The hours plod by. People come and go. I take orders, bring food, clear away empty plates. I catch Phil giving me dark looks more than once, though I have no idea what I've done to piss him off.

And I can't stop thinking about what happened last night.

It's not just the TV thing, either. It's that story Terrance told. I know he was just trying to spook me, but he did a good job. I keep fixating on that one little detail about the suicide's shoes dropping when the body goes limp. What if they were wearing boots? Gumboots might fall off, but anything with laces wouldn't. And how about beforehand, when the body is kicking and twitching-hell, a shoe could go flying, land in the bushes where no one would find it. Then you'd have a corpse with a shoe missing, and that would probably confuse the hell out of anyone investigating the case.

Except there is no case. Just a headcase, named Jace. Who is losing the race to keep her sanity in place. Whee.

By the end of my shift I know I have to do something-anything-to get this out of my brain before it burrows in so deep it turns white and its eyes fall out. Unfortunately, about the only plan I can come up with is to give in and go see Old Man Longinus, who by all accounts is as receptive to visitors as an irritable whale is to a harpoon.

I go home first to walk Galahad and try to figure out my approach. "Hi, Mr. Longinus? I'm the local loon. I understand you're the local crank, and I was wondering if we could get together and maybe discuss mutual areas of interest."

Mmm. Needs work.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Longinus. A woman on TV with a sword informed me you have some answers, and I was hoping you might be willing to share them. No, I don't know what the questions are. Oh, that's down the street? Under the big neon sign reading CRAZY MOTEL-RUBBER ROOMS AVAILABLE, FREE DRY CLEANING OF STRAITJACKETS INCLUDED? Thank you so much, I'll be right back."

Big improvement. Should be tweaked a bit.

"MWAH-HA-HA-HA! My tinfoil hat pointed at your house! I like frogs! Would you like to floopa-floopa my gazinga-ding? No, sir, I am not phantasmagorical! Look, Ernest Hemingway eating a pickle!"

Much better. Or at least more accurate.

Galahad and I are on our regular route, down to the end of the street and then through a little patch of woods next to the grocery store, and I'm so lost in thought I'm not really paying attention. That's how I wind up getting trapped.

"Hello, Jace," says a raspy voice.

I blink and look up. Father Stone stands in front of me.

I'm not really sure what denomination he represents-the United Reformed Methodist Presbyterian Baptist Something, I think. He looks like a midget linebacker with a bad haircut and only seems to have one expression, like a robot that skimped on the options. That expression is supposed to be a friendly smile, but it seems about as genuine as something assembled by a taxidermist. He never wears anything but solid black with a little white collar, and it wouldn't surprise me to learn he sleeps in the same outfit.

"Uh, hello, Father," I say. "I'm just out walking my dog." It's a lame and obvious thing to say, but the man makes me nervous. He doesn't blink often enough.

"I see," he says, smiling. "How have you been, Jace? How are things?" He puts just the barest emphasis on the last word, but it makes it sound like he's enquiring about a family of monsters living in my basement.

"Things are fine," I say inanely. No, no, they're not. Things are moaning and squelching and waving their tentacles like a squid trying to signal a waitress.

"We haven't seen you in church lately," says a voice behind me. My eyes widen and my heart sinks. Never let them surround you.

"Oh, hi, Miss Selkirk," I say, turning. Miss Selkirk is a collection of wrinkles wrapped around a skeleton, with bright blue eyes and a mouth that wouldn't know what to do with a smile if one ever showed up-maybe she sold hers to Father Stone. That would explain a lot; it was probably a bad fit but he just jammed it in there anyway and now he can't get the damn thing to budge- Shut up, brain.

"I've been ... busy," I say. Actually, I've never been to Stone's church, but it seems unwise to bring that up now. They might insist on marching me down there for an inspection. "You know, with ... stuff."

"Your soul is important," Miss Selkirk says. She's dressed in lime-green pants held up with an orange belt, a purple and pink striped blouse, white gloves, and a black hat with what appears to be a dead crow stuck in the band. "You should take care of it." She squints at me like a racoon sizing up a garbage can.

"I do," I say. "I have it sent out and cleaned regularly."

Neither of them react to this little gem in the slightest. "Come by any time," says Father Stone. Smiling.

"We'd love to have you," says Miss Selkirk. She sounds hungry.

"I'll think about it. But I just remembered-Galahad did his business back there and I forget to bring a plastic bag with me. Gotta go get one." I spin around and march away quickly, before one of them magically produces said item from under a hat or maybe a metal hatch in their chest.

I take Gally back home and consider my next move. I finally decide to wing it-I'll march up to Longinus's house, knock on the door, and just talk to the guy. Feel him out. If nothing else, I can always invite him to church.

I change my clothes first. Not sure why. Stretchy black pants, sneakers, black top. Your basic breaking-and-entering outfit, though I have no intention of burgling the place-all I want is to have a conversation. I tell myself that, over and over, the whole walk there.

Which doesn't take long. The Longinus place is on the edge of town, but Thropirelem isn't a big place-maybe a few hundred people, all told. Small towns are like islands, little pockets of habitation separated by plains or forests or mountains instead of water-but mostly just separated by distance. People say that distance has dwindled in the twenty-first century, shrunk by modern transportation and telecommunications into a single global village, but there are still plenty of places where you can expect to drive for an hour or more before you see another human face. That distance always has been-and always will be-a factor in how people who live there act and think; isolation always is.

