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thing. The man and his lady bought some popcorn, nice as you please. He fed her, all lovey-dovey, then suddenly he just...flipped. Strangled her right in front of my eyes, then did himself in, along with the popper on my cart.”
    “Did you see anything unusual about him?”
    “You mean besides crushing his lady’s throat with his bare hands?”
    “Besides that.”
    “Like what?”
    Hidden under a tightly woven cloak of shadows beside a souvenir kiosk, Zeke leaned forward in an effort to hear her.
    “Were you able to see the attacker’s eyes?”
    “Those crazy eyes.” The vendor made a gesture to ward off the evil eye. “That man, he stared straight ahead, like he was sleepwalking. Only he was sleep-strangling.” Then he shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe he didn’t want to share his popcorn.”
    Her snort covered his.
    “Can you remember if he said anything? Vocalized anything? Screamed?”
    “Just one thing—‘you’ve had this coming for years, you no-good, whoring bastard.’”
    Kendall’s brow puckered. “He said that to his female companion?”
    “That’s it.” The vendor nodded. “Like I said, he was fine one minute, a madman the next.”
    “I know this will sound strange, but was there anything hanging around him? Like fog or maybe a cloud of smoke?”
    Zeke couldn’t stop the wince. Way to sound crazy, lady .
    “What? There was nothing like that.” The vendor seemed to shrink behind his cart before he picked up its handles and began to trundle away. “I saw nothing like that and I want nothing to do with something like that.”
    “I didn’t mean to offend.” She took a quick step after him. “Forget about the cloud, it doesn’t mean anything. What about the masked man the security guard reported seeing? Did you see The Guardian Angel?”
    He almost lost his grip on the shadows veiling him. Well, well. Kendall Glynn was just chock-full of surprises, wasn’t she?
    The vendor kept going. “Don’t know anything about a masked man, or a security guard.”
    “Sir—”
    “You want to talk to the security guards, they have a kiosk across the street in the parking lot. I want nothing to do with this.” And with that, the vendor practically ran down the wharf.
    The curse that popped out of Kendall made Zeke grin. Then she turned with a resolute tilt of her chin he would have spotted a mile away. She was across the street before he knew it, and it didn’t take a huge leap to know her next stop was an interrogation session with any poor schmuck who happened to be on duty at—
    He sensed it before he saw it.
    The telltale ice pick stab behind his eyes screamed out the presence of a spirit. He spun wildly in search of it, only to move at top speed toward the geist no more than ten feet from Kendall. It was the same hideous thing he’d seen before—a hunchbacked, ogrelike phantasm whose aura popped and oozed with a sickly blight that spoke volumes of just how old the poor thing was. An old spirit meant bat-crap crazy and mean, and without a doubt this one was the meanest he’d ever encountered.
    No. Not just mean . Murderous. And that was a first for a geist.
    It was so hunched over it knuckle-walked. Its blurring movement shifted around Kendall as if looking for a chink in her armor, and its hesitation to get any closer was as baffling as it was unnerving. But that didn’t matter now. The geist couldn’t be allowed to attack her. Hell, it couldn’t be allowed to attack anyone . It had to be crossed over before all of heaven spotlighted San Francisco with its unforgiving light.
    But...it damn well better not attack Kendall.
    The geist seemed to become aware of his presence almost at the same time he’d noticed it. A massive ripple twisted the thing’s aura, the same bizarre heat wave distortion that made all his senses jangle. He blinked, nearly stumbling as his attention wavered.
    What the hell is that?
    Before he could puzzle it out, the geist pivoted with unexpected grace, its