CHAPTER ONE

Three years ago, most of the pay phones disappeared from the streets of Snowtown. Metal stumps dotted the roads here and there where the task of removal was left incomplete and forgotten, remains of the deforestation project.

A few pay phones still lingered, standing tall for the people that refused to get cell phones. Harry was one of these, which irritated his editor to no end.

Harry Wilhelm is six feet tall, a natural red-head, built like a bean pole with shoulders, and part vampire. The red hair and vampirism were both from his mother's side of the family. From his father, Harry inherited a distinctive, pointed nose and a lot of hair.

From both his parents, Harry got a distaste for all things vampiric.

This story begins on a Tuesday afternoon. Harry leaned against his usual pay phone (a short box for handicapped people, tilted to the side from a recent interaction with a speeding automobile) and listened to the phone ring. While he did so, he checked his notes.

The phone was perched in front of a dark alley, a few blocks from a pawn shop Harry frequented.

His most recent notes wre nothing but drunken doodles and a couple of unidentified phone numbers. No stories, no leads, nothing interesting (except for that number which was in someone else's handwriting and looked promisingly feminine). He closed the notebook and put it back in his jacket pocket just as the phone stopped ringing and prompted him to enter a passcode. He did.

"No new messages," said the robot on the other line. Frustrated, Harry hung up with more force than was necessary.

Harry's editor left messages at that number when there was work for him - specific events to cover or leads to follow. Harry usually preferred it when he was given free reign to write whatever he pleased, but no stories had fallen into his lap in weeks.

And Harry's rent was due, soon. He was running out of money for food. Alcohol and cigarettes do not just buy themselves. But still, Harry's editor was ignoring him.

It was looking like he'd have to do more magazine work. Harry shuddered. Or, worse, more tabloid editorials.

Harry's train of thought derailed as something in the alley fell over, the racket echoing in the enclosed space. It sounded like a trash can, but it was too dark in there to see. Harry took a hesitant step forward, steeled himself, and walked into the alley.

It was probably a stray cat, if not a homicidal and homeless drug addict. Harry walked quietly, a skill he had honed over years of spying on people for reporting purposes.

The alley was the sort that dead-ended several yards in. There was an overflowing dumpster to his left and more garbage littering the ground near the walls. The smell of refuse and rot was strong and Harry braced himself against it.

What he did not brace himself for was about one hundred and eighty pounds of dead weight hitting him square in the back. It did, and Harry was thrown forward, landing hard on his hands and knees. The unmistakable, coppery smell of blood overwhelmed him and he struggled to a sitting position.

Behind him lay a dead body.

Harry tried to take in the details and even struggled to get his notepad from his coat, forgetting it was in his jacket. He managed a pen, fumbled with its cap, and dropped it. It lay, forgotten, by his knees and Harry stared, mouth agape, at the body.

Blood was pooling around it and somewhere in the back of Harry's mind he realised this meant it hadn't been dead long. Another, deeper part concluded that this meant the body was still warm and the blood still fresh.

The metallic smell surrounded Harry and permeated his every thought and sense.

Harry had never had fresh blood. He craved it in the same way he craved cigarettes after a long day, the way he craved alcohol. His every nerve burned raw and Harry fidgetted, unable to sit still. His muscles were tense, urging him to take action, any action, so long as that action didn't involve sitting prone in an alley.

The smell was so strong, so everywhere, Harry could taste it.

He felt weak without it, now it was here, and thoughts kept surfacing that told him to go for it. If he just gave in, everything could be okay. Nothing would go wrong, nothing bad would happen, and it would taste - would feel so good.

Harry's mouth watered. His teeth itched. He could almost convince himself he wasn't looking at a dead body, that he wasn't looking at a real person.

He lurched forward, ending up on his hands and knees, and started crawling forward before he caught himself. He stopped so suddenly that he almost fell and if someone had walked in on the scene they might have thought Harry was lost in prayer.

Harry shut his eyes. He had to get out of there. The temptation would ruin him otherwise. So he stood, slowly and deliberately.

Harry opened his eyes. The body was still there. So was the smell, but it had lessened in strength. Harry walked past the body, also slowly and deliberately, then broke into a run out of the alley.

By the time Harry came back to his senses, he didn't know where he was. The streets were clean and unfamiliar. Peach trees in full bloom dotted the sidewalks at regular intervals. No one bumped into him or shouldered him out of the way as Harry meandered down the street - one or two people even paused to bid him good afternoon or ask him if he was okay. Harry felt like he had wandered out of Kansas and into Canada.

Leaning against a wall, Harry patted himself down for a cigarette and quickly found one. His hands were shaking and his nerves were shot. A thin layer of sweat had coated him, making him cold despite the warm weather and his overcoat. He wasn't shivering so much as trembling, and it took him more than a few tries to get his cigarette lit.

He closed his eyes, inhaling smoke, and tried to steady himself. Harry hadn't been this shaken up since that time he'd had to go a week without alcohol.

He'd have to go back, of course. It was stupid of him to abandon the body in the first place. A corpse was exactly what Harry needed right now. With his luck, by the time he got back, the body would be gone. Or the police would be there. Or, worst of all, another reporter would have stumbled onto it.

He was sucking on filter. Harry dropped the cigarette and snuffed it under foot. He started to walk away, but thought better of it and bent down to retrieve his litter.

A young bicyclist swerved around him while he was bent over and rang a bell angrily. "Jerkwad!" the kid shouted over his shoulder.

Couldn't be Canada, then.

Harry must have been heading south-east in his blind panic. He was almost in Keisey, one of the suburts that branched off of Snowtown.

Harry tried to avoid Keisey. Nothing ever happened there.

CHAPTER TWO

Harry started shaking again when he started off in the direction of the corpse, so he told himself he wasn't going back to the alley. He was heading back home, the alley just happened to be on the way.

The point turned out to be moot. The dead body was gone. All that remained to imply there had ever been a dead body at all was a faint brown stain soaked into the concrete. Harry knelt next to it, pretending that he was a detective and that the blood-stain might be able to tell him something.

It didn't. There wasn't even a smudge on one end or the other to suggest which way the body-snatchers had gone. Harry sighed and stood up, turning to leave.

A noise from above gave him pause. There was a fire escape some feet above the dumpster and sitting in it was a skinny kid in a green shirt and torn jeans.

"How long have you been up there?" Harry snapped.

The kid started up the fire escape. He grabbed at railings and supports above him, hauling himself toward the roof with inhuman speed and precision.

Harry ran for the dumpster, balancing himself on the edge of its opening. A moment to make sure he wasn't going to fall, then he jumped at the fire escape's ladder and pulled it down. It clattered and clanked and Harry started climbing up it.

"Come back!" Harry shouted. As he expected, the kid ignored him and continued climbing. He was nearly to the roof now, and Harry redoubled his efforts to catch up.

Six flights up and Harry reached the roof. The kid was sitting on an air duct, waiting patiently for Harry's arrival.

Harry doubled over, hands on his knees, and gulped down air. The air cut the back of his throat and he decided, for the nth time, that he needed to quit smoking. His stomach twisted in agreement.

"You okay, old man?" the kid asked. Now that they were only a few feet away from each other, Harry could tell that the kid wasn't really a kid at all. He looked maybe sixteen or seventeen, but Harry wouldn't have been surprised to find out that he was as young as twelve. The kid had long, black hair tied back into a loose pony-tail. Duct tape circled various spots on his clothes, tying the baggy attire close to his body.

Harry snarled at the accusation that he might be getting on in years. He sat down on the edge of the roof.

"I'm fine," Harry said. "How long," he paused for breath. "How long were you down there?"

"Long enough."

"You saw me there earlier?" Harry asked cautiously. "At three or so?"

"Yeah."

"Did you see the people in the car?"

"Van," the kid said dismissively. "And yeah. I know them, in fact."

Harry sat up straight. "Really!"

"Don't get too excited," the kid said. "I'm not going to tell you anything."

"Why?"

"In fact, I'm here to let you know that if you keep looking into this, there will be trouble."

Harry frowned. "I'm sorry?"

The kid tilted his head and his face fell into shadow. Sunlight reflected off the roof, highlighting his features in menacing ways. "Keep your fat nose out of other people's business," he said, enunciating carefully. "Or you will regret it."

Harry jerked back. "Who are you?"

The kid stood. "I hope I've made myself clear, Mr. Wilhelm. Have a nice day."

He turned his back on Harry, then walked to the other side of the roof. He disappeared over the ledge.

Harry stood to follow, but as he did so his stomach lurched forward and blood rushed to his head, making him dizzy. Harry fell to his knees, groaned, and passed out.

It was dark when Harry came to. His head was pounding and the tendons connecting to the base of his skull felt too tight. His entire torso felt hollow and raw, like several animals had fought their way out of him.

"Nap well?"

The voice came from above him. Harry sprang to his feet, and immediately regretted doing so. He almost toppled over, clutching his stomach and groaning. He felt dizzy again.

"Careful!" the voice belonged to a curvaceous blonde with cyan highlights in her hair. She reached out with slender hands and elegant fingers, grasping Harry's shoulder and holding him steady. The dizziness passed.

"Thanks," Harry said.

The blonde let go and stepped back. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Harry said, his gaze falling over her and taking in her vegetable-patterned pyjamas and matching slippers.

"You're staring."

Harry's attention snapped back to the woman's face (where he took in her tawny skin and large, blue eyes). "Sorry," he said. "I was," he went over his possible excuses, dismissed them all, and started over: "You're wearing your pyjamas."

"How do you know they're mine?"

"They fit too well to be your boyfriend's."

She laughed. "I don't have a boyfriend."

"Well," Harry grinned. "My name's Harry."

She held out her hand and Harry took it, shaking gently. "My name's Sea," she told him. "Good heavens!" she then exclaimed and grabbed Harry's wrist, yanking him closer and pulling up his sleeves in one swift movement. Harry yelped.

She continued: "When's the last time you ate? You're the skinniest boy I've ever seen!" Still grasping Harry's wrist, she dragged him toward the stairwell. "Come on, my apartment is just downstairs.

Walking into Sea's apartment was like walking into a tropical jungle. It was very warm and humid. Pots and vases containing plants were everywhere - hanging from the ceiling, lining the walls, and sitting on every available surface. The effect was stunning, and Harry stood there for a moment, just inside Sea's door.

Sea had let go of Harry's arm to walk to the kitchen. "Well?" she said, "Come in!"

The full effect of the heat hit Harry like he'd walked into a brick oven. He took off his hat and pulled at his collar. "Nice place," he said. "I like the décor."

"Thanks," Sea smiled. Her smile reached her eyes, crinkling the edges and making them sparkle. Her smile made her look like she was just about to start laughing. Like she could barely contain her joy.

Harry wasn't sure why people weren't nicer to each other if it meant they got to see smiles like that.

Sea disappeared out of Harry's view, rummaging through a cabinet.

"So," Harry said. "Do you make it a habit to hang out on the roof in your pyjamas?"

"Oh yes! I go up there to drink my tea. This part of town's pretty at night, it's why I wanted to live here," Sea explained, leaning over the counter. "People complain, saying there's no stars because of the light polution, you know, but they're wrong. The city's full of stars, they're in all the windows and along the streets. The sky's just reversed, that's all."

"Poetic," Harry mused.

"Oh, dang," Sea said. "I forgot my tea on the roof! I set it down when I saw you."

"Do you want me to go get it?"

"No, no," Sea trotted over to the front door. "You wait here, I'll be right back. And don't even think of sneaking off somewhere while I'm gone."

She disappeared out into the cold.

Harry pulled off his overcoat and after wasting a minute in search of a coat rack or hook and failing to find one, slung it over his left forearm and rested his hat on top of it.

The apartment was small, not much bigger than Harry's. It was cleaner, in a way. Instead of being cluttered with mess, it was cluttered with plant-life and photographs.