Here that distance is mostly filled with wheat instead of water, vast rippling fields of pale yellow. The Longinus house perches at the edge of that grassy ocean like a rotting seaside warehouse, huge and ancient and dark. It's only three stories tall, but it seems taller. The wood is that rough gray that unpainted lumber turns into under the hot prairie sun, like petrified elephant hide. All the windows are shrouded by dark curtains, and the front porch has a tumbleweed stuck in one corner beside an old wooden chair; I can't help but think of the Gallowsman.

I force myself to mount the creaking steps. The front door is a huge slab of oak with a panel of stained glass at head height. The designs worked into the glass are disturbing, but I'm not sure why; there's just something about the angles that seem subtly off, like an optical illusion you don't quite get.

And the door's ajar.

Just a few inches, enough to show a narrow slit of darkness beside the jamb. I freeze with my hand up to knock, then rap gently on the glass. "Hello?" I say softly.

Stupid. What's the point in knocking and calling out if you do it quietly? I say in a louder voice, "Hello! Mr. Longinus?" and knock again, harder this time. Hard enough, in fact, that the door swings open wider.

Dark hallway. No sound. I see an old oval mirror in a silver frame on one wall and faded wallpaper in some kind of floral pattern behind it. A shapeless dark coat hangs from a peg beside the door, and a worn pair of boots sit underneath it.

I take a step inside. My nerves are screaming at me to just turn around and leave, but some other part of my brain has taken over; I find myself checking the edges of the door, looking down for footprints, even glancing toward the ceiling at the cracked and dirty light fixture. My right hand keeps drifting toward my left shoulder, like I'm going to pull something out of a breast pocket.

No, not a pocket. A holster.

"Cut it out, Jace," I mutter. "You read too many police procedurals." I don't even own a gun, let alone a holster.

But apparently deep down inside I'm convinced I have cop DNA, because instead of leaving and closing the door behind me-or calling a real police officer-I move farther down the hallway.

There's another door ajar at the end of it.

When I peer around the edge of that one, I see stairs leading down. Basement, of course. No trail of blood on the steps, but that would be overkill. Creepy old house, door open, basement. I'd have to be some kind of idiot to go down there, right?

I throw myself on the mercy of the court. About the only excuse I have is possible mental illness, which in retrospect is probably closer to an explanation than an excuse. Also convenient, and less insulting.

Down I go. The staircase is well lit and doesn't creak. The stairs go down and end at another door, which is kind of strange. This one looks like it was forged out of cast iron about two hundred years ago, and it's open too. There's an orangey, flickering light coming from the other side; I peer cautiously into the room.

I don't know what I expect to see, but it isn't this.

First impressions: big room, lots of black draperies hanging down. More candles than the bedroom of a teenage goth girl, all of them lit. Lots of cushions on the floor, but no other furniture except for a big-ass table at the far end of the room.

No, not a table. An altar.

That's what draws my attention and focuses it. Because the altar-a big chunk of square granite that looks as if it was carved right out of the bedrock-has a body on it. Male, dressed in a long black robe, with a face only an undertaker could love.

Old Man Longinus.

I don't hesitate. I walk forward and inspect the body. He's got a long, presumably ceremonial dagger sticking out of his chest, and no pulse. I don't touch anything else, not at first. Instead, I look around and try to figure out what happened.

That's when I notice the photos.

There are seven in all, and from the way three are positioned on the altar it looks as if Longinus was placing them in preparation for some sort of ritual when he was attacked. There are two more on the floor. I find the last one trapped beneath the body, the corner barely visible.

They're all of me.

Me in different emotional states-gesticulating in anger, weeping, laughing, even one where I seem to be having an orgasm.

"Double. You. Tee. Eff," I say.

I don't study the pics for long. They go in my pocket.

If there's one thing I've learned from my police-work research, it's that the person who discovers the body is often the perpetrator. That, plus my being in the house for no good reason plus the pictures plus history of medical-grade wackiness equals Jace in jail. No way. I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid.

Okay, I may be crazy and stupid, but at least I try to alternate. And right now, I'm going to go with the crazy option and try to puzzle out what the hell went on here.

I look around. The burning candles are massive things that could have been lit days ago. But I also see the remains of smaller candles that are no more than puddles of cold wax that have obviously burned all the way down. That would have taken a while; if Longinus lit them before he was killed, the murder probably took place some time ago, hours at the very least.

No signs of a break-in or a struggle, so Longinus probably knew the person who murdered him. Whoever did it was fast, strong, and confident-the knife is buried up to the hilt, and it looks like it punched right through the breastbone. You don't kill someone with a single thrust like that, from the front, unless you know exactly what you're doing. Maybe you've even done it before.

The body isn't restrained, and one leg is dangling off the side of the altar. Not a ritual posture, in other words. He might have been shoved backward and off his feet before the killing blow was delivered.

So he let someone in, someone he wasn't afraid of. He was in the middle of preparing his altar, and then he was abruptly attacked and killed, possibly with a weapon of opportunity.

The cushions bother me.

You don't just scatter a few throw pillows around a room like this to brighten it up. The pillows are there for people to sit-or, more likely, kneel-on while something vile and perverse happens on that altar.

The evidence seems conclusive. Longinus was running a sex club.

Why they picked me as their fetish object isn't clear, but maybe it was only Longinus himself who was fixated on me. I go searching for corroborating evidence, convinced I'll find a chest full of sex toys and illegal porn hidden behind one of the black draperies.

Not so much.

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."