I woke up with a pounding headache, a dry throat, and sore muscles. Squinting to adjust to the daylight, the first thing I saw was Jack’s face several inches from mine. I leapt backward instinctually, kicking Jack and startling him awake. He curled into a ball, holding his head.

  “What is happening?!” he groaned. “Were we poisoned…again?”

  “It’s a hangover,” I said, though my throat was so scratchy it was hard to talk. “More importantly, what did you do to me?” When I sat up, I immediately regretted it. My stomach felt like a washing machine that someone had put on spin cycle.

  “You wanted to go to sleep, so I put you to sleep. That’s all. I didn’t realize with the ring it would have an effect on me as well,” he said and then squirmed into the blanket until it was covering his entire body. His voice came out from the lumpy quilt. “This happens every time humans drink? Why would you do this to yourself? This is horrible.”

  “One of the many reasons I don’t drink much. Don’t use magic on me again.”

  “You said I wish to a faerie.”

  He was right about that, and I should’ve known better. I stood up slowly and shuffled into the living room to find my purse.

  After popping some acetaminophen, I got myself a glass of water and started the coffee. On the table next to my purse was the ocarina Maron had left and the thick, folded paper. I slid the ocarina into my purse and unfolded the paper to find a series of numbers and crude drawings.

  “Jack, come check this out,” I said.

  “No, I’m never getting out of bed again. You were right about the ring. It’s evil and must be cast into the fires,” he moaned from the bedroom.

  “Didn’t know you were a Tolkien fan,” I said, “It’s just a hangover. Drink some water, get some caffeine, you’ll be fine.”

  “Stop yelling,” he whined.

  “You are such a baby!” I said and marched into the bedroom to rip the blanket off. “We have work to do, unless you want this to happen to you again. Jack Frost, I command you to get up.”

  Still in a ball, he said, “Hailey, you’re so cruel.” Gradually, he straightened his legs and readied himself for moving.

  I went back to the kitchen, poured us both coffee and waited. He walked in and stood over me, looking down at the folded paper. “What’s that?”

  “Maron found it with the cultists, bunch of numbers and drawings, does it mean anything to you?” I asked.

  “I think I’ve seen that drawing before,” Jack’s eyes tried to focus, but were unsuccessful. He sat down and held the cup of coffee I offered him with both hands. “Yep, that’s Egyptian hieroglyphics.”

  “Hmm.” I went to my phone and looked up anything that had to do with Egyptian frogs. “Hequet,” I read to Jack, “Egyptian goddess of regeneration and rebirth. Apparently, when the Nile was about to flood, the Egyptians would see a bunch of frogs.”

  “I don’t think she’d be a fan of mercury and lead poisoning,” Jack said. He rubbed his temples and leaned onto the table. “But, after what we saw last night, I gotta admit those cultists are legit. They worked up enough magic to change the beignet guy into a monster.”

  “Speaking of, we should probably figure out what to do with the mess downstairs,” I said. I willed myself to stand up and get my shoes on.

  “If I smell that thing again, I think I’ll puke,” Jack said, but followed suit.

  With each step down, I dreaded revisiting the gory scene from the night before. I also wasn’t sure what to do about it. Would I call the police? Even if I called anonymously, they’d certainly come to our door to ask if we heard anything. After being attacked by the cultists yesterday morning, even if they didn’t suspect we had anything to do with the cult, they’d bring us in and likely keep tabs on us. I wasn’t prepared to be restricted that way, and I also didn’t want to be charged for murder of the shopkeeper if things went south.

  My memory of the events, like the faces of the cultists, was also muddled from the drinking we had done that night. I decided it was for the best, since I didn’t want to remember the details of how people looked while they were eaten alive. I could feel the acid in the back of my throat when I recalled the smell the monster emitted and the way it felt to slide the blade into it.

  “I hope Maron had the sense to lock up when he left,” I said in an attempt to get my mind off of it.

  When we reached the bottom of the stairs, I stopped so abruptly, Jack walked into my back. The room was not how we left it. The remains of the frog monster and the cultists were gone. The floor had been meticulously cleaned. All of the frog paintings and cult paraphernalia were gone. Even the tables had been moved to their usual location. The entire room was immaculate, but I could still see the crack in the tile from where the frog had landed.

  “Did the cultists come back?” I asked, “Maron wouldn’t have done this.”

