“You’re Frost, right? Straight back,” he said, eyes wild. “Straight back! And hurry!”

“This is bad,” Cinnamon said, head craning back to look at the officer. “Rand’s sweet on ya, but we never gets special treatments from the piggies.”

“Don’t call them piggies,” I said, speeding down the tiny road.

“Why?” she asked, flicking an ear at me. “You knows they can’t hear us.”

“Really? So you knows that none of them are weres?” I asked, miming her broken diction. “You knows for sures?”

Her face fell. “No, I don’t.”

We bumped down a worn asphalt road through a canyon of winterbare trees, elaborate Victorian markers, and rows upon rows of Confederate graves. The road sank down, the graves grew smaller, more sad, and we rolled to a halt in a forest of headstones at the bottom of the hill between the Jewish section and Potter’s field.

What seemed like a thousand flashing lights waited for us: police cars, an ambulance, even a fire truck, surrounding a crowd of uniforms, paramedics and firemen gathered at the end of the road in front of the low brick wall that ringed the cemetery. Striding out of them was a well-dressed black man, sharp as a model and sexy as a movie star: Detective Andre Rand.

I opened the door, my boots crunched on gravel, and my vestcoat swished as I stepped out of the car, fhwapping behind me in the wind as I slammed the door shut. The officers stared. Their eyes narrowed. My normal getup was conspicuously out of place in this land of grey tombs and black uniforms. I’d been more comfortable talking to the buttoned-down principal of the school we’d just visited; now I just wanted to go and change.

“Hi, Rand,” I said, forced cheerful, putting my hand on Cinnamon’s shoulder as she materialized beside me. “What you gots-ahem. What do you have for me?”