Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The music playing on the jukebox in the grubby little cafe was not entirely unpleasant, though Lohmann could not identify the instruments — some kind of pipes? The singer’s voice was breathy but in-tune, and the lyrics were some nonsense about wanting to die with one’s beloved. Romantics never did give up. After fifty years or more of this kind of thing, Lohmann had to admit they were beginning to win him over through sheer persistence.

He kept an eye on the young man feeding quarters to the machine, while Skuld — it still felt odd using her name — sat nearby, talking to a woman in an outfit that even Lohmann, even in a city he’d never visited and a decade he’d never expected to see, could tell was chic. 

The woman’s name seemed to be Evie, and the young man by the jukebox was Maxie — well, Count Hauk-Šendorf. They spoke myriad languages, though nearly always with a slight accent. They were both short, slim, and very pretty, and occasionally dropped knowing references to people and events from well before the twentieth century. Lohmann was fairly sure they did not work for any of the Departments he was aware of. They’d come into the cafe together, where Skuld and Lohmann had been waiting for them.

While his partner chatted to Evie, Lohmann focussed studiously on the sandwich before him, not without a sense of dread — he’d noticed that the food changed just as much every ten years as every ten miles, and he wondered what people in 1980s New York found palatable.

The bread was much too sweet, as was the sauce. The ground-up beef, however, was salted enough to show that the dish had been intended as a savoury. Lohmann set the sandwich down on the square of paper it had been wrapped in, and glared at it for a while. One of the young people with funny hair at the next table giggled, and he glanced at them and shrugged, with an embarrassed smile.

“Fast food, man,” said a skinny youth whose hair was dyed green and stiffened into spines like a parrot’s poll. “Cheap, and there when you need it, but tastes like fried cardboard.”

The Inspector was trying hard, very hard, not to goggle at his surroundings like a tourist, but this was the first time he’d ever been to New York and it did indeed look like all the pictures he’d seen of the place, some fifty years before. It was dirtier, of course, but that was the way of cities. From the moment he and his colleague had arrived he had breathed in the smoke and gasoline and watched all the different oddly-dressed people and felt very much at home.

The advantage of cities was that no one noticed an extra stranger or two; and so no one clammed up in their presence. The green-haired lad (Lohmann had already begun to think of him as Papageno) went back to discussing local matters with his friends; in particular the recent disappearances of an acquaintance and the strange behaviour of another:

“Adrian – I’m not surprised she vanished. Girl sold drugs. But Sarah works in a clinic, which I guess is the same thing but it’s usually a bit safer, and she’s been freaking out about some guy who claims he’s sick and can’t figure out what’s wrong. I tell you, this city is being weirder than usual.”

The girl who spoke was dressed in a collection of brightly-coloured triangles, with a hairstyle that made it appear as though her head was on fire. It wasn’t to Lohmann’s taste, but he couldn’t honestly say he hadn’t seen stranger get-ups.

“May I remind you that New York is agreed to be neutral territory?” Evie bristled.

“I’m not here to interfere with you,” replied Skuld, carelessly. “You overestimate yourself — you’re nothing more than an alchemical experiment gone terribly right. Though I must admit, I thought you’d died in Prague?”

Evie had drawn herself up to her full height (which was less than three-quarters of Skuld’s) and glared like an angry cat when the Valkyrie accused her of overestimating; but when her interlocutor confessed puzzlement, she laughed.

“Oh, I just wanted everyone to leave me alone,” she said. “And it’s really not hard to play dead. I’d been doing it for centuries on the stage, after all. After that poor dear burnt what she thought was my father’s formula, and they all left the hotel room, I just got up and left out the back door.”

“And picked up your lover from the sanitarium before leaving town, I’m guessing?” Skuld nodded towards the youth still fiddling with the jukebox in the corner. “Looks like you gave him a dose of the formula too.”

“He wasn’t much good to me as an old man,” Evie said, but her expression had softened slightly.

“He’s still a bit light in the head,” Skuld observed.

“Oh, he always was, even back in Madrid. The formula restores and prolongs youth, it can’t do anything for a scattered brain. But he’s a sweet boy.”

“He must be. I think he’s the only person you’ve ever really cared for.” Skuld’s tone, too, had softened; but Evie set her mouth stubbornly. The valkyrie continued: “Fine. We didn’t come to pry into your affairs anyway — we came to ask a favour.”

“What kind of favour?”

“Information.”

“And in return?”

“I shall owe you a favour. You’re bound to need one sooner or later, living the way you do.” Skuld took a sip of her coffee and grimaced. “Why do you come to this restaurant, of all places?”

“It’s near my rehearsal space. Maxie likes the jukebox. And I thought you weren’t going to ask me any more personal questions?”

Skuld smiled.

“Fair enough. Do we have a deal?”

Evie’s smile was as dazzling as Skuld’s, and colder:

“What do you wish to know about?”

“55 Park West. The Šandor building.”

Chapter Text

A curly-haired woman was extricating a ‘cello case from a taxi when an old man shuffled towards her.

“Dr. Roberts—“ he gasped, frantically.

“I’m sorry,” Dana said hastily. “You’ve mistaken me for someone else.” New York’s crazier than usual this week, she thought.

The old man removed his sunglasses, and Dana froze as she recognized those mismatched eyes.

In the cafe, Papageno and his friends had moved on to the topic of something called “the clash.” The girl with the halo of bleached hair was very enthusiastic about it. The third member of their party was very tall, and the Inspector wasn’t quite sure if they were man or woman. They were dressed all in something that looked like black oilcloth, with a great deal of kohl eyeliner, and Lohmann grinned benignly — he’d seen stranger get-ups that that in his day, too.

Since the three were no longer discussing suspicious local occurrences, he waved to Evie’s boyfriend as the latter, done with the jukebox for the moment, came back towards the table where the diva sat deep in conversation with Skuld. The young-looking man exchanged a glance with his lover and, receiving a smile of reassurance, pulled up a chair and joined Lohmann.

The Inspector’s instincts told him those two were the type he used to think of as naughty children — Evie, according to her extensive file, had the morals of an alley cat, but never used violence when guile and sex appeal would suffice, and hers usually did; while her “Maxie” was a harmless sort really, even if his femme fatale kept leading him into all kinds of scrapes.

Just now Count Maxmillian Hauk-Šendorf seemed happy to enjoy the music from the jukebox. It was nothing Lohmann recognized but he guessed it was an old song in this time: the little old man at the counter and two grey-haired folk drinking coffees at a corner table were nodding approvingly, while Papageno and his girl tried not to roll their eyes at the honeyed tune (though their androgynous friend seemed more amenable).

“I remember when that one came out,” Hauk-Šendorf murmured to Lohmann when the song had ended, and the machine began replacing the disc and shuffling out a new one. “Oh, but I love this one, too.” He closed his eyes. The Inspector smiled but wondered if this was how the whole afternoon was going to go, when one of the coffee-drinkers at the corner table coughed.

”Poor thing,” said the Count. “I hated being old. It was like having a head-cold or a summer chill, except it never went away.” Lohmann tried to imagine the creature seated across from him as an old man, and couldn’t.

“Do you go around mentioning that to everyone?”

“Oh, they just assume I’m joking; or that I’m crazy. It’s interesting to see who guesses which.”

“Not so scatterbrained as you seem, are you?” 

Hauk-Šendorf smiled wistfully.

“Dear Eugenie is under the impression I spent fifty years wandering as a madman until I happened to see her again. The truth is, I was a competent if repressed diplomat, sleepwalking through my duties but hardly a crackpot, who went to the opera one evening and—” he mimed firing a pistol at his head: “There she was, and I was suddenly a lovesick boy again. And have been, happily, ever since; though it was a while before we could make my outsides match my insides.”

Lohmann was pretty sure the neighbouring table had fallen silent, but this conversation had become too interesting to shut down.

“After Ella smuggled me out of the asylum,” Hauk-Šendorf continued, “it took us a while to get all the ingredients together for the formula, and I was in a pretty bad way by the time it was ready, so she gave it to me first. Afterwards she told me she’d also been afraid that if she went first, and I’d seen the immediate effects, I’d have been too scared to try. There’s a sort of coma, d’you see. It did feel awful. Almost as bad as dying, I imagine.” He shuddered. “But I won’t have go through it again for another two-hundred-and-fifty-seven years, and perhaps I won’t at all. If Esme is tired of the whole thing by then, we can die together,” he said cheerfully. He looked at Lohmann curiously: “How do you work? I mean, you’re not from—” he gestured to the room around them. “But if you’ll pardon me speaking freely, you don’t look much like your colleague, either.”

“I’m a sort of revenant,” Lohmann offered. The Count’s face lit up in surprised delight.

“Really?! I’ve never died, myself. What’s it like?”

“Overrated.”

Over Hauk-Šendorf‘s shoulder, Lohmann could see that the three young people were giving them most un-New-Yorker-like openmouthed stares, and grinned. Then he caught the reflection of the doorway in the mirror behind the counter, and realized they were glaring past him at a handful of unpleasant-looking young men who were swaggering in. Hauk-Šendorf swore.

“Not that bunch again—” he muttered. Lohmann didn’t quite take the demi-mortal’s meaning until he saw the angular symbol on the new arrivals’ shirts.

Papageno and his friends were already on their feet. The elderly customers in the corners were also looking up from their coffee.

“No nazi scum in here!” railed the green-haired youth at the young men in the entrance.

It was a short fight. Papageno, perhaps with more courage than sense, had lunged for the largest one and was sent flying, but Lohmann was right behind him and connected with the man’s jaw. He had to admit it felt very satisfying.

The tall person in black turned out to have an impressive right hook.

The old man had come out from behind the counter with surprising speed, and a frying pan. Evie had flown across the room the moment the nazis had walked in, and was currently raking her scarlet nails across faces, shrieking something that was mostly unintelligible, but out of which Lohmann thought he could pick out the words Bayreuth Festspiel. Evidently the diva had artistic as well ethical issues with the fallen regime.

Hauk-Šendorf had made no move to fight; but Lohmann noticed he had placed himself between the brawl and the aged people in the corner; and that he’d picked up one of the trays and was holding it ready to deflect any blows or flying objects.

All of a sudden Skuld was in the middle of everything. Looking down at the nazis, she said in a low, icy voice:

“Leave this place.”

A blank look fell over the raw-beef faces on which bruises were already forming. Then the one with the helmet muttered: “*%$! this dive. Let’s take our money somewhere else, boys.” And they were gone.

The humans in the café blinked in surprise, and a couple of them cheered. The old man came around and refilled everyone’s cup, smiling on Skuld and Evie in particular. The coffee was still terrible.

The door swung open again, and a young woman lugging a ‘cello case staggered in and collapsed in a faint.

“It’s Dana,” Evie said in surprise. “Help her, Maxie.” Hauk-Šendorf pushed back his chair and hurried over to the slumped figure.

Chapter Text

“Did those thugs attack her?” asked one of the regulars.

“I don’t see any bruises.”

Dana opened her eyes, found herself sitting up in a chair —how had she made it to a chair? — and eventually managed to focus on the woman proffering a glass of water. It was Evie M., the singer she’d accompanied on a single— what had it been called? Oh yes, ‘Not Afraid.’ It had peaked at number seven on the charts — not bad for a classical-inflected dance track with lyrics in three languages.

Max Hauk-Šendorf, Evie’s manager/boyfriend, was holding Dana’s elbow in a steadying sort of way, and a number of other people were gathered about and asking if she was all right. How embarrassing. She let Evie give her a sip of water and coughed out a thanks and an insistence that she was fine, really, she’d just had a bit of a shock. Evie glanced up at a very tall blonde woman (Dana wondered for a moment if she were from one of the drag balls, but it was the wrong time of day) and said quietly:

“Speak of the Devil-- Dana lives in the building you were asking about.” The tall woman frowned.

“How do you know her?”

“She’s a musician. Cellist. One of the best.” Evie smiled at Dana. “Now, what’s got you under the weather, dear?”

John is one of the best too. What’s happened to him?

“I ran into an old acquaintance. He— he looks awful. I don’t know what’s wrong. He mistook me for someone else— a doctor, I think? And then he tried to–-” Frustratingly, her fear and anger made her voice seize up. John had never been like that when he was her cello teacher. He must have been delirious.

 Skuld turned to beckon Lohmann and found him already at her side.

“I don’t know if this is the Šandor building beginning to activate,” she said, “or if other events are tangled with the one we came to prevent.”

