6

VIC

“ I ’d like Halloween much better without the Devil’s Night angle.” Ross settled into his chair after getting a fresh cup of coffee.

“We don’t get the brunt of it like the uniforms do,” Vic reminded him.

“Unless they get overwhelmed and we get dragooned.”

“Ooh, fancy word! Are you watching one of those historical series, or is that a word-a-day calendar thing?”

Ross flipped him the bird. “As you can see, I am equally fluent in sign language.”

As homicide detectives, Vic and Ross got pulled into crowd control when the rest of the precinct was overwhelmed. Since it usually only happened a few times a year during large events, Vic didn’t mind too much, especially since it came with overtime.

On the other hand, dealing with rowdy tourists involved everything Vic didn’t miss about being a beat cop.

“I think Cap sends us in to keep us grateful for detective jobs,” Ross said.

“You might be right, although we’re not exactly rays of sunshine.”

“We work homicide , Vic. No one really expects that.”

“How come the rowdy tourists get a misspent youth? We didn’t,” Vic mused. Growing up in a family of cops meant either his parents or his older brothers kept close track of him. Getting out of line wasn’t an option.

“I grew up in a tiny town. Everyone knew my parents. If I ever dared to do anything, word would have gotten home before I did, and there’d have been a reckoning,” Ross replied.

Thanks to good crowd management, the Halloween revelers didn’t get too out of hand. Drunk and disorderly arrests were plentiful, along with some minor vandalism, loitering, and littering citations. Pickpockets and petty theft went along with people in big crowds being tipsy. A very visible police presence helped to discourage altercations, and bar bouncers shut down arguments before they became brawls.

All of which was well and good, but being the sober person at the party was never a fun role.

“Is Simon planning to do his thing again this year?” Ross asked with a wave of his hand to indicate that Vic would understand what he meant.

“You mean the usual wardings, protections, raising of protective spirits, and witchy, Voudon and Hoodoo spells to keep the dark energies at bay? Yes. I hate to think what October would be like without them.” Vic’s initial skepticism had given way to a deep and sincere appreciation of the role Myrtle Beach’s supernatural protectors played in quietly helping to keep the peace and avert harm.

“You and me both,” Ross replied.

Vic’s computer pinged, and he downloaded the file that arrived.

“What’s that?”

“A hunch. I know we went through all the missing person reports, and it looks like the troll is abiding by his truce. But my cop radar doesn’t believe it. If we haven’t found a paper trail, maybe the troll is smart enough to pick people who won’t be noticed.”

“I think you’re probably right, but I’m not sure how we prove it,” Ross said.

“I’m working on that part. I figured I’d start with the usual caseworkers, shelter staff, night shift folks. Ask who hasn’t been around in a while, and figure out who just moved on and who disappeared.”

“That’s a thin line with the folks at rock bottom,” Ross said. “So many of them are totally disconnected—no family, no friends, no attachments. We usually only know something went wrong when we find a body. But without that?—”

“Yeah, I know. Makes the perfect crime. The troll is ancient, so he knows where to look for easy food and not get caught. Then again, maybe he prefers healthier stock.”

“What are you hoping to find?” Russ settled in with a fresh tablet and pen.

“Honestly? I’m not sure. Maybe it’s a dead end. But I’ve got a hunch the troll is too hungry to just stick to his bargain, especially if he can cheat. That way he gets one assured meal without angry people hunting him, and there’s nothing stopping him from snatching extras that won’t be missed.”

“Even if we put a list together of suspected missing persons, we can’t prove the troll did it.”

“No,” Vic admitted. “But if he’s taking people, then we aren’t breaking the truce to go after him. The same way we’d go after a serial killer targeting the same group.”

“Does this have something to do with rules of magic?”

“I guess it does. According to Simon, the real thing is different from most of what’s on TV. There are rules of engagement and etiquette that are taken very seriously. Breaking them can cause serious penalties.”

“We’re talking about a troll. Super old and very powerful. Why would he care?” Ross sounded skeptical but interested.

“He made a pact to keep from being hunted. If he breaks the bargain, all bets are off.”

