The drop was scheduled to take place at 6:30PM in Crab Park, a stretch of green on the edge of Gastown. I stared out the window at the crowds milling on the sidewalks in Vancouver’s downtown east side. It was home to our most marginalized citizens, many of them homeless, drug addicted, or forced to turn to prostitution to survive. After passing one of the open “markets,” with the goods on offer set out on blankets on the grimy sidewalk or stuffed in trash bags and shopping carts, we hit the overpass leading to the waterfront park.

Chinese stone lions carved in intricate detail flanked each side of the road like sentinels. Beyond it, the Burrard Inlet winked blue in the sunlight.

Rohan parked my Honda, the more nondescript of our cars, in a small lot across from the park facing a stand of trees. To our left were the train tracks with an endless stretch of parked railcars, and behind that, gentrified condos in retrofitted brick buildings that still bore traces of their original use. Faded ads painted directly on the bricks proclaimed “janitorial supplies” or “wholesale grocers.”

The most mouthwatering smell of BBQ hit us when we exited the car.

We looped around to the water side of the park. Shipping containers in rusts and greens were stacked under the towering cranes at the port terminal directly east. There was the occasional distant siren and scrape of metal wheels and pulleys from the cranes.

Cyclists and joggers used the seawall path, exercising to the cry of seagulls. This stretch of the seawall was practically empty compared to deeper in the downtown core to our west. Even fewer people were in the park itself. It was hard to believe that thousands were close by in densely packed glass office towers, under the towering sails of the Pan Pacific hotel that was designed like a giant ship, or milling around the plaza that was home to the Olympic flame from when we’d hosted the 2010 Games.

Mounds of bright yellow sulfur were stockpiled across the Inlet, with the North Shore mountains looming over it all.

I buttoned up my cardigan against the breeze drifting off the water.

Even though Ro and I had shown up to the drop early, we had no idea if the park was already being watched. Crab Park itself wasn’t particularly exciting. Mostly grass, there was that one stand of trees with a scraggly rock garden. Some vagrant with matted hair and dirty clothes slept the snorey sleep of the drunk on one of the scattered wooden benches.

I had to check twice to confirm it was Drio, then I grimaced like a snotty brat. “Do we have to stay here?” I picked up my feet, stepping gingerly like the park could give me cooties. “I want ice cream.”

“Anything for my girl.”

Gagging loudly at Ro’s earnest–and bullshit–tone would have blown the charade so I settled for a soft snort.

We followed the path up to the small stone marker anchoring the rock garden, stopping to guess the language written on its plaque. Really we were checking on the navy backpack full of cash that Drio had tossed into the bushes under a tall pine tree behind the monument. He’d gotten here a while ago with the cash-filled backpack, put it in the drop spot, and then hung around in his guise as a homeless man to keep an eye on it until Candyman showed with the drugs. It was beat up and dirty enough that no one was going to want to abscond with it. To the casual observer, it would look like the backpack had been stolen and dumped here.

Keeping up my whiny persona, I made Rohan go back to the car.

“You sure Drio will spot the guy? His eyes were closed.” I wriggled in my seat.

“Are you going to fidget the entire time?”

“It’s possible.” My stomach growled and Ro shot me an exasperated look. “What? I’m hungry.”

“I’ll feed you after.” He reached across me and rolled up the window. Not that it helped because the car now smelled of grilled meat.

I pulled a granola bar out of my purse. Ro gazed longingly at it and even though I tsked him, I slapped the extra one I’d started carrying for him into his palm.

He flipped over the package. “This is a real granola bar. Not even dipped in chocolatey coating or with a ton of chemicals and sugar.”

“Yeah, you’ve broken me. Happy?”

“Yup,” he said, munching away.

The drop time came and went. At 6:40, a black Trans Am came off the overpass and turned the corner by the trees to the park. It was out of our sight line but three minutes later, Drio texted the word Go.

