The Hell You Say by Josh Lanyon

baseball game? Or worse: a fishing trip for the guys? A safari?
    “Lisa, I like him. Really. And I can’t take any more time. I mean, with Angus gone --”
    And battling the forces of darkness and all.
    “It would only be dinner. Bill suggested it himself.”
    “But I already like him,” I pleaded. “I like them all.”
    She blinked her lashes as though she felt the tears welling -- though I didn’t see a cloud in the sky. “No one can be to me what your father was, Adrien. Stephen was…well, he was the great love of my life. That kind of love happens once. But Bill is a good man. What we have together is special.”
    “Lisa….”
    “He’s certainly not going to replace you. You’ll always be --”
    “Okay! Where am I supposed to meet him for dinner?”
    The sun appeared in all its dimpled glory. She said nostalgically, “You look so like your father sometimes, Adrien. He used to get that same expression.”
    “And yet, funnily enough,” I said, “’twere not the apoplexy what done him in.”

    * * * * *
I spent a jolly evening surfing the ’Net and was once again taken aback to discover how many Web sites were devoted to Satanism, witchcraft, Wicca -- you name it. There were sites for chaos magic, Voodoo, vampires, guided meditation, and candle magick. What is the deal with candles? There were occult personals, online spell purchases (through PayPal, no less), and even organizations for gay pagans, gay witches, and gay Wiccans.

    52 Josh Lanyon
    Several links led me to Yahoo Groups. Again I found groups based on region (Boston-Occult), school of thought (angelsoccultforum), age (teenwitches), gender (goddessonly).
    There were groups dedicated to the black arts, to sex magic, to alchemy, to hermeticism.
    There were groups for specific covens and for solitary witches. But there was no entity anywhere called Blade Sable.
    Holy moly, what kind of menacing cult couldn’t afford its own Web site?
    On impulse, I joined a “community” called Dark Realm, with 983 members. The brief web intro indicated that this was a group for those who wished to peruse the dark side of the moon -- and maybe exchange spells, lore, and phone numbers.
    I filled out a quickie questionnaire, naturally lying about almost everything, and twenty minutes later, Frank Hardy, age twenty-one, interest sex magick (Yahoo ID
    blackster21), had been officially welcomed into the Dark Realm.
    The Blackster didn’t waste any time on social niceties. Right away he posted, asking whether any of the dark denizens had ever heard of a group called Blade Sable.
    No response. I hit refresh a couple of times, but zilch.
    Well, it was getting late on a Friday night. Time for all bad little witches to be out raising Cain. I turned off the computer.

    * * * * *
The employment agency wasn’t open on weekends, had I the heart to ring them. I rushed through the morning and early afternoon, taking advantage of a lull around three o’clock to microwave a bowl of Top Ramen soup and scan the weekend edition of the Times.
    The front page news froze me, spoon dangling foot-long noodles about an inch from my mouth. Bestselling author Gabriel Savant was missing. I speed-read the article. Savant had not been seen since Friday morning, when he had left his hotel without mentioning to anyone where he was going. When he had not returned in time for a book club luncheon, his assistant Robert Friedlander had begun calling around. Whatever that meant.
    When Savant had still not turned up for the evening’s scheduled book signing, Friedlander had filed a missing person’s report. Apparently when the person missing was a celebrity, the usual waiting period was waived.
    I re-read the article. Unless I was mistaken, it sounded very much as though Savant had walked out of my bookshop and disappeared into thin air.

    The Hell You Say

    53

Chapter Eight
    “I was wondering…” a voice inquired diffidently into the ether. “Are you hiring?”
    I jerked my head out of the