“So, a typical job, then?”

Someone tapped the Inspector’s shoulder, and he turned to find the old man with the coffee pot.

“Do I need to call an ambulance for this one?”

“I’m OK, really,” Dana protested.

“She’s unharmed,” said Skuld. The old man looked at Lohmann:

“The tall girl,” he said, “she a nurse?”

“I am a valkyrie,” said Skuld, impatiently. “I carry the brave from the field of battle to Valhalla, where their souls may have time to heal.” She’d decided, in the past couple decades, that it didn’t really matter how she explained herself to humans, because they’d just hear what they expected to hear anyway. Sure enough, the old man smiled:

“Aw, hon, that is such important work.”

“Dana, do you need us to take you home?” asked Evie, with a glance at Skuld. Dana looked as though she were about to tell them again that everything was fine; then she nodded.

“I’ll bring the car round,” Skuld said.

 Evie and Maxie placed the shaken cellist in the back seat of the Benz, protectively sandwiched between themselves and with her instrument balanced across their three laps. Lohmann got in the front beside Skuld and they were off, though even the driving skills of a valkyrie could only do so much in city traffic. In the meantime, Dana told them more about John Blaylock:

“I thought he was just another New York crazy,” she said. “I mean, he’d obviously got me confused with this Dr. Roberts woman. But then I saw that he had mismatched eyes – and all of a sudden I realized I knew him. He’d been one of my cello teachers, about fifteen years ago. But he looked nearly eighty. What could have happened to him?”

In the rear-view mirror, the inspector saw a peculiar look come over Evie’s face; hard to tell in the auto’s dimly-lit interior, but he thought the diva turned pale.

“A cellist, with odd-coloured eyes?” she was asking Dana. “I may have known him, too. His eyes – what colour were they, exactly?”

“Right one pale blue. The left one is black – well, it’s more like the pupil is big. What is it?” Evie and Maxie had leaned slightly forward and were looking at each other across Dana’s cello.

“Apart from the eyes,” Hauk-Šendorf asked, “what does he – what did he look like, when you first knew him?”

“Thin,” Dana said. “Fair. British accent. Very good-looking in an angular way. I’d a bit of a crush on him as a student – everyone did; but he never, you know, took advantage. That’s why I was so shaken today when he – when he tried to grab me. Apart from the fact that he was suddenly so old. He was only about thirty, I think, when I met him.”

“You say he grabbed you,” Lohmann interrupted from the front seat. “I know it’s painful, but could you be more specific? Do you mean he attacked you sexually?” The cellist bit her lip, and Evie patted her shoulder.

After taking a deep breath, Dana replied:

“Not… exactly. He – he pulled out a knife and tried to slash at me. Luckily he was weak enough I could break away easily, and I swung my cello case at him. Knocked him down. After that I ran for the first place I saw that had people in it.” She laughed bitterly. “I didn’t even drop the cello. If I’d been running from anybody faster or stronger, I’d never have made it.”

The Šandor Building proved to be an impressive structure, built just after the Great War, and much like Lohmann’s image of the Tower of Babel. Fortunately this tower had elevators, and Dana’s flat was comfortably furnished with squarish pink overstuffed chairs, several large potted plants, and curtains drawn back from the big windows. The cellist relaxed visibly once home, and asked if they wanted coffee.

Skuld stalked around the living room, peering suspiciously at the ironwork designs on the windows, as Evie and Maxie seated themselves.

Lohmann had offered to assist Dana in the kitchen -- the musician appeared to have set aside the topic of her recent attack and taken refuge in playing hostess, and the inspector, who had seen this behaviour in witnesses before, decided a few minutes of everyday activities and a good cup of coffee very likely would allow her to approach events from a fresh angle.

“If you could get some milk from the fridge,” she was saying to him. “Is skim all right?”

Lohmann wasn’t sure what she meant, but he grunted an acknowledgment and searched the mechanical refrigerator for anything that looked like milk.

“I figure if I don’t take cream," Dana continued, "I can allow myself a couple of extra cookies -- which are in the breadbox by the fridge -- I’ll get you a plate.” The box next to the fridge proved to contain a packet of biscuits labelled Oreo Chocolate Sandwich Cookies. He handed it to Dana, along with the plastic jug he’d found. “Are you one of Valerie’s clients?” she asked.

Seeing his puzzled face, she gestured with the coffee pot to where Skuld continued to prowl the living room. The valkyrie was cautiously tapping on the walls now, but her hostess did not appear to notice. Evie rose from one of the pink chairs, approached the tall blonde and began to whisper something to her.

“Her name is Valerie, right?" Dana asked. "I thought she said something about working for Veterans’ Affairs. I just thought maybe that’s how you knew each other – I mean, you’ve got a somewhat...military... look. Sorry, I put my foot in my mouth sometimes.”

Lohmann grinned at this idiom.

“No, we’re investigators,” he assured her. “My name is Lohmann; my partner is Skuld.”

“Valerie Skuld. What an interesting name. Is she Swedish?” Dana absently arranged the biscuits on the plate and handed the whole thing back to him.

“I’ve never asked.”

“So those two kids think they know the fellow who attacked their cellist friend?”

Skuld sullenly contemplated the rear bumper of the car ahead of them.

“They’re hardly kids,” she replied, “and by the sound of it, neither is her attacker. Evie says they met him in the late ‘forties, or someone who looked exactly like the man Dana described, and who played the same instrument.”

“Do they recall this musician’s name, thirty-five years later?”

“Evie thinks it was James Baylock, or Babcock, or something.”

Lohmann closed his eyes.

“So, could be the same name as Dana’s teacher, or another one of these people who change identity but keep the initials for convenience. I take it I’m going to be searching the local newspaper archives again?”

“You are good at it. What do you want to do until the public libraries open tomorrow morning?”

“Well, I’m not sleepy, not after the coffee and sugar biscuits she gave us. I wish she could have remembered more about that knife, but I told her we’d check with her again.”

“Strange she didn’t want to go to the police.”

“Not so strange. People have reservations about doing that when it’s a friend who attacked them. Would’ve made my old job a hell of a lot easier if they didn’t, but it’s human nature.” Lohmann scratched his jaw. “I also need to look for this Dr. Roberts.”

“They’ve got telephone directories in those corner booths. Not exactly an unusual name, though.”

“Well, presumably Dr. Roberts is a woman, or Bay-what’s-his-name wouldn’t have gone up to Miss Dana by mistake. Might narrow things down. Unless the directories only give first initials.” He glanced out the Benz window. “There’s a public phone.”

Two minutes later he walked back to the car, checking his watch.

“This is going to take some time,” he said. “And it’s after eight o’clock. Can you still call up doctors at all hours?”

“Not at home, usually, unless you know them.”

“Then I think I’d like to take a look at the city— while we’re here.”

”You realize I may have to actually kill somebody for a parking spot,” said Skuld, but she was smiling.

Chapter Text

Upon returning home that evening, Maxie walked over to the piano and plinked the keyboard.

“Will you sing something, Emily?” he asked. “I can always think better when there’s music.”

“It’s a week night, Maxie, the neighbours will complain again.”

“Then they ought not to live in a building with musicians,” the Count grumbled, but he closed the keyboard before asking: “Do you think John’s wife is still around as well?”

Elspeth shrugged non-commitally.

“You and I are still a pair,” she said, “and there always was something strange about that woman.”

“We ought to look them up.”

His lover laughed:

“Do you think they’re in the phone book, silly?”

“I can check.”

“Don’t you have work to do?”

“Oh, I finished that up this morning. It was only a few pages of business correspondence.” Eleanor kissed him lightly on the cheek as he continued: “I’ve been reading about a new thing: typing up letters and documents on home computers. It’s called ‘word processing,’ apparently.”

“Isn’t processing words what you do anyway?”

“Apparently this way you can make corrections before the words are inked onto the paper.”

“You always did love gadgets, my boy.” Elise kicked off her shoes and Maxie smiled.

“Now you’re the right height for me to do this.” He touched his lips to her forehead. He had said those words, and performed this action, thousands of times in the many years they had been together. Elena supposed that was only to be expected when your love affair had begun in an age when women all wore slippers instead of high heels. She leant her cheek against his shoulder, as she had done for decades, and congratulated herself on finally having found someone who wore well.

She felt Maxie kiss her ear, but he must still have been thinking about the topic of the Blaylocks, for he whispered: “Who d’you suppose Dr. Roberts is? The woman John mistook Dana for?”

“Best not to get involved, Maxie,” she warned. “The world is a big place, but it gets dangerously small when we meddle with our neighbours, you ought to have learned that by now.” Hauk-Šandorf sighed, and she felt his pulse speed up, just a little bit. “I know, salero del alma,” he said. “I still get curious about these matters.”

Maxie, Elena reflected, was scarcely into his second century; she’d found it hard to be detached from events when she was his age. Perhaps his temperament never would change — he’d been grey-haired when they’d found each other again in Prague, and even then, as an aged mortal, he’d been such a romantic boy.  He’d revived a part of herself she’d thought was gone for good.

The next morning found Lohmann and Skuld in front of the New York City Pubic Library, drinking coffee from cardboard cups by one of the stone lions. Lohmann took in the early-morning, late-September air and gazed at the scaffolding around the front of the neo-classical building with something like reverence.

“I used to think the city I lived in was so modern, so ugly,” he told Skuld. “But I’ve since begun to find myself missing the place. Is that what they call nostalgia?” A legless beggar in an old military coat sat on the corner and that was familiar too, the inspector thought.

“They’ve unlocked the doors,” said Skuld. The little crowd of fellow early-risers were disappearing into the building; taking one last gulp of his coffee, Lohmann got up and followed them in. The night before he'd wondered aloud to his partner why they waited at all, since doors were seldom locked to them, but the valkyrie had looked at the building with an expression like a cat scenting something, and had made a cryptic observation about not disturbing the residents any further.

Inside, there seemed to be more immediate and needed repairs going on, and the staffer Lohmann asked about it turned pale; so he changed the topic and asked about newspapers, and then phone books. Skuld had agreed to search the latter for doctors named Roberts, so Lohmann left her at a table and followed a still-nervous librarian to the archives, where he consulted the notes he’d scribbled the night before about where he might begin searching (concert reviews, histories of local music academies) for someone with the name John Blaylock, or one like it. 

“I wish Janine were still around.”

“Saw her the other day. She says her new gig is weird, but, like, good weird. I think she’s got a crush on one of the scientists working there.”

In the tiny office of Odyssey Translation Services, Robota Cassette and Karen, attired in the clothes they wore at their day job, were passing a very slow Friday afternoon. A few orders had come in and been sent on by courier to translators from the company’s stable of freelancers. Orders that were due back from the translators were, so far, all on-schedule.

Karen was painting her nails a pleasing shade of hot pink and discussing the strange scene she and her colleague had witnessed the day before at their local hang-out.

“And participated in,” added Robota, examining her bruised knuckles.

“Yeah, that was pretty brave of you and Dino,” said Karen. “I just freeze up when stuff happens.”

Robota shrugged.

“I’ve had to take care of myself a few times. The good thing is, guys who start trouble never expect people dressed like us to hit back, so you’ve got the element of surprise going for you, at least. Plus this time I wasn’t exactly alone -- I just wish I knew who that blonde was who finally sent them packing. Now that girl had style.” 

The phone on Karen’s desk jangled:

“Odyssey Translation Services,” she answered. “What?! Oh no— the clock’s ticking on that one. Have you called--- OK, with luck he’ll get it and bring it here on time. You’re not hurt, are you? Good.” She set down the receiver. “Dave got car-doored. He’s ok but his bike’s a pretzel. He’s already called his company and they’ve sent another guy to pick up the job from Hauk-Šandorf, but—” she checked the wall clock; “it needs to be here in ten minutes, and I don’t know if it will be.”

“Is it worth phoning up old Hauk and telling him to send the replacement courier right to the client’s office instead of back here? We never really need to proof his work anyway.”

Karen picked up the phone again.

“We can try, but you know how he is about phone calls. Look up his number, will you, doll?”

Robota was running an elegant talon down the list of translators employed by Odyssey, when the two secretaries heard footsteps in the hall and a somewhat out-of-breath young man clutching a large manila envelope careened into their office, swinging round the door as he gripped its handle. He stepped forward and slapped the envelope down on the desk in front of Robota, then looked back and forth at them in sudden surprise.

