Death Before Facebook

there a person in the whole house who isn’t utterly charmed by him?”
    “Well, that part’s true. And he does have this way of focusing. How’d you know that?”
    “’Cause that’s a butterfly man. Are you getting it now?”
    “So you’re saying he’s just conning us? He doesn’t really have any feelings for us?”
    “Oh, he’s got feelings. It’s just that they’re very, very changeable.”
    Kenny came in. “Burgers ready yet?”
    Skip got up and went back to her patties. “Ten minutes.”
    “Okay.” He smiled ear-to-ear and left.
    “A doll,” said Cindy Lou.
    “Yeah. Wouldn’t you just hate to be his sister?”
    “Ooooh. Wouldn’t you?” She got up to set the table. “How’s the case going?”
    “Don’t ask. We hit an impasse.” Because Cindy Lou often worked as a consultant for the police department, Skip could talk about the case with her.
    Skip turned over the burgers. She dished them up and opened a bag of potato chips. “Tell me what you think about this threesome.” She told her about Lenore, Caitlin, and their self-appointed mother, Kit.
    “Oh, man. Kit’s got her hands full.”
    “Did I tell you what those women are into? You’re not going to believe this.”
    “You want me to call the kids?” Without waiting, Cindy Lou hollered, “Sheila! Kenny!”
    It was definitely time—the burgers were ready, the chips were in the bowl, the table was set, the condiments were on it. But Skip felt oddly disappointed, knowing she and Cindy Lou were going to have to postpone adult talk till after dinner.
    She wouldn’t have missed that dinner for anything, though. The kids didn’t fight, no one stalked away, and they came close to settling the question of whether it was better to be eaten by a shark or a velociraptor.
    Sheila felt that a shark would probably bite your limbs off first, and you’d have to watch yourself get eaten, which would be by far the worst fate. “At least,” said Kenny, “you’d have time to kiss your butt good-bye. A dinosaur would just go for your guts—like you’d feel something really sharp in your middle and then you’d have to die looking into its cold carnivorous eye.”
    “Carnivorous!” hooted Sheila. “How could you know a word like that?”
    “Ha, ha, and ha! I know triskaidekaphobia too.”
    Skip’s sides hurt from laughing. She would have given up her job in Homicide for Jimmy Dee to have been there.
    When the kids had gone back to their homework, and she was loading the dishwasher, Cindy Lou said, “So what are Kit’s girls into? Witchcraft or something?”
    Skip whirled. “How the hell did you guess that?”
    “Is that it, really? Lucky, I guess. Anyway, half the world is. Why not them?”
    “Half the world is? How come I never heard of it? I thought pentagrams meant Satanism.”
    “Get hip, Granny. The goddess is coming back to save her only begotten Earth from the patriarchal demons.”
    “When you put it that way, it sounds like a pretty damn fine idea.”
    “I can’t pick any holes in it. Bring her on, why don’t you?”
    “Cindy Lou, you’re not kidding? You know about this stuff?”
    “Neopaganism? Sure I know. Black people never did stop doing magic. Voodoo’s paganism. You know, I wasn’t kidding about the demons. That’s what every religion does with the last one—demonizes it. Like Astarte and Baal—a pair of perfectly fine deities until the Hebrews got into that golden calf stuff. All of a sudden, they were the devil. And Pan, I guess, became the modem-day model for him—horns and cloven hooves, you know.”
    “How come you know this stuff?”
    “I’ve got a lot of Jungian friends. They’re heavy into archetypes. Made me read books and take courses. They said every educated person should know about it. You know what? They’re right.” She paused. “Say, why don’t we start a coven?”
    Skip was bending over, loading in a couple of glasses. She straightened up. “Who?”
    “You and me.”
    “You and me? A pair of rational, professional women?”
    “Who better? We could teach Sheila the goddess made woman in her image. Healthier for a kid.”
    “A girl kid? I guess it is. It’s the weirdest thing. I never thought about it.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
     
    EARLY MONDAY MORNING, Federal Express delivered a bulging package, which Skip ripped open instantly. It was full of disks from Wizard and some printouts as well.
    Everything Geoff had ever posted and everything he’d deleted.
    She was