The phone eventually woke him up, but as he groped for it he was dimly aware this was ring five or six. Using all that psychokinetic energy really wiped him out. “ ‘lo?” he mumbled into the receiver, eyes still firmly closed.

“Wow Gryphon, you’re still sleeping?” Varner said. “Late night last night?”

He rolled over and opened his eyes, looking at the clock. Was it really one in the afternoon? Well, it wasn’t one in the morning. “Sort of. Didn’t really sleep well.”

“Ah.” Varner said it in a strangely suspicious way. Amazing how much suspicion you could pack in one syllable. “We found our guy.”

“The killer? Who is it?”

“His name was Harold Cook. He was a real estate agent, which explains his access to the building. Also he used to work in his Uncle’s butcher shop as a teenager, which would explain his proficiency at cutting up bodies.”

“You keep using the word was. Has he skipped town or something?”

There was a long silence, during which Mr. Aronofsky said, You’ve gotten way too adept at lying.

Varner sighed before saying, “He’s dead. Apparently he killed himself at the crime scene.”

“Wow. That’s weird. I didn’t think serial killers were the type who committed suicide.”

“Generally they’re not. They have no qualms about hurting others but want to preserve themselves at all costs. There’s another oddity as well.”

“Oh?”

“We only found his prints at the scene, on the gun, but there was no powder residue on his hands.”

Damn, he forgot about that. “Huh. That is weird.”

“Isn’t it?” he paused again, as if waiting for Gryphon to fill the void. But he didn’t, so he was forced to pick up the slack. “Look, Gryph, you had nothing to do with this, right? You or your … passengers.”

He snorted in disbelief. “My passengers aren’t known for using guns, and neither am I.” It wasn’t a lie - they weren’t known for it. Didn’t mean they hadn’t done it in this instance, though.

You’re more like a lawyer every day, Mr. Aronofsky complained.

Ouch, Hugh said. That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it?

Varner seemed to concede that with a noise that was half-grunt, half-sigh. “Don’t blame me for grasping at straws. This case just wrapped up really neatly, and cases never wrap up neatly, not when they involve so many deaths.”

“I can imagine.”

“Speaking of which, I guess you’re responsible for my interesting visitor this morning.”

He sat up, rubbing his eyes, wondering if he could put him on hold and go pee. Did this phone even have a hold function? “Oh? You’re not seeing dead people, are you?”

“Only in a manner of speaking. O’Leary came into my office this morning and told me what really happened during the raid. I should reopen the case, but I don’t know if I will. It will be ugly, and nothing will be achieved. It was an accident, and Cal’s already retired out of the force. But goddamn it, all those men on the task force deliberately lied and obstructed the investigation.”

“Jeff just wanted the truth known. What you do with it is ultimately up to you.”

“Not all the angry dead want revenge, huh?”

“Not really. It depends on the person.” Was he fishing, trying to pick up a hint, a clue to his involvement with Cook? Gryphon wasn’t about to give it to him.

After a moment, he heard the creak of a chair, and the sound of papers being shuffled on a desk. “I should say I got an okay for you to work as a consultant for us on a provisional basis.”

“Great. I guess I can get started after we get back from California.”

“Oh, you doing that murder house thing?”

“Yeah. It’s a good chunk of change, and it’ll get the guys some publicity, which ultimately pays the bills.” He figured he’d massively dose himself with Nyquil before getting on the plane. It would damp down the electrical activity and his passengers, although he told Clay to wake him if the plane got in serious trouble or a drunken businessman started to go Al Qaeda on everyone. Maybe he couldn’t help, but he sure couldn’t hurt at that point.

“But you don’t want it for yourself?”

“Fuck no. I deal with enough fucknuts already.”

Gee, thanks, Hugh said.

“Good luck with that.”

“Thanks. You too.” He hung up and shuffled off to the bathroom, still yawning.

He really didn’t like anyone talking to him when he peed, but since when did Ruby give a damn about propriety? It wasn’t her forte. Kid, he’s suspicious. You know he is.

“Yeah, well, suspicion and a quarter leaves him with a quarter. He can’t prove shit.”

Not this time. But if you work with the cops he’s gonna be constantly hangin’ over your shoulder, whether you realize it or not. We won’t be able to do what we usually do what we do.

