Case 30: Entry 3

One down, God only knows how many to go.

Yesterday I made sure to chat with each of the other experts to see if anyone else had been threatened. I figure all the security I can arrange won't matter if one of them gets bullied into tossing a match on Los Susurros. Fortunately, it's not easy to find someone to threaten into being an asset, especially if you're from the spooky side. You have to find someone who isn't likely to go into denial or freak out in a way that runs counter to your goal. It's a difficult balance to strike, and I only found one person who seemed like he had been shaken up. It was one of the linguists, and he had some very interesting things to tell me. Well, actually when I got him to open up most of what he said was gibberish. He kept repeating "the knife can't cut" among other things, but that was still plenty for me to work with.

One of the earliest stories in Los Susurros tells of a trickster who protected his tribe against the Aztecs through deception and cunning. Infuriated over their numerous defeats, the Aztecs called upon three fiends to go out and slay him. The first was a snake that could slide into and animate the bodies of the dead, and it went to him in the form of a young woman pleading for aid and protection against her murderous brother. The serpent hoped to kill the trickster once it knew he had lowered his guard, but he smelled rotting flesh on the woman's breath and he led it into a ditch where he tested it to learn its true nature and then killed it. The next fiend was an imp with red feathers for hair and six fingers on each hand. The imp had mastered the skill of finding exactly the right words to strike at a person's heart, and when he set out to kill he would speak a single phrase to his target which sounded like nonsense but which would wear away at their mind until the mental torment was too great for them to put up a real fight. The imp came for the trickster and said, "The bird flies for five days straight," but in an instant the trickster replied, "And drops two eggs along the way." The imp tried a different phrase, but once more the trickster dismissed it with a nonsensical retort, and the two went back and forth for hours until the imp began stomping its feet and pulling out its feathers and all sense was gone from it. The final fiend was an Aztec warrior who had been transformed with dark magic. He had been turned into a demon such as they would craft only in times of great peril and then to complete a single task before going out into the wilderness forever. This demon could run and climb with the grace of a jaguar, and it had the power both to throw its voice and to imitate others with it. The demon would use roars and cries for help and other sounds to lead its prey on a run through the foliage until the prey was exhausted and perhaps injured and then it would kill the prey and eat its heart. But when the demon came for the trickster he noticed that when he slowed down the noises that drove him did not catch up. He soon knew he was being herded, and so the trickster veered very slightly off the demon's course while at the same time stumbling and panting to avoid suspicion. He knew the land, and he slowly changed the path until it led to a point he knew was a perfect place to ambush prey. Being familiar with the spot, he knew the direction from which the demon would strike, and so when he reached it he made sure to appear ripe for the taking until the moment when he swung around and held his spear firmly before him as the demon lunged. The next night he left trophies from each of the fiends where the Aztecs would find them, and for as long as he lived his tribe was never threatened again.

Mind you, that was a shortened version. The story as recorded in Los Susurros is much better. But the important thing is that the other expert's frantic mutters match up exactly with the modus operandi of a certain imp. I put out word to all nearby agents and other contacts of what to look out for and how to beat it, and then arranged to have a therapist specializing in the paranormal visit the disturbed expert that night while an agent stood watch. This morning I got a call saying that the imp had been taken care of.

Now to see what else is lurking about.

Case 30: Entry 2

Well, I'm pretty sure the books are authentic. I haven't done enough work on them to give an official answer yet, but everything about them that I've looked at so far is just so completely right. It's like if an English professor read a lost Shakespearean play: it wouldn't take them more than a few lines to recognize the bard's literary fingerprints. I've read plenty of old literature, and when I got the call for this job I made sure to read the few stories that are believed to have come from Los Susurros. So that's the good news. The bad news is that something just explained to me precisely what it would do with my entrails unless the books are either discredited or destroyed. That was kind of a bummer.

Honestly, I was an idiot not to see this coming. The whole reason Los Susurros is such a big deal is because most of the stories either faded from memory or were lost as the people who told them were wiped out, which means that there's probably a good handful of nasties who are safer without the books being found. For all I know, there could be a hundred different fiends all heading straight to this city. In fact, if any of the things described in Los Susurros can pass for human, it's possible I could have the head of a cartel gunning for me. A lot of the stories are from the right region, and it wouldn't be the first time human and supernatural evil joined up. I'm glad I have such a pleasant imagination to come up with such lovely scenarios. Anyway, the point is that this job is a lot more dangerous than I was expecting.

The first thing I did after I got back to my hotel room was call the Agency. They're still stretched thin, but it turns out they consider a collection of stories that could expose dozens of malevolent supernatural species to be a high priority. A small handful of agents is being dispatched, and they're pulling all the strings they have in the area to make sure the books as well as the other experts and I are protected. Of course, that kind of thing can be difficult to do when you don't know who or what you're defending against, and most of the people being protected don't know about you. Playing the defensive role while also moving openly about a large city is not exactly the tactical ideal. Especially when your enemy is something which (for all you know) can only be killed by being hung upside down and stabbed in the spleen with a copper dagger. Honestly, I'm much happier to have Nox on my side. A lot of monsters are afraid of certain domesticated animals, and cats always make excellent companions for supernatural work. Not to mention that Nox is a lot more clever than he has any right to be.

Anyway, I suppose I'd best get to work. I've got some copies and translations that I have permission to keep with me, and I'm hoping I can develop some profiles with them.

Case 30: Entry 1

I got a call this morning from the Huntington Library in San Marino. Apparently they've obtained several old books which might be Los Susurros de la Musa Perdida, and they want me to come in and help authenticate them. I may or may not have squealed and run around my home for several minutes after finishing the call. I mean, Los Susurros is kind of a legend. Or at least it is among the supernatural community and that portion of academia that specializes in folklore. Plenty of scholars tracing the history of fables, children's stories, and tall tales have been frustrated by references to this wealth of lost stories, and they have made much of the few stories that are supposed to have been given out from that trove. Not to mention that the few specific individuals mentioned as having at some point possessed and contributed to Los Susurros each had all kinds of rumors floating around them in their day.

The collection supposedly began with an explorer named Gabriel Esteban Salazar. He was there in the early days of colonization, and he was endlessly curious. He was basically a personification of all the whitewashed fancies of exploration and adventure that have been used to paint Christopher Columbus as a hero. Salazar arrived in the Americas eager to discover new lands, record strange customs, and sketch exotic flora and fauna, but somehow he was turned away from that vision. At first he stumbled onto stories as a way to relate to the Natives, but soon he became focused almost entirely on the fairy tales, ghost stories, and fables they had to tell. He recorded them with just as much thoroughness and care as other explorers put into maps and accounts of wildlife. He eventually became an advocate for the tribes, and some accounts indicate he was a close friend of Bartolome de las Casas. Of course, we all know how that battle went.

After a while the powers that be (or rather, the powers that were) found him more annoying than useful and arranged to have him sent back to Spain. Having come from a family of merchants, Salazar was not exactly impoverished on his return home, however the business was struggling and he spent nearly every spare coin he had expanding his collection. There was one man in particular whom he trusted to seek out stories from the New World and even some from the Old World as well on his behalf, though accounts of the man's identity tend to disagree. What is agreed on is that he inherited the collection upon Salazar's death. From there the trail of Los Susurros rambles through history, many of its owners and contributors completely unknown.

The next time the story really gets exciting is when the collection falls into the hands of a pirate. Supposedly, he was the first one to record the stories of African slaves. He was also the first Englishman to keep it, though that point could be debated. After something like twenty years of piracy he had amassed a small fortune, and he made a deal with the English crown for a new home in exchange for certain military secrets he had acquired over the years. He took the name of Jonas Goodspeed, and the crown quickly created an unofficial position for him. He rooted out spies, enforced a certain level of civility within the criminal underworld, and did any other dirty business that was handed off to him. And all the time he continued to collect stories. He collected children's rhymes, tales told only in certain remote towns and by certain people, urban legends, and any new lore he found coming from the colonies.

