by Andrew Dudek
Dallas’s friend the Professor lived in an upscale residential neighborhood in the 110s, between Morningside and Marcus Garvey Parks. The buildings were brownstone and looked well maintained, and there was more greenery than in most of Manhattan. I’d met Dallas at the shop and we’d driven to Columbia University, but the Professor had called en route to tell us to come to this neighborhood instead.
“So tell me about your friend,” I said.
Night was falling and the sidewalks were packed with pedestrians. A group of smooth-faced stock-broker types gaped at us as they passed.
“What’s their problem?” I asked.
“I don’t know, man,” Dallas said. “Maybe it’s the freakin’ foot-long dagger you’ve got strapped to your hip.”
“Oh. Yeah.” I’d forgotten that I’d brought the knife, but I wasn’t eager to leave it behind. The image of the man I’d seen the night before, smoking under the streetlight hadn't left me. No way was I walking around unarmed. “Just be glad I didn’t bring the sword.”
Dallas shook his head, but I could see in his eyes: he understood. “Anyway, yeah, Professor Bogart’s the real deal. Most real, young talent that passes through town will take at least a few classes in the classics, and Bogart’s the best in the country. Probably knows more about some types of magic than I do.”
A couple of young women in business-casual attire scurried out of the way as we passed. I tried to smile at one of them, but she pulled out her phone and fiddled with it, eager to avoid eye contact. I scowled.
We rounded a corner and Dallas broke into a grin. “Professor!”
A tall, thin man in his sixties stood at the corner, in front of a three-story brownstone. A little gray dog stood at his heels, panting happily in the heat. The man had unruly hair and a beard that were both snowy white and in need of a trim. He wore suit pants and a Grateful Dead T-shirt, the tie-dyed colors so faded that it looked authentically vintage. A lit cigarette dangled from between his fingers and he was watching the steady drone of traffic, like a patron of the opera.
He smiled warmly. “Steven. Nice to see you.”
Dallas shook the older man’s hand. “You too, Professor. Shouldn’t you be upstairs?”
Professor Bogart sighed and crouched to scratch the dog behind the ears. “Pitfalls of pet ownership, I’m afraid.” He smiled and stood up, hesitated, then raised his cigarette to his lips. “Also, Arturo doesn’t like it when I smoke. He’s on a bit of a health kick. So I’m exiled from my own home.”
Dallas nodded. “There’s a lot of that going around these days.”
Bogart looked at me. “And this is your friend, the knight of the Round Table?”
There are a lot of things I love about New York, but possibly my favorite is the fact that no one listens to conversations on the street. People walked past, but no one paid the least bit attention. In a lot of places, I’d have been hesitant to discuss a matter like this in public, but here, if anyone heard us, they’d assume we were crazy or planning some kind of LARP weekend adventure.
“Dave Carver,” I said. “Captain of the New York division of the Knights of the Round Table.”
“Captain, really?” The professor raised an eyebrow. “You’re young.”
“I’ve been doing it a while.”
“Fascinating. I’d love to pick your brain sometime.” Bogart dropped his cigarette butt and rubbed it against the pavement with his heel. “The things you must have seen! Most of my students don’t really believe you exist. They think you’re some sort of cross between the Templars and the Avengers.”
I shrugged. “Well, we’re real.”
“I heard about the Vampire War. Tell me, did you see much action?”
The scars on my neck bristled. I didn’t like talking about the war. I didn’t like thinking about the war. It always led to dark memories.
“Some,” I said, in a tone designed to suggest the professor change the subject.
He took the hint. “Well, gentlemen, what can I do for you?”
“We think somebody last night summoned a demon,” I said.
The professor frowned, the ends of his mustache curling around his thin lips. “And what makes you think that?”
I quickly summarized what we had found in the graveyard—the three savaged bodies, the fire pit, the smell of sulfur. The whole time I was talking, Bogart’s frown deepened, furrows drawn across his forehead. He shook his head and hummed “Happiness is a Warm Gun.” When I was done he tapped out a cig and lit up.