The Trans Am must have pulled a U-turn because it blew by us as we pulled out of the lot. Rohan proved quite adept at blending in traffic farther back, while keeping the car in view.

“Trained, were we?” I said.

“Oh yeah. The driving module rocked.”

Hmm. Maybe I could make them teach me all the cool things I’d missed. Not until I’d exposed all the corruption and destroyed Rabbi Mandelbaum obviously, but after that. It was important to make plans for the future.

I fiddled with the radio until I found Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage.” I relaxed back against my seat, planting my feet on the dashboard. “Appropriate music achieved. Car chase away.”

The Trans Am darted down Powell Street. Rohan trailed it, keeping to just above the speed limit with deft surety. Our path took us past one-storey businesses painted in colorful murals from the yearly mural festival, Sugar Mountain tent city set up across from the sugar refinery, and a jumble of auto repair shops, light industrial factories, and the microbreweries popping up everywhere in town.

We turned left. Traffic slowed to a crawl, down to a single lane due to construction. I drummed my fingers on the door. “I could run after it faster.”

Rohan honked at the bus that cut in front of us, blocking our view of the Trans Am. For several tense blocks we couldn’t tell whether or not the car had turned off anywhere, but we caught up with it around the back of Playland.

Right before the Second Narrows Bridge, the driver cut across two lanes of traffic to the off-ramp. Rohan veered sharply and I careened into the door. “We’ve been made,” he said.

The Trans Am blew through a three-way stop, flying under an underpass and whipping down a narrow service road.

I pointed out the window. “À la peanut butter sandwiches.” I blew out one of the Trans Am’s back tires. The car fishtailed, but the driver regained control.

I fired again and he jumped a curb, drifting sideways into a parking lot and crashing into one of the trees planted in a semi-circle along the fringes. The hood crumpled with a hiss.

Rohan screeched to a stop. “Nice work, Mumford.”

“‘Amazing Mumford,’ thank you very much.” I grinned, happy he’d gotten my Sesame Street reference. Flinging my door open, I strolled toward the car and the driver scrambling out, who sported a Metallica T-shirt and a mullet. The haircut was evil, but he didn’t sprout horns or shoot fire and pestilence.

“You human?” I said.

“The fuck kind of question is that?” He stomped around his car, running a hand over his busted-up vehicle like he might cry. Rohan’s expression was pure sympathy.

Sheesh.

“You trying to get me killed, lady? Throwing nails or whatever is illegal.”

“Yeah?” I grabbed the navy backpack off of the passenger seat. “So’s couriering for drug dealers.”

He frowned. “Huh? I got paid to go to the park and outrun anyone who followed me. Sure as hell not getting my bonus now.”

I unzipped the backpack. Rolled up newspapers with the same weight as our stacks of cash spilled out. “Son-of-a-bitch!”

Rohan slammed the guy against the Trans Am’s door. “Who paid you?”

“Some dude. Came to the Go-Cart track where I work.” The man he described, white, average height, short brown hair, jeans, jean jacket could have been any one of a million people.

Rohan tossed him away. The driver fell on his ass, threatening lawsuits. Ro turned back with a cold smile. “You’re going to forget this ever happened or I will find you. Got it?”

The driver threw up his hands. “Yeah, man. No problem.”

I took my car keys away from Ro and tossed him my burner phone. “Call Drio.”

Soon as we were back in the car, Ro hit the speakerphone button. “What happened?”

“Guy showed up,” Drio said. “Walked over to the monument, stared at it a second, and left. Didn’t take anything with him, but the backpack was gone.”

“Any drugs?” I pulled out of the lot.

“No. Candyman must have found out about the wreta.”

“You headed for the airport?” Ro said.

“Yeah, you bastard.” Drio hung up.

“Glove compartment,” I said.

Rohan opened it and removed a small device. He turned it on. “Hello, Plan B.”

