Secrets & Shadows

‘How could she do that to me?’ I thought. I couldn’t trust her any longer. I couldn’t shake the anger that welled up inside me. It was a raging inferno that could not be stopped. Any positive emotion that I once had towards her had gone up in smoke.

“Puck!” I shouted with a little more anger than I initially intended. It took me a few times calling out to him before he lazily fluttered over from his shelf in the bedroom, pulling out large plugs from his ears that looked like wax from one of my candles. “You have a life debt to me and wouldn’t dare harm me in any way, right?” I interrogated.

“Aye,” Puck said sheepishly. “Of course not, Sir. Why would you think that?”

I sighed a bit, shook my head and backed off, “I’m sorry, Puck. I shouldn’t have gone off on you like that,” I sat on my couch doing my best to bottle up what I was feeling and concentrate on the task at hand. Not the most healthy way of coping with date rape but, I’ll just have to deal with it later.

“Asphodel, belladonna, cinnamon, dittany,” I said to myself slowly. My mind began to calm so I could begin to think clearly. It seemed I finally had time to do some actual research on this Abyss Walker.

“By the way, Puck,” I began. “I’m sure everything was loud and whatnot last night, how did you get around that?” As if I didn’t already know, I just wanted to hear it from him because it’s usually good for a chuckle. Plus, since I was missing some time, perhaps he would unintentionally fill me in on what I missed.

To paraphrase the odd little Fae, he said something to the effect of, “while you were going at it like the primates on TV, I took one of your candles,” (knew it), “warmed up the stove and made the candle soft and plugged my ears with the softened wax! She was so loud and terrifying I didn’t know what else to do! Also I had to wear a blindfold. She was scary!” This was the cleaned up version. When Puck gets to tell a story from his perspective he usually tells a story like a foul mouthed, animated, four year old; stammering and talking with his whole body.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t help fend off Leanan Sidhe, Sir,” Puck added solemnly.

“It’s alright, Puck,” I said. “I know there wasn’t anything you could have done. She’s a high ranking Fae and you are...well you.”

“Oi!” Puck ejaculated. “I resemble that remark!” I laughed a little too hard at that.

“Resent, Puck,” I corrected. “You mean to say you resent that remark.”

“I know what I said,” Puck said, posing with his arms crossed.

“Gods you’re such a dork,” I muttered.

I started to think that everything up to now just seemed to be a huge mess of events. I needed to see if any of these occurrences were related somehow. Maybe try to find a pattern. I decided with all that had happened over the last few days I needed to start writing everything down. There was no way that I was going to keep everything straight in my head. I stood up and walked over to my desk and pulled out a yellow legal pad, grabbed a pen from a mug on my desk and started jotting things down.

One: there was a spirit from the Ouija board of unknown origin. Two: we have a supernatural possessive spirit in an unknown host that loves to feed on living things stealing their life and soul, for at least a full year. Three: a band manager tells me one of his people is missing and is later found dead. This possibly leads to a second of his people turning up missing. The singer of said band is also a possible magic user. Four: we have a high Fae who is hell bent on making me her lover for eternity who has enough magic to conjure a very realistic construct to physically hurt me.

I thought long and hard on this, staring at the notepad; I couldn’t make the connection. I put down the pad of paper and pen and decided on a different path to figure things out. I shoved my desk aside, along with the rug that it sat on, a few feet forward and sat on the floor next to where my desk was.

I pulled up some floorboards, that I had first removed when I moved in, and took out a few needed books: my mother’s grimoire, which has been in our family for about five hundred years according to her, and a few “Dungeons and Dragons” books, (which included a book of creatures and lists of in-game spells. I use the list of spells as it can be of some use to a sorcerer. Just a list of a spell name and what it does is all that’s needed. After that it’s just willpower and imagination to make it work). I also pulled out a crystal ball with a red oak stand on which it sits, (we will get to that shortly).

