November 14, 2024. Moonlight Curiosities. When in doubt? Ask. The book might answer…

The house growled behind us, offering its own commentary on Dorian, nightjars, and ‘people preserves.’ Dorian didn’t bother to reply. Instead, he briskly ushered us off the porch and down the cracked driveway. A short drive later, we arrived at the closest thing we had to a safe space—Moonlight Curiosities. We’d barely made it through the front door before I turned on Dorian, pinning him with a hard stare.

“Okay. You. Out with it,” I said, trying to appear stern while not dropping loose papers. “What the hell is a nightjar? I’ve barely gotten used to ghosts and cursed pens!”

He blinked. “What? Daniel, ghosts aren’t real…”

Cassidy locked the shop’s door behind us, rattling the brass knob to be sure. “Dorian! Focus! What’s a nightjar? My parents taught me to watch out for a lot of awful things. That wasn’t one of them.”

The bloodleech twitched as if he’d grabbed a live wire, then rubbed his hands over his face. “Fine,” he sighed, giving the locked door a dubious look. Then he made a half-hearted attempt to smooth out his flannel shirt. “First. Cassidy? Your education is woefully lacking! I really should have a word with your parents.”

Her mouth pulled into a tight line. I could almost hear the seconds count down to when she’d drop her human disguise and sprout claws. Apparently, so did Dorian.

“Second. Nightjars are simply horrifying, and trust me, I don’t say that lightly. You both know how my kind feeds on memories, spinal fluid, and such.” He waved a hand as if shooing a fly. “Dryads drain a person’s water and warmth, and skinshapers are fairly bitey, going for the meat.” He gestured to Cassidy. “Present company excluded.”

I squared my shoulders, frowning, as Cassidy folded her arms.

“Dorian. I do not bite my husband.”

He raised his hands. “No judgments. To each their own.” Then he wiggled a finger. “Still, nightjars? They take the vitality out of anything alive. Your kind. Humans. My kind. They aren’t picky; just drain it out and store it in jars for later, like shimmering honey.”

I exchanged an alarmed look with Cassidy before we glanced at the office where we hid the glowing Mason jar. Then I remembered the attack in Professor Barnes’ office, and the attacks on me. That steam. Amanda Price, or whoever she was, tried to cook us. Reality felt like a rock in my stomach.

Dorian smoothed his sandy hair back, then shook his head. “The withered bodies. I should’ve realized. That’s usually all that’s left.”

Cassidy pinched the bridge of her nose. “A day ago it felt like we didn’t know enough. Now it’s all too much.”

“Right down to the desk and glowing inkwell.” I pursed my lips. “Maybe we just lay it all out, see if something clicks?”

Dorian raised his eyebrows. “Inkwell? What’s this about a glowing inkwell?”

Cassidy looked at me, then at the stairs leading to the basement door, and sighed. I glanced at Dorian, then raised my eyebrows at her. She nodded.

“It’s a bad idea…”

I shrugged. “… but we’re out of good ones again.”

“Yeah,” she replied with a rueful smile.

Cassidy hurried toward the stairs to our apartment and the basement door. I studied Dorian for a long moment before going to grab my tablet.

“We’ll show you… just, please don’t tell anyone.”

A wicked gleam of curiosity flashed in his gray eyes. “Wouldn’t dream of it. Lead on!”

While Cassidy worked the knothole to open the hidden door on the landing above, I stopped Dorian at the base of the stairs. “Hey.” I tilted my head back the way we came. “All that back there. Are you okay? In Briarwood, you acted as if you couldn’t even see the jars. Then you panicked.”

Dorian’s typical wicked amusement at life faded as his mouth went tight. “That is a question with a complicated answer. It’s hard to trust what you see when a nightjar is around. They cloud perception, smearing memories around a given moment. Just long enough to let them get close, then it wears away.” He gave me a hard stare. “Just something to remember, Daniel.”

Cassidy hesitated at the top of the stairs, face a little pale. “Daniel, that’s how she got the drop on us the other night. Why I couldn’t hear her.”

“I was just thinking that.” My shoulders slowly tightened. That threw what I knew, thought I knew, into a tailspin. “If they do that, how long does it take to wear off?”

Dorian shrugged, expression worried. “A few minutes? Hours? Most don’t survive to get an accurate count.”

“Noted.” I led Dorian upstairs and into the wall.

Heading downstairs, Dorian’s amusement returned with a vengeance, growing with each step into the dusty gloom. The usual wash of scents, from ghosts of dead vegetables to the memory of old soil, wrapped around us like a welcome. When the sea of sallow light bulbs flickered on in the basement, Dorian let out a delighted chuckle.

