I don’t know my ex’s real name. He first introduced himself as Chance; he claims he came by the tag from the silver coin he likes to toy with, rolling it across his knuckles, tossing it for a hundred and coming up tails every time. I’d pumped his mother for information, more than once, but she had a way of changing the subject that was downright uncanny. The most I ever got out of her was, “It would be dangerous if you knew his true name, Corine.”

Regardless, his presence in my humble shop in Los Remedios, two thousand miles from where I’d seen him last, could mean nothing good.

”You’re a hard woman to find,” he said, leaning up on my counter as if he thought I’d be glad to see him. “I could almost be hurt by that, Corine.”

Well, I couldn’t really argue, as I’d left him sleeping in my bed when I took flight. “What’re you doing here?”

“I need you to handle something for me, just one job. I wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t important.” Pleading, he fixed striated amber eyes on me, knowing I was a sucker for that look.

Or I used to be. I wasn’t anymore.

Chance wasn’t my manager any longer. Or my lover, for that matter. I didn’t want to handle charged objects, didn’t want to tell people their loved one had been strangled while wearing that sweater. I didn’t want to do that anymore.

We had a hell of a run, him and me. For as many bereaved families as we helped, we encountered neo-pagan witches, truck-driving mediums, guys who sold genuine lucky charms out of the trunks of their cars, and folks who simply defied description with what they could do and why they did it. Sometimes I felt like we might’ve even brushed up against angels and demons, slipping by beneath the hot velvet of a summer night.