Hard Day's Knight by John G Hartness

everynight life, but if Lilith was bad juju like Greg thought then she could wreak some serious havoc if I fell under her control. And Greg was by far the better judge of character between the two of us, so I trusted his opinion. “Alright, I’ll stay clear of her. You know how I hate going to Phil’s anyway. Let’s get out of here before some cop rolls up and decides we’re making out in the BK parking lot.” We didn’t say much on the way home, but Greg kept tossing me worried glances when he thought I wasn’t looking.

Chapter 14

    “So, what’s the plan?” Greg asked when we got back into our apartment.

    “I’m still working on that.” I admitted, flopping down onto the couch and grabbing the Xbox controller. “Madden?” I asked as I tossed him the other controller.

    “Sure. I always think better with a little break now and then.” So I proceeded to kick his virtual butt in the football video game for an hour or so while I let my mind percolate on everything I’d found out over the past couple of nights. After the third straight flogging, Greg didn’t want to play anymore, so he headed over to the computer.

    “Really, dude? I thought we cancelled World of Warcraft.” I was just giving him a hard time, but sometimes I did it just because it was easy.

    “Bite me. I’m checking email.”

    “No thanks, I’ve had my fill of supernatural Scooby Snacks tonight.” He flipped me off, then started to wave me over to the desk.

    “Come here, dude. You gotta see this!” He was actually bouncing up and down in his chair. I thought we’d broken him of that habit in high school, but obviously not. I leaned over the back of his chair, as much to rescue the furniture from the shock load as anything else.

    “What is it, bro?”

    “I emailed the guys about the kidnappings to see what they knew, and they’ve got all the police reports!”

    Oh. Crap. “Really? You emailed the Dork Brigade about this case?”

    “Man, don’t call them that. They’re good guys. And Jason hacked into the police database and got us the police reports. So they’re useful, too.”

    “And how many free comic books did you get for letting them help?” When he wouldn’t look at me, I knew I’d hit home. My partner – the closet Spider-Man junkie.

    “The guys” were a trio of losers that worked in the biggest comic shop in town. They were understandably all over Greg for information on his “ongoing cases” whenever he went in to grab his subscriptions. Every once in a while we used them for daytime legwork or computer help when it was something we couldn’t get Dad to do or if the computing was out of Greg’s league. They were occasionally useful, but I always had a hard time balancing their annoying tics against the value of their assistance.

    “Do you want the reports or not?” I did, of course, so we spent the next twenty minutes printing a buttload of reports and then the rest of the night reading them. People think being a private detective is all fast cars and loose women, but it’s mostly divorce photos (not even the hot ones) and paperwork. Of course, people think being a vampire is all seductive glances and string quartets, and they never think about blood-in-a-bag and SPF ten million.

    There were ten files, and the girl we’d exorcised the night was slated to be number eleven, so we added our notes on her and Tommy into the mix and tried to see what patterns emerged. After three hours of taking apart class schedules, church attendance, club memberships and even school bus routes, I was losing my patience.

    “There’s nothing here!” I lay on my back in the floor of the apartment, surrounded by paper. It looked like I’d been mugged by a shedding yeti, and we had no more ideas than when we started. “What time is it?” I asked Greg.

    “Seven.” He mumbled, going over attendance records for the fifth victim.

    “I’m going to bed. It’s been a long night.” I stretched as I stood up