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Catholic Church doesn't mean I'd throw the baby out with the bathwater." She had to admit, though, that it was hard to believe in a better future for Detroit. If she lay in bed, sleepless in the early hours of the morning, she swore she could almost hear the brittle city rusting.
    "Just because the rich lady talks a nice line and built a big building with other people's money doesn't give her moral authority. It's a sociological fact: People get stupid in groups."
    "Maybe. But good things can happen when people get together, you know?"
    Brian leaned over, sniffed her hair. He grasped the sleeve of her robe and tugged her down to sit on the floor beside him. "You smell like oranges."
    Anya blushed. The change of subject wasn't unwelcome. Her attention was distracted as his fingers brushed aside the curtain of dark hair covering her jaw. He nibbled below her ear, sending ripples of anticipation through Anya's spine. She swung her legs into his lap, eager to touch and be touched by something real.
    "Hmm. Taste like oranges, too."
    His arm wrapped easily around her waist, and his lips began trailing up her jaw line to her lips. Anya sank into the kiss, tasting mint and heat in his mouth. Her fingers wound in his shirt. She could feel the quickening of his heartbeat under her palms as one hand slid under the collar of her robe, pressed against the bare flesh at the back of her neck. She yearned to feel his bare hands on more skin....
    Around her neck, she felt the salamander torque begin to yawn and stir.
    Go back to sleep, Sparky, she pleaded in the back of her mind. Not now...
    The phone rang. Reluctantly, Anya drew away. The universe was conspiring against her. She felt Sparky stretch and glide down her arm to the floor, where he watched Brian with half-lidded suspicious eyes.
    Brian reached for her. His eyes were shadowed in dark. "Can't it wait?"
    "No one ever calls me at home... not unless it's important."
    She climbed up from the floor and plucked the receiver from the kitchen wall. The phone, an old-fashioned turquoise corded handset, had come with the house and was older than Anya. Thus far, like the 1972 Dodge Dart she drove, it had proven impervious to Sparky's tinkering.
    "Hello." From the corner of her eye, she watched Sparky's tail lashing as he stalked around Brian. The salamander's attention was suddenly arrested as he looked past the man to the glowing rectangle of shiny new circuitry on the floor. Sparky leaned forward to lick the HDTV. "Sparky," she snapped, and he looked over his shoulder at her as innocently as a Rottweiler-sized fire elemental could look.
    "Kalinczyk?" the familiar voice on the other end of the line crackled with impatience.
    Anya pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead. "Yeah."
    "This is Marsh. There's been an incident at the Jasper Bernard scene."
    "What kind of incident?" Her brows knit together as her mind flashed through the possibilities. It couldn't have caught fire again--the scene had been cool throughout.
    "The house has been ransacked. The press is already here. Better put on your Wonder Woman boots and come down here ready to kick some ass."

J ASPER B ERNARD'S H OUSE WAS a hive wrapped in yellow fire line tape, surrounded by the buzz of voices. Anya elbowed her way through the throng of neighbors gawking behind the line in their pajamas and robes. The shellacked news reporter she'd seen earlier at the site was standing in front of the fire line tape, the lights from his news van illuminating the face of the house, a pump truck, a burned-out sedan, and two police cars at the entrance.
    Anya flashed her badge and ducked below the line. The reporter reached over the line with his microphone: "Nick Sarvos from Channel 7 News. Is it true that a man was burned to death inside?"
    Anya grimaced. She hated dealing with the press. Her mind froze under questioning, and she was always afraid of saying something monumentally stupid. There was nothing the press could do for her, so she