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“Its Pete.” She put him on speaker. “Hey Pete.”
    “Hey, how are you guys doing?”
    She glanced at me and grimaced again. “I'm okay; a few cuts and bruises, but nothing to cry over. George, on the other hand—”
    I said, “I'll be fine, Pete…bumps, bruises, and cuts, an ordinary day at the office.” Billy chuffed loudly at that. “So, what's the story with the kid?”
    “Nothing yet. Aris is running combinations of the partial plate along with blue four-door sedans. The list is long and we need to sort through it to try and determine if a teenager is the registered owner, but it could belong to his parents or it could be stolen, so that makes it harder.” Pete sounded tired.
    “Pete, we need to find this kid. If the police catch him he'll no doubt just kill whoever he comes in contact with!” Billy said angrily.
    The thing that had been bothering me earlier in the night about the kid suddenly broke through. “Pete, it was the kid from the other night, the teenager we saw in the Tenderloin—remember?”
    Pete asked, “Yeah? I didn't see him…I mean, not up close. Are you sure?”
    “I'm sure. He had on different clothes, but I'm positive it was him. And you know what else?” I glanced at Billy. “I don't think he was in complete charge of the situation…he seemed sort of dazed.” Billy gave me a hard glare, but didn't say anything.
    Pete said, “Well, he was using that demon to hurt people, so we know he's a ghost killer, but maybe he was on drugs or something. I mean, you'd have to be pretty messed up to do that on purpose, right?” I couldn't have agreed more. “Listen it's late.” And it was, almost 2 a.m. “Why don't you two get some sleep and get back to the city in the morning? Hopefully we'll have some leads at that point,” he said through a yawn. Then he asked, “Did either of you see Mark when you were leaving the parking lot?” Pete had arrived at the resort with two other ghost killers…Mark was one of them.
    “No, why?” Billy asked suspiciously.
    “I haven't seen him since we arrived at the hotel. Jason, the other guy I had with me, the one that saw the kid drive off, said he thought he followed you two outside, but….” Pete yawned again. “I don't know. He got there on his own…maybe he saw the kid leave and took off after him. I'll try his cell again.”
    “Yeah sure,” I said. “You sound pretty tired yourself. You headed back tonight?”
    Pete laughed wearily. “On the road now, my friend.”
    “Good, drive safe,” Billy said, and disconnected the call.
    I looked around the room. It really was a dive and it smelled funny. I wanted to go home. Now.
    “I want my own bed…let's go. I'm wide-awake now; I'll drive.” I pulled myself up from the bed and headed to the bathroom. She didn't argue.
    We cleaned up our dinner trash, dropped the key with the night clerk, and were on the road in less than fifteen minutes. Billy was snoring softly in twenty minutes, and remained that way until we hit the toll booth of the Golden Gate Bridge. From there it was only another ten minutes to our building in Pacific Heights.

Chapter 6
    As I unlocked my apartment door, Billy gave me a concerned look and asked, “You going to be okay? You want me to stay with you?” I must have looked pretty bad. The hour long drive really wore me down, and the shellacking I'd taken the night before was catching up to me again. Billy was in no way the mothering sort, but she knew better than anyone what it was like to get your clock cleaned by a demon, and it was probably the only thing that brought out sympathy in her otherwise callous personality.
    “Naw,” I said tiredly. “I'll be fine. But don't tell Justine how bad off I am. I'll be better after some sleep.”
    Justine worried, and although I was sure Billy had texted her the night before to say she wasn't coming home, Justine was an early riser. Even though it was not quite 4 a.m., she would probably hear Billy come in and would