Poem: Magick Hour

 

At magick hour the mist comes creeping 

While the world is silent, sleeping… 

Mice and voles, and cunning rats, 

Foxes, owls and stalking cats 

Know the hour; they know it well, 

Its ancient song, its timeless spell: 

While the woods are clear and cold, 

When the night has grown so old 

That dawn is not so far away –  

No time to waste before the day! – 

Then, while starlight trumps the sun,

By moonlight are the magicks done! 

Magicks small and magicks great: 

Spells and charms to shape our fate – 

Heal the world, soothe aching souls, 

Ease the sick, achieve our goals.

 Enchantments white, enchantments wise… 

At magick hour the powers rise! 

No time to tarry ’fore the dawn: 

It is the hour when dreams are born! 

 At magick hour the mist comes creeping 

While the world is silent, sleeping, 

But those who know will seldom tell 

The secret of the night’s deep spell.

Vector

 

There's something alive in the litterbox.

Bugsie wouldn't go near it. I noticed the problem when he started using a plant pot instead, digging around where he’s likely to uproot my old ficus. The first time I scolded and he gave me a steel-eyed glare. Second time, I took him to the sandbox and said, “Young man, you know the drill, you’ve known it for years now!” He began to sing, and staked out the box from as far away as he could get and still see it. He sat behind the couch all night, with a skinny view into the laundry area, and when I went to clean the box this morning--I saw it too.

Something moved.

It brushed my hand, raised a tiny red pimple before burying itself in the litter, fast--I backed off just as fast. The litter's a new brand. The bag calls it ‘volcanic ash from somewhere in the Pacific.’ The sales pitch says it's eco-friendly--and it's also half the price. The company's kosher, but who actually knows where they source the litter?

Heart pounding, I got on the laptop and googled for info. This new super-absorbant, clumping litter is shipped from islands in the Ring of Fire. No problem there. I googled again, “volcanic kitty litter parasite” and held my breath. Several million results came up, and I started scanning forums.

Something moving in the box … like a bug, grows fast when it gets wet … dog died … mom got sick …

Dry mouthed I thought, this has to be a hoax! But the stories were everywhere on the Net, thousands of pages. The further I looked, the more I saw, and all posting dates fell inside the last ten days.

One site looked official--government, or at least on a level with Mayo Clinic and the fire department. I gulped down the advice: “Do not touch the box. Use a broom, push it into a secure room, close the door and call this number.”

I scribbled it down. Bugsie still had the box staked out; he hadn't slept all night and gazed at me, wide eyed. When I approached the box he spat, hissed, started to sing again, so I shooed him away and followed instructions.

With exaggerated caution, I shoved the box into bathroom, slammed the door and made a grab for the phone.

Naturally, a computer answered: “All operators are busy. Leave your name and address. Under no circumstances touch the sandbox. An operator will return your call as soon as possible.”

Dust from the box had gotten into my throat. I coughed and frowned at the closed door before lassoing Bugsy. We retreated to the computer, and I googled yet again.

More stories, getting wilder as I read. New kitty litter … Solomon Islands … weird lights in the sky last June … my neighbor doesn't own a cat but her daughter does, she got sick when the girl came over to visit, and they both died within the week ... we thought Jim’d caught 'flu—you know, the headache and cough--then his hand swelled up … these tiny bugs jumped right out of Maureen's leg and vanished into the dust bunnies, and the next day her leg had to be amputated …

I called that number again and the computer began, “All operators are--”

Bugsy’s off-key singing at the bathroom door helped me make the decision. I hauled the cat carrier out of the closet, stuffed Bugsy inside and grabbed my bag on the way out. No way was I staying home with that.

Besides, I needed fresh air for this lousy headache, something to dispel the aches and pains that had started to niggle. Dad always has a bottle of Jack to hand. A shot or two would stop this damn' litter-dust cough.

As the door locked behind me I left a message on his machine: “Dad, I'm coming over, be there in an hour. I don’t feel so good, and I can't stay here, there's … damnit, there's something alive in the litterbox!”

The Lore of Wood and Wild: Owl

 

Moonlight settles over the forest like a silvery cloak, and Owl wakes with big yellow eyes, and the muted sound of wings. Night is a different world, with eddies, currents, tides. Wolves know this, and the wisdom of Foxes runs deep. But the deepest knowing of all belongs to Owl, whose sun is the moon and whose day is the night. Unseen, Owl hunts and loves and dreams; unseen, Owl lives and dies, for night is filled with peril and not for the faint of heart. Courage alone will spirit you there. This is the Lore of Wood and Wild.

Invitation to The Crypt

 

The invitation must have been delivered in the morning, though Rick Stewart had no idea how it found its way onto the phone table in the hall. The postman hadn't called. A courier would have rung the doorbell, but at ten o’clock the house remained quiet as a crypt — just the way Amadeus van Rijn preferred it. Not gloomy and dingy like a tomb, but just as quiet as one.

