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“Grandmaddox?” Lana said, venturing deeper. “Grandmother? Are you here?”

All around me, shelves slumped under the weight of bone necklaces, tins of incense, jars of insect carcasses. My nose wrinkled, but as I edged away, my hip bumped a rickety side table, spilling a deck of tarot cards onto the floor and rocking a candelabra. I grabbed it before it fell.

My fingers came away smeared with cobwebs.

“Fuck this place.” I muttered, stooping to pick up the deck.

Every card landed facedown, except for one—The Hanged Man.

I flipped over another one and gotDeath.

Stupid.

I stood to find Lana had ventured deeper into the shop. “Grandmaddox?” she called.

“She’s not here, Lana. Place has been abandoned for years,” I said, setting the deck of cards back where I found them.

Between a skull candle and an enormous gecko eyeing me warily, I made out one dusty bottle of Reed’s Ginger Beer—the one nod to something a human could consume.

“Grandmother!” Lana called again.

Finally, a figure separated itself from the shadows at the back of the shop, and Grandmaddox shuffled into the light. “My lovely child, come, come...” she whispered, “let me touch your skin.”

I recoiled.

Lana had filled me in on her details on the drive over, but I still wasn’t prepared. Grandmaddox might be half human, half demon, and blind as a bat, but she lookedfulldemon to me.

Two cloudy glass eyes stared vacantly from a proud, ancient face. Her long, silver hair was tied back with what looked like a rat’s tail. Like a relic from the bygone hippie days, she wore sandals and an airy frock that flowed around her like a waterfall.

Instinctively, my hand went to my gun.

The demon groped around until Lana tackle-hugged her, kissing her on the cheek.

“Grandmaddox, I need a favor,” Lana said breathlessly, wasting no time, “I need to find the portal in Central America...”

“I know, dear. I know.” Grandmaddox patted her cheek. “Why don’t we discuss it over some crawfish bisque and jambalaya? And Mr. Asher—” one of her cloudy blue eyes swiveled toward me, “—that won’t be necessary.”

Slowly, I eased my hand off the holster.

Major affinity: some kind of second sight?

Hmm... I’d have to be careful around this one.

At the back of the shop, a rickety wooden staircase led to a cave-like kitchen on the second floor, where several boiling pots had fogged up the windows. Wedged under the staircase leading to the third floor, a tiny dining room table had already been set for three. The house was so narrow, most of each floor was taken up by the crooked staircases.

On the kitchen counter, a tank of live lobsters dripped onto the moldy, peeling linoleum. Not just lobsters. Slithering between their legs was another monster. I peered closer, and felt my lip curl. Some kind of water snake. Poisonous, no doubt.

Then I saw the terrarium next to it.

Giant spiders. Hundreds of them. They crawled over each other, chittering madly. A wolf spider the size of my hand had nudged the lid aside and was squeezing its way out, its legs and feelers probing a saucer of butter that had been left above it.

A smaller tank, half full of murky water, held what looked like wriggling leeches. They, too, had chewed their way through the screen top and were making their escape across a plate of biscuits. Making grandmotherly small talk, Grandmaddox picked them off and brought the biscuits to the table, along with the butter saucer, the wolf spider now clinging to the edge.

Jesus, this woman’s house was a liability.

Looking right at home, Lana plopped down at the table and patted the seat next to her for me to sit.

My head bumped the staircase, and three cockroaches fell on the table and promptly skittered under our plates.