“Maybe,” I said, “but Aidan Christos called me in for this favor, so I’m gonna handle them.”

I told myself I was being chivalrous, not sexist, but truth was I couldn’t live with myself if I put Jane in harm’s way. Sometimes it was a good thing to pull what little sway my seniority in the Department gave me over her.

The semisolid form of a girl in her early twenties, roughly my age, faded into the chair at the center of the circle. Her long black hair was shagged out in a hipster mess and Jackie O sunglasses covered half of her face. She wore an ink-stained wifebeater that left her collarbones exposed, giving her an Iggy Pop look of emaciation. Her arms were covered in tattoos and one of her legs was irreverently slung over the left arm of the chair. Low-cut hiphugger jeans and heavy black biker boots completed her look. Not bad-looking for a hipster ghost. She didn’t move from the chair but cocked her head back and forth from side to side like some strange and curious bird.

“Jeremy?” she said, craning her neck forward. “Is that you, Jer?”

The floating mishmash of lamps overhead hitched in their circular pattern, several of them rattling against one another like glass teeth clacking together. A few colored panes of Tiffany glass came free and rained down onto the shop’s floor.

I collapsed my bat down and slipped it back into its holster at my side. It didn’t really feel like the right approach for dealing with a transparent biker chick. Instead, I advanced into the open circle and approached the chair.

At the sound of my footsteps, the woman tensed and stood up. She peered through her sunglasses in my direction as I approached. “Jeremy?” she asked once again. “I’ve missed you.” She gave a warm smile and the circle of lamps overhead rose to a steady glow and sped up in their swirling circular pattern.