It wasn’t thirty minutes after Mrs. Carmichael shooed Ardent away when the perky Miss Stacey Nichols was tapping her foot impatiently on the tiled floor of the Library’s Grand Foyer. The head librarian finished the business of tidying up her entrance display, before turning a suspicious look on the young lady reporter. “Miss Stacey, what are you all worked up about? Shouldn’t you be in school?”

The teenager looked more serious than usual and her easy smile was absent. “I need to find Spooky. Is he here?”

Under normal circumstances, Mrs. Carmichael would have had more questions and a decent amount of fun, pulling Stacey’s strings, but she could tell that today wasn’t the best day for her teasing. “Yes, Ardent is here. As a matter of fact, I just helped him find some microfilms from our archived periodicals. Run along now and you should be able to catch him. But, Miss Stacey, don’t you go getting that curiosity of yours into trouble that you can’t get out of.”

The high school senior’s blush, was all that was needed to tell Mrs. Carmichael that it was already too late for that.

Stacey hurried through the library and nearly slammed the well oiled door into the media room wall. The lights were dim and Ardent was the only one utilizing the room. She paused for a moment to compose herself before approaching him. “Hey Spooky, you got a minute?”

"Miss Nichols..." Ardent said, his tone somewhat flat. He'd wondered who'd all but slammed the door, breaking his concentration on the article in front of him.

And now he knew.

He rolled his eyes Heavenward, mentally counted to five, then swiveled in the worn brown cloth chair, green eyes narrowed. "Aren't you supposed to be in school?"

Stacey waved her hand dismissively in response to his question. "That just isn't even on my radar screen right now. ...but, if you have to know, it's college week." Her tone was matter of fact, certain that would be enough to explain why she wasn't in school.

"Spooky, you just gotta listen to me. I've been at the University this week, checking it out and looking into their programs." She paused for a moment and made a show of looking around the empty room. "I've stumbled onto something big. Real Big! I need your expertise."

Ardent gestured to the chair next to him at the viewing counter. "Sit. Talk." He folded his hands in his lap and waited, the microfiche viewer behind him humming softly into the silence.

The girl nodded her head once and followed his instructions. She turned again to look at the closed door behind her, her short bobbed hair bouncing, adding to her nervous appearance. "I think I found a cult? And I think they're going to do a...a..." Stacey paused and swallowed hard, it was unusual for anything to choke up the talkative girl. "a...sacrifice. Like a real actual, like real human sacrifice."

The thin man's eyes shifted from green to brown as he regarded her steadily. He began to swivel slowly from side to side, one sneaker-clad foot directing the motion. Today he was dressed in jeans and a light green t-shirt with a "Kiss me! I'm Irish!" leprechaun dancing across its front, Ardent's jet black hair gleamed like gunmetal in the blue glow of the reader behind him as he moved left to right, left to right. He kept looking at her in that unblinking way he'd had in their first interview as he pondered what she'd just said, silencing radiating off him like the heat-haze on an Arizona highway in mid-July.

"Go on," he said softly.

Stacey looked down at her hands for a long moment before she resumed her story. "I was staying at the dorm with my cousin, Amy, and she invited me to a party. It was at a place called the Succubus Club and there were a lot of really weird people there. Goth types, you know?" She looked up at him and made eye contact briefly before the shifting colors made her look away again.

He nodded.

"I heard a couple of them talking, they were all upset about something..." Her blue eyes were wide with the memory. "I think they said that they accidentally killed the baby. ...and they were talking about the full moon tomorrow night, or tonight, and the ritual and that they'd have to find another one." She looked at him again and he could see that her expression had softened, obviously sharing what she had brought her some relief.

"Have you talked to anyone at your school, or the police about this?"

"No." She quickly admitted. "I wanted to tell campus security but Amy told me not to, she said they wouldn't believe me and that some of these people role played, or something, and were always babbling about things that weren't real. ...but, they sounded serious to me, one of them, her voice trembled when she spoke like she was going to cry.

He stopped swiveling back and forth and gazed at her calmly. "How many people are we talking about here? You said 'they' - do 'they' know you over heard them? Do you know any of them from school?"

"I only got a good look at one of them, but I heard two names, other than that one. And they mentioned a professor. I was in the stall, I don't think they saw me or know that I followed them. ...but I've had this creepy feeling ever since, like somebody is watching me." Stacey shivered and he could actually see the trail of goose bumps that raced up her arm. "I haven't slept since."