“Why, Cassidy! Daniel! You two have been holding out on me. A hidden basement to bury the proverbial bodies? Well done. I approve!” he said, gesturing around us. “Oh, and is that desk Mr. Price-Hayes, or whatever his name is, wants?” He crossed to the desk, then stopped, staring at the shelf. “Wait, is that another pen? You have two? Wonderful!”

I quickly caught up to him, diverting Dorian back to the desk and worktable next to it. “Not a shopping spree. This is ‘stop the creepy killer and curse’ spree.”

Mildly disappointed, Dorian relented with good grace. I spread out what I’d swiped from Briarwood on one end of the worktable. Cassidy worked from the other, setting out what we’d found from the desk, along with photographs and Valeria’s murderous journals. Dorian hummed over several pieces, especially the old photographs and newspaper articles, studying each one carefully. I rummaged through Valeria’s flash drives, trying to make sense of their contents. A thoughtful quiet swelled until Dorian tossed words into the space first.

“I have to hand it to her, she was being more methodical than usual this time,” he said slowly, setting aside a page of notes and locations. “From what I remember, she was often more direct about these things. Less skullduggery. Seems like she was trying to work out the same problem we are.”

“That fits what I’m finding.” I tapped the edge of my tablet. “These flash drives are full of tax notices, property documents, and emails. Valeria had even joined the local historical society. She’d been in close contact with Fred Spivey, too.”

Cassidy straightened. “Fred Spivey? The one who died in Dorian’s attic?”

Dorian grimaced. “That’s a nasty turn. I rather liked him when he was alive. He knew a lot about antique houses.” His grimace turned thoughtful. “Though, if he’d been working with Valeria, he might’ve been working for whoever was paying Valeria.”

“There’s also a new name here.” I pulled up one of the property surveys. “One Morgana Vale? Her name’s in several emails about Briarwood Estate.”

“Vale,” Cassidy stiffened. “Daniel, we need to check, but I think that was the lady who was interested in the Mason jars.”

“It’s also the name of my real estate broker,” Dorian commented in a brittle voice. “That’s a bit of a coincidence.”

“Is it?” Cassidy asked.

A near-dead silence answered with a rush, brushed by the methodical tick of the ceiling fans.

Dorian turned back to the worktable and tapped the loose pile of photographs and clippings. “Well, now, isn’t that interesting?”

“What?” Cassidy asked, tense. “That’s the old photograph of Ollie Hayes, Amanda Price, and Martin Altamont.”

His eyes shifted between us. “Indeed, it is. Beyond the obvious around our mysterious Caleb Price-Hayes and his wanting your desk, have you taken a closer look at these?”

Setting the photograph down, Dorian fished out the old newspaper article of the same man standing next to the dusky-skinned figure of J. Stewart. We leaned over the table, studying the photographs. Cassidy’s brow furrowed.

“Wait… J. Stewart, I remember that name.” Cassidy’s eyes shot to me, then over to the Bestiary on the desk. “I mean, that name was on one of the manuscript pages at the top.”

Dorian raised his eyebrows. “Oh, I didn’t mean that, but that’s an odd thing. I meant the pictures.”

“Ollie Hayes,” Cassidy said thoughtfully, then her eyes widened. “Wait… his hand. He’s holding a pen in both pictures.” She squinted. “So is that J. Stewart, but he’s also holding an… inkwell? Are those the fountain pens?”

I scrambled for the desk, then returned with the inkwell. Its contents swirled like a tiny storm as I set it down next to the pictures. It matched. I drew a long breath.

“What if Valeria was after the inkwell, too?” I watched the tiny vial, liquid shadows warring with the greenish glow. “My uncle was supposedly convinced it was a key to all this.”

Dorian watched the small jar of shadowy ink swirl like water down a drain as it glowed a lime green. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say that was a nightjar’s preserves in there. Heard they were yellow, though, not green. Something’s moving in there.”

“You can see that?” Cassidy asked, voice hushed.

Dorian gave the tiniest nod, edged with discomfort. “I think it’s safe to say that was a nightjar that attacked you in my house the other night, Daniel. Probably why I don’t remember seeing anything. That nightjar… the one you said looked like Amanda Price… smeared my memories.”

I stared at the picture of Amanda Price from the 1960s. A tendril of nerves trembled down my spine. “She’s the same.”

“What?” Cassidy asked, frowning.

“Amanda Price,” I tapped the picture. “When I saw her in the moonlight, that was her face. As if she’d not aged a day.” An ugly thought wormed through my mind. “Dorian? Thanks to my beloved wife, I know skinshapers have just one human disguise they can pull on. What about bloodleeches?” I let that hang in the air before I added, “what about nightjars?”

