On that cryptic note, Dan Stanton went offline. Well, not that cryptic. Back in high school “glug-a-slug” was what we called the Sit’n Sip, Pemkowet’s only twenty-four-hour diner, located about half a mile from the interstate highway exit. It was where teenagers went to eat hash browns, drink coffee, and sober up after clandestine keg parties. But Lee wasn’t the kind of kid who got invited to a lot of parties. He was the kind of smart, aloof, unpopular kid who wouldn’t deign to use the in-crowd’s pet slang terms, and I couldn’t imagine he would have changed that much, which meant that the fact that he was using one of them now was weird and cryptic.

Then again, I’d contacted him through an alias, so I don’t know why I would have expected anything else.

About ten minutes later, I walked into the Sit’n Sip. Lee Hastings was lounging in a booth in the far corner, long legs stretched out, the rest of him slouched intently over a computer tablet. Although I hadn’t seen him in a good six years, I recognized his tall, bony figure immediately, even wrapped in a full-length black leather duster despite the lingering summer warmth.

“Hey, hon!” a cheerful waitress called to me. “Sit anywhere you like.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’m meeting someone.”

Lee lifted his head. He was wearing a khaki-colored Seattle Mariners baseball cap, which I thought was an odd choice with a black leather duster. Heck, maybe he had changed. Or maybe that was hip in Seattle. “Daisy.”

“Hi, Lee.” I slid into the seat opposite him. “It’s good to see you.”

He touched something on the tablet, making the screen go blank. “Is it?”

“Sure.”

Beneath the shadow of his baseball cap’s brim, his face was as gaunt as ever, dark eyes glimmering in bruised-looking hollows. Hence the nickname Skeletor. He’d grown one of those narrow beards that looked like a strip of Velcro glued to his chin and there were steel hoops in his earlobes. Okay, that was new and unexpected. “What do you want?”

“I need to create a database—” I began.

A look of disgust crossed his face. “Oh, for God’s sake! A database? Do you know what I get paid for consulting on a project? This isn’t high school, Daisy. I’m not going to teach you how to use Excel just because you promise to sit next to me in the cafeteria.”

Lowering my voice, I plowed on. “A database documenting the eldritch population in Pemkowet.”

“Are you—” Lee paused. “Say that again?”

I repeated myself.

“Why?”