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  “Alright, I see your point,” I said. “But I think this particular Norm’s case might surprise you…”

  “Oh, very well. Surprise me.”

  I filled him in on the details of Maggie’s peculiar houseguest and her husband’s subsequent murder and abduction. My head was still a little foggy from the previous night’s overindulgence, but my conversation with Maggie had left an impression, and I was pretty sure I hit all of the key details.

  “Hmm…” Hiram said when I finished speaking.

  “Is that a good hmm or a bad hmm?”

  “Let’s call it an intrigued hmm. And perhaps I was a little hasty in my assessment of your Norm’s predicament.”

  “Do you know what kind of creature or spirit could have done this to her? Is she still in danger?” I hadn’t wanted to spook Maggie, but I wondered at the possibility of the creature returning for her. It had accompanied the Besson’s to their hotel room, so it didn’t seem like much of a stretch to think it might follow Maggie to her sister’s.

  “It’s certainly not any kind of a spirit,” Hiram answered immediately.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Have you ever known of a spirit that required sustenance?”

  “No… I guess not.”

  “Tell me about the marks on her chest again,” he said.

  “They looked like fresh bruises. Dark and blueish. And there were three, arranged like a pyramid or triangle.”

  “And this creature she spotted was feeding on her husband at that same spot on his chest?”

  “That’s what she said she saw. Before they both disappeared.”

  “Fascinating.”

  “That’s not exactly the word I would use. Do you have any idea what it might be?”

  There was a long stretch of dead air from the phone.

  “Hiram?”

  “I was pondering. I’m not Wikipedia, you know. Something about this is tickling at a memory of mine, but I can’t quite figure out what we’re dealing with. If it were just the invisibility, I would say we were dealing with a random Gifted wacko who had gone off the deep end.”

  “There are regular people with that gift?” I wasn’t exactly thrilled by the prospect.

  “As regular as you and I…”

  “But you don’t think this was a person.”

  “The description certainly doesn’t fit. And the other aspects don’t add up either. A hunger for meat, and the way the creature seemed to be drinking from the victim and her husband…”

  “A vampire, maybe? Are they real?” I felt like an idiot asking, but there was still so much I didn’t know.

  “Yes, they’re real.” I could hear the amused smile in Hiram’s voice. “But, no, this doesn’t sound like the work of a vampire. For one, they don’t have any use for meat. And for another, vampires aren’t invisible. That whole thing about them not appearing in mirrors is just nonsense.”

  “Maybe it was a vampire that was just really good at hiding? What else would want to feed on the Besson’s blood?”

  “Stop worrying the vampire angle, Meredith. You’ve got the wrong mental picture of what they are. A vampire hiding away in a couple’s apartment to drain them would be like Bill Gates stilling food from a homeless shelter. Vampires are ancient and they keep it in the family… and they’re wealthy to a one. If one of their kind want’s a snack, they can have perfectly willing humans brought straight to their mansions. Contactless delivery, so to speak.”

  “Okay, so not a vampire,” I said. “What’s our second pick?”

  There was another long pause. This time I didn’t interrupt.

  “I… don’t know,” Hiram said at last. “But I might be able to find out. There are a couple of people I know who deal with the academic side of the occult and its history. They might have some answer for you.”

  “Okay, that sounds promising. Give me a call when you hear something from them.”

  “I will.” Hiram paused briefly. “And, Meredith, tread lightly. This thing sounds like a clinger… You wouldn’t want it to follow you home.”

  Chapter 5

  The Besson’s apartment was on the second floor of a stately stone building on the Upper Westside. It didn’t have a doorman, fewer and fewer buildings in the city did these days, but there was a security panel in the main entryway that required the tap of an RFID card before it would allow entry.

  I pulled out the white, credit-card-size entry card and key that Maggie had given me the previous night. Before I could test out that marvel of modern security technology, the glass security doors popped open and a little old lady with steel-grey hair walked out.

  “Coming in, dear?” she asked, holding the doors open.

  “Sure am. Thanks.” I gave her a smile and walked through the doors. I wasn’t breaking in this time, but the interaction renewed my lack of faith in so-called security buildings.

  “Take care, and tell Susan I’ll be around as soon as I get the chance, will you?”

  I didn’t have the foggiest idea what she was talking about, but I assured her I’d give Susan the message the moment I saw her. It just seemed easier that way.

  I took the stairs up to the second floor—using the elevator for one floor seemed lazy even for me—and used the provided keys to enter Maggie’s apartment. It was an odd feeling, entering someone else’s apartment by key. Even though I wasn’t there to steal anything, and had the owner’s permission, it still felt a little like cheating. My lockpick tools were practically burning a hole in my pocket.

  To say the apartment was big would be an understatement. It was ludicrously oversized for the area. The little hole in the wall that I affectionately called home could have easily fit into one corner of the living room. I knew that Mark had worked in finance or an adjacent field, but I hadn’t realized how loaded they actually were.

  The living room was decorated with expensive-looking furniture, but sparsely so. It was almost like they were making it a point to show the excessive space that was available. And, come to think of it, that’s probably exactly what the impetus behind their decorating choices was. In an overcrowded city like New Alcott, there was nothing quite like a spacious home to scream wealth.

