"Yeah, I do. So this book is supposed to be highoctane evil."
"Exactly. And it looks like the two dead vamps, uh, vampires are the first couple of ingredients for some kind of spell he's working."
"Holy fuck."
"I think I sense some kind of oxymoron in there."
"Yeah, and fuck you, too," she said, but without any heat behind it. "Must be one hell of a conjuring he's got going – and that's not a fucking oxymoron."
"No," I said, as a ball of ice formed in my stomach – the same one that showed up every time I thought about what this wizard might have in mind. "No, it's not."
"Two dead, so far – and vampires, at that."
"Two, maybe three. I'll know that later today, probably."
"Maybe three." She nodded slowly. "What do you figure his magic number is, so to speak?"
"That's something Vollman is trying to find out," I said. "I hope he does it pretty damn soon."
I checked my watch. "Not to rush you, or anything, but the sun'll be up in-"
"Seventeen minutes. Plenty of time."
But she stood up anyway, stretching a little.
"Where are you crashing these days? Someplace close by?"
She turned to look at me. "I'll tell you that," she said, "the first time you invite me inside."
I nodded, letting nothing of what I was feeling show on my face. Or so I hoped.
I stood up, too. I wanted to put my arms around her and hold her close, just for a couple of seconds. Instead, I just nodded and said, "'Night, Christine."
"Goodnight, Daddy."
And she was gone.
Driving through downtown Wilkes-Barre, you'd never know the place had been practically underwater for several days, back in 1972. That's when Hurricane Agnes passed through the Wyoming Valley. Worst storm we've ever seen, and it sent the Susquehanna River over its banks and into the city. I was just a kid then, and Scranton wasn't affected by the flood, but I remember the TV and newspaper pictures of the huge mess it made.
One of the grisliest forms of damage occurred when the flood reached the local cemeteries. It washed some of the dead out of their graves and then deposited them all over town, once the water receded. Corpses, some long dead and others more recent, were found on people's lawns, in the middle of streets, just everywhere.
I understand the local ghoul community still talks about those days among themselves. They refer to it as the Great Smorgasbord.
Thinking about stuff like that helped keep my mind off the fact that we might have a third murder in this spell cycle, or whatever it was, with no real leads and no way to know how many more deaths had to occur before the shit really hit the fan. We didn't even know what form the shit would take.
But it was going to be some seriously bad shit, I was pretty sure of that.
The taxpayers of Wilkes-Barre must be pretty generous, because their police department is located in a nice new building that always made me a little envious whenever I visited – not that I'd ever admit that to Lacey. Anyway, there's a downside to working there. It is in Wilkes-Barre.
Even if I hadn't been in the building before, I wouldn't need to ask where to find Lacey. Along with the rest of her unit, she was in the basement. The Supe Squad is always in the basement.
Their P.A. was a young black woman named Sandra Gaffney, who was getting her PhD in Criminal Justice from Penn State. She took this gig to support herself while writing her dissertation. You can tell right off she's not a typical civil servant – not only is she intelligent, she's actually pleasant most of the time.
"Hey, Sandy," I said. "How's it going?"
She looked up from her computer and gave me a smile. "Hey yourself, Sergeant. You drop by to see how some real police work is done?"
"You got it," I said. "Detective Brennan said she'd give me some pointers. She's expecting me."
"I'll give her a buzz."
Sarah picked up her phone, punched in three numbers, and muttered something I couldn't hear into the receiver. I noticed that next to her computer she kept a small stuffed toy bear with a dirty face, who looked like he'd seen better days.
Hanging up the phone, Sandra said to me, "She'll be right out."
"Thanks. How's the research going?"
"Pretty good. This place gives me more data every damn day."
Detective Lacey Brennan came around the corner. A little taller than average. Blonde hair, worn short. Blue eyes. Killer body – not that I ever paid much attention.
"Guy walks into a bar," she said. "Orders a cocktail, sips it for a while. But it turns out that he's a werewolf, and while he's sitting there drinking, the full moon comes out. So the guy transforms, right? Fur, fangs, the whole nine yards. Then he trots over to the window and sits there, on the floor, howling at the moon. Well, there's a couple of tourists from East Podunk sitting a few stools away. They take all this in, you know, then one of them turns to the bartender and says, 'Fuck – we'll have what he's having!'"
Behind Lacey, Sandy justder and sak her head. I looked at Lacey, kept my face impassive, and asked, "Yeah? Then what happened?"
She gave me a knuckle punch on the arm. Being a real he-man, I didn't show how much it hurt.
"Come on," Lacey said. "The file's on my desk."
I followed her into the squad room, which looked in most ways like every other detectives' bull pen I've ever seen, except with fresh paint and newer carpeting.
Of course Supe Squads tend to have some features you don't find in, say, a Homicide unit. I passed a wall rack containing several sizes and varieties of wooden stakes, and next to that was a glass-fronted case full of magically charged amulets. A poster on the opposite wall listed the six known defenses against ogre attack. Then there was a big bulletin board full of wanted posters showing renegade vamps, bail-jumping werewolves, a child-killing troll, and one I recognized from our own squad room: an artist's rendering of a wimpy-looking dwarf with a severe widow's peak. His name was Keyser something-or-other, and he was supposed to be the kingpin of a shadowy gang of fairy-dust smugglers. Some crooked supes call him the devil incarnate, but others say he doesn't even exist.
Lacey's area was at the back of the room. Sitting at a desk near hers, scowling at a computer printout, was her partner. Johnny Cedric lost an eye a few years back, during a raid on an illegal coven that had gone very wrong. Could've taken a disability pension and moved to Florida, but he chose to stay on the job. I kind of admired that, even if he was always bragging about how the sinister-looking eye patch got him laid a lot.
"Hey, look what the bat dragged in," Cedric said.
"How's it going, Cyclops?" Cops aren't known for their sensitivity.
"Not bad," he said. "Still trackin' it down and tryin' it out. You over here about our dead guy?"
I nodded. "The M.O. sounds like a couple of corpses we've had turn up in our neck of the woods."
"Oh, yeah, Lace was telling me about those. How recent?"
"Both in the last week, and we're pretty sure they're related to a torture-murder we had the week before."