"And lastly," he said, raising one slender eyebrow. "Why did you bring this to me?"

"I told you!" Her tone was defensive and exasperated. "I needed your expertise. They were talking about dead babies and rituals...and well. You were dead like, just a little bit ago. ...so, it only seemed logical that you could help me." She paused and her face fell a bit as she realized that maybe it wasn't so logical after all. "Right?"

"Miss Nichols," Ardent laughed as he shook his head. "...you're a pill." He rose silently to his feet and extended a slender hand towards the door, the chair squeaking faintly as it rolled back. "Do you know where this... event... was supposed to have occurred?"

She stood up quickly, surprised by her own enthusiasm now that she had help. It was hard to put her curiosity away for too long and she was eager to find out what was left to know about this situation. "Uh. No. I don't have the first clue where the baby was killed or where the ritual is going to be." She gave him a teen patented DUH! look, before she continued. "That's what we have to figure out."

She beat him to the door and threw it open, "I think we should start at the Succubus Club. Whadda you think?"

"I think that running off to a nightclub named after a demonic female sexual predator would be highly unwise, dear girl," Ardent said as he headed towards the door. "After all, my researches have taught me that there are much scarier things in the world than yours truly." He moved quietly out into the cramped, wood-paneled hallway and past a number of closed doors before heading up the half-flight of worn concrete stairs that connected the archives and study rooms to the rest of the library. A Pepsi machine hummed loudly to itself at the base of the stairs.

As he reached for the door he looked behind him to make sure that the teenager was following, the red light from the "EXIT" sign above the door painting his night black hair with streaks of auburn. "I think the first thing that we do, is a little surfing."

"Oooooh....Kaaaay. Whatever you say, Spooky" Stacey looked at him skeptically but followed along willingly enough. Before long they were on the second level of the library, where there were ten computer stations, most of which were free. After Ardent filled her in on the things he wanted her to look up, she set herself to the task with a dedication that surprised him.

Even with her help he knew that it would take a couple of hours before they could find everything on his list.

Stacey pecked proficiently at the keyboard, seemingly very much at home amongst the plethora of search engines and useful networking tools that the internet had to offer. She sighed a couple of times in exasperation as net blockers would prevent her searching into some of the more perverted cults that her link hopping revealed.

As she typed, she kept up a fairly steady commentary of her own, filling Ardent in on everything that she could think of concerning the people involved. "I'm pretty sure there were four of them, but the guy didn't talk, he seemed like he was with one of the girls. He was tall, really tall...like basketball player tall. And thin, you could see his cheek bones, really gaunt. ya know? The girl that was doing all the talking, they called her Trinity. That's the one I saw, and I couldn't miss her if I saw her again. She was pretty and her hair was silver, not like old lady silver...but shimmery." She stopped abruptly as a thought occurred to her. "Ya know...mighta been a wig."

Spooky was staring at her, long fingers steepled before his pursed lips, black eyes narrowed. Around them, computers hummed, students moved back and forth between them and the row of printers against the back wall, and Old Lady Carmichael could just be seen at the massive oaken island in the center of the room, casting suspicious glances at the pair of them. Time spun out like a Geometry final, and Spooky's eyes shifted slowly from black to gray as he stared at her. Or maybe through her?

"Uh, Spooky? Hello?" She waved a hand in front of her.

He blinked. "There's not a lot here," he said one index finger moving in the general direction of the monitor. "A number of reports on voodoo, college hi jinx, dabbling..." He stood suddenly, and she would have sworn the leprechaun on his t-shirt had, just for a second, been leering at her. "Higher than I'd like infant mortality rate, but we are where we are, so that's gotta be taken into account." He cocked his head and regarded her for just a second, giving her a quizzical look, like a cat wondering if this thing before him would squeak if he pounced. "Still..." he crossed silently over towards one of the printers and retrieved a fairly thick stack of paper.

He riffled quickly through the stack, then plucked a few sheets from it, slipping the rest into the slot atop a large locked trash bin that stood next to the printer. He returned, dropped the printouts onto Stacey's lap, then dropped back into his chair and began to spin in a lazy, languid fashion, his foot propelling him around and around. "Observe the blog of one Syndie Syndie," he said, spinning slowly like an Autumn leaf in a stream. "It's not rocket science to see that she's got it bad for her Prof."

