Greg, Bestest and Sneakiest Fucker Out There

Dilworth Park was full of tourists. Happy families skated around the ice-rink. Couples sipped spiked hot cocoa under the gaze of woodland creature shaped shrubberies in the wintergarden. Architecture enthusiasts snapped photos of City Hall – at one fleeting time the tallest building on earth – and the statue of William Penn that sat on the clock tower looming up from it. Out-of-towners cowered in fear trying to cross the immense traffic circle that completely surrounded the property of Penn Square.

I waited for Octavius by the ice-rink, watching people shuffle in and out of the City Hall courtyard with my back against the rail.

Bastard was late. Figures he'd keep me waiting.

I wove the silk of Isla's stocking between my fingers. She left the pair at my home. Ditched them. Tossed them away without a care. They were nice stockings. Soft. Sheer. Speckled with cute little polka dots. Minimal blood stains. Quality stuff. You'd think she'd want these back. Call, at least, to negotiate their return.

They smelled like her. Delicate and intoxicating. Cigarettes and mint and funeral flowers. An itch sparked in the veins of my wrists – right where I was twirling the fabric around myself over and over again – but a faint one. The telltale beginnings of another blood craving burrowing in.

There were two holes at the top of one stocking. Perfect little pinpricks from when I dragged it off her leg with my teeth. Couldn't really repair that with nail polish, could you? That why she didn't want them back?

A passing woman noticed me weaving women's lingerie between my fingers and steered her two children as far away from me as possible.

Buried the stocking back into my pocket. Yeah, yeah, I know, I was being weird. What did I even think I was planning to do with those? Drop them off at Isla's place on my way home? Use that as an excuse just to see her? Nah. She probably didn't want them anyone. Or else she'd have called.

Pulled my phone out my pocket, suddenly struck with the urge to check my messages. Nothing. What was I expecting?

Sighing and bored, I slipped on a pair of gloves before tugging out one of those books from my backpack again. Hadn't ever intended to crack their spines. But Octavius, busy little bee that he was, kept me waiting a few nights before finally agreeing to meet me for the exchange.

Vamp couldn't help it if his curiosity got the better of him in that time.

I flipped through the book. The one bound in human flesh and inked in old, stale, rotten human blood. Much of it was written in another language. Some grotesquely scrawled parody of Latin by the looks of it, but the margins held English annotations. Also, by the looks of it, scribbled in human blood.

The ingredients needed for the spells within it made even my stomach turn. And I consumed human blood for sustenance! Teeth of the accursed. Eyes of the innocent. Blood. Guts. Graverobbing. Several smeared and vague references to weaving or tying with the practitioner. Many of the annotations – presumably the ones actually explaining how to compile these gruesome details together – had been burned or crossed out. No wonder Lily couldn't make heads or tails of this.

Isla had done all this? As a teenager?

There was chapter, er, section? About rites. Command of the Soulless Undead, yeah, that one was pretty clear by now. But there were more. Loads more. Listed out like trophies waiting to be awarded. One contained details on how to See Beyond the Veil (or Behind or Through or Within, somebody had scribbled in the translation notes). Another few pages mentioned Resurrection and Restoration. Cute (horrific) diagrams followed the Restoration passages, again, too smudged and damaged to be legible. But those drawings rung a bell somewhere in my brain. Bodies lain parallel on altars. One in a severe state of decay – exposed bones, twisted limbs, bloody flesh, gaping, eyeless holes in its skull – the other fresh and pristine. All the hair and skin intact. A third little person drawn in the middle, connecting them like a bridge.

On the next page, the roles of the decaying corpse and the healthy body were reversed. A note was penciled in the corner. Blood exchange transfusion, something, life force, something.

"You know the point of a clandestine meeting," grumbled Octavius as he sidled up beside me, scowling, "is to do it someplace secret."

He leaned on his elbows against the rail, watching a pair of giggling girls struggle like fawns to find their feet in their skates.

"Your community college Wizardry degree didn't teach you the nuance of hiding in plain sight?"

"I work under here."

"Didn't want to eat up too much time out of your busy schedule."

The wizard sighed. "Alright, this better be good, let me have it."

I dumped the evil book into the backpack to join the other three (they seemed to whisper ancient secrets and curses and wickedness in slurring, oily tones when bundled together) and zipped up the bag. Handed the whole thing over to Octavius. He raised a brow, and dutifully peaked inside.

"Weaselly fuck," he breathed.

He zipped the bag up quickly, casting cautious glances over his shoulders. The most nefarious thing I saw, beyond us two creepy crawlies exchanging contraband on government property, was child knock their sibling's hot cocoa out their mittens. Kid sobbed as chocolate and marshmallows splattered the icy pavement.

"Where'd you find these?"

I shrugged. A lump formed in my throat.

Octavius took my silence for smugness.

"Okay, fine, you want to hear it? You're the bestest and sneakiest fucker out there. We'd've never recovered these without your superior skills as an investigator and a vampire, blah blah blah, the usual jawn. Now tell me."