“I can’t say for sure,” he said after a long drag. “Not without seeing the corpses. Even then, I’m more theoretician than practitioner. Steven has more knowledge about this sort of…unpleasantness.” He stared off into space and made drawing motions with the lit cigarette. “Although…perhaps…maybe…yes, that could very well be.”
He looked at us. “It could have been a hellhound summoning gone wrong.”
I nodded and let out a breath. Hellhounds are minor demons that take the shape of large black dogs (not to be confused with Black Dogs, which are something else entirely). They’re used by various supernatural organizations to track down missing people. Not particularly powerful, as demons go, and anyone with enough magical juice to summon one should have enough to control it. I’d never heard of a hellhound turning on its summoners like this. At least not this quickly.
“Hellhounds are weak, by demonic standards,” Bogart said, “but they excel at pursuing quarry. They also have marvelous hiding skills. It could be anywhere.”
I traced the sheath of my knife with an index finger. “I gotta tell ya, Professor, that’s not exactly what I was hoping to hear.”
“I understand,” he said. “And I do apologize. But I believe I can help you.” He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a small object. It was about the same size and shape as a billfold or a small wallet, and made of a similar material. Not leather, though—this thing was sturdier than cowhide. Markings were carved into the surface. I couldn’t translate them, but I recognized their like. Runes. Markings of a magical spell.
“What is this?” I asked.
“Just something I’ve been working on. If you keep it on your person, the runes will heat up when in the presence of demonic magic. It won’t stop it, but it should tell you when you’re close.”
I ran a hand over the rough surface of the wallet-like thing. The runes did have an uneven, hand-drawn texture to them.
“I have several more like it upstairs,” Bogart said. “It’s no problem.”
“I notice you had this right in your pocket, Professor,” I said. “Why is that?”
“I’ve learned many things in my life, Captain. One of them is that it’s never a bad thing to be prepared.”
“Regular Boy Scout, huh? I can relate.” I held the wallet up as if I were toasting him. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” Bogart tugged on his dog’s leash and turned towards the brownstone’s door, but he hesitated. “You wouldn’t happen to know the names of the victims, would you?”
I shook my head, but Dallas nodded.
“Heather Collins.” When he saw my frown, the wizard added, “Sam told me they identified her. They haven’t got names for the other two yet.”
Bogart’s face grayed. He took out his cigarettes and eyed them for a moment, like he was considering a third. Finally he shook his head and put them away.
“You know her,” I said.
“No. Well, not well. Last Easter I conducted a seminar on ancient mythologies and how they relate to the practical Art of magic. Students and practitioners from all over the area came. You were there, weren’t you Steven?”
Dallas shook his head. “I was dealing with that thing in Montauk that weekend.”
“Right. Right. Well, there aren’t very many of us, so I made personal connections with many of the students. Heather Collins…she was a lovely young woman with a flair for the Gothic, yes? I tried to convince her to transfer to Columbia so she could take so
me of my courses, but she told me that she liked her school.”
I nodded. My blood was pulsing in my veins and I swallowed against the faint tang of adrenaline in my mouth. I was on the trail.
“You wouldn’t happen to remember what school that was, would you?”
Bogart nodded. “Yes. She was a student at Jackson Perez-Connelly University.”
Chapter 9
JCPU was a private liberal arts school in downtown Newark. I’d never heard of it. Not that that was surprising, mind you—even before my mom died and I’d become a professional monster hunter, college had never seemed like a particularly appealing lifestyle. But even if I had gotten myself one of those fancy edu-mah-cay-shuns I probably wouldn’t have heard of JCPU. It was that small.
The tiny cramped street was lit with flashing red and blue lights. Police cars were parked haphazardly in the road and next to curbs. Dallas found a spot down the block and we hoofed it to the scene.