* * *

We’d gone in to the drop assuming a double-cross, which was why I’d sewn a tracker into the backpack. If Trans Am dude hadn’t taken the backpack, then Candyman must have portalled it out of there, confirming him as another demon. The blinking dot on the tracking screen showed an address not far from the wreta house, over by Boundary Road, the street delineating the border between Vancouver and Burnaby.

We hit the address up that night for maximum skulking.

In the daytime, this cozy cul-de-sac would have been filled with kids riding bikes or playing street hockey, overseen by neighborhood watch, but at 2AM, everyone was snug in their beds. We blended into the shadows in our all-black attire and black leather gloves.

The house was a cookie cutter replica of its boxy neighbors. If there was a ward on it, it was nothing we could sense and wasn’t designed to keep Rasha out. Rohan made short work of the lock on the back door, and we crept inside, flashlights on. The place was minimally furnished but someone lived here: there were a few dirty dishes in the sink, some cigarette butts in the ashtray in the living room, and a rumpled bed.

Glass shattered in the basement. We ran downstairs, flicking on the light, and jumping the stairs two at a time.

The single unfinished room with its concrete floor and exposed insulation between the joists was a disaster. Glass was smashed on the floor and boxes of corn starch were ripped open and strewn over the walls and floor like a Rorschach test.

The oshk was using its single human arm to rip apart a moonshine-type still with cattle prods attached to it. Shit, no. I was not being Tased like a side of beef.

Rohan and I rushed the demon. Ro executed a roundhouse kick, slicing its arm off, while I trapped it in a web of current, kicking the cattle prod into the corner out of its reach.

The oshk’s arm slithered back up the demon, reattaching itself in place. Where was the Humpty-Dumpty-couldn’t-put-it-back-together-again model of demon when you needed it?

It flowed its blobby body out of my magic net, keening in rage. My repeated strikes blew it back, but for every foot of ground it lost it jumped forward two more, pushing us back toward the stairs.

I glanced over my shoulder, calculating the distance before it had us trapped in that narrow space.

Rohan upped his assault, a blur of slicing and dicing. The demon slithered its body to surround him.

A glint of a blade, the wet plop of flesh hitting the ground, I couldn’t get a clean bead on the demon. Magic danced over my skin as I muttered “Come on,” over and over again.

The oshk rippled with a low bassy gurgle and blew Rohan back against the wall.

I heard his back crunch against a fat joist, but my vision was filled with the demon looming over me. I danced back a couple of steps, hit the bottom step, and fell backwards.

The demon bobbed up the staircase without touching me, its features contorted in fury.

“Uh, hello?” I blasted it in the back and it jerked, blowing out a stream of clear liquid that flew over my head to splash the ceiling, mostly absorbed by the exposed insulation.

I lowered the hands I’d flung over my face, and patted myself down, but I hadn’t been hit by its secretion. Had I been a couple feet deeper into the room, it would have been a different story. I hopped onto the first stair to follow and was tugged back into Ro’s arms. I struggled. “Don’t even think I’m staying–”

He nuzzled my neck. “Stop making me chase you.”

“What?” I elbowed him, jerking free. “This isn’t the time.”

“Completely and utterly slain.”

I whirled around. Ro gazed at me moonily. “Oh fuck. Rohan.”

“Yeah, sweetheart?” He tried to pull me into his arms once more, but I danced out of reach.

His blades, his skin–he’d come into contact with the spawn. The demon had to be the basis of Sweet Tooth and Ro was under its influence. And Rohan had touched me. Was it transferable? I stepped farther away. “The oshk. You touched it.”

“Only wanna touch you,” he said. “Be with you. You’re my light.”

Something heavy upstairs hit the floor with a reverberating thud.

I cast an anxious glance at the ceiling. Mistake. In the spilt second of taking my eyes off Ro, he’d caught me again.

Sweet Tooth made people go fucking bonkers. I couldn’t leave Ro alone if he might hurt himself.

