Friday. 5:18 PM

Mariah looked between me, Ben, and the open box. Her face was bright red with what I assumed was anger, but at least for the moment, I had her at a loss.

Finally, her shoulders slumped and she shook her head. “Shit. How much is this going to cost me?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Cost you?”

She grumbled a little more. “Are you too good for that?”

Tapping a hand to my head, I tried to figure out what she meant. “Good for—I don’t follow.”

“She’s asking if you’ll take a bribe to keep from writing about this,” Ben supplied.

Looking at him, Mariah rolled her eyes. “Thanks, buddy.”

I blinked. “Oh, no. That’s not what this is about.” Under normal circumstances, this would have been an enormous scoop, but at the moment I had bigger fish to fry. Still, if she’d brought the idea up, I could work with it. “Okay. I’ll make you a deal.”

She eyed me, warily. “A deal?”

“You answer all the questions I can think of relating to Andrea Hills, and I promise not to print anything about your business ethics. You’ll be an anonymous source.” I felt a twinge of guilt for exploiting my advantage over her, but only a twinge. I was offering her something of significant value—a promise not to run a story about what she was doing—and what I was asking in return wouldn’t be costly for her. My hide was on the line, and I had to take the advantages I could get.

“How do I know I can trust you?”

That was easy. “I never reveal a source.”

She was still suspicious. I couldn’t really blame her. Mariah looked at Ben, then back at me, and said, “He stays outside. You don’t record or write down any of this.”

“Deal.”

We went down to her office, and Ben waited out by the barrels while Mariah and I took seats across from each other at her desk.

“You went through my computer,” she noted.

“Sorry.” I rubbed at the back of my neck, feeling a little guilty. I almost asked if I could record our conversation, but she’d already established I couldn’t. My usual pattern of questions didn’t apply here, and I had to wing it. “So… first question. Why are you ordering potions from out of state?”

“You saw my brewing rig. It’s totalled. I can’t make anything.” Mariah crossed her arms. “You could have figured that out for yourself.”

“I could have guessed, but that confirms it.” I nodded. “I guess we should start with the spill. What happened?”

Glowering, she looked out at the distillery floor. “I made a rookie mistake. Mixed up a reagent, and when I left it to bubble till sunrise, it ate through a cauldron and wrecked the whole rig. Fifty thousand large, down the drain because I mislabeled my ingredients.”

I could sympathize with that frustration. “Why didn’t you replace it?”

“Do you have fifty thousand dollars lying around?” she asked. “Because I don’t. I blew through my savings getting this place put together the first time, I couldn’t afford to do it again.”

Fair point. “Why not tell Andrea, then? She thought it was her fault.”

She fumed, slouched in her chair, arms crossed over her chest. “Put it together, paper boy.”

I thought about it. “You’ve still been selling potions,” I said, thinking aloud. “But you’ve been saying they’re your own, when you’ve really been ordering them from a supplier. If the word got out, your business would take a huge hit. You didn’t think you could trust Andrea to keep your secret, so you just cut her out entirely.”

“No, dumbass,” she rolled her eyes. “I’d trust Andrea with my life.”

“Then why—”

“I didn’t want her to think less of me.” Mariah threw up her hands. “Did you think I’m proud of this? Barely breaking even hawking someone else’s brews? Hardly. But I can’t do anything about it. But Andrea… I’m such an idiot. I should have said something to her.”

“Okay.” I processed that. “What about Garret?”

“Oh, I don’t trust him to keep my secret.” Mariah shrugged casually, then her eyes widened and she tensed. “Wait, did he get hurt too?”

“His workshop got trashed, but he and Lydia are fine. That’s why I thought of you, actually; since he and Andrea were both targeted by someone, we were trying to think of things that they had in common.” I shrugged, pulling my jacket closer. “Okay, one more question. What does this do?”

I took the potion out of my pocket, holding it up.

“You stole that?” she asked, raising her eyebrows. “Are you kidding—”

“Didn’t steal, I wasn’t going to leave with it once I realized I didn’t need it as evidence,” I said. “But what does it do?”

“Cologne. Drink it, focus on what you want to smell like. Sandalwood, daisies, a coffee shop, whatever. There’s enough in there to last about six hours.”

I eyed the pint, skeptically. “How much?”

“Forty bucks.”

I didn’t really have money to spare, but I was going to need all the advantages I could get moving forward. A little magic, any magic, was good to have in my corner. “Do you have a truth serum on hand?”

