Justin Gustainis - Those Who Fight Monsters Tales of Occult Detectives

Hardin was making wild claims — the girl had been careful and the physical evidence was scant. They might not find the bolt cutters, and the salt thing was pure television. And while Hardin might scrounge together the evidence and some witness testimony, she might never convince the DA’s office that this had really happened.

Teresa looked stricken, like she was trying to decide if Hardin was right, and if they had the evidence. If a jury would believe that a meek, pregnant teenager like her could even murder another person. It would be a hard sell — but Hardin was hoping this would never make it to court. She wasn’t stretching the truth about the self-defense plea. By some accounts, Teresa probably deserved a medal. But Hardin wouldn’t go that far.

In a perfect world, Hardin would be slapping cuffs on Dora Manuel, not Teresa. But until the legal world caught up with the shadow world, this would have to do.

Teresa finally spoke in a rush. “I had to do it. You know I had to do it. My mother’s been pregnant twice since Ms. Manuel moved in. They all died. I heard her talking. She knew what it was. She knew what was happening. I had to stop it.” She had both hands laced in a protective barrier over her stomach now. She wasn’t showing much yet. Just a swell she could hold in her hands.

Julia Martinal covered her mouth. Hardin couldn’t imagine which part of this shocked her more — that her daughter was pregnant, or a murderer.

Hardin imagined trying to explain this to the captain. She managed to get the werewolves pushed through and on record, but this was so much weirder. At least, not having grown up with the stories, it was. But the case was solved. On the other hand, she could just walk away. Without Teresa’s confession, they’d never be able to close the case. Hardin had a hard time thinking of Teresa as a murderer — she wasn’t like Cormac Bennett. Hardin could just walk away. But not really.

In the end, Hardin called it in and arrested Teresa. But her next call was to the DA about what kind of deal they could work out. There had to be a way to work this out within the system. Get Teresa off on probation on a minor charge. There had to be a way to drag the shadow world, kicking and screaming, into the light.

Somehow, Hardin would figure it out.

Carrie Vaughn is the bestselling author of a series of novels about a werewolf named Kitty who hosts a talk radio advice show. The seventh installment, Kitty’s House of Horrors , was released January 2010. Her young adult novel, Voices of Dragons , and fantasy novel, Discord’s Apple , will also be released in 2010. Carrie lives in Boulder, Colorado and is always working on something new. Visit her at www.carrievaughn.com

Jessi Hardin is a homicide detective with the Denver Police Department. She heads the department’s new Paranatural Unit and has (rather inadvertently) become an expert on emerging issues of law enforcement and the supernatural.

“You’re not an easy man to find, Mister Morris,” Trevor Stone said. “I’ve been looking for you for some time.”

“It’s true that I don’t advertise, in the usual sense,” Quincey Morris told him. “But people who want my services usually manage to get in touch, sooner or later — as you have, your own self.” Although there was a Southwestern twang to Morris’s speech, it was muted — the inflection of a native Texan who has spent much of his time outside the Lone Star State.

“I would really have preferred sooner,” Stone said tightly. “As it is, I’m almost … almost out of time.”

Morris looked at the man sitting on his sofa more closely. Trevor Stone appeared to be in his mid-thirties. He was blond, clean-shaven, and wearing a suit that looked custom made. There was a sheen of perspiration on the man’s thin face, although the air conditioning in Morris’s living room kept the place comfortably cool — anyone spending a summer in Austin, Texas without air conditioning is either desperately poor or incurably insane.

Morris thought the man’s sweat might be due to either illness or fear. Time to find out which. “Pardon me for asking, but are you unwell?”

Stone gave a bark of unpleasant laughter. “Oh, no, I’m fine. The picture of health, and likely to remain so for another” — he glanced at the gold Patek Philippe on his wrist — “two hours and twenty-eight minutes.”

Fear, then.

Morris kept his face expressionless as he said, “That would bring us to midnight. What happens then?”

Stone was silent for a few seconds. “You ever play Monopoly, Mister Morris?”

“When I was a kid, sure.”

“So, imagine a nightmare where you land on Community Chest, and draw the worst Monopoly card of all time — Go to Hell. Go directly to Hell. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200. ”

It was Morris’s turn for silence. He finally broke it by saying, “Tell me. All of it.”

The first part of Trevor Stone’s story was unexceptional. A software engineer by training, he had gone to work in Silicon Valley after graduation from Cal Tech. Soon, he had made enough money out of the Internet boom to start up his own dot-com company with a couple of college buddies. They all made out like bandits — until the bottom fell out in the late nineties, taking most of the dot-commers with it.

That was how, Trevor Stone said, he had found himself sitting alone in one of his company’s deserted offices that afternoon — bankrupt and broke, under threat of lawsuits from his former partners and of divorce from his wife. He was just wondering if his life insurance had a suicide clause when a strange man appeared, and changed everything.

“I never heard him come in,” Stone said to Morris. “Which was kind of weird, because the place was so quiet, I swear you could have heard a mouse fart. But suddenly, there he is, standing in my office door.

“I look at him and I say, ‘Buddy, if you’re selling something, have you ever come to the wrong fucking place.’ And he gives me this funny little smile and says something like, ‘I suppose you might consider me a salesman of a sort, Mister Stone. As to whether I am in the wrong place, why don’t we determine that later?’”

“What did he look like?” Morris asked.

“Little guy, couldn’t have been more than five foot five. Had a goatee on him, jet black. Can’t vouch for the rest of his hair, because he kept his hat on the whole time, one of those Homburg things, which I didn’t think anybody wore anymore. Nice suit, three-piece, with a bow tie — not a clip-on, but one of those that you tie yourself.”

“Did he give you a name?”

“He said it was Dunjee. What’s that — Scottish?”

“Maybe.” Morris’s voice held no inflection at all. “Could be any number of things.” After a moment he said, “So, what did this little man want with you?”

“Well, this is one of those guys who take forever to get to the point, but what it finally came down to is that he wants me to play ‘Let’s Make a Deal.’”

Morris nodded. “And what was he offering?”

“A way out. A change in my luck. An end to my problems, and a return to the kind of life I’d had before.”

“I see. And your part of the bargain involved…”

“Nothing much.” Another bitter laugh. “Just my soul.”

“Doesn’t sound like a very good deal to me,” Morris said gently.

“I thought it was just a joke , man!” Stone stood up and started pacing the room nervously. “I was only listening to the guy because I had nothing else to do, and it gave me something to think about besides slitting my wrists.”

Morris nodded again. “I assume there were … terms.”