November 11, 2024. Laguna Bay College, Craigbrook, Alabama. We got to shed some light on the problem, just not the kind we expected…

Despite the chilly air, the odd conversation stayed as warm as the pie. Cassidy and I finally headed home about the time evening knocked the fall dust off the world. Life had handed us a bittersweet ending to the day with only a few surprise thorns.

Cassidy watched the sunset as I drove. “The sheriff,” she murmured. “He knew.”

“He did.” I frowned a little as streetlights flickered awake. “Not sure what to do with that. I got that Issac wanted us to talk to Sheriff Branham.”

“Yeah,” Cassidy sighed. “Yeah. First, we need to talk to Professor Barnes. After that?” She looked over, raising her eyebrows. “We need to talk to the sheriff.”

I didn’t have a good reply, so I nodded. We skipped over the soul-shattering fact, it was a ghost—a real one—that had told us any of this. It haunted the broken edges of our conversation. We didn’t talk about that.

The silence and the sunset said the rest.

Sunlight slid through the shop windows the next morning, giving the dust a spotlight to dance. I puttered around the shelves, dusting and organizing with the odd urge to whistle. A quiet routine before opening the shop for the day.

It all felt so painfully normal; I wondered if the world had run out of spare weird to throw at us. We made it through breakfast, coffee, and the entire morning without a new dead body, a cursed pen, or yet another visit from law enforcement. I wasn’t sure if I felt productive, caught up, or just a little neglected by life. Cassidy’s voice caught my attention as she walked downstairs to the shop where I lingered behind the front counter.

“… of course, Professor,” she said, giving me a bright grin. “—yes. Absolutely. We’ll both come and bring that 1948 cookbook you want, too. See you then!”

She cut the call, eyebrows dancing as her smile reached her green eyes. With a flourish, she dropped her phone into the pocket of her Crimson Tide hoodie.

“That was Professor Barnes. He wants us to come by later today when we can. Turns out he has the pen back and from what he described—I think it’s the last Waterman pen.”

Her smile melted off a frown. “… he also hasn't slept much in two nights. Nightmares.”

We swapped a knowing look that said everything. I’d been having nightmares. So had Cassidy. I rapped my knuckles against the wooden counter.

“Close shop early?” I suggested. She nodded as I pulled my phone from a pants pocket. “I’ll text Mike and let him know we’ll be out so he’s clear to come work on the front window.”

One text exchange later, we waded through a sandwich lunch, then an early afternoon. Our repair guy, Mike Dobbins, dropped by mid-afternoon and got to work on the busted bay window. Cassidy and I left him to it, flipping the shop sign to ‘closed’ and headed out to meet the professor.

Laguna Bay College was in Craigbrook, the next town over. Normally that’s a fifteen-minute drive, but that day it was more like twenty. The road was busy with delivery vans, a school bus, and at least one yellow-green farm combine taking up both patience and pavement. As we drove, the landscape blurred to beige, green, and the somber pre-gray of winter.

“If he’s having nightmares, and we’ve been having nightmares…” Cassidy sighed from the passenger side, words flatlining while watching the landscape smear past.

I nodded, nervously tapping the fake leather of the steering wheel. “… the pens. I was just thinking that. The nightmares and the pens go together.” A low flush scrubbed my cheeks. “Most of the nightmares, maybe.”

It was going to be a long time before I stopped hearing Valeria Moffet’s insane giggle living rent-free in my head. We let the road noise of the drive fill the dead space in the conversation.

Laguna Bay was a local branch of a community college system that sprawled across the state. They hadn’t skimped on appearance. This branch was spread out, not tall, with the largest building being only four stories at most. Vaguely art déco, tan buildings surrounded both a wide parking lot and a grassy common area sprinkled with wooden benches. Brown fall trees framed everything, including some of the concrete paths.

I navigated the field of parked cars until I tracked down an open space. “So, taking for granted this is the fourth pen, what if it hurt that student?”

Cassidy paused, hand on the seat belt buckle as she pursed her lips. Every thought shone raw in her eyes. “I know nothing about curses,” she admitted.

With the car in park, I unbuckled and stepped out. “You know more than I do. I keep wanting to call… just somebody.”

Cassidy stepped out, and we headed up the nearest walk. “Who, though?” She shook her head. “I could call my folks; they might know someone.”

I winced. “We could ask Dorian.”

She mirrored my expression. “That’s a horrible idea and probably the right one.” She rubbed an eye. “If anyone knows their way around old curses, it’d be a bloodleech.”

We found Professor Halcomb Barnes in his office on the second floor of the Charles Weatherby Hall building. It was the fourth office on the right, complete with an ancient wooden door housing a frosted glass pane. Inside was the portrait of a college professor, from an old coffee aroma to shelves of books along either wall. Rolls of old maps were stuck in an umbrella holder by the door, as dusty blinds muted the air to a soaked sepia.

The professor looked up when we walked inside; tan slacks and a blue shirt were a little rumpled, along with his brown hair. Overall, the man looked a dozen years older to the day since last we saw him, and twice as tired.

Then I spotted what was on his desk. The fourth Waterman pen. I froze.