She snorted. “That’s fiction. Nobody makes truth serums.”

I shrugged, dug in a pocket for my wallet, and passed her a pair of twenties. “Sorry for the trouble.”

“Is that all of your questions, then?” she asked.

“Yeah. Thanks for—”

“Get out of my office.”

“Okay.”

I hurried out, nodding to Ben. He matched my stride, following me to the exit. “Anything?”

“She’s innocent, and I’m back at square one,” I said, shaking my head. “And, we’re running out of time.”

We stepped into the hallway, and then through the exit. Once we were outside, Ben asked, “So, what’s next?”

“First, I need to stop and get some supplies, then we need to go to the Crossroads,” I explained. “I’ve got a plan. It’s not a good plan, but it’s all I’ve got.”

He pulled out his keys. “Okay. Where are we going for supplies?”

“Our first stop is just a couple blocks away.”

Noir Arts and Oddities wasn’t a part of the magical community, strictly speaking, but you wouldn’t know that if you went inside. About ninety percent of their stock could be used in some type of spell or another, and anything that couldn’t was still pretty cool.

And, as I hoped, it had exactly what I needed. Perusing the shelves and looking at price tags, I settled on a vole skull. It was the cheapest bone they had on display that’d work for my purposes.

Picking it up gently, I carried it to the cash register, setting it down and reaching for my wallet.

“Did you find everything you needed?” the cashier asked, checking the tag.

I frowned, thinking about it. “Actually, do you sell, uh…” I rubbed the back of my neck, avoiding eye contact with her. “Dirt from a gravesite?”

She paused in the middle of ringing in the price of the skull, looking up at me. “I’m sorry?”

“Graveyard- sorry, never mind. Silly question.” I felt foolish for asking, but there was a cemetery nearby, and I could—

She shook her head and pointed. “I wasn’t sure I’d heard you right. Our charms made with graveyard dirt are on a shelf over there.”

Oh. Right.

Noir was pretty awesome.

Grabbing the dirt, I paid, got a nice bag to put the skull in, and got Ben’s attention. We left, walking back to his truck.

Hopping in the driver’s seat, he asked, “Where to next?”

“Dollar store,” I said, “I think there’s one just south of the Crossroads, so we can swing by.”

Ben eyed me. “What kind of spell are you doing, exactly?”

“Not a spell,” I corrected. “And, just trust me. It’s safe.”

He gave me a side-eye glance, but didn’t argue.

The rest of the shopping went smoothly. All in all, including the vole skull, dirt, and taxes, I spent twenty-five bucks on supplies.

Everything in tow, we drove down to the Crossroads.

I’d forgotten to take into account what day it was, or how long our errands would take. It was a little past six, and it was the first Friday of the month, in mid spring.

The place was packed.

Any building that didn’t have an art installation was selling food or liquor, and that wasn’t including the artists who had little stations set up on sidewalk corners, the food trucks, and the street performers. It was a dozen square blocks of an enormous party.

Needless to say, parking was a nightmare.

I normally avoided First Fridays like the plague, but it wasn’t an option at the moment. I’d have to deal with the crowds. Ben found a spot a half mile away, parallel parking his truck in a narrow spot.

“Should you take that gem thing with you?” Ben asked, pointing at the cleansing crystal I’d left in the cupholder.

I shrugged, then shook my head. “I don’t think we need it.”

We had to hoof it the rest of the way into town, shuffling past the wash of crowds.

“You’re going to do magic?” Ben asked. “Here?”

“Not magic,” I said, again. “And it’ll be subtle. Nobody will notice anything weird. Don’t worry.”

“Right. So what can I do?”

Digging in the plastic bag from the dollar store, I passed him one of the two items I’d bought. “Harmonize. You know the tune to ‘Kansas City’?”

“Oklahoma, or Wilbert Harrison? Either way, yes.”

I rolled my eyes. “Just play along once I get started.”

Finding a relatively secluded spot in an alleyway, I sat down and got to work.

First order of business, I took out my wallet, retrieving one of my business cards. A small, glossy image of my press headshot was printed on it, and I set it on the ground. Next came the vole skull, which I placed gingerly on top of the business card, before sprinkling the whole thing with the dirt.

That done, I reached into the dollar store bag, took out the second kazoo that I’d purchased, and began to hum into it.

Ben blinked, and it took him a couple seconds before he started humming into his own purple, plastic kazoo, going along with the familiar tune.