“You – you were both at the café yesterday, weren’t you? Dressed a little differently, but I never forget faces.” He made them each a bow that raised one of Robota’s well-trained eyebrows, but she smiled graciously and examined the envelope.

“Are you the replacement courier, then?” Karen asked him. “You got here sooner than I expected.”

“Replacement courier? Dear me, no. When the courier didn’t arrive, I -- that is to say, er, my uncle – decided to waste no further time. I brought the documents in person for examination.” He smoothed down his hair and turned back to Robota: “And may I congratulate you, lady, on the courage you showed yesterday in the face of those—"

“Yes, yes, everybody’s impressed,” she answered with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Now, you’ll want the cheque to take back to your uncle, won’t you?” She pulled open a desk drawer and took out an envelope.

“You’re Hauk-Šandorf’s nephew?” Karen asked the unexpected messenger. “What’s he like? I always wonder about our freelancers — never see most of them in person. Robota — um, Roberta says your uncle’s been working for the company since it started in the ‘fifties.”

“That’s true enough,” their visitor replied. He seemed a little abashed by the question. “Uncle Maxie is, er, a trifle eccentric. But a gentleman.” He coughed in a way that suggested his throat didn’t really need clearing.

“How old is he anyway?” Karen asked, apparently oblivious to the dismayed expressions chasing each other across the young man’s face. “Thirty-five years is a long time to work for one place, but I suppose he could have been quite young when he started.”

“Oh yes. Um, about my age, actually.”

“And you hang out at the same sandwich shop we do,” purred Robota.

Maxie (for of course it was he) turned to her, grateful for the change of topic:

“Hang out. Yes indeed.” He filed the term away for future use. Maxmillian Hauk-Šandorf collected slang like some people watch birds. Robota appraised his face.

“Of course,” she said, clapping her hands. “You come there all the time with that hot brunette and play the jukebox. I ought to congratulate your girlfriend on her fighting skills, from what I saw yesterday.”

Maxie laughed.

“We had some trouble with that lot, years ago,” he explained. “Now Eugenia either goes for their throats or tells‘em things about Wagner they don’t want to hear.”

 Back at the library, Lohmann felt Skuld’s presence behind him, and looked up, wriggling his stiff shoulders.

“It’s times like these I really miss having staff,” he grumbled. “Find anything promising in the phone books?”

The valkyrie pulled up a chair and showed him a long list.

“I skipped the obviously masculine names, but about half of these just have first initials. How goes the day with you?”

”A small victory.” Lohmann showed him the references he’d found to John and Miriam Blaylock from 1937, 1948, and 1979. (The 1948 concert review also praised the singing of one Elspeth McLaren.)

”1979. Wonder if the Blaylocks are in the phone book — they must need to be reachable for concert bookings, after all.”

Chapter Text

John did not want to return to the brownstone, no longer a sanctuary. Even if he could still manage the front stairs, he couldn’t face Miriam like this. It was not merely pride— something in him feared her, as though she might bundle him away in a drawer like a bunch of old love-letters. Eyes blurring, he looked up the address of the clinic again.

“I wish Dana had been able to remember Blaylock’s home address with more accuracy than “near Park Avenue, somewhere between 69th and 77th.”

“It was a dozen years ago. Who’s to say he’d even still be living there?”

“Well, no one’s going to give up a brownstone in New York if they can help it.”

 Halfway through a scherzo, Dana stopped, her bow frozen in mid-stroke. Carefully laying her cello on its side, she went to her bedroom and began digging through the two shoeboxes of photos and concert programs at the back of her closet.

Two hours later she was at the front desk of the Fifth Avenue branch of the New York Public Library.

“Sorry to bother you,” she began.

“Oh, don’t worry,” said the clerk. “People come here looking for all kinds of information. The other day I had someone asking about the nutritional value of human flesh.”

“This isn’t exactly a question for the books,” Dana explained. “Two friends of mine were going to be here today doing some research, and I was wondering if they still are. A fat man in an old-fashioned suit, hat and coat; and a really tall blonde woman? They’d planned to check the archives for music performances. Only they might have arrived before your shift started,” she finished.

“Well, I’ve been here since noon, and I haven’t seen anyone leave who fits your descriptions; so they might still be in the archives. Down that way.”

Sure enough, the pair were sitting beside one another, heads bent together over notes and faded papers. Dana stood near the entrance to the room, watching them. Eventually she cleared her throat, and Lohmann looked up. He straightened his back and waved her over to the table.

“I found some things,” she began, “that might help.” She showed them her old address book with John’s phone number, and the polaroid of her teenage self, snapped outside John and Miriam’s elegant home.

“Well, we’re going to our usual place – are you heading the same way? Unless you have to report back to your uncle.”

“Uncle… will be all right,” said Max. “I’m meeting up with Evie. I take it that’s where you’re off to as well.” He paused at the doorway as Robota pulled on her black plastic raincoat and added darker lipstick to her office face. “I wonder if Ethyl will be jealous, should I arrive with you two,” he mused.

“Well should you?” Karen asked, fluffing up her hair. “I mean, we don’t want to start trouble.”

Max smiled.

“Oh, I expect she’ll enjoy an excuse to be jealous. It’s been a while.”

For about twenty minutes, everyone was on the move. Maxie, Karen and Robota made their way downtown to the little cafe where Evie and Dino, oblivious to each other, were waiting and drinking bitter coffee. Lohmann, Skuld and Dana (who’d insisted on coming along) were in the Benz, trying to thread their way through traffic to John and Miriam’s brownstone. John was in a cab for the geriatric research clinic, fingering his knife and feeling his bones grow frailer by the minute. And Dr. Sarah Roberts—-

Karen smacked her forehead.

“Sorry you guys, I forgot. I hope you don’t mind an extra person sitting with us at the cafe?”

“The more the merrier,” Robota shrugged. “Unless it’s somebody awful.”

“No, just my cousin Sarah— you know, the one I was telling you about the other day who was attacked by some crazy guy at the clinic where she works. Only the other day we were talking about how weird things have been lately, and then what-do-you-know, more weird shit happened. And I got this feeling that maybe I should call her up and see if she was ok, and I sort of accidentally invited her to meet me after work today.”

“It’s a public place,” said the Count, who’d been listening to her story in a distracted sort of way. “Anyone can come in.”

“No but the clinic where she works is a research lab,” said the secretary. “Premature-aging diseases and stuff. Patients don’t just walk in.”

“I was talking about the cafe. No reason why your cousin shouldn’t just pull up an extra table and—” Count Hauk-Sendorf stopped in place. “Your cousin is a medical researcher? Studying premature aging?”

Karen rolled her eyes.

“I know, I know, we’re cousins but you’re wondering what we’ve got in common. Look, we both grew up in houses with high ceilings and linen cupboards that smelled of lavender. We both rebelled, but in different directions – Sarah became a doctor instead of marrying one, and I became a freak, ok? And we both moved to New York City to do our thing.“

Maxie blinked, very slowly. Then he took Karen’s hand in both of his:

“I apologize for prying, my dear; and also for being mysterious; but I really do think once we reach the cafe that you, and your cousin, and Eugenia and myself need to have a talk and put some pieces together.”

Chapter Text

Evie M. was glaring at – well, everyone in her vicinity, really, but especially Maxie. Robota and Dino exchanged awkward glances as Karen tried to explain things to her cousin Sarah.

“What,” said Evie coldly, “did I say about not getting involved?” Maxie pondered for a moment:

“To do it?” He looked as if he were about to second-guess whether the positive or the negative was the correct answer; and then decided to stick with his original response.

Evie switched to another tongue— several other tongues— Robota thought it sounded like alternating Spanish, Italian and German-- but her annoyance required no translation.

When she finally paused for breath, Max replied with an argument which contained two languages Robota recognized, at least one she didn’t, and, incongruously enough, the interjection “gloriosky,” which she’d never heard used by anyone but her grandmother and the Jets in West Side Story. Robota saw one of the café regulars at the next table pause with his sandwich halfway to his mouth.

“Be that as it may, dearest,” Maxie said, once he’d calmed enough to switch back to English, “we know now for a fact that this doctor--” he nodded at Sarah, “is the one John was looking for; and given his behavior towards Dana, that might be dangerous for her.”

“I understand, but what are we supposed to do about it?” Evie smoothed her hair back into place, like a cat washing its ear, and was suddenly cool again. She nodded at Sarah like Max had. “I’m sorry for your problems, darling, but I don’t know what to suggest, except staying away from your usual haunts.” Turning back to her boyfriend, she insisted: “We don’t know where to find John, what he wants, or what to do about it.”

“Well we could at least pass the information on to… those two.”

“I don’t know how to call them.”

“Tell Dana. They’re likely to check in with her or with us soon enough.” Evie pouted, fished some change and a shabby, much-the-worse-for-wear address book from her purse, handed the lot to him and pointed dramatically towards the pay phone in the corner.

 “Not a word more?” Maxie asked, with the slightest of smiles. Ellen only jabbed her finger more dramatically at the phone as he got up and went to call.

There came a faint clapping sound. It was Robota, very delicately applauding, at the end of the table.

“You can stay with me if you need to, Sarah,” said Karen to her cousin.

From the outside, the Blaylock residence had looked like a typical turn-of-the-century brownstone. Inside, away from the untidy, busy street, the décor was spare, modern and white-walled, except for the numerous objets d’art on display. There were many Egyptian antiquities, and very little evidence of daily life. Lohmann recalled museums he’d visited, and then with a shudder recalled Dr. Baum’s study at the asylum, with its anthropological specimens and staring Expressionist portraits.

Mrs. Blaylock was as fair as Skuld, as effortlessly chic as Evie, and about as human as the antiquities around her. Lohmann, when he was alive, had once gone out of curiosity to see a show of modern art. The twisted poses and cruel, or mad, expressions hadn’t appealed to him, but he thought he’d understood the artists’ intent. The woman facing him looked like a classical statue, but the inspector suspected it would have taken one of those modern portraitists to depict her soul. She had something of the same distant air as Skuld, and the two, he noticed, eyed each other with mirrored expressions. He felt rather sidelined, and glanced at Dana to see how she was taking the situation – but Mrs. Blaylock was already greeting her. Of course, she’s our introduction to the household.

Skuld and Mrs. Blaylock were still sizing one another up and Lohmann, watching them, marvelled at the contrast between their ageless, Olympian beauty, and the look of the young people he’d seen in the café. That lot had had youth without optimism; and it had made more sense to him, in a way, than the idealists he’d met over the decades. Skuld would probably have a field day with that if she knew; of late, the Valkyrie truly did seem to regard him as a kid brother. 

“Dana, how are you? John and I have been following your career – congratulations on your post with the Philharmonic.” Mrs. Blaylock embraced the younger woman, giving her a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. “And who are your friends?”

“They're doing a magazine article,” Dana said. A discussion of possible excuses for their visit had come to this. "Sorry to disturb you without calling, but we were in the neighborhood, and I’d brought them some old concert programs; and I suddenly I wondered if you still have any from when I was starting out.”

She held out the sheaf of papers she’d brought to the library. Mrs. Blaylock gave Dana's companions a dubious look while Lohmann tried as hard as he could to look like a journalist, though he wasn't sure just what that meant in this day and age. Nevertheless, the music teacher smiled, took the leaflets, most already faded after ten years, and began looking through them.

Maxie let the phone ring seven times at Dana’s apartment before giving up on it. He wondered if she was elsewhere or simply not answering. Thoughtfully, he looked down at the address book Edie had handed him. The cover was very worn, almost all trace of its original colour faded. Edie, he recalled, was often very slow to replace and update her address book.

On the ghost of a hope, he turned to the B section.

Chapter Text

Miriam Blaylock, showing no impatience, examined the sheaf of old concert programs, occasionally pausing to comment on some artist or event. Suddenly she tilted her head in surprise, though her beautiful face remained impassive.

“Where did you get this one, Dana? It's for a concert to raise funds for the children of Berlin. That was well before you two were born, and you—” she looked hard at Lohmann, “would have been one of those children at the time, I imagine.” Lohmann shifted uncomfortably but said nothing. Dana had shown him how to use the coin-operated Xerox machine at the library to copy the concert programme from 1948; and he'd slipped it in with the others.

“May I see?” Skuld asked. Mrs. Blaylock looked suspicious but, unable to refuse, handed the paper to the other blonde.

“Why, isn't this your name, Miriam? And your husband, John?” She held out the program again, pointing to the relevant piece of music.