I took out the “Dungeons and Dragons” book of creatures, called a bestiary, and I tried flipping through it to see if there was anything similar to what I’m up against. It was a modern hardcover book about an inch thick. The stylized glossy cover depicted a very accurate representation of a windigo staring at the reader with its golden eyes set in a deer skull, with the game logo near the top. I know you probably think that I’m crazy for using made up monsters in a book written by nerds and for nerds. To tell the truth, the artists and writers employed by this game company who render these creatures, plus the people who describe them must be magic users in real life. There is no way any mundane person can render these creatures and monsters with such accuracy, unless they’ve seen these creatures for themselves.

I slowly flipped through the book, page by page checking descriptions and pictures. I happened across an entry of a spirit with the same demented clown face as the cloud that came from the Ouija board. The description was harmless enough, was just an extremely mischievous poltergeist that took pleasure in “accidents” happening around the haunted person(s). I read that it usually gets bored easily and that it will either find a new place or person to haunt after a few days to a week.

That surprisingly explains quite a bit. The tires blew on the band’s bus, as well as the engine malfunctions and the lighting accidents on stage. It had been a couple weeks, so that also explains why nothing else of that nature has happened recently.

That’s one mystery down. In the long run it didn’t really help in finding out what I needed to know for the task at hand.

I flipped back through the book but nothing really seemed to fit this Abyss Walker. Not surprised, if this thing is from the Myst in the far reaches of Faewild then it wouldn’t be widely known or seen.

I then remembered something Leanan Sidhe said: I had to kill it and there was no saving the host. It made me wonder if there was a ritual, spell or kind of exorcism in Mom’s book that I could perform. I put away the “Dungeons and Dragons” book and picked up the heavy ancient tome that was the family grimoire.

The book was about a thousand handwritten pages thick, and was as tall and wide and was comically huge and heavy like you would see in a cartoon. It had a faded green, hard leather cover with our family coat of arms embossed upon it. The tome’s pages were yellow with age. The hand bound spine looked as it was about to break.

I lifted it as carefully as I could and sat it down in front of me on the floor. I gently opened the fragile cover and began to thumb through its antique pages. After a few minutes of searching I found a section on exorcisms. Unfortunately it wasn’t much help though; it was mostly infernal demon possessions or angelic possessions, even a small sub chapter titled, ‘So You Woke an Elder God, Now What?’, to which the only recommendation was, ‘Pray to whatever god in which you believe. You just brought an end to the world as you know it. Good going, Nincompoop!’

Carefully I placed it on my desk, hoping to check it again in a while. Maybe I’ll find something different. It was a gargantuan book after all.

I decided it was time that I used my crystal ball to get more information. It wasn’t a perfectly clear ball like some carnival fortune teller’s. This was a solid, polished, opaque ball of rose quartz which sat upon a decorative red oak stand.

“What do you have there, Sir? I’ve never seen it before.” Puck asked as he fluttered over, suddenly interested.

“It’s my Scrynet crystal,” I explained. “I don’t like bringing it out and I don’t like using it.”

“Why not? And what does it do?” he said, cocking his head like a dog.

“The Scrynet is basically the magic user’s internet,” I said as I held the polished quartz ball. “It connects the minds of every magic user in the world who’s using it. I haven’t used it much because it’s addicting. The amount of information that can flow into one’s head is so exhilarating that it’s difficult to stop. An untrained mage can be in front of the ball for hours, days or weeks. People have died just getting information for no other than just obtaining knowledge.”

‘Afterall, knowledge is power and power corrupts,’ I thought to myself.

“However, it can be very useful in small doses.”

“Have you ever lost control and gotten addicted, Sir?” Puck asked.

“Only once for about a day,” I said. “There’s a reason I have a plethora of useless game show knowledge.”

“What’s a plethora?” Puck asked.

I cocked an eyebrow at him and thought, ‘Really? That’s the question he comes up with?’ I shook my head and ignored him and went back to preparing myself.

