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Hernando leaned into the open window of the car. “But they’re not in Heaven anymore, are they?” With that last cryptic comment he stepped back and let me raise the window. He and Rigby watched us drive off. They looked sort of forlorn standing there in the abandoned, broken parking lot. Or maybe it was just me feeling forlorn.

I looked at Bernardo. “Don’t kill anyone, okay?”

He slid back in his seat, snuggling against the leather. He looked more relaxed than I’d seen him in hours. “If they try to kill us?”

I sighed. “Then we defend ourselves,” I said.

“See, I knew you’d see things my way.”

“Don’t start the fight,” I said.

He looked at me with eager brown eyes. “Can I finish it?”

I looked back at the road searching for a parking space. Whatever spell Baco had been working was over. The atmosphere was a little easier to breathe. But there was still something in the air like close lightning waiting to strike. “Yeah, we can finish it.”

He started humming under his breath. I think it was the theme from “The Magnificent Seven.” To quote an overused movie line, I had a bad feeling about this.

37

BY THE TIME I found a parking space, Bernardo and I had a plan. I was an out of town necromancer wanting to talk shop with one of the only other necromancers I’d ever heard of. If it hadn’t been so damn close to the truth, it would have been a lousy cover story. Even being the truth, almost, it sounded weak. But we didn’t have all day, and besides, I don’t think being sneaky was a strong suit for either of us. We were both more comfortable with the bust-the-door-down-and-start-shooting school, than the concoct-a-good-cover-story-and-infiltrate.

Bernardo reached his hand out for me just before we crossed the street. I frowned at him.

He waggled his hand at me. “Come on, Anita, play fair.” He was holding his right hand out to me. I stared at the offered hand for a heartbeat, but finally took it. His fingers slid around my hand a little slower, and a little more proprietarily than necessary, but I could live with it. Lucky for us that I was right-handed, and Bernardo was left-handed. We could hold hands and not compromise either of our gun hands. Usually, I was the only one armed when I was cuddling, so it was only my gun hand we had to worry about.

I’ve dated men that I couldn’t walk hand in hand with, like an awkward rhythm between us. Bernardo was not one of those men. He slowed his pace to let me catch up to his longer legs, until he realized I was a step ahead of him, tugging on his hand. I have a lot of tall friends. No one ever complains that I can’t keep up.

The door to the bar was black and blended so well with the building’s facade that you almost missed it. Bernardo opened the door for me, and I let him. It might blow our cover to argue over who got to hold the door for who. Though if he had been my real boyfriend, we’d have had the discussion. Ah, well.

The minute I stepped inside the bar, no, the second I stepped inside the bar, I knew we were not going to blend in. So many things had already gone wrong. We were not so much overdressed as wrongly dressed. If Bernardo had ditched the black dress shirt and just worn the white T-shirt, and if it hadn’t looked fresh out of the box, then he might have mingled. I was so the only suit jacket in the room. But even the polo shirt and jeans seemed a little much beside what some of the women were wearing. Can you say, short-shorts?

A girl near us, and I meant girl—if she was eighteen, I’d eat something icky—looked at me with hostile eyes. She had long brown hair that swung past her shoulders. The hair was clean and shiny even in the dim light. Her makeup was light but expertly applied. She should have been deciding who to take to the prom. Instead, she was wearing a black leather bra with metal studs on it and matching shorts that looked like they’d been painted over her narrow hips. A pair of those clunky platform high-heels completed the look. Those platform shoes had been ugly in the seventies and eighties,