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I wouldn’t ask, mostly because I had a feeling he was done with confessions for the moment. Having his astrological chart would help me almost as much as picking his brain…and it would be a lot easier to work with.
My cell phone rang, and I set down my soup spoon and picked up the phone.
Calvin.
“Hey,” he said, voice warm, sending happy little thrills all over me. “How are you doing?”
“I’m fine,” I replied. “But not as fine as I would be if you were here.”
“I know,” he said. “I wish I were there, too. But at least it looks as if we’ve got this meth thing pretty well locked down, so I’m hoping that means there won’t be anything to keep me from coming to dinner tomorrow night.”
“Well, that’s something,” I said. “You weren’t doing anything too dangerous, were you?”
He chuckled. “Doing dangerous stuff is part of my job, you know. But in this case, it was mostly chasing down a bunch of Breaking Bad wannabes. They weren’t too organized, and they weren’t armed, and now they’re all sitting in lock-up awaiting arraignment. That was probably my excitement quota for the month, unless you count helping Hector Salazar get his cows off our range — they’re always busting through the fences.”
I smiled, even though Calvin couldn’t see my expression. “Yes, that sounds like a real thrill a minute.”
“I much prefer busting cows to busting meth heads, that’s for sure.” He paused before asking, “Anything new on the demon front?”
A sigh I couldn’t quite hold back slipped from between my lips. “Not a lot. I’ve got the recording Brant Thoreau made the night he died, but I didn’t hear anything on it that offered any kind of a real clue.”
“It’s still quiet at the house?”
“I guess so,” I answered. “Or at least, I haven’t heard anything from my mother, so I assume that’s good news. She and Tom spent most of the day out, but I’m sure they must be back at the house now. I was planning to call in the morning to check on them.”
“And they know to get out if things get dicey?”
“I’m sure they do,” I said. “But I went over there with Sasha earlier today to get Brant’s things and his car, and it was absolutely quiet. More than that, it felt almost…serene. It was strange.”
Calvin was quiet for a second or two. Then he said, “What do you make of it?”
“I honestly don’t know,” I confessed. “Something about this whole situation feels off, but I can’t puzzle out what it might be.”
“Well, I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” he replied, his voice mellow, reassuring. “I’ve never met anyone with better instincts than you.”
The praise cheered me up, even as I thought he might be overstating things a bit. Sure, I couldn’t deny that my psychic powers gave me insights which might elude other people who didn’t have the same extrasensory gifts, but I still couldn’t stop myself from thinking that I didn’t yet have a handle on what was going on at the Bigelow mansion.
“Here’s hoping,” I said.
“You’ll do fine,” he told me. “Gotta go — miss you.”
He hung up then, and I held the phone for a moment before gently putting it down on the coffee table. I missed him, too, more than I wanted to admit. Our relationship had taken a quantum leap a few days earlier, but I hadn’t seen much of him since then, thanks to his work and the goings-on at my mother and Tom’s place. That he’d come right out and told me he missed me meant more than I could say.
Well, I’d see Calvin the next evening. That was twenty-four more hours than I wanted to spend away from him, but at least we had firm plans to see each other.
I supposed I had to be content with that.
The rain stuck around for the rest of the evening, and I went to sleep listening to the soft tap-tap of raindrops pattering against my bedroom window…only to be awakened a few hours later by my phone ringing on the nightstand.
I reached for it at once, my body thrumming with adrenaline. Calls in the middle of the night were never a good thing…especially when your mother and her husband were currently living in a house that might or might not be infested with demons.
Without looking at the screen, I put the phone to my ear. “Hello?”
“Selena.”
Tom’s voice. He sounded shaken.
“What’s the matter?”