Dorian raised his eyebrows. “Good question. We bloodleeches tend to sculpt our own human face out of memories we collect from those we eat. Not enough to duplicate anyone, which suits me fine. I prefer the uniqueness.”

“… and nightjars?” Cassidy asked, almost holding her breath.

Dorian pulled his mouth tight as if eating something sour. “Nightjars can, or so I’ve been told by a few dryads.”

The faint scratch of a metal nib against paper frayed the air. I inhaled slowly, staring into the middle distance, as Cassidy stiffened. Dorian frowned at us, then followed the scratching around the desk. He came to a dead stop as the sound faded.

“You two have a Bestiary of the Uncanny?” The bloodleech paused, giving us an uneasy look from under his eyebrows. “Nighthunters use those things with their inquisition to murder non-humans.”

Cassidy winced. “It… came with the desk?”

Dorian watched the book as if it might bite. That, and what little he said, was almost too tempting to ignore. It also felt like a problem for later. I hurried around the desk.

“How did they use it? We’d been given the impression it might be… helpful?” I hesitated. Trying to ‘explain’ Issac felt really offensive, and I suddenly felt that having Dorian in the same room as Issac wasn’t a great idea; at least not at the moment. Cassidy jumped in to help.

“We’re not sure what it’s doing, but it sort of records? So far it’s given a few… hm… honest insights into what’s happening? How do Nighthunters use it?” she added with a tight expression.

Dorian moved to touch the book but didn’t. Instead, he wiggled his fingers and kept his distance. “Oh, not very sure. Survivors have said Nighthunters keep one when they head out to do their killings.”

“Fun,” I said without a hint of humor. “More murder journaling. People around here need to get better hobbies, like digging up the dead or gardening.”

Dorian’s grin was pure relief. “Fantastic idea! We should do that for my housewarming.”

I stared at the ceiling and sighed, then picked up the Bestiary. Flipping it open, I turned to the recent entries. Diagrams of the Mason jars hadn’t changed, but the names had been sorted. The names of Morgana Vale and Amanda Price were adjacent to the drawing, almost overlapping. Farther down, J. Stewart had been circled. The next page held a disturbingly clinical account of nightjars.

“It’s recorded what we’ve talked about. There’s a lot about nightjars, too. None of it looks finished.”

Then I found Dorian’s name frantically scratched out of the main list of names and rewritten at the bottom of the page like a margin note. The word ‘Hiss!’ was beside it. Both were written in a frantic scrawl, as if someone had been interrupted while writing. I quickly handed the book to Cassidy, who scanned the page and saw what I had. She closed the book gently, hugging it against her with the tiniest, amused smile.

“Unfinished,” I mused. “… and ‘please let me stop.’”

Both Cassidy and Dorian stared at me uneasily. I considered them, then waved a hand at the worktable. “Someone grab me some paper.”

Kyle’s pen was still in the wooden box on the desk, but I wanted the other one. Hurrying to the glass case on the shelf, I found its key hidden behind it and removed the lock. The turquoise lines on the second fountain pen glowed the closer I carried it to Kyle’s.

Cassidy’s eyes were huge. “Daniel!”

I shook my head as Dorian tentatively handed me some paper. The inkwell glowed like a green lamp. I glanced at it suspiciously, a guess half-forming in my head.

“Wait. Hear me out.” I looked between them. “When people write, ‘please let me stop,’ something reacts… like something’s reading.” I pulled up a chair and gestured to the inkwell before uncapping the pen. “We’re doing a lot of guessing. Why don’t we try asking?”

“Daniel, this could make it worse,” Cassidy said sternly.

The inkwell pulsed. “Maybe… but I think this inkwell changes the rules somehow. People are dying. We need to try.”

My hand hesitated over the paper with the pen. Everything I’d just said was half-fact and half-guess. But we’d run out of good ideas and people were dying. I met Cassidy’s eyes as she walked over. Tension drained her human disguise away, leaving her natural human-bat form. She hugged me, then kept a hand on my shoulder. I touched pen to paper.

“Who are you?” I dictated while I wrote. “What do you want?”

Two seconds passed. Nothing happened, then my hand trembled as it moved on its own. Shaky words scratched across the paper, a mix of my handwriting and someone else’s.

“… ask the dryads,” Cassidy read in a haunted tone. “… finish my story… J.”

My phone rang, making us jump. I grabbed it. “Hello, Sheriff. How can I help you?”

“Afternoon, Daniel.” The sheriff’s voice was brittle. “If you and Cassidy aren’t busy, I’ll need y’all to come to the morgue tomorrow. Caleb Hayes was found dead today. Murdered in the same way as Fred Spivey.”