“Could Simon and his friends kill the troll?” Ross looked intrigued.

“I hope we don’t have to find out. But if he’s right about the lighthouse keepers being guardians and having something to do with protecting the Grand Strand, then maybe there’s more than one way to limit the damage the troll can do,” Vic said.

“Here’s how I understand it—although Simon might snicker at my translation,” Vic continued. “When the lighthouse keepers started their protections, it put limitations on the troll, even if it didn’t kill him. That kept him from overfeeding. From something Simon found out, he can’t make people vanish over and over without taking a break in between to recharge, which works in our favor. Except we don’t know for sure how long he takes to power back up or when the timer started over again. Many decades later, the motorcycle club offered him guaranteed meals without repercussions, and whether in good faith or bad, the troll took the deal—not long after the lighthouses became automated.”

“Maybe he always planned to cheat. Or he waited to make sure that the keepers—guardians—were really gone before he started to break the deal. If he’s really ancient, perhaps in the past he had a different deal to clean up the vagrants, and as long as he took the people no one missed, the hunters didn’t intervene.”

“Harsh.”

“But possible,” Vic argued, and Ross shrugged in acknowledgment.

A couple of hours working their contacts yielded a list of several dozen possible disappearances going back a few years.

“None of them were on the missing persons list we started with,” Vic noted when he and Ross finished their calls. “Their habits weren’t regular enough for anyone to be sure they hadn’t just gone off on their own accord—wherever off might be.”

Police work involved seeing the good, the bad, and the ugly of human nature—and the places where community and government systems failed. Non-profits did the best they could with the resources they had, but there was always the need for more. Too often, bad people—or creatures—exploited those gaps, knowing it would be easy to avoid detection.

“I don’t know whether to be furious or depressed,” Ross confessed. “I wish the community could do better. But I don’t know how to fix the problems.”

“Yeah. Same. Which means we just tackle the little corner that we can affect and take it as a win.” Making peace with a broken system was a survival skill cops learned early. Not being able to ignore the consequences drove plenty of them to drink.

“How do you think this is going to play out?” Ross asked. “If we can’t kill the troll, and he won’t keep the bargain, does he just keep taking people?”

“From everything Simon’s found, during the years that the lighthouse keepers were guardians and worked their wardings, it reined in the troll. That’s what we’re hoping to find out more about tomorrow, visiting the sites,” Vic said.

The coffee maker beeped, and Ross got up to refill their cups. He snagged them both a couple of cookies from a tray before coming back.

“But there aren’t lighthouse keepers anymore,” Ross pointed out.

“I don’t think that running the lighthouse is the main point or that automating the light matters,” Vic replied. “Simon’s still figuring it out, so I could be wrong, but I think it’s having someone at those places with strong energy keeping the protections fresh that counts. The places of power are ancient, but it’s pretty common, I guess, for people to pick up on that subliminally and build a church, a shrine, or some sort of protection on the site.”

“Which came first—the lighthouse or the protections?”

Vic shrugged. “There might have been other wardings in place before the lighthouses that have been forgotten. After all, when they were built people didn’t think they’d ever be automated. The modern world is always changing. That can make it rough to deal with an ancient threat that stays the same.”

Ross seemed to consider his next question for a moment before speaking. “How come it took magic to work the wardings instead of any of the religious organizations?”

For all its reputation as a place for fun and frolic, the state had deep and active religious ties, making their absence notable.

“We don’t know for sure that they haven’t been involved,” Vic pointed out. “Simon talked with Father Anne, and she’s working through her channels. All it takes is for an elderly priest to die and not have a successor, and then there’s no one to pick up the slack. It would have been easy back in the day to pass a blessing ritual off as asking for protection for the coast in the locations where the lighthouses were later built.”

“Okay. Good point. I hope you’re right.” Ross ran a hand back through his hair and munched a cookie. “I need a break. Totally changing the subject here—at least for a little bit. How’s married life working for you?” Ross had been part of Simon and Vic’s wedding party and an enthusiastic supporter of their marriage.