The boss would have been asleep for only an hour when Rick yawned his way down the wide curved stairway, headed for the kitchen with coffee on his mind and nothing louder than the tick of a grandfather clock in his ears. Doors and windows were all locked up … and there on the polished walnut phone table lay the proverbial engraved invitation.

It was the old fashioned kind: gilt-edged, ivory card, hand-written in the copperplate only seen in greetings cards these days, where computers generated it. Nobody was expected to actually be able to write copperplate anymore. But the person who had sent the card could certainly do it:

Tonight, moonrise, Saint Jude’s, the Tomb.

Cordially, as ever,

Jake M.

Rick spent several moments trying to recall Amadeus mentioning some Jake, but no one came to mind. The card probably originated with one of the antique dealers or auction houses he dealt with. Rick recalled a Jean, and a Jules, a Jacques — copperplate would be just their style — but no Jake.

Thinking nothing more of it than to wonder how it had materialized on the phone table, he stuck the card into the back pocket of his jeans as he headed into the kitchen and followed through on his coffee plans. Like the rest of the house, the kitchen was vast, fully-fitted, and almost as old fashioned as Jake M.’s card. Amadeus liked antiques as much as he cherished quiet. He had no affection for computers, but did possess both laptop and cell phone, which he viewed as unfortunate necessities, like the blood-scarlet sportscar parked in the old coach house which had been converted to a garage.

Quiet saturated the house — yes, like a tomb, Rick decided. He pushed earbuds into his ears, resorting to the MP3 player to remedy the situation. When Amadeus played music, it would be Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Bach, Vivaldi. He had no desire to give house-room to Johnny Cash or Sting, much less Queen or the Stones. As he would say, “That’s what MP3 players were invented for, Rick” … and Amadeus was the boss.

Coffee in one hand, a reheated yesterday’s-croissant in the other, Rick drifted into the drawing room and cracked open a curtain to peek at the weather. Amadeus might happily drowse away the daylight hours, but Rick had better things to do —

But apparently not today. The sky was gray, already low and still lowering. It was shaping up to be the proverbial dark and stormy night, if the wind refused to shift by a few compass points and move this weather front to north or south. Rain flecked the window glass. Rick shivered as he woke  the laptop and hunted for a weather forecast. The trick or treaters would be in for a drenching, unless the wind changed.

And according to the forecast, it would. Winds gusting in the afternoon, shifting easterly, showers clearing ahead of a calm though humid evening. Perfect for kids in ghoul masks and witches’ hats … so Amadeus van Rijn would be inclined to keep the rendezvous at ‘The Tomb’ at St. Jude’s, which put Rick on duty. The job description read bodyguard. Time, he thought, to play the part.

Saint Jude's? It could only mean the old churchyard. The tombstones were so old, the most ancient dated back to the Napoleonic Wars. Then again, so did Amadeus; and there were times when he seemed much more comfortable with things of the past than the present. It was probably an occupational hazard when you were so unthinkably old, you remembered wanting to toss salad at the stage on the opening night of Hamlet.

Not that one as cultured, as genteel as van Rijn would actually throw vegetables at an actor, Rick allowed as he turned on the gas fire in the library and sank into a winged leather armchair. He remembered the invitation in the nick of time before he sat on it, and put it on the mantel, propped against the clock. 

The boss always slept way past noon. He'd make phone calls, set up a few deals in the late afternoon — there was serious money in antiques. Amadeus wasn't so much an expert in the field as simply someone who knew gems from junk because he'd been there when everything was new.

He'd see the card propped against the clock when he came in for the laptop. Rick had other things to do. He promptly forgot about it as he began to tap his toe in rhythm to Johnny Cash and thought, Whatever they’re paying this porter, it’s not enough.

He remembered the invitation at six, when the strains of Handel wafted out of the sound system in the office. Xerxes. Amadeus sang along with the baritone part in a rich voice, dead in tune. Rick no longer bothered to ask how he knew the lyrics. He looked into the office to see the boss combing his signature hair, a long, snow-white mane.

The hair was only part of him that'd changed with the years. Raven black in his youth, for reasons unknown it gradually became white as Gandalf’s with time, while the rest of van Rijn, true to his race, retained the smoothness of skin, the tautness of muscle, of any thirty year old.

“We’re going out,” Rick guessed, seeing Amadeus’s choice of black silk, reminiscent of a past he never spoke of, but which Rick would sometimes imagine —

— castles in the wilderness, guttering candles, whimpering winds and blazing stars beneath which wolves howled —

“We were summoned,” Amadeus observed.

