Singe headed for the kitchen.

The two unfamiliar women made frightened squeaks when they saw my sidekick.

The Dead Man is a near quarter ton of defunct Loghyr, a species now little known and almost extinct. This one looks like a dwarf mammoth minus the hair and tusks. He went around on his hind legs when he was alive. His trunk-like snoot makes his yellowish gray, wrinkled face uglier than you can imagine. There is no twinkle in his eyes.

Loghyr don’t die like the rest of us. We croak; the part that isn’t meat and bone hustles off to whatever reward is on the schedule. Or sticks around to make life miserable for the living. Usually the same living we made miserable before we assumed room temperature. But Loghyr stick around and haunt their own corpses. For centuries, sometimes.

It’s been four and a half of those since somebody stuck a knife between my partner’s ribs.

I’m double haunted. Eleanor was a ghost when I met her, too.

I told the ladies, ‘‘He’s harmless.’’ Though a huge misogynist. I used to be able to wake him up just by bringing in a female of this caliber.

He’s getting used to me having an occasional companion of the obstinate sex. He gets along with Singe and Tinnie. Most of the time. The redhead remains strictly ‘‘Miss Tate,’’ however.

Though startled and intimidated, the new girls didn’t recognize a Loghyr when they saw one. So they weren’t scared.

‘‘Tinnie, my sweetest sweet, who might your friends be? And why do you turn up now, after weeks and weeks of sticking your tongue out and staying away?’’

Tinnie said, ‘‘Bobbi Wilt and Lindy Zhang.’’ Without indicating which was which. Because I didn’t need to know. ‘‘Guys, this here is six feet three inches of the prettiest ex-Marine you’re ever likely to find underfoot. Look at those big baby blues. Never mind the bad hair, the pockmarks, the scars, and all that stuff. That’s just normal wear and tear.’’