This is the city – Scranton, Pennsylvania.

  It used to be a coal town, back in the days when anthracite was king. That was a long time ago – the last of the mines played out in the 1950s. But people here are tough, and they learned to adapt. Today, Scranton's got a healthy economy based on light industry, tourism, and retail. They've cleaned out a lot of the culm banks left by the mines, too.

  It's a good place to live and raise a family – apart from vampires, werewolves, ghouls, wizards, and the occasional demon.

  Scranton's got a "live and let unlive" relationship with the supernatural, just like everyplace else. But when a vamp puts the bite on an unwilling victim, or some witch casts the wrong kind of spell, that's when they call me.

  My name's Markowski. I carry a badge.

  Also a crucifix, some wooden stakes, a big vial of holy water, and a 9 mm Beretta loaded with silver bullets.

  I was never a Boy Scout, but "Be Prepared" is still a good motto to live by. Especially if you plan to keep on living.

 

America's been coming to terms with what law enforcement calls the "supernatural element" for more than fifty years now. It hasn't always been a real smooth adjustment.

  It was World War II that did it. I sometimes wonder if FDR would have been in such a hurry to send the GIs off to fight if he knew what some of them were going to bring back home – and I'm not talking about the clap or war brides, either.

  But I guess he would've done it anyway, FDR. Somebody had to stop Hitler and those other bastards. But I bet the troops coming home would have got a much closer look, if anybody in authority suspected that some of them were… changed.

  The experts figure that there were always a few supernaturals (or "supes," as most of us call them) in America. All those legends had to come from someplace. But the creatures were usually real careful to keep their heads down.

  The supes in Europe mostly decided just to stay there, and leave the New World to the humans. Until pretty recently, getting to North America involved a long sea voyage. It would have been pretty hard for a supe to keep hidden for all that time, and getting found out probably meant a quick trip over the side. Unless he did a Dracula and killed everybody aboard. Vamps'll do that – they're vicious bastards, most of them. But that solution presented problems of its own – like who was going to run the boat come sunrise.

  Anyway, most supes figured America wasn't exactly their land of opportunity. The early colonies had been founded by the Puritans, a bunch of tightass religious fanatics who'd left England because they decided the place wasn't righteous enough for them. And what guys like Cotton Mather had in mind for supes became pretty clear during the Salem witch trials, which took place after the European ones had died out. So supes generally stayed away for a long time.

  Some of them probably got to North America in 1918, following what they used to call the Great War. But the U.S. was only in that one for the last eighten months or so, and we didn't send nearly as many guys over as we would next time out. Still, I bet if you took a close look at the more than half a million U.S. deaths attributed to the flu epidemic of 1918, you'd find quite a few that were supe-related.

  Then came World War II. Millions of Americans got put into uniform and sent over to Europe. There, some of them were bitten by vampires and lived to carry their curse back home. Others were victims of werewolf attacks. And a bunch more made the acquaintance of various witches, wizards, sorcerers, necromancers, and other practitioners of the black arts.

  A few years later, easy access to air travel made it possible for European supes to migrate westward without any problems. Quite a few of them did. There wasn't much left of Europe by then, anyway.

  The revival of interest in monster movies after the war didn't happen by chance. It reflected a country that was starting to get used to what was really going bump in the night. Movies like I Married a Zombie weren't always fiction, if you know what I mean.

 

The 1940s also brought McCarthyism. Tail Gunner Joe started out by going after domestic Communists, but the political witch hunt soon turned into a real one when he widened his net to ensnare members of the supernatural community (who the right-wingers referred to as "Supies"). I guess we've all seen the footage of those hearings, with McCarthy browbeating the witnesses: "Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of a coven?" It didn't come out until long afterward that Roy Cohn, the Committee's top inquisitor, was actually a closet werewolf.

  McCarthy wasn't necessarily wrong. Some supes really are dangerous, take it from me. He just didn't know when to stop. He started out trying to unmask vamps in the State Department, and more power to him (he was smart: subpoenaed everybody who worked the night shift). But then McCarthy's early success made him arrogant. He figured it was his duty to take down every supe in America, along with those humans who supported them (he called them "Supesymps," for Supe Sympathizers, except when they were known as Fellow Flyers). A lot of innocent weres, witches, and trolls were caught up in McCarthy's inquisition before the public finally had enough and stopped backing him.