Rick’s memory jogged. “Oh yes, the invitation. I left it in the library”

“I found it. One is not invited to a tomb.” Amadeus finished combing the white silk and hunted for a clasp.

“You might be, on Halloween,” Rick argued.

“Perhaps,” Amadeus allowed. “But in this case I’m being summoned. There’s a difference.”

“The summons could be for us.” Rick watched him fiddling with the gold clasp. Silver gave him a painful rash, as it did most of his people; he avoided it at all cost, but he'd always liked gold.

“Jake doesn’t know you, not yet,” Amadeus said unconcernedly.

“Which means I don’t know him.” Rick might've been waiting for the boss to say, well, duh, but it wasn't the kind of thing Amadeus was ever likely to say. “He doesn’t mind if I come along?”

“I shouldn’t think so. It’s me he's after. He always is.”

The remark made Rick’s brows rise, made the bodyguard's professional hackles rise, but he wisely made no remark. People had pursued Amadeus for more centuries than he cared to recall. Rick knew a handful of the stories —

There was Lady Jean Hargreaves, who pursued him from London to Italy, where Amadeus managed to get her engaged to a Count Enzo Bertolucci, and made his escape with the Baroness Greenbrough, who was flattered because she thought she was old enough to be his mother, when in fact she was off by at least two thousand years. 

Then there was the wealthy widow, the Right Honorable Mrs. Alexandra Campbell-Hay, who claimed she was pregnant with van Rijn's offspring for three consecutive years, at which point even the most skeptical of Amadeus’s critics realized something wasn’t quite right. That time, Amadeus made his escape with Madame Alicia Cuvier nee-Jones, the Welsh wine heiress who was tragically drowned in a tank of Chablis when the ladder she was scaling collapsed during an earthquake.

And a famous artist, Oscar Riverside, who expressed his ardor by panting Amadeus nude in 1894, and had to joust with a magistrate to recover the painting after it was confiscated by the morality police — seized right out of the gallery where it was on exhibition, much to the chagrin of the manager, who'd never before seen ‘standing room only’ in an art gallery. Amadeus was briefly famous (some said notorious), and retired to the south of Spain for several decades to let the dust settle. Oscar Riverside painted infamous nudes till a Zeppelin raid on London in 1916 ended his career. As Amadeus said, you had to be fatalistic: Ossie had spent far more time in Granada than in London for the last twenty years (make of that what one would). And in any case, what manner of idiot went back to London with Zeppelins headed west?

Sometimes Rick was more than halfway convinced Amadeus made it all up — then he would remember how the passageways upstairs were lined with portraits. Lady Jean was a big-busted beauty with apple cheeks, a sweet little smile and a psychotic look in her baby-blue eyes. Baroness Hortense Greenbrough was a stout matron of sixty, with henna-red hair and enough rouge to paint a fire engine. Sandy Campbell was the whey-faced twenty-something with eyes fixed on some point in the fourth dimension. Allie Jones was the reed-slender lass whose huge, ruddy nose promised to glow in the dark. And Ossie Riverside appeared to have been a tall, broad shouldered, long legged show pony, if Rick had ever seen one, with big green eyes, pouty red  lips, and a penchant for curling his hair and wearing it six inches longer than the current fashion.

The fact was, you couldn’t make this stuff up, Rick decided as he watched Amadeus get ready to go out. Well, you could, he allowed a moment later, but van Rijn had never been the type to fictionalize. Nor did he need to. He'd grown stupefyingly rich as an antique dealer; he owned six mansions scattered across Europe, was the patron of a major symphony orchestra, owned an art gallery in London and a vineyard in Provence. In the 1920s and 30s it amused him to date movie stars — Margaret Lockwood and Rudolph Valentino; and he could produce the snapshots to prove it, insofar as van Rijn should be inclined to prove anything.

The weather had improved during the afternoon and evening, while the wind shifted to the southeast. It actually felt warm, and the wave of air coming through from Europe seemed heavy, humid. Amadeus never felt the cold in any case, being what he was. Rick found himself sweating as he opened the garage and aimed the remote at the car. 

Sidelights flickered; the car issued a yelping sound, as if someone had stood on the tail of a very small dog. Rick shrugged out of his windbreaker, tugged the black tee-shirt straight and threw the jacket into the car.

“You look like you’re … cruising, is that the word?” Amadeus’s voice startled him, from the doorway of the converted coach house.

“Don’t con me,” Rick admonished, “you speak the lingo.”

“I’m sad to say, I do.” Amadeus sighed. “Modern English is rather faff, don’t you think?”

“Not if you were born after 1998,” Rick snorted. “You don’t want to know what kids call English the way you speak it.”

“Not faff, I take it?”

“Get in the car.” Rick brandished the key. “You’re going to be late.”

“He’ll wait.”

“This dude, Jake M. Someone I should know?”

