THREE

“Charlie? It’s me.”

“I know it’s you, Jace. I know how to cast this wonderful magic spell, call display. It only works on a rare mystic artifact known as a cell phone, but fortunately I have one of those, too—”

“Shut up, bonehead. I have a problem.”

“And a truly unique way of asking for assistance—”

“You know that old saying about good friends, and what they’ll help you do?”

“You’ll have to unvague that for me.”

“A friend will help you move. A good friend—” I pause, and hold my breath.

“Where are you?”

“The creepiest house in town. In the basement.”

“Stay there. Don’t call anyone else. Give me ten—no, fifteen minutes.”

“Okay.”

He hangs up. I let out my breath slowly. A good friend will help you move a body.

It’s funny. You’d think I’d be freaked out or in shock or something, but I’m not. In fact, I feel more normal and less anxious than I have in months. And considering what I found in my search of the basement, that makes no sense at all.

There was a chest, all right, but it didn’t contain porn or kinky costumes or anything even vaguely phallic. What it held was a book. That’s all, just one single book. It was thick and leather bound and written in a language I didn’t understand.

But I did understand some of what was on the loose papers stuck between the pages. They were handwritten in English and made the crazy between my ears seem as mundane as a mud puddle.

Longinus was the head of a secret club, all right, but it was more culty than kinky. The kind of obscene he was into involved black magic, ritual sacrifice, and summoning some kind of entity. There were lots of drawings, but they were badly done and hard to understand. His penmanship left a lot to be desired, too.

Okay, so I’m not the only crazy person in my little corner of the world, and some of the people I’ve known for years apparently like to dress up like the Emperor in Star Wars and chant in a basement. Life is weird, I get that.

But according to Longinus’s notes—which don’t name any names, of course—some of the people in this town don’t just worship an unholy evil.

Some of them are vampires. And some of them are werewolves.

That’s about all I could glean from my first look at the notes. As for the book itself, I think it’s what’s called a grimoire, a book of spells. It’s written in a language—and sometimes, an alphabet—I don’t recognize, on pages of ancient parchment. The ink is a reddish brown.

And every now and then, in the middle of what I assume is some sort of enchantment, my name pops up. Jace Valchek, written in English, in that same red-brown ink. It looks like it was written a long time ago.

Charlie arrives, driving his ’57 Chevy with the big-ass tail fins, painted midnight black to highlight all the chrome. He pulls around the side of the house, out of sight, and I hear a knock at the back door, which turns out to be in the kitchen. I find it and let him in.

He’s wearing sneakers, an old pair of jeans, and a faded black T-shirt. He’s got a large gym bag in one hand. “Are you okay?” are the first words out of his mouth.

“Yeah. It’s Old Man Longinus who’s not doing so good.”

“Tell me what happened.” Charlie seems to be taking this in stride, too, which only heightens the unreality. It almost feels like we’re just delivering rehearsed lines, falling into familiar roles, like characters in a long-running TV show.…

I give my head a shake. “All right. Here’s the situation.” I give him a quick summary, leaving out what brought me here in the first place. I show him the book, the notes, and the photos, which he studies briefly but intently before handing them back. “Show me the body.”

I take him to the basement. He studies the corpse, then puts down the gym bag and unzips it. He pulls out some kitchen gloves, a bottle of bleach, and a roll of paper towels. “First things first. Wipe down every surface you think you might have touched. Do the same for footprints you might have tracked in.” He takes out a handful of black trash bags and a roll of duct tape. “I’m going to do a little gift wrapping.”

“Charlie. Aren’t you going to ask me the obvious question?”

He rolls his eyes. “Did you kill him?”

“No.”

“Duh. Now get moving—we don’t know how long we have.”

And so, my very first disposal of a body—excuse me, a murder victim—proceeds with the fervent intensity of cleaning house before the in-laws show up. I erase all traces of Charlie’s presence and my own, while Charlie bags the corpse. There’s surprisingly little blood, and what there is seems to have flowed into a gutter built into the table for just that purpose. We sanitize everything with bleach.

The body goes into Charlie’s trunk, along with the knife.

“What are you going to do with it?” I ask him.

“Better you don’t know,” he says. “But don’t worry—nobody’s going to find it.”

I nod. “Thank you,” I say. “I don’t know what I’d—”

“Go home. Don’t talk to anyone. I’ll come over tomorrow and we’ll hash this all out, okay? It’ll be all right.”