After Goodspeed passed away there's a handful of individuals known or suspected to have possessed Los Susurros, none of them quite as impressive as either he or Salazar. They each had at least one rumor attached to them, but most didn't have that same kind prolific life story. The first two were scholars, and after that there were three who regularly dealt with the Natives in some official capacity. The last person known to have kept the collection was a missionary who spent nearly half his life among the tribes. After that, the trail runs cold.

Until now, that is. I'm already checked in to my hotel room and I've been spending most of this afternoon looking through stories of various kinds from the same stretch of time in which Los Susurros was supposedly assembled, and from the same cultures. They've already got people sniffing the ink, sending samples to labs, and studying the linguistic fingerprints. My job is to look at the stories themselves, see if their styles fit with the alleged sources. And I intend to do my job right.

Case 26: Entry 6

We went out to town as soon as the sun set. I had my semiautomatic crossbow, a small bag of charms, a crucifix, my revolver, a couple knives, and a rod designed to channel bursts of arcane energy. It's sort of like a more ghetto version of Loki's scepter. Yosef on the other hand was armed with a taser, a machete, and an abundance of jewelry and other adornments that were supposed to amplify his abilities. Roland carried a battle axe, several grenades, and a gun I recognized from my work with the agency. The recoil from that thing is more than a normal human hand can deal with. Finally, Michelle had a few amulets and rings she had picked up during her work, a gun with several runes and other images worked into it, three throwing knives, her katana, and a belt full of specialized ammunition. The sleeves into which the bullets were placed each featured an image suggesting what that bullet was used for.

The streets were completely abandoned as we drove to the same park we had planned to end the first exorcism at. No one was out driving, on a walk, or even in any of the shops and restaurants. Everyone there had simply accepted that this was a night on which to stay home. Which was a pretty good move on their part. We were only halfway there when an enormous feral dog with glowing green eyes slammed itself against the side of Michelle's van. We all decided to get out and fight now that the nasties were beginning to introduce themselves. Michelle got out of the van as the dog began a second charge and decapitated it with a single, effortless stroke of her katana. Yosef yelped and dodged out of the way a half second before a ghoul with long, sharp teeth and longer, sharper claws tried to pounce on him from the roof of a shop. Paranormal levels of intuition are extremely helpful in this line of work. Anyway, Roland brought his axe down on that one. Then eleven or so other monsters (most of them from some movie or other) came out to greet us. It was little scary until the velociraptor and the clown started attacking the others.

"I was wondering if that would take," I said as the others looked on in bafflement. "It's a little something I slipped into the summoning ritual."

Michelle gave me a mildly impressed and said, "You are a very scary man, Mr. Underhill."

Then she waded in and cleaned up the mess. I think that might have been the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. Anyway, we went through town like a buzz saw after that. Most of the monsters were actually kind of easy to beat. There were too many of them for Mr. Ash to exert any kind of control or focus, so they were all just running on what he had already put into them. Michelle and Roland were more than a match for them. At the same time, I dealt with the dead. I would "rebuke" Mr. Ash's hold on them in the name Adonai and by the blood of Yeshua. At the same time, Yosef ripped his presence out of the living minions who came after us. He was considerably more capable now that we had done a bit of damage to Mr. Ash's presence in the town and then focused the rest into the vessels we were now dealing with. The whole operation took about two hours, and it was exhausting. But we didn't have time to rest that night. We still had to finish off the big bad before he could recover.

It was Yosef who found the way. We went back to our cars and he led us to the old mine the little girl had supposedly disappeared in. Big surprise there.

I don't like caves. In fact, I don't like going anywhere I don't have the advantage. But we came there to kill the thing, and it hadn't shown any intention of coming out to us. So in we went.

It wasn't long before the mine ended and Mr. Ash's lair began. A few of the charms I had brought were for light, and Michelle had some small lanterns which caused irritation to vampires and other nocturnal nasties which she tossed around as soon as we entered it's lair. His hole had a more natural, cavernous feel. And there were a lot more bones. I don't remember the first thirty seconds or so very clearly. I know Yosef shouted a warning. I know we scattered as the wendigo fell from the ceiling. And it was indeed a wendigo. Mr. Ash stood at about eight feet tall by my estimate. He had grey skin; bloodshot, yellow eyes; six fingers complete with iron claws on each hand; bestial feet with hooked claws designed for climbing; a mane of coarse, dark hair; and a pair of thin, black antlers that followed the curve of its head. Much of it's body seemed emaciated, but then there were parts that bulged with muscle. The hands in particular were absurdly large compared to the mostly spindly limbs they were attached to. I remember that form quite well. I remember emptying my gun at it, although I still don't know if I hit anything. I do know that I got it with my rod. There was a rippling in the air and then some bruises or perhaps burns appeared on the creature's side. It opened its mouth and howled at me, and I could smell rotten meat on its breath. I tried to turn up the juice at that point, and the rod blew up in my hand. I think it still sent a blast at the wendigo, though, because I'm pretty sure that's when it swatted me away and broke a few ribs in the process.

Roland and Michelle were both trying to get the better of it, but it was too fast for them. At one point Roland got his axe stuck in Mr. Ash's shoulder, and he had to snap the handle off when he saw the blood flowing up the head and towards him. He wound up jamming the handle into the creature's side before it sent him flying. Then things took a turn for the worse as Yosef crumpled over. He had been trying to bind Mr. Ash, and the effort had been costing him dearly. There was blood flowing freely from his eyes and nose. He was probably the only reason it didn't kill us all in the first two seconds of combat. Soon it had Michelle on the floor, her sword lying a few feet away. It raised one arm to finish her off, and then Roland emptied his gun into it. A lot of things would have been splatter across the wall by that, but it just got knocked back a few steps. Michelle was still dazed, so it moved back in to finish the job. This time Roland was back and his feet and he tried to tackle the wendigo. That didn't go very well, but it bought Michelle a few more seconds before Roland hit the ground and was occupied with trying to stuff his entrails back inside. I saw the kanji on her blade glowing as the thing turned its attention back to her. And then it charged.

I can't tell you exactly what she did. I think there were four distinct movements that ended with Michelle standing behind the wendigo as it crouched down in agony. She had cut off its arm, but the dark blood was reaching out and dragging the severed limb back to the main body. Then the blade came down one more time. It was a high cost for that stroke. It cost decades of research from Tom Yukimura. From what I read, it cost the lives of a few brave souls who'd had some clue about the true history of this town. It cost bringing a band of supernatural experts together. It took all my experience and skill and that of everyone else on the team to put that sword in place. It fell on the neck of Mr. Ash, and it cut cleanly and easily until it was all the way through.

* * * * *

I think Yosef got us out somehow. I know I definitely didn't walk out when the stalagmites shattered and the walls trembled. However we got out, there was a helicopter there within twenty or thirty minutes. Straub had been waiting for some sign of the creature's demise. He got us all to a safe house and sent some people to collect our cars and our things. He likes to maintain a reputation as a good man to do deals with. I recovered quickly enough, and I wanted to be done with it all, but I also wanted to talk to him before I left.

"Why?" I asked him. "You said Tom Yukimura asked you to take care of this, what were you paying him for?"

The smug bastard folded his hands together and looked me over for a few seconds before he answered.

"I want Tom's help for a job I'm planning," he said. "Tom told me that he wouldn't allow me to break him out of prison for it unless I did this."

"Why not just send in a team, knock him out, and then put the pressure on once he's yours?" I asked. "Don't tell me you don't have a shapeshifter or two you could call up."

"I tried that," said Straub. "He put them all in a hospital."

"Such a badass," I muttered.

"I know, right??" said Straub in return.

That was the most I got out of him, so I decided to head out after one more stop. We're all going out to dinner to celebrate after everyone's recovered a bit more, so I didn't feel bad about skipping some goodbyes. Roland was propped up in bed with a pair of glasses and a kindle when I knocked on his door.