There were photographs everywhere in little, sombre black frams. Most of them contained a picture of Sea and someone else, but some were just a someone else. Harry was peering at a picture of an older man with greying hair and half-moon spectacles when Sea walked back in, mug in hand.

The mug was blue and patterned with stylised snowflakes.

"Sea is an odd name," Harry told her, his time spent looking at her pictures having bred familiarity.

"It's short for Chelsea," she explained. "I don't like it, and I don't like Chels."

Harry made an understanding noise.

"Harry is a boring sort of name," Sea said, walking back to the kitchen. Her hair was tied back into a single pony-tail. It was wavy, the sort of texture that you get after you've spent years tying it back into a braid or bun.

Harry picked up another photograph (this one of Sea, the older man, and a baby otter). It was a cute photograph and Harry smiled. "I'm a boring sort of person," he said.

"I don't believe that for a moment," Sea caught his eye over the counter and smirked. "I think you're very interesting."

"You wouldn't think that if you hadn't found me unconscious on your roof."

"That may be, but I did. Stop snooping and sit down."

The counter was lined with barstools, to which Sea gestured with her mug. The stools were backless and made of a polished, dark wood. The seats were a deep crimson. Harry set the photograph down as near as he could to where it was, and walked over.

The left half of all of Sea's fingernails were painted blue. They rested against the surface of her mug, which she held in both hands near her mouth.

Harry sat down. The seat was uncomfortable, but it was the sort of uncomfortable he was used to.

"How do you like your eggs?" Sea asked him. She put her mug in a microwave and hit the timer. The microwave buzzed to life and the mug spun lazily.

"Sunny side up," Harry said.

Sea's top end disappeared into a refridgerator. From inside: "Do you want juice or milk?"

"You wouldn't have anything stronger?" Harry ventured.

Sea's top half reappeared. "Nope," she told him, eggs in arms. "You're not to have any alcohol until you've got some food in you. No wonder you're in this state."

"Sorry," Harry said, though he wasn't really. "Juice, then."

"Juice it is," Sea beamed. She started cooking and the smell of raw eggs and butter filled the apartment.

"Where did you get all these plants?" Harry asked. He was trying to make conversation and the plants were so dominating that it was the first topic that came to mind.

"Oh, I pick them up here and there," Sea said to the eggs. "Most of them were given to me for whatever reason. Once people know you like something, everyone gives it to you for your birthday and Christmas."

Harry nodded. "Yeah," he said. "I got twelve blank journals one year."

"You write?" Sea turned to ask.

"Non-fiction," Harry admitted. "News articles," he clarified.

"Neat! What paper?"

Harry found a sudden interest in the pattern on Sea's counter-tops. They were tiled - black, white, purple, and robin's egg blue. "I'm freelance," he said.

"Oh," Sea said in exactly the same way everyone else said "Oh" when Harry told them he was freelance. She turned back to the eggs.

Harry stood. "Listen," he said, holding up a cigarette. "Do you mind if I step outside for a moment?"

Sea turned around and waved her spatula at him. "No!" she said, and hot grease flicked off the end of her instrument and bit at Harry's ahnd. "Sit down! None of that, either, until you're fed."

Harry was feeling like he was in deeper than he'd like. "Sorry," he mumbled and sat down, replacing his cigarette. He frowned at the tiny red spots on his hand.

"Your eggs are almost done. I made you six."

That sounded like a lot.

Sea scooped the eggs over onto a plate and set them in front of Harry. The eggs looked odd, somehow - the albumen was almost too white and the yolks were vibrant and perfect. All of the eggs had melted together. One large white with little dots of yellow in the middle.

"Don't eat too fast," Sea warned, getting Harry a knife and fork. "You don't want to get sick."

Harry had read things about the eggs you'd find in Snowtown. Tales about the chicken farms off in Keisey. He was pretty sure that if he got sick, it wasn't eating too fast that was going to do it. Still, he wasn't the sort to turn down a free meal, odd looking or no. So he dug in, eating slower than he would have if he were alone and not under the watchful eye of a blonde in vegetable pyjamas.

Sea didn't talk to him while he was eating and Harry didn't have anything to say, so his meal was quiet and uneventful. Sea watched Harry over the rim of her microwaved mug, taking careful sips ever so often.

Eggs gone and glass drained, Harry sat back and wondered if he could sneak off for a smoke now that the food was eaten.

"So, Harry," Sea said, interrupting Harry's thoughts of nicotine and carcinogens. "What were you doing on the roof?"

"Trailing a lead," Harry told her. He felt too warm and pulled at his collar. His stomach, especially, was warmer than he was comfortable with.

"What lead?"

Despite the heat, Harry felt very at peace with everything. He started to lean back before remembering that he was seated on a stool. "Just a kid that was in the alley earlier," Harry started undoing his jacket, but forgot about this halfway through. In the back of his mind he got the feeling that something wasn't quite right, and he mentally searched for the source of that feeling. It was like trying to right yourself in the depths of the ocean, though - moving too much just made it more difficult to figure out which way was up.

"What happened in the alley?" Sea asked. Her eyes were very blue, Harry realised, and he wondered if that was natural.

"I got assaulted by a corpse," Harry said and wondered why he'd told her that.

"Really?"

Harry nodded. "Someone was dumping a body and I happened to be in the way."

"Why?"

"I don't know," Harry said. "That's why I came back."

'Shut up!' the back of Harry's mind told him.

"Do you have any other leads?"

"No. I'm stuck, now."

Sea nodded and took another sip of her tea. Harry was leaning to the left and tried to right himself, but ended up just tilting further over. He fell off the barstool and failed to brace himself for the impact. He landed on the carpeted floor with a dull 'thump' and rolled over to stare at the ceiling. His right leg was tangled up in the framework of the stool and while it didn't hurt, it looked very painful.

Sea leaned over into his vision.

"What have you drugged me with?" Harry asked.

"Nothing serious. It'll be out of your system in an hour or so. I hope you're not too mad at me."

"What, mad?" Harry asked, struggling to sit up and failing. "Why would I be mad? You just drugged me is all."

"I'm glad you see it my way. We can finish talking once you regain consciousness."

"If you think I'm," Harry said. "If you," he tried again. The edges of his vision were blurring and the room looked darker than it had a moment ago. "If," he tried one last time, then laid down and closed his eyes.

"Good boy," he heard Sea from somewhere very far off.

CHAPTER THREE

When Harry came to for the second time that night there was a ringing in his left ear, but otherwise he felt fine. Even the incessant hunger that had plagued his stomach since he was nineteen had quelled.

Harry was in a strange bed. The sheets, pillow cases, and blanket were white and smelled primarily of cheap laundry detergent, but under that was the smell of hair and girl that Harry had grown to like. The sheets were tangled around his waist and one of his legs was hanging over the edge of the bed. He threw his arm across the other side of the mattress and was relieved to discover that no one was there.

The only thing worse than waking up alone is waking up next to a person you don't remember.

He stretched. His joints cracked. He pulled his leg back onto the bed and the events leading up to his involuntary nap were brought back to him with painful clarity by a sharp reminder from his right leg. He had fallen, he remembered, and twisted his leg in the process. Meanwhile, he was laying shirtless in what he assumed to be the bed of the woman who drugged him.

Harry got carefully to his feet and left the bedroom.

In one corner of the apartment, opposite the kitchen and next to the door to the bedroom, there was a couch and a coffee table. Harry's hat was on the table. Sea was on the couch, doing something with Harry's shirt. She looked up as he walked in.

"Good morning," she said.

Sea had changed and now wore a dark green tank-top and a sinfully short, black skirt.

Harry though carefully over his options and decided that caution was the better part of valor. "Can I have that back, please?" he asked, pointing at his shirt.

"Of course," Sea held it out. "You had a missing button," she explained. "It was bugging me all night, so I fixed it."

Harry pulled the shirt on, happy to be clothed again. He found his jacket folded over a barstool, and pulled that on as well. It was still too humid in the apartment for his overcoat, so he slung it over his shoulder and reached for his hat.

Sea slapped his wrist. "I reshaped it for you. It needs to dry."

"Okay," Harry said.

"Sit down."

Harry considered. He could probably force his way out of the apartment. Sea was much shorter than he was and his genetics had favoured him in the strength area. On the other hand, if he left he'd never find out why Sea had drugged him, why she had wanted to know about the body.

Plus, Harry was a little afraid of her. There was some hidden danger, here, and he didn't want to discover it first-hand by making the wrong move. So he sat down on a barstool, far away from Sea, and laid his coat over his lap.

"I wanted to continue our conversation," Sea explained, "on more even footing."

"Even footing?"

"With you not under the influence of a minor magic."

Sea was a magic-user, Harry realised. That explained everything.

Magic is a powerful thing, too powerful to be used safely by mere humans. It fries your brain when you use it, causing irreparable damage. This means that magic-users are all at least a little batty and hard to get along with - it would mean that some magic-users might think it a perfectly reasonable course of action to drug a person they just met so he would answer their questions truthfully. The magic-user wouldn't see this as any sort of breach of trust or act of aggression, because magic-users are nucking futs.

Snowtown public and private schools were prone to showing the same sort of anti-magic propaganda as anti-drug propaganda, usually back-to-back. This had about the same effect as you would expect it to, and magic use in teenagers was on a steady rise over the years. Many teenagers were prone to doing drugs and magic at the same time, usually with disasterous results.

"So, Harry," Sea said, leaning forward. Her elbows were rested on her knees, giving Harry a good view of her cleavage. "You said that, yesterday, you were assaulted by a dead body."

"Yesterday?"

"It's almost six," Sea explained. "You were down for a long time."

Harry looked around for a window and spotted one behind a cluster of climbing ivy. Sunlight filtered in and Harry realised with a sinking feeling that, without his hat, going outside in that would be suicide. Even with his hat on, morning light gave him a headache that could last for days.

"What were you doing in the alley?"

"I don't know," Harry said. "I thought I saw something."

"And then?"

"And then I was knocked over by a flying corpse," Harry snapped. "You said it yourself."

"And then?"

"And then I left."

"Why?"

Harry tried to explain that being caught next to a dead body in Snowtown is suspicious behaviour and would make any passing authority figures think he was the murderer. What came out was "Nnnn."

It felt like his tongue was glued to the top of his mouth.

"Ah!" from Sea. "That's a side-effect."

"What," Harry said. His tongue had un-glued itself and he rubbed it against the roof of his mouth briefly, like he was trying to get a taste out of his mouth.

"From the potion I slipped you last night. It should wear off in a few hours."

"What, exactly, is the side-effect." Harry asked slowly.

"You can't lie."

"I can't lie for several hours?"

"No. But don't feel obligated to answer my questions. Just, you know, don't answer if you don't want to say. We'll pretend you lied."

Harry sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. Magic-users.

"Okay," he said. "I left the alley. An hour later I came back and the body was gone."

Sea pondered this. "No evidence of who took it?"

"No."

"Or where?"

"No."

"Or why?"

"Not that I saw," Harry said, becoming impatient.

"And there were no witnesses."

"There was a witness," Harry said, exasperated. "He was the kid I was chasing when I passed out."

"Why did you pass out?"

"Nnnn," Harry said again. He blinked, confused. He had been trying to say that he didn't know, but if that was a lie ...

Sea was staring at him.

"H..." Harry started. When his mouth didn't glue itself shut, he finished: "Hunger."

"And that's it?"

"Yes. I blacked out and when I woke up you drugged me so you could ask me about my personal life."

"No, I drugged you so I could ask you about your job. If I were asking you about your personal life I'd be asking you abou tthe people you have had sex with and whether or not you have standard genetalia."

"Point taken," Harry said.

"There weren't any other witnesses?"

"Not that I saw."

"You know," Sea mused, "there's a bunch of kids that sit across from that alley every day."

Harry jumped to his feet. "Really!"