Cassidy glanced at me before setting the antique cookbook the professor wanted on his desk. Warily, she eased into a nearby chair.

“That’s it,” I breathed, claiming a chair for myself. “Same tortoiseshell casing, but this one looks wrapped in bronze-gold thorn leaves.”

Cassidy reached for the pen, paused, then gingerly lifted it.

“The other pen had turquoise vines around the outside,” she said, hefting the pen as if testing its weight. Even as she did, she studied the chrome-edged casing as if it might bite her at any moment.

I noticed she left out any mention that the turquoise pen was in our hidden basement. After what Issac had told us, I thought that was a fantastic idea.

“Yeah.” I frowned when it looked like the leaves shifted. “The pen Dorian handed us had blood-red veins.”

Tired or not, this caught the professor’s attention. He leaned forward, elbows on his desk.

“I’m no expert on fountain pens. That one I picked up in Sleepy Hollow on a vacation.”

“Cassidy said you mentioned nightmares?” I tensed for the answer.

He nodded. “Those only started when my student gave the pen back. She said she had them, too. Also, she said a bad feeling came over her, and just had to give the pen back.”

Cassidy took a long breath, sparing a brief glance at me. I raised my eyebrows. The professor didn’t notice. Instead, he kept going.

“Now, myths and legends? That is in my wheelhouse, at least from literature and history, or I wouldn’t be teaching. You said bloody veins, turquoise vines, and now that?”

Professor Barnes sat back slowly, pursing his lips.

He gestured at the pen. Light from the office windows cast it in an odd glimmer that made me want to step away.

“That’s folklore theming if I ever heard it,” Professor Barnes said. “Old world. Faeries, dryads, and the bad bargains they made that would get people into trouble.”

I shared a look with Cassidy, then folded my arms.

“Like a curse?” When Professor Barnes nodded, I leaped onto the inevitable next thought. “Really? What kinds?”

Professor Barnes shrugged, a wide smile on his tired face. The enthusiasm of someone taking refuge against the world in their favorite subject.

“Oh, well. For example, over in Scotland—”

The power died with an ugly snap.

Professor Barnes tensed. “What?”

Cassidy stood, holding the pen like a knife. I turned toward the door, feeling an itch between my shoulder blades. That one motion spared me a world of pain for the next two seconds.

The office door flew open with a bang. A hand with fingers too long for comfort grabbed the door frame before a shadow in a dark coat lunged for me.

“Gah—!”

I leaped back, finding a chair the hard way, before tumbling to the floor. Cassidy wasn’t so lucky.

The tall figure in the black coat and wide-brimmed hat shoulder-checked Cassidy into a wall. My wife bounced off a shelf and onto the floor. The fountain pen sailed out of her grip, skittering across the professor’s desk.

I scrambled to my feet as the dark figure snatched up the pen, then produced a sickly yellow light from its coat. They snatched Professor Barnes by the throat.

“Professor!” I glanced around for something, anything, to use as a weapon.

Cassidy shook her head. Extending her claws, she shoved herself upright using the shelves; black bat-eyes glittering with anger. Five feet from us, Professor Barnes shuddered in the thing’s dead-pale grip, eyes wide and staring. A touch of drool trembled on the professor’s lips as the veins stood out on his neck.

Then my blood chilled as the professor’s hair slowly turned white, and his skin withered.

I reached for the nearest thing I could find—an old wooden dowel rod. It was six feet long and braced with metal caps on either end. I swung at the figure—the thing—cracking them across the back. The dark figure hissed like a dying boiler bent backwards out of shape. Cassidy rushed in low, claws tearing long gashes in coat and dead-pale skin. They staggered against the desk, letting go of Professor Barnes, who collapsed in a heap.

Glass shattered against the floor in the dark as the figure whirled to face me, burning eyes glaring from hollow pits. I swallowed, standing my ground as it limped at me in a rush. Cassidy clawed its back, and the tall figure shoved me aside like a doll. They raced for the pitch-black hallway. Cassidy and I charged after them.

The hallway was dark as pitch and twice as thick. Sunlight limped through the nearby windows, but something dark fogged the corridor. Cassidy squinted, bat ears pushing up through her hair. They turned, twisted, then she shook her head at me with a frown.

“Nothing,” she snapped. “Nothing!”

A groan laser focused us on the office.

We bolted inside, Cassidy restoring her human disguise as fast as she was able. The groan was Professor Barnes—hurt, dazed, but alive. He had managed to pull out his phone.

“Security?” he rasped. When he spotted us in the dark, he nodded, looking relieved to see us. Cassidy rushed to the older man’s side as he continued. “Yes. Send someone. My office. Second floor. Charles Weatherby Hall building.”

“Ask them to call the sheriff,” Cassidy suggested, helping the professor into his chair.

On the far side of the desk, I followed the hint of a sickly yellow flicker. By the time I got to where I thought it was, the light was gone. Instead, I found broken glass—a shattered Mason jar. Empty. The kind of jar used for candles or storing food. I glanced at the desk and chair-strewn office, then met Cassidy’s worried look.

“They took the pen.” A sigh rattled out of me. “I just know it. They got the pen.”