  “Maybe you should use that little clay instrument he gave you and ask him?” Jack offered, but I ignored him.

  “Do you think it was the Lutins?”

  Jack shrugged. “One less thing to worry about.”

  “That’s it? We’re just going to move on like none of that happened last night?” When I raised my voice, Jack put his hand to his head.

  “Pretty much,” he mumbled while squinting at me.

  “I stabbed something that used to be a someone to death. It can’t just disappear.” I wasn’t sure who I was trying to convince, but I needed there to be something left from what I had done or else it felt inconsequential.

  “The guilt doesn’t go away, if that’s what you’re wondering. No matter how many you kill or how truly terrible they were,” Jack said quietly with his eyes half shut as if he were slipping into a dream.

  Just then, my phone buzzed from my pajama pocket. I answered it. “Lopes?”

  “Chika, are you coming to my party or what? Everyone’s asking about the newbie that got bit by the rabbit on her first day and was then in a shootout her second.” It was hard to hear Lopes over the background noise.

  “Uh, yeah, we’re just getting up,” I said.

  “God, to be young again. It’s almost noon,” Lopes said.

  “We’ll be there in a bit.” I hung up the phone and met Jack’s eyes.

  “Why are we going to a party? I thought we were done with parties for a while?” Jack asked, his body hunched as he climbed back up the stairs.

  “We are done with drinking for a while, but this is a party full of detectives, and we have a puzzle to solve,” I said, following behind. “We could use their help.”

  “Oh sure, why don’t we just tell them I’m a faerie and we watched a bunch of cultists turn a man into a huge frog before we froze it and stabbed it to death. They’ll have us committed or locked up for drugs. They’re cops.” Jack walked into the living room and plopped down on the couch.

  I went to the bedroom and found that the green sundress from the other day had been laundered. After throwing it on with the floppy hat again, I went to the kitchen and poured some milk into a bowl. I searched through the cupboards until I found honey to add to it. I took the liberty of removing a cookie from the jar on the counter and left it on the table along with the milk.

  “Oh come on, those are my cookies,” Jack said.

  “Don’t be ungrateful,” I said knowing full well that he would understand I was referring to the Lutins. If you didn’t thank helpful house faeries properly, they were likely to turn on you and make your life miserable. “Get dressed, we’re going to the party.”

  Then I searched around the apartment for something I could give to Lopes as a gift. Amongst the assorted potted plants, I found a purple orchid that I thought would do the trick, so I tucked it in my arm and we were underway.

  I decided there was no time like the present to give the trolley a go, so we waited at one of the stops. Although my head was starting to feel better, my stomach was still a bit wonky. Jack stood next to me wearing dark sunglasses and a fitted white t-shirt like the one that had been stained with his blood the previous day.

  When the trolley stopped, people rushed on. Jack and I must have looked as hungover as we felt because the driver lifted his blue cap up to eye us. He stopped us in the doorway.

  “Don’t ya go throwing up in my trolley, ya hear?” he said.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Jack said confidently.

  However, after taking our seats in the overly warm cramped car that was winding around on a track, Jack was looking more green than his usual pale white. I grasped the plant on my lap with both hands hoping not to tip dirt all over the trolley when it turned a corner.

  “So, what else do you think the cultists want? They already summoned their frog thing,” I said, trying to keep Jack’s mind off of the twists and turns through the dense city.

  “The shopkeeper said he was the avatar of whatever it is they’re summoning, so they aren’t done,” Jack reminded me.

  It had been a rough night, so I forgave myself for misremembering that detail. “Right, it would be good to stop them before they finish what they’re trying to do. Not to mention, it would be nice to stop the cultists from killing themselves.”

  Jack shook his head. “Human lives are so short already, I will never understand why you’re all in such a rush to end them.”

  “I think this is our stop,” I said while looking at my phone.

  As soon as we were off of the trolley, Jack locked arms with me. I wasn’t sure if he was hoping I’d keep him steady or if he didn’t want to pay attention to where we were walking, but I didn’t mind since it was another hot day and his arm was always cool. It was only about a block to Lopes’ apartment.

  This side of town lacked the cutesy townhouses and had more blocky houses converted into apartment buildings. Lopes lived on one side of a two family house with a chain link fence surrounding it. On Lopes’ side was a vast array of yard decals from glass butterfly balls and hummingbird feeders to cute gnome statues that reminded me of the Lutins standing in well-maintained grass. In direct contrast, the entire yard of Lopes’ neighbor was overgrown with tall weeds. There were no decorations and the steps leading up to the front door sloped with wear. The front door on that side was much larger than the door to Lopes’ apartment, and looked out of place from the rest of the building.