"Yeah, a gang or cult or something. They probably saw what happened."

Harry was already grabbing for his hat. "Thanks!" he blurted as he opened the door. "I owe you one!"

"I'll hold you to that!"

CHAPTER FOUR

When Harry was six, he had gone to his grandmother's house every day after school.

Tabitha, the grandmother in question, had once been a beautiful, full-blooded vampire with black hair, a stunning figure, and sparkling red eyes that were full of life and vigor. The years had bleached Tabitha's hair and stolen the spark from her eyes, leaving them filmy and dull. Her skin, while still entirely colourless, had become leathery and wrinkled, like old shoes. In Harry's young mind, however, she did not act old and so he did not think of her as old.

"You know the rules, of course," Tabitha had told him one overcast October afternoon. They were in her back yard, a yard with little grass and many trees.

The trees had already lost most of their leaves and the ground was coated in bright swatches of orange and red and yellow. Harry very much wanted to play in the leaves, to find the brown ones that crunched into powder when he stepped on them. But Tabitha insisted on his attention.

"Yes, Gramma," he said, staring at a squirrel as it ran across the fence.

"Look at me when I talk to you, boy," Tabitha raised her hand as though to hit Harry and Harry's eyes snapped back to her.

"Sorry, Gramma," he said.

"Then you know that you're not allowed to go out in the mornings."

Harry nodded.

"But do you know why?"

Harry shook his head.

"You're not human, Harry," Tabitha told him. "And you'll never be human, no matter what your parents want. You listen to me, not them, okay?"

Tabitha sat on the cold ground and motioned for Harry to join her. She continued: "Sunlight comes in three categories. You have morning light, afternoon light, and evening light. In the morning, light is at its purest, because it hasn't been diluted by smog and energy. Morning light is deadly to vampires, and very dangerous to halfbreeds. If you go out unprotected, it could kill you, Harry."

Harry swallowed.

"Do you understand?"

"Yes, Gramma."

"Good boy. Let's go do your homework."

CHAPTER FIVE

Harry groaned as he crossed the street in front of Sea's apartment complex, horns blaring around him and not helping his current condition. Light stabbed into his eyes, hitting their mark somewhere deep in his brain. His skin felt clammy and greasy and Harry couldn't tell if it was because he needed a shower or because his hat and coat weren't protecting him from the powerful, early morning light.

There was another alley directly across from the scene of the crime. It looked dark in there - the alley made a sharp left turn a few feet down. Someone was sitting in front of it.

Harry rubbed his forehead and grunted.

"Hey, man," the someone said. "What's your problem? You are ruining my vibes."

He spoke as if this was the most obvious thing in the world and Harry could only be doing it on purpose. He had bleached-blond, spiked hair and was wearing an open vest, a pair of pants, and several chain-like accessories but not much else. His lips were green.

"Sorry," Harry said. "Listen, I got a question for you."

"Woah," spiked-hair said as though a great realisation had dawned on him. "Are you, like, a vampire?"

"Nnnn," Harry tried and found his mouth glued shut again. "Sea," he said under his breath and he said it like a swear. "Yes," he said. "Do you-"

"Wow!" spiked-hair interrupted him. Harry suspected that he was on something. "I thought you guys were, like, allergic to sunlight."

"It gives me a headache. Were-"

"Is it true about the garlic?"

Harry hissed through his teeth. "Well, it doesn't make me explode or anything."

"What about bats?"

Harry sighed. "What about them?

"Can you turn into one?"

"No. I don't think even one-hundred percent, full-blooded vampires can do that."

"Too trippy, man."

Harry realised that he'd gotten side-tracked and hit his forehead with his palm. His head jolted and his headache got worse. "Listen, were you here yesterday at about three in the afternoon?"

"Oh yeah, I'm here all day. I have to keep watch."

"Do you remember it?" Harry asked, fully aware that he was talking to a drug-addict.

"Of course!" spiked-hair looked pleased with himself. "I've got an excellent memory."

"Did you see anything odd?"

"Woah," spiked-hair said suddenly, eyes wide. "Are you, like, a vampire?"

"Nevermind," Harry said and turned down the alley.

"Hey, wait! You can't - oh, hey."

Spiked-hair didn't follow him. Harry assumed the sentry had discovered something exciting and forgotten about him. Probably his own hand.

A few yards after the turn in the alley was a dead-end. Before that were a number of pup tents and sleeping bags. The alley was kept mostly clean and neat, a shock considering the rest of the city. Up against the dead end was a pile of pillows. Sitting cross-legged on the pillows was a dirty, pale man with greying black hair and no shirt. His pants were covered in stains of varoius kinds and colours, as well as rips and tears. The cuffs were tattered and his feet were bare and crusted in things Harry didn't want to think about. His lips were green.

"Come in!" the man on the pillows exclaimed. "Come in, we've been expecting you."

Harry turned to look behind him and didn't see anything blocking the exit, so he shrugged and continued into the alley.

"You're here earlier than we thought you'd be," the man stood and offered his hand. After only a moment of hesitation, Harry shook it. He then discreetly wiped his hand off on the back of his coat.

The man continued: "My name is Fiddler, and this is Artful."

Fiddler waved a hand in the direction of a brown tabby with matted, dust-covered fur laying on one of the pillows. Its legs were splayed in odd directions. Its mouth was open and its tongue lolled out the corner. Its eyelids were cracked - slits of pure white where its eyes ought to be. Harry suspected it was dead until it shook (dust and dirt and ash flying everywhere), rolled onto its stomach and sat up. Its nictitating membranes slid open, revealing amber eyes. It looked expectantly at Harry.

"Say hello to Artful," Fiddler instructed.

"Er, hello." Harry was, by now, used to dealing with crazy, homeless men. Unfortunately, his method of dealing with them usually involved leaving.

"And you are?"

"Harry," Harry said, removing his hat and clutching it in both hands. "Harry Wilhelm. I wanted to talk to someone about some events that occurred across the street yesterday afternoon."

"Of course!" Fiddler flopped down onto the pillows. Dust and dirt exploded out of them. "But first we should talk. Sit! Sit!"

Harry sat. Artful licked his chops, still staring at Harry and - was it grinning? The cat had a look about it like a Wonderland character. Harry shifted in his seat. "Were you-"

Fiddler cut him off with a wave of his hand. Artful purred loudly and suddenly, like a chainsaw starting, then stopped as Fiddler tickled under its chin. "One does not discuss business before pleasure," Fiddler smiled. "We are both gentlemen here."

Fiddler had his long hair tied back in a loose pony-tail. He was clean-shaven and had green eyes. His skin was covered in scars and bruises, not to mention patches of dried filth. He was about a head taller than Harry and that made Harry nervous.

The alley they were in was wide, but not wide enough to prevent Harry from feeling a uncomfortably claustrophobic. It was also dark, the high walls preventing most of the low-hanging sun's light from reaching them.

It took Harry a minute to realise that Fiddler was talking about drugs. "Ah," Harry said, raising his hands. "I don't do drugs."

"Nonsense!" Fiddler stood, unfolding his long limbs. He was a compact guy when sitting. Now he towered over Harry and Harry had to resist the urge to stand in response. Fiddler wasn't trying to intimidate him, Harry reassured himself. He couldn't help being a giant.

Fiddler gestured widely as he spoke, walking in a slow circle around Harry. "It's a simple procedure, anyone can do it, and safe as houses!"

Harry twisted to follow Fiddler as he walked. "I'm sure," he said. "But I still don't do drugs."

Fiddler dropped to kneel behind Harry. "If you don't join us in the fog," he said, "how can we help you?"

"You could start by answering my questions. That would be helpful."

A dozen or so people were shuffling into the alley, taking their places on cushions or by tents. All of them had green lips.

Fiddler leaned in until he and Harry were almost touching noses. The green around Fiddler's mouth was dark and splotchy, the skin itself discoloured like a bruise. A weird and unpleasant smell was coming from it, mixing with Fiddler's breath, which smelled like a combination of halitosis and mint.

Fiddler was turning out to be very intimidating after all.

Artful yowled suddenly and Harry jerked back, startled. Fiddler grinned and Harry got the impression he'd just dropped a rung in the conversation.

"Healthier than cigarettes," Fiddler reassured him. "Probably open doors for you that you didn't even know were closed. What do you have to lose?"

"Plenty," Harry snapped. He looked everywhere but at Fiddler, not comfortable enough to make eye contact.

Fiddler sighed, shaking his head. "Mr. Wilhelm. How can we trust you if you don't trust us?"

A glass contraption had appeared in Fiddler's hand and he held it up. "You want answers, Harry?" he said. "The answers lie here."

Harry realised he'd been leaning back and sat up straight. "Fine," he said.

Fiddler and his gang of drug-addled hop heads were the only known witnesses to the body dump or the body snatch. Not very reliable witnesses, true, but still all Harry had. If he wanted to find out what happened, he needed to listen to their demands.

Fiddler grinned, a different sort of smile from the one he'd had on earlier. Before his expression had been predatory - now it was gentle, friendly. Joy that someone he knew had made the right choice. He sat back, folding back up into a cross-legged position. He took the first hit, not even offering Harry the chance until he'd seen it done. Fiddler put a match to one end of the bottle and his lips to the other.

The opening of the bottle matched up to the ring of dying skin around Fiddler's mouth.

"See?" Fiddler said after a moment. "Jade fog. Safe as houses."

Harry's resolve had weakened and he took the bottle with reluctance. It looked like a blown-glass sculpture and Harry sort of remembered seeing his peers using them after school but couldn't remember the name. It was decorated with green and yellow swirls and was mostly transparent.

The alley was filled with a tense silence, everyone leaning in to watch the events unfolding at the end.

Harry wiped the lip of the thing with his sleeve, like a kid with his friend's bottle of coke. He clumsily recreated the actions Fiddler had taken and inhaled.

The flavour was not unlike menthol cigarettes, a sort of sharp mint that cut the back of his throat as it went down. There was the cool feeling of smooth glass below that. It was thicker than cigarette smoke, more solid and substantial, and gave Harry the peculiar and unique feeling that he was drowning in fog. Everything was becoming blurry and - Harry noticed with some surprise - glowing at the edges. Glowing green.

"Here, let me take that," someone said and took the thing Harry was holding. He didn't know he'd been holding something.

The green fog had encased everything. Harry was surrounded by walls, now. Not jade. Emerald.

Harry was inside an emerald.

He got up to take a look around and something snagged his pant leg. Dark red splots accented the smooth, green floor, but he felt no pain. Harry ran his hand over the ground and discovered a smaller emerald. There was a dark spot in the middle of it. Harry put it in his pocket and started walking.

"You're an idiot," someone said and Harry suspected it was himself. That seemed like the sort of thing that would happen.

He turned around and sure enough, there he was. "Years," he said. "Years of dodging drugs and ignoring peer pressure and you crack like that? Inhaling an unknown substance you got from a complete stranger. You're the stupidest man on Earth."

Harry laughed. "I know you are, but what am I?" he asked, and the other Harry vanished like dissolving sugar. Harry kept walking.

The emerald was made up of what Harry estimated to be thousands of identical corridors, each of them made up of featureless, semi-transparent, green surfaces. They were cool and smooth to the touch and at one point Harry decided he needed to know what they tasted like.

The walls tasted like glass. The ceiling, he found after some difficulty, tasted like markers smell. He didn't bother tasting the floor.

He culd have been walking for minutes, he could have been walking for hours, or he could have been walking for days. He thought a great deal about nothing and arrived at several inconsequential conclusions which were therefore forgotten almost immediately.

He arrived at a dead end and decided that now was about the time his subconscious would throw someone else at him to force him into some kind of epiphany. He was not disappointed.

Harry turned to see a teenage girl leaning against one of the semi-transparent walls. She had dyed black hair (her blonde roots were showing), a pleated, plaid miniskirt, and a tank top. Melissa looked exactly like he remembered her.