“You’ll know him soon enough … in fact, you probably already do, you just don’t realize it.”

“Oooh, that’s so … so Amadeus,” Rick accused. He watched the tall, lean body slide into the passenger seat and asked, “You, uh, hungry?”

“Not today.” Amadeus ran up the seatbelt. “Tomorrow, perhaps.”

“You’re the boss.” Rick started the car and backed out.

The blood-scarlet Maserati Alfieri purred down the long, curved drive, past poplar and cedar and sycamore, to the mansion’s tall black iron gates. They opened automatically, not daring to squeal, and closed up when Rick had pulled out.

Saint Jude’s was an old church with an overcrowded cemetery, probably past due for clearing. The developers were dying to get in; they identified at least half a billion’s worth of real estate here, in anyone’s currency. But until the ground was deconsecrated, the church demolished, historic tombstones salvaged, ground milled in search of someone’s earthly remains to be relocated, Saint Jude’s would drowse on in the south of the city. A quarter of a square kilometer levitated right out of another time zone and plunked into 2021, likely via some ’wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff’ which Rick did not profess to understand, but cautiously suspected to be perfectly genuine.

“Never a blue box with a spinner on top around when you need one,” he remarked as he stopped the car beside the skeletal chestnut trees, outside a wrought-iron gate. He killed the engine, opened the door.

“Blue box with a spinner...?” Amadeus slid out and closed his door.

“Don’t give me that. You’ve been saving it to the harddrive every week,” Rick retorted. The Maserati locked up with another stomp-tailed yelp. “Any tomb in particular?”

“Follow me.”

He'd been here before — this much was obvious. He knew the tall iron gates were not locked, and which way the bolt worked, without even looking at it. He knew the path to take, around the bare trees and ancient headstones … weeping angels that inspired the heebie jeebies in Rick lately (and where was that itinerant blue box when you needed it?), and the memorial garden where cremated ashes were scattered.

And there was the tomb, like a tiny house with an open archway sheltering barred, padlocked gates and, within, a short flight of stone steps leading down to the crypt. Above the gate was a flourishing, stylized letter M. As in, ‘Jake M.,’ Rick observed as he and Amadeus stepped in under the arch. 

He tried the gates, but the padlock must've rusted into place decades ago. A few ornamental lamps lit the graveyard, their cold light shimmering on the faint mist that had begun to thicken in the chill, clammy humidity.

Amadeus cast about in the short passage leading to the gate, and murmured as he discovered a lantern. It stank of oil. He flicked a cigarette lighter, lit the wick, and handed it to Rick. “For your poor human eyes.”

“And of course you see in the dark like a fox,” Rick said dryly. “Or do I mean a bat?”

“I’d better.” Amadeus was amused.

“You’re nocturnal,” Rick added.

“Like all my kind.”

“You could say, like the pubbing, clubbing rentboys, swingers and assorted nightlife,” Rick snorted. “Urban wildlife.”

“One could say that.” Amadeus’s lip curled slightly. “But if one wanted to drive the Lamborghini the next time I need to go to Rome, one might think twice about it.”

Rick chuckled. “It’s hell being your minder.”

“You took the job.”

“The way you advertised it, how could one refuse? Besides,” Rick admitted, “I’d had enough of bouncing.”

“You make it sound as if you were a rubber ball.”

“I was a bouncer … and don’t you dare say you don’t know what it means! The language might be faff, but you speak it as fluently as you rattle on in Ancient Greek and Latin.”

“I speak it.” Amadeus gazed out across the old cemetery, where most trees were mere skeletons and, beyond them, the sky over the city had definitely begun to lighten. “It’s almost moonrise.”

“That’s what the dude said — moonrise at The Tomb. He’s late.”

“Jacob is never late,” Amadeus said with acerbic humor.

Rick angled a look at him. “You’ve done this before.”

“Many times.”

“You’ve been summoned many times?”

“Whenever I’m in London at this time of year.”

“And this Jake M. — Jacob, is it? — summons you, and you just toddle along when you’re told to?”

“I don’t toddle anywhere. I have never toddled in my entire life.” Amadeus gave his bodyguard a disdainful look, but the dark eyes glittered with amusement.

“Me Londoner,” Rick intoned, tapping his chest. “You … come to think of it, where are you from originally?”

“Iberia, Flanders, Nederland, many places,” Amadeus informed him unhelpfully.

“Where the hell is Iberia?”

“Spain. Shush, now. The moon’s rising, Jake will be here in a moment.” And some note in his voice said, ‘Here we go again.’

