EXCLUSIVE SNEAK PEEK

by

Robert E. Vardeman

She picked up the switchblade, slid the safety off and pressed the button. Its recoil in her hand surprised her as it opened with a satisfying snick. She waved the ten-inch length around so it caught morning sunlight slanting in through the big plate glass window and reflected all over the office like some feeble spotlight. She twisted the blade just so and illuminated a spot across the room. The shadow of the blade lay across her blouse, the tip pointing at her heart.

She glanced back at Jablonski's office, then heaved a sigh. She closed the switchblade and slipped on the brass knucks. They spread her fingers apart uncomfortably, but the palm grip robbed it of giving her anything more than a little discomfort. It had been designed for a man with far bigger hands than hers. One whack from this set would knock out anyone she connected with. She ran her left thumb over the edges and pulled back, stifling a curse of her own. Sharp. She decided even a light blow if she wore these could cause more damage than even a strong man fighting bare knuckled. She slipped them off and started to close the drawer, but the revolver drew her attention like a magnet pulls iron.

One shot and it would be over. Whatever "it" might be. She hefted the gun, spun the cylinder the best she could and pointed it at the spot she had illuminated with the knife's reflection.

"Bang," she said softly. "Gotcha." The sense of power was immense. A single shot could kill a man all the way down the street.

"Missed by a mile," came a whisper in her ear. Allison jumped. "You'll never hit me, ever."

Allison looked around the office but saw only papers gently rustling at the side of her desktop.

"Careful with the gun. You'll shoot somebody. You unloaded it, didn't you?" The voice was barely audible over the rising high-pitched buzz.

"I don't know how." Allison guiltily shoved the pistol back into the drawer and closed it was a clang. "I was just--"

"Wondering what it was like to kill something? What it would be like to kill someone?" the voice said.

"You stop flying around and settle down. Here. Now. On my desk." Allison thumped her index finger into the exact spot and tried to look stern. She was still a little shaken that she had been caught playing with the weapons Jablonski had taken off the street punks who had mistaken him for someone who'd be robbed willingly. He had told her to lock them up, but she had forgotten the combination to the locking file cabinet again.

She knew she ought to write it down but then Spigot would find the scrap of paper and hide it, making her both angry and feeling guilty.

The buzzing sound took on a different pitch, almost a drone now, and an eight-inch-tall fairy appeared where she tapped her finger against the desk. The rapidly fluttering wings caused some more small windy disturbances and then even that died as Spigot folded her gossamer wings, settled down cross-legged on the desk and looked at her like a bug under a microscope. The fairy obviously mocked her, as she always did.

"You should have locked them up."

"I couldn't remember the combination. I thought I--" Allison stopped, pushed a strand of auburn hair out of her eyes and bent down to look Spigot squarely in the eye. The fairy's eyes were compound like a fly, but each facet shone a different rainbow hue. If Allison couldn't read what was going on in the fairy's head by looking into her in the eyes, the small, mobile face was a sure giveaway. Spigot couldn't control her emotions. She worked hard to keep from tittering.

"You got in the cabinet and changed the combination," Allison accused.

"I was bored."

"You're always bored. Now reset the combination or at least tell me what it is now. These are too dangerous for me to keep in my desk."

"You were having fun playing with them." Spigot craned her neck and pointed to the brass knuckles. "Those are strange rings." She held up her own tiny hand where a different gem sparkled on each finger. "I don't think I like them. Mine are far nicer."

"You know good and well what those are." Allison forced herself to keep her voice down. Jablonski didn't like Spigot hanging around when she wasn't working. If anything, he would have forced her to come in through the mail slot in the door rather than let a client spot her because fairies were not well thought of due to their petty thieving. Allison didn't doubt Spigot had stolen each and every one of those rings on her fingers, though who could miss such microscopic stones?

"I won't. I can't. I promised."

"What are you talking about?" Allison always felt she was listening to a ten-second radio talk show delay when Spigot came around.

"I promised him Jablonski would help."

"We are a detective agency." Allison tried to make out the words painted on the window, but they were reversed. She suffered from a little dyslexia. She looked at the reflection in a mirror so the words came out right. Almost right. A little out of order. Confidential Investigations, the bottom line read, just under the Retrograde Detective Agency logo.

"You have to talk to him."

"Who?"

"Jablonski!" Spigot stood and stamped a tiny bare foot. The sunlight reflected off several toe rings on preternaturally long digits. She crossed arms over her chest, which would have been grotesquely out of proportion if she had been a full-sized woman, and glared at Allison. "You're always trying to confuse me."

"You're our best field agent," Allison said, in an attempt to placate the fairy. "I wouldn't do a thing like that."

"I'm your only field agent. The rest have gone back to the hill. Jablonski is a terrible employer, hiding us like he's embarrassed to have anyone see us fluttering about. We made his reputation. If we fairies didn't owe him, I'd go back to the hill, too, and never darken your doorway again."

"Some clients, uh, don't understand."

"Their loss," Spigot said. She lifted her chin and looked defiant.

"Yes, their loss. Now what is it you wanted to tell him?"

"You'll have to do it for me. I promised we'd find him."

Allison took a deep breath and slowly wormed the story out of the fairy.

When Spigot finished, Allison said, "Jablonski doesn't like missing person cases. Runaway kids are the worst of all, expect maybe scorned wives running off with bad boy lovers."

"They're better than peeping through windows and trying to catch adulterers. You humans can be such perverts." Spigot's wings fluttered a little faster and a smile crept onto her tiny lips. "Well, maybe not that bad, just funny. Amusing funny, not strange funny, though you can be that, too." She slowed down and said, "I promised Dick Haffner we'd find his son, Larry. He's ever so worried."

"Who is this Haffner and why did he come to you?" Allison wasn't sure many humans were on speaking terms with fairies, and those people tended to be denizens of what she thought of as "the other side."

"He puts out food for us. Candy. I like the soft chocolatey kind. I can rip it off and carry it away and eat it where my brothers and sisters can't steal it from me." Spigot showed remarkably sharp little teeth as she mimicked how she ate the candy.

"Like brownies?"

"No!" Spigot said sharply. "I don't like brownies. They're thieves. Worse. They're hypocrites pretending to do housework for you and then stealing things. Like rugs. They'll steal the rug out from under your feet."

Allison tried a different tack.