"No,' Melissa said. "Don't blow. see? It's all gone, now. You can't force it. You have to let it escape."

Her words sounded familiar.

"Like this," Melissa said and took a drag on her cigarette. Her mouth opened and she barely exhaled. The smoke rose in wisps, curling through the air and disappearing. Her hazel eyes followed the smoke and she grinned, perfectly aligned and whitened teeth showing between black-painted lips. She turned back to Harry. "You try."

Harry shook his head in disbelief. It was like watching a tape of a conversation he'd had with melissa sixteen years ago. She lifted her hand and stroked the air right about where Harry's cheek would have been if he hadn't been standing five feet away. "Good boy," she said.

Harry stepped forward. "These are disgusting," he said.

Melissa laughed. "Yeah," she looked down at the cigarette cocked between two fingers. "I don't think I'd bother with them if they weren't so taboo."

Melissa placed the cigarette to her lips, then pulled it away. She tilted her head back and, as Harry had done during the original conversation, he admired the line of her neck. Streamers of smoke floated away and Melissa raised her hand - slowly, like she didn't want to scare them off - and brushed her fingertips through an especially visible curve of smoke. The smoke shattered when she touched it, disappearing. She looked sad. Harry felt the urge to do something about that but couldn't figure out what.

Melissa turned back to him and this time looked him in the eye instead of where he should have been standing. "Do you want to learn how to blow smoke rings?"

"You little dumbass," a voice came from behind Harry and Melissa dissolved. Harry couldn't place the voice immediately - it just sounded like the voice inside his head. So he turned.

There, at least eight feet tall and still wearing that frumpy, blue and brown dress he'd last seen her in, was his grandmother.

"What are you, ashamed?" her fangs flashed when she spoke, a vampire trait that Harry had learned to hide.

"No, Gramma," Harry said. He felt like he was six again.

"If you're not ashamed, then why do you act ashamed?"

"I don't, Gramma."

Tabitha backhanded Harry so hard he was sure he'd lose a tooth. He fell to the ground and scrambled back to his knees.

"Don't you back-talk me, boy!" Tabitha said, raising her hand again as a warning. Harry said nothing.

"You put so much effort into hiding your heritage. The Laings were a proud family, a family of vampires. But you, you can't even admit to yourself where you came from. Who you are. What you are."

"I'm a Wilhelm," Harry muttered.

"What did you say, boy?"

"Nothing, Gramma."

"Didn't I tell you to look at me when I talk to you, boy?"

Harry looked up at his grandmother. His vision had gone blurry and he struggled to keep his focus on her.

"It's your father, that Christopher," she spat. "I knew it. He put wrong ideas into your heads - your mother and you both. And your brothers, I'm sure. I never liked him."

Harry didn't feel this was a fair assessment but said nothing.

"You're all a disgrace," Tabitha said. "You're a disgrace, you've forgotten everything I taught you. You forgot me."

"No!" Harry said. "Never! I never forgot you!"

He looked back to the floor, "You left us. You abandoned me. I waited for you."

When he looked up, he was alone.

CHAPTER SIX

"Somewhere, beyond the sea."

Someone was singing. Badly.

"Somewhere, waiting for me -" the someone hiccupped, cutting himself off.

Harry regained consciousness with the remains of a headache. Dull pains hung in odd places, like the headache had been a fragile thing and had broken into several pieces. His perpetual hunger was back and Harry's stomach growled low and loud, like a train approaching.

He sat up and discovered that he'd been sleeping on a wooden bench in a stone-walled holding cell. On the bench next to him sat a man best described as a large mat of black hair - his beard and hairline were inseparable and untrimmed. It was this man who had been singing - he picked it up again, a couple of lines later than where he'd left off.

The cell was dark, the only light coming from a single overhead lamp hanging outside the cell. There were other lamps, but none of them were lit.

The man next to Harry smelled like three day old garbage with an undertone of raw spinach. Harry stood and curled one hand around the bars to the cell, resting his chin and other wrist on the horizontal bar. He looked around.

There was a thin strip of floor outside the cell. It was occupied by two desks, complete with computers. Only one of the computers was on.

Harry subtly tried the door, just in case it wasn't locked. It was.

"Hey!" he shouted. "Anyone out there?"

There was no response. The scruffy gentleman behind him countered by singing louder and more off-key.

"I'm thinking I'll hang myself with my tie," Harry shouted. "Think my family will sue the station for that?"

There was a door at one end of the hall. It opened and through it came a police officer. He was shorter than Harry, but also more in shape. His uniform was clean and pressed but the clip-on tie was hanging over his shoulders. He carried a fresh cup of coffee. Steam curled up from it.

"What do you take us for?" the officer said, setting the cup down and standing in front of Harry. He leaned against the second desk. "You're not even wearing a tie."

"My shoelaces, then."

"You don't have any of those, either."

"Fine," Harry admitted. "It was a bluff. Why am I here?"

The officer grabbeed a clipboard from the desk behind him. "Well, let's see here," he said. "According to this you were brought in for drunken behaviour including but not limited to," he trailed off, scanning the clipboard. He flipped the page, smriked, and continued: "You were sobbing at a trash can."

"That's not illegal."

"You were causing more up-right citizens than yourself to worry about their safety," the cop shrugged. "So we brought you in to sleep off whatever was in your system."

"I didn't have anything to drink yesterday," Harry said. "Someone drugged me."

"You smell like whiskey," Harry's cell mate slurred. He'd shuffled up next to Harry and now was sniffing at Harry's coat-sleeve.

"You're not helping," Harry snarled.

"We thought it was a little odd," the officer said, apparently not hearing Harry. "Getting a public disturbance call at seven in the morning."

"It's seven?!" Harry shouted.

"No, it was seven when we got the call. It's eight-thirty, now."

"Christ!" Harry said. "You got to let me out of here, I have a story to follow!"

"What was that about being drugged, sir?"

"Nothing important, I'm fine now. You got to let me go."

"You sure?" the cop straightened. "Why don't you go ahead and tell me what you were up to yesterday."

Harry thought about this. If he told the cop about what happened yesterday, he was sure to notice the small detail about the dead body. Harry'd probably end up arrested himself. Not to mention, someone else could get their hands on his story, and he wasn't about to let that happen.

"Nothing," Harry grinned. "I must have had a few drinks, after all. Completely blacked out around ten in the evening."

The cop rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

"You got to let me go," Harry repeated.

The scruffy gentleman wrapped his arms around Harry's waist and buried his head into Harry's back. "Take me with you."

"Er," Harry said.

"You sure you want to go?" the cop asked. "Looks like you made a friend."

"Please, I have a job to get to."

The man started to sing again, voice and lyrics muffled by Harry's coat. Harry's back became damp due to his cell mate's breath.

"Well," the cop considered. "I guess you seem sober enough to me. But next time you decide to sob at a garbage can you ought to do it in the privacy of your own home."

He unlocked the barred door, and Harry quickly disentangled himself from his cell mate and ran out. "I will, officer!" Harry said. "Thank you!"

By the time Harry got back to the alley in which he had met Fiddler, it was deserted. All that remained was an overturned rubbish bin and a pair of rolled-up sleeping bags. Harry punched a wall and left to find a bar.

The bar that he found was the Hammer and Shark, a small, run down pub right in the middle of southern Snowtown. Its regular patrons were hardened criminals just out of jail and needing a place nearby but not too close to the police station. It happened to be pretty close to the alleys Harry had been finding himself in so often these days, so it was here that Harry went.

The bar was dimly lit. The walls were panelled wood and undecorated. A small chandelier made of deer antlers was hanging from the middle of the ceiling.

A doughy, balding man with dark tufts of hair sticking out from behind his ears was busying himself with opening the bar - wiping down tables, opening windows, and cleaning glasses. Sitting in a corner was a large, muscular man with elaborate sharks tattooed across his face and down his left arm. He looked like a bouncer but was nursing a frosty glass so Harry couldn't be sure.

When Harry took a seat at the bar, the balding man slid behind it. Harry ordered a whiskey and dropped two dollars. The bartender gave him a small glass full of ice and a little liquor, retrieved the bills, and went back to opening.

Harry would have to go home and write up what he knew. He could probably piece together a small article. Nothing that would pay his rent next month, but it could buy him dinner and a drink.

The whiskey went down harsh. As Harry suppressed a shudder, a woman walked into the bar.

She was dark skinned and her black hair was tied back in a french braid. She carried a case for a large musical instrument - probably a saxophone. She walked up to the seat next to Harry and looked at it with a raised eyebrow.

Harry's hat was sitting on it.

"Oh," he said and moved it to the bar. "Sorry, I didn't expect anyone else to be here."

"It's alright," she smiled. "I'm Karen."

"Harry," Harry said.

"You're here early, Harry."

Karen was wearing a blue halter top and a pair of brown capri pants. Her fingernails were painted purple and her lips were painted midnight green.

Harry shrugged and Karen ordered "the usual." The bartender slid her a drink that Harry recognised as jagermeister by the smell.

"Perils of the job," Harry said. "You're here early, too."

"I was up all night. I've actually been wandering around, waiting for the bars to open."

Harry nodded - he had been there before. "What kept you up? If I can ask."

"Oh, some stuff to do with a club I'm in."

Karen took a drink, her purple nails clicking against the glass. Her green lips wrapped delicately around the edge.

'Wait,' the more sensible part of Harry's brain thought. 'Green lips?'

Harry looked closer and edges of bruising were visible where the lip-stick ended. It looked like dying flesh.

"Wouldn't have anything to do with the jade fog, would it?" Harry asked.

Karen froze, just for a second. It was enough to tell Harry that he'd hit a nerve. She finished drinking and set the glass down. She didn't look at Harry.

"What are you talking about?" she asked.

"Hm?" Harry asked, donning an air of nonchalance. "Oh, nothing, I guess. I should probably get going."

He started to stand, both hands on the bar.

"No! Wait!" Karen grabbed his wrist and looked around. "Let me get you another drink."

Harry's recent encounter with an insane magic-user made him pause and consider. But Harry is not one to decline a free drink, so he sat down.

"All right," he said. "Let's talk."

Karen glared at the man with the shark tattoos as the bartender got Harry another whiskey. She lowered her voice and leaned in close. "How do you know about the fog?"

Harry swirled the whiskey around in his glass before taking a drink. He set the glass down slowly and didn't take his hand off it.

"Do you know a man named Fiddler?" Harry didn't bother lowering his voice. The bartender looked up at him, then went back to cleaning glasses.

Karen's mouth was a thin line. Her eyebrows were flat. Her dark eyes crinkled at the corners. Harry smirked and finished his whiskey.

"Come with me," Karen said. "Let's talk in private."

She dropped a folded clump of dollar bills on the bar, glared at the bartender, and left. Harry followed.

Harry pulled a cigarette from its case with his teeth.

Harry kept his cigarettes in a tin case with victorian style floral patterns embossed on it.

"Have you ever noticed," he said and paused to light the cigarette. "How having too little of something is worse than having none at all?"

"Shut up," Karen said.

"Bad day?"

"I said shut up."

Harry shrugged and followed her silently.

Before long they were approaching the park between Ripton and Ramsey, quite a ways away from Snowtown South.

A group fo familiar, green-lipped people were hanging out on the jungle gym and connected monkey bars. Sitting at the top of the slide, cat slung over his shoulders (again appearing dead for all intents and purposes), was Fiddler.

The green-lipped cult were talking and laughing - it took them a moment to notice their visitors. Karen walked right up to them, steps heavy and purposeful. Harry stopped at the edge of the park, eyes narrowed and fists clenched. He took a breath and let it out slowly, forcing himself to relax.

Harry squared his shoulders and approached Fiddler.

Karen had stopped next to the slide's ladder, glaring at Harry. Fiddler grinned when he saw the reporter and slid down. "Harry!" he said. "You came back!"

