Текст книги "Hard Spell"

Автор книги: Justin Gustainis

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  Three symbols I'd never seen before were carved into the victim's forehead – one over the left temple, another over the right one, and a third square in the middle.

  The man in the alley wasn't just a murder victim.

  He was a sacrifice.

• • • •

  Inside the bar, Karl made the rounds of the customers while I had a word with the bartender, a pretty brunette in her mid-twenties whose nametag read "Andrea." She wore black pants on her slim hips, and a matching shirt, the cuffs folded back a couple of turns to leave her forearms bare.

  I described the vic for her and asked if she remembered serving him.

  "Yeah, sure. He was the double Scotch and water. Sat over there" – rea gestured to the right with her chin – "third stool from the end."

  "Notice anything unusual about him?"

  She glanced back toward the spot where the vic had been sitting, as if it helped her remember. "Well, he wasn't exactly killing that Scotch. When I figured out he wasn't coming back, I cleared the space. Glass was still full – he hadn't touched a drop."

  Why would somebody come into a bar, order booze, then not have any? Unless he came to do something besides drink.

  "He didn't stiff you, did he?"

  "Hell, no. He paid when I served him, just like he was supposed to. It's either that or run a tab, but I'm only supposed to run tabs for regulars." Andrea leaned closer and lowered her voice a little. "Listen, um, the guy paid with a twenty, and left his change on the bar. I didn't touch it until I was taking the glass away. By then, I figured he was either absentminded, or a hell of a good tipper. What should I, you know...?"

  "Might as well treat it like a tip and keep it," I said. "Let the guy's last act on earth be something good, even if he didn't intend it that way."

  "I like the way you think," she said. "Thanks."

  She straightened up, restoring the distance between us.

  "Do you remember him talking to anybody?" I asked her.

  "Uh-uh. He sat by himself, and I didn't see anybody come over. Only time I heard him talk was when he ordered the Scotch." She frowned. "Wait – his phone went off, once. I remember, cause the ringtone was this old Blue Oyster Cult song that I like."

  "'Don't Fear the Reaper'?"

  "Yeah, that's it. How'd you know?"

  "Lucky guess," I said. "So he got a phone call. Did you hear any of the conversation?"

  "Nah, I had customers further down. Anyway, I don't eavesdrop. I just went down his way cause I needed some ice." I saw her eyes narrow.

  "What?"

  "Nothing, I guess. But it wasn't long after the call that I noticed his chair was empty. At first, I just figured he went to the john."

  I glanced down and saw that the inside of her right arm was covered with thin scars running in all directions. I looked up before Andrea caught me staring.

  So she was a cutter. She fit the profile – it's almost always young women who feel the need to wound themselves in that particular way, over and over. Some of them do it so they can stop feeling whatever's gnawing at them. Others do it in the hope of feeling something, anything at all.

  I thanked her for the information and got up from the bar stool. Mentioning the scars wasn't going to do anything except embarrass Andrea. I wanted to think that she'd gotten help someplace and put it all behind her, but I knew better. A couple of those cuts were as fresh as yesterday's tears.

  We've all got our demons. And most of them can't be exorcised with a razor blade – even for a little while.

Karl and I walked back to our car, which we'd had to park half a block away. The bars were closed now, and the streets had grown quiet. Some tendrils of fog from the Lackawanna River were wrapping themselves around the trees and lamp posts.

  "Since I came up with zip from the customers, that phone call of yours is about the only lead we've got, unless forensics finds something," Karl said.

  "The CSI guys? Hell, they'll probably crack the case tomorrow. Don't you watch TV?"

  "Well, just in case they don't, I hope one of the phone companies will tell us who called the vic tonight."

  "That would be nice," I said. "Not as good as the perp confessing on the front page of the Times-Tribune tomorrow, but still not bad."

  "Is your buddy gonna send us a copy of the autopsy report?"

  "Yeah, along with the crime scene pictures, for all the good they'll do."

  "It was no bar fight, that's for sure," Karl said. "Hell, I knew that, soon as I got a look at the vic's wound."

  "How do you mean?"

  "Guy's throat was sliced, haina?" Karl said.

  "Yeah, so?"

  "So in any kind of a fight, guy uses a knife, you're gonna have stab wounds as the COD. Maybe some defensive cuts around the hands and arms, but the real damage comes from punctures." Karl kicked an empty soda can and sent it clanging into the gutter. "This was no fight, this was pre-fucking-meditated murder."