"How long has Larry been missing?"

"Only since last night, so the police won't do anything. I even told Mr. Haffner to see that friend of yours on the force and use your name--"

"You didn't! Detective Carson isn't a friend. He's a policeman."

"You're sweet on him. I can tell. I thought he must like you, too, so I told Mr. Haffner, but Carson was rude to him."

"It has to be forty-eight hours," Allison said, "unless Larry has a record."

"He's a good boy," Spigot said. Allison could hear the worried father speaking in such a tone. Spigot sometimes sounded more like a recording than a fairy.

"Can he pay?"

"His son is missing!" cried Spigot. "You're asking for money! Why, he was so distraught he didn't even offer me a piece of chewy candy."

"Great," Allison muttered. "You've found a client who can't pay and whose kid will probably get home before he does."

"This is serious, Allison. I feel it."

"Fairy intuition?"

"Fairy intuition," Spigot assured her. Allison couldn't remember a single instance where "fairy intuition" had been right, but nothing else was happening in the office, and this might keep her from playing with the dangerous toys in her desk drawer. She shuddered, thinking she might have shot herself with the gun or cut herself opening the switchblade. What she might have done wearing the brass knuckles was beyond her imagination.

Allison heaved to her feet, made sure the desk drawer was as securely locked as it could be against a curious fairy and then went to put the new case in front of her boss.

#

"Jablonski is a good man," Spigot said.

"Jablonski told me to put you in a cage and then drown you in the lake," Allison said. "He refused to take the case. He said he had a more important one to work on, and he's probably right. I had to help him with the Internet connection. He's working for a big chemical company on some industrial espionage, and they're paying us a hundred times what a missing boy's father can pay."

"But no chemical company would give us chewy chocolate candy."

"He was distraught," Allison admitted. She had never seen a grown man cry so much in such a short time as when she and Spigot had spoken with Dick Haffner to find out details of his son's disappearance. After the harrowing ten minutes, Allison had wanted to run, fearing Haffner's grief would suck her down like some giant emotional black hole from which she could never escape.

"The school's just letting out," she said. Spigot flew about her ears, making hearing difficult until finally alighting on her shoulder.

"You talk to them," Spigot said. "I don't like the pretends."

Allison sucked in her breath and tried to think about Larry Haffner, but it was difficult. Her own daughter had been killed--murdered--and the wounds would never heal, in spite of Emmy dying over a year ago.

"She would have been a junior this year," she said.

"She wouldn't have ever graduated. She was a Goth, just like them, and they're no good. They're lazy and crazy and--"

"Shut up." Allison had no time for the fairy's opinion about Goth kids. Most of them, like Emmy, were just rebelling, cosplaying, not trying to do anything but find themselves.

"They set fairies on fire. They've evil. Even the ones that aren't Satan worshipers, they're all evil. They read about it on your computers and then think up even more vile things to do. Ever had your wings plucked off?"

Allison shushed Spigot again, as a rush of students poured from the high school while the final bell was still ringing. She tried to identify which of the Goths were Larry's friends since there were so many of them.

"All different and so alike," she said.

"There. Those. Those are the ones. Can't you feel the ugliness, the evil? It's boiling off them like dew off a leaf in the morning sunlight. And that's dangerous since it can scald you if you fly too close."

Allison shushed Spigot again and went to the tight knot of kids sharing a cigarette. When she got closer, she almost laughed. They might have been dressed up for Halloween, but they were far too old for trick or treating. The girl had several rings in one ear and none in the other, but when her black-glossed lips parted a golden stud in her tongue gleamed. She wore net stockings, a skirt that hardly covered her ass and a motorcycle jacket that looked like it had belonged to James Dean after the crash.

The three boys were similarly garbed. Black leather pants, dusters that brushed the ground, studs in lips and ears and ten pounds of attitude that faded when it became obvious Allison wasn't the least bit outraged by them.

As she stopped a pace away, the smallest of the bunch, one with a round face more like a cherub than a devil, turned to her and pointedly blew smoke in her direction before passing the cigarette to the girl who towered over him by a full head.

"You're not a cop," the boy said.

"And figuring that out so fast gets you elected head of Mensa," Allison said. She studied the quartet. The girl, looking tough, puffed on the cigarette and then thrust it out to Allison.

"Want a drag?"

"No, thanks. It'll stunt my fashion sense like it has yours," Allison said, stepping up, taking the cigarette, making a show of dropping it to the pavement and crushing it under her shoe. "You must be Claudia. You were Larry's girlfriend."

"She's my girlfriend," the short cherubic kid said, pushing between Allison and Claudia. "You got no right asking us questions. We know our rights."

"Yeah," spoke up another boy, maybe as old as fifteen from the acres of acne on his face. Pepperoni pizza would be jealous of the look. "We learned it all in civics. Sixth Men'ment. When we go to class, I mean."

"If you mean not testifying against yourself, that's the Fifth," Allison said.

"That's what we drink, bitch." The short Goth smirked. "You're really not bad looking for an old woman. A MILF, yeah. I think I could get into you."

"That means--" Spigot began.

"I know what it means." Allison fought to keep her temper. "Larry's been missing for awhile. Aren't you worried about your friend? Or do you know where he is?" She watched their reactions. Claudia looked confused. The timid one who didn't know his rights looked like a cornered rat. The fourth one, a boy shorter than Allison but heavyset, averted his eyes.

"You're Will, aren't you?" she said, moving to cut the short kid off so he couldn't stop her from talking with the nervous boy. You and Larry hang together. Do you know where Larry is?" Allison wondered what sort of kid Larry was to even be seen with someone with the complexion of a corpse. The picture his father had given showed him to be rather plain looking, though there had been a haunted look in his brown eyes that had convinced her to go along with Spigot on this one. She tried to move closer to see if Will used makeup to turn his face so pale. He might have been a zombie for all the color in his gray face.

Will still wouldn't look at her. Light danced off an earbud and the gold ring through his lower left lip. Allison saw that the lip ring quivered just a little. He would make a terrible poker player.

"That's Wet Willie," the short Goth said. "We call him that because that's what happens when he's around chicks."

"What'd you call Larry?"

"A wuss, that's what. He wouldn't go with us last night when we went out on our annoy and destroy." The short kid puffed up his chest. When he smiled she saw fangs.