"Fiddler," Harry replied.

Karen pointed at Harry and turned her glare to Fiddler. "He was talking about the fog!"

Fiddler shrugged. "He took some."

"He what?!"

Fiddler didn't take his eyes off Harry. He reached up to tickle under Artful's chin, cocking his head just so, brow furrowing with thought. "He fit the prophesy," Fiddler explained.

Harry pinched the bridge of his nose. "A prophesy?"

"It has been told that a stranger would come to us and wander the fog. We're to follow and be led to new lands."

"How specific."

"There were more details," Fiddler let his hand drop. "But they've been lost to time."

"How long ago did you recieve this prophesy?"

"About a month ago. Artful here told me himself. He hasn't spoken to me since, though," Fiddler frowned.

Harry shook his head. "For the love of Pete," he said, mostly to himself. Then, "Look, Fiddler, I did what you asked under the pretense that you'd answer my questions."

"Yes," Fiddler said.

"Instead, I woke up in the drunk tank."

Fiddler walked forward until he and Harry were almost nose to nose. Harry had to look up to look Fiddler in the eye. "What do you want me to do about that?" Fiddler asked.

"I want you to answer my questions," Harry said. His tone was turning clipped.

Fiddler crossed his arms. "I can't do that."

"What," Harry said.

"I can't answer your question, Harry."

"Why not?"

A hint of a smile played at the corners of Fiddler's mouth. He spoke slowly, like he was explaining a complex theory to a five year old. "You want to know about an event that occurred across the street from my location at three in the afternoon yesterday?"

Harry hestitated, eyes narrowed. He relaised his nails were digging into his palms and tried to relax again. It almost worked. "Yes," he said, drawing the word out.

"I was in the alley at the time," Fiddler still wasn't quite smiling. "You've been there, you should know that I wouldn't have been able to see anything."

"But your friends," Harry's voice wavered. "They could have seen something."

"Am I my brother's keeper? Ask them if you want answers, not I."

Harry's heart pounded and his stomach twisted and his skin pricked as his adrenaline levels increased. Fiddler had led him on, tricked him into serving Fiddler's purposes, and then left him to rot.

Harry punched Fiddler. His knuckles connected with Fiddler's jaw with a loud crack. Fiddler reeled back, arms pin-wheeling for balance. He fell.

Artful slid off his shoulders and landed on the ground with a fur-muffled 'flump' but otherwise didn't move, still sleeping peacefully.

Harry took a step toward Fiddler, but if you'd asked him he wouldn't have known what he was going to do. Kick Fiddler? Pin him and keep punching?

Four of the cult-members grabbed Harry and pulled him back. Harry stumbled, but kept his feet.

"Relax, guys!" Harry said. "I wasn't going to hurt him!"

Karen ran to Fiddler's side. "Fiddler, are you okay?"

"Yeah," Fiddler said, massaging his jaw. "I'm fine, I think. Hell of a right hook you've got, Harold."

"Don't call me that."

Fiddler got to his feet, leaving Artful in the grass.

Spiked-hair, the guardian of the alley, was clinging to Harry's left arm. "Hey, Fiddler," he said. "This guy's a vampire."

"Am not," Harry protested.

"Yeah," spiked-hair said. "He told me, before he broke into the alley."

"I was lying," Harry countered, struggling against the cult members restraining him. "Let me go, I have work to do."

Fiddler leaned in close to Harry, peering at his face. Harry could smell the amount of time Fiddler had gone without a shower, as well as the minty scent of the fog and the decaying smell of Fiddler's lips. "Huh," Fiddler said and Harry winced away from his breath. "Would you look at that. Harry, you've been keeping secrets."

"I said let me go," Harry repeated. He pulled against his green-lipped assailants' grips but they just held tighter.

"Karen?" Fiddler said. "Get the rope."

CHAPTER SEVEN

"Vampires," fiddler said, "are very peculiar animals."

"Not a vampire," Harry muttered. He was tied up and leaning against an opaque wall jutting out from the jungle gym.

"All vampires, as part of their feeding process," Fiddler grinned at Harry, as though sharing in some kind of dark, mischievous secret. "Secrete a kind of anasthetic. But they secrete different kinds."

"I really don't care."

"You will, I'm certain. You see, full vampires secrete a contagion with their venom. There is a chance it'll turn the victim into a vampire."

"I'll keep that in mind if I ever find a bloodsucker," Harry said. He tested his bonds, as he had done just after they'd tied him up and every few minutes after. They were still holding fast.

Fiddler ignored him. "Now, vampires with diluted blood - half-vampires, you know. They secrete a different toxin entirely. One without the contagion."

"I still don't care."

Fiddler kneeled next to Harry. Harry tried headbutting him but missed. Fiddler laughed.

"The toxin is a very powerful drug, Harry," he said. "Naturally, taking it with the contagion involved is very dangerous. In some cases it's fatal."

"How sad."

"But if I were to get the venom from a half-bred bloodsucker like yourself," Fiddler said, toying with Harry's red hair.

Full-blooded vampires all had black hair.

A pair of strong hands grabbed at Harry's forehead and pulled back. Fiddler's thumb wormed its way between Harry's lips, then between his teeth and yanked, forcing Harry's mouth open. Fiddler's other hand was holding some kind of glass vial - he stuck it with Harry's left canine tooth and pushed up while pulling out. A curious sensation overcame Harry. He relaxed and bit harder against the vial. It felt like he was bleeding from a wound, but with no pain.

"Do you have any idea what the street value of this is?" Fiddler said, removing the vial. It had some kind of rubber top, like you see in the context of venom collecting, or the vials they stick syringes into. Harry ran his tongue over his tooth - it felt raw and tasted like the skin on a slice of ham.

"God, that's a lot," Fiddler said. He held the vial up to the light. "When's the last time you fed? Never? Ah, well, more for me."

He readied another vial and the whole process started over. Harry tried biting Fiddler's hand but with the vial in the way, this accomplished nothing.

"The high on vampire's milk is like none you've ever experienced," Fiddler said. "High quality stuff, this. And rare."

The second vial gone, Harry spat, trying to get the taste of Fiddler's thumb out of his mouth. There was a lingering aftertaste of rubber.

Harry had never realised that being part-vampire meant he could get jumped in the street and milked like a viper. Killed by vampire hunters, yes. Harvested by drug addicts, no.

Fiddler turned away and put the vials in a metal lunch-box. "Goodnight, Harry," he said.

Harry's nose and mouth were covered by a damp cloth. He thrashed, but with his arms and legs tied, he couldn't get away from it.

The world went dark.

This time Harry regained sconsiousness in a dumpster. He felt drained, like he was physically empty. He wanted to go back to sleep and stay there for several days, maybe even a few weeks. Instead he sat up, lifting the lid on the dumpster and seeking fresher air.

His sense of smell was all but gone, which meant that he'd been there for a while. When Harry tried to climb out, his hand hit something unstable and he slid further down into the trash heap.

The something unstable, Harry saw, was a dead body. The same dead body he'd spent the past day and a half looking for.

Harry leapt out of the dumpster like he thought the body was going to attack him. He wasn't afraid of it, he told himself. It was just such a shock to run into it there.

"Okay," Harry said. His heart was pounding. "You need to calm down. This is what you wanted, right? So don't waste it."

"First," Harry replied, "you should stop talking to yourself. Then you should get the details."

Harry pulled out his notepad and pen. Then he started writing down the details.

The deceased had been between twenty and twenty-five years of age. He had black hair - no, look at the eyebrows, his hair was dyed black. He also wore more make-up than your standard young adult male, mostly eyeliner. He was the sort of pale you only became when you've restricted yourself to nocturnal activity.

Harry grabbed the body by the back of its shirt collar and pulled. The body rose to the top of the pile of trash and Harry continued, prodding the body for more details when he needed to.

Black, button-up shirt. Pressed slacks. No wallet or ID. Silver skull cufflinks. A novelty upside-down cross necklace. Harry swallowed his indignation at this and continued.

He had fangs. Harry looked closer. These fangs had paid for some dentist's new high-definition television. Possibly the dentist's car depending on how much other work the deceased had had done.

Harry bit down on his notepad and pen, then grabbed the corpse under both arms and pulled it out of the dumpster. He and it both fell unceremoniously to the concrete ground.

There was a hole in the back of the body's skull. It looked like it had been inflicted post-mortem, judging from the lack of blood. The deceased had likely died from a stab wound in the back. Harry wasn't an expert on these things, but the slice along the poor guy's spine was probably fatal. The wound looked ritualised.

"Hey, Mosquito!"

Harry turned, tripped over his right foot, and fell with a crash against the dumpster. The green-shirted kid from earlier was leaning against the alley entrance.

"Get it?" he continued. "Because you're a bloodsucker and you've got that ridiculous nose."

Harry stood and dusted himself off. "If you have to explain the joke," he said, "it's not funny. Is there something I can help you with?"

"Not really," the kid shrugged. "Listen, you're in some trouble. You should probably know about it."

"Trouble?"

"Yeah, you've brought yourself to the attention of some pretty dangerous people. They'll probably kill you and dump your body somewhere."

"What? Why?"

The kid examined his fingernails. "They need a vampire, you know. You might work out for them, but you won't survive the process. Like this guy," the kid nodded at the dead body. "That guy didn't work out. Or I suppose you wouldn't be in this mess."

"Who are you talking about? Who needs a vampire?"

The kid grinned. "Naw, you'll find out soon enough. I've told you too much already."

Harry shook his head. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because, Skeeter," the kid said. "I like seeing you all riled up. You'll try to stop the inevitable, running around like an ant when the anthill catches fire. But you can't. You're too small and insignificant, like the ant, you see."

"Yes," Harry said. "I got that."

"Good. Listen, Skeeter, I got to run. You go ahead and keep doing what you're doing, it's too late now to stop. I guess I'll be seeing you later."

The kid turned heel and left. Harry ran out of the alley but by then the kid and all traces of him were gone. Harry returned to the dead body.

CHAPTER EIGHT

There were people that wantedn Harry Wilhelm dead. This was not new to him - he is not a popular man, and his unpopularity (usually among people he's written articles about for some quick cash) can lead him to some interesting and very dangerous places. Not to mention there had been times when Harry's good natured interest in women had led him to first get drugged, then jumped by a gang of drugged-up cultists, and these are just examples from the past day.

No, Harry had a plan in dire times such as these, and it didn't vary too much from his usual plan for every day occurances.

The plan was this: Survive.

A plan simple enough to remember on even the drunkest of nights. Right now, hanging out in front of a dead body in the last place the person who had told him he was a dead man had seen him was not conducive to Harry's survival. So he put the body back where he found it and started walking.

Harry's options were few. He could go home, but didn't particularly want to be alone after his newest death-threat. He could go to a bar (and boy did he ever want a drink) but if there is one thing that encourages you to be sober, it's this. Or, he could go to a friend's house.

Harry doesn't have very many friends. One could say that Harry doesn't have any friends. So when Harry tried to think of the sort of places he could just drop by unannounced and beg to stay for a while, until whoever it was that wanted him dead calmed down, the list got back to him blank.

'Well,' he thought. 'That Sea chick seemed to like me.'

Another five minutes of walking and the list still turned up blank. After ten minutes, Harry found himself in front of Sea's apartment and couldn't think of a compelling reason to leave. Fifteen minutes in and Sea was outside, thrilled to see him, and dragging him upstairs.

"So!" Sea said, ushering Harry again into her plant-infested jungle hideout. "What happened? Did you talk to the gang?"

"Gang?" Harry asked as he removed his coat and hat. "Oh, the addicts. Yeah, I talked to them."

"And?"

"They helped me find the body," Harry told her and it wasn't technically a lie. "You remember when I was here before?" he said, sitting down and changing the subject.

"Do you want anything?" Sea was in the kitchen, busying herself with cupboards.