• • • •

The civil rights movement didn't openly include many supes, at first. But then Martin Luther King, Jr, gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial. He said that he looked forward to the day when "black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, naturals and supernaturals" would live together in harmony.

  There was a rumor going around that J. Edgar Hoover had a tape of King "entertaining" a vampire, but I don't believe that. No human as good as Dr King was would mess around with vamps. Probably. But nobody's ever explained why the bullet that killed him was made of solid silver.

  It was Lyndon Johnson who really sealed the deal on supe equality. Riding high on the wave of public sentiment that followed JFK's assassination, he pushed through Congress a whole bunch of civil rights bills. One of them gave supernaturals the same rights and responsibilities as all other citizens.

  It didn't exactly hurt his credibility when Johnson revealed that one of his daughters, Luci Bird, had willingly succumbed to a vampire and planned to marry him. That nighttime White House wedding was quite an event, I hear – even if some in the media did start referring to the bride as "Luci Bat." Far as I'm concerned, there are worse things she could have been called.

 

You can find supes everyplace now, but they're not evenly distributed. There's lots in the big cities, of course. A big population means more potential "blood donors" if you're a vamp, a bigger client base if you're a witch or wizard for hire, and more to eat if you're a ghoul. It's true that some, like the werewolves, used to settle in mostly rural areas – simpler to hide, I guess, and farm animals are easier prey than people. But even that's changed now.

  Scranton's got about seventy-five thousand people, which puts it about midway between New York City and Hicksville. But there's an awful lot of supes here, relative to the population. Nobody understood why that was, until 1966. That was when a couple of profs from the local university figured out that a whole bunch of ley lines intersect in the Wyoming Valley. Several of them come together right here in Scranton.

  It's not known for sure where ley lines came from – there's four or five major theories, and every one makes my head hurt. But all the experts agree they exist.

  They're a powerful source of magical energy, ley lines. The more lines intersecting, the stronger the energy. Passon and Warner, the professors, proved that there are four points in and around Scranton where at least ten different ley lines come together. That's kind of a big deal, in magical terms. Or so they say.

  I hope those two profs got tenure, or whatever they call it. They helped answer a lot of questions.

  The intersecting ley lines are like a magnet for supes, which explains why we've got so many. They were drawn here over the years, even if they didn't realize why. Weres, vamps, ghouls, witches, trolls, you name it. We've got 'em all in Scranton.

  Lucky us.

 

The Occult and Supernatural Crimes Investigation Unit, which everybody calls the "Supe Squad," is located in the basement of police HQ. There's no windows down there, but none of us mind. You never know what might get out through a window when you're not looking. Or what might get in.

  I pull the night shift, which is the busiest time for our kind of work. I've racked up enough seniority to get whatever shift I want, but I work the graveyard (yeah, I know) because I like the action.

  The boss is Lieutenant McGuire. They say his wife was grabbed by a gang of werewolves years ago, and that McGuire tracked them down, all by himself. When he left the house where they'd been hiding, there wasn't a creature alive inside, including McGuire's wife, who was found with a silver bullet in her brain.

  McGuire always claimed it was a stray shot that killed her. But there are stories about that – rumors, really. Stories that one of the weres had already bitten her, that she was infected with lycanthropy. Some of the stories say that she begged him to do it.

  It might be true. McGuire's an okay guy and a good boss, but he's got a darkness about him that has nothing to do with the fact that he doesn't see much sunlight.

  Despite whatever may have happened in the past, McGuire's no vigilante. He plays by the rules.

  But may Almighty God help any supe who breaks them.

  It's not against the law to be a supernatural creature, or to engage in most kinds of occult rituals and practices. But there are laws concerning all that stuff. The bottom line for supes is the same one that applies to humans: you can't hurt anybody.

  Unless they give consent, and you'd be surprised how many do. But there are rules about that, too.

 

I never understood why somebody would open a liquor store. Sure, it's a business, just like anything else; buy stuff and sell it for a profit. And I'm not one of those church ladies who think nobody should sell booze. Somebody's going to, as long as the stuff is legal. And Prohibition proved just tupid it was to make it illegal.