Dana had been closely watching the wife of her former cello teacher; now she saw a glimmer of worry cross her face, and for the first time since speaking to the two.... investigators, truly believed that she was dealing with something beyond the world of normal people, or even the world of musicians. She was just about to inquire about John's conspicuous absence, when Miriam came to a decision—

She did not wait for her interlocutors to speak again before she attacked, and she put a deep gash in the side of Lohmann’s neck before Skuld was able to deflect her arm. The inspector had not seen or felt his own blood running in fifty years, and he instinctively pressed his hand to his wound for a good five seconds before he remembered he didn’t have to. By now his partner had the vampire’s arms pinned behind her back. Miriam snarled like an angry cat, all her cool elegance abandoned.

“Are you trying to activate the Sandor Building?” Lohmann asked. Miriam’s snarl became, suddenly, a very human look of bewilderment.

“What on Earth are you talking about?”

Dana, too, threw the Inspector a startled look.

“What about my building?” she asked sharply.

“I examined your apartment when we were there last night,” Skuld explained, “and I took the opportunity to do some checking today at the library. The ironwork contains some unusual metals for your era.”

“Radioactive?”

The Valkyrie shook her head, still holding the squirming Miriam.

“Selenium. Sealed inside the girders like that, it shouldn’t be too dangerous to humans, but the question is why it’s there in the first place. It’s a semiconductor. They used to use it in power supplies for electronic equipment in the 1940s— radio and television receivers, that kind of thing.”

“So I’m living inside a big antenna?” Dana frowned. “Why do I keep getting snowstorms on my tv, then?”

“Your tv is likely getting interference from the... other things it’s pulling in.”

“Why do you think this has anything to do with me?” Miriam Blaylock demanded. “My husband and I are music teachers, not radio technicians.”

“You stabbed a guy in front of me, Miriam,” said Dana. “You’ll excuse me if I'm a little short on trust at the moment.”

“No, but she's making sense, though,” Lohmann touched his neck as he spoke, but the wound Mrs. Blaylock had inflicted was already gone. “She and John are only vampires, Skuld. None of this seems their style.”

Dana was about to ask “only vampires?” when the Blaylock residence telephone rang.

Everyone paused. Miriam glared at Lohmann.

“Am I allowed to answer that?” she asked. Exchanging a glance with his colleague, Lohmann stepped between the vampire and the one mortal in the room; and Skuld released Miriam, who picked up the phone. “Hello,” she inquired, her manner once again smooth and professional. Then a look somewhere between disgust and amusement crossed her face. “It’s for you,” she said, holding out the receiver to Skuld.

“Hullo, madam Skuld,” said Maxie on the other end. He'd just finished a lengthy and interesting conversation with the operator— his girlfriend's address book from 1943 having contained the name of the Blaylocks’ telephone exchange, but not the number.

At the research clinic, John Blaylock was struggling to come to terms with the absence of Dr. Roberts, or indeed anyone he might speak with. 

“I’m sorry, sir,” the receptionist had said, “but she left early today. Did you have an appointment? You’re not on our list of patients.” A short, middle-aged security guard was beginning to look him up and down, trying to decide between escorting him from the premises and calling him an ambulance. John felt shock at the rage that suddenly gripped him— scant days ago he could have easily overpowered that uniformed oaf. Now the man was an Hercules compared to his own withered frame.

“…and I really think you’d better come back here,” Maxie had finished telling what he knew. Skuld looked at Miriam, who’d lit a cigarette and with a sullen expression was now leaning against a highbacked chair.

“Mrs. Blaylock.” The valkyrie addressed the vampire in a dangerously quiet voice. “Your husband hasn’t been too well lately, has he?”

“What do you care? Your colleague is right— whatever it is you’re poking your nose into is nothing to do with us. Dana, darling, you’re still welcome any time— I shan’t hold this against you; but you are never to bring your friends by again, do you understand?”

Despite this, Dana seemed willing and indeed eager to leave with Skuld and Lohmann.

 “I’m not sure I even want to go back to my apartment, knowing what I know now,” Dana said, when they had met up with Evie, Maxie, and the rest. “I’d consider a hotel, if that one we drove past hadn’t had exterminators coming out of it, and all that smoke.”

“We can stay over,” said Skuld, “if it makes you feel any better— and if you don’t mind people sleeping in your living room.”

“Why not, it’s been a while since I hosted a party.”

Dana realized as she said this that she may have just extended an invitation to seven or eight people she didn’t even know; but then, throwing an impromptu sleepover was less offputting than the thought of spending the night listening for strange audiotronic effects and wondering if her walls were shooting out some kind of cosmic rays. So it was that an hour later— after a stop at her neighbourhood grocery store so everyone could pick up something to bring— Skuld went to park the car as the rest of them got in the elevator and traipsed down the hall with their cold cuts and orange juice and ice cream and whatever that coffee cake was that Lohmann had decided looked like it might not be too bad.

“I used to know a German guy who made wonderful pastries,” Dino was saying. “He was a singer— pastry chef was his day job. I think he’s dead now though.”

Dana knew her neighbor, Louis, was glaring jealously at them through his door’s peephole, but for once he wasn’t showing his face. Maybe she ought to bring large groups of guests home more often. Showing them in, she slid the door bolts and hung up her coat.

Robota was looking about the room.

“This is a nice place,” she said. “Even if it is, y’know, haunted.” Dana had let the trio and Dr. Roberts in on some of what was going on with the classical-music vampires and her building being a giant cosmic receiver built by cultists before WWII. She wasn’t certain whether they actually believed any of it; she wasn’t sure how much she believed herself— though Miriam and John’s bizarre behaviour had made her willing to accept that some pretty odd things were going down. Karen had assured her that she for one was trying to believe the story, “since it’s more interesting than thinking some old weird guy is just obsessing over my cousin— sorry Sarah, I know you’ve had a rough day.”

The researcher, who’d said little, ran her hand through her curly hair. One could see how Blaylock might have confused her with Dana.

“I still don’t understand what’s going on,” she admitted. “Actually, Karen, if we could go back to your place in a while, I don’t feel up to staying awake here all night. No disrespect meant to our hostess.” Her cousin nodded gravely, and threw a glance at Robota.

“Dino and I will come too if you like,” said the latter.

“No offence taken,” Dana added. “Especially since I don’t have a couch. But you don’t have to rush out. Lohmann, do you want to help me with the coffee again?” The Inspector was not averse to doing so, and he stood up to follow her into the kitchen.

And promptly fell flat on his face.

Picking himself up felt somehow both easier and more awkward than usual, and he wondered if someone could have drugged him, or if he was even capable of suffering that kind of intoxication in his present state. He could get drunk, and sometimes did, but that was voluntary. Dana had taken his arm, and Maxie, who’d jumped up at the crashing sound of Lohmann hitting floor, cocked his head quizzically at the sight of his face.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” he observed.

“Do what?”

“Change age.”

“I don’t. Well, just in the usual direction, and not even that, these past fifty years.”

“Well, look at yourself, man. Seems to me you’ve just done a very sudden reverse.”

Lohmann turned too rapidly towards the mirror on the wall, and nearly lost his footing again as he blinked at his reflection. Maxie was quite right though. The inspector scratched his head thoughtfully, and the sandy-haired, slightly plump young man in the mirror did the same. The differences were fairly subtle, all told, but noticeable.

“That’s all very well,” he said at last, “but why is my body so damn difficult to steer all of a sudden? Getting younger oughtn’t to do that.”

Maxie cast back his memory:

“I mostly just remember the aches and pains being gone.”

“I hadn’t any aches and pains, at least not lately.”

“Well, that’d be because of being dead, I suppose—” Maxie interrupted.

“This,” Lohmann continued, “just feels… like being drunk. I’m not saying I never took a drink in the old days, but I’m sure I’d recall if I’d been drunk non-stop from, say—” he tried to appraise the age of the face in the mirror “—1916 to 1922.”

“I’d have thought you wouldn’t recall anything of those years, if you’d been drunk,” Hauk-Sendorf argued.

“Well I can recall them, so I obviously wasn’t,” said Lohmann firmly. He ventured a look down again, though it made him dizzy. “Bit less of me, isn’t there? Oh—” he said, striking his forehead. “So that’s what’s doing it. Different centre of gravity.” Having solved this conundrum, he appeared to accept the situation, though he still walked as though trying to navigate a tightrope as he made his way back to the square, upholstered chair. The rest of the party interrupted their conversation to stare at him. The count, for his part, perched on the arm of the neighbouring chair and continued surveying the Inspector.

“Your clothes have changed too,” he commented. “You’re going to look awfully old-fashioned if you wear that suit outside.”

“This suit goes with this body,” said Lohmann firmly. He checked his left cuff. “It’s even got the replacement button that never quite matched.”

“At least take the jacket off; and the spats.”

Skuld entered, and looked around.

“What did I miss?”

Dana looked at the door behind the valkyrie.

“How’d you get in? I locked, bolted, and chained that door myself. Oh, and Lohmann’s younger now.”

“Well, well, little brother.”

“Don’t you ‘little brother’ me; this whole thing is a damned nuisance.” If pressed to contemplate it, Lohmann would probably, in life, have described his body as a sturdy and useful animal that did a decent enough job of carrying him from place to place; and the relationship had continued much the same in his afterlife, even if he occasionally wondered how.

“Change back, if you don’t like it.”

“I can’t. You know I never could alter my looks.”

“Well, why’ve they altered now, then?”

“That's what I’d like to know myself.”

Maxie, sitting with his chin propped on his hand, suddenly murmured:

Dérision! que cet amour boiteux,
qui nous remet au cœur tant d’ivresse et de flame,
ait oublié le corps en rajeunissant l’âme!

“Only in reverse,” he added brightly.

“Perhaps it is your soul something’s happened to, little bro— Lohmann,” Skuld said, looking hard at her partner. “That’s what you are now, after all.”

Chapter Text

Maxie was still musing to himself:

“I seem to recall that everyone feels old at that age; it’s only looking back on it that one can see how young one was. Which is why I advise you to skip ahead to that part, and enjoy some nostalgia for the present. After all, we are currently walking around in some future person’s memories of the Good Old Days.”

“Max,” said Robota, “You’re sweet, but no one has the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

“Skuld does, I think.”

But the valkyrie had placed a finger to her lips.

“Never mind all that now,” snapped Lohmann, who was gripping the lapels of his suit with the expression of one determined to carry out the task at hand with or without his body’s cooperation. Skuld continued to look at him in appraisal. “Miss Barrett,” her colleague insisted, “wanted me to help with the coffee, and I’m going to help her with the damn coffee.”

Dana could not resist a grin but made no comment as the young officer carefully picked himself out of her chair and made his way across her living room towards the kitchen.

“I’ll get the...skim milk,” he said when he’d finally reached the refrigerator. He swung open the door.

Zuul

The door of the kitchen appliance opened on another place.

Lohmann blinked at the hellish landscape, wondering if he really was drunk, and became aware of Dana clutching his arm and slamming the door shut. Seeing her expression, he patted her shoulder awkwardly:

“Let’s go to the living room, lass.” But the cellist was hurrying for the front door. Lohmann watched her flee into the hall; paused long enough to take in the bewildered expressions on half-a-dozen faces; then saying simply:  “She’s had a bit of a shock— hobgoblins in the icebox— I’d better go after her—” he lurched across the room, seized Dana’s coat from the hook near the door, and headed into the hallway.

“Well, the Inspector seems to have regained his balance,” said Maxie.

A short man in glasses was peering around the doorway of his apartment, but ducked back in as Lohmann brushed carelessly past him. Dana was huddled against the panel of buttons that called the elevators, but she turned suddenly to look as the inspector approached.

“I’m not going back in there,” she said. “Not tonight, anyway.”

“I won’t make you. But you’ll need your coat if we leave the building; no point escaping bugbears only to catch your death of regular old cold.”

The elevator arrived and they got in. Down in the lobby, and once Dana was wrapped up against the fall evening, they exited and walked together silently for a block until they came to the first place that was open. The cellist made a sharp turn and went inside. Lohmann was right behind her. They sat down in a booth along the wall.

Behind the counter, the only visible employee, a man with iron-gray hair and a bored expression, was folding paper receipts into birds and animals. He looked up, gave them a nod, and was soon beside them with his notepad.