  "Could've been a mugging," I said. "Guy comes up behind the vic, knife to his throat, says, 'Give it up, motherfucker.' The vic struggles, maybe gets in a good kick backward or something. Then the perp panics, bears down too hard with the blade, the vic tries to pull away, and it's good night, sweet prince."

  "Yeah. But," Karl said.

  "'But' is right. We've got that artwork carved into his forehead."

  "You ever come across anything like those–" Karl stopped talking suddenly, and a moment later I realized why.

  Somebody was leaning against our car.

  The man was just a lean silhouette, until he turned his head a little and let the streetlight's glare fall on his face.

  It was Vollman.

"You were summoned tonight to the scene of a crime," Vollman said. "A murder, in fact."

  "How the hell did you know that?" Karl asked him.

  Vollman gave one of his narrow smiles. "I have my resources," he said. "Perhaps, in this instance, something as mundane as a scanner that picks up police radio broadcasts."

  "You seem to know why we're here, Vollman," I said. "But that doesn't explain why you are."

  "I assume the murder had one or more... occult... elements, or you gentlemen would not have been called to view the aftermath," Vollman said.

  "Yeah. So?" I took a long breath, made myself a little calmer. Vollman was a fucking bloodsucker, but for the moment, we needed him. The minute we didn't...

  "May I ask what those elements were?" He was a polite leech, I'll give him that.

  I took another one of those long breaths, then looked at Karl, who shrugged, "Why not?"

  "The victim had some esoteric symbols carved into his forehead," I said. "Three of them. Could be occult-related, although they don't fit in with any system of magic that I ever heard of."

  Even in the half-light, with the fog getting thicker, I could see something cross Vollman's lean face. I wondered what it was. After a long pause he asked, "Can you describe them?"

  "I can do better than that," I said, reaching for my notebook. "I drew them."

  I showed Vollman my version of the marks from the victim's brow. He looked at them as if he was trying to burn the images into his memory.

  "These drawings are accurate?" he asked.

  "Pretty close," I said. "I should have photos to check them against in a day or two, if it matters.

  There wasn't enough light to use my phone camera."

  "You recognize them?" Karl asked.

  "Not precisely, no," Vollman said, without taking his eyes off the paper. "They are very old in origin, I think. Sumerian, or possibly Babylonian. I have some books that I can consult."

  "And if you find something, you're going to let us know, right? Since we've been so open with you about this case and everything," I said.

  "Of course," Vollman said. "But in the meantime, Sergeant, may I offer a suggestion?"

  As if I could fucking stop you. "What?"

  "Ask whoever conducts the autopsy to look closely at the throat wound, with special attention to any trace elements that may be found there. It is very important, I think, to know exactly what was used to inflict the fatal cut."

  "What was used?" Karl said. "Shit, that oughta be obvious. It was a knife, and a damn sharp one, too. Or a straight razor, maybe."

  Vollman nodded. "I expect you are correct, Detective. But a crucial point is the material that the blade was made of."

  "Why's that so important?" I asked him.

  "The answer to that depends on what you find out," Vollman said with another one of his toothless smiles. Didn't want to display his fangs, I guess.

  The smile didn't last long. "I will be, as you say, in touch."

  Vollman took a couple of steps back, the fog and darkness making his form indistinct.

  "I need you to do better than–" I began, then stopped. "Vollman? Vollman!"

  He was gone, the stagy old bastard.

  Karl summarized my feelings very well. "Fucking vamps," he said.

The autopsy report only took twenty-four hours or so, which was almost as big a miracle as the one that followed "Lazarus, come forth!" It informed us that the victim died of "exsanguination following a single deep, narrow laceration that severed carotid artery, windpipe, and jugular vein, with aspirated blood as a contributing factor."

  In other words, somebody cut the guy's throat, and he bled out and died, inhaling some of his own blood in the process. Big surprise.

  The tissue analysis of the wound area took another couple of days. Would've been longer, but the Homicide guys had put pressure on the lab. Good thing, too, or we might have had to wait a week or more for the results. Nobody rushes stuff for the Supe Squad.

  Homicide was treating this as their case. For the time being, we were letting them think it was. But we still got copies of all the paperwork. Scanlon saw to that.

"Silver?" Lieutenant McGuire stared at the top sheet of the lab report I'd just dropped on his desk. "They're sure?"

