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VIC

“ T roll? Are you fucking kidding me? Like the ugly toys with the green hair?” Vic responded.

Simon waited him out. “Not really. Trolls are one of the most ancient creatures in stories from across the world and most cultures. They are magical, they can shapeshift or make themselves invisible, and they can make people disappear.”

Vic paced behind his desk while Ross watched with amusement. “Seriously?”

Simon filled him in on what he had learned that day and the séance. “That’s what the last keeper of the Georgetown Light believed the guardians and the Wellspring kept at bay. I’m guessing the Wellspring—the energy around the lighthouses—is a type of genius loci, but I need to confirm that. I’m headed to do some more research. The ghost thinks we can restore the wardings. We’d just need our own team to keep them refreshed.”

“You make that sound easy.”

Simon paused, and Vic knew his husband was waiting out his mood. “The original wardings were maintained by lighthouse keepers who weren’t witches. They weren’t necessarily descendants, although a few lighthouses did pass from father to son to grandson. That means that the magic can probably be done by anyone who understands the necessary powers involved.”

Vic sighed. “Okay. That’s not the weirdest thing we’ve ever done.”

“Thank you—I think.”

“And we’ve discovered something else,” Vic went on. “We looked at disappearances around Myrtle Beach since the lighthouses stopped being manned. There are a lot.”

“Not surprising, given that it’s a beach and there are a plenty of people who come through here who might be looking to start over. We both did.”

“We didn’t disappear—we relocated. Kept the same names, changed jobs, and people knew where we went,” Vic noted. “I get what you’re saying—some people might have plans to erase their footprint and become someone else. But even accounting for that, over the years, there’s a higher-than-average rate for a city this size. So we’re looking into it. I hate to say it, but if we rule out everything else, it’s probably something woo-woo.”

“Mrs. Brighton is looking for her uncle’s journal. She inherited it but hadn’t felt comfortable reading it. Now that we know he recorded his ritual there, it’s a start,” Simon replied. “There’s also a big collection of everything to do with the lighthouses at St. Cyprian College. That’ll be the next step once we know what Frank wrote.”

“There are a lot of lighthouses just in the Carolinas.”

“Apparently only seven in North Carolina count to anchor the magic, and all the ones in South Carolina. Georgetown is first on the list. I’ll let you know what I find out. And I’m planning to be home for dinner.”

“See you then. Be careful. Love you,” Vic said.

“Right back atcha. Love you too.”

Vic turned to see Ross looking at him. “Trolls?”

“They’re badass in the old stories. Let’s not mention it to anyone until Simon does his research-fu and we have more to go on.”

“Where do we go from here?” Ross reached for his coffee cup, found it empty, and grimaced.

“We work this like any other case.”

“Except it’s got a troll.”

“We’ve dealt with worse people.”

“True.”

Vic started to pace again. “The motorcycle club made a deal to stop a gang war. Maybe the other disappearances weren’t as random as they seem, even if they aren’t tied to a decades-long bargain.”

“What do you have in mind?” Ross got up to fill his coffee cup and realized the pot was empty. He started another one as they talked.

“I think we find out whatever we can about the people who were never found. Some of them still probably have family and friends who are alive. Find out why they ran or what they were escaping. If they were escaping.”

“We don’t want to give the families false hope,” Ross pointed out. “We aren’t likely to find their loved ones, even if we figure out who took them.”

Vic nodded. “Yeah, I know. But if there’s a pattern to why those particular people were taken, we might be able to help Simon decipher the magic. And if we can do that, we’re working the case from the other end. He’ll gather what’s needed to bring back the protections, and we can figure out who’s vulnerable.”

Ross sighed. “Okay. Let’s get to it. But you’re buying me dinner soon for making me do dialing for dollars.” That was what Ross called the process of calling people from a list to gather information, one of the things he hated most about the job.

“I’ll even spring for beer because I’m that awesome of a partner,” Vic joked.

Ross printed out a list and they split the pages, then got comfortable before they started calling.