"See?" Spigot cried. "He's a vampire!"

"You just pretend to be a vampire," Allison said, facing him and backing him up a step. "He's a make believe zombie. What are you, Claudia? Some kind of succubus?"

"I don't know what that is, but it sounds like fun. I mean, sucking, right? What is it, Dagger?"

"I'll tell you later," the short cherub Goth said. He showed his fake acrylic fangs even more. "I'll show you. You'll like it."

"He doesn't know what a succubus is," Spigot whispered. "Tell him! They're awful creatures. I can't stand them and--"

Allison ignored the fairy and asked, "Where was the last place you saw Larry?"

"Near the Tulgey Woods," Will said before Dagger could tell him to shut up. "Last night. He . . . he knew better 'n to go there."

"Why?" Allison asked.

"Because the big bad wolf comes out and eats granny, that's why," Dagger said. He punched Will hard enough to stagger him. "We gotta go. Unless you want to come with us and--" Dagger made obscene thrusting motions with his hips.

"I've got bigger things to do," Allison said. She walked away with Dagger berating Claudia for laughing.

"Mr. Haffner never mentioned the woods," Spigot said. "This is a clue!"

"I don't know how much of a clue it is," Allison said. "I don't know what to do."

"I'll scout the woods. I can fly in and out, up and down and all around and nothing will ever catch me."

"You've been there before?"

"No," Spigot admitted reluctantly. "I'm afraid of those woods, but I can fly around outside."

"You do that. I'll see if Jablonski can help us out. He gets along with the police better than I do--and I'm not sweet on Carson so don't you go saying that--and I'm sure he can get them to search the woods. Didn't a kid get killed there a year or two ago?"

"Dangerous place the woods," Spigot said.

Allison barely heard the fairy. She muttered, "The woods are on the far side of town, and I don't have much reason to go that way usually."

"Dangerous place, those woods," Spigot repeated. Allison winced as a rapidly moving wing scratched her cheek as Spigot launched herself. In seconds the fairy vanished, even the drone of her wings gone. Allison glanced over her shoulder, but Larry's Goth friends had disappeared as quickly.

#

"Come, on, Bernie," she said. "The man's son is missing. All I want is for a search team to check the woods."

"The Tulgey Woods," Jablonski said, looking as if he had bitten into a jelly donut and found shit. "Nothing good ever happens there."

"All the more reason to do a search," she said.

"I'm up to my ears in a real case. Besides, I know this kid. He's one of those who dress up funny, black leather and looking tough and bored all the time because they're too stupid to even turn on their Wii."

"Goth," she said. "I talked to his friends. That's how I know where to hunt. The forest was the last place they saw him last night."

"It's a dangerous place," Jablonski said.

Allison stopped herself before she told him Spigot had said the same thing.

"How come? That's where a teenager was found dead three years ago. That's a long time back."

"Ho-dad's," he said, as if that answered her question. "Now get back out there. You've got work to do filing and shit. If you don't I can find something for you to do. And I have to figure out how trade secrets are being stolen." Jablonski ran his fingers through his thinning dishwater blond hair and stared at his computer screen. Allison caught sight of a complicated blueprint, probably the laboratory where the theft was taking place. Jablonski already ignored her. She backed from the office and closed the door behind her.

"Well, that's that," she said softly. The search for Larry Haffner would have to be abandoned if her boss wasn't behind her 100 percent.

"See?" Spigot whirred about like an annoying fly. "He told you to keep looking for Larry."

"What? No, no he didn't. He told me to get back to work."

"On the Haffner case," Spigot insisted.

"No. . . . "

"He didn't tell you not to look. He told you to get back to work. On the Haffner case."

"You were spying," Allison accused.

"In the Tulgey Wood," Spigot said. The fairy shivered, causing her wings to ripple.

"What'd you find? Any trace of Larry?"

"There's a horrible place there. Ho-dad's."

"You heard Bernie mention it." Allison hesitated, then asked, "What is it? A bar?"

"They have a 'no-fairies' policy. They're brutal humans there. At least I think they're all humans. Some might be vampires. No zombies, just vampires. And ghouls. Definitely ghouls. They kill fairies, slather us in guacamole dip and eat us."

"Why do you think Ho-dad's is important?"

"It's right at the edge of the wood and . . . I spied on two drunks. They said they heard terrible sounds in the wood about when Larry disappeared."

"You're jumping to a lot of conclusions," Allison said. "Will said Larry went there, but he might have been lying."

"He wasn't."

"And these drunks could have been talking about anything. A coyote or even somebody punking them."

"It was Larry," Spigot insisted. "Why won't you believe me? I worked harder than I ever have to find out all this. You're trying to hurt my self-esteem."

"Yeah, right," Allison said. She sat heavily in her desk chair, glanced at the locked center drawer and wondered if she ought to take something from it when she went to Ho-dad's.

#

"I, uh, I think I'll--"

"Go in," Spigot urged. The fairy shoved hard against the back of Allison's head, tangling her hair. Allison swatted at her, but the fairy persisted.

"This isn't the kind of place a single woman goes in," Allison said. Ho-dad's had a couple bikes parked outside, but she didn't think it was exclusively a biker bar from the pickups parked alongside them. What bothered her were the two hearses backed up near the side where a rusted steel door stood half open. Under a thick awning from the hearses to the door ran a trail of dirt. There might be vampires inside.

She sucked in her breath when the front door slammed open and a mountain of a man barreled out, roaring angrily. Following him almost timorously was a man so thin he was hardly more than a skeleton. He had sallow parchment flesh drawn across his cheekbones and his dark eyes burned with drugged intensity.

"I'm gonna rip your arms off, then beat you to death with them," the huge man said, turning. He balled his fists and squared off, ready for the fight.

Allison gasped when the skeleton man shifted slightly, showing the pool cue hidden behind him. He swung as hard as he could, sending splinters from the broken cue flying as it collided with a shaggy head. The larger man took a step forward, then fell to the pavement, unconscious. The skeleton recovered his balance, went to the man he had bludgeoned and rifled through his pockets, stuffing money into his own pockets. He looked up at Allison.

She knew real fear. The depths of those burning eyes might as well have been windows into the depths of hell.

Without a word, the man left.

"I can't--"

"Go in. Larry is out in the woods. Customers saw him."