"It's not that I—" pinched my nose. Even here, her cursed pushed on my will. Leave her name out of it. No trace. The mere thought of necromancy and the barista and books and sweet fucking hell I saw a zombie and Isla was met with the sensation of a sock stuffed down my gullet. A garbled mess of chokes and nonsensical noises foamed out from around my tongue, tasting of iron and wine.

I wiped the sloppy mess of mushy and unformed words from the corner of my mouth with the back of my hand.

Cleared my throat.

"Let's just say I found your lost, ah, dog. Stole the neighbor's newspaper. Chased them right down the street. Tore a hole right ... through... the... dog walker fanging hell." I ground out.

Octavius cocked a brow. "'Aight. Whatever the fuck that means."

I turned around to face the rink beside him. And seized up. She was there. In her leopard print coat. Twirling and laughing on the ice. Spraying some other fella with frost. He took her hand. spun her around.

The squeezing weight around my ribs loosened.

It wasn't her. Just some other blonde wearing a similar coat. Her hair a touch longer and shade darker. The coat newer. Zipped all the way up to her chin. She didn't even have a mole.

"It's complicated," I said.

"You know what, never mind, best if I don't know," after slinging the pack over one shoulder, Octavius dug into his pockets. "Plausible deniability and all that."

I nodded. "Some real nasty specials in there. What's the punishment for doing all that these days?"

Isla's lament was wicked, but not wrong. The Magistrate had some well-polished broomsticks up their asses about containing unregistered undead outbreaks. Necromancy was a slippery slope, or so I'd heard. It only takes one sloppily revived sod to start a whole pandemic of mindless cannibal corpses shuffling about. It's happened. Officially, only once or twice, but I suspected the Magistrate and all their sisterlike counterparts across the globe kept smaller incidents well under wraps. Or rather, buried in six feet of cement on triply consecrated earth.

"Capital," he said. Isla's blood turned to lead in my veins. Heavy and toxic. "Is my guess."

Tried to steady my jittery lungs. You know, just to keep passing as human. Blending in with the clouds of breath hovering all around me.

Octavius didn't seem to notice. He was fiddling with his knitting needles, a bundle of hot pink yarn hanging over the edge of the ice-rink.

"Hey, opinion," he held up his creation. Looked like a baby bootie. "This a good color? For a baby gift. I usually see this shit in pastels."

"It's very pink," I said.

"Yeah, the mom likes bright colors. They're having their first girl."

I sighed. The color wasn't just bright, it was garish. "Thought she was doing a more gender-neutral thing for this sho—sprinkle."

Octavius stared at his handywork for a moment. "Fuck."

He sunk the bootie and knitting needles back into his pockets.

Gust of wind dragged itself as the stone of City Hall, howling. The cold bit at my cheek. Octavius cupped one hand around the other and unraveled a thread from his glove. Rolled it into a knot between his fingers. Another of those green, ethereal cigarettes of his came to life. He brought it to his lips pinched between his thumb and forefinger. Isla preferred to hold hers between her middle and index. Waved it around like a magic wand. Stubbed it out in a werewolf's eye socket.

Fang this. I had one more errand to run tonight, and didn't feel like getting trapped into helping a wizard pick out baby bottles and onesies.

I pushed myself of the barrier and clapped Octavius on the back. "Consider my favor returned, pal."

"Hey, wait, 'fore you go. I got a missing person's report you might be interested in."

I tensed. Every muscle tightened and throbbed. Rubbed a hand against the back of my stiff neck. Didn't turn to face Octavius. Didn't want to give anything a way. Missing person? Had Lily made it into the blood donor registry after all? Dmitri said he had been meaning to get around to that paperwork. Had the coot finally gone and done it after I dropped his case? Fangs.

"Oh yeah?

"Get this, a Pack member," Octavius grunted around his cigarette. "So-and-so Cabroni, I don't remember. Wild timing."

"Magistrate so paid off the mob has you hunting their strays now?"

"Nah, was family worried. Something about a PI not returning calls."

I swallowed that lump charging up my throat.

"Taking a page out of your book. No more messing with politics."

"Sure," said Octavius. Then, taking a page out of my book, he patted me on the shoulder as he walked past. "Have a good night, man. Get some rest."

I grumbled a 'you too' I'm sure he didn't hear. The wizard was already across the courtyard, pulling his duster tight around himself, and shuffling down a decommissioned subway entrance. None of the humans in his proximity seemed to notice to man phasing straight through the bespelled gate and vanishing down the darkened stairwell into the earth on the other side.

Speak Philadelphian: City Hall – Philadelphia's seat of municipal government was constructed of brick, white marble, and limestone, in the late 1880s. A statue of city founder William Penn erected at the top of the building's clock tower waves his hand kindly from his hip at the people below (or, depending on the angle you look from, he's waving a very different, very excited, piece of anatomy). A gentlemen's agreement forbade any structure from rising above Billy's hat, keeping City Hall the tallest structure in the city until 1986. The construction of taller, modern skyscrapers angered old Bill's ghost, and thrust a curse upon Philly's sports teams, banning them from winning any championships. The curse was lifted in 2007, when a smaller Penn statue was affixed atop the Comcast Center, the then highest tower in the city. Phillies won the World Series the following year. Just sayin'.