"No," Harry said, then reconsidered. "Not unless it's something with a very high proof."

"Of course I remember when you were here earlier."

"There was a kid I was after before I passed out."

"Yeah?"

Harry leaned back, yawned, and continued. "I saw him again. He told me I'm a dead man."

"Vampires aren't really undead," Sea told him, walking back out to the living area. She was carrying a tray. There were matching cups on it.

"I know that," Harry snapped. "Wait, how did you - what makes you think - I'm not a vampire."

"I'm not blind," Sea said. She set the tray down and poured something from a bottle into both cups. She peered at Harry as she handed him a glass, "Huh. Your fangs are smaller, now. Did you feed?"

Harry covered his mouth with his hand and narrowed his eyes at Sea.

Vampires have a pair of venom glands just above the roof of their mouth. The glands fill with venom over time, and when the glands are full they press against the vampire's canines. This gives the fangs the illusion of being larger than they really are.

When the vampire feeds, the glands empty and the canines appear smaller.

"No. What is this?"

"Type A. I went out and got some earlier. I thought you might appreciate it."

Type A was a vampire drink - a sort of whiskey with blood mixed in. Harry stared at it and reconsidered his plan of staying with Sea until this whole thing blew over. Maybe he'd be better off on the run after all.

Harry tossed back the glass, finishing it in one go. Sea poured him another.

"He didn't mean that I was literally dead, as in right now," Harry explained. He drained the second glass and Sea poured him a third. "He meant that there are people that want me dead, as in right now."

"Oh," Sea said. "Hm."

"It would be helpful if I knew who they were," Harry said, more to himself than to Sea.

Sea clapped her hands, excited. "Let's try and figure it out!" she said. "I love a good mystery."

"This isn't a dime-store mystery novel," Harry said. "My life is on the line, here."

"You're just too close to see it. What are the clues?"

Harry thought, taking another drink. This time he poured the next himself. Sea hadn't touched her glass. This caused him to hesitate, but didn't worry him enough to waste alcohol. "I don't think I have any. There's the kid that warned me - he's involved somehow. He knows more than he's telling. Oh!"

"What?"

"The dead body, the one I was looking into. The kid said they killed him."

"Exciting! How?"

Harry pulled out his notebook and hastily drew the outline of a person. He drew another line down the middle, two more lines crossing that one, and scribbled "Back" with an arrow pointing at the body. He showed it to Sea, "Like that."

"Hmmm," Sea said. "May I?"

"Go ahead."

Sea tore the page out of the notebook and peered at it. "I've seen this before. In a book."

"Ah yeah," Harry said. "A book. That narrows it down."

"No, it was," sea's sentence hung in the air. She bit her lip. "I don't remember. But I can find it again."

"Really?"

"Oh yes, the options are going to be very slim. Ritualistic killings don't exactly get detailed in the farmer's almanac, you know."

"Right," Harry said, feeling foolish. "Of course not. Do you have it here?"

"No, I'd have to go to the library. Will you be okay here on your own?"

Harry looked around. "These aren't attack-plants, are they?"

"Nnnn," Sea said. "No."

"Then I'll be fine. I've stayed home alone before."

Sea stood up. "All right, I'll be back as soon as I find it. Raid the fridge if you want, mi casa es su casa."

"Gracias," Harry said, standing to see Sea to the door. "Good luck."

"You too," Sea said, then left. The door lock clicked behind her.

Harry sat on the couch and poured himself another drink. 'Attack plants,' he thought. 'Unlikely.'

An hour later, Harry was drinking straight from the bottle. Half an hour ago he'd drained Sea's glass, as it had been sitting there looking forlorn and abandoned. He was feeling better about this whole thing - sure, he'd been drugged, drugged again, betrayed, abandoned, abducted, milked, threatened, and thrown away. That could happen to anybody. And he was still alive, that's what counted.

There was a knock at the door. Harry tried to peek through the curtains but the ivy blocked his view. Presumably the visitor couldn't know Harry was in there, either. He decided not to answer the door. Not his house, after all.

The visitor knocked again, harder this time. Harry wondered if it was important and took another swig of Type A.

Now they were banging on the door. Harry wondered if Sea had forgotten her keys or something - maybe she was locked outside.

They tried the doorknob subtly, then forcefully. Harry decided it wasn't Sea but instead was an insistent door-to-door salesman. You had to admire his determination. Harry rolled over to try and get a nap in, but rolled the wrong way and fell off the couch with a thump. His bottle fell with him, but was empty enough that it didn't spill. This was fortuitous, Harry thought, so he took another drink in celebration.

Then the window imploded. Glass shards rained down on Harry as he covered his head with his arm. Torn and shredded ivy littered the floor and was strewn over the sofa. The smell of fire and gunpowder filled the room.

That was a very insistent door-to-door salesman.

Harry got to his feet as quickly as he could, which wasn't all that quickly. He stumbled toward the kitchen - away from the window and, coincidentally, toward more alcohol. He turned when he felt he was far enough away from any danger and observed the now broken window.

The climbing ivy was well and truly dead. That was very sad. Sea would be heartbroken when she got home. And there was glass everywhere. Maybe he could clean that up, give Sea less work to do.

There was no one standing in front of the window. From here, Harry could see the other side of the locked door - there was no one there, either. Harry was alone, if you discounted the plants.

'Why would someone break the window and then run away?' part of Harry thought. 'They were so eager to get in, before.'

The other part was thinking, 'Where does Sea keep her liquor?'

He started off looking in the cupboard next to the oven and worked his way around the kitchen. Eventually he found a second bottle of Type A and grabbed it.

Had that fern been there before?

In the middle of the apartment, between Harry and the door, was a very large potted fern. It was outgrowing its container, lush leaves overflowing and sprawled over the carpet.

That was odd, but not odd enough for Harry to care. He walked across the apartment to see how much glass there was to clean up. Halfway there, something caught him around the ankle and Harry tripped, falling onto the glass coffee table and dropping his brand new, unopened bottle of whiskey.

The table survived the impact. Harry, too, survived with very minor injuries, though he'd cracked himself good on the jaw and was sure it'd be hurting in a few hours. Harry turned to see what had tripped him.

The fern was definitely bigger, now. The tendrils were growing a good six or seven feet away from the plant and, as Harry watched, it continued growing. Harry was pretty sure plants weren't supposed to grow visibly.

In addition, it seemed the tendrils were curving toward Harry - growing in his direction. This was the most ominous plant Harry had ever met, and he decided then and there that he needed to leave. But first he had to get his bottle of whiskey. Where had it rolled to?

Harry ducked under the coffee table, checked under the couch, got glass shard embedded in both his palms and, at a loss, stood up to think about this new conundrum.

"Oh. There it is," Harry said. The bottle of whiskey was much farther away than he'd figured it could be - over near the fern. In fact, it seemed the fern had grown over the whiskey. Several of the fern's tendrils had grown around the neck of the bottle, and a couple more around the body.

Then the fern lifted the bottle to about shoulder height and waggled it at Harry. The plant was taunting him with alcohol.

That was definitely unusual. Not the sort of thing you'd see in an every-day occurence. Harry rubbed his chin and thought about this.

While Harry thought, the plant made its move. All the while, tendrils had been growing and seeking, and now they wrapped around Harry's ankles and tugged. Harry fell once more against the coffee table and this time it did not survive. The glass shattered and the metal frame twisted and bent, caving in where Harry had landed. Harry could feel a few new cuts on his face and back, but was otherwise fine. Except that he was now being dragged toward a planty doom and wouldn't that be embarrassing to have printed in his obituary?

More tendrils wrapped around him, grabbing hold of his torso and limbs. One very thick tentacle wrapped around Harry's neck and Harry decided it was high time he took action.

Pulling at the tendrils did nothing - as soon as Harry got one vine off of him, three more were ready to take its place. Harry thrashed, hoping he might tire the plant out or survive long enough that whatever evil hoodoo was on it might wear off, but that quickly became less of an option as the world was blocked out by green leaves and terracotta.

'It doesn't even have the decency to be a man-eating plant,' Harry thought glumly. That would have made a better story, now it was just kind of pitiful. "Starving reporter suffocated by giant fern" - that would never make the front page.

After some struggle, Harry managed to get one of his matches out of his pants pocket. Warrior brand strike-anywheres he'd found in the last shirt he'd bought.

Harry's coordination was too shot from all the whiskey to light it with his thumb and his attempts to do so only resulted in a splinter under his nail. He tried lighting it on the plant, but that, too, got him no-where. Finally, he tried lighting it on his teeth.

Three tries and the match burst into flames, then threatened to go out. Harry tilted the match, feeding matchstick to fire. It caught.

Ferns are not dry plants and Harry knew that trying to set the fern on fire with just one match was going to be a waste of time. The fern, however, didn't know this - a primal instict of 'fire bad!' shuddered through the plant and it reared back, dumping Harry to the floor.

Harry rolled to his knees, laughing gleefully, and held the match out in front of himself. The plant flailed and thrashed. It lost its grip on the bottle of Type A (perhaps intentionally) and the bottle flew through the air and shattered against the far wall. Harry stopped laughing.

"That was uncalled for," Harry said. He retrieved his hat and coat from the arm of the couch, where he'd been using them as a pillow. "I can tell when I'm not welcome," he quipped, and left.

CHAPTER NINE

A lesser man would run away. A lesser man would give up. A lesser man would search for a story, any story that would mean he didn't have to write about the dead body and the people trying to kill him. He'd lay low and let it all blow over.

Harry jabbed the numbers on the pay phone and waited impatiently for his answering service to pick up. He tapped his foot and twisted the phone cord between two fingers.

A robot answered and prompted Harry to enter his passcode. He did.

"No new messages," the robot chirped.

Harry growled and slammed the reciever down, then picked it up and slammed it down again. No new messages meant his editor still hadn't thrown any jobs his way, which meant he was stuck with the story he'd found.

Harry fished three more coins from his pocket and fed them to the phone.

"Snowtown City Police," a bored, feminine voice said. "What do you need?"

"I found a corpse in a dumpster," Harry said.

"Thank you for the report, sir. Where was the body found?"

"On the corner of Eighth and Grimes," Harry said, fishing for a cigarette.

"We'll take care of that, sir. Please stay on the line for questioning."

Harry hung up.

Snowtown police were notoriously overworked and underpaid. They often had to branch out into the other cities (Ripton, Ramsey, Wilmington, Shelton, and Keisey) that made up the Snowtown county. Crime rates were on a rise with no end that anyone could see, and with the cops so busy some crimes went weeks without anyone looking into them. The city was a mess.

So Harry's dead friend was, in all likelihood, going to rot in the dumpster a while longer.

Harry rested his head against the pay phone and smoked.

The sun was setting and the streets were crowded. Pedestrians on their way home from work side-stepped Harry and his phone. Harry thought.

There was still enough alcohol in Harry's system to make his thoughts fuzzy, but by now he was well aware of the facts. They did not come easily, but they came.

All Harry had was a dead body and a few suspects. Not enough to be print-worthy.

Meanwhile, he still had bills to pay and food to buy. Harry couldn't afford to be the lesser man.

A grinding sound behind him caught Harry's attention. He turned to look, squinted, furrowed his brow, and took a step forward.

The building behind him was made of red brick, much like most of the buildings in thisn area. These brings in particular were moving, causing the offending noise. Harry approached the building. Carefully, like he didn't want to attract its attention.

The bricks were sliding in and out and as Harry walked up to them, one of the bricks fell to the ground at his feet. Harry picked it up.

It was a dingy red and pockmarked with holes. Some of the red rubbed off on Harry's fingers. It looked like a normal brick.

Another brick fell and Harry began to doubt the stability of the wall. The bricks stopped moving abruptly, and Harry took a step back.