He washed his hands in the sink, and didn’t risk a look at himself in the mirror. He wasn’t sure he wanted to look at himself right now. “That depends on what we tell him, doesn’t it?”

This is all so very disturbing, Mr. Aronofsky complained.

Maybe it was, but Gryphon figured if he was going to do this, he was going to do this his way. And having the cops in his line of sight was preferable to looking over his shoulder for them.

He dried his hands and went downstairs to find the house empty. Clay was probably back at work today, putting in some time before they had to take off for Los Angeles. Gryphon was too tired to throw something together, so he found a microwavable dinner in the freezer and nuked it, nursing a soda instead of making coffee. It was all caffeine.

He ate mechanically while rain pattered against the kitchen window like skeletal fingers tapping to be let in, and in the near perfect quiet, he realized he felt perfectly hollow, a Trojan horse of a human being. What was going to happen when he died? He assumed at some point the would have to die, but when? And what happened then? Although he occasionally tried, he still didn’t believe in an afterlife. Maybe, in his case, that was better.

He’d finished eating the frozen dinner that was somewhat bizarrely almost unidentifiable by taste, and found himself fighting back heavy yawns. He’d decided to go back to bed and just sleep until he was forced to get up for fear of bed sores when the phone in the front room rang. He wasn’t going to answer it, as he’d felt he’d talked to enough people today, but he had a nagging feeling he should pick it up. So he did, bracing for the worst.

“Oh, hey Gryphon, I didn’t realize you were there.” It was Kevin Holloway, one half of the lawyer couple that had owned the property where most of the Stanhope family was buried. The pair had actually kept in touch, why he wasn’t sure, except they knew something inexplicable when they saw it, and decided to keep it in reserve, in case they ever needed it again. Kevin was the one who hired Spirit Guides in the first place, as he believed their house was haunted more than his wife, who thought he was an idiot. He turned out to be right, but Gryphon wasn’t under the impression that the hard charging Rachel Davies ever conceded the point.

“Yeah. Clay isn’t, though. Can I take a message?”

“Actually, you’re the one I wanted to talk to. Do you remember that I was having one of the P.I.s contracted by the firm looking into finding Beatrice Broslowski Aronofsky for you?”

“Oh right.” Beatrice was Mr. Aronofsky’s wife, who seemed to slip off the edge of the world after her unmarried sister Edith won the lottery and moved to Florida. Bea was presumably with her, but they’d been unable to find either. “They found her?”

“Yes, she did.” Kevin paused awkwardly, cleared his throat. “There’s no good way to say this, so I‘m just going to say it. I’m sorry, but she died two years ago. She passed away in a care center in Ocala, heart failure. She’s buried in a Jewish cemetery outside Miami. I’m so sorry.”

“Oh shit.” He sat down heavily on the arm of the couch, as it was closest.

Poor Bea, Mr. Aronofsky said sadly. I was afraid of that, you know.

“Would you like the name and address of the cemetery?”

He rubbed his eyes, which felt like they were filled with sand. “Can you email me?”

“Sure. You gonna be okay?”

“Oh yeah, I’m fine. It’s Mr. Aronofsky I’m worried about.”

I’m fine, he protested weakly.

As soon as he got off the phone with Kevin, he sunk down on the sofa and asked, “What do you want to do?” Gryphon was basically asking if he wanted to leave or not. After all, all Mr. Aronofsky wanted was to find his wife. Now he had.

Gryphon didn’t want him to go. He was like the grandfather he never had, and was a rare voice of moderation, although his was the path very rarely taken. Yet it wasn’t fair to ask him to stay if he was done and wanted to go.

I don’t know, he admitted.

So Gryphon just sat there, watching the rain sluice down the window, and waited for him to make up his mind.

Wow - what was in that cold medicine?

As he pushed himself up and realized that night had rendered Roan’s bedroom dark, he was at least glad he could breathe. The meds might have fucked him up pretty good - and Roan had been right about that - but being able to breathe made him feel better. He got up and stumbled his way to the bathroom in the dark, not tripping over anything but running somewhat painfully into what was probably the dresser. He had to squint for a long time to get used to the bathroom light, which seemed too bright, and took as quick a shower as possible when it felt like he was moving in slow motion. The water felt nice, though.

He hated having to wear Roan’s clothes, but he still needed to get over to his place and get some other clothes, or better yet, just go home. But a torpor had overcome him that had only a bit to do with the cold.