  My problem's not moral, it's practical. A liquor store is a small, cash-intensive business. It doesn't have many employees, and it has to stay open late because most people do their drinking in the evening. Can you say big fat target?

  There's a reason why you never hear jokes about somebody knocking over a hardware store.

  In Pennsylvania, the sale of hard booze and wine is handled by the LCB, the Liquor Control Board. All these places with the bottles in the window and "Wine & Spirits" over the door are really state-run liquor stores. The only difference is where the profits go – it doesn't make the places any less tempting to some lowlife with a drug habit and a gun.

  Even if the lowlife in question isn't human.

 

My partner and I had been out trying to turn up witnesses to a bad case of fairy-bashing when we got the radio call directing us to the State Store on Mulberry. Even if I didn't know where the place was, it wouldn't have been hard to spot once we got within a couple of blocks. The multiple sets of flashing red lights guided us in, just like beacons at the entrance to Hell.

  As we got closer, Big Paul said from the seat next to me, "Jeez, they really called out the cavalry. Must be four, five units here."

  Paul di Napoli had been my partner for just over four years. Despite being too fond of his wife's pasta, he still moved around pretty good when he needed to, and he passed the department's physical fitness test every year. The last time had been close, but Big Paul still managed to make the grade. The fact that his cousin Angie is head of the Officer Fitness Board probably didn't hurt, either.

  "Gotta be a supe inside," I said. "All this firepower already here, they wouldn't need us, otherwise." I parked the car as close as I could to the scene, and began rummaging through the gear we keep in a locked box between the front seats. Without looking up I asked, "You see SWAT anyplace?"

  The Sacred Weapons and Tactics unit was usually called in to deal with any violent (or potentially violent) confrontations with members of the supe community. They're trained in negotiation. They also know what to do if negotiation fails, and they do it real well.

  "Nah," Paul said, "but I ain't surprised. Didn't you hear about the hostage situation goin' down on the South Side?"

  "Uh-uh." I stowed several small objects in the pockets of my sport coat.

  "Couple of guys from Patrol was talkin' about it just before we left the House tonight. I guess some wizard wannabe had a fight with his old lady, and things got out of hand."

  "Doesn't sound like SWAT's kind of problem." I put a vial containing fresh crushed garlic in my shirt pocket. I could either repel a vampire or season some kielbasa, depending on how things worked out.

  "I hear the dude's barricaded inside his apartment – and somehow he got his hands on a charged wand."

  "Shit. They'll be out there a while, then."

  "Most likely. Looks like it's up to us, bro. Whatever it is."

  "Yeah, well, 'twas ever fucking thus." I closed the lid on the case, but didn't lock it. I might have to get it open again, in a hurry.

  I put my ID folder in my breast pocket, so that the badge would hang over the front. "Let's go join the party."

 

We ducked under the yellow crime scene tape and headed toward the nearest prowl car. A uniform named Flaherty noticed us first, and came over, a frown on his thin face. "Jeez, what took you guys so long?"

  "We stopped to get our hair done," I told him. "Who's the ROS?"

  He gave me a look, then pointed with his chin. "Matthews. Over there."

  I was glad that the Ranking Officer on Scene was Matthews. He was smart and steady and didn't have anything to prove.

  Matthews was on his radio as we came up on him. He saw us, and I heard him say, "Never mind – they're here," and sign off.

  We all shook hands, then I asked him, "So, how bad is it?"

  "Couple tried to take down the liquor store. A squad car arrived before they could get out, and they decided not to give it up. They've got hostages."

  "Goblins?" I heard Big Paul mutter. "What the fuck?"

  Goblins are nasty little bastards, but they usually give people a wide berth. You find them near garbage dumps and junkyards, mostly. They don't tend to come into densely populated human areas.

  "Near as I can figure," Matthews said, "they braced the clerk with those homemade knives they use, and told him to empty the register. The clerk might've thought it was a joke. Anyway, I guess he told them to fuck off, and so they cut him. I dunno know how bad."

  "I bet he gave up the money after that," I said. "So, why are the gobs still in there?"

  "Customer in the back of the store, some woman looking over the expensive wine they've got back there. When she saw what was going down, she called 666 on her cell. That's how we know what happened. There was a black-and-white a couple of blocks over. They got here pretty quick."