Vic looked down the list, only a portion of the full roster of the disappearances from the past forty years. Ross had done his best to sort by age, but there were other variables as well, especially last known address and prior police record.

It didn’t escape Vic how many of the missing people had no known next of kin or contact listed. Serial killers often preyed upon people no one would miss, and he wondered whether monsters were savvy enough to do the same.

After an hour and dozens of calls each, they compared notes.

“Each of the family members I talked to said that their person was down on his luck—and it’s all men, by the way,” Ross said. “Lost a job, got divorced, bad breakup, going bankrupt, poor health diagnosis. They didn’t know for sure what made them come to Myrtle Beach, but they figured it was to get a fresh start and cut ties.”

“So maybe the motorcycle guy was an outlier, making a deal to benefit someone else. Maybe the people most likely to be taken think that anywhere is better than here,” Vic mused.

“Not always true, but I can see why people might think so.”

Vic tapped his fingers on the desk as he thought. “Simon said the creature could shapeshift. So maybe it switches to human form to size up its victims. Hangs out in bars. Maybe it can literally smell desperation.”

“Plenty of human serial killers and grifters do that—I’d think that something with magic would be even better at it,” Ross suggested.

“We don’t know what happens next,” Vic said. “Does it follow them and suck out their soul? Do they need to make a deal or ask for a favor? It might just get the jump on them like a regular predator, but in a lot of the old tales I’ve heard Simon tell, there’s usually something transactional, even if the victim doesn’t realize it at the time.”

“Did any of the people you talked to say that someone had looked for the missing person?” Ross asked.

Vic shook his head. “No. They might have been related to the victims, but there wasn’t any real attachment. Pretty sad, actually.” He and his large family weren’t always in agreement, but Vic always knew he was loved.

“And more common than we like to admit,” Ross said. “I keep thinking that the connecting thread is that each of the people who went missing had gotten themselves into a jam they didn’t see a way to fix on their own. If you’re desperate enough to think about changing your name and running away, you’ve run out of good alternatives, and you’re ranking the bad ones.”

“Ditching everything and going missing is one step removed from just checking out completely,” Vic remarked. “Maybe the creature can spot the ones who got separated from their herd, so to speak. Less risk.”

“That’s giving the creature a lot of credit, don’t you think?” Ross leaned back and stretched.

Vic thought for a moment. “Is it? Wild animals are smart enough to take on the prey that stray from the group, lag behind, or are too weak to put up a fight. The creature we’re talking about might not even have to worry about health—like with Carter Edwards—because it’s not consuming the body—just the soul.”

“Eww,” Ross protested. “TMI.”

“Hey, I grew up watching all those nature shows with my brothers. Wildlife is brutal, man.”

“Has Simon tried to contact the ghosts of the people who vanished? If the creature sucked out their soul, would they still be around as a spirit, or would they just be, I don’t know—erased?” Ross asked.

“Yes, they were ghosts, but fading according to Simon.” Vic looked at the list again. “Okay, we can’t do magic, but we do data—which is almost the same,” he said, and Ross snorted. “Hear me out. Let’s plot the last known locations. It might help us figure out where the creature is doing its hunting.”

“If it can look like anything, how do we catch it?” Ross asked.

“I’m going to leave that up to Simon,” Vic replied. “He was headed to some college library to do research. But I figure this is a legit part of our job since it’s people who are victims of a crime in our territory. And if Simon’s right and it’s connected to the lighthouses becoming automated, this has been a forty-year crime spree.”

Ross fed the data into a program that would map the data points while Vic scanned the printouts for anything they might have missed. No matter how good and helpful computers were, human intuition often spotted connections that defied binary logic.

Vic’s phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number.

“Detective D’Amato? You just called my sister about our brother, James Hinton, who went missing ten years ago.”

“Can I put you on speaker?” Vic asked and got approval. He set his phone on the desk so Ross could hear. “Go ahead.”

