'Wait,' Karl said. 'Scroll down some more.'
'To where?'
'To the name of the guy who ended up as Purina Demon Chow.'
I'd heard that, on the advice of their attorneys, the surviving cultists had clammed up tighter than a banker's wallet. They weren't saying anything about anything, including the name of their buddy who Karl had thrown to the demon. They weren't even admitting that there was a demon. And any ID the guy had been carrying had been consumed, along with the rest of him.
I sat there frowning at the monitor until Karl said, 'Try the M.E. He might have something.'
It took a few seconds to find the medical examiner's report. In one of the appendices, it said that forensics had found enough DNA to make an identification of the deceased.
Ronald Longworth, age twenty-one. Same address as the cultist who had made bail.
Jamieson Longworth's brother.
I started to say something, but then my computer made a ping and a little tab appeared on the bottom of the screen. It read, 'New mail from Vollmanex@aol. com.'
I looked at Karl for a second, then clicked open my mailbox. Sometimes when it rains, it pours.
Nobody would ever accuse Vollman of being verbose – not online, anyway.
I have examined, with considerable difficulty, a copy of the Opus Mago. Only one spell in it calls for the sacrifice of Nosferatu. The one attempting to cast this spell must not succeed. He must be stopped, at any cost.
The number of Nosferatu sacrifices required for the sacrifice is 5.
'Five vamps,' Karl said. 'Which means two to go.'
'You can do subtraction,' I said. 'That's a good start. We'll have you up to the multiplication tables by next week.'
'Yeah, if any of us are still here next week. What do you figure the Big Bad is – the one Vollman says is gonna happen if the spell goes off as planned?'
'The End of the World as We Know It, maybe? I think I've heard that one a few times before. And the World as We Know It is still here.'
'Yeah, but maybe that's because the good guys always stopped the bad guys who were gonna cause it,' Karl said. 'You ever think about that?'
'Right now I'd rather think about how to find Jamieson Longworth, before his tame wizard manages to do us in. We can't save the world if we've been turned into lawn furniture.'
I turned back to the computer. 'Last known address for both these guys is in Abington Heights.'
Karl snorted. 'That explains where he got the money to make bail. Dude's got some coin, if he lives up there.'
'Maybe.' I brought up the Reverse Directory and typed Longworth's address into it. 'Then again, the money may belong to Mommy and Daddy. The property's in their name, anyway.'
'Well, I guess human sacrifice is one way to rebel against your parents,' Karl said. 'But it seems kinda extreme, even if they are real assholes.'
I stood up. 'Let's go talk to them,' I said, 'and find out.'
On our way out to the car Karl said, 'Maybe we oughta not mention to Mommy and Daddy that I'm the one who fed their other kid to a demon.'
'Yeah, that would make kind of a bad first impression, wouldn't it?'
'Bastard deserved it, though.'
'Even so.'
amp;n Karl said. 'Even so.'
We don't have mansions in Scranton. People with enough money for a mansion would rather live someplace else. But if there were going to be any mansions in town, you'd find them in Abington Heights. That's where the money lives, most of it. Some of the really rich have isolated estates up in the hills around Lake Scranton. But there was enough money in Abington Heights to offset a good-sized chunk of the national debt, if you could only get it away from them, and good luck with that.
The Longworths had built themselves a threestory mock Tudor that sprawled across a plot of ground about the size of New Zealand. I wondered what issue of Architectural Digest they'd seen it in. 'Build us one like this,' I bet they'd told the contractor, 'only bigger.' The immense lawn was so immaculately kept that I couldn't imagine kids playing on it. I wondered where the Longworth brothers, growing up, had played ball, and tag, and generally run tear-assing around the way kids are supposed to.
Maybe they hadn't. Maybe that was the problem, or part of it.
The door was answered by a smiling chubbycheeked housekeeper who said her name was Mrs. Moyle. She was wearing a tasteful version of what my mom used to call a housedress, except this one had probably cost five times as much. At least they hadn't put her in a maid's uniform.
We'd called ahead and were expected. If we weren't exactly welcome, you couldn't tell it by Mrs. Moyle, who showed us into a living room that wasn't nearly as big as Dodger Stadium.
'Would you officers care for some tea, or coffee, or maybe something light to eat?' she asked.
'No, thank you, ma'am,' I said. 'We're good.'
'A cocktail, perhaps?' She touched her fingers to her mouth in embarrassment. 'Oh, that's right, you're still on duty, aren't you?'
'Yes, we are, ma'am. If you could just tell Mrs. Longworth we're here?'
'Oh, of course. Please make yourselves comfortable. I'm sure she'll be right out.'
Karl and I sat down on a leather couch that was more comfortable than it looked. Mrs. Longworth kept us waiting exactly five minutes – the same length of time I'd spent cooling my heels in a few other rich people's homes. It must be in a manual somewhere, under 'Appropriate Waiting Time for Visiting Tradesmen, Police Officers, and Other Representatives of the Working Class.'
Emily Longworth wasn't more than five feet tall, but she hadn't let her height, or lack of it, give her an inferiority complex. Her hair was a shade of auburn that nature never thought of but should have, and she wore a simple gray wool dress that was probably worth as much as my pension fund. I assumed the pearls on the single string around her slim neck were genuine.
She looked at our ID folders closely, whether out of disdain or mere curiosity I couldn't tell. After we were all seated, she said with a tight smile, 'So, gentlemen, what can I do for you?'
'First of all, ma'am, I'd like to offer my condolences on the death of your son. I know what a terrible thing that must be.'
There was no point in tiptoeing around it. If she was going to vent about it, let her. She might be more talkative, afterwards.
The semblance of a smile was gone as Mrs. Longworth asked me, 'Indeed, officer? You've experienced the loss of a child, yourself, have you?'
'Yes, ma'am, I have.' In ways you can't even imagine.
She saw the truth of it in my face, even if she didn't fully understand what I'd meant.
'In that case, thank you for your… condolences.'She'd been about to say 'sympathy,' I was sure of it – I'd seen the 's' start to form in her mouth, but then she'd remembered that one doesn't accept sympathy from social inferiors.
Next to me, Karl was looking at the carpet as if he wanted to memorize the weave. He'd been pretending that throwing that little bastard to the demon had been all in a night's work, but I knew better. It would be a long time before either of us forgot the screams coming from Richard Longworth as that demon had eaten him alive. The fact that it could easily have been me screaming, as Richard Longworth cheered, was some consolation, but only some.
Closing her eyes, Mrs. Longworth shook her head slowly. 'It's been like a nightmare, except even in my most frightening dreams I never thought that my son would be set upon by werewolves…'
The word seemed to hang, vibrating, in the air. I opened my mouth to speak, then closed it. I'd been about to say, Werewolves don't do that kind of thing anymore – not outside the movies, then I remembered that case in Denver last year.
A guy had been arrested for molesting little kids. He'd been doing it for a while, apparently. The victims had