“It’s not as big of a shift as I expected,” Vic confessed. “Maybe it was back in the day when people didn’t live together. I already knew that he squeezes the toothpaste tube in the middle and snores when he has a bad cold.”

Ross laughed. “Yes, but how about folding towels? Both edges turned inside, or a z-fold? It’s the little things that matter.”

“Whoever’s turn it is to do the laundry gets to pick.” Vic pulled a granola bar from his lunch bag, saving the cookie for afterward. “Don’t forget, we both lived on our own for years, so we already learned how to keep body and soul together. And since we’re both guys, there aren’t expectations about whose job it is to do one thing or another.”

“I never thought about that,” Ross admitted. “Sheila and I figured we were being very progressive making up our own agreements about who did what. And for a lot of stuff, we just take turns. Or whoever is best at it gets stuck with the chore. We learned the hard way that beats making the person who’s all thumbs do something they aren’t good at.”

“Did anything surprise you about being married?” Vic washed down a bite of his bar with coffee.

“At first? How many little things you never think to talk about because you assume everyone does them the way you do, and they don’t,” Ross said. “What’s familiar isn’t always what works best. Later on—how good it is when you settle into a rhythm and work together without even thinking about it.”

Vic smiled. “Yeah, I like creating our own routines. They might not suit everyone, but they work for us. It’s just seamless. Maybe that’s part of how you know you got the right one.”

Ross rolled his eyes. “As if any idiot couldn’t see that both of you besotted fools weren’t over the moon for each other.”

“Were we that obvious?”

“Ask Cap. Hell, ask the precinct. There was even a betting pool on how long it would take for the two of you to wise up and make it official.”

“Seriously?” Vic wasn’t sure whether to be horrified or a little flattered.

“It was clear as day to everyone except you two.”

They chatted about vacations and the holidays as they finished lunch, and Vic got up to stretch. He dialed Simon, who answered right away.

“Hey, what’s up?” Simon asked.

“I think the troll is breaking the truce,” Vic told him. Simon remained silent. “Uh, say something?”

“I was going to call you and say the same thing,” Simon replied. “Fill me in.”

Vic gave him the results from the research he and Ross had done. When he finished, Simon shared what he had learned from Ricky.

“You told me once that supernatural creatures can be picky about the details of agreements,” Vic said. “Does that apply to trolls?”

“That’s one of the things I’ve asked Father Anne to look into,” Simon replied. “No one does fine print like the fay and the old ones. But even if the troll thinks it found a loophole, that might not automatically work in its favor. And if it has broken the agreement, restoring the lighthouse protections to bind it would be completely legit.”

“Are there supernatural lawyers? Because this sounds like stuff we go to court over,” Vic asked.

“There are tribunals and barristers—everything tends to have old-fashioned terms,” Simon replied. “The good news is that containment in the face of clear harm is a recognized cause to take action, so we don’t need permission. That’s how monster hunters operate without getting bogged down in the system.”

In normal life, Vic wasn’t a fan of shoot first, ask questions later. But since joining forces with Simon, he had gained an appreciation for the expediency of frontier justice, at least when it came to the supernatural.

“You know what Ross and I found is probably not the whole picture, right? Without bodies, there’s no way to prove that the person isn’t still out there somewhere, even though that’s highly unlikely. No bones, no DNA,” Vic pointed out. “The kinds of places these folks holed up would be perfect for the troll to poof them and not be seen. Hell, even if someone did see them disappear, they either wouldn’t tell anyone, wouldn’t believe what they saw, or wouldn’t be believed even if they did say something.”

“I think we’ve figured out how the troll has co-existed for so long,” Simon replied. “As long as he picked victims that the people in charge either didn’t value or wanted rid of, the troll didn’t get hunted…even without the lighthouse wardings.”

“What changed?” Vic asked, although he had a few suspicions.

“Viewpoints. Values. More enlightened approaches became mainstream right about the time the lighthouse wardings weakened. Mental health programs, homeless shelters, intervention services—trying to save people and help them get back on their feet instead of writing them off. That meant a shift from seeing the troll as doing the dirty work of cleaning up problems to viewing it as a monster preying on the most vulnerable people,” Simon replied.

