Having the ability to communicate with spiders had proven to be a handy skill when I wanted to know what was going on behind a closed door, such as the one I’d found myself in front of at the base of the ladder.

That still didn’t mean something big, bad and scary wasn’t standing perfectly still nearby waiting for the buxom blond cheerleader to lead the way all by herself on a dark and stormy night -- Oh, wait; sorry, too many horror movies lately. Vampires can make you think like that way too often. Those movies really are classics though. I’d often wondered if buxom blond cheerleaders are really that stupid, or actually that buxom.

Carefully, I opened the door and stepped into … an empty storage closet. Score one for the sneaky geek. I suddenly felt like a hacker algorithm breaking into a mainframe. Only this time around it wouldn’t be simple vapor ware caught by a virus scanner, it would be my own flesh and blood that would get spilled if I got caught. I could hear fairly loud music playing nearby, something not quite heavy metal, but close. Fortunately all the enforcers that I’d ever met had hated most any kind of music. That, in and of itself made me feel comfortable enough to carefully crack open the door.

I realized I’d been mistaken about the music being heavy metal once I recognized the Judas Priest song Touch of Evil. Someone apparently liked a darker shade of music for what ever it was that was currently going on in the morgue.

I could see the back of a figure in surgical garb working at a table. When I spotted the black pony tails sprouting out from beneath the surgical cap, I was relieved. Not only had I found the morgue and Abby, but she also seemed to be alone. Gently closing the door, I reached up and opened a small panel above it. Now came the hard part. If I managed to screw this up, the current situation would get enforcer ugly in a hurry.

Part of the security procedures Ace and Nixon had installed utilized another software innovation which I’d also helped to develop. We’d christened the result Python. Every door, panel and lighting fixture within the complex was wired to the central computer system and could be controlled by Python. It was designed to use the water tight bulkhead system much like you might find in large ships.

The central engine for Python was designed to use fairly simple numeric coding to control various options for everything that it was connected to. You could lock individual areas down, or the entire complex -- or you could dim the lights and turn on the microwave if you messed up the code.

If a code was attempted and found to be invalid, one possible reaction Python might have, would be to lock everything down. That usually only happened if you failed at the attempt several times in a row. It was really embarrassing when it happened more than once, as it had to some.

At this point I could deduce a couple of things. The enforcers did not appear to have access to everything within the complex. This may, or may not have been Mids doings; or some other automated system may have done it. If Mids had used Python to lock down parts of the complex, I could complicate things if I used the wrong code in a way she’d not anticipated or expected. This, of course, was assuming that she was not incapacitated in some way or another. With my proximity to our new morgue, I had to start thinking of such possibilities as much as I may not want to.

Simply put, it is fairly common knowledge that morgues are for dead bodies, not live ones.

Clearing such thoughts from my mind, I focused on the task at hand. Hopefully there would time to mourn later if it proved necessary. While designing Python we’d classified each of the rooms numerically and by zone. The idea was to keep it simple. Zone, plus room, plus command code in sequence. I closed my eyes and pictured the map that Ace and Nixon had developed and designed. I came up with the code that I thought would lock down the game room and silently prayed as I typed it in. It was time for some truth or dare.

I opened the door and stepped out into the room, carefully closing it behind me.

Fortunately I saw that the main door to the morgue was also closed. Python had been my friend. Hopefully I was now sealed safely into the morgue with Abby. It was at that point that I saw the legs and feet on one the other end of the table that she was standing, which meant that I was looking at a morgue table; with a corpse on it. The part about being in a morgue suddenly came back to my thoughts just about the time that I realized Abby was performing an autopsy.

So the morgue had not been some sort of code. We really did have a morgue and there were bodies stored in it. Oh goody. Then I thought of Mids and felt myself tense up. The next few minutes could turn out to be real bad. I don’t mind looking at the dead; I’m just not quite comfortable with those that I’ve known when they’d been alive. Especially if we happened to be close friends who had spend a lot of fun times together. I’ve heard that you really don’t want to watch the autopsy of a close friend. I might be about to test that theory.

“What’s up Phantom?” Abby asked over her shoulder as she turned to place something on a scale. She looked at me with a raised eyebrow and smiled behind her clear plastic visor. I had forgotten that she had a nice smile. It made me not want to think about who was on that table. It was a sign of how desperately I was searching for distractions. Then I realized that she’d probably been aware of me as soon as I’d stepped into the room.

Apparently I must not be Vampire level sneaky.

“Wow, nice duds!” she exclaimed, picking up whatever she’d been weighing and turning back to her work. Time for more truth or dare. I prepared myself in case it was Mids on that table and started a silent prayer. I made myself move forward to the other side and face Abby. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. I started to realize that I was never going to be any more ready for this than I was now. Remember the deep breath and that the dead are no longer people anymore. Shit.