"They were frightened?" Allison stared at the fallen man. Blood oozed from the side of his head and he moaned, reassuring her he hadn't been killed.

"Go in."

"You're coming with me?"

"I can't!" cried Spigot. "They enforce the 'no-fairies' policy. I don't want to be eaten."

"They wouldn't do a thing like that," she said, but the sight of the man laid out on the pavement in front of the front leading into Ho-dad's made her wonder. Allison closed her eyes, took a deep breath and then said, "All right. I'm doing it. I am."

"I'll put daisies on your grave if you don't make it," Spigot said.

"What?" Allison spun and stared at the fairy.

"Daisies are your favorite flower. I remember things like that."

Anger overrode her fear as she stepped inside the bar. It took a few seconds for her eyes to adapt to the dim light. She almost wished she could keep her eyes closed. Ankle-deep sawdust on the floor lay in lumps formed by spilled blood, but what caused her the most discomfort was the way things moved under the veneer of sawdust. Too small for rats, she hoped whatever moved back and forth was only a mouse or snake or something . . . natural. Looking at the patrons, she wasn't sure there was anything natural inside Ho-dad's.

She went to the end of the bar and stared down at the clear acrylic surface. Just underneath stretched a skeleton of some creature she could not identify.

"It's fake, right?"

"That's what some say. I say it's a Bigfoot I shot out back," the barkeep said. He wore a black silk shirt like a second skin. Black jeans only slightly looser made him vanish in the dark behind the bar, his head and hands seeming to float disembodied. "What do you want?"

"Information," Allison said, screwing up her courage. All eyes inside the bar fixed on her. Some were flat and emotionless. Those were bad but others made her think they were sizing her up for dinner. What bothered he most was her inability to tell which of the patrons were the vampires that had come in through the side entrance.

"You gotta drink. First one's on the house. When you finish it and buy the second, might be information can be bought."

Allison nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Her eyes widened when the bartender put a shot glass filled with a dubious amber liquid in front of her. She couldn't meet his dark pupiless eyes and instead stared at his nametag telling the world or anyone who could read that his name was Evan.

"I wanted a club soda. To settle my stomach."

The barkeep didn't move. Allison took the shot glass, steeled herself and knocked it back, hoping to swallow without the vile looking potion from touching her lips or tongue. It felt as if she had been punched in the gut.

"G-good," she got out. "Gimme 'nother."

"Hundred dollars."

"That's outrageous. Look, Evan--"

"We got a no-fairy policy. You came here with one. Drinks cost more if you pal around with those buzzing little sons of bitches."

"Spigot is a she."

"Bitch."

Allison felt the room whirl about her as the liquor invaded her bloodstream like a SWAT team breaking into a meth house. She fumbled in her purse and pulled out all the money she had. She dropped it on the bar, just above a Sasquatch clavicle.

"Hit me," she said.

The bartender poured a second drink that sizzled in the shot glass. Allison wrapped her hand around the glass and felt it getting warmer by the second.

"Better drink up. It doesn't have much of a half life," Evan said. He smiled just a little and she thought she saw shadowy fangs. Spigot had been right about vampires hanging out at Ho-dad's, and it was because it was run by vampires.

"Information doesn't either," she said. "Two of your customers heard something in the woods out back last night about the time Larry Haffner disappeared."

"After enough of those, you can listen to gas music from Jupiter--without headphones."

"What'd they hear? They must have said something. Or are they here now?"

"They left town," the barkeep said. "I don't read much into what they said. It was almost full moon."

"They were lunatics?" she asked. She had to take her hand off the glass. It burned her fingers.

"They heard what they heard. It was almost full moon. Be full tomorrow night." The bartender shivered and then asked, "You gonna drink that?"

Allison pushed it across the bar and said, "Thanks." She wasn't sure she had learned anything other than drinking that would burn her stomach as surely as if she swallowed napalm.

The bartender shrugged, took the glass and downed it. He licked a tiny drop off his lip where it left a bright white blister, then tossed the glass into a sink with a pile of other glasses waiting to be washed. Allison wondered if he used nitric acid on them, too.

On unsteady feet, she left Ho-dad's and reentered a world of bright sun, clean air and Spigot, who had alighted on the fallen man's shoulder and whispered to him. Seeing Allison, Spigot flapped hard and landed on her shoulder.

"Did you learn anything?"

"I don't know," Allison said. Her head felt like the Hindenburg docking at Lakehurst, on fire, collapsing, neurons tumbling from the sky. "What did you say to him?"

"Subliminal suggestion," the fairy assured her. "I'm positive he will beat up anyone trying to harm a fairy now."

Allison barely heard. She had to drive home and the world was doubling in front of her. As she got into her car, she looked into the dense woods behind Ho-dad's. It looked so peaceful. Then she heard a tortured howl drift out from deep in the forest.

#

Time crushed her to a pulp. The drink she had downed at Ho-dad's didn't help, but mostly Allison felt like the last grains were running out of the hourglass. She had gone to Detective Carson and hadn't gotten anything more than a lewd glance from him. There had been a murder down at the rail yards, and he was occupied with it. Bernie Jablonski had left the office with only an illegible scrawled note saying he was on stakeout. She had no idea where he was, and he never left his cell phone turned on when he was spying on someone. A call at the wrong time could endanger not only the case but his life. Voicemail wasn't as good as talking to him since she doubted he would bother responding.

Allison worried he would specifically order her to drop the case since she had gone ahead, more on Spigot's misinterpretation of Jablonski's growled dismissal than any real approval.

"Tara, hi," she greeted, seeing the evening news anchor coming from the parking lot.

"How are you doing, Allison?" Tara Clarke flashed an insincere, on-the-air smile. "You still working for the PI?"

"I've got a hot one, Tara," she said, falling into step. Her nose wrinkled. Tara's perfume was strong enough to burn off under the hot lights and attract every man within a ten-mile radius. "A missing boy."

"Didn't see anything on the police blotter. The lead story is the murder down at the . . ."

"Rail yard, I know," Allison said. "That's been wrapped up. Detective Carson finished it off this afternoon."

"Do tell," Tara said, frowning. "I need to get an update."

"And you'll need something to fill a thirty-second slot." Allison handed Tara the file she had put together on Larry Haffner. "He went missing behind a disreputable bar on the north side of town."