  Before I could knock on Lopes’ door we were greeted by the low bark of a large dog, and Lopes’ voice telling it to be quiet. When Lopes appeared, she was wearing a tight dress with red roses on it and a plastic crown. Her short hair had been curled into a bob, and her nails sparkled. I thought she looked nice.

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  “Happy birthday!” I said while holding the orchid up.

  “You made it,” Lopes said. “That’s a lovely flower, thank you.” She opened the screen door to let us inside and took the flowers. “I’m sorry to be so pushy about you coming. It’s just how I am, like this mutt!”

  The large, grey pitbull mix pushed past Lopes and jumped up on me, scratching my arms as it slobbered on my face. Jack slipped behind me to avoid the same fate.

  “OK, OK. Down Daisy. Get down,” Lopes said while pulling her dog away from me. “Everyone’s out back.” She placed the flowers on her front table.

  “Not a dog person?” Jack whispered knowing all about the trauma of my last case.

  “Nor rabbits nor frogs,” I said.

  “You’re going to run out of animals.”

  We walked through the first floor of Lopes’ apartment which was basically a living room and kitchen. The walls were brightly painted in reds and yellows. Cutsie signs like “Home is where the dog is,” were hanging above the dog’s food dish. I knew the hangover was fading, because my mouth was watering from the smell of nachos covered in cheese and jalapenos. Beyond the back door was a fenced-in backyard. An awning shaded a cement patio with a table and chairs and a picnic table with an umbrella was just past it. All along the sides of the walls were raised gardens of fruits and vegetables—tomatoes, strawberries, and cucumbers.

  Jack had to avoid hitting his head on hanging reflective ornaments hung from the awning as we walked out into the heat. Stevens and Chen were drinking iced tea at the picnic table. Lacroix was wearing a Hawaiian shirt with flamingos on it and talking to Martin who had her brown hair tied up tightly and was holding a beer. There were two other guests I was unfamiliar with, but they looked like brothers and had similar features to Lopes’, so I assumed they were her family.

  I sat at the table across from Chen and Stevens and grabbed a nacho from the bowl in front of them. Stevens shifted uncomfortably and stopped talking. Chen grinned at Jack as he sat beside me. Lopes pulled a lawn chair next to the table and offered us iced tea.

  “Get this, Stevens was at that roof party with the snow,” Chen said elbowing Stevens. “You know, the one I told you about. Isn’t that crazy?”

  “I wasn’t there when it snowed though,” Stevens mumbled. “I left after Lillith ditched me.”

  “I told you she was no good for you,” Lopes said. “I have real nice cousin lookin’ for a good guy. I could give her your number.”

  “I think I’m going to take a break from dating for a little while,” Stevens said.

  “You have any cousins for me?” Chen asked.

  I couldn’t hear what Lacroix was talking about with Martin, but the other two guests joined the conversation. The iced tea was sweet and refreshing, but I could feel sweat dripping down the back of my dress.

  “I would never do that to my cousins…or you,” Lopes said and then burst out laughing.

  Chen joined her with a chuckle and then said, “Not all of us have handsome men showing up to see them at work.”

  Lopes kicked Chen under the table.

  “I meant her fiance, not her ex-boyfriend. He came to see her the first day, remember?” Chen clarified and then winced as he was kicked again. “Oh, shoot.”

  If I were a cruel person, I could have acted as if Chen had committed a social faux-pas. In some cases, an engaged woman may not want her fiance to know about her ex-boyfriend’s unexpected visit. Lopes was staring daggers into Chen who appeared remorseful. Before I could open my mouth to relieve them, Jack spoke.

  “You’re talking about Maron? We spent last night with him. He really is fun to be around. Too bad Hailey made him leave,” Jack said while poking the ice cubes in his tea with a straw.

  All three of my coworkers looked like those stress relief toys where the eyes bulge out when squeezed. Jack had made it sound as though we were starting a thruple. I could feel my face burning red.

  “It’s not, that’s not…” I tried to explain but couldn’t figure out how to tell them about the time we spent with Maron without discussing faeries or frog monsters.

  “I would love to hear more about this,” Chen said, leaning elbows onto the table and putting his face in his hands between them.