He liked being here. Roan had a nice house, with a lot more room than his apartment, and a warmer atmosphere than the loft where he usually painted. Roan himself was a bit of a puzzle, but one that probably said more about him than Roan himself. Roan wasn’t the type of guy he ever thought he’d be involved with. Sure, he was good looking - his eyes were fascinating; even if he didn’t now know that they could actually transform into cat’s eyes when he was still in his Human state, they were gorgeous and intense, the eyes of someone who was always thinking - and he was, much to his surprise, one of the smartest men he had ever met. He was not pedantic, not a pretentious professorial type, just someone gifted with an easy intelligence that came from the seemingly contrary habit of reading in great quantities and interacting with a lot of different people. Dylan had always found that a turn on, although pretentiousness turned him off, which had led Jason to once ask, laughing at him, “What the fuck are you doin’ in the art world then?” He had never been able to answer that question.

No, what troubled him about Roan was the fact that he used to be a cop, and since his father, he really didn’t trust police officers. He knew consciously that not all cops were bad, and certainly very few could have been as troubled his father, a seemingly stoic man who was just a simmering volcano of rage, and who one day finally erupted. But what the brain knows and how it reacts was often two different things, and it didn’t help that Roan seemed so stoic. Except it was a false impression; Roan was anything but stoic. He made wisecracks and got angry enough to spit words like bullets, he sometimes wore his grief like a shroud to keep the world away, and what seemed initially like stoicism was really an enforced calm brought on by fear, because if he got agitated or upset enough, he wouldn’t erupt: he’d transform. What an odd problem to have - that probably wasn’t in any medical journal.

And was yet another reason to avoid getting involved with him. Both Sheba and his best friend, Tristan, worried about him getting involved with someone who was infected anyways, because you could only be so careful. Shit happened, condoms broke, just an errant drop of blood could ruin your life forever. But he’d learned the hard way that anything could change your life forever - staying later than you expected so you could say goodbye to a friend, taking a shortcut, someone else running a red light. Life was almost ludicrously fragile at times. He refused to live in fear of a possibility, because if he did, he’d never get out of bed. And he trusted Roan to never hurt him - he seemed more freaked out by the idea of accidentally infecting him than Dylan could ever get.

Never getting out of bed sounded like a good idea since it felt like his head was a balloon, but he was really thirsty. He pulled on some sweatpants and a random t-shirt, hoping that Roan wouldn’t really be requiring either item soon, and went downstairs to get something cold to drink. He almost felt like he was floating, which was a bad sign. But that’s how colds and the flu always hit him: he got bad fevers. He’d been prone to them ever since he was a baby; his mother used to claim he just “ran hot”, like his thermostat was slightly off. And maybe it was; maybe that explained everything about him.

He found some pineapple orange juice in his fridge and poured himself a glass, adding ice cubes to make it even colder, and took a deep gulp. Too fast probably, as the cold shot a sharp pain through his head - brain freeze from a glass of juice? Wow, how pathetic was he? - but it tasted good enough that he realized he was kind of hungry. When did he last eat? He sipped his juice while he searched Roan’s refrigerator. There wasn’t a whole lot, it wasn’t hard to tell he was a bachelor who ate out a lot, but there was the Chinese food he brought home. He found the box of vegetable chow mein that he must have gotten for him, and put it in the microwave. It smelled good, so once it was done he plopped right down on the couch and started to eat it with the disposable chopsticks he found in the bag along with the food. That was a kind of surprising thing he had discovered about Roan: he was thoughtful. He never really expected that.

There was a message on the answering machine, and even though it wasn’t his place, he decided to play the message anyways. It turned out to be Roan, letting him know he was out on a stakeout. Again, more thoughtfulness on his part, along with the assumption he’d be nosy enough to check the machine.

Sitting alone in the house, he didn’t feel quite alone. It was almost like the echo of Paris was still here, still existing in the shadows and the corner of the eye, but it wasn’t a creepy feeling at all. Maybe because he knew Paris before he knew Roan, and never would have known him if it wasn’t for Paris. In fact, he wondered if he should tell him that Paris was the only reason he was in his life. One of the last times he saw Paris at Panic, he had asked him if he’d check in on Roan after his death. Dylan had found the request both odd and uncomfortable, because all he knew of Roan was what Paris had told him, and then that brief time he’d spent with the pair of them at the police station after Eric’s murder. His first impression of Roan had been he was ultra-serious, clearly an ex-cop, intelligent and tough, the winner of any macho man contests you’d throw at him. It was hard to match that with Paris’s description of him as this sweet, almost emotionally fragile man that he wanted Dylan to check up on after his death, because he was sure Roan would retreat from life at the first chance he got. Paris had been so very in love with him that he’d looked at him through rose colored glasses, and yet he was right about him anyways. You could never fault Paris’s personality insights.