  "Sure as the lab is likely to be," I said. In the chair beside me, I heard Karl give a quiet snort of laughter. He was probably thinking about some of the notable fuckups the lab had made in the past.

  "I could have a sample sent to the FBI in Washington," I said, with a straight face. "They've got better facilities, as they're always reminding us."

  "Sure," McGuire said. "And the results might even come back before I collect my pension. But I doubt it."

  He was right. When it comes to requests from local law enforcement, the FBI lab could make a glacier look speedy.

  "You didn't get to the good part yet," I told McGuire. "Keep reading."

  He gave me a look, then returned to the lab report. McGuire's a fast reader, and I wondered how long it would take him to get to the punch line.

  One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four–

  "A vamp? The vic's a fucking vampire?"

  I was about to say something stupid like "Yeah, where do we send the medal?" when Karl piped up with, "Must be, boss. It's pretty hard to fuck that up, once you know what to look for. There's, I think, nine different tests they can do."

  We both looked at him. He shrugged and said, "I read a lot, okay?"

  McGuire sat back in his chair, frowning. "Why would somebody use a silver-coated knife to off a vampire? There's plenty of easier ways to do it."

  "Beats the shit out of me," I said. "But Vollman thought we might find something interesting in the wound. That's why I requested the tissue analysis."

  "Who's Vollman?" McGuire asked. "Oh, right – your informant, I remember now. Maybe you better ask Mr Vollman why he thought the laceration would have unusual material in it."

  "I'd love to," I told him. "But I don't know how to contact the bloodsucker."

  McGuire raised his eyebrows at that, then lowered them in a first-class glare that included both Karl and me.

  "The old bastard wouldn't give us his contact information," Karl said. "Said he'd get in touch with us, instead."

  McGuire shook his head in disgust. "Then you two clowns had damn well better hope–"

  "Excuse me, Lieutenant?" Louise the Tease had appeared in McGuire's door. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but there's a man here to see the detectives." Louise looked at me. "It's the one who was here before – Vollman."

  I thought that kind of timing only happens on TV, but maybe Karl and I were having a change in our luck. And about time, too.

  We excused ourselves and got out of his office before the lieutenant could finish cutting each of us a brand new asshole.

"Silver," Vollman said thoughtfully, after I'd told him about the lab report. "I thought it might be some such."

  "And you thought that why, exactly?" I asked.

  "Has the knife itself been found?" Vollman asked, instead of answering my question.

  "Not so far," Karl told him. "Homicide had uniforms searching a five-block radius. They checked all the usual places where somebody would dump something – sewer grates, dumpsters, trash cans, like that. Nada."

  "Look," I said. "We both know you don't need a silver-plated knife to kill a vampire, although it seems to do the job pretty well. So the silver must have some other purpose."

  "A ritualistic purpose. Gotta be," Karl said.

  "And you knew it," I said. "That's why you told us to check for foreign substances in the wound. I want to know what you know about this, Vollman."

  The vampire/wizard looked at his hands for a long moment. They had long, thin fingers and the skin was free of the brown spots you associate with old folks. Guess vamps don't have liver problems. And for them, sun damage is never an issue – except when it's terminal.

  "I know little," he said finally. "But I suspect much, and fear even more."

  I slammed my open hand down on my desk. "Why don't you cut out the cryptic bullshit and tell us something straight out, just for a change?"

  Vollman raised his head and looked at me. He didn't seem to change expression, but I was suddenly very aware that I was sitting opposite a five hundred year-old monster who's probably killed more people than I've had meals.

  But I've faced down creatures as scary as Vollman before. I didn't blink or look away. I wan't afraid of him – or so I told myself.

  The old man held my gaze, then nodded, as if he had just confirmed something. "Very well, Sergeant. But what I know does not, regrettably, amount to a great deal."

  Vollman settled himself in his chair before going on. "The symbols you showed me were, in fact, from the language of ancient Sumeria. They do not constitute a word, but rather seem to form the first three letters of the name of an ancient god."

  "What god?" Karl asked him.

  Vollman looked uneasy for the first time since I had met him. "I would prefer not to say the name aloud. This is a powerful and quite malevolent deity. It probably makes no difference whether its name is spoken, but I have learned something of prudence in my long life."

  I knew what he meant. There are some names it's better not to say out loud, if you don't have to. Speaking of the devil doesn't necessarily make him appear – but it might.

  "All right," I said. "Would you be willing to write it down for us, instead?"