  I was rescued by Lacroix’s knack for perfect timing. He walked over to the table with a beer in one hand and said to me and Jack, “How are you two holding up after the incident yesterday?”

  At first my mind went to the frog monster I’d cut to pieces, but then I remembered having to witness the death of Alicia, which was also traumatic. “I could be better,” I said honestly.

  “The counselor should be calling you for an appointment, and you might want to talk about who they could recommend for your fiance too,” Lacroix said. Then as if he had been reminded, he asked, “Hey, Chen, you ever get those mercury and lead poisoning results back?”

  “Yeah, unfortunately, I found elevated levels of lead in all of us. No mercury, though. I was about to call the city water again when Herbert came out and told me not to cause a panic. He took all my data and said he’d do the follow-ups. I already made my doctor’s appointment, and I’m taking iron supplements. I suggest y’all do the same.”

  “So you gave him everything?” Lacroix asked.

  “Yeah, what was I supposed to do? He’s been looking to fire me since I started,” Chen said.

  “I hate that guy,” Lopes said and mumbled a curse in Spanish beneath her breath.

  “When I started he told me I should’ve gone for a badge like a real man instead of hiding in a lab,” Stevens said.

  “Herbert’s a dick!” Martin yelled from the other table, but didn’t come over to join the conversation. She was in between the brothers now, sitting with her legs propped on a planter beside her.

  “If Herbert sits on it, I’m making an anonymous phone call to health departments,” Lacroix said.

  “You should, but can we not talk about work?” Lopes said, “It’s my birthday! Jose, turn the music up.”

  “Your neighbor works nights though,” Jose warned.

  “Fine, turn it up a little.”

  There were some speakers on the table next to the house that had been playing salsa music quietly. Jose took out his phone and it got louder.

  “Come on Detective, show me your moves.” She grabbed his hands and the two of them danced together. Martin cheered and clapped before going back to her conversation with the brothers.

  “Now’s as good a time as any,” Jack said. His tea glass was empty, and he was likely fed up with sitting in the heat.

  “For what?” Chen asked.

  I tried not to be annoyed about such an awkward transition. “Uh, yeah, well, it’s just this mystery game we are playing.” I recalled seeing an ad for a game you can sign your friends up for and they are mailed pieces of a mystery to solve, so I described that to Chen and Stevens.

  “I think I’ve heard of those,” Stevens said, wiping away the steam from his glasses with his striped polo shirt.

  I pulled the paper out of my bag. Chen and Stevens leaned over it to get a better look.

  “Are those hieroglyphics?” Stevens asked. “Chen, do you know how to read those?”

  “Right, because I’m Chinese I know every language, including dead ones,” Chen said and turned his nose up dramatically with a “humpf.”

  “I thought you said you almost became an archeologist, and you were big into Egyptian history,” Stevens said, unfazed by Chen’s behavior.

  “Aww, you listened to me. That is such a charming quality in a man,” Chen said. He leaned over the paper, suddenly giddy. “Yes! I can translate. This is so fun. Never thought I’d put my undergrad work to use. I need a pen and paper.”

  “I wonder what the numbers are?” Stevens asked.

  Chen asked Lopes for writing supplies, interrupting her and Lacroix’s dance.

  Lacroix came back to our table and peered at the paper. “Looks like latitude and longitude,” he said.

  Stevens was quicker to the draw than me. He took out his phone and looked the coordinates up on a map. By the time Chen came out of the house, Stevens was able to write down several addresses. Chen was translating each picture into a letter or syllable. All of us were hovering over him.

  “Sacrifice, Sacrifice again,” he read outloud, “Few more Sacrifices, then Avatar, Plague, Mass Sacrifice, Advent.”

  “Those addresses look familiar…” Stevens said as he wrote them down, but never managed to finish his train of thought.

  “What are those symbols on the corners?” Jack asked, “Looks like a sun?”

  “Time of day, I think,” Chen said.

  “Where’s this?” I asked, not liking the sound of “Plague,” and hoping we could figure out what the cultists were planning before they unleashed it.

  “The cemetery with the giant eyesore,” Lopes said, “Nicolas Cage, you know the actor, bought up a bunch of plots and had a big stupid pyramid built there. Rich people get away with anything.”

  “We’ll have to check it out,” I said while giving Jack’s hand a squeeze beneath the table.