“I never thought monsters paid attention to public opinion,” Vic replied. He had put the call on speakerphone, and Ross chuckled at his comment.

“Actually, sentient monsters have to pay a lot of attention to the culture around them,” Simon said. “Remember all the vampire TV shows where the vamp looks like everyone else, except for not going out during the day? He doesn’t swan around in a cape looking like Dracula. Too obvious.”

Now that Vic thought about it, all the paranormal shows he had seen lately had vampires, werewolves, and other creatures hiding in plain sight by finding creative ways to blend in. From the people with supernatural abilities Vic had met through Simon, he knew such things were more than just the invention of television scriptwriters.

“And trolls are shapeshifters. So he can look like anyone and change appearance,” Simon reminded him. “Keep that in mind. I’m pretty sure the troll knows we’re paying attention to him.” He told Vic about spotting the tall man just before the traffic signals fell.

“I’m glad you’re safe,” Vic replied. Ross’s eyes had gone wide at the story.

“Yeah, me too.”

“Tough to tell if we’re being stalked if the troll can change how he looks,” Vic observed. “I wonder if the tall man is his main form. Maybe he can’t do as much if he’s shifted.”

“I’ll ask Father Anne. That’s a good point,” Simon replied.

“Like that’s not creepy as fuck,” Ross muttered.

“Just—be careful,” Vic told Simon. “Don’t take any crazy chances.”

“Same for you,” Simon told him. “See you at home.”

The cop on desk duty leaned in their doorway. “Hey guys—there’s a man here to see you. Are you expecting anyone?”

Vic and Ross exchanged a look. “No, but did he say why he came?”

“He said he was on the force during the gang wars and heard someone was looking into them,” the desk cop replied.

“That was over forty years ago,” Ross said.

“He’s up in years. Should I send him back?”

“Sure,” Vic said. “Thank you.” The cop returned to the front desk as Vic looked at Ross. “This should be interesting.”

Several minutes later the cop escorted an elderly man back to their office.

“I know the way,” the man grumbled. “Haven’t forgotten everything yet.”

“No offense intended, sir,” the much younger officer replied, hiding a smile. “Here you are.”

The officer looked at Vic and Ross. “This is Mr. Caldwell Henshaw. Mr. Henshaw, Homicide Detectives Vic D’Amato and Ross Hamilton.”

“Are you two the ones looking at the gang wars?” the old cop’s voice was strong and steady despite his age. He was slight and stooped, but Vic bet from the width of the man’s shoulders that he had been a much larger person in his youth.

“Yes, sir.” Vic hurried to set out a chair for their guest. “Have a seat, please. How can we help you?”

“Can I get you a cup of coffee?” Ross asked.

The man gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “Thanks, but that just tears up my stomach these days. Guess I overdid it back then.” He gratefully accepted a bottle of water and settled into his chair.

“Now, why in the Sam Hill does anyone care about those old fights?” Henshaw demanded after he had taken a swig of water.

Vic and Ross shared a glance. He didn’t want to blurt out that they thought a supernatural creature was up to no good, but Vic hadn’t come up with a plausible cover story.

“We think that there are certain…interests…who might benefit from the unrest,” Vic said, trying to stick as close to the truth as possible. “Play both sides against the middle.”

“Ain’t there always?” Henshaw said with a sigh. “God, the more things change, the more they stay the same. I thought those cycle gangs got tamed down to be fan clubs where a bunch of desk jockeys dress up and play tough guy.”

Vic tried not to snicker since Henshaw’s characterization rang true. “I guess that’s better for everyone than the alternative. From what I’ve heard, Myrtle Beach got more family-oriented too, over the years.”

“Oh, it’s less exciting than it used to be, that’s for sure. Can’t say that’s a bad thing. You boys ever go up to Virginia Beach in your wild days?” Henshaw asked.

Ross raised an eyebrow. “I think I know what you mean. Not exactly the same atmosphere.”