  "And the gobs refused to come out with their claws up," Paul said.

  "You got it," Matthews said. "They'd found the woman by then, so she and the clerk are both hostages."

  "What I don't get is why goblins are doing shit like this," I said. "It's not their style."

  "I dunno." Matthews shrugged. "The first uniforms on the scene say the gobs were acting real twitchy, even for them. Hysterical, even."

  Big Paul and I looked at each other. "Meth," I said, and he nodded.

  Surprise and anger chased each other across Matthews' face. "Did you say meth? Are you fuckin' serious?"

  "Do I look like I'm kidding around?" I said. "There's been rumors the last couple of months that some of the local goblins have figured how to cook meth. Story goes, some big drugstore dumped a bunch of expired OTC drugs, including a whole shitload of cold medicine."

  "We checked it out," Paul said. "Since it's not prescription meds, the drugstores don't gotta keep track of it. The ones that are part of a chain, they send the expired stuff back to some central warehouse, and those guys dispose of it like any other trash – at a dump or landfill."

  "We called the company HQs of a couple of the big drugstore chains that have stores in town," I said. "They told us they'd be happy to discuss their waste disposal practices with me – right after I showed them a court order."

  "Which we can't get, because the corporate HQs are outside our jurisdiction," Paul growled.

  "Goblins on meth." Matthews shook his head. "Just what we fuckin' need."

  "Maybe we oughta put this bitch session on hold 'til later," Paul said. "There's hostages, remember?"

  "Yeah, you're right," I told him. I looked over at the liquor store, the flashing red lights bouncing off its windows like something at one of those rave clubs. "Guess we're gonna need CIs." I gestured with my head toward where we'd left the car. "You wanna...?"

  "Sure." Big Paul lumbered off inthe direction we'd come from. Then he stopped, and turned back.

  "Vests, too?" he asked.

  I shrugged. Goblins weren't shooters, everybody knew that. "I don't want one," I told him. "But if you're feeling wussy, be my guest."

  Paul grinned at me. "Yeah, and fuck you, too." Then he pivoted and went back to the car.

  Matthews looked at me. "CIs? What the hell d'you need a confidential informant for? We know where the little green bastards are."

  "Yeah, we do. That's why he's getting some special cartridges out of our vehicle. They're tipped with cold iron. Different kind of CI."

• • • •

Nobody knows why cold iron works against the creatures of faerie – goblins, trolls, dwarves, and all the rest. Might just as well ask why silver kills a werewolf, or why vamps can't stand sunlight. Some philosopher has probably spent years trying to figure it all out. But as Paul and I approached that liquor store, I was just glad that my Beretta held a fresh clip of 9mm CI slugs.

  The weapon was holstered, for now. No point in spooking already jazzed-up goblins. My last combat pistol test showed that I could bring it up to firing position in 1.3 seconds and hit what I was aiming at 92 percent of the time. I figured that would be good enough.

  There wasn't much danger of getting shot, anyway. Goblins don't use guns, and if this pair was breaking with tradition, they'd have busted some caps by now. Goblins aren't famous for their patience, even without meth.

  The whole front of the liquor store was glass. As we approached, I thought I saw a flash of green from just above the check-out counter. They knew we were here, all right.

  I pushed the heavy door open slowly, Paul right behind me. A long gray counter ran along the wall to the left, and we walked slowly toward it, our footsteps loud in the stillness. I stopped about twenty feet away. Big Paul would take up position about fifteen feet back and a little to my right, as always. If I went down, he'd be in a good position to nail the bastard responsible.

  "I'm Detective Sergeant Stanley Markowski," I said, as calmly as if I was meeting someone at work. "This is Detective Paul di Napoli." Keep everything cool, that was the idea. The fact that my pulse was pounding in my ears like a crazed conga drummer didn't matter. "Whaddaya say we try to work this out? There's no need for anybody to get hurt."

  The clerk had already been hurt, I knew that. But I decided not to mess up my pitch with inconvenient facts.

  Goblin voices always remind me of fingernails being scraped across a blackboard. The one coming from behind the counter was no exception. "What you want?" it screeched.

  "I want to talk."

  "No talk – want car. Get car or we cut humans."