“Just two black coffees,” Dana said. “No point in cream or sugar,” she explained to Lohmann when the server had gone to the kitchen. “This is the kind of place where the coffee is just the rent you pay to occupy the table. I’ll have to go back to my apartment eventually,” she added, “my cello’s there. But I just can’t face it right now. What were those creatures? Why was there a landscape in my fridge? I mean, I’ve left takeout in there too long sometimes, but I’ve never had that happen.”

“I expect my colleague is looking into that as we speak. For my part, I can’t begin to guess. She and I usually deal with individual malignant souls, not worlds colliding with each other.”

The coffee arrived, and was just as bad as Dana had intimated.

“You realize this is all incredibly weird, right? Or maybe it’s everyday stuff where you come from.”

“If you would prefer someone else keep you company—”

“No, you’re all right. OK, it’s a bit odd that you’re suddenly about half the age you were twenty minutes ago, but it’s been that kind of day.”

“How d’you think I feel about it?” Lohmann groaned. “I’m like a loaf of bread that been suddenly turned back into dough.”

For the first time since she’d fled her apartment, Dana smiled.

“Don’t underestimate yourself. You’re at least half-baked.”

“Welp,” said Robota, back at Dana’s apartment. She was standing up quickly and pulling her PVC coat about herself. “Don’t say it hasn’t been a slice of Heaven— because it hasn’t.”

“I think it’s time we got Sarah back to my place,” Karen added. “My pull-out couch takes a while to... pull out.” Dino grunted something under his breath and prepared to leave with them. Skuld and Evie nodded, and Maxie bowed slightly to each of the young people as he shook their hands.

“I’m going to check the kitchen,” said Skuld to Evie. “I will not be offended if you and Maxie leave, too.”

The diva looked at her boyfriend.

“Well, I don’t know about you two ladies, but I’m curious to see these hobgoblins in the icebox,” said Maxie.

“As long as you don’t have a concert first thing tomorrow, there’s no immediate hurry.” Lohmann toyed with his coffee cup. “We can sit here until – when does this place close down for the night, exactly?”

“It doesn’t, but if I’m going to avoid going home for a few hours, I’d rather go someplace more fun. Or at least one with a better menu.”

“Well, if you require an escort, I am currently young, moderately high-spirited, and wearing a suit, even if Hauk-Sendorf thinks it’s old-fashioned.”

“He’s not wrong,” said Dana, looking Lohmann over, “but maybe people will think it’s come back in style. Or that you’re going out early for Hallowe’en.”

“What’s Hallowing?”

“I’ll tell you on the way.”

Shivering. When had it last been so cold? He was a dried-up leaf in the night. By morning he’d have fallen. Somebody had written a story about that once, hadn’t they? He couldn’t recall how it had ended. Miriam was getting out of a taxi and coming towards him.

“How?”

“You left your memorandum book.”

“Need to find.... doctor...”

“Hush, darling. I have another idea. Do you know who telephoned today?”

Chapter Text

“Oughtn’t we to – I don’t know – creep up on it?” Maxie asked. He peered around Skuld as she stood in the doorway of Dana’s kitchen, contemplating the refrigerator.

“What good would that do?” asked the valkyrie. She crossed the small room in a single stride and flung open the refrigerator door.

“Food,” the Count observed. He sounded disappointed. “Perhaps the goblins were in the top half?”

Skuld tried opening the freezer, but it contained nothing more otherworldly than two ice-cube trays, a pint of ice-cream (strawberry), and a half-used bag of frozen peas. Shutting the freezer door, she contemplated the shopping list affixed to it with magnets shaped like small pieces of fruit.

“Did Lohmann imagine them, or do they come and go, d’you think?”

“I wish he’d at least stopped a minute to describe them.”

“He was more concerned with the cellist,” Maxie chuckled. “I like him for that. Always keep an eye on the lady. Also true when playing cards.” Skuld turned back to the demi-mortal with a bemused look. She’d met many personalities over the centuries, for there are many forms of bravery; but his mind was of a type she’d seldom encountered. Behind him, in the living room, Evie stretched out on Dana’s couch with her elegant ankles demurely crossed.

“It’s always possible,” Skuld said slowly, “that the creatures were a transmission the building picked up, but that the signal is flickering.”

“Or that they did what they’d come for and transmitted themselves home,” Evie mused.

The valkyrie went over to the living-room window and gazed at it again, arms akimbo.

“For the cult’s purpose,” she said, “the structure of this building is as crucial as the materials. If a bit’s missing, it won’t work as a receiver.”

Evie picked up her coat from where she’d thrown it over the back of one of Dana’s chairs.

“If you’re planning to – to set fire to the place or something, Maxie and I can’t be involved. I’m not changing name and location for another decade if I can help it.”

The valkyrie laughed raucously.

“No fear,” she said. “I’m not planning to go that far if I can avoid it.” She grasped the ironwork on the big window. “If we can add a piece, in the right place, I think we can mess up their pattern enough to dampen the effect. I don’t suppose Dana keeps copper wire about the place?” she added.

“She’s a musician, not an electrical engineer,” said Evie, waspishly.

“Spare cello strings?”

“They wouldn’t be long enough, not to mention the fuss she’d make if you took’em.”

”Then one of you will need to go out and buy a spool of copper wire. Is it the kind of thing corner shops around here carry?”

The Count stood up.

“Maxie!”

“We’ve come this far, darling. I’m keen to see what happens. Don’t worry,” he added cheerfully, giving Evie a quick kiss before slipping out of the room. Evie turned to Skuld, her eyes cold.

“Last time that man told me not to worry, we ended up stranded in Lisbon for two months.” She passed her hand across her face. “You owe us an extra favour for all we’re doing to help you.”

“Fair enough. Add it to the tab.” Skuld went to Dana’s bedroom, Evie close on her heels. She opened the closet (also empty of anything supernatural) and began picking out coat hangers.

“Good thing she doesn’t throw them out. Here—” she thrust several at the singer. “As long as you’re helping, help me peel off the paper covers. Let’s see what we can make of these.”

Somewhere downtown, Dana and Lohmann were leaving a club arm in arm. Lohmann glanced up at the buildings, still impressed, as Dana laughed.

“The look on that woman’s face, when you asked if she was counting the silverware.”

“Well, the way she was fondling that little teaspoon—”

Dana laughed again.

“Oh, that wasn’t for tea. She was taking cocaine.”

“Really? In my day they just kept the stuff in little bottles and pretended it was smelling-salts. A spoon’s much harder to explain away.”

“You used to be Narcotics? Vice?” Dana asked.

“Homicide.”

“Good. I mean, I’d hate to think I’d brought you to the enemy camp.”

Now it was Lohmann’s turn to laugh.

“On the occasions I entered dancehalls, it was to dance. Well, once or twice it was because somebody had been shot or stabbed, but usually it was to dance.”

“What do you think of disco?”

“The dances I recall,” said Lohmann thoughtfully, “were less... suggestive, but had considerably more opportunity for physical touch.”

“Show me?” Dana murmured impishly, and she was standing very close; so the Inspector decided he might as well put his arm around her waist, and she didn’t seem to mind that, so he took her hand, held her arm outstretched, and next thing the cellist knew she was being walked backwards, smoothly but very rapidly, in a circle, and occasionally twirled. When they had spiralled their way to the centre of the figure, Lohmann held her firmly and they spun in place:

“One, two, three turns, and—“ he made a deep bow, dipping Dana backwards until her curly hair nearly grazed the pavement. Then he set her neatly on her feet and peered up at her (in heels, she was a half-inch taller than him). “Well? What do you think of the most daring dance 1914 had to offer?”

She smiled slyly:

“I’ve certainly had worse times on the dance floor.”

Sitting cross-legged, Skuld considered the looped shape, like a lover’s knot, that she had twisted from the wire hangers and which currently lay in the middle of Dana’s living-room floor. Evie looked over her shoulder:

“Something tells me this is going to need to be hung on the outside of the building, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but I saw a door leading out to the roof. The tricky part will be running the wire down to the ground. Wonder if Maxie’s found any yet?”

“I just hope he hasn’t tried breaking into any electrical boxes and fried himself.”

The valkyrie laughed, less harshly than usual.

“You have got a treasure there, haven’t you? I’m not joking,” she added, glancing up and seeing the look on Evie’s face. “That boy would do anything for you.”

New Yorkers pride themselves on minding their own business; so no passer-by gave so much as a glance to Lohmann and Dana as they glided, cheek-to-cheek, down the sidewalk. She was humming, a ballpoint pen held between her teeth for want of a rose. When they reached the next streetlight Lohmann twirled her around again, and Dana took the pen and tossed it over her shoulder, giggling as she fell into his arms.

It had not been so long as fifty years since Lohmann had last kissed anybody, for Valhalla was hardly a monastery; but when it came down to it he usually preferred a cigar and a good chat. He was not, however, feeling his usual self, and yielding to a strange, sudden impulse, he leaned in and placed his lips to hers. Then he wondered if he’d misjudged her mood, for she pulled back suddenly.

“No—” she said. “No, wait until we get back to my place.”

“Your place?” Lohmann blinked. “You were all afire to get away from it a few hours ago.” Dana laughed and swung herself around his shoulder.

“Changed my mind. Now I think it’s exciting.”

“Exciting? To have a hole clear through to another world in your icebox?”

“Mm-hm.” She grinned at him, her hair backlit by the streetlamp. “It’s like being..... a gatekeeper. The gatekeeper to a mystery dimension. That’s pretty glamorous, don’t you think?”

“Where is everybody?!” Evie’s worry had finally shown its hand.

“Well, Dana’s safer away from this place; and my partner won’t let anything happen to her,” Skuld said. “But Maxie has been gone a long—”

Dana’s telephone rang. The valkyrie and the diva looked at each other.

“Do we answer?”

“It’s not our apartment.”

The phone kept ringing. Finally, with an impetuous shrug, Evie walked over and picked up the receiver.

“Hello Dana,” purred the voice of Miriam Blaylock. “Is your friend available to speak to me? Not the nasty reporters— the little soprano.”

“Do you mean me, Miriam?”

“Elspeth, darling, it’s been simply ages. It is still Elspeth? What name are you using now?”

“Never you mind. How did you find us?”

“We’re not the only musicians with a listing in the Manhattan telephone directory, dear; and I do know the girl. My husband used to be her cello teacher, remember?” Evie began cursing in Greek, but the sweet, cruel voice cut her off: “None of that now. Don’t you want to know why I called? John and I caught up with your playmate. He’s awfully well-preserved, isn’t he? Won’t you drop by for a little chat about that? I do believe Dana can give you our address.”

And the line went dead.

Chapter Text

“We meet again, Count.”

Maxie opened his eyes on a cadaverous figure who had to be John Blaylock. His old, old former acquaintance sat in an armchair, propped up, Maxie noticed, with a couple of pillows. His odd eyes glared malevolently out of a face like a dry leaf. Hauk-Sendorf shuddered, pity and nausea twisting inside him.

Elena Makropulos looked up at Skuld.

“Valkyrie, I’m calling in one of those favours; of the two you agreed to owe me. Miriam obviously wants the formula for John — even if she doesn’t yet know, exactly, that there is a formula. She knows Maxie and I aren’t vampires, so she’ll exchange him for the secret of our immortality.”

“The formula likely won’t work on vampires.”

“Not my problem. She wants it, she can have one of my copies — oh, after all the trouble it was to retrieve the original manuscript from Baron Prus, I made sure to have backup versions. Maxie typed them up and we proofread and corrected them. She won’t be able to complain I cheated her.”

“Then what do you need me for?”

“I don’t trust Miriam not to cheat me.”

“You want backup.”

“I want a driver who can handle emergencies.”

Skuld grinned at the diva with newfound respect.

The count Hauk-Sendorf had never claimed to particularly excel in intelligence; but he’d amassed a great deal of experience over the years; and he was of the opinion that while being polite wouldn’t head off every problem, it worked often enough to be worth trying. He was currently pondering how to address his captor in a friendly, informal manner. Neither “old man” nor “dear boy” seemed in good taste, given Blaylock’s current condition. “Buddy” and “Pal” were perhaps too ambiguous in tone. Tapping his fingers on the arms of the heavy wooden chair (it would have been easier to think if he’d had more freedom to fidget, but Miriam had tied him pretty securely), he tried to recall what other terms had been about at the time of their previous meeting some four decades earlier.

“Brother,” he said to Blaylock, his manner sympathetic, “you’ve got troubles.”