Sure enough, the moon had begun to climb over the city skyline, and Rick set aside his thousand-odd questions to enjoy the sight. Bodyguarding for van Rijn had many, many perks, not least among them the fact that, being nocturnal, the boss would be waking up, getting motivated, at about the same time as the city’s party animals. Switching from bouncing hardcases and headcases at The Hare and Hounds to minding for a reclusive, immortal billionaire with ’exotic dietary requirements’ and international business interests had been a challenge, but at least the hours Rick was expected to keep remained about the same. Plus, the first class travel opportunities, not to mention the sportscars —

 And Amadeus badly needed a minder. In fact, Rick often thought he needed a keeper. No matter the physical strength of his kind,  every one of them suffered a terrible vulnerability which needed to be jealously guarded. Little wonder they were an endangered species in the twenty-first century. 
It was a very long time indeed since a torch-wielding mob had actually bayed at the heels of someone like van Rijn, but the scene remained far from impossible; and though he might never deign to admit it, his safety had never been more than precarious, through two and a half millennia. 

Rick Stewart had learned all this a piece at a time, as Amadeus let first one secret slip and then another. Eventually, even a bouncer lately employed in the pub scene put two and two together and made five ... which turned out to be the right answer. 

Not bad, he decided, for a kid who bombed out of school, earned a meager living by physically throwing his weight around, and was desperate enough to answer an advert in the paper —

The wind had shifted again and the passage to an abandoned crypt wasn't the warmest place to be. Rick shivered animatedly, hoarding the tiny heat given off by the lantern. “Trust the likes of you to hang out in a bloody crypt on Halloween.”

“The likes of me?”

“You know what I mean!”

“I know what you mean,” van Rijn admitted. “And you know full well, I don’t hang out in crypts by choice. It’s just a convenient rendezvous when I’m summoned.”

“This Jake makes a habit of it, when you’re in town at Halloween.”

“He does.” Amadeus frowned across the graveyard. “His family is interred all around us. They were laid to rest here for centuries. All gone now; their bloodline ended.”

“Except for Jake,” Rick said glibly.

“Not ... quite.” Amadeus seemed determined to be cryptic.

“Meaning?” Rick groaned.

“Take it up with Jacob.” Amadeus nodded toward the rising moon. “He’s here.”

Rick muttered the kind of language that would've got his pocket money docked as a kid in his mother’s hearing. He followed the line of Amadeus’s eyes to the other corner of the structure housing the upper levels of the crypt. 

A figure had appeared there, though Rick hadn't heard anyone approach, and he must have had an LED light somewhere on him, because pale blue light enveloped him. The wind toyed with his hair —

At which moment Rick realized there was no wind. 

The graveyard was absolutely still, not a branch stirred among the trees … and the blue light didn't issue from some LED. It emanated from the figure himself, while the long blond hair floated as if he were in freefall, and his body shimmered.

“Omigod,” Rick whispered.

“Hush, now,” Amadeus admonished.

“But I can see right through him!”

“Of course you can. Jacob! Jake, it’s been — how long, seven years?”

“Seven very long years,” the apparition agreed, coming closer. “You look great. You never change. Then again, how could you?”

“And you’re looking very good indeed,” van Rijn approved.

Looking good? Rick blinked both eyes as hard as he could, rubbed them and peered at the figure, which had drifted to a shimmering rest just outside their archway. He swore again. “He looks — he looks like Brad bloody Pitt!”

“I suppose he does,” van Rijn mused. “And I don’t suppose there’s any reason why he shouldn’t.”

“He’s a — a— he’s dead,” Rick said lucidly.

Jacob frowned at him, head cocked. “The lad’s a genius.” He might look like Pitt, but his voice was entirely English. “Who’s the brat, Amadeus?”

“My bodyguard,” Amadeus told him. “It’s been a difficult few years, Jacob. I endured a few too many close calls, when things became ... more uncomfortable than I cared for. I decided I needed a bodyguard.”

“A minder. You would,” Jake M. said thoughtfully. “Being what you are.”

“Oh, don’t be judgmental, old friend!” Amadeus spread his arms. “Every time I’m in London on October 31st I get the summons, and I never let you down. Every time, I come when you issue the invitation, and every time you say the same thing. Being what I am.”

The apparition shrugged. “It’s my job. You know it all by heart by now … how many years I spent buried in the counting house, doing business and missing being mortal and human and decent … and how mankind was the comprehensive ocean of my business, and all the stuff you don’t do in life you’re doomed to do in death.”

Amadeus had taken to peering closely at Jake’s transparent feet. “I don’t see them.”

Rick’s heart had stopped hammering on his ribs as if it were trying to batter its way out. He listened properly now, actually hearing what they were saying. Something sounded horribly familiar about Jake's words. He'd heard them before, somewhere. In a movie? Actually, in several movies — the subject matter had been filmed so often, everybody from Captain Picard to the Muppets had taken a crack at it. He swallowed a curse and forced himself to focus as Jake said, 

“I got rid of the chains.” The apparition crowed, preening visibly. “Took a while, but if you get your head down and do the job right, you can work through the penance and unload the ironmongery. God knows, it’s been over 170 years … enough’s enough, right?” He struck a dramatic, heroic pose — Achilles on the beach at Troy. “Major makeover. What d'you think?”