“I’m Scott Hinton, and I was with Jimmy the day he disappeared. I was trying to cheer him up. He’d had a rough go for a while. Job trouble, woman trouble, health problems. Even though he was only in his late twenties, life had beat him down. He was my older brother, and I didn’t want to see him unhappy.”

“What happened?”

“We went down to Ocean Boulevard to walk around and kill an evening. Get some food, have a couple of beers, people-watch and hang out,” Scott said. “I could tell Jimmy was trying to get in the spirit and appreciated being together, but he was just so sad. We went to the big arcade and played games.

“We were together all evening. Then I went to the bathroom, and it was crowded so it took a bit. When I came back, Jimmy was playing pinball against a guy I’d never seen before. They were joking around, and Jimmy said, ‘I bet I can beat you.’ Just joshing, not even putting money on the line,” Scott went on.

“He had perked up, so I didn’t interfere. I went to get drinks. When I came back, they were both gone. No one saw them leave, but we never saw Jimmy again.”

Vic knew that the timeframe was before security cameras were everywhere. “Did he drive? Was his car missing?”

“No,” Scott said. “I drove that night. I went nuts looking for him. Got the arcade staff involved, called the police, nothing. But people said he probably just made a new friend and went to have a beer, and he’d turn up in the morning. Except Jimmy wouldn’t leave me like that. We were close.”

“When he didn’t come back, I put up signs. Filed a missing person report. Went back to the arcade every night to see if the guy he played with was a regular. They said he often came in a couple of nights a week, but no one knew who he was.” The agitation in Scott’s voice made it clear that despite the years that had passed, the disappearance was clear in his mind.

“I thought maybe if he went after Jimmy, he’d go for me too if I hung around. He didn’t show. Even the arcade staff said that they hadn’t seen the guy since the night Jimmy went missing,” Scott said. “I always hoped that Jimmy would show up out of the blue, and it would be some weird story about bad drugs and a road trip, but that didn’t happen. I still miss him.”

Vic could hear the pain in Scott’s voice and couldn’t imagine losing one of his brothers like that. Ross had stopped his work to listen and looked shaken.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Vic said. “I know it’s been a long time, but do you remember anything about the stranger Jimmy played with? What he looked like?”

“That was almost forty years ago. Whatever he looked like then, he won’t be the same now, if he’s even still alive,” Scott replied.

“It might help us match him to photographs in the system,” Vic replied and crossed his fingers.

“Okay. What’s stuck in my mind, even after all this time, is that he was unusually tall, like a basketball player, and pretty beefy. Plain features—not ugly, but not handsome. I think the word is rugged. Shaggy blond hair. Huge hands.”

“Did you hear him talk? Did he have an accent?”

“No, sorry. I remember wondering if he was a pro wrestler because he looked very muscular.”

“Anything different about his clothing?” Vic pressed, probing for some kind of lead.

“Not fashionable—just a plain T-shirt and loose-fitting jeans. I figured maybe he had trouble finding things in his size.”

“Thank you,” Vic told him. “I’m sorry to bring up bad memories.”

“Don’t be. I think about Jimmy every day. If you find out what happened to him, I want to know,” Scott said. “And if you can catch the guy who took him away—make him pay.”

Vic promised to keep Scott informed and ended the call. He looked over to Ross and knew his partner could read the emotional effect of the conversation.

“If this creature is a shapeshifter, it could have come back every night looking like someone else, and no one would have been the wiser,” Vic said.

“Yeah, that occurred to me too,” Ross said. “Does the creature have a quota? Maybe it just eats until it’s full? So, it wouldn’t have necessarily returned to the arcade until it needed another meal.”

“Let’s keep going and see if we can get a few other stories. Then we can compare notes once Simon’s done his research,” Vic suggested.

They worked their way down the rest of the list. Many of the contacts had either left without a forwarding address or had died. Some were in nursing homes. Others refused to discuss the subject.

