Page 1 of Dark Stars

Bobby was in the library reading his newest acquisition when the faint sense of trouble at the back of his mind finally 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 peculiar below the surface, which was where all the most interesting things were found.

"Whatcha reading today, Bobby?"

Harold asked as he sat down across from him, stretching his long legs out the side of the table, setting down four crisp, new manilla folders, two of which barely seemed to have anything in them. He snagged the book when Bobby held it out, smiling faintly as he read the title and shaking his head.

"Is this more werewolves?"

"Yes,"

Bobby said delightedly as he took the book back.

"Fated mates and everything—the one guy is even a cranky police officer."

Harold laughed.

"How close are they to real werewolves?"

"Eight out of ten. You didn't come here to discuss werewolf romance with me, though."

"Entertaining as that would be, no. I need your help."

Harold spread the folders out with one hand, reaching up with the other to touch the earring in his left ear, a gesture he probably didn't even notice. To the naked eye, it was an innocuous piece of green-ish stone cut into a diamond shape, the tips and edges razor fine. To those who saw more of the world than most knew was there, that stone was older than the planet itself, and protected Harold from things that could do much, much worse than kill him.

"I'm swamped with cases, as we always seem to be this time of year."

"February through April,"

Bobby murmured, placing a bookmark and setting his book aside.

"Surprised you haven't needed me sooner."

"Been trying not to bother you, but I got hit with four today that are either a whole lot of nothing or a whole lot of here we go again. You can have your pick."

Threads quivered, darkness whispered, that delightful sense of trouble sharpening. Something in this lot was interesting, full of those delightful below the surface shenanigans that he loved so much. He read the labels first: L-0422-MSB; C-0422-SD, I-0422-DOE, C-0422-LMK.

"What in the primordial is going on in this county? I haven't felt anything, and I 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 had most of the night to kill. Picking up a new order later today."

Snorting, Harold said, "Oh, is that why Yates is flashing that ugly Ferrari?"

"Is that what his car is called? He's not going to have it long, driving like that, especially if he tries to drive up to the creek any time this month."

The certainty of it pulsed through him, one of the random bits that came to him. He was not prescient like his mother, like most of his relatives, but sometimes the strains of plucked threads made sense to him.

"So what's happened in the county that you got a job from your beloved Sheriff and another one from Lemon?"

"Ugh, why did I promise I'd try harder to be nice to that jackass?"

"You suck at cards, especially after that much tequila, and you're adorably human about honoring your promises."

"That's hilarious coming from you,"

Harold said with a slight grin.

"Anyway, Sheriff Fuckhead came by with a case about bones in the woods. Like, hanging from trees in weird shapes, like effigies, with 'runes and shit' drawn below them in the dirt."

"Children,"

Bobby replied dismissively.

"I'd know if somebody was casting that many dark workings around here."

He'd feel them, find them, feast on them. Nobody did dark castings in his territory.

"Yeah, except that one of his deputies had the 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 and laughed loudly enough to get a glare from Amanda, the librarian on duty.

"Sorry, Mandy."

He snickered some more as he stared at the 'rune circles'.

"Did our mystery serial killer or whoever is ratting him out bother to do even a lazy google of arcana? This is worse than pure gibberish. This one is summoning the great demon king of rotting gym socks."

"There is no such fucking thing as arcana for 'gym socks,' you smartass."

"Well, our little genius here discovered them,"

Bobby retorted, and closed the file. "Next."

"Lemon found some animals in the woods that had been sucked dry. Not vampire sucked, but like a thousand little somethings drained them."

Bobby lifted one brow.

"You know I don't have family in the area. You and the Sheriff get tetchy. I get 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 take those, but I brought them just in case they pinged you."

Setting those two aside, Bobby pulled the next one close.

"What's the local case?"

"Missing woman, circumstances are just peculiar enough that Melody came to me instead of Fuckhead."

"I don't think continually calling him Fuckhead is being nicer."

"He isn't around to hear it,"

Harold muttered.

"Fine, whatever. It's Melody's grandniece that's gone missing, along with her cat."

That piqued Bobby's interest. Only fools trifled with cats. He opened the folder and read. The girl, Brittany, had gone for a walk three nights ago with her cat, Petal.

"Three days?"