"I'll be gone in a second," I said after he invited me in. "But first, I just have to know. What are you?"

The old man smiled, gestured me to come closer, and then put his face up next to my ear.

"I'm Santa Claus."

I still have absolutely no idea if he was joking or not.

Case 26: Entry 5

I can't tell you what any one person said when I suggested the ritual, but the general message was something along the lines of "Have you lost your friggin' mind??"

After the shouting had died down a bit I started making my case.

"First off, as far as I can tell," I said. "This looks like the work of a very old, very dangerous wendigo. And the fun thing about wendigos is that they don't have a lot of weaknesses. There are some native secrets that can deal with them, but most of those have been lost and the only one I know requires the horn of a white buffalo and about a month of preparation. So far, the only weakness Mr. Ash has is the fact that his false forms are easier to kill. Aside from exploiting that weakness, all we can do is keep shooting, slashing, and hitting him until the sheer physical and metaphysical trauma is more than he can recover from. Secondly, we are all here because Straub decided each of us knew our stuff. In fact, I'd bet we'd already have been killed or driven out if not for the fact that everyone here is a professional. An expert. Together, I think we can handle what I'm proposing. And third, I'm here because my expertise is in monsters and folklore, and it is my expert opinion that this is the best way to deal with our dear friend, Mr. Ash. Oh, and there's one more thing." I smiled. "So far every mask we've gone after--except it's presence within the town itself--has been one that it chose to send after us. It knew the risks and it chose to go in anyway. But can imagine how it would terrify Mr. Ash to be dropped into a fight of our choosing? Can you imagine that thing being not just hurt, but scared?"

If I had been dealing with a bunch of perfectly logical people, the appeal to my own expertise would have been what brought it home. As it is, I'm pretty sure what really hooked the others was that last point. To be fair, it's probably hard to take a scrawny twenty-one year old seriously when he starts go off about his "expertise."

"There's still the issue of collateral damage," said Michelle. "If you call up every mask Mr. Ash has then some of them are going to go off killing locals."

"I'm not so sure about that," said Yosef. "Mr. Ash has been here for a long time, probably longer than this town even existed. Everyone here has been living with him for as long as they can remember, and when the sun goes down again I think they just won't find a reason to go outside. And I can tell you right now that he can't enter a home without an invitation." Then he glanced at me and added, "You were planning on doing this after sunset, yes?"

I nodded.

"The ritual itself will take a while," I said. "But I'd prefer for the little mini-Ashes to start popping up after dark. I'm not sure I could make them all manifest during daylight hours anyway."

There was still some chatter after that, but for the most part the argument was won. Soon we were all busy with preparations. I lent Yosef my stash of drugs designed specifically for paranormal uses (the poor dude had been running on Advil, marajuana, and some minor league amphetamines) and he went off to meditate, Michelle got all her weaponry ready and did whatever passes for relaxation when you're a monster hunter about to go on the biggest hunt of your career, and Roland went to a Denny's in Tahoe for breakfast. Meanwhile, I was working the first draft of the ritual. It took eleven drafts before I was ready to go.

I put it together using a couple using a ceremony from one of the few books of genuine wizardry I happen to have together with an Egyptian rite I had come across during my time at the Belmonte estate and bits and pieces of over a dozen other ceremonies and spells. What I came up with in the end started with eating some peyote and going through a mediation exercise to get in touch with the arcane world. Then I called up a spirit of dreams I'm on good terms with to assist in the ritual. Finally, I got to work on ruining Mr. Ash's day. I had to call up each of his masks one by one, extract a name from them, bind them, and then cast them away from me. It was then that I found out whether the forms of his victims were actual shades or just images. Some of the dead faces were just illusions, but many more were real genuine shades who were trapped in his grip so that he could continue to feed on them and to occasionally use them as sock puppets. That was creepy and so incredibly wrong, but it wasn't as weird as when I called up the living people who regularly acted as his masks. Like I said, this is a really nasty place, and there are plenty of people who have prospered off of the evil in this town. Those people, the ones who worked hand-in-hand with Mr. Ash even if they never consciously knew it, they became just as much a part of him as the nightmares he pulled out of the minds of those he terrorized. Tonight could get tricky.

But I'm not going to worry about that now. Now I'm going to get a good meal, call Cynthia (or anyone really who isn't in the middle of all this), and take a nap. I think I might get a good two hours in before the sun sets and everything goes to hell.

Case 26: Entry 4

Last night made me remember some accounts of similarly haunted towns that the Agency has on file. One thing I always found interesting was the remarks locals made about how the town was somehow wrong or how there was something cruel and wicked just beneath the surface. It's hard to consider those remarks in such an academic manner when I find myself in the middle of such a town. And what happened when I finally got to sleep didn't help.

I don't know if I had any normal dreams before it started, or if there was more to the nightmare before my recollection begins. All I know is my memory begins with waking up in the hotel bed in a room that was empty except for myself and Cynthia. She was standing in the doorway, and when she saw that I was up she started to say something. Before she could utter a syllable, a cluster of spindly, grey hands snatched her up and yanked her out of view. The door slammed behind her.

I ran after her, and when I found the door locked I started pounding on it and then slamming myself against it. I ran around the room, trying the windows and finding them just as secure. I shouted for her. I shouted for my compatriots. I should for anyone to help me escape.

"Don't worry about the girl," said a child's voice coming from the vent.

"She's gone to see Mr. Ash," said a similar voice from  the bathroom sink. "You'll go too, Underhill. You'll go to see Mr. Ash too. Mr. Ash loves visitors."

I backed up to the opposite end of the room and ran at the door as hard as I could.

"You'll meet Mr. Ash before too long."

I charged the door again. This time I thought I heard it start to give.

"The little morsel will meet him, too."

I charged again.

"And the old man can come along."

I hurled myself against the door.

"And Tommy's bitch, too."

I charged again.

"Mr. Ash can hardly wait to meet you all."

The door gave way, and I ran out as fast as I could. I kept running until I was out on the street. Then I wound down to a slow jog as I looked around. The sky was completely grey, and the streetlights shone with stale, yellow light. Many of the buildings were distorted, built to bizarre and cartoonish proportions. And along the sidewalk there stood the dead, the killers, and the nightmare beasts. I knew many of them from Tom's notes and others from our more recent research. I knew the Jewish boy who had been beaten to death, and the old woman barbecuing a human arm on her front lawn, and the little girl who had drowned one spring. I was slowing to a stop when I heard Cynthia scream and saw the sheriff shoving her in the trunk of his car. He turned to look at me, and I saw that his face was grey, his eyes were yellow, and his teeth were like needles. I broke into another sprint as he drove away.

Some part of me knew it was a dream, but I didn't care. Panic had taken hold and it wasn't letting go. I kept on running, feeling the grim atmosphere filling my lungs, infecting me just as it had infected the whole town. I needed to break free.

"A thousand years or more ago when Hogwarts school began,"

I sang. I reached into the ancient relics of my childhood and pulled out the song. I kept going until I felt the panic start to recede. The dead people and the nightmare beasts snarled at me as the whole street trembled with the music. Something hairy and ghoulish crawled toward me and opened its enormous maw.

"Old Tomnoddy, all big body, old Tomnoddy can't spy me-e..."

I belted out the songs with which Bilbo had distracted the spiders, and the thing scampered away. I kept on going with the songs of Tolkien and those of Redwall and Harry Potter and anything else I could remember. I saw the ghoulish thing and a handful of other horrors form a wide circle around me even as they winced at each note. I wasn't sure what would happen when I ran out of tunes.

Then they were all cut to pieces by falcons made of painted glass.

"You're on my turf now, bitch!" shouted the Yemeni psychic as rode up to the street on the back of a steampunk saber-toothed tiger robot. Then he seemed to notice me there and said, "Hey, Jack."

"Hi," I said. "So...uh...you're used to this kind of thing."

