets lubed. You’re the dominant one, you control the lube, you penetrate first.”

Victor’s eyes narrowed. He struggled again to heave Daisy’s awkward body upright. “You entered the last portal without a second thought.”

“Yes I did, and I learned a valuable lesson. You should be proud.”

“I’ll do it.” I opened the cabinet door again.

“No!” they both barked.

Zee’s tail whipped out and swatted the cabinet door shut. “No fuckin’ way. Not gonna happen. Who cares where it goes, right? Shove the preteen in—poof—trash gone, problem solved.”

That would be a convenient solution. But shoving corpses into random holes was almost as bad as entering a portal without knowing what was on the other side. I glanced at Victor.

“Frankly,” he sighed. “I do not have any better ideas, and every second we spend arguing in this closet risks our discovery.”

“I don’t know. Shouldn’t we see where it goes first?” I asked. “What if it comes out right over the police commissioner’s desk—the vice commissioner’s desk? We uh . . . we had the last one arrested.”

“That is highly unlikely,” Victor said.

“As unlikely as finding another fuckin’ portal in the hotel’s housekeeping closet?” Zee asked. “Ugh. Fuck. Fine. Step aside.” Zee shrugged off his red jacket and handed it to me, leaving him impressively bare-chested. We shuffled against each other, trying to get Zee back in position at the front of the cabinet.

“Hm, hello there, Kitten,” he purred, pressed up close against my chest. “Snug fit.” His eyebrows jumped suggestively.