The person she was working on was indeed that a young woman. I felt the dread that had built up like a towering tsunami flood away as I looked down at the woman’s face. They say you can faint from intense relief, and I almost did. I even had to hold onto the table for a moment to steady myself. I had really, really thought it was going to be Mids. I probably had convinced myself of it. Fear the power of prayer.

Abby had made the usual Y incision from the shoulders down between the breasts and on to the pubic bone. The woman’s chest had been peeled back with the breast plate removed to get at the internal organs. Abby looked at me while she held the dead woman’s heart in her hand. “Computer, mute the music.” She called out to the ceiling.

The room was suddenly very, very quiet. From my expression and my coat, she must have figured out that I was not simply there to observe. “Phantom, what’s going on?” she asked quietly. She wasn’t smiling anymore. She was looking at me across the chest of a dead woman holding the dead woman’s heart in her hands. I wonder if hallmark has a card for situations like this. I may have to write and ask them.

“I don’t know.” I replied truthfully. What was a dead woman doing in the morgue of our complex? “What happened to her?” I finally asked. The relief had turned to sorrow as I realized that even if it hadn’t been Mids lying there, someone else’s daughter, wife or sister was dead. She might have friends out looking for her even as we stood there. “What have you found so far?” I added, looking down into the dead woman’s chest cavity. I couldn’t look at the woman’s face just then. I needed her not to be human for a minute or two.

Abby must have looked at me for a few moments before deciding that she could wait on her questions. “So far, I can tell you she was healthy, and not stabbed, strangled or shot.” She carefully returned the removed organs to the chest cavity and replaced the excised breast plate. Reaching down she lifted one of the dead woman’s hands. I stifled the bile that rose in my throat. This was not the first autopsy that I had seen, but the emotional scale was now off the charts for this one. I guess I’ll have to blame Mids for scaring me like that. I would need a very stiff drink after this.

Okay, maybe three of four. She was going to owe me.

“There are faint burn marks between each finger indicating some sort of electrocution.” I looked between the slim feminine fingers of the hand Abby was holding and saw the marks she was referring to. “No other indication of trauma which leads me to consider that acute electrocution was the MODD.” When I looked at her in apparent confusion, she smiled. “Method of Death Dummy. Now tell me what the hell is going on.”

So we stood there like that with the open chest of a dead woman between us as Abby held the dead woman’s hand, while I told her what I’d suspected happened and what I’d done so far. Then she told me what she’d learned. When she was done I was in shock. Emotional roller coaster action can do that.

Leviticus LaRouchette, the sitting Master of Toronto for several decades had simply up and vanished.

If you were to believe Parquette, Leviticus LaRouchette had gone missing without the permission of the Council. Unfortunately, truth has never been amongst Parquette’s stronger suits. As I watched Abby neatly stitch up the woman’s chest, I pondered what the news of his disappearance meant.

Autopsies completely remove any erotica that could be found when someone asks you to hold a woman’s naked breasts while they tie a suture knot in a straight line between them. The body was on a pull out table that could be pushed into what looked like a cooler. There were two other doors that I hadn’t really noticed before.

Oh great. Here we go again.

“Are you sure she said LaRouchette is gone?” I asked as she pulled the sheet up to the dead woman’s chin as if she were simply tucking her patient in.

“Not only has he gone missing, but apparently she’s now officially in charge.” Vampires often did move around, but Master Vampires usually had to coordinate their movements with the Council before they moved on permanently.

I suppose you could say it was a major rule of sorts. But then again LaRouchette was not one to follow any rules he hadn’t made. “Why would an enforcer suddenly be in charge?” I asked, now understanding what must have been made Parquette so perky. Abby shrugged and reached over to open door number two. I stopped her by placing a hand against the drawer and took a deep breath. “Is Mids in one of these?” Damn that stupid truth or dare crap. I was getting tired of it.

Abby looked at me for a long moment. “You really care a lot about her. Was there something going on between the two of you that I should know about?”

There are probably hundreds of ways to answer that question politely, but in reality it hadn’t been that way between Mids and me. I took a deep breath. “Mids and I are really good friends, and have worked together a lot. I consider her to be like a sister. Anything else you want to know?” I said evenly. “I just want to know if she is down here or not. A simple yes or no will do, okay? Please?” Okay, I was starting to get mad. The emotional roller coaster was on the move again. Keep those belts buckled and hands in the car at all times kiddies.

Abby finally smiled. “No. I think she’s safely upstairs silly. She’s apparently been alive and well enough to annoy the shit out of Parquette for quite a while if that helps ease your pain.” I removed my hand and stepped back as she pulled out the middle drawer. I was looking down at the corpse of yet another dead woman. Knowing that Mids was not going to be pulled out of these doors allowed me to concentrate a bit better.