“We need to be together, baby.” His hold on me tightened. Ro’s eye were tinged with the same mania I’d seen in Naomi’s back at the club. I didn’t feel any different though, so I didn’t think second-hand oshk was a thing.

The demon was tearing upstairs apart and howling. Rohan wasn’t phased by it.

I struggled to free myself without zapping him, but I couldn’t. The boyfriend who’d cradled me so tenderly last night was gone.

Glass shattered upstairs.

“Nava?” Rohan’s smile was so sweet. I almost fell for it until I saw the off-kilter glint in his eyes.

Oh, Snowflake. I bit my lip. “Sorry, babe. Demon first, creeper stalker boyfriend second.” I gave him a vicious electric shock. His face crumpled in bewildered hurt. I tore free and ran up the stairs, bolting the basement door from my side.

Shit. Shit. Shit. Goddamn addictive personalities. Of all the times to be proven right. There were levels of cold hard action I was fine with; disempowering Ro wasn’t one of them. I couldn’t get his betrayed look out of my head so I drew it in to myself, letting it fuel me.

The oshk waddled into the kitchen, its tiny head bowed in defeat and its body covered in streaks of red rust. The marks corresponded to where Ro had slashed it. Iron poisoning.

The demon jerked at the sight of me and tried to portal out, but it had been injured enough that it couldn’t go anywhere. It ballooned up, expanding to take over most of the kitchen real estate, quivering more violently the larger it got.

I dove past it, hitting the living room floor in a sloppy roll, and flattening myself against the wall. Liquid splatted against the walls and floor in the kitchen like a hard rain storm but I was safe in the other room. Gag-inducing cotton candy stank overrode the natural mustiness of the house.

The basement door rattled, Rohan yelling for me.

I unleashed a volley of strikes at the oshk. The demon shrank back to its normal, admittedly still massive size, shooting more trippy liquid. It made a hell of a fire hose.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Rohan threw himself against the door. I prayed it held with Old Faithful geysering in there. If Ro got loose and came after me, I couldn’t take both him and the demon on.

Didn’t matter how much I peppered the demon with strikes, methodically covering every inch of it, I couldn’t find the kill spot. That meant that, as with certain other demons, the kill spot was inside it somewhere. I’d have to open it up.

I regretted not having more weapons training. My magic generally served me well, but right about now, it would have been handy having some expertise with something sharp and iron to cut the fucker up. I’d gotten complacent relying on Ro, never thinking he’d be part of my problem. Though this had been an ambush, so I wouldn’t have known to bring a long-range weapon with me.

Rubbing the sweat from my eyes with the inside of an elbow, I raised my arms above my head to dissipate the lactic acid burn in my side, my breaths coming in harsh pants. I was almost tapped out. I tried to shut out Ro’s increasingly more furious screams and pounding. Tried to shut out how Jake had literally killed himself at this point of the drug trip attempting to get his object of desire.

Repeating “sorry,” I called up all the magic I had left into a tight, hard knot.

It wasn’t going to be enough.

The basement door splintered. “Nava!” Ro roared.

Adrenaline flooded my system. My skin turned blue, lightning bolts sliding over my skin.

This isn’t my boyfriend. It’s the drug.

“Stay away from her,” Ro growled.

My blood ran cold. With Ro lost to this addictive drive to get to me, he was in no headspace to take on the demon. I jumped into the doorway humming and crackling with magic. “Yo!” I yelled, turning the oshk’s attention away from Rohan.

I blew the demon to smithereens.

Ever seen those old Bugs Bunny cartoons where the character’s eyes bugged out of their head, then snapped back into place? It was like that, but full-body. For one second, the oshk splintered into tiny pieces. It wasn’t all nice smooth blob either. There were bits of undigested flesh, bone fragments and one fist-sized piece that was beating–its black lumpy heart. They hung there for one impossible moment, then snapped back together.

I stumbled back. At the same moment that I’d blown it up, Ro had slashed out at the demon to get it out of the way and when the demon reformed, Ro’s arm was stuck in the middle of it, buried up to his shoulder, his blade just peeking out.