  “We could go now,” Lopes said. “It’s not that far, and I gotta take Daisy for a walk anyway.”

  “Oh, no, I don’t think…but your party.” I tried to come up with any reason I could to keep the others away from the cemetery, since I wasn’t sure what kind of cultists or monsters would be there.

  “Don’t you have to go to these locations to solve your mystery game?” Chen asked.

  I didn’t have time to respond. Lopes was already putting covers on food, and calling for her dog to meet her at the door.

  “I’m bored. Let’s take this party on the road.” Lopes then said, “Whoever wants to stay can.. We’ll be back soon.”

  “I could use the exercise,” Lacroix said with a shrug.

  “I’m definitely coming.” Chen had already stood up. “And so is Stevens.”

  “Oh, no, I should really head home,” Stevens said.

  “You head home now, and I’m gonna make you relabel all your slides from the last case,” Lopes said, “Your handwriting sucks.”

  I was at a loss. The forensics crew had helped me decipher the cult’s paper, so part of me was glad I showed it to them, but I had no idea what we were walking into. Jack had also been unusually quiet through the whole conversation.

  Before long, I found myself walking down the sidewalk after Lopes, her dog and the majority of my coworkers. The only ones who stayed behind were Martin and Lopes’ relatives who seemed to be hitting it off fairly well. Jack was starting to hunch on our walk, so I locked elbows with him to keep him going at the swift pace Lopes was setting. All the way she was chatting about how she had grown up in that neighborhood and all the changes that had happened. Meanwhile Daisy did her best to drag Lopes on side trips to sniff every weed, discarded burger wrapper, and crack in the sidewalk.

  When we approached the iron gates to the cemetery, Jack was looking worse for wear. Through the black bars I could see the mini mausoleums, most of them made of a white stone. They had varying degrees of decoration: some had miniature towers and columns while others had angels carved into them. I’d always admired the artistry that went into gravestones, but these were unlike anything I had ever seen. In the distance, between the aging rectangles there was a sharp, stark white point that stood out like a buoy in a lake.

  “That really is an eyesore,” I agreed with Lopes' earlier comment.

  “Let’s get a better look,” Chen said and strolled through the open gates with Stevens beside him.

  “I gotta stay out here with Daisy. No dogs allowed,” Lopes said. “But you have fun.”

  Lacroix and Lopes stood by the gates chatting about changes to the neighborhood that would be of no interest to anyone who wasn’t from the area. I started to walk toward the cemetery but my arm stopped me. Jack remained standing in place. His eyes were on the black iron spears that made up the fence wrapping around the entire cemetery. Even though the iron fence appeared to be old, someone had gone through the trouble of repainting and maintaining it. I always wondered if graveyard fences were meant to keep people out or to keep something in.

  “Not going in there,” Jack said without leaving any room for argument.

  “You’re not?” I let my arm slip out of his and then asked, “What about this?” I held my hand up with the ring to remind him about his new magical immunity. To the others, I supposed it seemed as though I was pulling the fiance card.

  “Right,” he stood still, weighing his options.

  “‘Ain’t nothing wrong with being uncomfortable around a cemetery,” Lacroix finally said. “I’ll go with O’Malley, he can stay out here with Lopes.”

  “Never would’ve taken Jack Frost for a coward,” I teased as I walked through the gates with Lacroix. It wasn’t possible for me to hide my annoyance that the one person I wanted by my side to help figure out the case or fight a frog monster was too chicken to pass through an iron gate. I knew I could have ordered him to do it, but if my earlier comment made me look like an over-controlling fiance to the rest of the group, I couldn’t imagine how abusive it would look for me to order him to do something. It also didn’t sit right with me to force him that way.

  As we walked through the iron gate, I regretted my decision. The slight hill at the front of the graveyard made the entrance disappear from our line of vision. We were surrounded by an eerie stillness. The heat haze was distorting the mausoleums in the distance, and the ominous gravesites provided no shade from the summer sun. Visibility in the graveyard was poor, causing me to lose sight of Chen and Stevens when they turned the corner ahead of us toward the pyramid. I knew there could be cultists or something worse hiding behind any one of the mounds we walked between, and Lacroix’s flamingo shirt did not ease my concerns like his gun would have. Even though interrupting their ritual was my prerogative, I secretly hoped we had either missed the cultists or they hadn’t arrived yet.

  When I heard Stevens scream in the distance, I knew I had made a big mistake.