"Ho-dad's?" Tara's perfectly plucked eyebrows arched. "This might be pretty good. I've been meaning to send a producer out there and find what goes on when nobody's looking." She glanced at Allison. "You do know what I mean?"

"They have a strict no-fairy policy because their patrons kill the fairies, dip them in guacamole and then eat them."

Tara started to react, shocked, then laughed.

"You have such a snarky sense of humor, Allison. That's what I love about you." She leafed through the file, came to Larry's picture and nodded. "I might get this on. He's a clean-cut kid, what's he doing around a dive like Ho-dad's, maybe one of those degenerates did something to him and why haven't the cops investigated? Yeah, I can use this. Thanks, Allison."

She rushed off before Allison could say anything that would exonerate Detective Carson. Pissing him off wasn't something she wanted to do, even if he was such a pig at times. Then she decided he needed to be prodded a little since he had ignored Dick Haffner. The sooner Larry was found, the sooner he would be safe at home, asleep in his own bed.

Allison left the TV station feeling good about accomplishing more than she had since morning.

#

"His picture was on television. On the evening news!" Dick Haffner paced in front of her desk, every step a sharp click against the floor. He waved his hands around, balled them into tight fists as if he wanted to hit her, then paced some more.

Allison tried not to be too obvious, but she unlocked the drawer on her desk but did not open it. Haffner wasn't responding the way she had thought he would to the good news.

"This is the fastest way of finding Larry," she said. "With a lot of people alerted, he might be found sooner than if the police began asking questions. Those friends of Larry's are not likely to answer anything that will help the cops."

"You plastered his picture all over town. You shouldn't have done that without telling me."

"If you want your son found, you have to let people know he's missing."

"No!"

Allison wasn't sure what Haffner's problem was.

"It'll be another day before the police would even accept a missing person's report," she pointed out.

"I want you to find him, not the police, not now." Haffner began to turn from side to side, as if he was trapped in a box and couldn't find a way out. "You don't understand. Larry is special."

"Special needs?"

His eyes were wide and wild.

"Forget it. Don't do anything more. I . . . I'll do what I can. Just leave him alone." Haffner slammed the door as he left.

"That went well," Allison said, glad she didn't need to resort to any of the weapons in her desk drawer.

"He killed Larry. That's the only explanation," came the soft words in her ear.

"Spigot, please. Stop spying."

"That's what you hire me for. He killed Larry and is afraid someone saw him."

"That doesn't make any sense. He asked for help finding Larry. The cops won't even take a report until tonight or maybe tomorrow morning." She looked hard at Spigot, who sat on her shoulder. "How'd you get involved?"

Spigot looked away. Before she could fly off, Allison grabbed her wings between thumb and forefinger and brought her around and put her down on the desk.

"Tell me."

"He feeds fairies. He's nice. Most of the time."

"Why? Most people think you're only insufferable little insects."

"Don't be rude," Spigot said, her lips thinning in anger. "He asked if I had seen Larry when I stopped by for some of the chewy chocolate candy. I hadn't. One thing led to another and I told him I could find Larry."

"You never told him you were recruiting me--or the agency--for the hunt?"

"I figured he knew I worked for you. He never said, not exactly, but I figured he did."

Allison leaned back and thought hard. She should drop the entire hunt right now. The police would take over in a day--or would they? From the way Haffner had reacted to her going to the trouble to get some publicity, he might not want the police involved. Anything Spigot heard got turned around, dumped into a pile and then only the shiniest facts and half-heard rumors got passed along.

If she had any sense at all--or at least more than a fairy--she would stop her investigation. But she couldn't because curiosity was eating away at her. A father ought to move heaven and earth to find his lost son, if he thought there was a hint of foul play. Dick Haffner had been more fearful of his son's picture being shown on TV than he had of his son lying dead in a ditch somewhere.

Or lost in the Tulgey Woods.

Allison shivered thinking of the forest. It wasn't anything more than trees, like any other forest, but it spooked her. Since it spooked the lowlifes and half-lifes who frequented Ho-dad's, it had to be worth searching.

"I'm going to see if any of Larry's teachers might have an idea what happened to him. The way things are these days, a kid's five seconds late for class and the National Guard is called out. If he misses a full day, it becomes a federal case."

"You're going back to that school?" Spigot said with distaste. "I don't want to see those fake Goths again. They are so revolting."

"They might have another clue about Larry," Allison said. "It won't be necessary to talk to them. Dagger wasn't too happy that Will even spoke to me."

"And Claudia laughed at him. He'll beat her up. I know it. I should have convinced her to run away."

Allison made certain the answering machine was on, then left for the school, thinking hard as she drove through the early morning traffic. Spigot hummed to herself when she wasn't giving Allison driving advice, making the term "backseat driver" just a little closer to justifiable homicide.

"Wait here," Allison said, getting out of the car. Only a single parking spot had been left for visitors. The principal wasn't too charitable, or maybe they had added more administrators and had to find prime parking spots for them. She knew she had to check in but was certain the secretary would send her on her way if she so much as hinted that she was investigating a child's disappearance. Not even Tara could worm incriminating statements out of bureaucrats--unless she promised to put them on TV for a part of their 15 minutes of fame.

"May I help you?" The secretary looked as if she had just left a job as prison guard. Her hair was close-cropped and her beady eyes close-set. Her lips were pursed to the point of being closed permanently from the pressure. Everything about the gray-haired woman said CLOSED, and that included her mind.

"I want to see Larry Haffner's teacher."

"Home room?"

"Of course," Allison said with the proper hint of annoyance in her tone.

"Only his parents are allowed a conference with Mr. Throckmorton."

Allison openly sneered now as she said, "Do I look like Larry's father?"

"These days, who can tell," the secretary said. She scribbled and handed a slip of pink paper to Allison. "Here's a hall pass. Mr. Throckmorton is in room 123, down the hall to the left."

Allison didn't make the snide comment about the possibility of the rooms not being in numerical order. As she walked, she saw that they weren't. It took her longer to find the room than she thought. She knocked timidly at first then with greater authority on the door.

A middle-aged man with thinning hair and a suit that must have been the prize find at the Goodwill fall sale opened the door. He stared at her in surprise.

"Can I help you?"

"I'd like to talk about Larry. Larry Haffner."

"You're his mother?"

"Do I look like his father?" Allison had worked this line before. It still played well.