It made him wonder sometimes if Paris had picked him out as a future boyfriend for his husband. A really bizarre thought, endlessly creepy, and yet … would he put it past Paris? Not really. Paris knew what Roan wanted and needed, and it wouldn’t have surprised him if he had tried to plan ahead for Roan’s benefit. When Roan got to the point where he could talk about him, maybe he’d mention it.

It made him wonder if things would really work between him and Roan. They seemed to come from two different worlds, intersected only by violence and grief. But sometimes that was a good thing, wasn’t it? Opposites attracting and all.

The remote was sitting on the coffee table, beside a copy of something called the Science News (did he want to know why Roan had a subscription to that?), and he picked it up, deciding to see what was on. When he turned on the TV, he discovered it was on Comedy Central. Hard core science and foul mouthed cartoons - no wonder Roan was so hard to pin down. He was a Renaissance man for a truly fucked up twenty first century.

Dylan pressed the favorites button on the cable remote to see what else Roan had programmed on it. The Sci-Fi Channel, HBO, BBC America, IFC, Here. Well, he certainly liked his cable channels. Dylan had the overwhelming urge to shout, “Nerd!” but managed to suppress it.

There was a knock at the door, which almost made him jump. Was Roan back already? Did he not want to mess with his key? He shut off the television and cautiously walked over to the door, wondering who it might be. Should he be worried?

It must have been the cold fucking him up still, because he normally wasn’t this paranoid. He shook his head, but stopped quickly as it was making him dizzy, and opened the door.

For a moment he stared at the young guy on the doorstep without recognition, even though he thought he should be familiar. The guy, lean and blond, a classic twink, delicate and somewhat surprised looking, just stared back at him for a long moment before finding his voice. “Umm … Toby … hi. I swear, I come in peace.”

The fact that he called him Toby caused the penny to drop. That and his voice, which was fairly unmistakable. “Oh, Matt. Hey. I almost didn’t recognize you.”

He nodded sheepishly, digging his hands nervously in the pocket of his navy windbreaker, looking down at the ground. “Yeah, umm, I lost some weight and um, the facial hair.”

“I can tell.” There was an awkward pause after this, but Dylan was in no hurry to fill it. The last time he’d seen Matt, he was throwing glasses at him at Panic, accusing him of “stealing” Roan.

Matt shifted uneasily, glancing at him askance, as if afraid (or too embarrassed) to look him in the eye. “Look, umm … I’m really sorry about … y’know … I was kinda … fucked up at the time. If you hate me, I understand …”

“I don’t hate you. Grudges only hurt the people who hold them.” Or at least that’s what he told himself when it came to the man who killed Jason. Most of the time, he just tried not to think about him.

Matt’s pale eyebrows rose in surprise, and a briefly suspicious look faded quickly. “Oh, right, you’re a Buddhist.”

He loved the way people said that, like it was a rare species of person. Maybe it was. “Also, I don’t see the point in holding a grudge.”

“Well, yeah,” he admitted, so awkward he was like a teenager asking someone out on a date. Dylan did honestly feel bad for him, which reminded him why he was never really that pissed off at the kid: how could he be? He felt bad for him. He wanted what he couldn’t have, and didn’t know how to deal with it. “Can I, umm, talk to Roan?”

“He’s not here; I’m afraid he’s on a stake out.”

“Oh.”

Matt looked so forlorn it was impossible not to pity him. Poor kid. No matter that many of his problems were ones of his own creation. “Would you like to come in?”

That seemed to surprise him. “Oh, um … yeah, could I?”

Dylan held the door open. “Why not?”

He came in, although he kept looking at him like he expected him to sucker punch him. “So, umm … you live here now?”

“No, I’m just waiting for him too.”

Matt nodded, looking around like he expected that Roan had massively redecorated in his absence. Of course he hadn’t, but maybe Matt was expecting to see big poster sized photos of them together inside heart shaped frames.