Finally, Ross got lucky. “It’s been a while since anyone asked questions about Tom,” Sherry Cranston said after Ross put the call on speaker. “After all this time, we finally accepted that he wasn’t coming home, although he’d be welcome if he did. We still mark his birthday. It would be good to get an answer, one way or the other. Although I want to think he ran off to some tropical island and turned his life around, I don’t think he’d stay out of touch if he were still alive.”

“I know you’ve given the story before, but can you go over it for me again, please?” Ross asked. “Particularly anything you remember about people he was with.”

“We went to a party at a friend’s house,” Sherry said. “Early Eighties—loud music, big hair. We were mostly hanging out and drinking beer. Some of the guys got up a poker game. Low stakes, just something to do.

“Tom had a run of bad luck, and I practically dragged him to the party. Told him to stop moping and that he’d feel better around people,” she recounted, and Vic could hear old guilt in her voice.

“He humored me and went, but he didn’t perk up until someone suggested poker. Tommy wasn’t a high roller, but he liked the game. It was the most interested I’d seen him in a long time, and I knew he wasn’t going to lose his shirt, so I hung out with the girls in the living room, and the guys set up a game in the dining room,” Sherry went on.

“Did you know everyone at the party?” Ross asked. “Were there any new people or strangers?”

“It was our regular gang, except for one guy I hadn’t seen before. I asked who he was but everyone thought he was a friend of someone else’s,” Sherry replied. “Big guy. Broad shoulders, thick arms, large hands. Rather plain in the face. Built like a lumberjack, although he was dressed like everyone else. Didn’t say much, but he might have been the one who suggested the poker game.”

Vic and Ross shared a look. Trouble.

“They played a few rounds, and everything seemed fine. The girls and I were just talking and listening to music, having a couple of beers. No one was making wild bets. From what I could hear, Tom seemed like he was on a winning streak. I wondered if his friends let him win to cheer him up. I heard him say double or nothing, and the new guy said, ‘I accept.’”

“What happened after that?” Ross asked.

Sherry sighed. “Tom lost. He wasn’t playing for much money, just for fun, but it kinda took the wind out of his sails. He went outside to have a smoke on the back steps, and the new guy went with him. We never saw either of them again.”

“Nothing left behind?” Ross asked.

“Tom’s pack of Lucky’s, his lighter, and a half-smoked cig were on the steps. Nothing from the new guy. I know Tom didn’t just take off without telling me. He never did that sort of thing, and he hadn’t had more than one or two beers,” Sherry said.

“Did the stranger have a car?” Vic leaned in toward the phone.

“That’s the weird thing—when we couldn’t find them, and everyone started talking, no one knew where he’d come from. We all thought he was friends with someone else, but we compared stories, and he wasn’t. It’s like he just wandered in and made himself at home and no one questioned him,” Sherry recalled. “If he had a car, it wasn’t parked with everyone else’s, and we didn’t hear him leave.”

“When did you realize something was wrong?” Ross pressed.

“I had a bad feeling that night, but Tom’s friends knew he’d had a rough patch and thought maybe he and the new guy just went out to a bar or to score some weed.” She chuckled self-consciously. “It’s been forty years—is the statute of limitations up on that?”

“We’re definitely not concerned about the pot,” Ross assured her. “What next?”

“When he didn’t come home, I knew something was wrong. That just wasn’t Tom. He would have called, and he didn’t just crash with strangers. I checked in with all our friends, and when no one had heard from him or seen him, I called the police,” Sherry told them.

“Since it had only been overnight, they didn’t think it was a real disappearance and told me he probably just passed out watching TV and would wander back home in a while. If he’d been with someone we knew, I wouldn’t have worried. But I didn’t like that he’d gone off with a stranger. Anything could have happened.

“Tom didn’t have much money, so I doubt it was a robbery. He was a nice boy, maybe a little too nice, which got him into some of the scrapes he was trying to get out of. Had a knack for trusting the wrong people who took advantage. I miss my brother.”

Vic and Ross exchanged a glance. They might discover what happened to Tom, but returning him was unlikely.

