My heart raced quicker than my carriage down to Police Precinct 6. I wanted Chelle to stay home where it was safe, but she kept insisting. It didn't take an analyst to know she wanted to see what happened to Mica.

Soaring through the dark of night, we parked beside the police carriages in the highrise. Chief Rita O'Law had sent Officer Cornberry to greet us.

"I cannot believe this," the fop remarked, his hair now a remarkable color of pink with yellow stripes. "Doesn't the boss lady know I have a socialithe social lifthe?!"

"Lisp all you want," I remarked, still dressed in my pajamas with an overcoat pulled over it. "But I was enjoying life too… until reality happened."

"And you looked in the mirror?" Cornberry remarked.

I cast a glare at him.

"Why isn't he taking this seriously, big sis?" Chelle demanded.

"Probably because he's a joke himself," I said. "Cornberry. Need I remind you this is Mica Angelo's…relative?"

"Right," Cornberry answered forlornly. "I'll lead the way."

Even someone as garrulous as Cornberry was strangely quiet, upon entering the building. Overhead lights in the police office were all dimmed and grey and the desks piled high in unfinished paperwork from earlier that day. Two grunts saluted us as we made our way to the jail cells.

White light filled the concrete prison. The walls were cracked and tinted a hue of pale yellow. We reached two cells where the chief stood. I gaped. She was in a jet black cocktail dress and her hair was tied up in a well arrayed bun. Professor Archie Bald was there too; he wore fluffy pink pajamas with bunny slippers and somehow still managed to look manly.

The contents of the jail cell made, Chelle turned blanche whiter than a ghost at midnight. Mica Angelo lay in the prison, his face and body stiff as a frozen tombstone. There was no marks or physical harm done to him, only a far away look of death. Chelle began to cry and I held her close to me.

"Thanks for coming here on such short notice," the Chief said. "It all seemed we all had other things to do at this time." She ran her velvet gloves along her tight dress. "Like a hot date."

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"Or," Archie remarked. "Playing a foxy game of solitaire where the loser has to remove his clothes!"

"But solitaire is played with only one person," I said, biting my lips.

"Hey," Archie said as everyone turned to him. "It's Friday night okay? Geez…"

"I don't need to hear about your outrageous personal life, Mr. Bald," the chief remarked, before turning to me. "This is completely baffling. The guards swear they were here all night so for these two criminals to up and die like that…is…"

"Sus…" I said narrowing my eyes. "Very, very sus."

"Ol' Archie thinks its suspect too!" My unhip teacher said.

"After all," I said, surveying both prison cells. "Who could want Mica Angelo dead? Chelle? Did he have a lot of enemies?"

Chelle wiped her nose and looked up at me. Her eyes shined with crystaline tears. "Aside from the Telas, not much. Until he was busted, everybody liked him."

I turned my gaze to Mabel Syrup. The old woman lay in a similar position, locked in an eternal rigor mortis. "And that doesn't explain why the restaurant lady died too."

Archie paced the room with his triumphant and iconic limp. "Perhaps, my dear Jacqueline," he said to me. "You are looking at this through your own prison cell: the metal bars of your own mind. Liberate yourself from your mental lock and think–who could want both of them dead. What did they have in common?"

I thought back to the one factor that tied two very different people together in an indelible knot. It was that horned creature. Both of them had that creature displayed somewhere like a trophy for the world's most unfortunate mug. And Olive said she saw similar creatures in other mansions. The devotion to this sinister fiend. It seemed…almost cultish."

"Child's play!" I said with a smile."Mica Angelo and Mabel Syrup were both in a cult!"

Archie's bright and childish grin flashed in a delighted arc. "Bingo bongo, my protege! And what a curious cult it is!"

"Cult or not," said the chief as she lit the end of a cigar. "Doesn't explain how they died. There was no sign of struggle or any markings on their bodies. It's still not clear if this was a suicide or a homicide.

"Or an 'I can't Decide!'" Archie exclaimed.

The chief glared at him. "If wordplay were a crime, you'd be a master criminal, Mr. Bald."

"Or a master wordsmith!" my professor remarked.

"Well," I said, pulling out my vape. "Were the two guards really the only ones here?"

"Them," the chief said. "And the warden, but he had already gone home by then."

I looked into the cells again. The fallen victims' pupils were dilated in the shape of question marks again. And this time they punctuated the mystery of their demise.

There was nothing more I could do tonight, but sleep on it. I hoped desperately for a lead or at least a kick from the outside. When I went to Enigma Academy the next day, however, I truly got a kick in the head instead.