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Who had done this to Aurie Edison? I stared at the black new moon of another lunatic night, pondering the case. Police-tape cordoned off the gruesome stain in front of Century Luxe Hotel. Crime Scene Unit was making a clean sweep. Yellow evidence markers followed a scattered trail of vehicle pieces.

My partner and I were interviewing witnesses, but half the spectators had found better things to do. The crime scene was already hours old. The place crawled with reporters. I dodged a videographer and made my way to Detective Tegan Stoney.

The smell of coffee and mouthwash that clung to her confessed the predawn hour. It was four a.m. after Saturday night. I had a keener nose than most, so I picked up on the good time she'd been having before she got here. Not my business. We both had been called in for this.

"Don't all the cameras make you feel like we're filming Law & Order?" I asked.

"Complete with our own sexy leading man," she said.

"Love your sense of humor."

"I was talking about Mayfield." Tegan grinned as she pointed at the barrel-chested former Marine crossing the hotel drive toward us. Captain Mayfield's salt-and-pepper buzzcut was ashigh and tight as his personality.

"What have we got so far?" the middle-aged black man called out.

"Hit-and-run," I said. "Nothing that normally warrants this level of hoopla."

The captain confided quietly when he reached us, "Yeah, NOPD wants this case closed fast. The victim is the daughter of Emily Leigh Edison of Metairie, better known as—"

"Nannette Baudelaire, Academy Award-winning director of five Best Pictures," said Tegan. She smiled at my surprised demeanor. "And her new movie Gracious Fury is projected to make that six. It's opening next month."

"Somebody Googled," I accused.

"Actually, I'm a fan."

Mayfield asked her, "Did you know she summers in New Orleans?"

"Not until now," Tegan admitted. "According to her spokesperson—who I was on the phone with a moment ago—the daughters were raised here, but few people would've been aware of their link to Nannette. She kept them out of the spotlight."

"All great intel, but I doubt the famous mom was behind the wheel," I quipped.

Mayfield chuckled dryly. "You want to stake your career on jokes, Ravani?"

"C'mon, the perp is some out-of-towner, somewhere sleeping off a rough night of Hand Grenades. He'll turn himself in when he sees the body damage to his rental. You could've put anybody on this."

"You're lucky to get anything after that crap you pulled a few months ago. Thanks to your wacky press conference with the psychic, the media thinks you're a nutjob. Take this easy-A and solve this thing. Get your reputation back," he said.

I rolled my shoulder free from his condescending backrub. "Get help with one missing person's case, and suddenly you're a nutjob," I said as he left.

"He's fucking with you, you know that." Tegan didn't bother hiding her amusement.

"Yeah, well, I used to get more respect."

The thing with the psychic had pushed the envelope, but I needed an excuse for the leads I followed. Nobody—not even my longtime partner—knew of my network of Supernatural informants. Call it a perk of working for the Council of Overlay Affairs. Whenever unusual crimes spilled into the Real World, it was my job to make justice look natural.

Unfortunately, cleaning up paranormal activity was beginning to affect my credibility. I wondered if, as Mayfield implied, I should be grateful for a simple hit-and-run. Nothing out of the ordinary about this one.

I tipped my head at a surveillance camera at the corner of the hotel. "Hey, Tegan. Whoever did this was kind enough to do it on camera, and all I need is a license plate. Let's binge-watch some CCTV."

"Let's go," she replied.

An hour later, we were in the manager's office with the run of the system. There was footage of the victim and her sister taking an elevator, flashing a doorman, and getting into a party on the top floor. But, once inside, there was no record. I watched the uptight hotel manager. She smiled.

"Our VIP guests prefer not to be under scrutiny, you understand."

"I want the name of whoever booked the floor," I said.

"You'll need a warrant." She smiled tighter.

I gritted my teeth. Tegan drew my attention to the victim stumbling back into the elevator. "She's drunk," said my partner.

"How much alcohol did they have?"

"Haley Edison blew a breathalyzer result of..." Tegan paused and consulted her notes. "Less than zero-point-zero-one, but she couldn't say how much the victim drank. They got separated in the party. CSU is getting back to me with the tox report as soon as they have it."

My focus drifted over the girl onscreen. She swept back loose curls and pushed a phone to her ear, and the vision of her gorgeous face stalled me. God, I needed to get laid if I was drooling over a hit-and-run victim. I stared at her plush mouth.

"Who's Pat?" I asked. Tegan skewed her brows. The audio was full of noise, and she couldn't hear what the victim said. "I read her lips," I explained.

"There was a brief call around eleven-forty-five about modeling agent Patricia Gramercy. The sister says the call was spotty, dropped right after she answered."

Nodding, I watched the victim exit the elevator on wobbly legs and trip through the hotel lobby. I zoomed-in as a woman stopped her outside the building, but tropical landscaping obscured the view.

Tegan started to say something. I held up a finger and peered intently at the monitor, barely making out the victim saying she thought she had been drugged. Interesting. Toxicology would show what, if anything, was in her system. Now, who would drug her, and why? I squared my jaw, mulling it over.

"What is it?" my partner asked.

"That woman's going for help."

"How do you know? You can't even see her face."

"Call it a hunch. A young, drunk girl stumbling around a four-star hotel? Someone would go for help."

The disoriented young woman wandered into the street. A split-second later, the SUV hit her with brutal force. Just like that. In a blink. I had a feeling it was coming, and it was no less tough to watch.

The stoic hotelier made the sign of the cross, and Tegan stepped away from the desk. I gave her a minute, but I forced myself to watch, rewind, watch it again. I heard it loud and clear with each replay. The truck idling out of camera range. The clue the accident wasn't an accident.

"See a license plate number?" Tegan composed herself.

I shook my head, no. So, what did we have? A VIP celebrity party. A drugged girl. An SUV with illegal tint, no plates. Deliberate hit-and-run. It all added up to one thing: Someone had wanted Aurie Edison dead.

Tegan blew out an exasperated breath. "Okay, we need to find out Nannette Baudelaire's enemies," she said.

"I want to know what happened in the penthouse." I was about to say more, but the surveillance video stopped me. A feeling like static crackled along my skin as the image onscreen wavered, and the thin veil separating this world from the next faded before my eyes.

I cocked my head in disbelief as an angel in full-wing exited the hotel. Aurie got up. "Is this real?" she asked. The divine entity disappeared into the night, but my jaw dropped as our victim followed someone else out of frame. Suddenly, the crime scene filled with vampires way too interested in her body. I recognized their mien. All well-heeled with a swagger of entitlement.

"What in the holy hell?" I whispered, confused.

Tegan gave me a pointed stare, but I couldn't explain. She couldn't see what I saw. "Got another wild hunch?" she asked.

"Let's say this won't be an ordinary case."

"It never is with you." She laughed.

No, I thought. It never is.