  Most goblins don't speak English real well, and the only phrase of Goblin that I know translates as "Your mother mates with trolls under every bridge in town."

  "Don't cut humans," I said. "Talk instead. Talk better."

  "Talk no good. Want car, go away far. No prison."

  "Why come here? Why rob?" Talking to gobs always made me sound like some nitwit in an old Tarzan movie. Can't be helped, though. Simple words and syntax are all they understand – in human language, or their own. Goblins aren't real bright.

  "Money. Lots of money at liquor place."

  I caught movement out of the corner of my eye as something shifted in the parking lot outside. I hoped the uniforms out there weren't getting ere's no n to try something stupid. Matthews had promised me that no breach would be attempted until Paul and I got out of there. His word was good, but if some higherup arrived on scene and overruled him….

  A full breach almost always results in casualties. Sometimes those include people caught in the middle.

  "Why money?" I asked. "Goblin not need money."

  Living near dumps, goblins usually forage for what they need. Sometimes they barter with other goblin tribes for stuff they can't find on their own.

  "For powder. For powder, need money much. Want powder. Need money."

  Just as I'd figured. Meth-head goblins, Jesus.

  "If I give powder, let humans go free?"

  "You get powder? Shit talk. Cop got no powder."

  "Cops find lotsa drugs. Take during arrest, for evidence. You want powder, or no?"

  I heard some whispering going on behind the counter. Behind me, Paul muttered, "I hope you know that the fuck you're doin'."

  "We get powder, let one human go. Then give car. Need car."

  "I give powder, you let both humans go."

  "One human. One!"

  Hysteria was rising in the voice, making it even uglier than before. "Okay, one human," I said. "I go get powder now. Back soon."

  "Get quick, or we cut."

  As we hurried back to the police lines, Paul said, "I ain't gonna ask if you're fucking nuts, cause I already know the answer to that one. You're gonna try something tricky, right?"

  "I hope so," I told him. "Whether it'll work depends on if she's on duty tonight, or Dispatch can find her."

  "Her who?"

  "Rachel Proctor."

  Big Paul stopped walking and looked at me. "The department witch," he said.

  "That's the one."

 

The black-and-white unit pulled up to the command post thirty-six long minutes later. A uniform I didn't know got out of the passenger side. Looking in Matthews' direction he said, "Sir, I got a package for Sergeant Markowski."

  "That's me." I went over, and he handed me a thick white envelope. "Thanks," I said, and before he had even turned away, I was slitting it open. Inside was a sealed, sandwich-size baggie containing three or four ounces of crystalline white powder. There was also a note from Rachel Proctor, the department's consulting white witch. "No guarantees, but it ought to work. Good luck." She hadn't added "You'll need it." She didn't have to.

 

Two minutes later, Big Paul and I were back inside the liquor store. I was about twenty feet away from the counter when one of the screechy voices yelled, "Stop! No more close! We cut!"

  "I have powder," I said, as calmly as I could. "Have meth. Here. See?" I held up the baggie and let it dangle. One of the goblins stuck his head up for an instant, then disappeared again.

  A few seconds later I heard, "Throw powder. Throw here!" The need in that voice was almost palpable.

  "One human first," I said. "You made promise. I bring powder, one human let go."

  "Throw bag here, or cut humans! Cut bad!"

  "You cut humans, no powder. And no car."

  More muttered conferring. Then a man crawled out from behind the counter on his hands and knees. He was in his undershirt. Somebody had used one sleeve of a blue-striped outer shirt to bandage his upper left arm. The fabric was soaked with blood, and ding.

  "It's all right," I told him. "Stand up, and walk toward us. It's gonna be okay."

  The guy stood, but it wasn't easy for him. I guess he was stiff from sitting all that time, or he might've been woozy from blood loss, or both. Early fifties, probably. Tall, skinny, and scared half to death.

  I kept my eye on the counter as Paul led the clerk to the door. The uniforms would get him into an ambulance.

  "Drug now!" The goblin voice was a scream. "Drug now, or cut woman. Cut tits off! Now!"

  "Here!" I said and tossed the baggie underhand. It cleared the counter and disappeared behind it. I felt my guts, already tight, clench a little harder. This was going to be the tricky part.