It suddenly occurred to him that he’d just let in a slightly crazed former admirer of Roan’s. Was that smart? Oh fuck. Well, hopefully Roan wouldn’t be too pissed off at him when he came home.

****

As smart as he was - and Holden was undoubtedly smart - he seemed stunned that stakeouts were so fucking boring. Roan could have told him this if he had only bothered to ask.

This gave them a lot of time to talk, which Roan absolutely loathed. When Holden started asking him if he’d ever had sex with a woman (no - Holden had, or at least “had given punani a shot”, but mainly because he hadn’t wanted the guys on the team to think he was a fag … which he was. Ah, he was so glad he wasn’t a teenager anymore …) he circumvented him by asking about his necklaces, which had bugged him.

Holden told him he wore many because when he was living on the streets, he had no other place to put them. They were safest around his neck, and people had a tendency to give him necklaces since he was always wearing some, and it became his shtick. He said he found it kind of comforting now, like it was a type of body armor.

The dogtags were real. According to Holden, he was out one night with some friends, and met this cute young guy who seemed to be drowning his sorrows. He was a GI who was shipping out to Iraq on the weekend and wasn’t looking forward to it, mainly because he was sure that he would be coming back in a wooden box. Holden felt bad for him - well, he was cute - and bought him a drink, and let him tag around for a while. Holden said he knew he was gay as soon as he saw him (“That was no straight man’s body,”), but they never discussed it. They did fuck, though, and Holden didn’t charge him or even mention he was a hustler - he said he saw it as “doing his duty for the troops”, even though he saw the war as one of the most goddamn stupid things he’d ever witnessed, and he’d actually seen a Uli Boll film once.

After that, the guy left his dogtags with him, saying he was probably the only person who knew the real him. Holden thought that was “very Lifetime movie”, and while he took the dogtags, he just threw them in his top dresser drawer and forgot about them. Until a couple of months ago, when he saw a newspaper in a client’s hotel room, reporting on the latest local troop casualties. He saw the guy’s picture among them; he’d been taken out by an IED somewhere near Mosul. There was a tiny bio beneath thumbnail sized pictures of the dead troops, and Holden said he was taken by a couple of things: his age (he was only twenty two, which Holden hadn’t known), and the fact that they interviewed his “girlfriend”, a girl he basically met over the internet and never saw in person. She was convinced they were going to get married when he came back from Iraq. Holden couldn’t believe he was the only one who knew he was gay, especially since if he just came out, they’d have kicked his ass out of the Army and he’d still be alive. But being seen as straight - or at least staying in the military - was more important to him than that. So Holden started wearing his dogtags amongst his necklaces, for all the “closet boys”. Roan supposed it was touching in a way, but mostly just tragic. Pointless death was always tragic.

After a while, Roan insisted on silence, so Holden pulled out his iPod and started listening to it through one earbud, so his other ear was free for the receiver. The bad part was Roan got to hear what Holden was listening to. He stared at him in disbelief. “You listen to Fall Out Boy?” Roan was genuinely horrified.

Holden rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I know, it’s high school girl emo, but some of it’s pretty catchy. We can’t all be hipster indie rock listeners like you.”

“I am not a hipster.”

“And yet listening to at least five bands that no normal person has ever heard of is hip. Face it; you’re on the trend scale.”

If he took a moment to think about it, Roan would realize this was deeply stupid, and yet being called a “hipster” seemed like a major slur. “Since when was Pansy Division trendy?”

He paused briefly, but still hadn’t turned off the Fall Out Boy. “Okay, point taken.”

The stake out seemed to crawl by. At one point he left to get them some fast food down the street, which filled a hunger void but was kind of unsatisfying. He’d have preferred a pizza, but there was no easy way to eat that on a stake out in a small car.

Kai got lots of business, but he was careful about who he picked. Holden assured Roan if he got a “thug” vibe off anyone, he’d go with them, because that’s who they were looking for. That didn’t make him feel very good, but he hadn’t set this up in the first place.

It was approximately two in the morning, and Roan was chewing his caffeinated gum to stay alert, even though it had an aftertaste like diesel. They were unlikely to get their guy to take the bait tonight - or even tomorrow night. The problem with stake outs is they could last a while. In this case he doubted it would last a week, but it could. At least it wouldn’t last a month. Their psycho couldn’t wait that long. They just had no guarantee that he’d pick Kai as his next victim.

