“More than I would care to admit.”
***
Waiting outside the head inspector’s office, Felipe tried not to let his disquiet show even as little barbs of anxiety slipped across the tether from Oliver. Gale’s voice drifted from the other side of the closed door followed by Head Inspector Williams’s low rumble. Felipe didn’t like that they had heard so little about this case. Tight lips never boded well in an office where investigators never stopped gossiping or complaining about their cases, and it set off his danger senses. If the head inspector was keeping the details quiet and only speaking to teams individually, it had to be bad. Beside him, Oliver stood ramrod straight while Gwen tied and untied Oliver’s left shoe with unseen fingers. Felipe was about to lean over to tell him they should not take the case when the door opened.
Gale, the head inspector’s secretary and partner—bedmate—he wasn’t sure, stuck their head out. Despite wearing lavender trousers instead of a gown that day, Gale still had their hair piled into anelaborate knot of curls and wore what looked like a corset under their shirtwaist and lace trimmed jacket. They rarely ever wore trousers, yet they somehow still managed to blur the line between masculinity and femininity. Gale’s brown eyes flickered between the three of them before coming to rest on Felipe.
“Gang’s all here? Good. Come on in.”
As they filed in, Gale swept over to their chair and lap table in the corner behind the head inspector’s larger, more austere desk. The head inspector’s office resembled the inside of a ship with wood paneled walls that held only a few maps of the city and the surrounding areas. If Felipe sat very still, he swore he could feel it sway ever so slightly, but he tried not to. Head Inspector Williams didn’t look up from his papers but gave them a curt nod and a grunt of acknowledgement behind his thick, grey mustache. The ship in a bottle on the corner of the desk roiled on an unseen storm, and the usually tidy desk looked as if it had been ransacked. Usually, the head inspector had everything in folders and bins, but today, papers were strewn across open ledgers and stacks of file folders. Gale met Felipe’s gaze with a roll of their eyes and mouthed behind the head inspector’s back,He’s in a mood.
While Oliver and Gwen took the seats before the head inspector’s desk, Felipe stood behind them and waited. The head inspector’s eyes darted across the page in his hand, but he still didn’t look up. Gwen shifted in her seat, and Felipe could tell she was angling to read the page. He suspected she could read upside down and backwards as easily as she could forwards. Laying a hand on Oliver’s shoulder, Felipe gave him a reassuring squeeze. He could already feel the tension in his chest pulling tight as a bowstring the longer they waited. With a huffed breath, Head Inspector Williams set the report aside and scowled at Gwen as her gaze shot up from the page.
“Do you all know why I’ve called this meeting?” the head inspector asked, leveling a look at each of them in turn.
Oliver opened his mouth to speak, but Felipe squeezed his shoulder more sharply. “No, sir.”
“Good. What I’m about to tell you is confidential. You cannot breathe a word of this outside this office, and if there is any panic, I will place the blame squarely on you three.”
Tension crept along the tether, though Felipe didn’t know where his fear ended and Oliver’s began. Definitely not disciplinary action, then.
“Has Galvan told either of you about the case we received from the New Jersey Paranormal Society?”
“Only that it exists and that none of the investigators want to take it,” Oliver said hesitantly, oblivious to Felipe’s wince.
The head inspector’s lips thinned. “Of course they don’t.”
“But you want me and Dr. Barlow to take it?” Felipe added, keeping his voice level despite his growing irritation. “Sir, when we talked about my semi-retirement, you agreed that I wouldn’t have to take cases outside of the city anymore.”
“Did I say you were assigned to it yet, Galvan? Trust me, I’d rather kick this mess back to the New Jersey Branch, but I’m offering the case to you because it fits youruniqueskillsets.” The head inspector picked up a paper, but at Gale clearing their throat, he begrudgingly pulled a pair of pince-nez from his pocket and set them on his nose. “The New Jersey Branch received a letter last month claiming that the dead are coming back to life and terrorizing people in a town at the edge of the Pine Barrens.”
Felipe could see the thoughts flickering through Oliver’s mind about the logistics and specifics, but all Felipe could think of was what sort of town this was. He had an inkling, and he didn’t like it one bit.
“Supposedly, the dead have already attacked four people that we know of, though there might be more. The head of the New Jersey Branch wasn’t clear on that, and neither was the original letter. At least one person has been killed. Now, I don’t know if we have a rogue necromancer or possibly a—”
“Vampire!” Gwen exclaimed, shooting Oliver a smug look.
“It’spossiblya vampire or some other creature, but either way, it needs to go. Miss Jones, Mr. Turpin informed me that you are the Paranormal Society’s resident expert on vampires, on paper at least. I assume you can give Galvan and Barlow all the information they could need for this case?”
Gwen’s eyes brightened behind her spectacles. “Head Inspector, I have been preparing for this moment for years. My magnum opus on vampires isn’t complete yet, as I’m still researching the vampire-like creatures of Africa and Asia for volumes five and six, but I already have a volume and a half typed up with extensive notes and a lengthybibliography for the rest. The sections on American and European vampire mythos should be complete enough for your purposes, though. Dr. Barlow even helped me with some of my medical questions and theories.”
“Of course he did.” The head inspector barely suppressed a world-weary look. “We don’t need a tome, Miss Jones. A few pages of key information are more than enough until we have a better idea of what’s going on.A fewmeaning less than ten.”
Gwen looked as if she wanted to argue, but Felipe cut her off. “Sir, may I ask why the New Jersey Branch hasn’t handled the case themselves?”
“Because when they did, two of their investigators went missing, and the other two who tried to investigate their disappearance fled town and refused to go back.”
“So it’s a murder town?” Felipe replied, shaking his head. Of fucking course, it was.
“There is no such thing as a murder town, Galvan.”
Gale scoffed. “Like hell there isn’t.”
“What’s a murder town?” Oliver asked Felipe quietly.
“It’s a town where too many weird things happen,” Felipe explained. “Every investigator has stumbled into at least one. If a town is a hotbed of monsters, disappearances, and unexplained, gruesome deaths, it’s a murder town. They’re bad news, and no one wants to go to them if they can help it.”
“It has to do with too much magic,” Gale added from behind the head inspector’s desk without raising their head from their notes. “That’s my theory, at least. The energy that stokes magic is like mercury. You can drink a little and survive, but too much will make you go mad or kill you. Sometimes, it’s the land that’s the problem. Sometimes, it’s the people. You can’t really tell until you’re in it, not that it matters. It’s all bad.”
