We pulled up to the hotel, Sinclair (reluctantly) handed his Mercedes keys to the valet, and walked into the hotel. It was one of those hotels that look like a nice big brownstone on the outside, a place where families lived. It cost, Tina had told me, twelve hundred dollars. A night. I assumed the beds were made of gold and the staff tucked you in every night with hot cocoa and kisses.

"A zombie," Tina murmured. She looked like she was having trouble processing everything that was happening at once. I hoped she enjoyed being a member of the "I'm freaking out" club. "I had no idea they even existed."

"We will take care of that-"

"Too late," I said.

"-after we take care of this. Perhaps I should tell him," Sinclair was saying as we trooped to the elevator. "Be the heavy, as it were."

"I'm not afraid to tell Alonzo that we're punishing him," I retorted. Shit, after the Unfortunate Attic Incident, I wasn't afraid of anything.

"Small bites, Majesty," Tina murmured.

The elevator came-ding! The doors slid open. Before I could let Tina in on my new "not afraid of nothin' " mind-set, Sinclair muttered the rare epithet.

Tina looked. I looked. We all looked. And after the night I'd had, I really wasn't all that surprised.

"He's pretty dead," I observed.