Holden continued to be unconscionably nosy, so he told him what he’d discovered about his mother and his still unidentified father. State bureaucracy was slow to move, so he hadn’t gotten back those files on Zoë yet, but he had to give him something. The name Mission Creek Church meant something to him, though. Holden looked off into the middle distance, not focusing on anything but his own thoughts. “Mission Creek? Wow, that sounds familiar.”

“How so?”

Holden just shook his head, brow furrowing as he tried to call it up from he recesses of his memory. “I’m not sure …”

Roan didn’t think he was lying. He couldn’t remember how he knew the name, just that he knew it, and it bugged him.

While they were pondering the imponderable, a black Ford Explorer had pulled up, and Kai was talking to the man inside, hidden by both poor lighting and tinted windows. It was so cold you could see Kai’s breath as quickly dissipating clouds, little ghosts disappearing into the ether. After a few moments of negotiating, Kai got in on the passenger side, and Roan asked Holden, “Do you have a mike you talk to him on? I’d like to wrap this up for the night. I’m exhausted, and I’m sure he must be.”

“No, I can only receive, I can’t transmit. But sure, when he’s done we c-” Holden suddenly sat ramrod straight in the driver’s seat, almost knocking the remains of his Dr. Pepper out of the cup holder. “Holy shit,” he gasped.

“What?”

“This guy, who just picked Kai up? He identified himself as Roan.”

He felt his heart suddenly plummet to the bottom of his stomach. That could only mean one thing. “How did Kai react?”

“He didn’t. He just said his name was Kyle.”

“Good boy. Follow this asshole, just don’t get too close. If he realizes he’s being followed, he might do something stupid.”

Holden hastily started the car, and asked, quite nervously, “Is this our guy?”

“It must be,” he said, pulling out his cell phone. Considering the time, he knew he was going to wake Murphy up, but there was no way to avoid it. After four rings, the phone was picked up, and Murphy’s sleep slurred voice grumbled, “This better be fucking good.”

“It is. We’re tailing our guy right now, but I need you to call in back up. People you can trust, ones who won’t fall back on the “brotherhood is all” bullshit.”

That must have piqued her curiosity, as she sounded a bit more awake. “What? Why, Roan?”

They were so energetic now that there was no way Gryphon could even get near a car, not to mention get in one. The wiring wouldn’t so much melt as totally vaporize, and he’d probably cause the windshield to explode. But he’d been hoping to take Harold back to the river, to where he’d dumped his victims, but it was too far to walk. Was it too far to walk to the store? He didn’t think so.

So he ended up walking the street with the stiff, seething Harold, who wanted to break away but hadn’t a hope in hell. Ruby had a death grip on him - no pun intended - but Gryphon hadn’t totally ceded control of his own body to her. Gryphon wanted a say in this, although he wasn’t completely sure why. For Anna, perhaps. Or maybe just because he wanted the nightmares to stop.

Luckily they were in a neighborhood where somebody walking somewhat zombie like didn’t attract attention, and by the time they reached the block where the closed down store was, no one seemed to be out on the street save for those passed out in shuttered doorways. As they walked across the parking lot, past and through yellow crime scene tape, he asked, “Getting déjà vu, Harry? You left a partial print, you know, as well as bits of victims. You just can’t get rid of all the evidence no matter how hard you try … at least not when you chop your victims up like cows in a slaughterhouse.”

“Who the fuck are you?” he grated through gritted teeth, barely able to talk. His voice was like a far away rumble, a garbage truck with a bad engine on the next block.

Gryphon sighed dramatically. “We’ve been over that. Consider me the agent of all your victims, because I am. And they won’t rest until you’ve joined them. You never did tell me how you thought you were gonna die.”

Harold was silent, deliberately this time, grinding his teeth like he was preparing to bite his throat out. He didn’t believe it, or at least refused to believe that something else was controlling him, and that he was completely fucking doomed. People’s powers of denial was astonishing. They honestly refused to believe this was somehow supernatural and beyond belief, yet very much happening. Gryphon supposed he used to be the same way, before the supernatural barged its way into his life and gave him no choice at all.

They marched across the lot in silence, the sound of sirens and car engines and stereos so distant it was like eavesdropping on another world. They were as grim as a funeral procession, but that was only correct. No, it wasn’t - execution was probably the correct term.