Apparently, the school’s dormitory-situation was small enough that it encouraged its students to live off-campus. Many of the houses in this particular neighborhood on the east side of Newark were rented out to college students a semester or two at a time. Many of the porches we passed were occupied by college kids, some holding beer or smoking, all watching the process.
Police tape had been set up around one of the houses, and uniformed cops buzzed around. A couple of large men in rumpled, ill-fitting suits were talking to a trio of college-aged women.
There was a mass of people gathered around the tape, as there often was when the cops set up a scene like this.
"Did ya hear about this?” a middle-aged black man said to me. “Girl that lived there got killed. Murdered, ya know?”
I whistled softly. “Damn shame.”
“Dallas. Carver.”
Officer Samantha Fasano was in uniform, standing with a group of other cops. She gestured for us to come past the tape and strode over to meet us.
“This was off-campus housing for Heather Collins, one of the vics from the cemetery,” Fasano said. “Lived here with three other girls—they’re all okay, that’s them over there talking to the detectives—who according to their statements didn’t know what she was doing in the graveyard.”
Dallas nodded. “A lot of practitioners don’t tell straights about magic. That whole ‘thou shall not suffer a witch to live’ thing makes us paranoid.”
“Go figure,” I said. “What do you know so far?”
“Not much,” Fasano said. “The brass isn’t filling us unis in on this one. Afraid of the media."
Spectacular death like this, the Post would be salivating like an oilman at an untapped reservoir. Understandable, but it wouldn’t make my job any easier.
The house itself was innocuous. Cheap, affordable housing for the student on a budget. Two stories, wood panel exterior, small porch, crappy furniture. The kind of place that a college kid could whittle away the hours between the parties.
Near the porch steps, the detectives had moved away to talk to someone in a sweat-stained sport coat, leaving the three housemates of Heather Collins alone.
I slipped away from Fasano and Dallas. I felt the cop staring after me and heard Dallas mutter to let me go. I didn’t doubt that the cops were good at what they did, but they weren’t as aware of what had killed Heather Collins as I was. They wouldn’t have any idea what questions to ask.
All three of the girls looked at me warily. They’d been talking to cops for hours now, and they looked nervous about more. But then again, I didn’t look like a cop—they might just have been scared of the shaggy, scar-necked man approaching them.
“Ladies.” I smiled. “Mind if I ask you a couple of questions?”
The tallest of the three answered. She was dirty-blond and blue-eyed, pretty in a small-town way, but the effect was dampened by the tears and the smudged makeup. “We already talked to the cops. We told them everything we know.”
“I’m sure you did,” I said. “But I’m not a cop. More of a…private investigator.” That was close enough to the truth to pass the sniff test. “I just want to clarify a few things.”
“What things?”
“Well, you lived with her, right? So you must have been pretty close with Heather.”
“Not really,” the blonde said. “I mean, I knew her a bit from an art history course last semester, but we weren’t, like, friends, or anything. She just needed a place, and our fourth roommate had just transferred to Boston, so I offered her the room.”
“I hardly ever talked to her,” another of the girls, short, plump, and brunette, wailed before burying her face in the shoulder of the third.
Seriously? These girls were this upset over the death of someone they didn’t know that well? At first it didn’t add up, but then I thought. They were young and most probably sheltered from this kind of horror. This was probably their first brush with violent death.
“This is hard,” I said. “Trust me, I know. But do you have any idea what Heather was doing in the cemetery that night?”
“Something freakish with those weirdos,” the third roommate, a Latina with long black hair, said.
“Come on,” the blonde said. “Heather wasn’t that bad. A little strange, but she was nice.”
“I heard they mutilated animals.”
“What weirdos are you ladies talking about?” I asked before the blonde could fire back.
“Heather’s friends,” she said. “I don’t know all of their names, but they were…well, weird sounds mean, but…”
“Gotcha. Let's call it 'eccentric.'” I offered the most reassuring smile I could. “Do you know how many of them there were?”
