“I do shodo magic,” Dali said. “I curse through calligraphy. I have to write the curse out on a piece of paper and I can’t move while I do it. One smudge, and I might kill the lot of us.”Oh good.“But don’t worry.” Dali waved her arms. “It’s so precise, it usually doesn’t work at all.”Better and better.”

“Any messages for me?" Usually I got one or two, but mostly people who wanted my help preferred to talk in person."Yes. Hold on." She pulled out a handful of pink tickets and recited from memory, without checking the paper. "Seven forty-two a.m., Mr. Gasparian: I curse you. I curse your arms so they wither and die and fall off your body. I curse your eyeballs to explode. I curse your feet to swell until blue. I curse your spine to crack. I curse you. I curse you. I curse you.”

“I have a tendency to want to understand everything people say and everything I hear, both at work and outside, even at a distance, even if it’s one of the innumerable languages I don’t know, even if it’s in an indistinguishable murmur or imperceptible whisper, even if it would be better that I didn’t understand and what’s said is not intended for my ears or is said precisely so I won’t understand it.”

“I folded my arms. “I don’t usually do stakeouts.”“I thought it might be a nice change of pace for you. All that knocking down of doors and burning down of buildings must get tiring.”“I don’t always knock down doors,” I said. “Sometimes it’s a wall.”

“I can’t write without a reader. It’s precisely like a kiss—you can’t do it alone.”

“Carter started down the stairs, but I grabbed his arm.“Hang on. What about traps?”He frowned. “Traps?”“Didn’t Egyptian tombs have traps?”“Well…sometimes. But this isn’t a tomb. Besides, more often they had curses, like the burning curse, the donkey curse—”“Oh, lovely. That sounds so much better.”