I set up a blanket on the floor and placed the stand and ball on it in the center and sat in front of it with my legs crossed. My heart had the familiar banging sound inside my ears. I attempted to hover my hands above the crystal but they shook nervously.

Taking a deep breath I recited, “Asphodel, belladonna, cinnamon, dittany.” This was really a bad morning. I’ve never had to repeat my coping mechanism more than once in such a short timeframe.

Waving my hands over the glassy ball, I concentrated on reaching out to all the other magic users connected to the Scrynet. At the same time I set up a shield around my mind to only filter in the information from the Scrynet that I wanted, as opposed to the potential addicting info-dump.

This also made sure that I kept my will power to shut everything down in case I was accessing too much information.

Soon the ball began to glow and my consciousness began to expand. The magical equivalent to a holographic screen and keyboard appeared before me, approximately two foot square. Each person who accesses the Scrynet see this differently. Some, like me, see it as a computer and use it like the internet. Others may see it as a large book, or a shelf of books. Some magic users, usually the much older generation, are even strong enough to have it portrayed as a full library.

Words began to form on the magical computer screen in front of me. They read, “Welcome to Scrynet. Please type in your inquiry.”

I used the hologram-like keyboard in front of me and typed, ‘Abyss Walker, the Myst’ and hit enter.

‘No results found.’ The Scrynet screen showed me.

I tried expanding my search request to what could be considered a chat room. Once I did, the Scrynet linked me to other wizards and sorcerers connected to the Scrynet at the same time as I was.

The “chat room”, for lack of a better term, was buzzing with conversation. Hundreds of magical users talking back and forth. Many of the conversations were very interesting. It wasn’t like a regular internet chat room with usernames and avatars. It was just chat bubbles, but at the same time I could see, in my mind’s eye, who was on the other side.

Puck fluttered over and sat on my knee. “What are you looking at now, Sir?” he asked.

“It’s a bunch of people talking through the Scrynet,” I explained. “They’re all talking about different demons, demigods, forgotten spells, and something about recruitment for The League of Bread Mages!?” I was taken aback. I guess I owe Grandpa a posthumous apology.

“Well,” I said. “I guess it’s time to ask about you-know-what.” I began to type if anyone had heard or knew anything about the Abyss Walker and hit send.

The entire chat room died almost immediately. It was a few moments before anyone replied back.

‘Which one?’ someone replied. I couldn’t believe what I was reading.

‘Which one?’ I replied. ‘You mean there’s more than one?’

Someone different replied in turn, ‘Of course there is. There are always more than just one of any creature.’

‘This one is attacking people in my town,’ I typed out. ‘I can’t find any information on it in any of my books. I need to know how to get rid of it. How to banish it.’

‘The Leanan Sidhe knows much. Ask her.’ a new chat bubble appeared, an old man being the person I saw in my head thanks to the Scrynet.

I replied back, ‘I have, which is how I know about the Abyss Walker. But I don’t think I can trust her. It’s a long story but she tricked me into forming some kind of bond and she’s acting strangely. I’m not sure I can trust her.’ I was putting a lot of faith into whomever I was speaking with.

‘But have you asked her to tell you everything she knows about it?’ the same man said.

I thought hard for a moment. ‘No I don’t believe I have.’ I replied.

‘Fae cannot lie,’ said someone else, an old woman. ‘Just ask and you will have your answers.’

There was a shocker. How did I not know that bit of information?

‘But be warned,’ another old wizard chimed in. ‘Fae like to tell you everything while telling you nothing. Listen to their riddles.’

“Hey, Puck?” I said.

“Aye, Boss?” Puck replied looking up at me from my knee. “What is it?”

“Can you lie to me?” I asked, following the advice given to me.

“Well, I kind of can,” he said.

“What do you mean, ‘kind of’”?

“If Fae lies at all, even to each other, it causes us great physical pain. Like, trying to scoop out your eye with a dull rusted spoon,” he added graphically.

“Hmmm,” I hummed thoughtfully. “How can you get around being blunt about telling the truth?” I asked.