The bricks all jutted outward at once and the wall tilted above Harry. For a moment, Harry couldn't decide which way to dodge and stood there while the bricks because to fall around him. He dove backward just as the wall fell.

Harry tripped over his own shoes and landed in the gutter, still clutching the first brick. He scrambled to his feet, slipping once and banging his already aching knee on the sidewalk.

A pile of bricks lay in front of him. The hole in the wall they left behind opened into a storage room, filled with boxes and crates. People continued walking by Harry, no one taking notice of the odd event.

Harry looked around and spotted someone watching him. A person in a dark grey hoodie across the street. When they realised Harry'd seen them they bolted, running down the street toward Ramsey.

They'd already gone too far for Harry to chase them down. Traffic at the moment was a nightmare and was an effective barrier for keeping Harry from crossing the street.

Harry started walking, headed for the center of the city. Sea had gone to the library for answers. It was answers Harry needed, so he would go to the library, too. He didn't know where the library was, but it had to be around here somewhere.

The middle of the city is referred to by most people as Downtown Snowtown, although it is not 'down' by any stretch of the imagination. The main streets are skinny and crowded with pedestrian traffic and street sellers. The side streets are skinnier and deserted, frequented only by people with shady business to do and the people to do that business with. Harry had found himself on one of these side streets.

Downtown Snowtown is like a maze, and Harry hadn't been paying attention to where he was going. He stopped to get his bearings but couldn't find any street signs.

"Welcome, man," a tall figure emerged from the shadows of an alley and grinned at Harry. He had a red, trilby style hat and a grey tailcoat with blood-red lapels and buttons. "Need anything?"

He had dark red hair and deeply tanned skin. His right eye was purple, like a lilac. The other was brown. He was covered in silver jewellery, all very detailed and ornate.

"No," Harry said, and resumed walking.

Tailcoat followed him, jewellery jingling. "You sure? You don't even know what I'm selling."

"I really don't have time for this."

Tailcoat grabbed Harry's shoulder and turned him around. "Listen," he said. "I can sense things."

"I'm sure you can."

"I've got a knack for it," tailcoat grinned and his teeth were yellow and crooked and sharp looking. "And you are in need of help. I can tell."

"I'm in need of solitude," Harry said.

"Fair enough," tailcoat shrugged and his necklaces rattled. It sounded like the warning rattle of a snake. "I can tell that you're a man in need of directions."

"You don't need a knack to tell when a person's lost."

"No, but you do need a knack to know some other things. You're in a business that doesn't pay well - by how much work you do, am I right? You're under constant stress and right now your life is in danger. You need to find this place you're looking for because you need to save yourself."

Tailcoat's method of speech was almost musical, rising and falling in tone at even intervals. It was hypnotising and Harry found it difficult to focus on tailcoat's actual words. He shook his head to clear it, and scoffed.

"Mm," Harry said. "Vague statements. From what I'm guessing is a fortune teller. You've got me convinced. Can I go now?"

"At least let me give you some directions. The library is that way," he said with a grand gesture that caused the multitude of rings on his fingers to click together. "Just keep going the way you're going and when you reach the crossroads, go right."

Harry thought about this. "Thanks," he said, finally.

Tailcoat held his hand out in an offer to shake. His other hand touched the brim of his hat, tilting it up a fraction. "Not a problem, my man. And if you ever need anything else you come right back to me. The name's Drift."

Harry hesitated, but took Drift's hand and shook it firmly. As he pulled his hand away, something caught his finger and pain jolted up his arm. Harry stuck his finger in his mouth and a familiar, coppery taste filled it.

"Sorry," Drift said, holding up his hand. "Happens from time to time. They're a bit sharp."

Harry's blood was staining the bottom of a silver ring done up like a sparrow skull on both sides.

"Right," Harry said, brow furrowed. "Okay," he muttered, and left.

The directions were true and did take Harry to the Snowtown South Public Library And Petting Zoo. The building was old, converted into the local library from a large church after the new church was built a few blocks down. It had caused quite the public stir and Harry had been lucky enough to be the only reporter to get the full story. He'd sold it to one of the bigger newspapers, then an architecture magazine, with a little editing.

The library was made up of clay bricks, dredged out of the nearby lake in Keisey. It still had the spire that usually indicates a place of worship. Leading up to the front doors was a wide stairway - it was up this that Harry ran, ready to find a familiar face.

The interior of the library still had the feel of a holy place. A place to worship literature, Harry supposed. The pews had been replaced with bookshelves. Spiral staircases led to a darkened second story. From the entryway, Harry could see more bookcases up there, but fewer people.

He stepped further into the library. The silence was oppressive and Harry was terrified that he would interrupt it somehow. His footsteps sounded too loud and Harry winced with each one.

Somewhere in the back, Harry could hear a goat bleating. The petting zoo was located behind the library - if one were to stop and concentrate, one might catch the faint smell of hay under the stronger scent of dust and paper.

Harry couldn't find Sea in any of the first-floor aisles. Tentatively, he started up the nearest staircase.

Harry's leg ached by the time he reached the top.

The lights were off, implying the area was off-limits to patrons. There weren't any signs or ropes telling him to go back downstairs, however, so on the second floor Harry stayed.

The smell of dust was stronger up there, too. Harry ducked into one of the aisles.

The second story was set up with a huge hole in the middle, from which you could see down into the first floor. The bookshelves were perpendicular to the railing, creating narrow aisles about one shelf long each. There were many places that Harry couldn't see and in which Sea could be tucked away, but he suspected he was alone up there.

He pulled a random book from the shelf and wiped a layer of dust off the cover with his coat sleve. He frowned at the title, angling the book so the cover could catch more light. A History of Japanese Demons.

The next book he grabbed turned out to be Loa and You, A Cautionary Tale. He put them both back.

He was in the right section, but he had no idea where to begin. Harry and the occult didn't get along - some times more literally than others. He tried the next aisle and grabbed another book at random. A Beginner's Guide to Malicious Spirits. The word 'beginner' encouraged him and he kept it. The next book was The Amature's Guide to Starting a Cult.

The third was Shrine Upkeep & Maintenance. Less helpful. Harry put it back. He turned to head downstairs, where all the light was, and was stopped by a man standing behind him. He was wearing a dark suit, was balding, and had a small, bottlebrush moustache obscuring his upper lip.

"Sorry," the man said.

"Not at all," Harry replied.

A centipede crawled out of the man's shirt collar and started up his neck. He didn't seem to notice, not even when the insect made its way over the man's face and began eating his nostril.

"Are you all right?" the man asked Harry.

Harry had been about to ask him that. "I'm fine," he said as another centipede crawled over the man's ear and nestled in what little hair he had. A third crawled out of his tear-duct and began eating his eyelid. Harry stepped backwards, inched around the man, and ran down the stairs (injured leg be damned).

The first floor crunched when Harry stepped on it and he looked down to find three dead cockroaches and half of a millipede. The rest of the millipede was stuck to his shoe. He shuddered, leaning against the stairway railing for balance, then ran out of the library. Behind him he heard a woman shouting "Sir," but wasn't keen on stopping to find out what she wanted.

He didn't stop when he got outside. He staggered down the street and away from the library.

Several blocks away, a chill ran over Harry from his feet to his skull, mostly travelling via spine. A wave of nausea hit him and he dropped to his knees by the road and heaved into the gutter. Nothing came of it and his stomach soon calmed down. He lay by the road, too tired to stand.

"Harry?"

Harry propped himself up on his elbows. Frank, the pawn broker, was staring at him. "Hey, Frank," Harry said.

Frank was tall, maybe an inch taller than Harry. He had the look of a man who used to be in shape, but had let himself go in recent years. His hair was short, fluffy, and black.

"What're you doing in the gutter?"

"What does anyone do in a gutter?"

Frank gave Harry a hand to his feet and Harry dusted himself off. Frank shook his head, "Here, come on. I'll walk you home. Wouldn't do to have my worst customer hit by a parking car."

"You're a saint, Frank."

Harry was still clutching the library books, his knuckles gone white around them. That's probably what all the shouting had been about. He could return them with profuse apologies when he finished with them. Better yet, he could drop them off in the after-hours slot and never return. He was beginning to think he didn't like libraries.

"You live up here, right?" Frank asked. "On Ivy Road?"

"Yeah," Harry said. Now that he was on his way home and unlikely to ever again visit the library for very long, Harry wished he had taken the time to look for more appropriate books.

"You look like the ghost of what the cat dragged in," Frank said.

"Huh?"

"I said you look terrible, mate. What's wrong?"

"I'm just having an odd day," Harry said. He looked up from the covers of his books, turning to see Frank as they walked.

Centipedes, wolf spiders, and mealworms were falling from Frank's face in waves, squirming and wriggling and crawling out of every visible hole on his head. HIs face rippled and wreathed unnaturaly with the force of the escaping insects. They fell in bunches, hitting the ground with hollow clicking sounds.

Frank tried to say something but the endless stream of bugs made his words impossible to understand.

Harry stopped, standing dumb in front of his pawn-broker. For a moment he couldn't really process what he was seeing. The entire day had just been too much.

Frank tried talking again. He looked concerned, but not nearly concerned enough for a man with live insects inside him. A centipede squirmed around his teeth and dangled for a moment from his lip, stuck.

Harry staggered backward, raising his hands apologetically. Frank reached out to him, concern still highlighting his features, and Harry shook his head.

"I know the way from here, Frank," he said. "I'll see you around."

CHAPTER TEN

Harry Wilhelm is not the sort of man who is inclined to bouts of "Why me, God?" but today he really had to wonder. His fist clenched around the gold cross in his pocket.

Eventually he made it back to his apartment, alone. He'd forgotten his keys inside yesterday morning, so he climbed in his broken window, more accurately described as a window frame. He really needed to get that fixed.

He didn't think anyone else had been there. Everything looked to be where he had left it. Unfortunately, his apartment always had the sort of 'just been robbed' vibe unique to people who have just been robbed and money-less bachelors with no inclination to clean up after themselves.

He sat on the couch and propped A Beginner's Guide to Malicious Demons on his knees. Harry read.

An hour passed and the only thing the book had told him was that he was probably not being plagued by a malicious demon. Frustrated, he threw the book at the wall and stood up to pace. The fifth time he limped past the book, he felt guilty for throwing it and picked it up, putting it on his desk. There, he grabbed a cigarette and started smoking.

"Books," Harry muttered with the air of a person who could benefit from reading more often but is unlikely to do so. "Literature," he added, spitting smoke. After some thought he continued: "Texts. Tomes. Opuscules."

"Now you're just making things up," Harry reprimanded himself.

"Could be."

His pacing brought him over to the fridge. After a moment's thought, he pulled the door open.

There was no food in the fridge. On the top shelf was an empty jar of mayonnaise. On the bottom shelf, shoved to the back, was a plain brown box.

He stood like that for a minute, one hand on top of the fridge door, staring at the box. Cold air curled around Harry's pantlegs. An ache began in his right knee.

Harry grabbed the box and closed the fridge.

"Weak," he muttered.

He growled in response. "I have had a very long day," he sighed and almost lost his cigarette. He puffed at it apologetically, then opened the box. Inside were five or six small, plastic packets full of a suspicious, red liquid. He picked one of them up. "I think I deserve this."

The liquid inside was thick and opaque. The packet was cool to the touch. Harry held it to his cheek, relishing the sensation. Beneath the smell of medicinal plastic, he could catch the faint scent of copper. His mouth started watering and his skin tightened.

Harry tore into the packet with his fangs, a technique he reserved for his worst days. The packet split halfway down the middle and spilled over his shirt and pants. Harry sucked at the blood pack with ravenous enthusiasm. When it was empty he moved onto his hands, licking them clean.

It wasn't that blood tasted great. After so many years of burning off his tastebuds with smoke and drink, Harry could barely taste it. But it was satisfying in a way that nothing else could match. It quieted a faint but persistent, nagging voice inside him.