I want to hug him, but I just nod. “Yeah. Okay.”

He gets in and drives away, carefully.

I’ve got a lot to think about on the walk home.

*   *   *

“Jace!”

I jump three feet straight up and my eyeballs bug out six inches from my skull. Okay, not really, but that’s what it feels like.

I’m a block away from my house. I’ve got the book—wrapped in a plastic shopping bag—clutched to my chest. And standing directly in front of me on the sidewalk, blocking my path, is Vince Shelly.

Vince is, not to put too fine a point on it, the town drunk. He’s got a crappy little house I think he inherited and some sort of disability pension, which is enough to keep him inebriated pretty much all of the time. He’s more into beer than the hard stuff, though, which means he’s usually just wobbly as opposed to falling-down wasted. He’s bald on top, with long, greasy gray hair to his shoulders, and a ridiculous pair of muttonchop whiskers that seem to go with the Harley-Davidson hoodie he’s wearing, though I’ve never seen him on a bike. Stained gray sweatpants and scuffed loafers finish off the outfit, no doubt handy when you don’t want to fiddle with anything as complicated as zippers or laces.

“Hey, Vince,” I say. He’s not all that bulky, but the way he’s swaying from side to side keeps me from darting either way around him. “Uh, excuse me.”

“Why? Did you fart?” He grins at me, blinking bloodshot eyes. “Fine evening, ain’t it?”

“Sure.”

“Yeah. Sure is.” He’s studying me like a drunken cat trying to focus on a mouse. “But you can never tell, right?”

“I—what?”

“Might not be so nice.” He nods, giving me an exaggerated look of secrecy. “You look under things, they’re not always nice at all. Sometimes they’re nasty.”

I stare at him. “What are you—are you trying to tell me something?”

He stares back. Suddenly he doesn’t seem all that unsteady on his feet. “Maybe,” he says. “Maybe I am.”

We’re frozen like that for a few seconds, just studying each other, until he abruptly says, “You like tattoos?”

I’m rapidly approaching non sequiter overload. “I … guess?”

He yanks up his sleeve. His arm is covered with tats of superheroes—Spider-man, Superman, Batman, the Hulk. Lots of others. It looks like a ten-year-old’s idea of heaven. “Cool, huh?”

“Oh, absolutely.”

He beams at me with pride. “I know. But lately, I’ve been having problems with ’em. See?” He points at a tattoo of Thor swinging his hammer. “They’re running.”

“From what?” I’m only half joking.

He shakes his head. “Not running away. The colors are bleeding out … see?” He points. I’m no expert, but some of the lines look a lot blurrier than others.

“Something’s pushing the ink out,” Vince says. “Something underneath. I don’t know what it is yet, but I can feel it. Inside me.”

“I … I have to go,” I say, and push past him. Whatever it is inside him—other than Coors and cheap pizza—I just can’t have this conversation right now. I need to get home, lock all the doors and windows, and hide in a pillow fort. With my dog.

Vince doesn’t chase me, or say anything as I hurry away. I’m afraid to look back. I’m afraid he won’t be there anymore. Or worse, that something else might be standing in his place.

When I get home, the very first thing I do is turn on the TV.

The second is to dig out my stash of Bloodhound Files DVDs from where I’ve hidden them under the fridge. Nobody looks under a fridge, unless they’ve desperate to add to their dust-bunny-and-moldy-Cheerios collection. I put a DVD in at random and hit PLAY.

While I’m doing this, Galahad regards me with a very concerned look on his face. I grab the remote before he tries to bury it again, and he lies down on the floor beside the couch with his chin on the floor as if to say Oh, crap, here we go again.

And then, as the opening music kicks in over the credits, I pull the grimoire out of the bag and sit down to take a long, hard look at it.

“Okay, Jace,” I say out loud. “Let’s get to work.”

*   *   *

One of my favorite things about The Bloodhound Files is the golems.

Most people have heard of golems. They’re basically men made from clay, sort of mineral-based Frankensteins brought to life with magic. That’s the traditional kind, from Jewish mythology.

On the show, they’ve been updated; they’re mass produced, made from sand poured into human-shaped, thick-skinned plastic bags, and animated by the life force of an animal. They come in a variety of colors, and are largely used for their muscle power.

There are no golems in Longinus’s notes, or his supposed book of spells. I find that oddly reassuring, though I’m not sure why.

But there is something else, something I missed on my first reading.