Virginia Beach’s proximity to several military bases led to a tension between family-friendly entertainment and meeting the interests of horny young men looking for a good time between deployments. While the area had made strides in expanding its appeal to a more general audience, there were still plenty of bars and strip clubs to cater to off-duty interests.

“I’ve heard,” Vic replied. The town of Virginia Beach did its best to be gay friendly, but Vic didn’t go looking for trouble, and military bars were trouble with a capital T.

“Myrtle was rough and ready back in the day until the town council teamed up with some bigwig real estate developers to create what’s here now,” Henshaw said. “Fancy hotels, entertainment venues, concert pavilions, and Ocean Boulevard. It’s definitely an improvement over the Wild West.”

“So you were on the force during the gang wars?” Ross asked.

“Yep. A whole lot younger than I am today. Bunch of the cycle clubs would get liquored up and pick fights, and then their friends would join in. Next thing you knew, a bunch of them were brawling. Mostly fists, but now and again there would be pipes, chains, brass knuckles, and shots fired. People ended up hurt. There were always several deaths—and more than a few people went missing when the fights were over.”

“How do you mean, missing?” Vic asked.

“Just up and disappeared,” Henshaw said. “Maybe it’s not odd that folks with a drifter lifestyle pick up and leave, but people who earned a place in a club usually stuck around, and in their own rough and tumble way, the members looked out for each other.”

“Who reported the missing members?” Ross asked.

“See, that’s what always struck me funny because it was someone high up in the clubs that would do it. They’d walk in with a couple of their lieutenants and belly up to the desk and file a missing person report—or three. The day before they’d been swinging punches at each other, and then everything was back to normal.”

“Did the cops take the reports seriously?”

Henshaw see-sawed his hand. “Kinda. We didn’t think they were pulling our leg, but we weren’t inclined to do extra favors, if you know what I mean.”

“What made the club bosses think someone had gone missing as opposed to just taking off on their own?” Ross leaned forward, intrigued.

“Because the bosses were worried. These clubs, they were families. Fucked up, dysfunctional-as-all-hell families, but maybe the best any of their people ever had. They took care of each other, even if they threw punches. And when those bosses came in to file a report, asking us for help when they’d rather gnaw off an arm, I figured they were really worried.”

“Did the cops ever find the missing people?” Vic asked.

“Not that I heard.”

“Was there anything the missing people had in common?” Ross probed. “Besides being members of the bike clubs?”

Henshaw thought for a moment. “I got the feeling, at the time, that the missing guys were at the bottom of the club’s pecking order. They were members, but sort of like the little brother the big kids let hang around. They weren’t the muscle guys or the lieutenants or the organizers. They were foot soldiers, glad to have a place to belong.

“Sometimes they were younger, or maybe not as bright, or just clueless. The rest of the club kept an eye on them. So they were upset when the guys went missing, and I think if they ever caught who took them heads would have rolled,” Henshaw said.

“There were accusations made, but nothing ever got proved,” he continued. “Didn’t look like a robbery—the people left all their things behind—including their bikes. Certainly wasn’t for ransom. No one said that there were drugs or theft involved. Somebody just turned around and said, ‘Where’s Fred?’ and no one knew.”

“People talk,” Vic replied. “There are always theories. Did you hear any of the rumors?”

Henshaw shrugged. “This was the eighties. People had theories about everything. UFOs. Bigfoot. The CIA. Some of them were smoking crazy stuff.”

“We’re pretty open-minded,” Ross said. “What did they say about the missing motorcyclists?”

“Well, see, it wasn’t just the bikers,” Henshaw said. “Back then, Myrtle Beach had a pretty high missing person count. Some got found, others didn’t. From what got reported—and that’s not going to be everyone who goes missing—I’d have said about eighty to ninety percent eventually got accounted for.”

Vic knew that lined up with the national average, allowing for the fact that not all people who went missing were reported or tracked—or wanted to be found.

“But the ones we couldn’t find haunted me,” Henshaw went on. “I couldn’t figure out why them and not others. We didn’t find blood or bodies. In most cases, they left all their belongings behind. It was like someone just waved a wand, and poof, they were gone. Sometimes, I still get dreams about that.”