"No, no, of course not. I'm in the middle of class right now. Art class. Home room."

"I wish I could come back during your conference period, whenever it is, but I have only a minute since I'm on my way to work."

"They'll be busy with their assignment for a few more minutes," Throckmorton said. "Is this about Larry's absence?"

"He . . . he's run away from home," Allison said. "I need to know if you ever heard him talking about doing such a horrible thing." She put a little quaver into her voice. "Anything recently that might have upset him?"

"Well, he was into that Goth scene," Throckmorton said, obviously uncomfortable with even this touch of criticism. "That's been the bane of many a student."

"What kind of work did Larry do in class?" Allison asked, wanting to sound like a mother and hoping for an opening with the teacher to insinuate a more pertinent question.

"Well, he did strange things," Throckmorton said slowly. "He wasn't much of an artist, but he had a good eye for photography. Here, let me find the last assignment he did."

Allison waited as he rummaged through a stack of papers on his desk and finally pulled out a manila folder. He opened it, leafed through, then took out a photograph.

"He shot that with his cell phone camera. Those are notoriously bad cameras, but he managed to capture some interesting designs. Don't you think?"

Allison stared at the photo montage of dismembered body parts and a darkly wooded area. She took the photo and held it up to get a better look.

"Rather disturbing," she said. "I didn't know he was doing anything like this."

"Oh, the body parts were my suggestion. He wanted to submit only the basic photograph. The forested area. That wasn't very exciting, but he didn't think so." Throckmorton shrugged. "It takes years to understand true art."

"Right," Allison said, reluctant to hand back the photo, but she did. "Do you have any idea where he might have gone?"

Throckmorton shook his head, then said, "You'll have to excuse me, Mrs. Haffner. The class is getting restless. They're like the ocean. When the waves start coming in, don't turn your back. Good meeting you after all this time."

Allison forced herself to smile and shake the man's hand. It was limp and felt like a pallid worm wiggling in her grasp.

She turned in her hall pass at the office and got a sour look from the secretary. Allison left, glad she had graduated from high school a long time ago. She swatted as a gust of wind brushed her face.

"Spigot, stop that. Stop dive bombing me."

"What'd you find out? What? It has to be important or you wouldn't look so serious."

"The art teacher showed me one of Larry's project. A photograph. I recognized it as a patch of woods directly behind Ho-dad's."

Spigot had nothing to say. Allison wished she could bottle this moment and save it.

#

"We shouldn't do this," Spigot said uneasily. "Ho-dad's is over there, and the lowlifes that go into it might stray into the woods."

"The only definite clues we have about what Larry was doing recently all point to this forest. Will said he was here. The photograph he took with his cell camera was of that patch over there." Allison held up her hands to look like a goalpost framing the trees. It matched what Throckmorton had shown her exactly, except for the severed body parts plastered around the edges.

"Tulgey Woods is dangerous," Spigot said. "You go. I'll wait."

"All right," Allison said. She was determined to get to the bottom of Larry's disappearance. Nothing made much sense other than Larry Haffner had been here. One of Ho-dad's patrons might have found the boy taking pictures and killed him. The photo was taken at dusk. A vampire might have fanged him, though that was rare these days. But who knew what others frequented Ho-dad's when the sun went down?

Larry might have lingered too long and paid for it with his life. If so, his body might be a few feet into the woods. Allison found a trail and started down it. She knew nothing of tracking but saw footprints in the soft earth. They might have been there for a day or a year. She couldn't tell. Walking faster, she followed the meandering trail deeper into the forest.

She came to a clearing, stopped and smiled.

"Curiosity too much for you, Spigot?" she asked.

"I got scared waiting for you. It was too close to Ho-dad's for me to bear."

Spigot settled on her shoulder. Allison winced as the fairy's toes cut into her flesh.

"I don't know where to go, but I haven't seen anything to show Larry came this way."

"You didn't get off the path," Spigot said.

Allison shook her head. She didn't know how to search the undergrowth for a body--and this was taking on a feel of retrieval rather than rescue. A body would be removed and a living boy wouldn't.

As she crossed the clearing, a shot ripped through the air just above her head. Spigot let out a high-pitched screech and launched into the air, wings beating so fast it sounded like a chainsaw running.

"My God," came a cry. A man dressed in a bright orange vest, a gimme cap and khaki cargo pants came running from the far side of the clearing, a rifle clutched in his hands as he ran. "Are you all right? You shouldn't poke around here without a vest during hunting season."

"You almost killed me," Allison said in a neutral tone. She tried to feel something but every emotion had died in her. Shock.

She hardly responded when Spigot landed again on her shoulder and began berating the hunter.

"You, shut up," the man said. "I don't have to put up with your yammering."

"Why are you out here?" Allison finally asked, struggling to think straight again.

"I'm hunting deer. Season started a couple days ago."

"My name's Allison Underwood, and I'm looking for a missing boy." She fished out the photo of Larry and showed it to the hunter.

"I'm Geoff Bancroft and I've hunted this stretch for the last eight years. Always see a deer or two, but nothing this year."

"You haven't seen him?"

Bancroft said, "He--oh, damn!" Bancroft hoisted his rifle to his shoulder and took a shot into the woods.

Allison jumped.

"A deer?"

"No, some nosy son of a bitch has been spying on me. I'm beginning to think he's chasing off the deer the way he's followed me for the past couple days."

"You shot at him?"

"He's probably one of those eco nuts who think animals deserve legal rights. The only right a deer's got is to end up as a haunch of venison on my dinner table."

"It wasn't a boy you shot at?" Allison thought Bancroft might have scared off Larry Haffner.

"Not him. I got a look at this guy's face. His head's a lot bigger. A gort head, if you know what I mean." When he saw Allison didn't, he explained, "The top of his head is like a mushroom, all bulgy and sticking out over his ears and eyes. He has a bulbous nose, red like a drunk's, and he's kinda tall. Maybe six feet tall."

"That's not Larry," Allison said. Her mind raced, turning over the possibility that the mystery man in the forest might know something about Larry's disappearance. He might watch for a search party.

"He's gone. I couldn't track him," Spigot said. Allison hadn't even realized the fairy had left the perch on her shoulder.

"Might be him and the kid are running around in the forest."

"What's that?"

"I was going to say I'd seen the kid in this picture, but he was stark naked. He thrashed around and made too much noise to be a deer, so I didn't even draw a bead on him."