  "Yes," he said. "That I am prepared to do."

  I found a pad in one of my desk drawers and handed it to Vollman, along with a pen. After a moment's hesitation, he wrote something on the pad and passed it back to me.

  He had written the word "Sakosh."

It meant nothing to me. I showed the pad to Karl, who glanced at the name, looked back at me, and shrugged. He'd never heard of it, either.

  I tossed the pad on my desk. "So, somebody killed a vampire last night with a silver blade, then carved the name of some old Sumerian god on the guy's forehead. What's this got to do with the Opus Mago and George Kulick?"

  "Perhaps nothing," Vollman said. "But I hold very little faith in coincidence."

  "Me, too," I said. "So?"

  "So, the man in the alley was clearly a sacrifice, yes?"

  "Fair assumption," I said.

  "A sacrifice is used in magic to give power to a spell or incantation."

  "Right."

  "Most magical rituals that involve sacrifice call for the death of an animal. The sacrifice of a human being is used only in the blackest of the black arts, when some great evil is being contemplated."

  "Agreed."

  Vollman looked at Karl, then back at me. "Then ask yourselves this question, which has been haunting me for the last several nights: how monstrous must a spell be that requires the sacrifice of a vampire?"

There was a silence that Vollman finally broke by saying, "And remember the Opus Mago is a forbidden book precisely because it contains spells to be used for invoking the most potent of the dark forces, which are precisely the kind of powers that would require such an... extreme... sacrifice."

  "So your theory," Karl said, "is that whoever stole the Opus Mago plans to carry out one of those blacker than-black rituals, and that the guy who got his throat cut is supposed to kick-start the process."

  Vollman nodded. "That is the conclusion that I have reached, based on the available information."

  Karl's chair creaked as he leaned forward. "So how do we find the guy who's doing this shit?"

  "If I knew that…" Vollman shrugged instead of finishing the sentence.

  "If you knew that, you wouldn't need us," I said. "That's the most honest thing you've ever said to us, even if you didn't really say it."

  Vollman didn't respond to my dig. Istead, he asked politely, "Have your police colleagues produced any useful leads in the case of George Kulick?"

  "Not a damn thing," I said. "No witnesses, no murder weapon, and the forensics stuff is pretty much useless."

  "They found some stray hairs on the corpse," Karl said, "but whether they come from the perp or from the vic's girlfriend, or his mother, or whoever, we don't know. And a DNA match won't work until they have a suspect to match it to."

  "I was just remembering something you said the other day," I told Vollman. "Whoever would mess around with the Opus Mago would have to be a wizard of 'supreme arrogance,' or something like that. I had the impression that you believe most practitioners of the Art wouldn't be caught dead with that book, so to speak."

  "You are correct," Vollman said. "Even I have not read it – apart from a quick perusal, to verify its authenticity."

  "You wouldn't read it," Karl said. "Okay, who would?"

  Vollman raised his hands a few inches before dropping them back in his lap. "I have no idea."

  "But among the local supes you're the man," Karl said. "You told us so yourself. So you ought to know which of the practitioners would have the stones to try a spell from this book."

  "I ought to know, yes, and I do," Vollman said. "The answer to your question is, 'no one.'"

  "None of the local wizards, witches, sorcerers, or wannabees would give it a try? You're sure?" Karl was like a terrier with a rat. He gets that way sometimes.

  "Quite certain. The person in this area with the greatest chance of surviving such an attempt is, frankly, myself. And I would not venture such insanity."

  "So it's an outsider," I said. "Somebody who came here for the express purpose of stealing the Opus Mago and making use of it."

  Vollman thought about that for a while, or pretended to. Finally, he said, "You must be correct, Sergeant. I can think of no other explanation."

  "Why here?" Karl asked. "Why Scranton?"

  "Remember, there are only four copies of the Opus Mago known to remain in existence, Detective," Vollman said. "Kulick was the guardian of one of them. There were only so many places the thief could strike."

  "Where are the other three?" I asked him.

  Vollman counted them off slowly on his fingers as he spoke. "One is in London," he said, "in a secure vault at the British Museum. Another is in Cologne, Germany. The third is held in Johannesburg, South Africa. And the fourth is – was – here."

  "Are the other three copies still where they're supposed to be?" I was wondering whether Scranton was the thief's first stop, or his last.