"Her parents are useless, like usual, and Melody only just got back from her quilting thing yesterday, so she didn't know. She went to walk along the lake like she always does."

"She's not supposed to do that at night, especially under a gibbous moon,"

Bobby replied, gnawing at his bottom lip as he read more of the file, which was all of two sheets of paper.

"There's nothing in the lake that could have gotten her, but.."

But the scant information was that her footsteps showed her walking to the edge of the lake, and then being dragged into it.

"Strange indeed. What's the last case? I don't recognize the 'I' designation."

"It's the only one that's a code. I for Innsmouth."

He rolled his eyes at Bobby's delighted look.

"Don't get excited, the only thing it has in common with the real Innsmouth is that it's a fucking hellscape."

"Why would that not excite me?"

He was salivating already. It had been a long time since he'd had a good snack.

Harold heaved the sigh of a man who'd been doing this entirely too long.

"It's not actually one place, but a loose triangle formed by three old towns. Old by human standards, anyway. One is near the coast, the others further inland, all about four hours from each other. Plenty of other towns and shit between and around them, but the trouble is always inside the triangle formed by those three points. I nicknamed it the Innsmouth Triangle."

"Delicious."

When that got him the Disapproving Look, Bobby said, "Delightful? What's the problem. How come you've never told me about this before?"

"Because the nearest point, the town of Marsh, is six hours away from us."

Bobby pouted.

"So I can't even do that one."

"You could if I gave you permission,"

Harold said.

Bobby reached up to toy with the collar wrapped around his throat, a narrow band of pearl gray leather into which thousands of minute arcana had been laid, confining him in time, place, shape, and more.

"So what's happening that you'd lengthen my leash?"

"I'm not sure, but people are missing, other people are acting strange, everyone I've called has mentioned an odd, fetid odor, strange sounds at night… Could be any number of things, but it would take more than one person for this many disappearances in so short a frame, and if even one of them is truly sensitive…"

"Naughty cultists. Not my favorite snack, but not awful,"

Bobby said.

Harold chuckled.

"Try to leave a few in some sort of usable condition if you take the job."

"Can I ponder?"

"Sure. Want to get coffee? I can help grab your obscene number of books too. How many are you stealing from the library today?"

Normally the librarians limited checkouts to three, with special permission to take up to six granted to certain trusted patrons.

Bobby they let take as many as he wanted, since the longest he'd ever kept a book was two days.

"Coffee sounds delightful."

He gathered up all the books he'd checked out that day, a mix of new stuff and old favorites. Harold gathered up the folders and helped him, though he kept getting distracted by actually looking at the books.

"Stop reading about investigators, Bobby. It's rotting your brain about how this job actually works."

"You'd like that one, but you can't have that copy because you won't return it on time, and Mandy will get mad at me."

Harold laughed.

"We're going to the bookstore, I'll see what I can do. I wish investigating murder was this exciting."

He looked at the next book in the stack.

"More werewolves?"

"You'd like that one too."

"Is there anything you haven't read?"

Bobby shrugged.

"I can read about five hundred books in a day, more if they're short. What do you think?"

"I think you're hilarious. Come on, book nerd, let's go."

He carried a stack of books under one arm, while Bobby carried the other three stacks, quietly casting them to be lighter and to not fall. When the books were stowed in the chest in the back of his pickup, he drove them from the library to the shopping center the local suburb overlords had tried really hard to make resemble some postcard perfect small town main street.

Mostly it just looked like a bad render of the same, but the coffee was good, the bookstore did whatever he wanted, and his favorite restaurant didn't ask bothersome questions.

Bobby led the way into the coffee shop—and stopped, grinning, as he spied who was on his way out.

"Hello, Sheriff."

"Hello, Bobby."

He scowled.

"Legrasse."

Harold scowled right back.

"Jones. Haven't I—"

He grunted as Bobby slammed an elbow into his gut. Forcing a smile, he said, "Good afternoon, nice to see you again."

Jones snorted.

"Whatever you two are doing, keep the trouble to a minimum. I've got enough to deal with."

"We'll do our best, Sheriff,"

Bobby replied.

That got him more derisive noises, and Jones' soft drawl came out more when he said, "Butter wouldn't melt in that mouth. Sure I'll see ya'll again soon."