We sounded terrible, but a few people tossed change into the paper bag I’d gotten from Noir anyways, seemingly out of sympathy for what had to look like the worst street performing duo in the city. We played on, continuing our little harmony.

…

Saturday. 1:43 PM

“Hold it,” Davis said, brow furrowing in thought. “Kazoos?”

“I needed a song,” I explained. “You have to play live music to get this ritual to work, my singing would never count as ‘music’, and you can get two kazoos for a buck. I wasn’t going to shell out money for a real instrument I can’t play.”

He glowered, piecing it together. “Murray, is a vole a predator?”

“Yeah,” she said, glaring at me. “Predator skull, photograph of the caller, graveyard dirt, music.”

I nodded, sheepishly. “And I was in the Crossroads.”

Davis stared, slack jawed. “You’re kidding me.”

…

Friday. 6:04 PM

Ben figured it out when I stopped the first song, and started playing out the tune of ‘Devil Went Down to Georgia’. “Hold it.”

I put down my kazoo. “What?”

“Are you summoning a demon?”

I nodded. “Yeah. I need information, he’s got it.”

Ben looked at me like I had grown a second head. “Isn’t that, I don’t know, massive overkill?”

“I’m not going to offer him my soul. If we can’t come to a deal, it’ll just be a waste of my time. It’s fine.”

“And what if he’s mad at you for wasting his time? What if he’s got a temper and a mean streak?” Ben asked. “Y’know. The demon.”

I shrugged. “I think it’ll be fine. ‘Demon’ doesn’t mean ‘Unreasonable’.”

“Yes, thank you. You wouldn’t believe how many people think I’m going to be some sort of monster.”

I jumped in alarm. I hadn’t seen the figure approach—she’d just appeared next to me, leaning against the nearest street pole.

She didn’t look like I’d expected. Her skin had a shade like she’d suffered an awful sunburn, pale red and sensitive to the touch. A little trilby sat on her head at an odd angle, matched by askew, mirrored sunglasses.

The headwear did little to distract from her baggy Hawaiian shirt or cargo shorts, and those did little to draw attention away from her sweat socks and crocs.

It was… a look. I had to wonder if she really didn’t understand human fashion, or if she was going for some sort of dazzle camouflage effect to keep people from noticing her fangs, or her bright yellow sclera and narrow-slitted pupils.

“Are you the demon?” I asked, getting to my feet.

“That’s me. Call me Lily. I hear you’re looking to make a deal.”

…

Friday. 6:17 PM

We got off the street, moving to a coffee shop that was crowded but at least had an open table with room for three people.

Only once we were both sitting did I start talking business. “How much do you know about my current pickle?”

She shook her head. “That’s not how this works.”

“Oh?”

“We’re not omniscient. We can learn a lot, way more and way faster than you can, but we have to be trying. I’m not going to keep tabs on every mortal in the city on the off chance they summon me wanting my help.” She tapped a long, fake nail on the table, which drew my eye to the way her polish had started to chip. “That said. I do know a bit about what you’re trying to do. I was expecting you to call me up sooner.”

“I try not to rely on freelancers,” I explained. “But, okay. Someone murdered a woman named Andrea Woods today. I need to know who it is.”

“Oh.” Lily blinked. “That’s it?”

“Once I know who, I can put the rest of the details together myself,” I explained. “And if I can point the counsellors to the real culprit, then they’ll stop trying to lock me up.”

Ben showed up, holding three paper cups which he distributed according to our orders. Black coffee for him, cream and sugar for me, and ten shots of espresso with one pack of Splenda for the demon.

“Is there anything else you want, while I’m here?” she asked, showing her pointed teeth in what was probably meant to be a smile as she got a whiff of her ‘coffee’. “That’s a pretty basic retrieval for me. I can do it in a minute or two.”

“That’s all I want. What’s it going to cost?” I asked. This was the tricky part. She could name something outside of my price range, just to make me negotiate from a place of weakness, or—

“A fifty percent stake in KCWW LLC,” she said, quickly. She had that answer ready to go.

“I…” I tapped a finger to my temple, confused. “Why do you want a stake in the paper? I’m not even solvent.”

“Not yet.” Showing her teeth in what was definitely a predatory smile, she said, “Besides, you’ve poured your soul into making it, and that makes me more interested than any amount of cash.”

I frowned. A fifty percent stake was more than I was willing to part with. “What else would you take?”

“Not an IOU, given your lack of capital,” she said. “Frankly, your only other assets that I’d be interested in are the immortal type, and I wouldn’t feel right taking your soul for something this simple. It wouldn’t be a fair trade.”

