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can get him. I’m gonna make her bring him back. I’m gonna make her give me a chance.”
     
    “How, brother?”
     
    Demon’s emphatic resolve faltered a little and he looked back over at the pretty little house. “I…I’ll talk to her. Make her see.”
     
    “It’s a decent plan, Deme. But not outside her house in the middle of the night. We’ll go to her office when she’s working. You’re just gonna scare her standing out here like this. That’s not gonna help your cause.” He put his hand on Demon’s back. “C’mon, brother. Let’s head out. You can crash on my couch for a couple hours.”
     
    Demon didn’t respond, but Muse thought he was coming around. And then the front door of the house in question opened. Car or not, it looked like the little social worker was home, after all. Demon went stiff and took a couple of steps into the middle of the street. And then he stopped cold.
     
    So did Muse. Sidonie Tuladhar was storming off her porch and across her lawn.
     
    She was wearing nothing but a pair of flowered panties and a light-colored bra, maybe pink. And pointing a gun right at them, held in both hands. Looked like an old-school .38.
     
    “What the fuck’re y’doing here? Y’think you c’n scare me? Y’can’t scare me! Get the fuck OUT OF HERE!”
     
    She was drunk. Muse took a breath. There was a lot of bad going on right here. When Demon went forward, toward the drunk chick brandishing a handgun, the bad went to worse. The nearly-naked social worker stopped and locked her legs—looked like she’d taken a handgun class. He put his hands up, but she was staring at Demon. Muse wasn’t sure she’d even noticed him yet.
     
    “If y’think I won’t shoot you in the face, y’can try me!” She was on the sidewalk, in the overlapping circles of the streetlights. The gun shook in her hands, and Muse saw the muscles in her slim forearms bunch as she tightened her grip.
     
    The gun wasn’t manually cocked, though. That might give him some time.
     
    But Demon grinned and reached behind his back, and Muse knew exactly what the fucktard was thinking—he’d seen that the gun wasn’t cocked, too, and he was betting he could draw on her. He’d come carrying. Jesus. “Deme, ease off. We don’t need a shootout. Just put your hands up.”
     
    “You’re outta your mind,” he growled in response, but he held his hand at his hip.
     
    “You gonna shoot a naked girl in her front yard? Is that gonna get Tucker back?”
     
    That got him. Demon relaxed and turned away from the girl. “Fuck.”
     
    “Yeah.” He turned his attention to the girl. “Sidonie. Is that right?”
     
    Her eyes slid to him; she looked surprised to see him—and rightly so. They’d spent a surprising amount of time together in the past fifteen hours. “What?”
     
    “My buddy here is gonna get on his bike and go, okay?”
     
    She still had the gun on Demon, so Muse took a couple of steps toward her. She didn’t change her aim, but she watched him come. “And what are you gonna do?” Her speech was clearing up; adrenaline was probably kicking the booze out of her system.
     
    “I thought we could talk. Smooth this over.” A couple more steps, his hands still up. He was only maybe six feet or so from her now. Demon, finally being reasonable, had stood pat in the middle of the street.
     
    “Talk? Yeah, right. Fuck you. I won’t be bullied.”
     
    He took another step, a long stride, and she decided that he was the greater threat, arms up or not. She swung the pistol toward him, loosening her two-handed hold as she did so. He used the opportunity to lunge in and hit her trigger hand. He gave it a good pop, and the gun clattered to the sidewalk.
     
    But then she came in with her other hand and caught him under the chin—a direct hit to his button with the flat of her hand, sending his head flying sharply backward and dropping him to his ass. She’d rung his bell hard. What the fuck?
     
    Before he