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healer. Maybe Pal and I could get a twofer deal.
    The preserved bordello rooms upstairs were outfitted in a hodgepodge of old furnishings, everything from Victorian couches to a 1940s RCA phonograph. The peeling ceiling was gold-painted tin, and the windows were draped with lace and heavy red velvet curtains. Every lampshade had a fringe. Department store mannequins dressed in garish feather boas, beaded flapper dresses, and huge feathered hats stood as mute, dusty sentries in the corners.
    Spike bounced in Randall’s palm and pointed to a bedroom that had “Miss Kitty” painted on the doorin ornate pink calligraphy with desert roses sprouting from the “I”s. We stepped inside and found a relatively small room dominated by a brass bed covered in a rumpled handmade patchwork quilt. A wooden trunk at the foot of the bed was draped in a large lace doily. The walls were decorated in amateur paintings of cowboys and horses and photographs of ranch life that looked to be from the 1920s.
    The little mechanical lizard circled in Randall’s palm and made an excited clicking noise.
    “Huh.” Randall went over to the antique dresser and opened the bottom drawer. Inside were various articles of moth-eaten lingerie. He reached inside, apparently feeling around on the underside of the drawer above. I heard a faint rip as old tape or putty gave way, and Randall pulled out a quartz crystal that had been carved to look like a small phallus.
    “Oh, wow, the Warlock has one of those,” I said, instantly recognizing it as a venereal disease detector.
    “They’re handy, for sure.” Randall slipped the fetish into the thigh pocket of his cargo pants. “And it looks like Miss Kitty was probably responsible for the portals downstairs.”
    “Why in the world would a Talent work as a prostitute in a little Texas town?” I wondered aloud. “If she was powerful enough to create portals, surely she’d have better job options than
this
.”
    Randall shrugged. “Maybe she was trying to piss off her parents. Maybe she really, really liked sex with cowboys. Or maybe she was part succubus, and needed a steady supply of dude-sauce to keep her power up. Blood’s not the only fluid useful in necromantic spells, y’know.”
    He pocketed Spike and moved around the bed to push aside the curtain that covered the doorway to Kitty’s closet. A cloud of dust rose from the heavy pink brocade. Coughing, I followed him inside, and my stone eye instantly showed me the outline of a door on the far wall. This one had fancy paneling, as though it went someplace swanky.
    “Well, let’s see where this one goes.” I pulled off my glove, stuck my flame fingers into the edge, and pulled.
    The portal swung open, revealing an upscale hotel room beyond. The king-size bed was covered in a down comforter, and the flat-screen TV across from it was shiny and new. A black netbook slept on the mahogany computer desk, and a red Samsonite case sat on the luggage rack by the closed closet door. The room overlooked gleaming downtown corporate buildings; familiar, but I couldn’t quite place the skyline.
    Randall held up his hand to warn me to stay where I was. He cautiously stepped into the room and peeked around the corner into the bathroom. “Good, the guy’s not here.”
    “How do you know it’s a guy?” I asked from the portal.
    “Left his tighty whiteys on the bathroom floor. Or in this case, his tighty, browny streakies.”
    “Um, ew.”
    “Yeah, don’t go in there.”
    Randall crossed the room to the window, stared out at the skyscrapers, then picked up the hotel notepad that lay on the desk. His eyes lit up. “Toy store! This is the Alden Houston … Space City ParanormalDefense is just a few blocks away. We won’t have any problem getting back up to Dallas from here.”
    Grinning, he rejoined me in Miss Kitty’s closet and spoke the charm to close the portal. “Let’s go back to the Saguaro and get the others.”

chapter
four
Send-Offs
    R