“What’s your theory? I promise that no matter how wild, we won’t laugh,” Vic told him.

“Okay, here goes. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Ever see one of those sci-fi shows where someone steps into a rift between our world and somewhere else? I don’t know what it would take to make that happen—secret government technology, some sort of Russian cyber tech, alien abduction, or real magic—but I think that something unnatural happened to those people.”

Henshaw waited for a reaction, and Vic could see the man was braced for ridicule. When they didn’t react, he looked from one to the other. “That’s it? You don’t think I’m nuts?”

Ross shook his head. “Nope. We’re just trying to figure out how to fix it.”

“I’m not the only one who thought there was something spooky going on,” Henshaw said. “There was a lady who claimed to be a witch, hung around with some of the bikers. For a while there, she did a big business in spirit bells. Then the gang wars and the disappearances stopped. Damnedest thing.”

Ross and Vic exchanged a look. Because of the bargain—which the troll is breaking.

“Was there anything special about the spirit bells the witch made?” Vic asked.

The old man dug into his pocket and pulled out a small steel bell about as wide around as his thumb. It was carved with runes and sigils, some of which Vic recognized from Simon’s work and made a pleasant ringing sound.

“I used to ride back in the day. Started out as a motorcycle cop. When I retired, the former head of the club gave me this, said I’d done right by his folks, and wished me well. I didn’t ride much after that, but I always hung onto it.”

He handed the bell to Vic, who wondered what Simon would make of it.

“I don’t know the name of the witch—she might not even be around anymore. But I thought the bell brought me good luck. Now I’m giving it to you, hoping you can figure out how to stop the disappearances once and for all.” He grinned and winked.

“Thank you.” Vic held the bell in his cupped hand. He felt certain its magic and protections were real. “But don’t you still need this?”

“I got it inked a long time ago, just in case.” Henshaw pulled up his sleeve to display a perfect replica of both sides of the bell. “This way, I can’t lose it.” He pushed out of his chair to stand. “Hope you boys can finish what we started.”

“We plan to do our best,” Ross vowed.

Vic insisted on walking Henshaw to his car, unsurprised that the retired cop had parked in the back, the employee lot. Henshaw gave him a look. “You’re not just being nice to an old man. What do you think is out here?”

“We think there’s an ancient creature that was held at bay for a very long time by protections that have faded, and it’s behind the disappearances. Friends of ours are trying to figure out how to rein it in again.”

“I’m guessing that’s off the books, unless the police department got a whole lot more exciting since my day,” Henshaw said with a knowing look.

“Definitely off the books,” Vic replied. “Although our captain knows and supports it.”

“Good. There were always strange things that couldn’t quite be explained. Even back in my day, there were some guys who took care of that stuff. The rest of us didn’t want to know the details, but we were glad they were around.” Henshaw gave him a jaunty salute before getting into his Toyota sedan and driving away.

Vic watched the taillights recede and shivered even though the night was warm. He turned in a slow circle, feeling like he was being watched. Half a block away, in the darkness, just outside the streetlight’s glow, he spotted a tall figure. It was too far to see features, but Vic had the sense the person was staring at him, and it sent a chill down his spine.

He blinked and the man was gone. When Vic came back inside, he heard shouting and swearing. He ran toward the front desk, where he saw several uniformed cops wrestling three clearly inebriated men toward the holding cells.

“Book them on drunk and disorderly,” the senior officer said. “We’ll get their details when they sober up.”

“I’m telling you, Don just disappeared!” one of the drunks shouted. “Like in the movies. Gone.” He was a wild-looking man in his thirties with a mane of reddish hair, a bushy beard, and he smelled like beer.

“Can you pull him into an interrogation room?” Vic asked the desk cop. “I need to talk to him.”

“He’s pretty trashed.”

“Believe it or not, he’s making sense to me, and I don’t want him to change his story. I’ll have Ross with me. You can run the cameras.”

The cop at the desk gave him a dubious look, but did as Vic requested.

“Have a seat,” Vic told the drunk, who was handcuffed to the table. “I want to hear about the person who disappeared.”