“I’d met three of them. Four, I guess if you count Heather.”
I frowned. There had been three bodies at the scene. “You wouldn’t know their names, would you?”
“Just Heather’s. The others had, like, weird code names. China and Marigold or something. Oh, and Amy. Amy Vernon.”
The Latina said, “She was the only normal one in the group.”
“How so?”
“She was the only one that wore clothes from this century and didn’t dye her hair weird colors.”
There hadn’t been any bodies at the scene that fit that description. Unless the hellhound had totally consumed her—not impossible, but unlikely—Amy Vernon was still out there somewhere.
“You wouldn’t have an address or phone number for Miss Vernon, would you?” I asked.
“No, sorry.”
I thanked the young women for their time, told them, I was sorry for their loss, and returned to Dallas. Fasano had drifted over to talk to a crime scene tech. The wizard’s arms were folded across his chest and he looked nervous.
“Get anything?”
“There may have been a fourth girl in the cemetery. She may have gotten away from the demon.”
“You know how to find her?”
I smiled. “No, but I have a plan.”
Chapter 10
"This is a stupid plan,” Dallas said. “You know that, right? It’s an absolutely, objectively awful plan. It’s so bad that—”
“Alright, alright,” I said. “Got it. Do you have a better plan?”
“No.”
“Then this is the plan.”
I’ve spent my adult life going into the dark. Vampire nests, werebeast dens, haunted mansions, and goblin caverns. Places that would scare most ordinary people witless. I don’t think about it anymore. It’s what I do.
In my entire life I had never been anywhere like this.
The Admissions and Registration Building of Jackson Perez-Connelly University was all on one floor, behind a glass door. It was a big, wide-open room. Three bored-looking people sat at a long desk, working on crossword puzzles or playing on their phones. At the end of the room I could see a short hall, leading to a few doors.
My team was assembled around me: Steve Dallas, Harrison Edwards, and Krissy Thomas. Dallas was wearing a suit. With a t
ie. It fit him well. His hair was brushed back and he’d shaved, making him look like a respectable businessman. Harrison had also shaved. It had burned out the battery in my electric razor, but it had been worth it. The bushy beard was gone, making Harrison look even younger than his age. Krissy, a twenty-one-year-old, had hair the color of milky coffee, bright blue eyes, and skin that was a little paler than you might have expected. She was my page (think an apprentice knight), and she was dressed for the heat wave: a bright pink tank-top and jean shorts so short they barely qualified as clothing. She smiled. When she wanted to, Krissy could create an attention black hole. No one would notice me while she was doing her thing.
All of us were unarmed—except for my switchblade which I never went anywhere without. This mission counted on blending in, and a white T-shirt would be more effective than any sword or knife.
“Everyone remembers the plan?” I said.
“Yes, Dave.” Krissy sighed, with a little more drama than necessary. “We’ve been over it ten times.”
“It hasn’t been ten.”
She began counting on her fingers. “Once when we left the office. Twice when we picked up Dallas. Three times—”
“I get it.”
“We got this,” Dallas said and used a handkerchief to wipe his forehead clear of sweat.
This was my crack team: a shaven teenage werewolf. a perspiring wizard, and a girl who was six months out from a totally normal life.
Dallas pushed open the door and took a few confident strides towards the desk. He surveyed the room like Caesar at Gaul and said, “Uh, hello. My name’s George Ocean. I’d like to enroll my daughter.”
The middle-aged Japanese woman looked up from her puzzle book with a visible effort. “I’m sorry sir, but the term’s already started, and late registration is booked. If you’d like to come back in November we could see about getting her into the spring semester. Besides, she would need to apply first.”
Harrison and I slipped away. Dallas banged his fist on the desk and shouted, “I’m a wealthy businessman, and I want to enroll my daughter today!”