The Gatekeeper Dana was a very handsome woman, and her warm, lithe self fit very satisfyingly in Lohmann’s arms. Accompanying her back to the gate sounded like a fine idea This, the Inspector told himself with less firmness than he was usually able to muster, is all wrong. It doesn’t make sense, no matter how good it might feel.

“Gatekeeper Dana Miss Barrett, you are forgetting yourself—” If only English had a more formal term of address. “You” was plural, of course, but when it was used indiscriminately it quite lost its— never mind—

No one else would ever know with what effort he pulled himself away from Dana to look about wildly and hail a cab:

“Take the lady home,” he told the driver roughly, and gave the address of her building. Would she be safe there? Safer than with him – the pair of them were like a match and a striking cover – and Skuld would still be at Dana’s apartment. The Valkyrie could keep an eye on her until he pulled himself together. Now, how was he going to do that?

Lohmann looked up and down the street, casting about for something familiar that might help him reclaim his composure.

“The Keymaster is not coming with us?” Sandro’s fare asked.

“Who?”

“He hailed your car, mortal.”

“Who you calling mortal, lady—“ the taxi-driver snapped, though he had to admit her description wasn’t exactly wrong.“Your boyfriend just said to drive you home.” She must’ve had too much of something.

“I shall wait for him by the Gate Between the Worlds.”

“Yeah, you do that, sister.” Fact was, she wasn’t even the craziest passenger he’d had tonight. Just then an explosion from the old firehouse down the block rattled the doors of Sandro’s cab.

George had the radio tuned to what he thought of as the Beethoven station, because this late at night the customers generally didn’t complain, and sometimes he thought it scared off some of the rougher element. Not that he wouldn’t mind a customer or two coming in; there were bills to pay, and honestly he wouldn’t mind the company tonight. There was a funny feeling in in the air.

So when the guy in the old-fashioned suit came in, George wasn’t sure whether to feel relief or wonder if this was part of the full-moon crowd. He didn’t look like a typical weirdo, if there was such a thing. The clothes were odd — George hadn’t seen a collar like that outside of old family photos. The fellow must’ve got the duds from a theatrical warehouse or someone’s attic. No smell of mothballs, though — and his haircut was shorter than fashionable, but it went with the suit. He sat at the end of the counter and ordered a black coffee and listened to the music with his eyes half-closed. George kept an eye on him. He might not be Trouble, but something sure was troubling him. Though the counterman had usually found it best not to ask questions, sometimes his curiosity won out:

“Long day at work?” he asked, the least provocative question he could come up with. The customer gave a short laugh.

“You’ve no idea.” he said, and George decided to leave things at that; but the man added, after a moment, “Work isn’t the problem, though. I like my work. I almost lost control of myself this evening. I might still do.” He glanced up and must’ve seen the alarm cross George’s face: “Oh not like that.” He sighed heavily. “A lady... made me a very tempting offer. She’s waiting for me at her apartment right now. And I absolutely must not go to her, or the consequences...”

George thought he saw the man’s trouble now:

“She got a husband, eh? Or you’re the one who’s already got somebody?” He wiped down the counter for emphasis: “Don’t mess around with extramaritals, son. It’s never worth it.” The customer gulped down his coffee, and George refilled it. “You stay sitting here instead. Or go to your wife, if you’ve got one.”

“Not exactly.”

“Just going steady?” The counterman was warming to the topic. “Well, if she’s a good one, you marry her, even if she’s not as pretty as the lady you met today.”

“She... is, actually. They’re just very different from each other. We’re not dating, though.”

George began trying to figure out the angles of this fellow’s personal life, but unwilling to give up on his original preposition, he declared:

“Well, you tell her how you feel, son, and stay away from that other lady’s apartment.” The customer looked confused, but allowed he’d try to sort out his feelings on the matter and that the coffee and music were helping with that.

Maxie glared defiantly at Mrs. Blaylock, gracefully draped over the high back of her decrepit husband’s armchair.

“Aren’t you making an awfully big assumption,” the young-looking man asked her, “that Eugeni--- that Evie will walk into your trap just because you’ve got me as bait?”

“To misquote a movie that everyone in this country is sentimentally obsessed with – ‘if she did not leave you in Marseilles or Oran... or Prague...she certainly won't leave you in New York.’”

Chapter Text

There were lights like shooting stars over the city that evening; but these had issued from the old firehouse as it exploded. In the confusion of gawking bystanders, the arrival of the fire trucks and the freelance photojournalists, few looked up and noticed them. Some flew away from New York entirely, but most took arcs that dropped at last to earth in dozens of different neighbourhoods, and only they knew what drew them each to each.

“Some of these people aren’t alive,” Skuld said as she swerved around a pedestrian in a suit that writhed as though filled with more than one being. “Some of them I’m not even sure were humans to begin with.”

“Can they stop us?” Elise asked.

“I don’t think they particularly want to,” mused the valkyrie; “but they’re all headed the opposite way from us. This trip is going to be a little like swimming upstream. And I’m worried about where they’re going, if—”

“The favour, remember? You promised—” the smaller woman hissed.

“And I shall keep my word,” Skuld interrupted her. “But I’m going to have to take a different route.” So saying, she made a sharp turn into an alleyway that the Benz shouldn’t have been able to fit through.

The lone customer at the counter was still listening to the radio, his chin propped on his hand, and his eyes half-closed. George could see now that the man was older than he’d originally guessed; and his suit, though still a bit dated, was nowhere near as fusty as it had looked at first glance. Just a guy with problems like the rest of us, the counter-man thought.

The customer opened his eyes as George approached. They were grey, their expression tired but clear.

“How much do I owe you for the coffee?” he asked. George figured it out, and the man put some change on the counter. George passed his hand across his eyes— he must’ve been pretty beat too: for a moment the coins had looked the wrong colours, like they were foreign money, but when he picked them up they were American nickels and dimes, sure enough.

“Thank you,” said the customer quietly, as he put on his hat. “For the coffee, and for the music.”

“Well, the advice was free,” George added, “and worth about as much.”

The man grinned, showing a jawful of crooked and discoloured teeth, and then he was out the door and walking away down the street with a weary gait that somehow took him out of sight with remarkable speed. George sighed with something that might have been sympathy, or relief, and turned his attention to making a new pot of coffee.

Behind him, the diner’s door jangled open, and he turned to gaze, slack-jawed, upon the pair of new customers who’d entered. Their skin was bloated to translucence and seawater poured from their swabbies’ uniforms.

Turning onto Central Park, Sandro was just about to address his odd passenger when something slugged him in the back of the head. He saw a fire hydrant coming at him and then darkness.

The Gatekeeper got out of the back of the cab, ignoring the cold water the broken hydrant was splashing over the hood. She needed the Keymaster, and she was sure the Man from Another Time had been the one. She did not know why he’d sent her away, but the coming of Gozer the Traveller would not be put off.

“You all right, lady?” asked one of this realm’s beings. The Gatekeeper ignored it and began walking back the way the taxi had come. She would find the Keymaster, and together they would open the gate to Gozer.

It had been a few decades since Maxie had found himself in this kind of pickle. He couldn’t make out what Blaylock was muttering; but there was no misunderstanding the gleam in his eyes like he’d been taking Boris-Karloff lessons. Hauk-Sendorf’s own eyes were a little wider than usual, but he endeavoured to remain composed.

“You can’t imagine the humiliation,” Blaylock croaked. The count suddenly recalled a couple of occasions upon which he’d not only been old, old; but also bundled into a straight jacket and taken away to a sanitarium. Still, it never helped in these kinds of situations to tell the other person of one’s own troubles, so he nodded silently. Pity his hands were tied— he’d long since learnt that in this country it was infra dig for men to embrace each other, at least in the general run of social intercourse; but a pat on the shoulder was permissible, and often very effective.

Mrs. Blaylock was still sitting by the telephone, her calm apparently unruffled; but she had lit and smoked three cigarettes in unbroken succession. It was a good thing, thought Maxie, that none of them could get lung cancer; at least, he didn’t think they could. Really with her husband in his present condition perhaps she ought to be more careful.

He wondered if Evie would come to negotiate for him. She had rescued him before, and had never claimed to regret it, so she might again this time. He wondered if the Blaylocks would really release him in exchange for the elixir. He wondered if there was anything he could do if things went wrong.

Chapter Text

The time was approaching eleven o’clock. Robota, Dino, Karen and Sarah were fleeing Greenwich village and the bevy of spectres in evening dress who continued to shriek “I May Be Wrong But I Think You’re Wonderful” and “I’d Rather Be Spanish Than Mannish” a half-dozen blocks behind them.

“What the hell was that all about?” Dino asked.

“Don’t know, but they were really overdoing it on the hair gel,” Karen offered, in a tone that almost managed the bravado she was aiming for. “Nice outfits, though.”

Robota, picking up the tone with greater confidence, replied:

“Too dated for my taste.1930s retro is done to death.”

“So were they, I think— done to death.” Karen’s cousin shuddered. “Maybe this is just a normal night for you guys—“

“It really isn’t,” Robota broke in sharply, then with a sudden change of tone added: “There’s that lady with the haunted apartment.” In their flight northwards, they'd caught up with Dana, who strode up the middle of the street, seemingly oblivious to both cars and ghosts.

“Hey, Dana,” Karen called, waving to her. “What gives?” Dana ignored her.

Glancing up and down the street, Dino approached the cellist.

“Dana, you feeling all right?” he asked.

It was fortunate that when, receiving no response, he touched her arm, he did so gingerly rather than firmly, or he would have been thrown to the ground as she flailed the limb in question and rounded on him with a low growl.

The air was electric with threat, as if a thunderstorm was gathering, but a thunderstorm larger than Lohmann had ever encountered. Even beneath his coat and shirtsleeves, he could feel the hairs on his forearms stand up. His head ached and he felt thoroughly disgusted with himself, but at least he was himself once again.

He brushed past a semi-corporeal being who seemed to be hawking sausages of some kind – Lohmann didn’t care to examine them at close quarters – from a small push-cart. Walking among ghosts – well that was hardly new for him. He began to consider his duty in this situation – these spirits were not supposed to be abroad, yet with so many about him, the sensible response was to restrict himself to arresting those who were an immediate threat to public safety; and yet none of them, at present, and compared with his past experiences, really seemed to be more than a nuisance. The Sandor Building, then, remained the greatest threat, with the Blaylocks running a close second.

How to approach these problems, though? If he returned to Dana’s apartment he risked running into Dana and falling once more under the spell that sought to force them together. Yet he could not get in touch with Skuld without returning to the place he'd left her.

He checked his notebook to see if he’d jotted down the telephone number for the place, and found to his relief that he had. Now to find a phone. The nearest of street-corner public telephones caught his eye, but it was full of laughing ghosts. He must have caught their attention too, for one waved to him, shouting:

“Hey man, we’re trying to see how many we can fit in this phone booth, wanna join us?!” Lohmann shook his head and tried to pass his shudder off as a shrug.

The next booth along contained a small green entity that was enthusiastically shredding the telephone directory, but which scuttled away when he glared at it. Feeling somewhat cheered by this evidence he was returning to form, the Inspector dialed the number. His heart sank again as the phone rang and rang without answer.

Lohmann had taken a look at a map of the city before his arrival, and again at the library that morning, and from what he could recall—and from the wheeled racks of clothing the ghosts were playfully racing back and forth across the intersection ahead of him -- he thought he was probably approaching the Garment District. He still had a long walk, then to– Time Square, was that its name? – and the Sandor Building was still further. Time to think, then, while he moved northwards. The Inspector preferred sitting in thought to walking in thought, but he suspected whatever course of action he eventually chose was going to require him to be in one of New York’s central neighbourhoods, so he might as well get moving.

He wondered if the taxi-cab had brought Dana to her home yet.

A large, sleek old car came out of an impossibly narrow alleyway, made a ninety-degree right-hand turn onto the avenue, and came to a sudden and silent stop just beside him. The passenger-side window rolled down and Elena Makropulos looked him up and down:

“Your rejuvenation didn’t last very long,” she observed.

“Good thing too,” Lohmann growled, climbing into the back of the Benz. He’d a feeling there was no time to waste on argument; he even decided she could keep the front seat for now.

“Where,” asked Skuld, “is the cellist?”