“We use riddles, Sir,” he said simply. “You just have to read between the lines.”

“Read between the lines,” I said to myself. I wonder what I may have missed when speaking with Leanan Sidhe in the past. After thanking the individuals for their help the room was once again abuzz like before. I broke my concentration on the crystal ball and the connection to the Scrynet was severed. The screen and keyboard faded from existence, the glow had faded from the ball and was now just a plain, polished, shiny sphere of quartz sitting cold on a pedestal. I picked everything up and put everything away, save for the grimoire, back in the hole under my desk, replaced the floorboards and flap of carpet back carefully and pushed my desk back into place.

Just after everything was back in its place my phone rang. I groaned and just placed the phone on speaker, “Paranormal Investigations. Lance Frost speaking. How may I help you?”

A sultry voice came over the phone, “Oh my! How polite!” It was Mara.

“I hope you have some good news for me, Mara,” I said, putting my face in my hands. I wasn’t sure if I could deal with this right now. Being around sex vampires was not something I was looking forward to.

“Indeed I do, but you’re going to have to come down here to see it,” she said singsongingly.

“You’re a tease. You know that, right?” I said. I moved over to the bedroom to find a clean and decent shirt to wear over to Mara’s office.

“Teasing is my speciality. You of all people should know that.”

That I did, and all too well. Sadly as much as I would love to have reminisced on this memory, there was only pain for now as memories of last night melded with memories with Mara. I really used to like thinking back on memories of Mara and I, despite everything. But now those memories are ruined, tainted, and painful.

“Lance, are you there? Hello?” Mara asked. I apparently had been in a daze for a moment.

“Right, yeah. I’m here,” I managed to say flatly, “you want me over there now?” I asked, getting back on topic.

“Are you alright?” Mara asked. “You’re not your usual sarcastic, assholish self.”

“Yeah, I’m fine. When do you need me there?” I said changing the subject.

Mara seemed a little taken aback by my response, “Er, why don’t you come by right away, hon. It’s pretty important.”

“Alright, I’ll be over soon,” I said plainly and hung up. To tell the truth, even though I’m sure it was exciting news I really didn’t want to do much else but crawl into a ball and just give in to the overwhelming negative feelings that were beginning to show up in my brain. For once, I really didn’t feel like doing much of anything. I was used to the anxiety, but not this depressive ugly beast looming over my mind.

In the back of mind I knew what needed to be done. I knew what I had to do, and I was using all of my will to go against what my brain was telling me. So I made myself finish getting dressed. Eat what little food we had at the moment to put something in my stomach. Found my jacket and equipped myself with small items I may need were I attacked again and walked out the door with Puck following close behind.

* * *

We arrived at Prana Studios, luckily, without incident. We were greeted in our usual way by Mara’s thrall and were let in. “Go on in. Ms. Grace is expecting you,” she had said. We made our usual way down the longer-than-it-appears hallway. It seemed like a slow day as most of the doors were open along the hall. They either had the lights off or were otherwise unoccupied.

Near the end of the hall we happened across an occupied room that was left open. It appeared it was a Dominatrix BDSM scene where a legit succubus demon was doing a fake rape scene towards an “unwilling” male. When I say this was a real succubus I wasn’t just name calling some random Prana vampire; her skin was a dark blue, ram’s horns curled around where her ears would be, her legs below her knees belonged to a goat and a long spiked tail protruded from her lower back. I’m sure they sold this to their customers as just high budget makeup and effects, but this demon was seriously feeding on this human male. All I could do was just stare and feel nothing.

As I was looking off into space at the primal scene going on in front of me, I felt an arm snake around my waist and I jumped, “Gah!”

“You always were easy to sneak up on,” said Mara, smiling up at me. She kept her arm around my waist and kissed my cheek. “Enjoying the show? You would not believe how hard it was to book an actual succubus. I mean, we’re the next best thing and can always play dress up, but nothing beats authenticity.”