“Suits you,” Amadeus said honestly. “It’s a good look for you.”

“It was time for a change.” Then Jacob dropped back into character, taking on enough gravitas to sink the RMS Titanic. He jabbed a sharp, hard finger at Amadeus. “It is well that you answered the summons, for the time has come for repentance. The sins of the past —”

“Oh, give it a rest,” van Rijn scoffed. “You said you’ve finished the penance, dumped the ironmongery. You can quit the job now.”

Jacob seemed taken aback. “I suppose I got used to the work. I kinda like it now. Going around, putting the breeze up characters like you. Saving souls.”

“Doing what?” Rick demanded. “Who the hell are you?” He took a half step forward, put himself between Amadeus and the apparition. “I’m his minder. You want to take a pop at him, sunshine, you gotta get through me.”

“Rick,” Amadeus began, half amused.

But Rick was adamant. “Hey, you hired a bodyguard, remember? What sort of useless twerp would I be, if I just let him have a pop at you? He’s not exactly the Grim Reaper!” He shot a quick look over his shoulder at Amadeus. “Is he?”

“Not exactly.” Amadeus actually chuckled. “He’s a third cousin, twice removed, of the Grim Reaper’s. Jacob is here with the warning … if I don’t mend my ways, it’ll be doom for me … a marble slab in the smart new churchyard over at Saint Bede’s.”

“Not while I’m minding for you,” Rick said loudly. He pinned the luminous Brad Pitt lookalike with a professional glare. “Okay, you, Jake, Jacob, whatever your name is. Drop it. Right now.”

The apparition seemed nonplussed, as if he'd never run face-first into a bodyguard. “Whatever my name is? Look around you, laddie. Scores of Marleys are interred here.”

“Yeah, well the only Marley I know about is Bob Marley,” Rick began; and then skipped a beat. “Uh, Jacob...?”

“Marley,” Amadeus finished.

“But he looks like Brad Pitt.”

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t,” Jake challenged. “I’ve been dead for 173 years — it’s not like I have a physical body left to look like. You want me to lurch around looking like the bunch of rags and bones in the tomb?” He made a face. “That'd be gross.”

“Yeah, well, no, well, I suppose,” Rick admitted, “but … you’re real.”

“I’m a ghost,” Jacob said patiently. “Nobody ever thought to hire a decent exorcist and get rid of me — or the other three on the team, come to that — so I’m still here.” He flicked back the ends of the long blond hair. “I got to like the job, scaring crap out of people to make them get off their bums and be halfway decent for a change.”

“And save their souls,” van Rijn said doubtfully.

“Well, it doesn’t actually work like that,” Jacob admitted. “I mean, look at me. You can either do the good works while you’re alive and kicking, or you can do them when you’re dead. Your choice, actually. Fact is, like the saying goes, you’re a looooong time dead. You get bored as all hell if you don’t find yourself a proper job.”

“Like haunting someone’s house?” Amadeus was teasing now.

“But … but …” Rick swallowed hard. “You were in a book.”

Jacob chuckled richly. “I would've asked the bastard for a cut of the royalties, but I was dead by the time it was published, and Charles was too dense to hear me when I came knocking. Even if he’d split the royalties with me, how was I going to spend the dosh? That’s the bummer deal about being dead. They don’t have shops where I live.”

“No shops?” Rick had begun to doubt his sanity, and turned to the older, wiser head for guidance. “Tell me I’m hallucinating.”

“Trick or treat,” Jacob mocked, making appalling ghoul faces before he dropped back into the character, the gravitas, and pointed the sharp, hard finger at Amadeus again. “You will be haunted by three spirits. The first shall come upon the stroke of —”

“It’s Halloween,” Rick bellowed in protest. “That’s supposed to happen on Christmas Eve!”

“Says who?” Jacob argued. “Charles set the story at Christmas because he wanted to write a book about Christmas. There was no market for books about Halloween back in those days.”

“Rick, shush,” van Rijn said with exaggerated patience. “I rather like this part. It’s where he tells me I’ll be haunted by the Ghosts of Lives Past, Lives Present, and Lives Yet to Come. It’s something of a blast, actually. A wild ride, to use your vernacular. If we hang around here, and you hitch a lift, you can come back with me and catch a glimpse or two of the places where I grew up … the big, dark, drafty castle where I lost a certain kind of virginity, which is to say the garden where I tasted blood for the first time —”

“Aha!” Jake interjected. “This is where all the stuff about sins and atonement and the good of mankind clicks into gear. Time to save your soul, my dear boy.”

