Page 1 of Dark Stars
Chapter One
Bobby was in the library reading his newestacquisition when the faint sense of trouble at the back of his mindfinally reared to the fore.I'm here.
It arrived as usual in the form of Harold,local businessman on the surface, but inquisitor into the peculiarbelow the surface, which was where all the most interesting thingswere found.
"Whatcha reading today, Bobby?" Harold askedas he sat down across from him, stretching his long legs out theside of the table, setting down four crisp, new manilla folders,two of which barely seemed to have anything in them. He snagged thebook when Bobby held it out, smiling faintly as he read the titleand shaking his head. "Is this more werewolves?"
"Yes," Bobby said delightedly as he took thebook back. "Fated mates and everything—the one guy is even a crankypolice officer."
Harold laughed. "How close are they to realwerewolves?"
"Eight out of ten. You didn't come here todiscuss werewolf romance with me, though."
"Entertaining as that would be, no. I needyour help." Harold spread the folders out with one hand, reachingup with the other to touch the earring in his left ear, a gesturehe probably didn't even notice. To the naked eye, it was aninnocuous piece of green-ish stone cut into a diamond shape, thetips and edges razor fine. To those who saw more of the world thanmost knew was there, that stone was older than the planet itself,and protected Harold from things that could do much, much worsethan kill him. "I'm swamped with cases, as we always seem to bethis time of year."
"February through April," Bobby murmured,placing a bookmark and setting his book aside. "Surprised youhaven't needed me sooner."
"Been trying not to bother you, but I gothit with four today that are either a whole lot of nothing or awhole lot of here we go again. You can have your pick."
Threads quivered, darkness whispered, thatdelightful sense of trouble sharpening. Something in this lot wasinteresting, full of those delightful below the surfaceshenanigans that he loved so much. He read the labels first:L-0422-MSB; C-0422-SD, I-0422-DOE, C-0422-LMK."What in theprimordial is going on in this county? I haven't felt anything, andI was bored enough to look last night."
Harold's mouth ticked up at one corner."Bored? Did you run out of books, somehow?"
"Yes, and reread all of them, but still hadmost of the night to kill. Picking up a new order later today."
Snorting, Harold said, "Oh, is that whyYates is flashing that ugly Ferrari?"
"Is that what his car is called? He's notgoing to have it long, driving like that, especially if he tries todrive up to the creek any time this month." The certainty of itpulsed through him, one of the random bits that came to him. He wasnot prescient like his mother, like most of his relatives, butsometimes the strains of plucked threads made sense to him. "Sowhat's happened in the county that you got a job from your belovedSheriff and another one from Lemon?"
"Ugh, why did I promise I'd try harder to benice to that jackass?"
"You suck at cards, especially after thatmuch tequila, and you're adorably human about honoring yourpromises."
"That's hilarious coming from you," Haroldsaid with a slight grin. "Anyway, Sheriff Fuckhead came by with acase about bones in the woods. Like, hanging from trees in weirdshapes, like effigies, with 'runes and shit' drawn below them inthe dirt."
"Children," Bobby replied dismissively. "I'dknow if somebody was casting that many dark workings around here."He'd feel them, find them, feast on them. Nobody did dark castingsinhisterritory.
"Yeah, except that one of his deputies hadthe idea to dig up the dirt in the middle one of the 'rune circles'and they found a body. All thirteen wound up having bodies."
Shivers of delight ran down Bobby's spine."Serial killer? Delicious." He opened the relevant folder andlaughed loudly enough to get a glare from Amanda, the librarian onduty. "Sorry, Mandy." He snickered some more as he stared at the'rune circles'. "Did our mystery serial killer or whoever isratting him out bother to do even a lazy google of arcana? This isworse than pure gibberish. This one is summoning the great demonking of rotting gym socks."
"There is no such fucking thing as arcanafor 'gym socks,' you smartass."
"Well, our little genius here discoveredthem," Bobby retorted, and closed the file. "Next."
"Lemon found some animals in the woods thathad been sucked dry. Not vampire sucked, but like a thousand littlesomethings drained them."
Bobby lifted one brow. "You know I don'thave family in the area. You and the Sheriff get tetchy.Iget tetchy."
"Which is why this one is so fucking weird.Something tells me it might be related to the Gym Socks Summoner,but I don't know enough about either case yet. I'll probably takethose, but I brought them just in case they pinged you."
Setting those two aside, Bobby pulled thenext one close. "What's the local case?"
"Missing woman, circumstances are justpeculiar enough that Melody came to me instead of Fuckhead."
"I don't think continually calling himFuckhead is being nicer."
"He isn't around to hear it," Haroldmuttered. "Fine, whatever. It's Melody's grandniece that's gonemissing, along with her cat."