All I could do was just stare at the show blankly and give a vague reply, “I see.” Mara came in front of me and grabbed my shoulders firmly.

“Hey, are you alright?” she asked. It sounded like she had genuine concern in her voice.

“Yeah, sorry. I’m fine,” I shook my head and blinked a few times, “what was it you wanted to show me?”

“Follow me,” she said. She didn’t look convinced by my reply as we walked towards her office. Puck, rather than flutter about, sat on my shoulder and gave my face a gentle pat and a small patch of warmth formed on my cheek.

We got to her office, she unlocked it and let us in before following behind and promptly locked it back up.

“So what’s so important that you couldn’t tell me over the phone?” I asked in a mildly annoyed voice.

Mara smiled, “It’s about your girlfriend, Siren.” Mara bounced over to her computer and began typing.

“What about her, exactly?” I asked. “And she’s not my girlfriend,” I crossed my arms over my chest in suspicion.

“Yeah, what about her!” Puck said, chiming in.

Mara opened her mouth to say something, but as the words were about to leave her mouth we all were made very aware of a very loud scream from an ethereal voice down the hall.

“Well that was impressive for a human,” Mara said in response.

“Excuse me?” I said. “Don’t tell me that noise came from a human.”

“Oh, of course not,” Mara said. “That was the succubus you saw earlier. Seems like she’s done feeding for the camera. It’s so rare that a human leaves a succubus feeling satisfied, if you catch my meaning. That’s the only time they roar. I should probably check if he’s still alive,” Mara paused for a moment. “Nah, this is much more enjoyable.” She turned back to her computer with a huge smile on her face.

Mara typed a few more seconds before triumphantly hitting the enter key, “I’m pretty proud of this actually. Our IT team was useless in decrypting the information so I took matters into my own hands,” she said as she gestured for Puck and I to come over and pointed to the screen. “Here it is: Nina Williams. Goes by the alias, Siren,” she said in a matter of fact tone. “Class ‘C’ Vampire. Order of Bards.”

“Wait, WHAT?!” I exclaimed. “Let me see that,” I pushed my way in front of Mara’s computer and I couldn’t believe what I was reading:

Nina “Siren” Williams. Prana Tribe;

Last known location: San Francisco.

Class: C; Order: Bard

Age: 313; Birth Date: 4/28/1705;

Current Occupation: Songstress

Nina Williams, or Siren as I knew her, was a freaking sex vampire?! That would make sense and fill a lot of holes. Why she could hear and see Puck, why I was always so worn out after being near her for just about any amount of time, and not to mention why Puck and I were so entranced by her looks. I barely even thought about the bandmates being Siren’s thralls, of which only Grunt was left. Especially since their marks seemed so similar to Mara’s own thrall.

“I’m honestly kind of surprised that you didn’t figure it out sooner. Seems you have a bit of a type in women, huh?” she said in an attempt to tease me.

“Yeah gee, I wonder how the hell I missed that one? It’s not like unearthly beauty is distracting or something,” I said facetiously.

“Oh, stop,” Mara said, nudging me with her arm. “I’m only giving you a hard time.”

“So what’s this Bard Order?” I asked, pointing to the screen changing the subject. “I never heard of any vampires having this kind of hierarchy.”

“It’s an old forgotten order apparently, I never knew about it. According to what I could research, we used to be divided like guilds to use our specialities. Some were better at seduction, other politicking, or song, et cetera so we trained our fortes. There were a few different orders within our Tribe that became hierarchical: Kings Order, they belonged to our governing body; Warriors Order: obviously they were our soldiers in case we ever needed a strong arm, and the Drone Order: They really didn’t do much, honestly. (Like drones in a beehive. If that order existed today most would probably work here as actors and models since they didn’t possess any other talents other than looking pretty), and lastly the Bard Order: they specialize in the use of their voice.