"You saw him?" Allison couldn't believe her ears.

"Naked as the day he was born, flapping his arms and running farther into the woods. That way," Bancroft said, pointing in the direction taken by the man who had been spying on them. "It was two nights ago, almost. That when you said he went missing?"

"Go look," Allison ordered Spigot. The fairy started to protest, then buzzed away. She turned to Bancroft. "Have you seen anything of him since then?"

"I didn't want to see anything of him then. All I want is to bag a deer so I can eat. Times are rough, I lost my job, so this year I need to make a kill more than when it was only for recreation."

"You almost bagged me," Allison said, beginning to feel a little shaky now that the shock was wearing off.

"Look, if you're all right, I need to get back to hunting. This isn't something you start and stop. It takes skill and perseverance."

"Go on. Just be sure you know what you're shooting at."

Geoff Bancroft glared at her implied criticism but left. She watched as he faded into the woods. To her surprise his orange safety vest didn't show up as well as she would have thought. No wonder he had mistaken her for a deer with such poor visibility in the forest.

Allison crossed the clearing and paused at the edge of the woods. From deeper in the wood came a frantic buzzing. Spigot was returning. Fast.

"Allison, Allison, I found him. It. I found a pile."

"A pile?" Allison's heart sank, thinking the fairy meant she had found a body.

"Clothing. A pair of shoes. Oh, I don't know. I'm too upset to know."

Allison followed Spigot back through the underbrush, having a harder time of it than the fairy, who kept haranguing her about the horror of it all. Allison came out at an intersection of two paths through the forest and stared.

A pair of heavy-soled, scuffed black boots had been thrown aside carelessly. She knelt and examined them, but there wasn't any way she could identify the boots as belonging to Larry Haffner. She looked up at Spigot.

"The boots look like something a Goth would wear," she said, "but . . . "

"We can track him," Spigot said firmly. "It'll be hard, but we can track him and find who belongs to the boots and then we'll--"

"Spigot," Allison said sharply. "How do we track the scent? The police won't loan us one of their cadaver dogs."

"Not the police," Spigot said in a choked voice. "Blood troll. I can get a blood troll to follow the scent."

Allison had no idea what a blood troll was, but it didn't sound too friendly.

#

The crashing and snarling made Allison recoil, then reach for a fallen tree limb to defend herself. The bushes parted and a low-slung vicious animal with lolling tongue and fangs dripping with sulfurous looking saliva glared at her.

"This is Bambi," Spigot said, fluttering about above the monster. "Don't look at him like that. He's very nice and offered to find Larry for us."

"He's a blood troll?" Allison clutched the limb even tighter when the blood troll stood. It had been running on all four but she saw it was more humanoid in shape, with arms as long as the legs. The face was curiously human in spite of the fangs and tongue. The nostrils flared so wide Allison thought Spigot could fly up either of them.

"He owes me," Spigot said proudly. "He's a good friend."

Allison cried out as Spigot flew down and put her arms around the monstrosity's neck to give him a hug and then kissed his leathery cheek.

"Oh, you humans," Spigot said, flying away. "Go on, Bambi. Find the boy."

The troll strutted to the boots, then dropped to all fours, looking again like an ugly dog. Bambi sniffed a few times, then spun in a circle and finally stopped, looking deeper into the forest. With a snarl, Bambi loped away.

"Come on, Allison," the fairy urged. "He's got the scent. He's so much better than those dumb bloodhounds your police use."

Allison followed warily, then found herself running to keep up with the blood troll. By the time she was sweating and at the edge of her endurance, she saw Spigot fluttering in circles above the crouching blood troll.

At Bambi's feet was a pile of clothing. He looked up, sniffed the air and began circling as Allison went over.

"Goth clothing," she said, looking up. "These must be Larry's. He dropped all his clothes and went cavorting around the forest naked. That's when that hunter Bancroft spotted him."

"Drugs," Spigot said solemnly. "It does them all in."

"I hate to admit it, but you're probably right." Disappointment washed over her. She had hoped there would be some other reason for Larry to disappear. But this was probably the best. He hadn't been kidnapped and when Bambi found him, he could go home, maybe get into rehab and straighten out his miserable life.

"Where is he?" Allison asked.

"Bambi's confused," Spigot said. A frown creased her tiny face. "He's lost the scent."

"But he found the clothes. It's the body that creates the scent. If Larry is running around stark naked, he ought to be leaving scent everywhere."

"He isn't," Spigot said. "Bambi can't find any trace of him anywhere."

"Nowhere?"

Spigot shook her head. She dropped to Bambi's shoulder and whispered to him for a minute. The blood troll shook his head, then shrugged. Spigot went back to wing, letting the blood troll slip away into the forest.

"He's embarrassed," Spigot said. "This is the first time he hasn't been able to find his quarry."

"He did good. Tell him that," Allison said. "When you see him again." The forest was dank and quiet. No birds chirped, and if Bambi made any sound moving through the underbrush, she couldn't hear it. Even Spigot's wing beat was muted. "Let's retrieve Larry's clothes and return them to his father."

She wondered if she ought to call Detective Carson and get a bloodhound out. Something told her Bambi had done a better job than any canine could. She wasn't sure what he was, but there was no questioning how acute his tracking skills were. If he had lost Larry in the forest, the police dogs couldn't do better.

How could she find Larry before his drug-addled brain burned out entirely?

#

The Haffner house was about what Allison expected. It was a small two-bedroom house, somewhat in disarray and needing to be cleaned thoroughly, but it had homey touches, knickknacks scattered around and even a sense this was a safe haven against the outer world.

"Have you found him?" Dick Haffner's question carried a combination of fear and anticipation. He gripped the door for support as he looked to the paper bag Allison held. Haffner sucked in his breath, stepped back and silently ushered her inside.

"We found his clothing," she said. Allison explained how the hunter had seen Larry running naked and asked Haffner, "What kind of drugs did Larry do? This might help us figure where he would go. J-weed?"

"He didn't do drugs."

"The parents seldom know," she said.

"I know." His words were cold, flat, final.

"I'd suggest you go to the police. I'm not sure they can do anything more." She didn't mention putting Larry's picture on TV. Tara had done as good a job publicizing the boy's disappearance as possible, but no one had called in with a sighting. That told her Larry Haffner lay dead somewhere in the wooded area behind Ho-dad's.