They didn’t have to, but they led him around to the back, even though they could have went in the front. It seemed to speak to symmetry. There was a new padlock on the door, but Ruby snapped it like it was made of balsa wood, and flung the door open, even though it was so warped in the frame it scraped on the floor with a noise so loud it was almost a screech.

But if they didn’t hear gunshots and bone saws out here, no one was going to hear that either.

Once inside the dark, empty store, it seemed wrong somehow. The forensic teams had cleared out a lot of stuff and moved other things around, and now there was a strange chemical scent lost amongst the old blood, the dust, and the mouse shit. Was that lumisol, the stuff they sprayed for bloodstains? Probably. Might have been something else too.

They weren’t alone, although Harold probably didn’t know that. The ghosts of his victims were all waiting here, fanned around him like they’d capture him if he tried to escape. Conspicuously missing was confused Rita, and Anna remained standing off to one side, as if still refusing to join the group she was tragically apart of anyways.

“So do you want to tell me what your major malfunction is?” Gryphon wondered. “What made you such a monster? Was it a bugfuck ultra-religious mother, like Ted Bundy? Or did you have a normal upbringing with two parents who never seemed to notice you were bringing strangers home and burying them in the backyard, like Jeffrey Dahmer? Please tell me you have a new story - you were abducted by circus people and fired out of a cannon against your will for the first ten years of your life? You saw your mother eaten by crocodiles? You’re your own Uncle? Give me something here.”

Ruby eased up her control on Harold, only so he could talk, not move. But he was still glaring at him hatefully, and seemed like he was trying to make his head go Scanners and explode. Sadly for Harold, only Gryphon’s passengers seemed to have that kind of power. “You don’t scare me.”

“Which proves you’re a moron. As well as impotent. Actually I was wondering about that, since you have kids. Did you fantasize about killing someone while having sex with your wife? ‘Cause you guys usually can’t get it up unless you’re hurting someone else -”

That did it; Gryphon and Ruby knew attacking his ability to get it up would get under his skin. It was true, though, that most serial killers were impotent, and couldn’t get a hard on unless they were hurting or dominating someone. It was a sensitive issue for these guys. “Don’t you talk to me like that! You don’t know me!”

“I do. I know all about you and all other men like you. I’ve stood with you in dark rooms one thousand times, you have killed me one thousand times, and only the faces and the weapons change. Most serials use intimate weapons - knives, bare hands, ropes - as a continuation of the sexual nature of their crimes. Death is the only true intimacy they experience with another person, because they can’t feel much of anything otherwise. But you use a gun, which tells me a couple of things about you. It’s phallic of course - that’s a given - and suggests you feel impotent in your daily life too. Constrained. You’re a powerful man, or at least you feel you should be, and you want everyone to know it. You’re no pussy, you’re no fag, you’re no peon - you’re a man, goddamn it, and you prove it by putting a gun to a woman’s head while she’s giving you a blow job and pulling the trigger. Damn, you’re such a man you‘re just oozing testosterone. Precisely who are you trying to convince?”

He was so angry, Gryphon expected to see cartoon fume lines coming off the top of his head. His face was berry red, and veins were throbbing in both temples. He looked like a boil about to burst. “Fuck you!”

“Is your wife a shrew? Was your mother? Why do you hate women so much?”

“I take out the trash!” he spat back. “They were parasites on society! I did the world a fucking favor!”

“Oh, you’re an altruist! I’m sorry I didn’t recognize that. You must be the next Mother Theresa.”

“I don’t give a shit what a fucking freak like you thinks. I know I’m right.”

“Of course you do. Much like crazy people never think they are, desperately wrong people never think they’re wrong. It’s like deliberate self-blindness.”

“You’re dead, freak,” he snarled, spittle flying from his bloody lips.

Gryphon gave him an icy smile so devoid of warmth it seemed to suck the air straight out of the room. “You first.”

Let me take over, kid, Ruby insisted.

“No, he’s mine,” Gryphon told her.

Confusion frosted the rage in his eyes. “Who the fuck are you talking to?”

“The dead. Keep up, Harry - we’ve been over this already.”

“You’re insane.”

He shrugged. “At least I’m not quite as batshit as you. But then again, who is?”

Make this fucker suffer, Sheila, still spokeswoman for the river victims, said.