  I walked through the living room to check the kitchen first. It was an old habit, checking the fridge for valuables. But this time there was a non-nefarious reason to snoop around in there.

  The creature had been stealing food. So, it stood to reason that there might be some evidence of its time here in the apartment. It didn’t help matters that I had no idea what I was looking for. I figured there was little chance in stumbling upon a trail of meat crumbs that pointed straight to the invisible fugitive, but there was at least a chance I might find something that would help point Hiram in the right direction.

  As far as refrigerators went, this one was a disappointment. It was a big expensive number with double doors and some kind of fancy computer screen in the front. But its contents were wholly mundane—just meticulously arranged groceries. No partially gnawed steaks or bloody handprints.

  The rest of the kitchen turned out to be just as boring. Nothing in the cabinets or pantry seemed amiss, unless you count an inordinate number of kitchen shears. I left everything in roughly the same state as when I found it and turned my attention to the couple’s bedroom.

  Technically, the apartment had two bedrooms, but one had been turned into a home office, presumably to help Mark earn the big bucks. The office was the first room in the hall off the living room, so I gave it a cursory glance before continuing on to where the real action went down, so to speak.

  If the bruising on Maggie’s chest indicated anything, it was that their uninvited guest had been feeding on the Bessons for some time before it decided to take things to the next level. As creepy as it was, it would make sense that the creature might have used their bedroom as its own den. Maggie had mentioned the sounds of movement that seemed to be coming from inside the apartment, so it seemed more than possible that the thing ha
d simply made itself home right in there with them.

  The thought gave me a chill. There were more than enough things that go bump in the night without having to include those you can’t even see in broad daylight.

  Their bedroom was lavish in the same minimalist way as the rest of the apartment. There was a floating king-size bed in the middle of one wall along with a pair of monolithic tables on either side. A large abstract painting, at least as wide as the bed itself, was centered on the wall above the bed. The picture was simply a swirl of red blotches against a pale gray background. I knew nothing about art, and this thing was probably meant to represent the plight of the honeybee or the sorrow of a lost summer’s day, but I couldn’t see anything but a huge, grisly bloodstain.

  I spent several minutes poking around under the bed and in the side tables, but I came up empty-handed. There was a walk-in closet that was roughly half the size of my apartment with rows upon rows of boxed shoes, designer bags, and high-end clothing. But other than making me wish I was still a burglar, it also gave me nothing.

  I sat down on the edge of the Bessons’ massive bed to think. I didn’t have to worry about making a mess of it. It was the only thing in the whole apartment that didn’t look pristine and perfect. I guessed that even rich perfectionists didn’t like making up the bed all of the time. Not that I had room to talk. My entire home looked like an unmade bed.

  There was still the hotel room to check, but I was getting a sinking feeling that it too would be a dead end. The police might have already checked it out, if they were even bothering to look into any of this, but I had my doubts. Adult missing persons cases were rarely a high priority, and one with what they probably considered to be an unstable wife was likely even less of a priority.

  It was far too early in the game for me to be thinking of giving up. But even just the possibility of returning to Maggie empty-handed put a lead ball in the pit of my stomach. I could understand what that would mean to her. It wasn’t just a matter of losing her husband, and in such a bizarre manner, it also meant never knowing for sure… She seemed certain about what she saw, and maybe she hadn’t had a moment’s doubt. Yet. But time had a way of needling at a person. If she never gets that closure, someday, and probably not all that far in the future, she’s going to start to wonder about what she actually saw. It would probably start out as a single intrusive thought: what if I didn’t really see what I thought I did? That might be enough to start her doubting herself, and eventually she might start to believe as the police did. Maybe Mark did run off.

  “Alright, if there are any invisible beasts or people in here, please avert your eyes because I really need to use the facilities.” I waited a beat, just in case, then headed into the bedroom’s en suite bathroom.

  I had only just made contact with the immaculate porcelain throne when I heard a sound. It was the kind of lowkey shuffling and thudding that you would expect to hear if there was someone else moving around inside the apartment. The noise was far too near to be from outside of the Bessons’ home.

  I was caught in limbo. I needed to relieve myself, and I was already in position. But I also really didn’t want to get caught by an invisible chest sucker with my pants down.

  That mental image sealed the deal. I stood silently, made myself decent, and crept back over to the bathroom door.

  The sounds didn’t stop. If anything, they got louder. The shuffling became a heavy, intermittent stomp like from booted feet. Or hooves.

  And it sounded like it was coming from the area of the apartment near the kitchen.

  I slid silently back into the bedroom and considered my options. I had wanted to find something, sure, but I was hoping for clues to lead me to the creature… at a later time when I was prepared and had whatever intel Hiram had come up with on my side. I hadn’t wanted to bumble into the blood-sucking thing on my first outing.

