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Authors: Craig Schaefer
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myself to sit up.
“Curses. You’ve seen through my cunning plan.”
I’m a morning person, always have been. There’s something about the start of a new day that just feels ripe with promise, even when a case isn’t going my way. It felt like a metallic-green necktie day.
I thought about last night while I showered, letting the pounding water and rising steam clear the fog in my brain. The cambion were searching the Gunderson house for something. It had to have been something small, since they’d torn open everything bigger than a pack of chewing gum. Something hidden. Something well hidden, since they’d even gutted the upholstery and torn out pillow stuffing to hunt for it.
Maybe we needed to take another run at Helen and see if she was keeping any secrets up her sleeve. For all we knew, this could have nothing to do with the Bogeyman. Still, the timing was too close for coincidences.
I finished showering, toweled off my hair, and unzipped my little vinyl travel bag. I always go light on the makeup—moisturizer, eye shadow, lip gloss, mascara, done. The scratch on my cheek had faded to an angry little welt. I wished I’d packed concealer, but I could live with it.
“Bathroom’s yours,” I said on my way out. Jessie growled at me.
Eventually we got ourselves together and migrated to the room next door. April and Kevin had made themselves at home: the phone by the television was nothing but an exposed bundle of cables and parts, wired up to Kevin’s laptop like something out of Frankenstein’s laboratory.
“You’re going to fix that before we leave, right?” I said.
On his screen, a medieval knight in shining armor stood on the veranda of an Italian-style palazzo, a massive sword strapped to his back.
“Oh my God,” Jessie groaned, throwing herself on the closest bed. “You colossal geek. Kill orcs on your own time.”
“I’ll have you know, I’m mining for information,” he said, and gestured to the chat window in the bottom left corner of the screen. “Hackers, extremists, undergrounders and fringers—everybody knows the NSA’s all over IRC and e-mail these days, and phone security is a joke. Online games, though? Nobody’s monitoring private chat there. It’s the final frontier for unrestricted communication.”
I took a peek, leaning over his shoulder and reading the chat as it scrolled up the window.
(Private) Tomoe Gozen: Yeah, I’ll be your Google. I need the cash to get out of the 702 for a while. Everything’s going crazy here.
(Private) Grignr: Thanks, TG.
(Private) Tomoe Gozen: Anything for a guild buddy. Well, anything but cybersex again. That was a little weird.
Kevin lunged for the keyboard, snapping the chat window shut. He grimaced and looked up at me.
“I’m cultivating a confidential informant. A little privacy?”
April, sitting over at the table near the window and poring over a stack of heavy books, glanced up at us. “He’s also slaying orcs.”
“Hobgoblins, Dr. Snitch. Hobgoblins are not orcs.”
“I,” April said, “have something a little more grounded in reality for you two. I talked to Vladimir last night.”
“Vlad’s an antiquities dealer in New York,” Jessie told me. “Specializes in stolen artifacts, real grave-robber stuff. We flipped him a while back. Now he gets to run his seedy little operation as long as he feeds us intel and vouches for us when we need cover.”
“As it turns out,” April said, “there’s a sorcerer he’s done business with living twenty miles from Talbot Cove. A man named Douglas Bredford. He’s a small fish in a tiny pond. Vladimir says that if anyone can identify the men who attacked you last night, it’s him.”
I smiled. Finally, a lead. It wasn’t much, but at least we weren’t spinning our wheels and waiting for another kid to get snatched. “Great. Where do we find him?”
April held out a yellow sticky note, bearing an address in prim, neat handwriting.
“Most likely,
“Curses. You’ve seen through my cunning plan.”
I’m a morning person, always have been. There’s something about the start of a new day that just feels ripe with promise, even when a case isn’t going my way. It felt like a metallic-green necktie day.
I thought about last night while I showered, letting the pounding water and rising steam clear the fog in my brain. The cambion were searching the Gunderson house for something. It had to have been something small, since they’d torn open everything bigger than a pack of chewing gum. Something hidden. Something well hidden, since they’d even gutted the upholstery and torn out pillow stuffing to hunt for it.
Maybe we needed to take another run at Helen and see if she was keeping any secrets up her sleeve. For all we knew, this could have nothing to do with the Bogeyman. Still, the timing was too close for coincidences.
I finished showering, toweled off my hair, and unzipped my little vinyl travel bag. I always go light on the makeup—moisturizer, eye shadow, lip gloss, mascara, done. The scratch on my cheek had faded to an angry little welt. I wished I’d packed concealer, but I could live with it.
“Bathroom’s yours,” I said on my way out. Jessie growled at me.
Eventually we got ourselves together and migrated to the room next door. April and Kevin had made themselves at home: the phone by the television was nothing but an exposed bundle of cables and parts, wired up to Kevin’s laptop like something out of Frankenstein’s laboratory.
“You’re going to fix that before we leave, right?” I said.
On his screen, a medieval knight in shining armor stood on the veranda of an Italian-style palazzo, a massive sword strapped to his back.
“Oh my God,” Jessie groaned, throwing herself on the closest bed. “You colossal geek. Kill orcs on your own time.”
“I’ll have you know, I’m mining for information,” he said, and gestured to the chat window in the bottom left corner of the screen. “Hackers, extremists, undergrounders and fringers—everybody knows the NSA’s all over IRC and e-mail these days, and phone security is a joke. Online games, though? Nobody’s monitoring private chat there. It’s the final frontier for unrestricted communication.”
I took a peek, leaning over his shoulder and reading the chat as it scrolled up the window.
(Private) Tomoe Gozen: Yeah, I’ll be your Google. I need the cash to get out of the 702 for a while. Everything’s going crazy here.
(Private) Grignr: Thanks, TG.
(Private) Tomoe Gozen: Anything for a guild buddy. Well, anything but cybersex again. That was a little weird.
Kevin lunged for the keyboard, snapping the chat window shut. He grimaced and looked up at me.
“I’m cultivating a confidential informant. A little privacy?”
April, sitting over at the table near the window and poring over a stack of heavy books, glanced up at us. “He’s also slaying orcs.”
“Hobgoblins, Dr. Snitch. Hobgoblins are not orcs.”
“I,” April said, “have something a little more grounded in reality for you two. I talked to Vladimir last night.”
“Vlad’s an antiquities dealer in New York,” Jessie told me. “Specializes in stolen artifacts, real grave-robber stuff. We flipped him a while back. Now he gets to run his seedy little operation as long as he feeds us intel and vouches for us when we need cover.”
“As it turns out,” April said, “there’s a sorcerer he’s done business with living twenty miles from Talbot Cove. A man named Douglas Bredford. He’s a small fish in a tiny pond. Vladimir says that if anyone can identify the men who attacked you last night, it’s him.”
I smiled. Finally, a lead. It wasn’t much, but at least we weren’t spinning our wheels and waiting for another kid to get snatched. “Great. Where do we find him?”
April held out a yellow sticky note, bearing an address in prim, neat handwriting.
“Most likely,
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