“Jacob.” Amadeus folded his arms on his silk-tunicked breast. “In the first place, I was born the way I am, not made.”

“Vampire.” Jacob’s nose wrinkled. He frowned at Rick. “You know about all him, do you?”

Rick shoved both hands into his back pockets. “I figured it out. What’s it to you?”

“Me?” Jake shrugged. “I just like saving souls. I suppose I do it on a hobby basis, now I don’t actually have to.” He gestured at his feet. “See? No more chains.”

“In the second place,” van Rijn said, louder, “I can’t stop being what I am, any more than you can stop being a ghost. I’m already a philanthropist, Jacob, as well you know. I fund a symphony orchestra, and a dramatic society, an art school, and a publisher of arcane literature. What more do you want?”

“A hospital,” Jacob suggested.

“All right, a hospital,” Amadeus agreed.

“For orphans.” Jacob looked satisfied.

“A hospital for orphans. It’s perfect. Why didn’t I think of it myself?” Amadeus demanded with scathing, arid humor. He lifted a brow at Rick. “He was always like this, even when he was alive. He likes to tell you dying changed him, but he was always a manipulative little sod. He got it from his father and his paternal grandmother.”

“You knew them.” Rick wondered why he was surprised.

“I knew several generations of Marleys,” Amadeus mused, “and there wasn’t a Robert among them.”

“Bob,” Rick corrected. “It’s Bob Marley. Of course, he’s dead now; and he was Jamaican.” He glared at Jacob. “Not one of your mob.”

“Can't say I've ever been to Jamaica,” Jacob said thoughtfully.

“Why not treat yourself to a vacation?” Amadeus suggested. “You can go right there from here. It’s nice at this time of year.”

The apparition glared at him. “The hospital?”

“You’ve got your hospital,” Amadeus promised dutifully. “For orphans, specifically … which I take to mean we toss all the other sick children out into the street.”

“Amadeus!” Jacob might be dead, but he could still roar.

“Not just for orphans, then,” the young-old vampire said smoothly, not the least daunted. “Orphan friendly, perhaps, yes?”

“Then, I can tell the rest of the team not to bother coming tonight —?” Jacob relaxed visibly. “Saves them the time and trouble, which puts the smiles back on their faces. They can be a disagreeable, taciturn bunch, especially his lordship, Yet to Be. All these years, and I’ve never managed to wring a word out of him. Never even a syllable. He just does the skeletal, pointy finger thing. Very inscrutable, I’m sure. He probably thinks its menacing, when it’s more of your actual aggravation. In fact, I’m not even sure it’s a him. Could be a her, for all I know.” He thought over the turn of events and said speculatively, “Jamaica.”

“Where the rest of the Marleys come from,” Rick said wryly. “Reggae, rum, cricket, the works.”

“Holiday,” Jacob's voice was becoming as thin and pale as the rest of him.

Amadeus took a step forward. “Jake, you’re fading out. Are you leaving already?”

“I — what? No.” Jacob seemed to notice what was happening and looked around wildly. “Omigod — no. No!”

“What?” Beside van Rijn, Rick watched the apparition panic. “Jake, what?”

“I — I’m being exorcised,” Jacob wailed, shouting, though only a tendril of sound made it through to Rick’s ears. “I don’t wanna be exorcised! I wanna go to Jamaica! Amadeus — Amadeus, do something! Help me!”

But Amadeus was obviously at a loss. “I’m a vampire, not an exorcist, Jake, I’ve never even attended an exorcism! I wouldn’t know where to begin to stop one.” He reached out to Jacob as if trying to touch him, but his hand passed right through the insubstantial stuff of the ghost. “Jacob! You’re fading fast, tell me what to do!”

The apparition looked pained, distraught. “Clap your hands,” he whimpered.

“Do what?” Rick strained forward toward him. “Jake, do what?”

“Clap your hands,” Jacob moaned, “and say, “I do believe in ghosts!” He wailed, as if in agony. “Say it, say it!”

He was fading rapidly now. Just a thin, wavering remnant was left, and Rick clapped his hands hard, echoing the sharp raps of Amadeus’s palms. “I do believe in ghosts,” Rick said loudly.

“I do believe in ghosts,” van Rijn called. “I do — I do!”

Rick stopped short in mid clap. “Just a second. Just one bloody second — that’s Peter freakin’ Pan.”

“It’s what?” Amadeus looked sidelong at him.

“The part where Tinkerbell swallows poison to save Peter,” Rick said coldly, and pinned the apparition with an accusatory glare. “You … you toerag.”

The ghost brightened till he looked almost corporeal, and doubled up with ribald laughter. “Got you. Trick or bleedin’ treat! Got you, got both of you!”