Yosef smiled brightly and said, "It's probably the first time this thing has gone mind-to-mind with an expert."

"So...now what?" I asked.

"Now you wake up," said Yosef a moment before the street broke open before me.

I don't know how long I had to fall through that jumble of images and lights before I woke back up. It could have been seconds or it could have been hours. Not too many hours, though, because there was only a five hour difference between when I fell asleep and when I woke up again. What I do know is that my companions and I all woke up rather shaken. Roland in particular looked pale. Through the whole job thus far I've been shifting between seeing him as a kindly grandfather and a hulking thug, and in that moment it occurred to me to wonder if he actually did have any grandchildren. If he did...I don't want to know what our enemy showed him.

"I am really sick of this thing," said Michelle. Then she looked at me and asked, "How do we stop playing around and finally kill it?"

I got up and went to my luggage. I spent a few moments shifting through books before I answered her.

"If we went up against it right now I don't think we'd stand a chance," I said. "Which is why I think we should stick with the same idea we had before. We take advantage of the creature's ability to inhabit forms other than its own. We confront it in those other forms and we beat it in those other forms until we've hurt the thing enough that we can go after it for real."

"So we're just supposed to wait for it take cheap shots at us and hope we keep coming out on top?" asked Michelle.

"No," I said. "So I spend the day putting together a summoning ritual that will force it to manifest in all its guises. Then we kill the bastard."

Case 26: Entry 3

I have to admit, before we started this morning I had some doubts about Tom Yukimura's suspicions. Those are gone now.

We started out the day by splitting up to do research. Yosef went around the town to see what he picked up while also using my camera, Michelle went to the library to go through old newspapers and town records, and Roland and I went to talk to the sheriff. I haven't worked with agents in person very often, but I have done it enough to know how to looks and sound like a spooky yet legitimate bureaucrat. Once I set the tone of the encounter, Roland mostly took over the talking. We didn't say exactly what we were in town to investigate, but we hinted that it was some kind of murder cult.

At first the sheriff seemed entirely cooperative, but then we realized he was leading us on with unimportant details and information we clearly already had. Whenever we tried to push for more he started getting indignant and forcing us to spend up to half an hour batting bureaucratic jargon back and forth. The exchange lasted over three hours and we learned nothing. Well, not quite nothing. There were a few incidents we hadn't known about before, among them the disappearance of a little girl a few years ago. Apparently it had been assumed she'd gotten lost in an abandoned mine, and the sheriff had plenty of very good reasons for believing it was just a tragic accident. It made perfect sense for him not to have filed a report to state or federal officials just as long as you overlooked the fact that she was a freaking kid. It doesn't matter how much it looks like an accident; when children disappear alarms are supposed to go off! That's more than just procedure, it's common sense. That one discovery me think there might be even more secret tragedies in this town than even Tom Yukimura suspected.

At the same time that was happening, Yosef was facing his own troubles. Unlike us, he was getting all kinds of data from his investigation. I think he must have gotten enough hits to map out more than half the supernatural hotspots in town, and there are a lot more here than in most places. The problem was that each hit landed like a hammer. He started taking pills after the first few hits, but it still kept getting worse until around noon when he had an actual seizure right before he passed out. He managed to call Michelle when he felt that coming on, but he cut off mid-sentence when he heard another voice echoing through his head saying, "I see you, little morsel."

Everything kind of came to a halt after that. We all went back to the hotel suite (usually I'd stay somewhere cheaper but Straub provided an extremely generous budget, and he laughed when I told him I'd try to use it sparingly) and Michelle and I put everything we'd learned together while Roland made sure Yosef wasn't dying or suffering brain damage. Yosef only passed out for two or three minutes (contrary to what the movies have taught us, it's usually a bad sign if you get knocked out any longer than that) but he was jittery when he woke up and it was a few hours before he seemed back to normal.

By three in the afternoon we had put together a narrative of the entire history of the town as it related to the creature. That's always important, taking the disparate facts of a case and arranging them into a coherent story. By five we had made an arcanographic map of the town which displayed the magnitude and kinds of concentrations of energy. By nine I had composed a ritual to bless the town and drive out the creature's presence. Michelle and I agreed that the creature's greatest weakness lay in its ability to project its consciousness into various forms. As long as it inhabited a form it was subject to the limitations and vulnerabilities of those forms, and its most exposed vessel is the town itself. We spent an hour and a half on rest and ritual purification, and then we went out.

Then we began to understand just how nasty this thing is.

We each drove to the site of a major tragedy and nexus of dark energy. The ritual started by remembering the victims and praying for their rest, then there was a series of chants rebuking the evil that lay over the town interspersed with verses and poems, some of which were specific to the site in question. The ritual ended with a prayer for the town and for God to bless our quest, and the scattering of a handful of small acacia chips (the wood used to build the Arc of the Covenant) inscribed with holy sigils. And yes, I do take those with me whenever I go on a case and it took a lot of time of effort to make them. The plan was to hit the biggest sites, wander the streets for a bit doing general purifications, and then meeting up a park that happens to be pretty near the exact center of town for the big finale. We also had a psychic link that Yosef put together (which is pretty damn impressive) to harmonize our efforts and alert us all if one of us was in danger.

I think we each got at least two sites taken care of before the trouble started.

Michelle was outside the ruins of a shop when she saw a tall, slightly overweight man who had been staring at her at the library coming out of the shadows at her. I was in front of a house where a family had been brutally murdered when the sheriff and two other men drove up. Roland was on the edge of town when a freaking mountain lion crept up behind him. Yosef was at a tree from which seemed to be a favorite suicide spot when a posse of high schoolers showed up and started calling him a terrorist.

Roland finished with his assassin first. It came at him from behind, which meant that its first attack didn't hit anything vital. It tried to reach around to bite or claw open his neck, but before it could manage that the man had already grabbed a hold of it and flipped it onto the ground in front of him--despite the fact that it had its claws hooked into his flesh. He made quick work of the big cat at that point. At the same time Michelle was fighting the man who seemed intent of raping her. He should have been out in twenty or thirty seconds, but it seemed like he just didn't notice the injuries she inflicted. In fact, he actually managed to keep punching and grabbing with an arm she knew for a fact she had dislocated. The man wasn't anywhere near as good a fighter as her, but he was plenty strong and what few punches made it through to her were harder than I think even he would normally be able to throw. After about seven or eight minutes Michelle finally pushed him past whatever breaking point he had, and she left him lying on the ground suffering the physical trauma of a minor car wreck.

I had a bit of a harder time with my adversaries. I knew I wasn't going to win that fight, so I raised one hand, used the other to remove any weapons I had on me, and calmly and clearly told the sheriff what I was reaching for and that I was surrendering. Then he punched me in the gut. There was a lot of punching and kicking after that, but I made sure not to fight back or run away. That would probably be more impressive if I was someone who had some semblance of combat expertise. Anyway, I just kept trying to talk to the sheriff. I asked him why he was doing this. I reminded him that I was not resisting. I asked him if this was the kind of thing he normally did. When he shouted something about me and the other "agent" trying to take over the town or spread nasty rumors I asked him how it made sense to attack a federal agent. Some of the questions were too confrontational and just made him angrier, but I kept at it. The key to undoing any psychic whammy is always separating your natural thoughts and feelings from the outside influence. In other words, I needed him to question what he was doing. It must have worked because after a while the sheriff told his boys to stop. He knelt down to where I was lying on the ground and told me that I'd better keep quiet. I thought I heard some shame or doubt in his voice when he said that. Then he just got back into his car and left. It's possible the whammy just ran it's course, but I really think if I can't kept up trying to interrupt it the encounter would have ended with my death.