  "I have made inquiries within the last few days," Vollman said. "Yes, all three are still in place." He held up a hand, palm toward me, for a moment. "And if I may anticipate your next question, no attempts have been made to steal the other copies."

  "So, whoever it was wanted the book, he picked Scranton as the best place to rip it off," Karl said. "Maybe because he heard the Opus Mago was guarded by just one guy and a dinky little floor safe."

  Vollman stirred in his chair a little, as if the accusation in Karl's voice had made him uncomfortable.

  "He came here for the book, then stuck around," Karl went on. "Why would he do that?"

  "Perhaps he is in a hurry," Vollman said. "He wants to waste no time in putting one of the spells into practice."

  "It would be good if we knew what ll was," I said to Karl. "Might give us a better idea of what we're dealing with."

  I turned to Vollman. "We know about the silver knife, and about the name of–" I stopped, and tapped the pad on my desk, where he had written the ancient god's name. "–this guy here. Is that enough to go on, for somebody to look in one of the other copies and work backwards?"

  Vollman sat there for a while, frowning. Then he said, "I can ask. You understand, I have no authority over those people. But if I explain what is at stake here, it may be that one of the other caretakers can be persuaded to search through his copy of the Opus Mago. Perhaps, given what we know, he can determine the exact nature of the spell that is being undertaken by this lunatic, whoever he may be."

  "Or 'she,'" Karl said.

  Vollman dipped his head in acknowledgment. "Or she."

  "If you can do that right away, it would be a very good thing," I said. "And in the meantime, Detective Renfer and I will talk to some of our contacts in the supernatural community."

  Vollman looked at me. "To what end?"

  "To see if there's a new wizard in town."

In Scranton, there's no shortage of what my mom used to call beer gardens. There are straight bars and supe bars. That doesn't mean a supe can't walk into any joint in town for a beer (or a Bloody Mary – with or without real blood), assuming he's of age and has the money to pay for it. Discrimination's against the law. Anyway, no bartender's going to refuse to serve somebody who might come back during the next full moon and tear his throat out.

  But most supes prefer the company of their own, and the biggest supe bar in town is Renfield's on Wyoming Avenue. I'd been there plenty of times before.

  The place was busy when Karl and I walked in a little after 3am. Supe bars usually stay open all night and close at dawn, for obvious reasons.

  You'd think we might get a hostile reception in a place like that, but you'd be wrong. Cops on the Supe Squad spend as much time investigating crimes committed against supes as we do on crimes with a supe perpetrator, and the supe community knows that. If a cop is fair in his dealings with them, the supes remember.

  And if he's not fair, they remember that, too.

  I try to be fair, even when dealing with vamps. You can't let your personal views get in the way of your work – it's not professional. And I'm always professional. Well, almost always.

We got nods of welcome from a couple of ogres sitting in a corner, and a quiet wave from a werewolf we knew. The rest of the customers ignored us, or pretended to.

  Elvira was tending bar, like she usually does on weeknights. That's not her real name, of course. But she's tricked out like that vamp wannabe who got famous hosting bad horror movies on TV. Why an attractive human would want to look like a vamp is beyond me, but I guess a girl's gotta make a living. Like the original, our Elvira's got boobs big enough to look good in the low-slung dress that's part of the get-up, and I bet that cleavage of hers is good for a lot of tips.

  When she slinked over, I ordered a ginger ale for myself and a seltzer for Karl. That thing about no booze on the job may be a cliché, but it's also a rule.

  Besides, if I was going to drink, I wouldn't do it in a supe bar, despite my good relations with most of the locals. There's always the chance that I'd get careless and have one too many.

  A circus animal trainer may get along pretty well with the lions, tigers, and leopards in his act, but he'd be a fool to turn hs back on them.

  Elvira was back within a minute. She placed our drinks in front of us, and I dropped a twenty on the bar. As she reached for it, I placed my hand on top of hers. Nothing painful – I just wanted to get her attention.

  She looked at me through all the mascara and eyeliner that surrounded her baby blues. "What?"

  "Seen any new faces, the last week or so?"

  She wrinkled her forehead in thought. "Gosh, no, I don't think so. You guys lookin' for somebody in particular?"

  I nodded. "A practitioner, gender unknown. New in town, and a real heavy hitter."

  "I haven't heard about anybody like that, Stan," Elvira said. "Honest."

  "Put the word out, will you?" I said. "Quiet, no drama. But make it clear that if anybody can give me a line on this new spellcaster, I'd owe them a heck of a big favor."