“I know that after all this time, he’s probably not still alive,” Sherry said with a hitch in her voice. “But if we can’t bring him home, I’d like to know what happened, and see if we can do something to get him justice.”

“I understand,” Ross said. “That’s why we’re looking into some old cold cases that might be connected. I have you on my list, and if we do find something, I’ll let you know.”

“Thank you,” Sherry told him. “You know, Tom was the whimsical one. That’s why I think life went so rough on him when things didn’t work out. He loved fairy tales when he was a kid, and read all the fantasy books and saw the big movies when they came out. I think that if he could have moved into one of those make-believe worlds, he would have gone.”

Uh-oh. Vic saw his reaction mirrored on Ross’s face.

“If you think of anything else, no matter how small, about that night or the stranger, please give me a call.” Ross made sure she had his information before hanging up.

“Do you think the troll could sense that?” Ross asked. “I can’t believe we’re talking about trolls.”

“Same. I don’t know—predators have good instincts to spot likely prey. It sounds like Tom might have begged to go without realizing the ramifications.”

“Or maybe he did. The folks who’ve been taken were hanging on by a thread. They might have been desperate enough to think that anywhere was better than here,” Ross pointed out.

“It’s also possible that because the creature is a shifter, it doesn’t show up on security cameras,” Vic mused. “Although that can vary. Sometimes they show up with reflective eyes. Maybe it varies by the type of shifter.”

It wasn’t lost on Vic that not too long ago, he never would have considered anything paranormal a remote possibility. Simon changed everything—and I’m so glad he did.

“Is there a pattern to the disappearances the creature is responsible for?” Ross wondered aloud. “There are non-supernatural reasons people go missing. But I’m wondering if the troll eats his fill, so to speak, and then sits it out for a while before binging again. If we could find a pattern, maybe Simon and his friends could—I don’t know—do something witchy to keep it from happening.”

“I think that’s what he’s working on right now from the other end of the hypothesis,” Vic said. “Without the lighthouse keepers, we’ll need to create a surrogate set of guardians who maintain the wardings. I’m wondering if there’s a Supernatural Coast Guard like there seems to be a paranormal version of everything else.”

“They probably don’t have a website,” Ross replied with a straight face.

“Ya think?” Vic snarked. “But Simon’s cousin, Cassidy, should be able to find out, and if she can’t, her hacker buddy, Teag, probably can.”

In the years since Vic had gotten clued in about the supernatural, he had come to appreciate a network of people with abilities who used their talents to protect the coast while staying well under the radar of regular law enforcement, the media, and most of the government. While it was great to know they existed if needed, figuring out how to contact secret organizations did pose a challenge.

Vic and Ross spent the rest of their shift calling on cold cases. They turned up several with similar stories—large stranger makes a bet, person vanishes without a trace. Vic plotted them on calendars, looking for any patterns.

“I shouldn’t be surprised, but there are clusters around the solstices and the equinoxes,” Vic noted. “The fall solstice disappearances extend to Halloween, which would be a time no one would pay attention to strangers or someone who looked a bit off.”

“Before the lighthouses were automated, with the records that survived, there’s no clear pattern, “Ross noted. “The creature could still slip one through now and again, but the wardings definitely cut down on the frequency. The people who disappeared back then, when the guardians were active, seem to be plain ol’ regular missing persons. Some of whom did eventually show up—dead or alive—later on.”

“We can’t track every person on the coast who’s gone missing in the last half century,” Vic said. “But let’s look for the same seasonal pattern of disappearances around the lighthouses in that time period. That should be reasonably easy to run a database search on.”

Once again, Ross ran the searches while Vic made more coffee and brought over a reasonably fresh, half-empty box of cookies.

“Even with narrowing the search, that’s still forty years of data,” Ross said. “I’m going to run one now and set the rest to run overnight. They’ll process faster because the network won’t have as much traffic, and they should be ready in the morning.”