“This is contestant number two.” Abby said, pulling back the sheet. Walking around the table she opened the last door, pulling out yet another woman on a slab. “And this is contestant number three. She has been dead the longest, approximately about a year according to Parquette and company. The middle one has been dead about six months and the other one anywhere from two days to a week.”

I turned and stepped back so that I could see all three women at the same time. They were all Caucasian female. We had a redhead, a brunette and a blond. “All appear to be natural.” Abby added with an amused smile, which made me realize I must have been mumbling what I’d noticed out loud.

“Well I thought you might actually ask about that, so there.”

She was having way too much fun with this. I really hadn’t needed to know that fact about the women but stored it away in case I would need it later. She was right; we might need all the facts we could get. All were similar in build, with long hair. Other than that, there wasn’t much they had in common that I could see.

Okay, after several minutes of trying to come up with something conclusive, I’d had to admit that I was as stumped as when I had seen the first body. I said so to Abby as she began to remove their hands from beneath the covers and placed them across their chests like you expect to see someone in a coffin. When she’d finished the last one and stepped back, I saw the common thread.

It was the burn marks on their hands.

Well not so much on their hands as much as between their fingers. It was almost like they’d been holding electrical wire when they’d died. But who would do that without a struggle or some other sort of trauma showing up on the victim? Folks who are electrocuted do what some have called the “hummers” dance where they jerk around and hum until the power is turned off. Another morbid fact I’d stumbled upon and stored away long ago.

“No idea.” Abby replied as we leaned against the back wall studying the three corpses. “I’ve checked their brain tissue and there isn’t much sign of electrocution as I would have expected. They’re just lighter in color than usual.”

I turned and looked at her. “The brain tissue was lighter in color? What would be significant about that?”

Abby pushed off of the wall and started pacing back and forth. After some hesitation, she started explaining what she’d been considering. The fact that she apparently was used to gesturing as she spoke added some amusement which helped ease the mood. “When someone is electrocuted, and has significant voltage applied to their bodies, the brain often becomes cooked inside the skull. Their brains showed no sign of that. But, and this may sound strange, their brains were lighter because I think it wasn’t energy going in that killed them.”

Even I hadn’t thought of that. “They were reverse electrocuted?” I asked incredulously. “But that would only happen if they were … some kind of …”

“Witch” Abby finished for me. “Score one for the geek team. Actually Parquette told me they were Cabal Witches whose services they’d purchased.” Abby began covering the women back up and pushing them back into their drawers.

“Okay, hold on; what is a Cabal and how’d they be able to sell Witches services?” I asked. This was going down a road that I had not even thought existed. I mean if you were a fan of Buffy and company you knew there were Witches but, Witches for hire?

Abby closed the last door and began removing the gown she’d been wearing over her clothing. “Cabals are Sorcerer family organizations, sort of like Mob families. Sorcerers do not like Witches and visa versa. Men can be Sorcerers, and women can be Witches but never the other way around. Cabals hire Witches to do mundane spells that they feel are beneath them, or hire them out to others for the same purpose.” This was stunning news to me. From my expression she must have realized I’d been blissfully unaware. “Sorry, I thought you knew about them. If you know about us, I assumed you knew about them.”

She was still wearing the tux she’d traveled in and had put her jacket back on. We were back at the proverbial square one. Scooby-Doo where were you when we really needed you. At this point I might even settle for Shaggy.

“I’m surprised they haven’t come looking for us yet.” Abby said, picking up her cap and looking toward the door.

“They’re locked out.” I replied, still contemplating what we’d discovered. Something had sucked the energy out of three Witches and killed them almost six months apart. If I didn’t know better, they hadn’t been murdered so much as they’d been, well … executed. And that thought began to bother me. It began to bother me a lot. There was only one person I really wanted to talk to now and the perkiness queen was probably waiting for us upstairs.

“This might not go well and I’ll understand completely if you don’t want to stick around to see the show.” I said adjusting the straps on the weapons that I suspected might get used shortly.

Abby walked over, and put her arm through mine. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. It would be nice if someone had cared for me as much as you care for your friend and those Witches.”

We turned and moved toward the door. She was on my left arm which left my right hand free and clear. It was time to dance with the devil and pay our dues. I hoped I’d get a chance to blast that smile off that perky bitch upstairs. It finally made sense why she’d been in such a good mood. I should have known better.

You can’t teach old dogs new tricks. Not even pit bulls.

Abby probably didn’t understand what tune I was humming as I reached up to deactivate the Python lock, so I started singing out loud which got her laughing. I was starting to like her. For a Vampire, she wasn’t all that bad.

“Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but inside it’s so delightful. It’s time to go see the bitch upstairs, let it rain, let it rain, let it rain”

* * *