Meanwhile, Yosef was being beaten by a crowding of laughing adolescents. I suspect he could have handled them easily on most nights, but he was still shaken from his earlier encounter with the creature. Not to mention that he was getting hits off his attackers that were as least as heavy as anything he'd sensed this morning. They dragged him to the edge of the woods and tied him to a tree. They were beginning to take turns with a baseball bat when Roland arrived on the scene. He decided to announce his presence by picking up one of the kids and tossing him across the clearing. When the kids refused to calm down he repeated the process. One of them tried to attack him with the baseball bat, which he caught mid-swing and yanked away from his attacker. Roland tossed one more kid before the rest had the good sense to run away.

In the end, Roland took Yosef back to the hotel while Michelle and I partnered up to complete an abbreviated version of the purification. It wasn't anything that could actually drive out the creature's presence, but I do think we at least managed to remove a couple footholds. And, more importantly, I think it hurt. It's good for my morale to suppose we caused that thing some pain, and right now we could all use a morale boost.

Case 26: Entry 2

Today I officially joined up with Straub's team.

According to the files he gave me, the creature Tom Yukimura spent his life searching for hunts among the northwestern mountains of the state. There's a handful of towns where it seems to hunt more regularly than elsewhere, and there is one town in particular a bit north of Tahoe that Tom came to believe was the heart of its territory just before he got locked away. Tom found a lot of odd deaths in the area like someone who was partially crushed in an accident and failed to scream for help despite the fact that the medical examiner swore he must have had at least four hours alive and conscious or a woman who hacked her neighbor to death with a cleaver over an argument they'd had nearly a decade ago. There were a lot of deaths like that, all odd enough to raise an eyebrow but not enough to hit any statistical red flags. But those were scattered across time and geography. The really troubling incidents were the times Tom believed the creature came out to hunt. The files included a long list of fatal accidents, fires, horrid murders, and other sources of suffering. After each one there was series of disappearances. Most of the bodies were never found, but those that were had all been mauled horribly. The police records suggest that most of the events only included four or five disappearances, but Tom was able to link seventeen disappearances to one of the events.

Those are the hard facts. Most of the stuff about deaths and disappearances can be confirmed with a little digging. Then there's the other stuff. For one thing, Tom believed that there are three signs when the creature starts seriously feeding: large flocks of sparrows including at least one which is white and grey, images of past victims, and the cave of the creature. The cave in particular is usually seen only in dreams or in distortions of some kind, but there were events during which people claimed to have found the actual dwelling place. Additionally, Tom believed that the creature was able to project its awareness into people whom it had called to darkness, animals, and conjured forms taken from the nightmares of its victims. He believed that it used these forms to do the actual hunting.

The really interesting thing is that (according to Tom) the monster's territory isn't just a place it happens to hunt; it actually haunts the land. That means that it shares a spiritual connection to the place, or (to put it more poetically) that the land is poisoned with its essence. If that's the case, we would do well to regard the town and its people with suspicion.

I shared this and an abundance of minor observations with the rest of the team when we met at a local Denny's. I also mentioned that I shared Straub's belief that the creature was an aberrant wendigo and pointed out the ways in which it fit the lore and the ways in which it deviated. Of course, wendigos don't really have any known silver bullets, so I wasn't able to deliver much good news. I did point out that we might be able to exploit the thing's connection to the land and that it could be vulnerable while it was inhabiting bodies other than its own. Not that I was able to say exactly how we could exploit those weaknesses if they really were weaknesses.

I was feeling kind of inadequate at the meeting.

There are three other members of the party. One is a scrawny, young, highly medicated psychic named Yosef Shadid. Another is a grandfatherly and roughly bear-shaped private investigator named Roland Fuentes whose ethnicity I would guess as Pacific Islander. The last member of the team is a katana-wielding huntress in her late twenties or early thirties named Michelle Yates. She also happens to be Tom Yukimura's last companion, and the only one who is generally regarded as his protege. From what I gathered, it's up to Yosef and myself to uncover and interpret the arcane details of the case while Roland takes the lead on human intelligence. Then when the fighting happens Roland is there to be the brawler while Michelle delivers more precise, critical strikes.

It seems like a good plan. In theory.

Journal 8: Entry 14/Case 26: Entry 1

I'm not really sure if this should go in my professional or my personal journal, so I'm putting it in both.

Wizarding society has always been academic in nature. Magical academies have always been centers of political power among wizards, and most such academies operate in the shadow of mundane universities. On the surface there's the same university everyone sees, but then many of the professors also teach secret lessons at night or on the weekend. They also run journals and regulate the educational standards of the surrounding magical community. There are plenty of universities no one thinks twice about in mundane society with hidden studies bearing all the esteem of Yale or Oxford among the supernatural community. With over a third of its staff belonging to wizarding society, Fresno Pacific University is one such college. So it was kind of awesome to get invited to a conference they had this weekend.

FPU's wizarding side has always been known to advocate for greater openness and treating us less talented members of the community with some semblance of respect, but even for them this latest conference was unprecedented. There was something like eighty people in attendance, and by my count almost twenty of them did not hold the rank of wizard. In fact, when the conference started off reading of several recently published and highly renowned papers Shauna Freeman and Gilbert Flamel (he's a descendant of Nicolas Flamel, he's another consultant for the Agency except that he specializes in alchemy, and he and Shauna seem inseparable although I've never been able to tell if their relationship is more like twins or an old married couple) were among those presenting their work. I also got to present two papers (one on the Man of the Crowds and another on folklore, urban legends, and ghost stories in Northern California for the last hundred years) but I did it in a much smaller room with a lot less fanfare.

I kind of nerded out a few times, and I got some odd looks from wizards who probably take resources (intellectual and otherwise) for granted that I would give everything I own to have. The discussions and presentations were brilliant, and I was able to make some new and possibly valuable contacts between events. I was expecting to be enthralled with everyone and everything, but I was surprised to find that many of the other guests found me just as interesting. It seems obvious now, but it had never occurred to me that among major league spellcasters the study of monsters and spirits might actually be a niche field. As it weird as it seems, I actually knew more about that field than most of the real wizards in attendance. Cynthia (I kind of invited her along) had a similar experience at a discussion on minor charms and other subtle workings. I was amused to notice a firm traditionalist growing increasingly grumpy as the rest of the room took an increasingly greater interest in Cynthia and her knowledge on the subject.

And then Evan Straub sat down while I was eating and ruined my whole day.

Evan Straub is something like three or four years older than me, and he made a name for himself as a treasure hunter in his late teens. Then he got into supernatural security, and proceeded to sign on with some seriously shady folks. I first encountered him during one of my early cases when a family hired me to recover an heirloom he had swindled away from them. The heirloom, by the way, had originally come into the family through a great uncle who died at Auschwitz. I wound up threatening to send a report to the Agency that would not exactly have them knocking down his door but which would make it extremely difficult for him to continue doing business. Straub never gave the heirloom back, but he did compensate the family for all the hardships he'd caused in the course of acquiring it and then he somehow tracked down nearly all of that same great uncle's art collection. Since then we've called each other for favors or mutually beneficial arrangements from time to time, but I wouldn't say we've ever been friendly. I may also have called him "Lucifer". A couple dozen times. 

Anyway, Cynthia was at a discussion on hexes that was going late, so I was on my own when Straub took a seat next to me.

"Hello, Mr. Underhill," said Straub. "I'd like to hire you for a job."

"No," I said without looking away from my food.

"I am prepared to pay you a sizable sum--"

"Go away."

"You know that I have always dealt with you in good faith--"

"Please shut up."

"I'm doing the job for Tom Yukimura."

I stopped eating.

Tom Yukimura is one of the most prolific monster hunters alive today not working for the Agency. Of course, he's serving a life sentence in prison so it's not like he's in the game anymore, but he is still alive. The man is going on eighty, and he started hunting in his late twenties. Without tactical support, training, or any government spooks to clean up his messes. I mean, he was also pretty ruthless and there's a long list of people who wound up collateral damages of his crusade, but still. The dude is awesome.

"You're doing a job for Tom Yukimura?" I said. "You?"

"Is it so hard to believe?" asked Straub.