His macabre task complete, Harry sat back and sunk into the couch. His fingers fiddled with the remains of the blood pack. An outside observer would have pinned Harry as being deep in thought, but the opposite was true. Bloodlust sated, Harry sat in blank contentment.

As time passed, just sitting became less appealing, but proper movement remained outside of Harry's current interests. The Amateur's Guide to Starting a Cult lay next to him, so he picked it up and started thumbing through it. On page 73 he found something familiar and turned back to see what it was.

There was a diagram on that page of a human body with a vertical red mark following the spine, and two horizontal lines crossing it near the bottom. Harry sat up and read.

The marks were part of a big magic usually performed by a couple of cults, one of which the book was using as an example. The magic in question was a summoning spell - the marks on the back of the sacrifice represented a crossroad through which the devil or spirit would come. Different sacrifices were needed depending on what you wanted to come through: Small animals, larger animals, humans, vampires, et cetera.

The book went on to mention a few well known cults that practiced this magic, along with a couple up-and-coming cults. One of which had a base of operations in Snowtown.

They called themselves the Shadow Children. The next chapter featured an interview with the founder, Seamus McIver.

IL: What prompted you to start a cult?

SM: I wouldn't call it a cult, not really. To call it a cult would imply blind fanatacism. It implies insanity.

IL: What would you call it, then?

SM: A religion. We're just like any other religion, really, we have our beliefs and we honour those beliefs through rituals.

IL: And what prompted you to found your religion?

SM: I looked around one day and I realised that this world isn't what was intended. Humanity was never meant to run around willy-nilly doing whatever we pleased. Humanity needs, craves order and discipline. But not from each other. We need it from a higher power, a being that knows more and better than we do.

IL: Who is this higher power?

SM: That's confidential.

IL: What would you say is the goal of your religion?

SM: We want to bring about the social upheaval that will end with the world shaped as it was meant to be.

It was good that 'cult' implied insanity, Harry thought, because Seamus was clearly insane. Was this the man after Harry's blood? An egotistic maniac who thought he knew what was best for mankind, better than mankind could know itself?

It was hard to imagine such a man getting anywhere. It was much easier to imagine him on a dirty streetcorner, clutching a cardboard sign and shouting at passersby. The end is nigh! Yea verily!

It was a puzzle that would have to wait for morning. Harry's vision was losing focus and he found himself rereading paragraphs over and over again. His muscles ached with a dull fatigue.

Harry dropped the book and box to the floor, rolled onto his side, and went to sleep.

Harry woke to the sound of running water. It sounded like one of his neighbouring apartments had a shower on. He drifted in and out of sleep until a stray thought wandered through his conscious mind.

Sea's apartment. Broken glass. Deadly, reporter-eating plant.

"Christ!" Harry said, sitting up. "Sea!"

He grabbed his coat and jacket off the couch and made a run for the door. Hand on doorknob, pull.

Nothing happened.

Assuming the door was jammed, Harry redoubled his efforts. The door was stuck fast.

"I don't have time for this," Harry grumbled and made for the window. He pulled the rest of his outfit on and tried to stick his foot through the window-frame. His foot slid off the air like he was trying to step through a frictionless, but solid, surface. Harry slipped and fell, knocking his forehead against the corner of his desk. Dots clouded his vision and he could feel a bump threatening to form.

"The heck was that?" he asked himself, standing. He wobbled, but didn't fall over.

Harry put a tentative hand against the window. There was resistence, but nothing that his hand could sense. Just a force preventing him from leaving.

It was weird, being stopped by something that had no physical properties. His mind recoiled from the sensation. He shuddered and pulled his hand back.

He wasn't leaving that way, that much was clear.

"Well," he said. "How exactly do you plan on leaving, then? The door's jammed and that's the only window."

"It's too early for you," he snapped. "Let me alone to think."

Harry stepped back and froze. His footsteps had been replaced with a sort of squishy splash. His carpet was soaked through, turned a deeper shade of green than it ought to have been. The water level climbed and before long was even with the baseboards.

Slowly but surely, Harry Wilhelm's apartment was filling with water.

"Christ almighty," Harry murmured. "The water damage."

The kitchen faucet was on and the sink was overflowing. From the sound of it, the faucet and shower in the bathroom were both on, as well. By now the water was soaking Harry's shins. His apartment was filling fast.

"Shouldn't be water-tight," he said, wading over to the kitchen. There, he tried turning the faucet off and was not surprised when his attempts didn't work.

"Every faucet in the apartment is broken," he growled, "and the window's got a force field over it. But it's that the apartment isn't leaking that bothers you."

He tried the knob uselessly for a few more seconds before calling it a lost cause and giving up.

The water had risen to waist level. Harry's coat drifted out behind him and he began shivering.

He sloshed over to the bathroom and gave the sink a try. Just as useless as the tap in the kitchen. A sudden spray of extremely hot water from the shower chased him back out to the living room. His coat had blocked most of the spray but it felt like his face might have been burned.

THe water rose to chest level and Harry threw himself at the door. The water stopped him from getting any speed and he bounced harmlessly off the heavy wood. In a panic he clawed at the door. He broke two nails and got a good sized splinter under another. Then door remained closed and intact.

"This shouldn't be happening," he whined.

"Save your breath."

The water rose above his nose and mouth, climbing above his eyes and finally over him completely. He struggled to keep his head above water, thrashing his arms and legs blindly. Harry kept sinking.

His legs tangled up in his trenchcoat. In a moment of clarity, he tore it off and shoved it away, then kicked himself upward.

There was still a gap between the water and the ceiling, but it was closing. Harry took a deep breath, then another, then tried to calm himself down with slow, even breaths. It wouldn't do to hyperventilate, pass out, and drown.

And all in the comfort of his own home.

The water level rose until Harry had to press his face against the ceiling to keep getting air. It continued rising, second by second, and soon there was no gap. Harry pushed himself away from the ceiling. He floated in the middle of the room and looked around.

Harry was going to drown.

He could sort of hear the taps still running, muffled by the surrounding water. He could hear his heartbeat pounding, going much faster than it usually did. A burn started in his lungs and his chest spasmed. He didn't have long.

A loud creak interrupted Harry's self-pitying thoughts and he swam away from the noise. After a moment, he realised it was coming from the walls. There was more water in his apartment than there was room for. A second passed and Harry wondered what to do.

A loud bang, then the rush of a river as the water exploded out Harry's door and his window.

Everything was spinning and Harry reached out in all directions for something to hold on to. His hand found a pole and he stopped, his arm jerking painfully.

The rush of water lessened until there was nothing left. Reluctantly, Harry opened his eyes.

He was hanging from the walkway in front of his apartment. He pulled himself up and over, landing with a wet 'plop' on the concrete by his door. The rushing water had cleared the remaining glass out of his broken window and torn the front door half off its hinges.

"Well," Harry said. He pulled out his cigarette case and checked the contents. The cigarettes were dry. "I needed a shower."

Leaning back a little gave Harry a good view into the apartment. He wished he hadn't - the water damage was substantial. The ceiling was still dripping, the carpet had soaked through, and the walls had turned a funny colour. The last thing he wanted to do was go back in there and take stock of all the damage he'd have to pay for some day, so he closed the door (more or less) on it and left.

The window next to Sea's front door had been cleared of glass shards, leaving a tasteful but empty window-frame. Harry knocked on the door and tried to think up excuses. He had been attacked by a dangerous devonian plant? He had found himself suddenly out of whiskey and therefore needed to leave? He was desperately in need of some fresh air and a long walk?

"Come in!" Sea's voice came through the window. "It's unlocked!"

Harry touched the doorknob and jerked his hand back. He reached out again, gripped the doorknob firmly, and opened the door.

"Sorry about the mess," Sea was standing in the kitchen, facing away from Harry. "I don't know what happened but I'll have it sorted out soon enough."

Harry wrung his hat and looked over the damage he'd done. Or, rather, the lack of damage he'd done. The mangled coffee table was missing, the glass shards were cleaned up, and the murderous plant was gone. A faint stain marred the wallpaper where the Type A had hit, but beyond that and the missing window there was no sign of anything remotely exciting ever happening there.

Sea turned to face her visitor, drying her hands with a floral-patterned bar towel. She dropped it when she saw the drowned rat on her doorstep.

"Oh my god!" she exclaimed and rushed to Harry's side. "What happened?"

Harry hadn't dried off on his way to Sea's apartment and he stood just inside, dripping on her carpet and shivering. Faint pink stains clung stubbornly to his shirt. Part of his face had turned red from the burn.

"I don't know," Harry admitted. "I'm sure it's nothing."

"Nothing my fuzzy pink slippers," Sea said. "You are positively oozing with some kind of magic!"

"I'm what?"

Sea led Harry over to the couch, an easy target without the coffee table in the way. As he sat she took his hat and removed his jacket, then disappeared into her bedroom. She came back with a thick, blue comforter.

"You are going to tell me exactly what happened," Sea told him and disappeared again, this time into the kitchen.

Harry sneezed.

"Gesundheit," from the kitchen.

"I was just in my apartment," Harry explained. "The taps were running."

Sea reappeared and sat next to him.

"I'm sure it's nothing," he repeated.

"Did you turn the taps on?"

"No," Harry said slowly. "But that doesn't mean anything. I could have, I could have been sleep walking."

Sea frowned at Harry, but didn't say anything.

A whistle went off in the kitchen and Sea stood. The high pitched noise echoed inside Harry's head, bouncing off the water that had got in through his ears. He rubbed at the side of his head with the comforter. Sea returned with a tray of tea. The tea-cosy was bright yellow with bright green trim and it hurt Harry's eyes to look at it for very long. Sea offered him a cup and he raised a hand, still wrapped in blanket, to protest.

"I don't drink tea," he explained.

"You don't drink anything that isn't alcoholic, I know," Sea said. "You will drink this tea and you will do it now."

"That's not true," Harry took the cup and peered at its contents. "I drink," he faltered. "Water."

"I am very glad to hear it. Drink the tea."

Harry sighed and swirled the tea around in its cup. There were things floating in it and Harry didn't think that was normal with tea. Sea's glare was deepening, however, so he drank the tea.

"Not all of it," Sea said, and Harry stopped. She took the cup back and directed her glare at its contents.

"What, exactly, have I walked into?" Harry asked. He was used to feeling lost - it went with the job - but not this lost.

Sea turned the teacup in her hands, not looking up from it. "There has been a magic placed on you, Mr. Wilhelm," she explained slowly, as though Harry ought to have known this already. "You're leaking magic through your pores. Either this was a very big magic indeed or you're still under the influence of the caster."

"Influence? Like voodoo mind control, or something?"

"Nothing quite so politically incorrect," she glanced up from the cup to smirk at Harry. "There's really very little to worry about from the vodun crowd. This, on the other hand, runs deep."

"Is it dangerous?"

"Isn't all magic?"

Sea peered at the tea, sticking her tongue out in concentration. Finally, she set it down on the end-table next to her. "I can't help you."

"Why not?"

"You're under the thumb of a bonecaster or bloodcaster - their magic is intimate and hard to get rid of."

"Intimate?"

Sea nodded, "Whoever this caster is, he has part of your essence - a bit of bone or some of your blood, obviously. The magic he's done is tangled up with something that is unmistakably you."

"I don't understand."

"It's unlikely you ever will - you're not a caster."

Harry shrugged. "So, what," he said, "I'm going to explode in three days or something?"

"Of course not. One of these times of casters, they're not going to do something nearly as showy as that. It's a subtle class of magic. And they'll probably want you intact so they can get more ingredients from you."

"Comforting thought," Harry said.

"So you," Sea waved her hands at Harry. "You showered with your clothes on?"

"More like I took a swim."

"What is it, Harry, that makes so many people want you dead?"

"My animal magnetism," Harry replied, pulling the comforter closer around himself.