“After about a millennia we saw the Bard Order was getting extremely powerful. They were able not only to feed by physical contact like the rest of us, but from the energy of a crowd. The Bard Order grew so strong they could command armies with song, music and voice,” Mara explained. “Remember the tale of the Pied Piper?”

I nodded. “Of course. Who doesn’t know it? Guy with a flute gets rid of the rat problem in a kingdom, gets none of the credit, then uses his music to take the kids away because he got butt hurt, right?”

“Right,” Mara confirmed. “Not only is it a true story, but can you imagine commanding not a few dozen children, but hundreds of fierce warriors purely with song? We, apparently, had to put a stop to it. So, the elders of that time ordered them purged.”

“They committed genocide on their own people?” I asked.

“It wasn’t something we were proud of apparently,” she said. “But mistakes were made. After we thought we wiped out that order we realized our mistake and did away with the Order Hierarchy System and learned from each other. That was back a few hundred years ago. We kept records of everything and everyone in the purged Order just in case we missed any until the invention of the internet around 1980. Whomever was in charge then decided to remove all existence of said Order since it was so unlikely that they would come back. Which is why we couldn’t see her file a few days ago until I decrypted it last night, and why I had such a hard time doing research.”

“How come you never knew any of this before?” I asked.

“It all happened before my time,” she said. “I’ve only been around since about 1820. The elders were also very good about keeping things on a need to know basis.”

“What happened between the time of the initial purge order and your elders calling off the search and destroy mission on this Bard Order? What if a member of the Bard Order showed themselves during that time?” I asked.

“They would be found, hunted and executed,” she said coldly. “Since the turn of the 20th century we changed tactics and only kept silent tabs on any we might have found. We just recently, a few decades ago, decided to turn a blind eye. The elders figured that with the modern world being what it was, there was no reasonable way someone could wield an army of musical thralls to take over the world like some comic book villain.”

“So, why erase files on all the Bard Order? Why keep them such a huge secret? And why would Siren register Ghost as a thrall if she was at risk?” I inquired.

“For starters, it wasn’t just Ghost that was added to the system. It appears, Wendy “Thorn” McGovern, and Daniel “Grunt” Thomas are also on her thrall list. Are those names familiar?” Mara asked.

“Yeah,” I replied. “Those are her bandmates, and her relationship partners.”

“My my,” she mused. “Busy little bee isn’t she?”

I rolled my eyes, “Can we move on please?” I snapped.

Mara gave me a hard side-eye glare, “Secondly, it may not have been Siren who had added Ghost and company into the database. It could have been whomever gave him, and the others, their mark,” Mara enlightened. “Either Siren or one of her thralls may have put down that “Nunya” name to keep it discreet. And as far as who would have corrupted the file,” she continued. “That very well could have been coincidence, since all of the Bard files ended up being removed from our database, with them no longer being a real threat for a number of reasons. Siren’s file could have just been part of a glitch in that it didn’t get fully deleted. It was the ’80s after all when computers were fairly new to everyone. It’s no surprise that something like this happened.”

“What about the similarity to that medallion that you showed me the other day?” I asked.

“According to my research, near the end of the Bard Order, they created a new symbol for themselves that was very similar to the King’s order, which was the one that you saw the other day,” she said. “No one knows why exactly. The executioners kind of killed first and asked questions later. The symbol was something fairly minor so it probably didn’t cross anyone’s mind. I, however, think it was because they thought themselves like kings and so they made their symbol to emulate the one already in existence.”

I turned and sat on Mara’s desk and crossed my arms. “Well, that was a technology and history lesson I didn’t know I needed today,” I said. “Everything you wanted to know about the secrets of the Prana Tribe, but were too afraid to ask.” Mara just rolled her eyes.

“You’re deflecting with humor, what’s up?” she pried.

I finally gave in, maybe it would do some good to talk about it. At least I could mostly trust Mara. “Leanan Sidhe used my Name and spellbound me last night.”

“Is that all? What’s so bad about that?” she said nonchalantly.