"Half your clients must have grudges against him," I said. "And he can't pay you in money. So what is he paying that's worth it?"

"I think that's my business," said Straub. "And I think you'd be much more interested to know what the job itself is. After all, he spent most of his life preparing for it."

I hate to admit it, but he had my attention then.

"You mean this is about his rumored vendetta?" I asked. "The obsession that would make him drop everything to chase down decades old police files or go after fiends that most hunters won't touch unless they outnumber them ten to one? I always thought that was a rumor to explain his recklessness and erratic tactics."

Straub produced a folder from his jacket and plopped it down in front of me. No, seriously, he let it go a few inches above the table to achieve that whole pompous, melodramatic plopping effect. 

"If it is just rumor then he must believe the lie," said Straub. "After I met him at the prison he had his protege deliver this. It contains every hard lead he ever discovered as well as his own journal entries on whispers and hunches."

I tried to look casual as I opened the folder. My eyes skimmed across police reports, local news articles, maps, and transcripts of interviews among other things.

"I believe you're the expert on this, but it looks like a wendigo to me," said Straub. "Except if that's right then it's a very odd wendigo. Or a very old one. Old enough to have acquired habits and traits not common to its kind. In any event, I'd like you on the team when we try to bring it down."

"Or I could just tell the Agency," I said as I continued to look through the files. "If there is something here then it's kind of their job."

"You could do that," said Straub. "And then they would tell you that they're stretched too thin and that they already have a waiting list of nasties with a lot more solid intelligence."

For the record, the idea of Evan Straub knowing the logistical capabilities of the Agency is not one which fills me with joy and happiness.

"If I tell you I'll consider it, will you go away?" I asked.

Straub smirked (he always smirks; I don't think it is anatomically possible for him to smile without looking like a smug bastard) and got up.

"I'll expect your call by Monday at five in the afternoon."

Special Report 57

Sorry for taking so long. I have to admit the recent string of anomalies had me baffled for a while until I reorganized all the data for the eighth time and noticed that three events involved people from the town of Lake Lorelei, Ohio. When I dug deeper, I found that every one of the events could be connected to the town in some way or other (I've attached a list for the other analysts to check), and I have become convinced that Lake Lorelei is now a nexus of supernatural activity. As you know, there are many places across the world (some populated and some belonging to the wilderness) where supernatural phenomena occur with alarming frequency. Sometimes the land itself is simply over saturated with power, sometimes it is the sight of some incident of serious historic and arcane significance, and sometimes a handful of minor arcane incidents (the laying of a curse, a clash between two powerful beings, the arrival of an artifact, etc.) occur in the same place and interact in such a way as to form a sort of knot or nexus of combined power. My guess is that Lake Lorelei recently became empowered through that final method, some convergence of minor incidents. I don't know exactly how to explain the fact that there are no reports of phenomena from Lake Lorelei, but many of these places do have a habit of protecting themselves from outsiders. Usually just the really, really powerful ones, though.

I would suggest sending in several squads of agents, each one containing specialists in distortions, skilled psychics, and combat experts. It may become necessary to pull them out quickly if Lake Lorelei turns out to have any unique...shall we say, quirks? If not, you should still expect at least one of the squads to get bogged down in some loop or illusion.

Case 24: Entry 6

Brennen told me that from what he's heard the next leg is supposed to be the longest and most difficult, but I'm not worried about that. I'm sure he can handle it. Or if he can I doubt I would make much difference. What I am worried about is whoever's been interfering in the quest.

Well, time to take care of it.

* * * * *

I left while Brennen was still asleep. I had an old key I used for certain rituals and I inscribed a few runes along it and then tied feather from one of the harpies to it. Then I did a little magic that I never could have pulled off if I weren't in the quest, and used the key on the door. I don't know where the door took Brennen, but it took me to a forrest wreathed in mist.

I walked through the forrest with a gun in one had and my secret weapon in the other. Eventually I found the path, and I followed it past cackling imps, spiders larger than me, three-eyed toads, and a couple dozen other creatures. I felt many of them closing in behind me, but I made sure to show no signs of fear. The path ended at the ruins of what might have been an old church, or perhaps a town hall. The roof was entirely gone, as well as a good portion of the walls. And on the podium lounged a beautiful youth with white hair interspersed with streaks of green, and long, pointed ears. 

"I am Jack Underhill," I said as I approached the faerie. "Friend of the Agency, Spellslinger, Destroyer of the Bane of the Belmontes, Doom of the Man of the Crowds, Ally of a Lord of the Wilds, and Appointed Guide of one whose destruction you seek." I held up the suitcase and said, "I come now either to deal in good faith for his safety, or else to unleash carnage. Which would you prefer?"

The faerie slowly applauded.

"Excellent entrance," he said. "I think anyone would be a fool to select whatever carnage you might muster. However, I can think of no treasure you might bring which I would desire more than the death of that unfortunate boy. I really hate to play the fool, but..."

"I didn't say I came to sell you anything," I said quickly. "I came instead to play a game and make a wager."

That caught his attention. His and that of everything else that had been listening in. Faeries love games, and they are always making wagers.

"I have in this suitcase a game of my own design. It is highly complex, but it is also designed not to give an unfair advantage to either player," I said. "I am prepared to play against you in it. If I win you will place the boy under your protection until the quest is complete. Neither you nor any of your allies nor anyone in debt to you in any way will threaten him or block his progress. If you win I will leave this place in peace and make no effort to stop your meddling in the quest. Oh, and you will of course make sure Brennen is safe from your meddling until the game is finished." Then I produced a thick binder from my backpack and added, "If that's not enough, I'll throw in all my notes on fey activity within the greater Sacramento area. I'm sure you'd find a few nuggets buried there. Oh, and either way I have guaranteed safe passage back home." 

The faerie accepted and the game began. And then the game went on. And on. And on. And on.

You see, this game had a card component, a component similar to chess, and an interactive landscape. And it had an imaginary third player who would appear when the dice produce one of a small handful of combinations and whose purpose was to screw over both players. And there were sixteen different scenarios which could cause the entire thing to be reset. In other ways, I designed this game for the express purpose of stalling. The secret weapon was deployed, and it was immensely successful. By the time the game was finally over, Brennen had already completed the quest and gone home.

I won, by the way. But that was probably just because my opponent was so completely frustrated.

Case 24: Entry 5

The dullahan from last time had me worried. Journeys like this are supposed to have opponents popping up, but that was too much. It's the kind of thing that suggests someone is meddling. That also jives with the assassin at the party, and it's not like there isn't plenty of motive. Brennen's emergence as a figure in faerie politics could have serious ramifications for certain individuals, if not for the nobles at large. As I considered that, I glanced at my secret weapon and wondered if it might be enough to stop the interloper. I guess it'll have to do.

As it turned out, this leg of the journey was in a swamp. We came out of a doorway in the middle of a very small patch of land populated by a single willow tree and surrounded by murky water and gnarled trees. There weren't any footprints like in the first leg or walls or other limits on the paths we could take like in the second leg.

"Is this going to be an underwater challenge?" asked Brennen. "Because I really don't want to swim in that."

"I don't think so," I said. "One thing the fey are known for is their physical grace. Well, not all of them are known for that, but the nobles definitely are. Anyway, I think this is supposed to challenge the athletic aspect of your fey heritage."

He gave me an annoyed look and said, "Are you telling me to go jumping and swinging around on rocks, roots, and branches?"

"I'm saying I think the journey is telling you that," I said as I knelt down and started unpacking my summoning gear. "And I think you'd surprise yourself if you tried it. Just like I bet your intuition was never even close to handling something like that maze until yesterday."

Then I stopped and considered something. I needed some kind of boat or raft if I was going to keep going beside Brennen, and there's a minor river spirit who owed me a favor. I had been about to make a circle, take out some symbols the spirit would respond to, and a few other tools, but now I thought I might try calling it up without any of that. I spoke the spirit's name three times with some fancy lines about his sacred waters and solemn debts, and then he just popped up. Just like that. He came, he enchanted a log to float where I wanted it to go and to be warded against harm, and then he popped out again. Just like that.