“This makes me wonder—is there a Supernatural National Park Service that keeps tourists away from Bigfoot? A lot of those parks are on land that the native people have considered sacred or at least paranormally active for a very long time,” Vic added.

“Not our jurisdiction,” Ross said without looking up from his keyboard. “Don’t make this huge job any bigger!”

Vic laughed. “Okay. Do you want me to take a lighthouse? Would that help?”

“How about as I get one data set gathered, you go through it looking for clusters, and I’ll move to the next lighthouse? That way we won’t trip over each other.”

“No guarantees about that, bro, but fine with me.”

They worked past quitting time. Captain Hargrove came by and frowned. “Shouldn’t you boys be headed home?”

“Just closing up for the night. Following up on a lead,” Vic told him. “We think there may be a pattern to solve some old cold case disappearances, and we’re trying to close in on the perp.” He decided to hold off on the woo-woo angle for now. Hargrove supported Simon’s involvement, but Vic didn’t want to strain his boss’s patience or put him in a tough situation to defend with his own managers.

“I can’t authorize overtime, so you’re on your own until this becomes an active case,” Hargrove warned. “And I’m not responsible for angry spouses when you let dinner get cold. Otherwise, knock yourselves out.”

An hour later, Vic’s phone pinged, and he checked a new message from Simon. “He’s wrapping up at the library, and he’ll be home in half an hour. Want to find a stopping place for tonight and pick this up tomorrow?”

“Sure.” Ross blinked rapidly several times. “My eyes are going blurry. But I put a couple of data sets in to process, so that should be a quick read on whether we’re on to something.”

They walked out to their cars. “Thanks for believing all this crazy stuff,” Vic said.

Ross grinned. “Hey, it makes life a whole lot more interesting—especially when it also explains stuff we couldn’t figure out. I’m down with it.”

Vic waved as Ross drove away and walked toward his motorcycle. The hair prickled on the back of his neck, and he had a strong sense of being watched even though he didn’t see anyone around.

His right hand went to the gun on his hip, while his left touched the silver charms Simon insisted he wear. When nothing moved and no one stepped out of the shadows, Vic headed toward his bike, parked near a shoulder-high brick wall. Vic climbed on the Hyabusa just as a loud cracking noise drowned out its engine.

A deep crevice appeared in the wall and spread along its length. The bricks tumbled, denting hoods and breaking windshields of the cars parked close.

Vic zoomed out of the way just as a brick sailed past his head, landing with a thud on a car right behind him.

That brick didn’t fall. It was thrown.

Car alarms blared, and people poured from the headquarters building, swearing over their damaged cars and pointing at the strange damage to the wall.

Vic stuck around to answer questions and scan for clues, but he couldn’t provide any information beyond what he had seen. He didn’t know much about building walls, but nothing about what had happened seemed normal.

Does the troll know I’m Simon’s partner? Would it have a way of knowing we’re looking into the disappearances? Was that a warning—or an attack—meant for me because we’re asking questions? Or was it a way to get to Simon by hurting me?

Vic drove more cautiously than usual, alert for danger on his way home, but he only encountered normal traffic. He beat Simon to their blue bungalow, so he got the mail and started making a quick dinner. Vic thought about the fallen wall, still not sure what to make of it; he’d check the police report in the morning. Until he had a better idea of whether it was shoddy workmanship versus anything supernatural, he decided not to mention it to Simon.

Being comfortable enough to cook a good meal was one of the many things Vic loved about being married versus dating. He still wanted Simon to think well of him and tried to do nice things just because, but Vic no longer felt the need to make every dinner or evening out a memorable occasion.

When they were both tired, take-out or spaghetti was perfectly acceptable. And if they were exhausted after a day at work, crashing on the couch with a favorite show was better than a fussy date.

Tonight though, they had plans to check out the local Boo and Brew event on the boardwalk, even if they didn’t stay late. The seasonal programs were fun, and Simon felt an obligation as a local business owner to be supportive and visible.

We’re not complacent. We’re real. I never understood the difference before, but now I do. And I absolutely love what we have together.