Gryphon scrubbed a hand through his hair, wondering if they’d understand why he had to do what he had to do. Maybe he’d just get the explaining out of the way first. “Harry, I’m sure you’re a narcissist, like just about every other serial on record. They can’t love anything but themselves, because you’re perfect. Hell, you’re god, aren’t you? What I’m gonna do is make you act Human for once in your fucking miserable life. You’re gonna do the decent thing and kill yourself.”

Harold glared at him under lowered brows, his eyes as hot as lava. “What?”

Gryphon sighed, as Ruby had said the same thing inside his own head. Hugh, for his part, chuckled, apparently enjoying the show. “You said you take out the trash, Harry. You’re the biggest piece of trash I’ve ever met. Time to do your job, Jesus of Sunshine Realty. Take you out.”

Harold snorted disdainfully. “Now who’s the moron?”

“Oh, you’re doing it.” To make that point, he asked, “Ruby, would you do me a favor and take his legs out? I want him kneeling.”

Although the crackling electricity in the air let him know she was currently pissed off at him, she did as he asked, and just as Harold opened his mouth to accuse him of being crazy again, his legs buckled and he fell heavily to his knees with a painful thud. But Harold was too shocked to complain. “This isn’t for you, Harry. You’re a piece of shit who should be drawn and quartered and then minced while still alive. But while you were pretending to be Human, you somehow acquired a wife and kids, and you’re going to spare them the agony of a trial, of newscasters who ask her how she could not know what a fucking monster you are, or your kids getting picked on at school and people audibly wondering if your illness has been passed on to them, if they’re gonna be a psycho prick like you in ten years. I think you’ve had enough victims over the years; no need to add to the list.”

Now something like fear started to creep into his eyes. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“I would. In fact, I have, several times. Haven’t you listened to a damn thing I’ve said? You’re neither my first or my last. This must be doubly horrible for you; you’ve just learned you’re nothing special after all. Since you were out hunting, you’re probably carrying your gun, aren’t you? Ruby, do you know where it is?”

“Who the fuck is -” he began, but stopped as the gun he’d been hiding beneath his shirt suddenly floated up into the air in front of him, the barrel aiming straight at his face. It looked like he wanted to lunge for it, but of course he couldn’t, as he was totally paralyzed. All he could do was stare down the barrel of his own .38 and wonder how the fuck things had come to this.

“Would you put the gun in your mouth,” Gryphon wondered. “Or under your chin?”

His mouth opened soundlessly, and then closed with a dry click. He swallowed hard, and tried again. “No one will believe I committed suicide.”

“Yes they will. The police are closing in on you. Your crimes are about to be splashed all over the internet in lurid detail; you’re jail bound and we all know it. And while it would be fun to see how long you could last in Oz amongst men who may be related to the women you killed - oh boy, wouldn’t that be fun? - I just don’t have the patience for that. Nobody wants to see your smug face on the nightly news, least of all me. Center of the forehead? A clumsy shot, but that mimics the placement of some of the bullet wounds in your victims. Perfect.”

The gun shifted slightly, moving up so the barrel was at the same level as his big, broad forehead. Harold’s eyes followed it with an almost incomprehensible blankness. He still had shark eyes, but the empty rage had been subsumed by a sort of cautious fear. He was finally beginning to grok that he was fucked. “You won’t get away with this.”

“Yes, I will. I always have.” He crouched down, so Harold didn’t have to look past the gun to look at him. “If you believe in reincarnation, hope that you come back a Human next time. If you believe in heaven and hell, pack some sunscreen. And if you believe in nothing at all, good, because you won’t be disappointed. Oh, and just for the record, you’re an incredible pussy, and you’ll always be remembered as such. Do it, Ruby.”

She pulled the trigger, and the sharp, loud blast seemed to fill the entirety of the empty store as the bullet slammed into his forehead and blew out the back of his head in a small fountain of crimson gore as his body jerked back and hit the floor, legs still bent under him at an awkward angle. It would have been painful if he’d still been alive.

I was kinda hopin’ for somethin’ more brutal, Sheila said.

“I’m sure the rats will gnaw at him a bit before the cops find him,” he told her, as Ruby let the gun drop to the floor. “Maybe they’ll take off something important.”

Well, formerly important. When you were a corpse, your body ceased to be important. Which was a good thing for Harold, because considering the condition of his skull, he was never going to look presentable again.