  I wasn’t totally defenseless. Hiram had taught me a couple of tricks, including one in which I could jolt the still-connected spirit of another person just by touching them. It was supposed to be enough to disorient or incapacitate a would-be attacker, but I had only ever had a chance to test it out on the new guy Francie had behind the bar on weekends. I had told him I’d give him fifty bucks if he let me try out a new kind of taser on him… I’d been able to render the poor guy unconscious for about two minutes, but when he woke up, the disorientation had him vomiting for the rest of the day.

  But this thing wasn’t a pleasantly attractive young bartender. It was an invisible creature of the underworld, and I highly doubted it was going to give me a chance to press my hands to it to see if my powers have any effect.

  So, I could try to make it out the bedroom window. There would be a fire escape there that I might be able to shimmy down. Or I could try to bolt past the thing and out the front door. If it were invisible in there, it might not have cause to suspect that I knew anything about it, and maybe it would let me go on my way.

  The third option was to woman up and confront the thing.

  I sucked in a breath and crept out into the hallway. I could still hear it as I made my snail’s pace toward the kitchen. The sounds became clearer, more distinct. Sounds of walking and cabinet doors being opened. And the unmistakable clunk-clunk of the refrigerator door being opened and then closed back.

  There were now two paths just feet before me: to the left, the kitchen, and the right, the front door. There was a good chance I could get out of the apartment without the thing even knowing I was ever there.

  As always, I took the left path.

  I moved with all the stealth my slightly trembling legs would allow and stepped into the kitchen doorway.

  The stomping sound came right at me from around the corner. And so did the dark, tall shape of…

  “Mark?”

  Chapter 6

  About a month or so back, after I started paying Francie to use one of the spare rooms in the bar and she, in turn, was able to keep paying her rent and stay afloat, Francie had hired a young bartender named Nic to help pick up the slack. It was the first time in more than a year she could afford not to be the sole worker at Francie’s, and business had actually started to pick up after his arrival. Whether that was because of the fresh face behind the bar or because of Francie’s improved disposition was anybody’s guess.

  It was Nic behind the bar when I walked in around eight o’clock on the same day I had paid my visit to the Bessons’, now plural once again, apartment. I liked Nic. He was too young and cool for either Francie or myself to understand (do young people even still say cool?), but he wasn’t obnoxious about it.

  I pulled out a stool and watched him do his thing with the other customers at the bar while I waited for him to work his way over to me. There was a perceptible grace in the way he moved around behind the bar, an economy of motion. He didn’t do anything flashy, no tossing the shaker behind his back and catching it or anything like that, but there was a surety and efficiency in everything he did. It was like watching a dancer when they weren’t dancing. He seemed to be supremely aware of his body and determined to only move it in a way that suited his current action.

  He had youthful features, but I didn’t know exactly how old he was. Somewhere north of twenty-one and south of twenty-two was my guess, though. Tonight, he was dressed in jeans that seemed to be painted onto his slender frame and a faded T-shirt that was probably both vintage and ironic. He capped off the ensemble with a dark blue blazer jacket that was a perfect complement for his coffee-colored skin.

  “The usual?” Nic flashed me a bright smile after he finished handing off a drink to the guy on my left.

  “Just a glass of sparkling water,” I said. “I think I might need a clear head tonight.”

  “That bad?” He put his elbows on the bar and cradled his chin in his hands like he was settling in for a story. I wondered if they taught that in bartending school.

  “Not bad, just…” I wasn’t sure what to call the day I’d had. If I took every
thing that happened at face value, I’d have to say it was a good day. A dead guy was no longer dead. A pretty good cause for celebration, right? But somewhere down deep that didn’t sit right. “When will Francie be back?”

  “Is she better company than I am?”

  “Absolutely,” I said, returning his smile. “And if she ever heard me say otherwise, she’d smother me in my sleep.”

  Nic filled a glass with ice and seltzer and pushed it across to me. “Fair enough. But I can still offer some subpar support until she gets here. She’s not due to relieve me until ten, which probably means she’ll be back around eleven-ish.”

  I took a sip of my water. Nic didn’t know about my brand of weird or the greater paranormal world at large. As far as he was concerned, I was just the lazy PI who rented a room in the back and drank too many gin and tonics. Which, to be fair, was completely accurate if you added in the whole Necromancy thing.

  “I had a weird case today,” I started. I thought maybe he was right. Just talking it out, sans some otherworldly details, might be some help.

  “Do tell.”

  “I spent this morning looking into a case for a woman whose husband had been murdered. Pretty horrible stuff, actually. He was killed in front of her while they stayed at a hotel in the city.”

  Nic leaned forward with an expression of interest that I doubted was feigned. Almost everyone loved some grisly gossip.

  “So, I was snooping around at their apartment to see what I might find.”

  “You think the murderer followed them from their house?” Nic gave an exaggerated shudder. “Like a serial killer or something?”

  “Something like that, yeah. There were indications he had been inside their home on several occasions.” I didn’t need to get into the specifics about an invisible creature. It was creepy enough as it was.

  “Jeez… Did you find anything at the apartment?”

  “Uh, yeah, the husband…”

  “His corpse!?”

  Most of the heads near us swiveled in Nic’s direction simultaneously. He flashed a smile. “Just a bar joke. This one’s got a million of them.”