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trains into the furniture, young man?”
    His eyes managed to widen even more, and his mouth formed into a little pout. One tiny shake of his head. “I didn’t do it, Mommy.”
    “Timmy...”
    “I didn’t!” he protested, little hands clenched in fists.
    I shot him a frown, then crossed the short distance to the coffee table and picked up the runaway train. “Then how did this end up all the way over here?”
    His face scrunched up with concentration. “Rolled there, Mommy,” he finally said, which, technically, was the absolute truth. “I was over there.” He pointed very firmly toward the front door.
    I sighed and considered pulling him into my lap and having the short-form discussion on responsibility, along with a toddler-level lecture on physics. More particularly, cause and effect.
    At the moment, though, I was more concerned with the local demon population than whether my son battered the furniture with his newly acquired train set. A dishrag around the table legs would save the furniture. Saving the world from the forces of darkness required a bit more finesse.
    “Just be more careful,” I said.
    “Okay, Mommy,” he said, giving me two thumbs-up.
    I shook my head, amused, and headed back to Eddie, but not before calling up to Stuart and Allie. It was already almost ten, and we needed to get out the door soon if we were going to make the eleven o’clock service.
    “Are you going to the library after Mass?” I asked Eddie. He’d met the librarian of our local branch library right before the holidays, and although he’d never come right out and said so, I could tell he was smitten. She worked the Sunday afternoon shift, so Eddie had a tendency to drift over there after church on a weekly basis.
    “I might do that,” he said, a false casualness in his voice.
    “Well, if you do,” I said, “maybe you could do a little research, too? Get on the Internet. Check encyclopedias?”
    “That’s what you got Ben for,” he said, referring to Father Ben, my still relatively green alimentatore. “This one, too,” he added, hooking his thumb toward Laura. “Me, I’m done with hunting. We already had this talk.” He squinted at me. “Or is your memory going?”
    “My memory is just fine,” I said. “And I talked to Ben about it last night when David and I went to the cathedral to hide the body.” A sad fact of my new demon hunting life is that Forza no longer sends out disposal teams. And since demons don’t just conveniently disappear into a puff of smoke with every kill, I’m left to clean up the mess. Not one of the better perks of the job, I assure you, but Father Ben had come up with the brilliant solution of hiding the bodies in the cathedral’s catacombs. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than digging holes in my vegetable garden. Especially since I was too domestically challenged to have a vegetable garden.
    “So Ben’s on the case then,” Eddie said. He turned to Laura. “You got your fingers dancing over the keyboard there, girlie?”
    “If you mean am I up for doing Internet research,” she answered, “the answer is yes.”
    He made a satisfied snort. “There you go,” he said to me. “You’re all set.”
    “I was kind of hoping for a little more input. Father Ben and Laura are both new at this. You’re a veteran.”
    “I was never much good at research,” he said. “And I’m out of this business. If I told you once, I told you a thousand times.”
    “Oh, really? I seem to remember you rushing into the middle of a demonic ceremony just a few weeks ago.” I crossed my arms over my chest and stared him down. “Or had you forgotten?”
    “That wasn’t about hunting,” he said. “That was about Allie.”
    “So is this,” I argued. “If demons are infesting San Diablo—”
    He cut me off with a wave of his hand and a snort. “Bah. This isn’t for Allie. It’s for David.” He looked at me over the rims of his reading glasses. “Or maybe it’s for your