Stacey was already riffling through the documents, her eager gaze taking in the various blog entries and photo's, her keen girl-reporter's mind (she liked that phrase - had ever since she'd read it in one her mom's old Nancy Drew mystery novels though she'd die of shame if she thought anyone ever suspected) putting together the picture of young unrequited goth love.

"Donovan is his name, I think, though I'm buggered if I know where I've seen him before," Spooky was saying, his voice dopplering oddly as he spun.

She looked up.

"Dude, what is it with you and spinnie chairs?" she asked, voiced tinged with irritation. He rotated into view, a lazy smile on his face. "Who knows?" he replied, rotating back out of sight.

God he was weird. "Ok, so what's this got to do with..." her voice trailed off, and she shuffled through the papers again. "Ok, that's kind of kinky," she murmured as she read back through some of 'Syndie's' fantasies. "... this girl really needs to stop watching Supernatural."

She looked up again at Spooky; rather at the empty chair where he'd been. "I wouldn't know about that," his voice said from behind her. She rolled her eyes and swiveled her own chair until she was facing him. He was standing there staring at Mrs. Carmichael with a look on his face that, had it been any more knowing, would have been able to recite Stacy's genome to the last character. The old bat was actually blushing.

Sick...

"But that's not the point, is it?" he asked, looking away from the librarian and back at Stacey. "The point is that this Succubus club would be the kind of place that our Syndie would positively adore, and all of that 'bear his child, the child of darkness, the seed of his," he waved a slender hand in the air, causing a nerdy looking Freshman standing near the counter to wave back, then sheepishly drop his hand when he realized he wasn't the object of attention. What a dork.

"... consummation of our sweat and blood, sacrificed to the Old Ones so that we two together can face the endless nights, yadda yadda yadda" Spooky continued. "Well, it might fit. It's a starting point at least." Spooky clasped his hands behind his back and bent at the waist, lowering his face to hers until their noses were almost touching." His eyes went from hazel to muddy brown. She shivered. "Want to go on a date?"

He grinned, and in that grin was the sins of Angels, and the fluttering of velvet wings in the dark.

Stacey cocked her head at him, in a seemingly constant state of bemusement. "What century are you from? You don't ask high school reporters on dates. The wrong person hears that...and well, your yesterday's news." She shook her head again and grinned. "What would you do without me Spooky."

He tapped the tip of her nose with his index finger, then straightened up. "I'd most likely not be called Spooky for one thing," he said dryly.

"So...what are you saying? We gonna go to the Succubus Club and see if we can find one of my suspects...or this horny Syndie chick...or what? Oh! ...and that name, Donovan...that sounds familiar." Her face screwed up in thought. "I think Trinity might have mentioned a Donovan."

"I'm saying that yes, we're going to go the Succubus Club and see if we can spot one of your suspects." He gave her a sideways glance, lips pursed as though he'd just bitten into something sour. "I hope you realize we could both get horribly and viciously murdered should things go pear-shaped." A passing student, somewhat pear-shaped herself glared up at him through a pair of hideously expensive glasses as she walked towards one of the PC's, clutching her books to her ample chest as though they were a talisman. Ardent didn't seem to notice.

Stacey's eyes lit with a positively devilish glint. "SOooo.... Lemme get this straight." She cocked her bobbed head slightly to the side, feigning confusion. "We are going to the Succubus Club. Whatever happened to, I think that running off to a nightclub named after a demonic female sexual predator would be highly unwise? With that she stood up, seemingly quite pleased with her imitation of Spooky.

"Oh, it's still outlandishly unwise," replied the thin man. He was peering now at the computer screen behind her with interest. He glanced back at her smug face. "But seeing as the alternative is calling your parents and hoping they can keep you home while I do this myself, well..." he spread his hands and gave that little half bow again. "Let's both of us agree that they haven't a chance in Hell of accomplishing that."

The old battle axe at the desk was staring at them still, her lips pressed into a thin, cranberry colored line, eyes hidden behind the glare of the overhead on her glasses. Someone *really* needed to tell her that cranberry wasn't on her color wheel.

"So we'll go together, and you'll promise me here and now that if I say run, you run, agreed?" He folded his arms across the leprechauns face on his chest and regarded her with what he must have thought was a very serious and grave expression.

In truth it made him look like he was constipated.

"Sure sure Spooky. Heard ya loud and clear. Let's roll!"

File Closed