“It was supposed to be just another hoax,” she said, taking a quick sip of brandy to settle her nerves before she looked into the eyes of the demon sitting across from her wearing an impeccably shaped human suit. “I only brought Ezekiel in on it because I thought it would be easy money, just like the last few times I’d been to the Bergen Estate, and because the priest had done me a good turn recently.”

A shiver went through her as she realized that if she hadn’t invited the old man to join her, she would be in that room right now instead of him.

“The Bergens? Those are the power barons, yes? I see their name on the mail for my electricity bill. It is a strange sort of mortal magic, is it not?” he mused, wandering from the topic as he always did. “Do you know how this electromotive force works? I’ve stared at the electric bulbs in here endlessly but still have yet to understand the trick to it.”

“I don’t, I’m afraid,” she shook her head. “But what I really don’t understand is what I just saw not three hours ago.”

“What did you see,” he asked, taking the bait. “I confess that even isolated as I am, I have heard some very strange rumors about the patriarch of that family.”

“Well, before we talk of what happened tonight, I must first tell you about my other recent trips to that family’s estate,” she said, clearing her throat. This would not be a short story, after all.

She started by telling her host about the well-kept grounds of the white southern-style manor house. It was large enough to fit her whole neighborhood within its wrought iron fences, and the house had more rooms than her tenement had apartments. It was clear that money would never be a problem for this family, even though the father, Morton Bergen, died last year under mysterious circumstances. After inviting more than a few clairvoyants to lead séances, his son, Morton Junior, hit upon her to come out and communicate with the beyond on his behalf. However, she wished that he had not.

“Were you able to give the boy the information he sought and provide closure?” Hugo asked, leaning in as she finally started to pique his interest.

“Only too well, unfortunately. Unlike the charlatan's he'd hired previously I was able to provide all the answers he sought regarding their accounts,” she answered, unable to keep a note of pride entirely out of her voice, “As well as sweep aside certain… proclivities that were best kept out of the papers for an additional fee.”

Hugo probed her for more details on that, but she demurred politely, citing a need to do what was right for all her clients, just as she had done on his behalf. The old man’s struggles with homosexuality weren’t anyone’s business, as she saw it. If he wanted to keep his summer home packed with young artists and musicians with a certain sensitive disposition, then she didn’t see how it was anyone’s business. It was the twenties, after all, and things were different now. Hugo came from an older time, though, and just that fact might have been enough to get him to refuse her.

It was irrelevant to the story, though, and instead, she focused on the most important part: the man’s son. Morton Junior, or Morty as he preferred to be called by his friends, was a very creative sort. However, she couldn’t say whether all the strange men his father kept around had anything to do with it. All that mattered was once he’d found himself a real psychic, he developed no end of imaginary problems that needed to be addressed by her.

He’d sent a car to the city for her twice to deal with curses, and during the summer, he had his fortune read nearly weekly for fear that something was coming to get him and that he could feel his doom approaching. None of those were as strange as what she’d seen he had done to the library, that last weekend in September, after his chauffeur had brought her there.

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It was still hot then, and that mansion was about the only place in Baltimore County with air conditioning where she might be welcome, so even though Josephine knew it would be a complete waste of time for her, she still took the long ride out there. After all, twenty dollars was twenty dollars, and she had nothing better to do.

It had been anything but a waste of her time, though. The man had removed every stick of furniture with corners from the room and paid someone to plaster all the places where the walls met each other as well as where they joined the ceiling and the floor so that there were no corners. When she’d gotten there, he’d met her at a round table with delicately arched Queen Anne chairs and explained that he’d finally figured out that it was the hounds of Tindalos that had been stalking him.

“Have you ever heard of the hounds of Tindalos?” she asked Hugo with a note of exasperation.

“I know many old and terrible names. More than you even, I expect, but that one is not on the list, I’m afraid,” he confessed as he spread his hands in bafflement.

“Neither had I,” she agreed. “Not until my esteemed client finally produced the source document for his fears - a pulp fantasy novel of weird fiction stories.”

Hugo laughed at that, and she let his amusement exhaust itself at poor Morty’s expense before she continued. “I attempted to explain the difference between reality and fiction, of course, but gently since he was a paying customer. Morton Junior might have been 22 in body, but he’d led a very sheltered life while his father was alive. It was only after his death that the man was permitted to read strange things like the pulp novel. As we both know, some of the dread names that those foolish storytellers use are quite real, but this one was a total sham. My customer insisted that it was because of how the creatures were described and that he’d seen something quite similar in his own night terrors, but I couldn’t see anything to it and left him only somewhat mollified.”

Josephine went on to explain that later that evening, she’d gone to a local bookseller and wasted a nickel buying exactly the same issue as Morty had shown her, but there was not a single description of the supposed hounds anywhere to be found in the entire work. Her host laughed once more when she explained that she had a conversation with the clerk and that the monster had been used in several horror stories to date, but none of them, not even the original author, had done so. Apparently, the man had just said they were too foul to be described.

“So you interrupt my feast to tell me about a monster that never existed, Josephine?” the Marquis said, shaking his head. “I thought I knew you better than that.”

“Of course not, Monsieur,” she answered quickly. “I was just getting to the important part. I wanted you to understand how it came to be that I parted ways with such a lucrative client. As much as I loved his money, I felt that he would do better in the care of a professional psychotherapist and thought for sure that I would never be hearing from him again. However, only a week later, my landlord received an urgent call for me from Morton’s butler. There had been some sort of supernatural tragedy, and their master was catatonic.”

“This seemed like just another strange ploy for attention from the man, and I was about to insist that they summon a doctor, when they offered to pay me cab fare and a sum well over my usual rate if I could come at once.” With her story finished, she looked up from her almost empty drink and back at the hungry eyes of her host. “How was I to know this was anything but another rich man’s flight of fancy?”

“So you took the money and went right over?” Hugo asked disinterestedly. Fearing what might happen if she lost his interest completely, she swallowed hard and glossed over the conversation she and Ezikeil had on the way there.

“Yes,” she agreed. “My driver made only a single stop to pick up Ezekiel, and then we took an eight-dollar cab ride well outside city limits. That was when we saw the mirror room.”

“The mirror room?” he asked, perking up.

“Well, technically, it was the gymnasium. I’d seen it before when it was full of normal exercise equipment, but sometime between then and now, he’d had the windows boarded up, and he’d taken every mirror from the rest of the manse and used them to line every surface. The wall, the floor, and even the ceiling he’d covered with as many reflective surfaces as he possibly could, and when I next saw him, he was sitting there, Catatonic on the only chair in the room.”