Mind you, I don't have the tiniest ounce of magical talent. I make plenty of magical charms and devices for my work, but even the easier ones take me several afternoons to finish. I know a decent amount of magical theory and when that doesn't make up for my lack of talent I either give up or cheat. In other words, I'm not some wizard who can just call up spirits on a whim. Except while we were on the journey. I said before that it seemed like the thing made us more of what we are, and I don't know if it would do that for anyone or if it's just making us each fit better into our roles, but the end result was that it allowed me to do things I couldn't have done otherwise. I think I should remember that.

"We still have no idea where we're going," said Brennen.

I'm pretty sure he was annoyed that I said he still had to try the whole fey grace thing. Anyway, about a second later something came hurtling through the air and became imbedded in the willow a few inches from Brennen's neck. A moment later we both saw that the projectile was a thin, sheathed sword. Then we swung around in unison to see where it had come from. Not too far away there was a woman in a ragged green dress with a sort of frail beauty that bordered on sickly. She pulled a lock away from the rest of her hair so that we could see the silver key tied into it. Then she jumped down into swamp and a large ripple shot out away from us.

"There you go," I said. "I guess it's a duel."

With that we both chased after woman. I tried not to look down into the waters, knowing as I did that it probably had many creatures far more frightening than alligators. Also, it probably had alligators. But those were all expected. The monstrous frogs with too many eyes, the scaly muskrats with the spine ridges, the tusked fish, and all those other freaks belonged here. I was on the lookout for something that didn't.

Brennen had just chased away an angry grindylow when I saw them. Four harpies were coming into a circle formation over the changeling. There was a gap between the tree he was on and the next large patch of solid footing, which meant he was going to have to make at least three leaps using very skimpy footholds and no cover from the foliage. I figured that was a good time to speed up my "boat." Also, apparently that thing can speed up.

One of the harpies dived for Brennen and I fired two shots from my gun. I actually didn't think I hit it at first, but apparently I grazed the wing enough to knock it off-course. The creature crashed into the water, and after a few seconds of floundering around it started to rise back into the air. Then there was a jerk from the leg still in the water and then something pulled the harpy down below the surface. I did a little fist pump and gave a thumbs up to Brennen, who had been understandably startled by the commotion.

Then he pointed at the harpy swooping down behind me.

When I looked over my shoulder I immediately panicked and flattened myself against the log. I willed it to move to the side, and at the same time I scrambled to fire at the creature. I had a much better shot at this one, but this time I was panicking. It would be a lie to call me anything but an amateur when it comes to marksmanship, and that level of skill doesn't mix well with panic. I got off four rounds, and every one of them was a miss. Fortunately, I at least managed to get out of the way of the dive, although I suspect the harpy could have corrected her course if she hand't been worried about taking a bullet.

As the harpy rose back into the sky, I heard a ringing clash and turned to glimpse my charge locked in combat with the fey woman. I felt a rush of relief. I couldn't be sure that he would win, but even if it was my place to interfere directly there wouldn't have been anything I could have done. He was moving amongst a grove of trees that would force the harpies to hop around clumsily if they wanted to interfere, which meant as long he didn't give them an obvious opening my job was done for this leg.

Now all I had to do was survive against three angry harpies. Oh, and my gun was a six-shooter, which meant it was now empty.

I tried to remember where in my many pockets I kept the other rounds, and drew up a great, big blank. I started patting myself down, vaguely aware that the assassins were coming in for another strike. They began their dive, and all I could find were a handful of small flares imbued with enough arcane power for them to drive away nocturnal monsters. They would be useless against my attackers. My little tricks weren't going to do it. A skilled fighter might win with the knife, but I've always been a perpetual novice there. It would take heavy firepower or genuine wizardry to take down those three. Genuine wizardry like what you might use to whistle up a spirit without preparation.

The harpies swooped down as one, and I figured it was more risky not to do something crazy. I pressed one hand down on the log and hoped desperately that the enchantment was one that formed a circuit with the outside environment rather than relying an internal reserve of arcane power. Then I tossed about half the flares up in the direction of the harpies and shouted a one word incantation. The flares exploded as if each had been two full tanks of gasoline, and at least a score of thick, zig-zagging tendrils of fire reached out and closed around my foes.

I didn't quite pass out, but everything was a bit hazy for the next few minutes. By the time I had reclaimed enough of my wits to head to land, Brennen had already beaten the fey woman and he was waiting for me by the door that had consequently appeared.

Case 24: Entry 4

When we opened the door in the kitchen we saw something from an Escher painting. Did Escher actually paint or was it charcoal or something? Whatever. The point is that we opened the door on a topsy-turvy labyrinth. And this time there weren't any footprints. I was more than a little intimidated, but we went in anyway. We tried the usual trick of keeping your hand on the right wall, but somehow that didn't work. It turned out there was some kind of spatial loop that just zapped us back to the someplace a little further from where we entered. I started taking notes, but it was Brennen who found the way out of the first loop.

The air here seems somehow more rich. The whole place is fertile with possibilities, both good and bad. I think it's making us both more of what we already are, which might have been how I guessed the nature of the enchantment in the caves. If I'm right, then Brennen's fey nature is being nurtured by this place, allowing his instincts to guide him through the maze. He brought us through at least three loops and I think he was even starting to anticipate the way gravity would sometimes change directions. Then the Small Folk noticed us.

We'd seen a few of the sprites and pixies darting around almost as soon as we entered the maze, but they hadn't shown any interest in us. That changed after about thirty minutes of wandering, though. At first they were just flitting around us trying to entrance or mesmerize us with their lights, but then one of them made a series of taps on one of the bricks and just as soon as I started to feel suspicious the gravity of the area got switched around and we got slammed into the new floor. It took us a few seconds to stagger back to our feet and check ourselves for injuries, but before I had quite finished my attention was seized by the sound tinkling, lyrical laughter. I looked up and saw the Small Folk darting around, cartwheeling through the air, and giving the general impression that this was the best game they had ever played.

We ran. The faeries thought that made it even funnier.

It turned out that screwing with gravity wasn't the only thing they could do. They also delighted in moving the walls around, rebooting the spatial loops, and activating enchantments such as one that flipped our perceptions of left and right or another that forced us to walk on our hands. I don't know how to describe what it was like when we tried to walk normally except to say that it wasn't allowed.

Eventually, I grabbed Brennen by the shoulder and said, "Stop, stop. We're never going to get through this way." I sat down and gestured for him to join me. "We have to make a deal."

Brennen had taken everything he could of his more arcane birthday gifts along for precisely this purpose. The trouble was that faeries were legalistic in nature and could be easily insulted, especially when it came to the Small Folk. So instead of just trying to call out and ask for a bargain we stayed seated and started looking at the haul. We played with the ones that leant themselves to games, and made sure the rest were visible. A sprite tried to steal a glimmering marble, but Brennen scolded it and said that it was a gift from Felebrul of the Daoine Sidhe. The little faerie wandered away with a look of shame. Then they changed gravity again, but as soon as we were able to get off our backs we just resumed the same position. The Small Folk tried the same trick four more times, and we kept on ignoring them despite the abundance of scrapes and bruises. I was feeling a mix of suspicious relief over having not fallen at an unfortunate angle and excitement at the way the faeries were starting to flit closer to us when I heard a loud, whinnying shriek and distant hoofbeats started echoing through the labyrinth.

There's a good handful of things that could have been (not counting shapeshifters), but there was one thing that immediately leapt to the front of my mind. Contrary to popular belief, the original headless horseman is not a ghost at all, but rather a faerie. It's called a dullahan (or maybe the Dullahan; I don't know if it's a species or a single one-of-a-kind creature) and if the banshee is the doorbell of death then he's the delivery boy.

