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her.”
    Hannah was surprised at the zing of jealousy that admission caused. Stupid! Carolyn was so damn sweet and pretty Hannah doubted there was a straight male on the planet who would kick her out of bed. Besides, it wasn’t as if Hannah had any interest in Jules. The guy was good-looking, but that was about all he had going for him.
    “So, Carolyn sent you here to look after me while I hunt my maker, is that the gist of things?”
    “In a nutshell.”
    “Of course you realize I don’t need your help.”
    “Of course,” she said and almost laughed at how concerned he looked by her easy agreement. She let her words hang for a moment just to savor his discomfiture. “You’re a lone Guardian in an unfamiliar city, hunting a Killer who’s way more powerful than you and who may be trying to set a trap for you. How could you possibly need any help?” She swigged the last of her beer, sighing in contentment. One thing she had to admit—it was fun to yank Jules’s chain. And easy, too.
    The dark, brooding look was back on his face. “I’ll find a way to get to him. And the last thing I need is a helpless mortal tagging along, getting in the way and distracting me.”
    “Yeah, that’s what you said last year, too. Remember? When you went running off to take on the Banger and commanded me to stay in the hotel?”
    He’d bullied and badgered her until she’d agreed to stay behind, but of course she’d been lying through her teeth. If she hadn’t arrived at the scene when she did, very likely there wouldn’t be a single Guardian left alive today.
    “You said yourself it was a lucky shot.”
    “Yeah, well, you make your own luck.” But she knew Jules would remain stuck on his ‘helpless mortal’ idea, so she decided to try another tack. “So tell me, do you know where Squires lives?”
    She could see at once that she’d hit a nerve. His face was too expressive to hide his chagrin. “Not at the moment, but I’ll find him.”
    “How?”
    Jules squirmed and didn’t answer.
    Hannah pounded her point home. “I already checked to see if he was listed in the phone book and came up with a big, fat nothing. So tell me, Sherlock, what’s your first step going to be?”
    He heaved an exasperated sigh and ran a hand through his hair, ruining its orderly disarray. “Okay, you’re right, I don’t know. I didn’t have much time for planning before I had to get out of town quick. But I’ll figure something out.”
    “Hmm. Too bad you don’t have a professional private investigator around to help you out.”
    “I’ll hire one!”
    “What? Hire a helpless mortal? One who doesn’t even know what he’s up against? Jules, that seems a bit shitty even for you.”
    He looked like he wanted to shake her. “How did Carolyn put up with you for so long? I swear, if you’d been my business partner, I’d have killed you before the first month was up.”
    “Yeah, I’m sure Carolyn felt that temptation off and on. But I was kinda handy to have around, so she let me live.”
    In truth, Carolyn was one of the few female friends Hannah’d had since her college days. Her family was a bastion of testosterone, her father a firefighter and her three brothers all policemen. Sometimes, she thought testosterone was a communicable disease and she’d caught it. She couldn’t quite get into all the girly stuff other women were into. Shopping was a painful chore that needed to be done, not an enjoyable social engagement. Cooking was best done by microwave with as little effort as possible. She’d rather watch Die Hard than Sleepless in Seattle, and she was a regular at Eagles and Phillies games. And that wasn’t even mentioning her smart mouth, which had on occasion lost her friends of both sexes.
    “What would be your next step if you were on this case,” Jules asked, every word dragged from his mouth with obvious reluctance.
    She shrugged. “I’d start by calling the Inquirer. If they did an article on Squires, they