“Did you say you broke the concrete?”

“Yes.”

“With what?”

“My hands.”

“You can break concrete with your hands?”

“If need be.”

I smiled, recalling when I first met Mo’Lock. He was just your standard ghoul doing what ghouls do best: lurking in the shadows, wandering the earth soulless and aimless. He’d helped me out on a case because he thought I was a monster as well. He said it was a vibration I gave off. Sort of the supernatural equivalent of a butt sniff.

When I met him, he barely spoke. Now he could recount events as well as any detective I’d ever known. Better, really, with his heightened senses and all.

“What about your two partners and the necklace you nabbed?”

“I haven’t seen them since. I’m a bit worried.” He fumbled in his pocket and then held up an object. “This is what I pulled from the neck of your undead attacker.”

He held up a simple homemade necklace. I took it from him. It was a plain strip of brown leather with a pendant attached, a small glass vial. Inside was what I took to be blood. That seemed to go along with the ghoul’s description of what had happened.

“Amulet?” the ghoul asked.

I shook my head. “More like a talisman. Amulets protect, ward off evil and things like that. Talismans make things happen.”

I held it up to the light, turning it in my palm. No inscriptions or marks of any kind. Nothing that told me what it was, or where it originated. I had two facts: the object was a talisman, and the wearer had been a reanimated, mummified corpse. Its origins could range from Haitian voodoo priests to Egypt or South America. Every culture had some sort of reanimation ritual, but which one fit the tiny vial?

It was just another mysterious piece to the puzzle. I still had no clue what the big picture was.

I held the vial up to the bulb of my desk light again. I wasn’t sure, but there seemed to be something else inside, floating in the blood. Probably a clot or a maggot.

I stared at the vial and shook my head. When I looked up to say something, Mo’Lock was gone. He was pinned against the wall, staring out the window—trying not to be seen from the outside.

“What is it?”

The ghoul turned to me. “Are you aware that someone is watching the apartment?”

“Dark-colored sports car?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“Lucky guess.” I swallowed a huge mouthful of whiskey.

10

I told the ghoul to shut the blinds. I’d had enough for the week. Some downtime was needed or I was going to fall apart. The vial was stashed in a compartment inside the top drawer of my desk. It would be safe there until I wanted to deal with it. I took another Percocet, stood from the desk, and zigzagged over to the couch. It was buried in trash. I cleared it off with a swipe of my aching arm, while Mo’Lock watched me curiously.