He settled his hat on his head, touched the brim, and brushed by Harold close enough to jar him slightly.

Then he was gone, leaving only the scent of cinnamon sugar, fresh coffee, and the faint tang of fresh blood.

"Fuckhead,"

Harold muttered as he stepped further into the café, removing the ballcap that went with him everywhere.

"You want your usual?"

"Yes, please."

Bobby wandered over to the bookshelves, but sadly nothing had changed since his last visit two days ago. He'd have to thin down his own collection again, beef up the variety here. He drew out one that by condition and smell had clearly been read more often than anything else, at least twenty times by him while he waited in long lines. It was the first in a series, but the café never seemed to have more than the first one. He'd just have to fix the problem himself.

He turned as Harold approached, taking the coffee he held out. Iced, no cream, drizzle of caramel. "Thanks."

"Never a problem,"

Harold said with one of his rare smiles. A hard childhood and a harder adulthood had left him fairly contained with anything he deemed 'soft,' but over the years, Bobby had earned his friendship, and Harold his, even if they were the unlikeliest of best friends.

"Come on, let's go get your two thousand books."

"It's only a hundred fifty today."

Harold grinned ever so briefly over his shoulder as he pushed open the door and led the way out.

"Uh-huh, and how many more coming in this week?"

"Another two hundred, shut your stupid face,"

Bobby said as Harold laughed. He couldn't help it; he liked to read. Especially romances, especially fantasy romances, from lowest to highest.

"You don't get to laugh at me when you borrow like thirty percent of them."

"Yeah, yeah,"

Harold said, sucking on his drink, some sort of cookies and cream abomination because the man lived and died by all things sweet, though you'd never be able to tell it by the way he was almost too thin. A side effect of his arcana, which he was vastly more adept with than most humans.

The bookstore was only a couple of blocks away, but given the number of books he'd be carrying out, Bobby drove them down. He backed into a space right in front, finished his coffee, and headed inside, shadowed by a slower, chuckling Harold.

"Bobby!"

Yates said, immediately abandoning whatever he'd been doing behind the counter.

"Your books arrived just minutes ago! I kept them all boxed up for you, so let me know if there's anything missing or whatnot, I'll try to get it added to Thursday's shipment."

"Thank you!"

Bobby said, already excited to tear into the boxes and get started. Was there anything better than a pile of books waiting to be read? No, there was not. Well, a great romance all his own would be wonderful, but something as legendary and perfect as his parents' eternal love was not likely to happen again.

Even though he was technically half human, they were invariably scared of him when they learned the truth, and his relatives on his mother's side found his humanity repulsive, which was pretty fucking hilarious and hypocritical, but that was relatives for you.

Once the books were loaded up, and he'd spent another hour perusing new releases for what wound up being another twenty books, they headed for his house, where Harold helped him unload them.

Setting the last of the boxes down, Harold said, "I don't know why you bother going to the library when you live in one."

"More books, more better, obviously,"

Bobby said. It was true he more or less lived in a library. Minus his bedroom, bathroom, the finished attic, and the kitchen, he'd converted everything else to shelves, with more free-standing shelves wherever he could fit them. Even the stairs held books. He was going to need more space soon, but that would require significant arcana, and he was lazy.

Sweeping up his locs into a loose bun, he opened the boxes and started adding them to his catalogue before putting them on the shelves. This, Harold didn't bother to help with, except to make them more coffee before settling at the kitchen table to do some work of his own.

By the time Bobby was finished, night was beginning to fall, the fireflies frolicking across his backyard, more of them than anyone would believe if they saw it. Fireflies liked him, had chosen to become his charming little avatars.

He went out to stand amongst them, eyes gleaming the same yellow-green, savoring the feeling of the sunlight fading, the dark overtaking. Against his chest, beneath his shirt, the jewel in his pendant thrummed, equally delighted to once more be in nightfall's embrace.

In sunlight he played. In moonlight he worked.

When the fireflies had faded off to carry on with their night, Bobby returned to the house, where Harold sipped a fresh cup of coffee as he waited patiently.

"All your books squared away?"

"Yes, thank you. I appreciate you never try to rush me."

"I know a bit about waiting and not pushing people, but you know that better than most. So what will it be?"