The oshk and I both froze. Rohan didn’t even blink. He jerked his arm upward to free it, slicing through the oshk’s heart from the inside.

The demon shriveled in on itself and disappeared, dead.

Ro bestowed this beautiful smile on me like he’d found a treasure. “I saved you.”

Say what? “Rohan, listen to me. The oshk produces Sweet Tooth.”

“That’s nice.” He grinned and crooked a finger at me. “Stop being coy and come here.”

I tapped my knuckles together anxiously. Could I wait out the effects? He hadn’t actually been hit with the secretion, just touched the demon’s flesh. Though maybe it was a secretion coating that gave the oshk’s skin its oily iridescence?

His expression shot from glorious sun to the most thunderous of storms when I failed to answer. “Nava.”

Damn it.

Using a roundhouse punch for more force, I clocked Rohan in the jaw. His head snapped sideways and he went down for the count. I crouched down to check his pulse, then assuring myself he was going to be fine, pressed a kiss to his forehead.

I sat down on the floor next to him and waited it out. The house was silent save for the gurgle of the water intake for the furnace. Yay, I’d killed the oshk and stopped any more Sweet Tooth from hitting the streets. But at what cost? I checked Ro’s breathing again, then pulled my knees into my chest, rested my head on top, and kept watch.

The soft dusty rose of dawn tinted the sky.

“Nava?”

I helped my groggy boyfriend sit up. He cracked his back getting up from the linoleum, but he wasn’t mauling me so I guess the drug had run its course. That was good. The bruise on his face from my punch, less so.

What was the appropriate greeting in this situation?

He rubbed his jaw. “Your training is working.”

“We gonna talk about this?”

“And say what?” His gaze was pure challenge.

That everything I’ve been scared of is true. That you’re rushing us, investing yourself because you need a purpose, and I need us to take things one day at a time because this is all so new and I care about you so much and I don’t want us to crash and burn like Cole and I did. That I don’t want to end up crying in the middle of the street because you only loved the idea of me. “Are we still good?”

Rohan blinked. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that? What I did…” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t me.”

Except it kind of was. “I know.” My voice was tighter than I’d intended it. I softened my tone as I added, “And I’m sorry for clocking you. I didn’t feel like I had any other option.”

“I appreciate that, but you sidelined me twice because you decided that the best way to protect me was to keep me out of the fray.”

“What would you have had me do?”

“I don’t know.” His voice was as full of anger and resignation as mine had been. He exhaled, pushing to his feet. “Any useful evidence downstairs?”

Good talk.

“I haven’t checked yet. I wanted to keep an eye on you.”

“No time like the present.” Rohan glanced at the shattered basement door, his expression unreadable, then headed downstairs.

I stepped over some tangled plastic tubing on the basement concrete floor lying next to an overturned chair. Ro pointed to two containers on a metal table. One was a thin, glass vial minus the Sweet Tooth label that held the familiar pink crystals. The other was a plastic container like the sterilized ones they gave you for urine samples. The seal had been broken and it held a clear liquid with pale streaks of blood floating in lazy twists.

Rohan picked it up and walked over near the spot on the ceiling that the oshk’s secretion had hit when I’d attacked it. Cotton-candy scented clear liquid had dripped on the floor. “Do you see another sterilized container?”

I sorted through the wreckage until I found one that the oshk hadn’t crushed. Rohan collected the liquid and sealed it up.

“Don’t get any on you,” I said. “With all your issues and the drug in its purest potency?” I mock-shuddered. “I know I’m irresistible, but you were precariously close to Fatal Attraction territory there. Boiling bunnies. Yikes.”

Rohan raised his eyebrows.

“Too soon?”

That earned me a ghost of a smile. “I’m astounded you held off this long. Besides, my focused, passionate nature–”

“You mean your willingness to obsess?”