"You've done so much."

"I understand how Spigot did more than you expected, getting the agency involved and--"

"Yes, I hadn't wanted her to go that far. I only asked if she had seen Larry." Haffner picked up a checkbook from an end table. "You've done what you can. Here's a fee for your trouble." He scribbled and then handed Allison the check. Her eyes went wide when she saw it.

"This is too much. I'll have to work overtime for another month to--"

"No!" Haffner settled down after this frightened outburst. "I mean, drop the case. End it here."

"Ten thousand dollars is too much." She looked around and wondered if the check would bounce. Haffner lived comfortably, but nothing suggested he could afford this much. It had the feel of being paid off rather than being paid.

"Take it. Thank you. Now, please let me be alone." Haffner clutched the bag with his son's clothing.

Allison started to refuse the payment, then decided it would go a long way toward paying some of the bills that had piled up at the agency, not to mention providing something for Spigot to reward Bambi. What a blood troll might consider a bonus wasn't a question Allison wanted to dwell on.

She drove back to the agency, thinking of ways to use the money to improve the exterior. Paint and maybe new lettering on the plate glass window ranked high on her list of things to do. As she went in, she heard Jablonski in his office, grumbling about the computer. She stuck her head in the door and called, "Hey, Boss. You need anything?"

"A new brain. I'm having trouble." He looked up, his eyes sharp and bright. "What have you been up to?"

"I got paid on the Haffner case."

"The missing boy? I saw something on Tara's broadcast." His eyes narrowed. "That was your doing, wasn't it?"

"We found Larry Haffner's clothing and a witness who had seen him running around naked in the Tulgey Woods. His father paid me."

"Good, then the case is over. Bank it and get back to work. Your work." He slammed his hand against the side of the monitor. "And make me instructions on how to use this database. You know what I mean."

"With bullet points," she said. He glared at her, the nodded.

"I've got to get back to my stakeout." He glanced at his wristwatch, then grabbed his camera. Allison wondered how Jablonski could use such a complicated device, with infrared lenses and digital memory cards and complex settings but couldn't use a simple database.

She let him push past her and leave in a hurry. It would only take her a few minutes to bank Haffner's check, then return to her boring job sitting and waiting for nobody to call. Allison put her fingers in her mouth and let out a high-pitched whistle. Wherever Spigot was, she would hear the call. Dick Haffner might have told her the job was over, but her desire to know what had happened to Larry Haffner had to be satisfied. Her own daughter had gotten involved with Goths and had been found dead in a gravel pit. She wanted Haffner to have some closure, if his son was dead. If he wasn't, she wanted Larry to return to that nice, cozy home.

#

"This is so wrong," Spigot said nervously. The tempo of her wing beat carried the same uneasiness. "These woods are dangerous in the day, but at night?" The fairy shivered, causing a cascade of luminous fairy dust to sparkle as it drifted to the ground.

"Which do you fear the most? The woods or Ho-dad's?"

"Let me think about that a minute," Spigot said. "Can I say both?"

Allison saw a pair of hearses pull up to the side entrance to Ho-dad's. Two gaunt figures got out and went inside. Vampires. In front others entered. The undead, the newly dead or those who didn't fit into any category. This wasn't the time for her to go ask the bartender for more information.

There wasn't anything he could--or would--tell her that he hadn't already.

"They eat fairies in there, you know," Spigot said.

"So I've heard," Allison said. She opened her knapsack and looked at the equipment she had accumulated. Two big flashlights, food, water, a decent jacket for later in the night when it got really cold--she was ready for anything. Weighing down the bottom of the backpack rode the .357 from her desk drawer. She didn't know how to fire a gun but how hard could it be? If something came after her, all she had to do was point the barrel and pull the trigger.

"I don't know what happens to fairies in there at night," Spigot said, fluttering toward the dark woods and then darting back as if she had flown too close to a fire.

"We'll find out, won't we?" Allison looked pointedly at the fairy to be sure she was coming along. Allison was going into the woods, no matter what, but it would be better if Spigot accompanied her. Allison didn't want to admit she was afraid, too, but the difference was her need to find Larry Haffner.

"It's full moon tonight," Spigot said.

Allison looked up but couldn't tell. Heavy clouds blanketed most of the sky, and the trees hid the horizon where the moon would rise. She took out the flashlight and clicked it on. The bright beam cut through the night and showed the path she had taken in the daylight. Everything looked so different now. She took a deep breath and started walking. Over her shoulder she called to Spigot, "You coming? Or do you want to check out Ho-dad's?"

Allison smiled when she heard the buzz of fairy wings. The smile disappeared when Spigot alighted on her shoulder and clamped down hard on her shoulder. If the fairy intended to ride like this very often, Allison knew she'd have to get a shoulder pad to keep her flesh intact.

"I figured we'd go to where we found the clothing and start searching there."

"How'll we find our way in the dark?"

Allison reached into a side pocket on the backpack and took out a GPS unit. She held it up for Spigot to see.

"I marked where the car is so we can find our way back. And if we follow the trails we did earlier, finding the place where he left his clothing shouldn't be too hard."

"We won't get lost?"

"I thought you had a fairy sense of locating yourself."

"I always know where I am," Spigot said. "Sometimes I just don't know where anything else is."

Allison trooped along the trail, her light illuminating the way. She reached the place where they'd found the boots. She dutifully marked this with a waypoint on the GPS, then pointed in the direction the blood troll had taken them earlier.

"This is sorta fun," Spigot admitted. "I don't like the idea of creatures that might eat me being all around, but your flashlight scares them off."

Allison said nothing about the Colt Python in the backpack. It weighed her down, but it was a comforting weight.

"About here's where Bambi found the clothes." Allison looked around, then stiffened when a loud, mournful howl cut through the still night.

"What's that?" Spigot asked.

"I was hoping you'd know," Allison said. "It must be a coyote or a wolf."

"It's not him," Spigot said in a choked voice.

"Him who? Larry?"

"No, him, the dead body."

Allison shined her light on what she had thought was a dead tree trunk and caught her breath. Spigot had found a body. A dead body.

[Branch here...]

[the hunter, Geoff Bancroft]

[Evan, Ho-dad's bartender]

[Throckmorton -- teacher]

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