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Cross sank down on one knee and panted. Sharon! He forced himself back to his feet and looked for her. But like any grifter, she had good survival instincts. During the confusion, she had slipped away.
TWO DAYS LATER, FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT SECURED THE DEMOCRATIC nomination for president, but he did it without the vote of the alternate from Oklahoma. The original delegate had recovered and returned to the convention. Hanlin hadn’t seemed too upset to learn that the mission had burned. He and Sean had decided to head for California and a new life. “Preferably one with no preaching,” Cross had told Sean.
Late that night, Cross and Conoscenza stood at the edge of Lake Michigan, watching wavelets run up onto the rock beach. Cigar smoke wreathed them like gray halos.
“Are you pleased?” Cross asked.
“I’ll be pleased when he wins the election,” was the reply. “So, what are you going to do with that thing?” Conoscenza added, with a nod at the amber.
“Damned if I know.” Cross regarded the sullen gem. “Drop it in the lake?”
“Things have a way of getting fished up. I’ll take it, put it in a safedeposit box.”
“And banks don’t fail?” Cross asked.
“Not my banks. And once you locate a new paladin, it’ll be destroyed.”
“You need to add that tear in Oklahoma to the to-do list,” Cross said.
“Noted, but its priority is low. The news out of Germany is . . . disturbing. I’m sending you to Europe.”
“Unh-unh, not right now.”
“Why? You have something more pressing?”
“I’ve gotta find Sharon.”
“And do what?” Conoscenza asked. “Without a paladin, we can’t remove her ability for magic. And you’re not going to kill her.”
“I could.”
“But you won’t, or our deal is off.”
Cross sighed, took a final drag on his cigar, and tossed it into the water. “Guess I better go pack my lederhosen.”
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A PUZZLE AND A MYSTERY
by M. L. N. Hanover
Big-city police detectives have to get used to dealing with killers and junkies and whores. Dealing with demons, however, is definitely raising the bar . . .
New writer M. L. N. Hanover is the author of Unclean Spirits and Darker Angels, the first two books in the Black Sun’s Daughter sequence. Hanover’s most recent book is Vicious Grace. An International Horror Guild Award winner, Hanover lives in the American Southwest.
THE GUY WASN’T WHAT DETECTIVE MASON EXPECTED. GIVEN EVERYTHING about the case, he’d figured on someone with a big black trench coat, maybe a priest’s collar. An air of mystery anyway. Instead, he got this chubby guy in his forties, balding, with an uncertain expression that he’d worn so long it was etched in his skin. His button-down shirt had fit him about fifteen pounds ago. The knot in his tie was so tight, it had probably been there for years, lifted over his head and put back on without ever being remade. When the desk sergeant brought him back, the guy had bumped into Winehart’s desk hard enough to splash coffee out of her mug, then apologized like he was afraid she’d mace him. Now he sat down across from Mason at Anderson’s empty desk, put his hands between his knees like a kid in school, and smiled nervously.
“You’re Detective Mason, then?”
“Am. And you’re the exorcist.”
The man bared his teeth and shook his head.
“No, not really. I wouldn’t put it that way. Richard Scarrey. Like the children’s writer, but with an extra e.”
“The who?”
“Children’s writer. Illustrator too. He wrote the Busytown books? Pigs in lederhosen, things like that? He spelled it with the double r, but I also have an e. Still pronounce it ‘scary,’ though.”
“Okay,” Mason said. “I’m Detective Mason. Chief told you about me?”