  More mutterings and stirrings from behind the counter. Then I heard sniffing sounds, the kind you make when sucking in air deliberately. There's different ways to ingest meth. It seemed these gobs were snorters.

  There was a clock on the wall above the counter. I watched it for two long minutes before calling "Goblins! Goblins, hear me?"

  A new sound answered me. It was wordless but had a rising inflection, like somebody asking a question in his sleep.

  "Goblins, you let woman go free. Let human go. Let go now."

  Thirty-two more seconds crawled across the face of that clock. Then there was a stir behind the counter. A woman stood up slowly, using the counter as leverage. She was a fortyish brunette who had probably known too many Twinkies in her time. "Don't shoot!" she yelled, and threw her hands in the air. "Don't shoot!"

  "Nobody's going to shoot you, ma'am. You can put your hands down. Just walk over to me. Easiest thing in the world. Take all the time you want. Just walk over here."

  She nervously looked down and to her right. When nobody tried to stop her, she shuffled out from behind the counter and walked unsteadily toward us, her eyes still wide with terror.

  Paul put his big arm around the woman's shoulders and led her toward the door. I still kept my eyes on the counter, although the hard part was over now.

  I heard the door open behind me, and Big Paul's voice saying, "Come on, move it. Get her out of here."

  Then I heard the door close and familiar footsteps coming back.

  "All clear," Paul's voice rumbled.

  We could have killed both of them, the goblins. Fired through the counter until our guns were empty and the little green bastards were dead or dying. No one in authority would've said "boo" about it.

  But we didn't have to do it that way, so we didn't. Killing is never my first choice when taking down a suspect. Well, hardly ever. And if Rachel's spell had worked the way it was supposed to, nobody should have to die.

  "Goblins!" I called. "Stand up! Stand up now!"

  And it worked. Instead of being told "Blow it out your ass" in Goblin, I saw two furry green heads appear over the counter top. Two sets of black eyes peered at us blearily.

  "Goblins! Drop knives. Drop knives. Now! Do it now!"

  After a long pause, I heard the metallic clang of something hitting the floor. Then again. The knot in my guts loosened a little.

  "Goblins! Come here! Come to me!"

  Without even looking at each other, the two creatures slowly came around the counter. I've seen goblins before, and these two looked typical. Four feet tall, more or less. Green fur over black skin. The misshapen heads were standard, but their confused, vague expressions wereprobably due to Rachel's magic, not goblin genetics.

  As they shuffled toward us, I reached slowly for the handcuffs on my belt. An amalgam of cold iron and silver, with a binding spell added for good measure, they would hold the greenies secure until they could be put into a special cell. The county jail's got accommodations for all creatures great and small, human and inhuman.

  I cuffed one goblin's paws behind his back, while Paul did the other one. As I went through the nearautomatic movements, I thought about the conversation I'd had with Rachel Proctor, once Dispatch had connected me to her phone.

 

"I need something that looks like meth, smells like it, hell, tastes like it," I told her. "But instead of getting buzzed, I want them made compliant and cooperative."

  "So you can tell them what to do."

  "Exactly. It's my best chance of getting the hostages out unharmed. The gobs, too, for that matter."

  "Why not a simple knockout potion? Aren't you being a little too clever, Sergeant?"

  "Can you guarantee instant unconsciousness for both of them, at exactly the same time?"

  "Of course I can't," Rachel said impatiently. "No potion works instantaneously, and there's no guarantee they'd both use it at the same – oh, I see."

  "Right. If they felt themselves being drugged unconscious, they might have enough time to knife the hostages. They would, too."

  "Quite possibly. They're mean little buggers, most of them," she confirmed.

  "I don't want them realizing they've been drugged until I start telling them what to do – not even then, if possible."

  "And you need this immediately, of course."

  "I need it before two strung-out goblins lose patience and start cutting up a couple of innocent humans. How long you figure I ought to wait?"

  "Bastard," she said, but without heat.

  "That's between Mom and Pop, and they're not here."

  A sigh came over the line. "All right, send a police car over to my place, but tell them to wait outside. I'll bring it out as soon as it's ready, assuming I can make it work. Maybe twenty minutes, start to finish."

  "When can you start?"

  "As soon as I stop talking to you," Rachel said, and hung up.