“I mean, my absolute commitment and perseverance has served me well. Landed me record contracts, tricky demon kills. You.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Too soon?”

I laughed and swatted him.

We found a trash bag to dump lab wreckage into, taking that and the three containers with us: the vial with the crystals, the blood-streaked liquid already sealed up, and the new clear secretion we’d collected. We dropped the containers off at a twenty-four hour courier service, expedited to a Rasha-owned lab in New York where they could analyze the substances and see if, as suspected, we had a match between the oshk secretion and Sweet Tooth.

My stomach rumbled, so I pulled into a diner that was almost full with a brisk breakfast rush, snagging the last tiny booth in the back. My anger had faded, leaving only hunger and exhaustion. The blueberry pancakes I ordered were light and fluffy with fat fresh strawberries slices on top and a heaping dollop of whipped cream. The bacon was extra crispy.

Rohan’s veggie omelet, no cheese, looked very healthy.

“Healthy isn’t leprosy. It’s actually the opposite,” he said.

“Who said a word?” I drizzled melted butter on my pancakes.

“You did.” He nudged my leg. His expression of fond exasperation was so familiar and welcome that the vise around my chest loosened.

I held a forkful of strawberry-adorned pancake at him. “Live a little.”

He leaned in for the bite, sucking whipped cream off my fingers. “I’m not denying the appetites that matter.”

Two could play this game. I slipped off my shoe and snuggled my toes onto his dick. Keeping my eyes on my food, I fought a grin, massaging until he got hard. So, like ten seconds.

Under the table, he grabbed my foot. “Enough,” he growled.

I motioned our waiter for more coffee. “Think Candyman screwed the oshk over in some drug partnership? That demon was pissed.”

Rohan added some hot sauce to the last third of his omelet. “All I care about is that Leo said the oshk was a Unique and we’ve eliminated the source of the Sweet Tooth.”

The analysis would conclusively confirm it, but the chances were high that the drug was off the street forever. Candyman still needed to be apprehended, but we’d put him out of business. I clinked my mug to Rohan’s. “We make a good team.”

“The best.”

If we both injected a bit too much enthusiasm into our words, maybe that was okay.

With hours until we’d hear back about the Sweet Tooth analysis, we decided to crash so we could hit the ground running finding Candyman. Drio wouldn’t be back until tomorrow and depending on what he’d learned from Golda, we’d need a strategy around that as well.

We made one quick pit stop at the cemetery in Vancouver–not the Jewish one, where cremation was forbidden–to meet the Rasha-friendly employee there and burn the trash bag of busted-up lab equipment, and then it was bedward-ho.

I slept okay for a while but a text from Sienna on my burner phone on behalf of Dr. Gelman woke me up.

Esther has a promising lead on the bindings. She’ll be out of isolation today if you want to come by. Before I had time to yawn, let alone compose a reply, another message sailed on in: For whatever unknown reason, your last visit cheered her up.

I added Sienna to the list of people who were never going to be a fan.

I snuggled back under the covers against my furnace boyfriend, but, hard as I tried, I couldn’t fall back asleep again. My promise to Ari to go see my mom weighed on me. I’d let my resentment toward my parents, especially Mom, fester for years and could have easily gone another decade, but I kept seeing Gelman wasted by cancer.

I heaved myself out of bed with a huff and snatched up some clothes.

“Where you going?” Rohan mumbled from under the pillow he’d stuffed on his head when my phone had gone off.

I popped my head out of my sundress. “To see my mom.”

He pulled the pillow off and cracked one eye open. “You want me to come with?”

I rumpled his hair. “Best if I don’t have witnesses, but thanks.”

He flopped over. “When you get back, we can Skype my parents.”

I whacked him in the head with his pillow “Not funny.”

“You’ll have to meet Mom at some point,” he called out.

I kept marching down the hallway. “Let’s see how things go with the blood-related mother first.” I crossed my fingers, not entirely sure which way I wanted things to go, and went to keep my damn promise.