“I wouldn’t feel right with that, either,” I pointed out. I glanced at Ben, wondering if he could front me some cash, but that wouldn’t be something I wanted to put on him.

“How much cash are we talking?” Ben asked, without me needing to ask. “I might be able to help out.”

“A hundred thousand,” she said, flatly. “‘Simple’ for me doesn’t mean easy, and cash doesn’t give me as much utility as you’d think it would.”

“Well I can’t do that,” Ben sat back, sipping his coffee. “Sorry.”

I came up with a number I was more comfortable with. “What can I get for a ten percent stake?”

She chuckled. “You’re going to cheap out on me when your life is on the line?”

“I never said my life is in danger.”

Smirking, the demon said, “I know a little bit about your situation. You caused quite a stir with that troll.”

I guess word was spreading, then. “Okay. So, yeah. How much is ten percent worth to you?”

She tapped at her chin, thinking about it for a long moment. “I’m feeling generous today. For that offer, I will tell you three true, meaningful statements about the killer.”

That was… potentially useful, but also potentially worthless. ‘Meaningful’ was such an ambiguous word. She could give me all the information I needed to find the murderer, or she could tell me their relationship status, favorite sports team, and preferred brand of underwear.

“How do I know you won’t just rip me off?”

She shrugged. “You have my word on that. If I made worthless deals, it’d be bad for business. I’ll give you a little insurance, though - if you’re not happy, you can change to the other deal and I won’t charge you for the three statements.”

That was fair enough. If I couldn’t learn something meaningful, I’d have to take the fifty percent offer anyways.

I wasn’t going to get a better offer. “Do we shake on it? Or is there some kind of… blood ritual?”

Rolling her eyes, the demon reached into her bra, pulling out a wad of folded papers. She unfolded them, smoothing out the wrinkles with her hands, and sliding me the stack. A contract.

The paper was a little warm from her body heat. I picked it up, skimming the whole thing, ensuring there were no tricks hidden in the fine print. It was secure, binding, and precise. There didn’t seem to be any wiggle room for either of us to get out of our obligations. When I was done reading, I passed it to Ben, who looked it over as well.

“Seems fairly airtight,” he said. “No caveats about your firstborn or anything.”

“Fine. Do you have a pen?”

Lily produced one from the lapel of her shirt, passing it over. I initialed in two places, signed at the bottom, and passed the paper back.

“You know,” I commented. “Now that you’ve got a stake in the company, it’d be in your best interest to make sure it stays afloat.”

“I’m aware,” she said. “Back in two shakes.”

I expected some fancy magic, but instead she got up, shuffled to the ladies’ room, and went inside.

Ben watched her go. “This isn’t exactly my idea of a binding magical promise.”

“Next time, I’ll ask her to add some special effects,” I quipped. “It might cost a couple extra percent in my company, though.”

A couple minutes passed before she came out, wiping her hands with a paper towel.

She pulled up her seat, wiped her mouth with her arm, and smiled. “Alright. I’ve got your information.”

“Great.” I took out my notebook, getting ready to write this all down. “What’d you learn?”

Lily held up a hand, raising her index finger in what was probably supposed to be a dramatic gesture. “First thing. The murder was not planned.”

That told me a lot. First, she’d used the word ‘Murder’, not ‘Killing’. It wasn’t accidental, then. An impulse decision, but a decision nonetheless. I jotted down her quote, word for word. “What’s the second thing?”

She raised another finger. “Before the day of the murder, they had never spoken with Andrea.”

I wrote that down, too. It wasn’t a friend, or a family member. Nobody with a real relationship. Pausing, I asked, “How are you defining, ‘spoken to’?”

The demon smirked. “Any conversation, including over a phone, but not including a written conversation, and not including a situation where one of them was addressing a room of people.”

Good to know. I wrote that down, as well. “What’s the third thing?”

“The murderer,” the demon said, raising a third finger. “Is a counsellor.”

I started to write it down, then stopped, looking up at her.

Lily flashed her pointed teeth. “Are you satisfied with your answers?”

I was barely paying attention to her, reeling with the implications of what she’d just said. “Eh… yes.”

Smiling, she said, “Alright. Thank you for your business.”

With a blink, she was gone.

Ben looked at me, and I wasn’t sure if he understood the full weight of what I’d just been told. “Are you okay?”

I shook my head. “I’m fucked.”