Detective Wilkes brushed his finger over his neat mustache, thinking. “All right, I’ll tell you what. Give me an hour to study the case file and make a few calls to my team. I’d like to get them started running background checks on everyone involved and looking into local pet stores or aquarium maintenance services.” He pointed at me. “I’d like to see your full report on the, um, undines’ testimony. I understand it isn’t written yet?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Not to mention this ghoul attack.” The chief glowered. “Daisy, if this is getting dangerous—”

“It’s not the kind of attack you can report, sir,” I said. “Not to mundane authorities. It was a violation of Hel’s rules. Unless you can charge a man with attempting to feed on the emotions of the unwilling?”

He sighed.

Tim Wilkes looked slightly pale. “So that’s what ghouls do?”

“That’s what ghouls do,” Cody confirmed.

“Not usually.” I don’t know why I felt compelled to defend them, except maybe for the memory of Stefan Ludovic’s ice-blue eyes. Tragic figures, Hel had called them. In Stefan’s case, I could almost believe it. Or maybe I just wanted to. The others, not so much. “Usually, they feed on the willing.”

“Who are willing because they’re miserable, and want to have their emotions drained,” Cody countered. “A vicious cycle most ghouls are only too happy to perpetuate.”

“None of which even remotely begins to explain how and why a twenty-one-year-old boy apparently drowned in salt water a thousand miles from the nearest ocean,” Chief Bryant interjected in a hard voice. He tossed a copy of today’s Appeldoorn Guardian on the conference table. The headline screamed,

PEMKOWET CHIEF OF POLICE

CONTINUES TO STONEWALL

Should Legislative Action Be Considered?

“I suggest you get to work before the shitstorm intensifies.”

Briefly, I entertained an unwelcome vision of Garm the bread-loving hellhound lying shot and bleeding on the dunes, Yggdrasil II hewn down with a thundering crash by an army of chain saws, and Little Niflheim excavated with backhoes. “Duly noted, sir.”

“Good.”

Chapter Seventeen

Seventeen

A little more than an hour later, Cody, Detective Wilkes, and I set out to pay a visit to Stefan Ludovic at the Wheelhouse, having first confirmed with a phone call that the head ghoul was on the premises and willing to receive us.

There were at least a dozen motorcycles in the parking lot, which seemed a bit excessive for not quite noon on a Wednesday. I wondered whether Stefan had called for backup. He didn’t strike me as the nervous type, but he didn’t strike me as the type to shy away from a show of force, either.

There was also a shiny black Lincoln Town Car with tinted windows sitting in the lot, its engine idling. I wondered what the hell that was all about.