“Possessed. Or under some kind of influence anyway. It hit me too, for a while.” He explained what had taken place in as matter-of-fact a tone as he could muster, all the while offering up silent thanks to whatever otherworldly agency supplied their transport that the Benz’s interior was not brightly-lit. He’d be damned if he let that little Makropulos vixen see him blush. When Skuld told him of Maxie’s abduction by the Blaylocks, however, he felt a twinge sympathy for the diva. Her cold self-assurance, he noticed now, could not quite suppress the worried note in her voice, and he began to believe she really did feel something more than amusement over poor feather-brained Hauk-Šendorf.

Poor feather-brained Hauk-Šendorf, meanwhile, was still tied to a chair, and beginning, despite his youthful joints, to find the experience a tad uncomfortable.

Chapter Text

“So this is what we’re doing, now. We’re really doing this.” Lohmann had claimed the front passenger seat as his right. He could see Evie, in the mirror, sticking out her tongue at him, but pretended not to notice.

“That’s the plan, yes.” Skuld answered, keeping her eyes on the maze of alleyways, parking garages — at one point Lohmann, frantically gripping the edge of the dashboard, was pretty sure she had somehow steered the Benz through an art gallery— as she threaded a path across the ghost-ridden city.

“Giving the vampires what they want is a plan?” he persisted.

“Retrieving one of the persons who’ve been helping us de-fuse the Sandor Building is our plan. Do you have any better suggestion?”

“No. Just wanted to hear you spell it out. Time was you’d have stuck to the big job.”

“I called in a favour,” Evie snapped from the back seat.

“Maxie’s part of the big job,” said Skuld. “And Miriam won’t let him keep. What are you grinning at? Time was you’d have been the one arguing with me about limiting the collateral damage.”

“That’s just what I am grinning about,” her human partner muttered under his breath; deciding to leave this one for analysis in some quieter moment.

“The address is coming up!” called Eliza. “If you two are done chatting and all.”

“He is not there.” Dana’s voice was flat as she looked up towards the clouds swirling about her apartment building, still several blocks away.

“Who do you mean he?” asked Karen. “The old—well, young— German guy?” She and her friends had, after a short debate among themselves, decided to follow the cellist at a safe distance, though as Dino had said, rubbing his shoulder, she hardly needed their protection, and there’d be nothing they could do to stop her if she decided to harm someone else.

“The man from another time,” growled Dana. “The Keymaster.” Karen and Robota turned to face each each other and with weary theatricality, performed the coordinated shrug they used when a customer telephoned with a particularly unreasonable request.

“Why don’t you wait for him at your place anyway?” Sarah’s voice was soothing. Karen supposed her cousin must have to deal with difficult people, too. “He knows where you live, after all. If the two of you both keep on the move you’re just going to miss each other again and again.”

The Inspector wondered how Mrs. Blaylock had come by two wheelchairs — one for her mummylike consort, and one for the bound-and-gagged Count Hauk-Sendorf— but a woman like herself no doubt had her resources. Elena Makropulos had given a faint sob at the sight of her lover, and Lohmann had patted her shoulder awkwardly.

“Chin up,” he whispered. “We’ll get him out of this.” I’m turning into a soft touch, I am, he thought. If the Valkyrie is beginning to care about living humans, I’d better be sure I don’t lose all common sense, or we’ll never get anything done.

“Hello, Elspeth,” said Miriam. “New York City must agree with you— you haven’t changed a bit.”

“I’m still not one for small talk.”

“No, it’s always straight down to business with you, isn’t it? Tart,” said Miriam to Evie with a slight smile.

The singer gave a sigh that was just a tad dramatic:

“I never claimed to be anything else, murderess. Cannibal. Or do you consider yourself above human?”

“I do, and why shouldn’t I? Do you still think you’re human?”

Evie shrugged.

“I’m a woman. And an artist. Whether or not I’m human is a minor concern. And my manners might leave something to be desired, but I do consider it bad form to drink blood. Which was still the majority view, last time I checked. Now stop boring me and let’s get on with this.”

“You brought what I asked for?”

“Of course I damn well brought what you asked for. Do you even know what it is?” Evie held up the small bag she’d been clutching: “A copy of my father’s alchemical formula. Each dose grants an additional three hundred years of life. And as a bonus, I included the couple of doses I keep already mixed up— lucky for you, since from the way John looks you don’t have time to assemble the ingredients yourself.”

Miriam frowned.

“Why should I trust you? It could be poison.” The Valkyrie was about to interrupt, but Evie raised an index finger towards the threatening sky above them all.

“Well, firstly,” she said, tapping an impatient foot, “you kidnapped Maxie, so of the two of us, you’re clearly the less trustworthy. Secondly, what do I stand to gain from killing John? I have less reason to be angry with him than I do with you— I doubt he had much of a hand in tying up my poor boy. And if I did want him dead, all I’d have to do is wait a bit. Which brings me to my third point: what choice do you have?”

Miriam drew out her ankh-dagger and held it against Maxie’s throat.

“If it fails—“

Evie hissed a curse, but now Skuld was the one to raise her hand for silence:

“I ought to point out that, as Miss Makropulos explained to me on the way over, the formula takes several days to show the desired effect, and I don’t think you want to hang about here all weekend. Now— you can tag along with us in case you need to take your revenge on her later,” (here Edith tried to interrupt angrily) “but this is the offer, take it or not. And I believe my...associate is quite correct in her appraisal of your situation.”

Chapter Text

The six of them, four standing and two seated, were still glaring at each other on the corner as the city around them continued to fall to chaos.

“We stick with you until the formula works,” said Miriam, finally. “And if it doesn’t help John—”

“I can’t guarantee that it will, you know,” Evie shrugged. “It might not work the same way on vampires. Or at all. Also, is there going to be room for all of us and your husband’s wheelchair in the car?” Here she glanced at Skuld: “Your ride may be supernaturally souped-up, but it surely has—” but Mrs Blaylock interrupted, gesturing with a certain pride towards the vintage ambulance parked two cars over from the Benz:

“How d’you think I brought John here? Not by subway.”

Lohmann whistled, and was about to ask where she’d got it, but Skuld nodded:

“Tail us, then. We’ve got things to do.” She turned to Evie, who held out a vial and an envelope to the vampire, who bit her lip for a moment and then snatched them recklessly from the diva’s grasp. Kneeling beside her spouse’s wheelchair, she fiddled with the vial.

“Do I inject it, or—?” she asked, looking up.

“By mouth, Miriam,” Evie said dryly. Parting John’s thin, chapped lips with her fingers, Mrs. Blaylock carefully held the vial his mouth and tipped it, watching his face. Lohmann cleared his throat:

“Since this may take a while,” he began, “does anyone object to me untying the Count and helping Mrs. Blaylock get her spouse back in the ambulance?”

“I can carry him,” Skuld offered.

“I’m sorry,” was the first thing Maxie said when Lohmann removed the gag from his mouth.

“She’s a wily one,” grunted the Inspector. “Expect she caught you off-guard. And I ought to have been around myself, instead of gallivanting around town with.... Miss Barrett.”

“No, I mean, sorry you’re not young anymore, and you hardly had a chance to enjoy it,” said the Count, looking up into Lohmann’s face.

“I don’t mind,” Lohmann said. He’d given up on the knots and pulled out his pocket-knife to cut the cords tying the demi-mortal to the chair.

“Well,” said Maxie, rubbing his wrists, “I suppose the years do suit some people.” What a funny little fellow he is, thought Lohmann.

“My colleague here,” Skuld interrupted, “prefers to have it believed he was born aged about forty.” The Inspector grimaced at her and she winked back at him. Elena was embracing her boyfriend and scolding him for getting captured and worrying her into an early grave. Maxie simply kissed her and asked for a moment to stretch his legs before he had to get into the Benz and sit down again. Impatient Miriam was gunning the engine on her ambulance, and Skuld cleared her throat.

“They’re not going to wait,” Lohmann said, “and neither will the Šandor building.”

“She’s going to panic, isn’t she, if the formula doesn’t rejuvenate that old dry stick in the next few hours?” asked Lohmann of the rest of the people in the car. The valkyrie kept her eyes on the road and said nothing.

“I did,” said Maxie quietly. Evie turned to look at him, but he was staring down at the raw marks where the cords had chafed his wrists.

“When Eugenia took the formula,” he continued after a pause, “it took days for her to wake up, longer than it did with me; and I started to worry she had actually died, that maybe a person could only use the stuff once, and a second dose would kill. We had taken a cottage, so I wouldn’t have to keep neighbours or hotel staff away while she recovered, but I became frightened that somebody would show up and think....” He pressed his knuckles to his mouth at the memory. “I almost fled.”

“Maxie. You never told me.”

“I was ashamed of myself.”

“Well,” grumbled the Inspector, “no harm done in your case, but Mrs. Blaylock seems, if you’ll pardon me, less the fleeing type and more the vengeance-seeking type. We’d best be on our guard.”

Chapter Text

Some of the ghosts roaming New York City that night wore what appeared to be the clothes they’d died in; others, in more formal attire, were presumably wearing what they’d been buried in. Many apparitions, especially those whose shape was not very human, wore nothing at all.

Then there were the ghosts who’d gathered near the front door of 55 Central Park West.

Their appearance was much more in keeping with certain traditions of spectral monks. They followed in a rough wedge shape behind a single robed figure. The ghosts did not enter the building. They gathered beside it, and then, at a nod from their shadowy leader, they levitated silently upwards, past each floor of the tower until they reached the terrace at the top.

Here, they came across a young man sitting on the balustrade.

The ghosts froze in midair, and one by one swivelled their empty hoods towards their commander, who floated towards the youth. The lead spectre had no face, but somehow it managed to look both puzzled and appraising as it hovered before the young man, who was dressed in the careless fashion of this strange decade yet did not seem particularly alarmed that a dozen otherworldly figures were hanging in space a few yards away from him, and thirty-odd stories above the sidewalk. Instead he rose to his feet and made a bow that was rather at odds with his sneakers, cuffed jeans and rolled-up shirtsleeves.

“Szép jó estét,” said Count Hauk-Šendorf, pleasantly, in a language the ghost recognized dimly from his early childhood, but had lost even within his own lifetime. When he did not reply, the Count switched to English and continued: “Mr. Shandor, isn’t it? The architect of all this?” He gestured at the Art Deco designs around them. “Lovely work, by the way. Only, according to my associates, you meant it to destroy the world.”

The hooded figure had continued to stare eyelessly at him, but now it nodded.

“Well,” said the Count, “I really can’t go along with that. Look, I’ve been around the block a few times; and some of my friends have been in this game even longer. I know everyone always asks what the world’s coming to, but I say people are no worse now than they’ve been.” He lifted his head and looked directly into where Shandor would have had eyes, and the architect suddenly felt the gravity behind the man’s prattle. “Besides,” Maxie continued, and his cheery demeanour abruptly returned and wiped his face clean as a slate. “I live in this world myself, and for purely selfish reasons, I don’t much care to see the old place torn down. Where would everybody go?”

“How much longer can Maxie keep‘em talking?” asked Lohmann as he struggled to make a clove hitch in the copper wire.

“If I know Maxie, he’s doing most of the talking,” said Evie, “and he did used to work in an embassy.”

“Yes, but he can hardly ask ghosts to fill out paperwork,” the Inspector muttered. Evie flashed an unexpected grin:

“Paperwork was never Maxie’s job at the embassy— he once got an Emir to spend two hours explaining the finer points of falconry, while the staff finished translating a thirty-page treaty. And if they’d needed more time, he would’ve shifted the topic to racehorses or women or the difficulties of breeding cheetahs in captivity, or something.”

“Did it really take you all these decades,” murmured Mrs. Blaylock, unwinding the wire from the spool as Lohmann worked, “to realize Hauk-Šendorf’s not as big a fool as he looks?”

The Inspector stopped what he was doing and laid a hand on Evie’s arm before she could close the gap to strike her vampire acquaintance.

“Don’t let her anger you,” he whispered. “And you,“ he added, glaring at Mrs. Blaylock, “don’t interrupt the work with your catty remarks.” Evie glanced up at him— past him, he realized, to where Maxie was, he hoped, still holding the attention of Shandor and the cultists. “They’re not likely to hurt him,” he added with as much conviction as he could muster. “Not sure they could. From what I’ve seen of these ghosts, they’re not that strong, physically.”

”It’s just that we’re ageless, but we’re not unbreakable.”

”If everything’s done at your end, we just need a couple more minutes to hoist the dampener into position.” Skuld, too was looking towards the top of the building. “Heave-ho.” She looped the wire around her left hand, and began pulling on it, winding it around her elbow as the dampener rose up along the side of the building. As she did so, something plunged like a hawk from the top storey.