A drawing of a hangman’s noose.

It’s in the grimoire, which is somehow worse than being in the notes, but at least there’s no mention of my name on that page. I just wish I knew what it meant—is it a reference to the Gallowsman, or are creepy drawings of nooses just the kind of thing that pop up in tomes like this, like doodles of a happy face in a kid’s notebook?

I glance up at the TV screen. It’s showing a fake commercial at the moment, coincidentally enough for a golem product. A smiling golem wearing boxer trunks is demonstrating a polish called Gleam Cream, which apparently gives your plastic skin the kind of supple, shiny, and clear appearance all golems desire. I guess you can sell anyone beauty products, if you try hard enough.

The doorbell rings. Galahad pads over and sniffs at the door, but he doesn’t bark. He’s pretty laid-back as far as being a watchdog goes. I hit PAUSE and open the door a crack, hoping it’s Charlie.

It’s not. It’s one of my neighbors, a kid named Billy. He’s around eleven and a born salesman.

“Hi, Jace!” he says with a big smile.

“Hi, Billy. I’m a little busy right now—”

“Too busy for chocolate?” He holds up a bar you could club someone to death with. Damn it, the kid knows my weakness.

“I’ll get my wallet,” I say.

Billy hangs out in the foyer with Gally as I scrounge up some cash. If he notices the paused image of Jace Red Dog on my TV, he doesn’t comment on it.

“Here,” I say, giving him a bill. “What’ll that get me?”

He grins. “Two of these bad boys.” He digs into his satchel and hands over the bars. Extra Dark—like I said, the kid knows me.

“Thanks. You’re going to college on my dime, aren’t you?”

“Maybe,” he says with a shrug. “But what I really want to do is drive a truck.”

I frown. Déjà vu, but not quite. Because …

“Thanks, Jace,” he says. “See you later!”

It’s gone. I wave goodbye as he trudges off down the sidewalk to his next sales pitch, and then I sink back into the couch.

Which is when I notice the screen is no longer frozen on an image of Red Dog.

The Sword of Midnight stares at me calmly, a digital onscreen statue. I pick up the remote, study her nervously, then unpause the image.

“Thanks,” she says. “That’s a weird feeling, you know? Like your whole body is on hold.”

She’s talking directly to me.

“You’re welcome,” I say.

I must sound a little stunned, because the Sword frowns and says, “Okay, Jace, get it together. Communicating like this isn’t easy, and I can’t do it for long. I need you to listen, resist making smart-ass remarks, and trust me, okay?”

“Uh-huh,” I say faintly.

“First of all, you’re not crazy. This isn’t a hallucination, or a dream, or anything simulated by technology or magic. It’s going to get strange before you’re done, but it’s all real. You with me?”

I swallow, and nod my head.

“Good. Because—Jace, look out!”

I scream and dive for the floor. Galahad starts barking. There’s a sudden swell of dramatic music—

Wait.

I look up. The Sword and Red Dog are battling a vampire street gang that call themselves the Lugosis—they all wear black capes and talk in ridiculous accents. I watch the fight for a few seconds, but I’ve seen it a dozen times before.

“Um,” I say. “Hello?”

No answer. I’m talking to a DVD.

“Now that is just goddamn annoying,” I say. Gally comes over and licks my face in a vain attempt to put a positive spin on things.

I watch until I fall asleep, but the Sword doesn’t talk to me again.

Not even at midnight.

*   *   *

I wake up the next morning on the couch in the blue glow of the TV. I yawn, turn it off, and do my best to pretend it’s just another morning. I stash my DVDs—putting the grimoire and the notes in with them—shower, and get into some fresh clothes. I feed Galahad and pour coffee in me, then take him out for his morning walk.

Which is when normal crashes and burns.

I can see the flashing red and blue lights before I reach the end of the street. I wonder if something went wrong and Charlie’s been arrested, but he lives in the opposite direction. The lights don’t seem to be coming from anywhere near the Longinus house, either.

I walk toward them. I probably shouldn’t, but I’m not the only one; a police car with its flashers going is a relatively rare sight in town, and I’m not the only citizen strolling down the sidewalk and trying to look casual.

The police car is blocking the entrance to the church’s parking lot. A deputy is trying to keep people back, but it’s impossible to hide what’s dangling from the third-story eaves of the church.

It’s Father Stone. And even from here, I can see the distinctive knot of a hangman’s noose in the rope around his neck.