The man suddenly seemed to realize his story could be taken the wrong way. “I didn’t do nothin’,” he protested. “I swear to god, I didn’t make it happen.”

Vic held up both hands, palms out, in a gesture of peace. “I believe you. I just want to hear about what you saw. Don’t add anything or take anything away. But first, I need to read you your rights.”

Once Vic finished with the Miranda warning, he sat across from the drunk. Ross hung out in a corner of the room where he could help if the man got agitated.

“What’s your name?”

“Jay.”

“Alright, Jay. Who disappeared?”

“My buddy, Don Cutter.”

“Can you tell me what Don was doing right before he disappeared?” Vic asked.

Jay looked around nervously. “Am I in trouble?”

“You were brought in for being drunk in public. You aren’t in trouble about Don.”

“Okay. Look, Don and me, we’ve been friends for a long, long time. We party together a lot, look out for each other. Know what I mean?” Jay made sense even though his voice had a blur of beer to it.

“We walked outside the club to get some air. We were hanging around the back steps, and Don gets a phone call. He put up a finger to tell me to stick around and walked a few steps away. I’m watching him talk on his phone, and then—poof. He just disappears.”

“When you say he disappeared—” Vic started.

“I mean he fuckin’ disappeared!” Jay roared. “He was standing there, talking on his phone, and then—beam me up, Scotty—he’s gone. I grabbed Jeremy and we walked all around the lot. I thought he might be pranking me, but that wasn’t really his style. His phone was right there on the ground, broke the screen when he dropped it. The call was still live. He wouldn’t have done that for a joke. You know what phones cost?”

“So you and your friend looked outside—could he have slipped past and gone back into the club?” Vic asked.

Jay ran his free hand through his long, tangled hair. “We looked. Asked everyone. Got the DJ to make an announcement. No one saw him again.”

“Did he manage to go home on his own?” Vic didn’t believe Don left voluntarily, but he had to explore the options.

“That’s where Jeremy and I went next, but he wasn’t at his place. We called our friends. No luck.”

“Was Don with you all night up to that point? Was he hanging around anyone you didn’t know?” Vic asked.

“He was with us. When he went to get a beer, he talked to the bartender and a couple of guys who were at the bar, and then he came back to our gang,” Jay replied.

“Was Don going through a rough time?” Vic pressed.

“His mom was real sick, and he just broke up with his girlfriend,” Jay said. “We were all trying to cheer him up.”

“The guys at the bar, were they still there after Don wasn’t?”

Jay thought for a moment. “I wasn’t paying them a whole lot of attention, but I think that one of them wasn’t around at the end, the tall one. I was focused on finding Don.”

“Can you state for the record Don’s name, phone number, and address? We’ll send a team to check his apartment,” Vic requested. Jay complied, and Vic signaled for the recording to stop.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” Vic said. “I hope he turns up okay.” Vic felt certain that the troll had taken Don. He felt sorry for Jay, who looked truly miserable.

“Come on, let’s get you settled so you can sleep it off.” Ross walked Jay to his cell.

Vic put in a good word for him on account of his cooperation.

If Simon’s theory is right about how often the troll can make someone disappear, this resets the counter to one. Useful to know.

“I’ll get Simon to stop by and examine the bell tomorrow,” Vic said when he and Ross returned to their office to wrap up for the night. “I’d be surprised if he didn’t have some ideas about the witch who made the bell. If she’s not still around, she might have a successor.”

“Do you think it provided that much protection?”

Vic shrugged. “Maybe. Sometimes little things pack a big punch.” They walked out to the parking lot, and he was relieved to catch a glimpse of the protective amulet he had given Ross at the neckline of his shirt.

“Don’t forget, I’m off tomorrow. Going to check out lighthouses with Simon to see if we can link his end of the legends and ours.”

“Yeah, yeah. Hard day of work cruising up the coast,” Ross teased. He grew serious. “Hope you can find something useful. It sounds like whatever pact was in place is gone.”

Vic clapped him on the shoulder. “That’s the goal. Call me if you need me. And stay clear of the troll.”