“Got me. Us,” Amadeus intoned. “Happy now, Jacob? Are you satisfied, now you’ve embarrassed me in front of my bodyguard?”

Jacob smothered his amusement. “I meant it about the hospital.”

“One children’s hospital, orphan friendly, on the fiscal agenda for 2022,” Amadeus said with all due solemnity. “Jamaica?”

“Jamaica,” Jacob agreed, “where the rest of the Marleys come from. I wonder if we’re related?”

He'd begun to fade once more, but this time without the performance. “I’ll see you again, Amadeus.”

“And my soul?” van Rijn called after him.

The ghost guffawed. “Like you have to worry about some marble slab at Saint Joseph’s. Vampires are immortal.”

Then he was gone.

Amadeus stooped to blow out the lamp and set it back on the shelf just inside the archway. “Clap hands and say, ‘I do believe in ghosts.’ Damnit, I must be getting slow.”

“Either that, or you never saw Peter Pan.” Rick stepped out into the graveyard.

“I’ll rent the DVD.”

“I’ll get you it for Christmas,” Rick muttered. “That and Dracula.”

“I’ve seen Dracula.”

“Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee?”

“Frank Langella. In fact, he signed a picture of himself when I met him at the London premier.”

Rick’s chin dropped for the second time that evening. “You met Frank Langella?”

“Of course. There was a charity event, I gave thirty thousand pounds. Mr. Langella and I drank champagne. He was most charming.”

“And soooo good looking,” Rick crooned. “And he never never guessed he was interviewing the real McCoy.”

“The real what?”

“A vampire.” Rick plucked the keys from his pocket and surveyed the graveyard critically as they started down toward the gate. He hurried the pace, wanting to get out of the dampness. The high humidity and rapidly chilling air were raising a thick mist, which wound and coiled around the gravestones, and those damned weeping angels. “This place,” Rick said succinctly, “is giving me the creeps.”

“It’s full of Marleys.”

“All this time, I thought he was out of a book.”

“He was out of a book.”

“Only because Charles Dickens put him in it!” Rick jingled the keys. “So … did Dickens meet Jake while he was alive, or after he died? Jake, I mean. Dickens probably had to be alive to write the book.” Abruptly, nothing seemed certain anymore.

The vampire’s brows rose. “I honestly have no idea. You know, I never thought to ask. Next time.”

“In another seven years? The next time an invitation card materializes on the table in the hall, when you’re in town at Halloween?”

“That would be the time.”

Rick groaned. “I need a beer.”

“You need dinner,” Amadeus corrected.

“I’m not hungry.”

“But I’m starting to feel a little … peckish.” The pink tip of van Rijn's tongue flicked out across his lips. Moonlight glistened on the too-sharp point of a canine tooth for just a moment before it was gone again. “You need to get some food inside you, so I can feed.”

“Oh. All right.” This facet of the job had caught Rick unawares, but the rewards, the perks, were more than worth the ... investment. Yes, that was the word. At the gate, he aimed the keyring at the car. It yelped as it came to life. “Fish and chips again, on account of you can’t stand garlic, so I can’t have French or Italian.”

“Try Indian. I’ve a fancy for something spicy. Have a nice Madras curry, with naan and papadums on the side.”

“And a beer,” Rick growled as he swung open the door.

“With a whiskey chaser. I like the way the spirit simmers in the blood.”

Pausing before stepping into the car, Rick regarded the white-haired young man over the roof. “You know, I got a whole bundle more than I bargained for, when I answered the advert in the paper. I only signed on as your minder.”

“Regrets?” Amadeus wondered.

For a moment Rick stopped to think, then shook his head. “Only when you drag me into crypts in the middle of graveyards on Halloween.”

“You don’t have to come next time.”

“I might, though, if you take me along for the ride, when Lives Past shows you the creepy old castle where you first tasted blood.”

“Even I was young once.”

“You still are.”

“Only on the outside.” Amadeus slid into the car. “Where are we going?”

“The Bombay Umbrella Club,” Rick said promptly. “You want Indian, you get Indian. Nothing but the best for the boss.”

“You’re too kind. What did I do to deserve you?”

“The aforementioned advert in the paper,” Rick reminded him glibly. “You wanted a minder, you got one.”

And Rick Stewart had wanted to move onward and upward from the hazards of bouncing at rowdy pubs. He revved the engine and flicked the indicator, but the road was deserted. The autumn night was calm, damp, cold, sharp with the promise of winter right around the corner — but first, fireworks in a few days’ time. On the fifth of November it would be Rick dragging van Rijn out to see the spectacle, if several tonnes of exploding gunpowder could rival meeting an actual, genuine ghost, face to face.

I do believe in ghosts, I do! Rick mocked himself and turned the car in the direction of the best Indian restaurant on this side of London.