  Yeah, I really said "heck". I'm no Boy Scout, but it's not smart to say words like "hell" in a supe bar. You never know what might be listening.

  Elvira promised to let her customers know that I was in the market for information, and I told her to keep the change from my twenty.

  I turned around and leaned my back against the bar. It was the signal that I was open for business, if anybody had any. I've found it's better to let supes approach me, rather than the other way around. Some of them spook easy, you might say.

  Off to my left, Karl was deep in conversation with the LeFay sisters, a couple of young witches from up the line in Dickson City. He could have been asking about our wizard, or trying to set up a threesome for later. Either way, it didn't look like he was having much luck.

A few minutes later, I realized that Barney Ghougle had slipped onto the stool to my right. I hadn't seen him approach, but then nobody beats a ghoul for sneaky.

  Everybody calls him Barney Ghougle, even him. His real name is something unpronounceable, except by another ghoul. Barney looks kind of like Peter Lorre used to, back when he was a young actor making films in Germany – like M, where Lorre played a degenerate child murderer. The resemblance ends there, though. I'm sure Barney would never hurt a kid.

  Which doesn't necessarily mean he wouldn't eat one, if it was already dead.

  I nodded in his direction. "Hey, Barney."

  "Sergeant," he said in that raspy voice of his. "And how are you this fine evening?"

  Even from several feet away, his halitosis made my nose wrinkle. Ghouls have the absolute worst breath in the world.

  "I'm a little frustrated, to tell you the truth," I said.

  "Indeed?" He took a sip of what looked like a double bourbon on the rocks. "Perhaps I might be able to assist you in some way, if I knew the cause of your distress."

  Barney talks like that because he's a mortician, and I guess somber formality helps when you're dealing with the grieving. I hear that his funeral home is pretty successful, but I'd never do business with him. I like my relatives to be buried with all their parts intact.

  "Maybe you can help," I said. "I'm trying to get a line on a practitioner."

  He nodded sympathetically. "There are so many," he said. "And yet I would have thought you knew them all. The local ones, at least."

  "That's just it," I told him. "This one might not be local. He, or maybe she, could be new in town, say within the last week or two. Somebody who's major league, or thinks he is. The kind who takes on the really hard spells."

  I turned and looked at him. "Sounds like there might be a 'but' lurking in there someplace."

  "How well you know me," he said with a tiny smile. "I was, in fact, about to say that I may have heard something about a new arrival to our fair city, a visitor who would seem to fit your description."

  He didn't say anything else. The silence between us dragged on for a while.

  "All right," I said with a sigh. "What do you need?"

  Barney took another sip of his drink before answering. "My brother," he said, not looking at me.

  "Algernon? Don't tell me he's been busted again."

  The little ghoul nodded glumly.

  "Same thing?" I asked. "Indecent exposure?"

  Another nod. "It is really most embarrassing," he said.

  I knew he meant it. Among ghouls, eating the flesh of the recently dead was no big deal, but having a relative who likes to wave his weenie around in front of the living is a scandal. Especially if he keeps getting caught.

  "Who filed the complaint?" I asked. "Do you know?"

  He nodded slowly. "Some woman in Nay Aug Park. I gather she was on a bench, tossing peanuts to the squirrels, when Algernon approached her and asked if she'd like to see some real…" He let his voice fade out, with a despairing gesture.

  "I'll find out who she is," I told him. "See if maybe I can persuade her to change her mind about pressing charges. You may have to part with a few bucks to make her happy."

  "Which I would do, gladly," Barney said. "Thank you."

  "You're welcome. Now, about that spellcaster..."

  "Yes, of course." He gestured with his chin toward a table in one corner of the room. "It was there, in fact, that I learned what I am about to tell you. A week ago it was, or a little longer. While waiting for a friend to join me, I noticed that two of our local wizards were conversing at a nearby table. I'm afraid I may have eavesdropped."

  I didn't doubt it for a minute. Most ghouls are incredible busybodies. That's why they make such good sources for information.

  "And what did you hear?" I asked.

  "One was saying that he had recently encountered a man downtown, bumped into him quite literally. Someone whom he had known years ago and who has since achieved quite a formidable reputation for the use of black magic. But when greeted, the man apparently said something along the lines of 'You must be mistaken,' and walked away, quite brusquely."

  "Mistaken identity, maybe," I said. "It happens, you know."