Ellie screamed, but the figure landed beside them with no sound at all. It was one of the cult-ghosts. Lohmann stepped automatically between it and the others as more of the robed ghosts landed around them, striking the sidewalk with that unnerving silence— but before he could make any move to ward them off, they drifted rapidly away, apparently ignoring their opposition.

”They can’t possibly be giving up already—“ Miriam Blaylock began.

”Here’s the first one, coming back,” interrupted Elena. “Oh hell no, it’s brought Dana and the others.” For a moment the Valkyrie stopped pulling on the wire and turned her head to look at Lohmann. Elena had hastily taken his arm and placed herself to block his view of the alluring Gatekeeper; but she was shorter than him. “Close your eyes,” she urged him.

”My Keymaster—“ breathed the cellist. Then she swivelled her head towards the parked ambulance. “Another Man-from-Another-Time? And the one up there as well, by the Gate.”

“Men from another time are pretty thick on the ground at the moment,” observed Lohmann, keeping his eyes squeezed shut. The Gatekeeper— no, Miss Barrett, he reminded himself, you must think of her as that and no more— did not reply. “What’s she doing?” he asked, his eyes still closed.

”Followers of Gozer,” came the voice of the woman he’d joked with a few hours back, years it felt like now. “Take me to the Gate.” 

Lohmann felt Evie’s small hand tighten on his arm, and heard a hiss from the Valkyrie that became a raven’s croak. Mrs. Blaylock cleared her throat.

”You can look now,” she said drily. “They’ve gone.”

The Inspector opened his eyes to see her pointing upwards.

Chapter Text

Lohmann heard wingbeats overhead, and looked up to see Skuld, in raven form, circling above him.

“Little brother—“ and her bird form became the size of an eagle, and then the size of a deer, “you need to come with me.” She snatched up the Inspector in her great claws.

He gripped his hat and swore. In all their years together the Valkyrie had only ever transported him by automobile. Even horseback would have been less unsettling than this.

“Did you like it?” she croaked in his ear. “Being with Dana?”

“Part of me could tell it wasn’t real,” Lohmann gasped, “and anyway, I don’t like being pushed into things.”

“Well, right now,” and Skuld’s voice became almost human again, “I’m afraid I’m the one pushing you towards her.”

To the east, he could see dawn beginning to throw the skyscrapers into silhouette. Even a ghost-haunted night, even an apocalypse, couldn’t last forever. His partner had reached the top floor by now, and dropped him on the terrace where he landed safely, if a bit unsteadily.

“May I point out that that would be an extremely bad idea?” he said, once he’d caught his breath. “If the building’s dangerous, and the forces haunting the building wanted her and myself together, shouldn’t we be trying like hell to resist?”

“If Dana’s looking for “a man from another time,” and comes face-to-face with both you and Maxie, she may hesitate and buy us enough time to finish installing the dampener.” Her shape changed; her feathers became the familiar chauffeur’s uniform.

”I’m to make love to Miss Barrett as a distraction,” said Lohmann, sounding more resigned than pleased. “And you’re being awfully optimistic that between myself and the Count, she’d give me the time of day.”

”You’ll just have to be charming.”

She must have noticed the look her partner gave her, for she added, “You only need delay things for about five minutes. Don’t tell me you can’t stall for five minutes?”

”It’d take more than five minutes to explain. All right, where is—” he froze, as his eyes fixed on something behind his colleague and his broad face lit up, entranced.

 Down on the sidewalk, Evie called out to Robota and her friends:

”Give me a hand with this wire! Everything depends upon it!” Miriam was glancing between her and the ambulance. “Oh no you don’t,” the singer glared at her. “Didn’t you want to stick around for revenge if the elixir didn’t work? Best make yourself useful in the meantime.”

Miriam looked up at the clouds that were roiling over the tower. She pulled out her dagger, and she was, as Lohmann had previously discovered, very fast; and she had centuries of experience with it; but not, perhaps, against people who were shorter than her, and on their guard.

Evie ducked. Then she kneed Miriam in the stomach. The blonde fell cursing to the sidewalk and Evie gave her a little kick to direct her towards the ambulance.

“You could have just fled, you know.” She turned to the four mortals. Robota and Dino had leapt forward (the latter despite his bruises) when Miriam had attacked, and were now facing Evie with evident embarrassment that their help had been unneeded.

“Madam, you flatter me—” Maxie, with the ease of experience, was politely demurring while glancing about for an exit. Unfortunately the top of a skyscraper offered few, and Dana-Zuul was between himself and the only one that was really feasible. He sidestepped her attempted embrace: “Charming though you are, I long ago pledged myself to somebody else— oh, hello Lohmann,” he added, trying not to sound too obviously relieved that someone else had joined the conversation.

“My Gatekeeper, have you already forgotten me?” asked the Inspector, with a plea in his voice that would not have been audible if he’d been his own person.

Terribly beautiful, with her hair whipping in the wind and an old, wild thing looking out from behind her eyes, Dana-Zuul studied the worried, silly, amiable face of Count Hauk-Sendorf.

“This one has waded in deeper time,” she said to herself-- then, swiveling her gaze towards Lohmann who stood with arms wide. “But this one… there was a connection.”

Chapter Text

“Look—” Maxie whispered reverently.

“Never mind them!”

Lohmann and Dana were now levitating about three feet above the terrace, and enveloped in a globe of crackling electricity; but Skuld had never considered lightning to be any serious cause for concern, and in any case there was nothing for it but to keep edging the dampener into the correct position.

“Hold this bit steady – now, while the cultists are too busy to interfere!” The Count did his best to assist her.

The robed ghost-cultists had eagerly formed a circle around Dana-Zuul and her consort, and were swaying in some ritual observance, or perhaps just enthusiasm. The pair had floated up another couple of feet, and the scrawl of lightning around them was beginning to assume a bluish-white tinge. Lohmann had removed his bowler hat when he embraced the cellist; it was now in the hand pressed against the small of her back. With their eyes shut in ecstasy, they both still looked quite human-- they might have been any couple on a date except for, well, literally everything going on around them.

Skuld was twisting wires with quick, fierce flicks of her fingers as her shadow darkened and solidified in the light that brightened around the possessed Lohmann and Dana. Maxie could no longer look away. She knew the same was true of the cultists. The wires of the design sang and grew hot beneath her hands as they began to pick up the energies that blazed through the building. There— she knotted one last bit of burning wire— done. Shading her eyes with one hand, the valkyrie turned to look; and yanked the entranced Count to one side as a tongue of electricity crackled from the lightening ball to the piece she’d just finished adding to the structure. 

The wires held, at least for the time being.

The bubble of psychic energy that contained Lohmann and Dana began to sink back to the terrace like a day-old helium balloon. Skuld was unsure whether to be worried or relieved that it had not simply burst and dropped them— but she had a more immediate concern in the ring of spectral cultists as each empty hood swiveled to face her. In the dawn light she could see they were truly empty robes, but that did not seem enough to dissuade them.

”Maxie.” She spoke firmly, trusting her words would be obeyed. “Get behind me.” 

“Things look like they’re getting hot up there—“ Robota observed, craning her neck, only to hear a small cry escape the diva standing beside her. “Oh honey,” she whispered, and put her arms around Evie. “Skuld won’t let anything happen to your man.” 

Karen pressed her face against the glass of the building’s front door.

”I don’t know know if there’s still anyone at the front desk who could let us in.”

Chapter Text

Dana woke to find herself kissing somebody who tasted of cigars; and stepping back, looked into the face of Lohmann (had he been somebody else for a while?), who goggled at her in an agony of embarrassment for a few seconds before asking, with a scratch of his head:

“What’s the last thing you remember? I need to know where to lay off apologizing and begin explaining.”

“I think I can remember everything, but it was like being in the back seat while someone else drove.”

“For me too,” he said, relieved.  “I apologize anyway. For getting you involved in this.”

She held out a steadying hand.

“Forget it. I was already living in the middle of Spook Central, remember? If anything you’re the one who got dragged into this mess.” The inspector still looked uncertain as they made their way across the terrace to Skuld and Maxie.

The elevators, against all odds, had still been working, and the four of them had descended and informed Elise and the mortals that the crisis was over. The diva had reminded the Valkyrie that she still owed her one (1) favour, to be called in at a later date, and Maxie had shaken the Inspector’s hand warmly.

“So is my building... back to normal?” Dana asked. “I mean, I suppose it was never normal to begin with, but is it free of... spells?”

“The remaining energy might affect radio transmissions or radar for a while.”

“How long is a while? And what’s the transmission range?”

“Oh, most of the Northern hemisphere. But it should diminish in a few days.”

“Wait—” asked Dino: “Radar?! I hope the Russians don’t think we’re attacking them.” But Skuld and Lohmann had already vanished.

Lohmann glanced about in case the Blaylocks were still lurking somewhere, but he and his partner reached the Benz without incident. Skuld turned on the radio which had appeared in the Benz’s dashboard some time around 1946. Despite her warning about the Sandor Building affecting transmissions, a song played clearly. The singer’s voice was the breathy, strained kind they seemed to like nowadays, but the tune was a gentle, melancholy waltz. The lyrics were something about a perfect day.

“It was unnerving,” Lohmann said at last, “not to be in charge of my actions. Partly because I keep suspecting I was in charge of my actions, and just had my sense of reserve lowered from what it usually is.”

“We’ve both seen more debauchery on a typical Saturday night. No hearts were broken. The world didn’t end. If you find any part of the memory sweet, there’s no guilt in cherishing it. For what you are, you are developing a curiously puritanical streak.”

“For what YOU are, you are developing an odd belief in free will. I know we must all seem like mayflies to you – but I’ve been at your side for fifty years now, and I would appreciate a little trust.”

The song ended, and an announcer said “The bird sings with its fingers. Once. I repeat, the bird sings with its fingers. Twice. I repeat...”

”Don’t worry,” Skuld said. “That’s not for us.” She leaned back in the driver’s seat and closed her eyes. “You’re right. I lied to you when I said I wasn’t a Norn."

“You’ll have to remind me.”

“Thirty-three years, two months and three days ago.”

Lohmann looked hard at his partner, her fair, cold face and her patient, detached manners.

“I’m a fool for not having guessed it earlier."

“You were not destined to guess it earlier."

Lohmann thought about this.

"Will Miss Barrett be all right?” he asked her.

“Possession was an unusual experience for her, but not so much of a shock as you might think. She will return to music for a while, but this incident will lead her to research New York’s architecture and from there to a career in art restoration. She will marry, have a son and div —”

“You can stop now—I just wanted to know she’s unharmed, not see her whole life laid out like a railway line.” 

Another song had started up as they talked. Lohmann had become so used to hearing without language barriers that it wasn’t until the end of the first verse he realized the lyrics were indeed in German. They’d begun as a song about children’s toy balloons (and even then he’d winced, recalling little Elsie Beckmann) but soon took an ominous turn.

 “Skuld,” he said. “That radio interference, from the building—” The valkyrie opened her eyes and turned towards him with a smile.

”It will not come to that,” she said. “Trouble will be averted. But not by us, this time.” She started the motor.

“That's the part I don't understand,” said Lohmann, watching the early morning streets slip by, now empty of ghosts. “If you always know how it’s going to turn out, what do you need me for at all? For that matter, why did you ask me if I wanted to join you in the first place if it was foreordained that I would?”

“Someone still has to play the game through. I bring you along when it’s going to be you. And I asked for reasons of courtesy; also I knew I was always going to ask. To have asked.”

“I see why you avoided telling me for so long,” the Inspector grinned in spite of himself. “It makes conversation damned awkward. And I suppose it’s against the rules for me to just ask you what’s to happen next?”

Skuld shrugged.

“Do you wish to retire?”

“No, but I suppose you already knew that,” Lohmann grumbled.

“It’s not that simple. You do make your choices, it’s more that… once you have chosen, everything shifts into place so that that was always what was going to happen, and so I foresaw that it would happen. Of course in this matter,” she added, “it’s just that retirement is not in your character. Everyone who knows you knows that.” 

“Well, I wouldn’t say no to a few days’ leave.” Skuld nodded and he continued, “I wonder if Hoffmeister would be up for a fishing trip.” He glanced sideways at her. “You could come too, y’know.”

“The big trout will get away.”

“STOP THAT.”

“Inspector, I’m joking.” She laughed as the Benz turned into the Holland Tunnel and did not come out the other end.