“She used it to consummate some weird ritual or bond against my will,” I said. “I wasn’t sure what ritual since she practically gave me a magical roofie and had her way with me,” I said. “I barely remember the night.”

“Wait,” Mara paused what she was doing, “did you say, ‘consummate’?” Mara asked, glaring at me.

“Uh, yeah. I blacked out after about an hour but Puck said it went all night,” I said embarrassingly.

“And it was scary!” Puck added.

“That bitch goes and uses you for sex just to perform some weird-ass fae ritual?!” she shouted. “Can’t your Magic Council do something about that? Isn’t that against one of your rules or something?”

I was taken aback by Mara’s temper. Seems like she was more mad about this than I was. “It is, but they only govern mortals. The Fae Courts govern the Faeries. There’s literally nothing I, or the Council, can do.”

“Maybe not you, but I could!” Mara was starting to get worked up. I could see her eyes turning pale and her skin becoming chalk. “I’d rip that bitch’s throat out!” she let out a growl from deep in her throat. She was beginning to transform into a Prana vampire’s true form, which is only slightly less terrifying than the Blood tribe’s.

I placed a hand on Mara’s shoulder, “Mara, there isn’t anything you can do either without evoking the Winter Queen’s wrath. It’s just not worth it. I feel a bit better after talking about it.”

Mara took a few deep breaths and calmed herself. Her eyes and skin returned to normal. “Fine. Just let me know if you ever decide on doing anything with that demon.”

“Demon huh?” I said. “Pretty harsh words coming from something of a demon yourself.”

“Watch it, hon,” Mara said, putting a finger on my chest. “That almost struck a nerve. Now help me see if that human in the other room is still alive.”

I sighed, “Fine, I suppose.”

We walked out of the room and headed to the occupied room. The succubus had fallen asleep on the floor in a fetal position holding her tail in her arms with a small smile on her face. Despite the fact she was a legitimate demon, she was kinda cute. The man had collapsed on the floor opposite of the succubus and looked pale and his lips blue.

“Um, should we call an ambulance or something?” I asked.

“No, he will be fine, I think.” Mara said. The other crew were in the back of the room getting coffee and snacking on fruits like nothing had happened. Mara went over and checked his pulse and breathing. “He’s alive, but he should probably get fluids.” She looked over at the loitering crew. “Hey! Why don’t one of you assholes get this man to the infirmary for an IV to rehydrate him?” A few people came over and carried him off apologizing profusely to Mara.

“Good help is so hard to find these days, right?” I nudged Mara with my elbow.

“You don’t know half of it,” she replied. “Well, you have the information you wanted and I have to find a way to send a sleeping succubus back to the void from whence it came. Besides I’m sure you have a lot to talk to your girlfriend about don’t you?”

“I told you, she’s not my girlfriend,” I said. But she was right, I did have to make a phone call, “Where’s your nearest landline phone?”

“Oh, right you can’t use cell phones. The front desk has a phone that you can use.”

She gave me a hug, wished me luck and sent me on my way. Puck and I got to the front desk and used the receptionist’s phone to dial the hotel. The phone rang half a dozen times before Grunt answered.

“Hello?” he said.

“This is Frost. Put Siren on,” I said.

“Uh, she’s sleeping right now. She has had a migraine since yesterday. Why don’t you call back late-,” he tried saying.

“Then wake her up, this is important, dammit!” I snapped at him.

“Alright alright, fine,” he said. “Asshole,” he muttered. I heard him wake up Siren and hand her the phone.

“Hello?” Siren said in a sleepy I-just-woke-up voice.

“Hey, this is Frost. I got some news for you,” I said.

“Oh?” Siren said while yawning. “What’s that?”

“Well first, that thing from the Ouija board was harmless and should have stopped haunting you by now and is in no way related to the events currently going on.”

Siren let out another yawn. “That’s good. Is that all?”

“Nope,” I said confidently. “You also have some explaining to do, ‘Nina’.”

I could not wait to hear the excuses.