Fortunately, the Small Folk didn't run for the hills, so I got Brennen to make deals for safe passage as quickly as he could. The rushed deals meant he had to give up more of his stash and he wasn't happy about that, but I didn't really care. Did you know dullahans carry around whips made out of freaking spines? Because I do, and not just because I'm an expert who knows this stuff. I know it because one was riding along the ceiling as we closed the last deal.

And so we ran. A lot. We had a head start and I think he was having just as much trouble figuring the place out as we did. At one point it looked like he was right behind us until it turned out he was stuck in a loop. I can't say how huge a relief that was. But I still didn't feel safe until we found a cabin in the middle of a particularly large room. I swear the horseman's whip was an inch from my neck when we slammed the door.

Case 24: Entry 3

I slept on the Pollexfen couch last night. I don't exactly have a lot of experience with changeling quests, so I wasn't sure what I might need to do to make sure I was with Brennen. As it turns out, that wasn't an issue. At the end of my meeting with Dr. Wundenhex he asked me to sign a contract. I should have known that the agreement was binding in more than one sense. Or at least, I think that's how I got stuck to Brennen as if by mystical superglue. I actually have no good reason to think the contract had anything to do with the connection, but it fits and it sounds more dramatic if I pretend I'm certain.

Anyway, I had a dream last night. It wasn't a normal dream, but it also wasn't like one of the visions I've had after getting to involved with spirits. Actually, it was quite like that other one but not exactly like it, more like I was seeing a vision from a distance. I when I woke up I couldn't remember the whole of the narrative, but bits and pieces kept flashing by in my first few minutes of waking, and there was one word that stayed with me: Glimmerfoot. Which is interesting because there were glowing blue and green footprints on the floor starting at the door to Brennen's bedroom and leading out onto the street. I had just barely enough time to absorb all of that nonsense before Brennen burst blearily out of his bedroom struggling to get the pack I'd help him make the night before onto his back and mumbling about how apparently it was time to go. Oh, and I he hadn't changed out of his night clothes, which happened to include a bath robe. It was a very Arthur Dent kind of look.

We followed the footprints (because apparently following glowing footprints to wherever is a thing you do during fey quests) outside and down a manhole (because apparently all that common sense that would normally tell us to not following the glowing footprints down a dark, dank hole doesn't apply during fey quests) to a tunnel that looked less and less like a sewer the farther on we went. Usually I would be happy about sewers being less like sewers, but in this case I would have preferred it stay stinky and normal. Especially when I first heard the canine growling coming from behind me.

After about fifteen minutes of travel we became aware of two pursuers. I only heard the wolf at first, but we quickly glimpsed the more humanoid stalker. He reminded me of an actor I'd seen at a gothic rendition of A Midsummer Night's Dream. He had all the usual faerie characteristics of pointed ears, youthful (one might even say childish) beauty, and lithe, subtle strength. He also had a uniquely manic air to him. We didn't see much of either pursuer aside from a few glimpses, but we could hear the snarling, the howling, and the cackling getting louder and more distinct. We started to run, but soon we got to a fork in the tunnel. The footprints lead to the left, which was covered entirely in rocks of varying sizes. We both stopped for a moment and stared at the difficult terrain. Then we heard the howling and the cackling and we ran the other way.

As we ran, there were other noises. Rustling sounds, low murmurs, jittery laughs. The roots that grew down the cavernous walls were getting thicker and more numerous. A few bristled with thorns. But we could still hear our pursuers getting closer, and we kept running. Then Brennen tripped and it took me a second for my brain to get through to my legs. I had taken to the job to guide him. The changeling was my responsibility. When I got back to him I dared to look back at our pursuers.

They had stopped.

I looked around. I saw glittering eyes gleaming out of the darkness. I saw the thorny roots. I heard the sinister whispers. I looked again at the wolf and the mad faerie. They hadn't moved. Then I had an intuition.

I took one step back toward the fork, and as I did the wolf retreated. Brennen shouted at me, but I took another few steps. The wolf did the same. And then I was sure that we were being chased by our own shadows. It took a bit longer to convince Brennen, but soon we were headed back to the glimmering path as our shadows danced before us. I saw a few imps, goblins, and other things leering out from behind rocks and roots, but we hadn't yet ventured far enough into the underground wilderness. We were still in the safe zone.

In the end, the glimmering path led us to a strange cabin. It was a long journey there and we had to make a few difficult climbs, but none of it was too dangerous. In the middle of the living room of the cottage is a door, and the footprints stop there. I believe through that door lies the next leg of our journey, but for now it is time to rest.

Case 24: Entry 2

As a general rule, I avoid faeries. I don't bother them, they don't bother me, and if they do bother me I  check to see how dangerous they are and then either get out of the way or respond with overwhelming hostility. I was actually sort of doubtful of the existence of the fey until the Agency accidentally trounced all over a spat between two of their nobles and everyone involved in the case (including the analysts) spent the next week having spiders and similarly unpleasant things crawling out of various orifices. So when I met more faeries this afternoon than I had ever encountered before, I was less than thrilled.

Due to the whole pilgrimage thing, Brennen Pollexfen had his birthday party a day early, and the guests turned out to be a very...diverse crowd. Anyway, I think there may have been more fey well-wishers than actual guests. Of course, it was hard to tell since any respectable faerie isn’t going to show up in public looking like a faerie. But while they’re all very good at looking like humans, they’re not very good at all at looking like normal humans. They tend to be rather eccentric.

     

Mostly I just stood awkwardly in the corner and watched while trying not to make eye contact with anyone. As I said, I try to stay out of the affairs of the fey, but from everything I’ve read on the subject a changeling noble is kind of a big deal. Fey like to play around in the mortal world, so a halfblooded noble with just enough status to be taken seriously and who happens to be at home in the mortal world is kind of a major factor in their politics. Basically, if he makes it through the pilgrimage he’ll be perfectly positioned to meddle in their meddling. So all the fey who showed up were there to ingratiate themselves to the lad through gifts of varying degrees of usefulness. I had my own gift (a large silver knife which had been given a minor blessing from the Lord of the Wilds) but I didn’t really feel comfortable approaching the lad until things had settled down a bit and the crowd had thinned. Also, I wasn’t sure how much or even if he’d been told about me so I was a bit nervous about the conversation that might emerge. After a while I decided to stop being a wuss and went over to sit next to the birthday boy.

     

He didn’t seem very impressed. Not that I can blame him. I’m only a few years older than him, I’m a little on the scrawny side, and the utility belt and other practical items of clothing I tend to wear usually just make me look all the more silly. Apparently he hadn’t heard much about me except that I was on speaking terms with a big time spirit and that I’d killed a vampire. I pointed out with what he’s going to go through he needs a nerd way more than he needs a thug, but he seemed unconvinced. I would have kept going, but that was about when I noticed a familiar face staring at Brennen's drink.

There's a handful of human criminals who are clued in to the supernatural world and who tend to get hired by nasties for jobs that they themselves would find difficult. They help set up false identities, launder money, and steal items from locations that warded or otherwise protected against the spooky side. The Agency has a very relaxed policy when it comes to these criminals and has even been known to interfere with normal law enforcement because their presence actually makes it easier for them to track malevolent supernatural activity. It turns out it's easier to track a vampire's human thug than it is to track the vampire itself. Anyway, I guess this thug upgraded to assassin. And he noticed me notice. And he didn't have to take an extra second to explain why no one should eat or drink anything else. If it had just been a matter of speed I would have got him, but that's not how foot chases work. He just had to get out of my line of sight long enough for me to lose the trail.

Oh well. I found his picture in the files after I got home, so the Agency will take care of him at the next opportunity. Thieves, frauds, and money launderers they don't mind, but assassins are another matter. At least I got a little more respect when I got back. When Brennen asked what I actually had to protect him I told him a little of my expertise, I showed him a few of my tools, and I let drop that I had spent the last two nights coming up with a secret weapon. It never hurts to have an ace in the hole.