"Traqueur." Her lips didn't move when she spoke my name like a whisper. I knew she had found the last shred. There was a drop of blood on it. I thanked my tulpa, always my eyes when I must see into the darkness:

"A rose has no other name, my sweet." I muttered aloud. "Nor shall you."

"What did you say, detective?" Commiste looked over where I knelt. She caught the corner of my eye and I saw her smile, just a breath of warmth in the cold mist of morning.

"This is the child's blood. On this cloth." I pointed to the tiny fragment on the thistle. I knew more and said nothing. They would know the rest very soon, with their science. "Bring in the necromancers. She is likely buried near here. Get Midnight. She always knows the spot."

Commiste nodded, smiled at me again and said: "Midnight is done with her pups. She will be happy to be back on the job."

"They don't know what their job is." I chuckled grimly and lit a smoke. I had started again when I found out I have lung cancer and testicular cancer. Why the hell not? I'm not letting them chop off my nuts, the damn things are just gonna have to kill me.

She left me there and called to have the dogs and forensics brought out to where we were. I considered how we had found this place. The killer had hid only the clues, leaving the truth untouched. We just focused on what motives the lies revealed. The psychology of my prey is very important to me, was he running, was he taking his time, was he excited, was he nervous, I must understand all of the killer's thoughts. I must know.

That is how I find them. The bodies of their victims, then the police can go and arrest the one I knew it was. Because then there is proof. I knew when I looked at him, that this man was the one, because I was already in his head and I know him, like recognizing myself in the mirror. Sometimes I don't recognize my real face, and that is why I fear mirrors, the sensation of not recognizing one's own face, even for a fraction of a second, it's terrifying, in-a-way.

My own thoughts run around like screaming, playing children inside my head. It is always a recess cacophony in there. I have to shuffle them all into the library for story time. That was fine until I found my first dead body, and it was quiet like in the library. Now it must be loud in my mind at all times. Silence is madness. I cannot abide the library.

"Lover, look." Christmas pointed. I looked to where my shimmering friend was pointing. "Oubliette."

And there I saw what my tulpa had found. It was a tunnel, a mineshaft. A desperate hole in the earth, carved by the shoveling want of man. I had known it from a dream. I shuddered and used my smoke to light another. In the dream, this would signal my demise. So I was to die this day. Great.

"It means I am to die. I dreamed of it." I said to her. Her smile faded to concern and she spoke in her tranquil French accent:

"You will not die. It was just a dream. You dream often of me, and yet I do not live. Do not believe dreams. That is what you always say when you don't win the lottery." She chastised me in her own delicate way. It sounded very soothing and reassuring. I nodded to Christmas. She nodded back, then floated on ahead of me to look into the mine. "Nothing dangerous in there."

I walked towards it and suddenly there was a sharp and gripping pain on the front of my foot. I'd sprung a trap on my foot. I exhaled and inhaled and tried to focus on breathing, the pain wanting to take over and make me pull away. I knew there was no sense in obeying the instinct to pull my foot back and denied it. I looked to where Christmas was watching.

"Help!" I told her out-loud. She floated right up to my face and smiled. Christmas instructed me calmly:

"Take the trap off of your foot by reaching down and holding the spring on the side closed. Then push down with your injured foot and lift it back into an armed position with your other hand while holding the spring closed on the side. When it clicks in your hand, let go and remove your other hand and hurt foot."

I did as she said and was freed. I took off my shoe painfully and looked at my mangled foot. The pain was already subsiding, but I could tell there were broken bones inside. It looked awful.

"Thanks, Christmas."

"Poor traceur. You can't run when they chase you." Christmas hovered over me, waiting almost predatory, for me to fall asleep. I lost consciousness and was in her realm. Here, I floated and she had work to do.

She was examining the tire tracks left as the van had pulled away. Two large men had jumped out, knocked over the woman and grabbed both of her children. Then they had driven away, leaving her there screaming in agony. Had they killed those children instead, it would be an amputation, instead of the infection it caused. She had become a shriveled creature, afraid of the light of day. Every stranger was a taker of children.

I pointed where something remained unnoticed all this time, even as rain had come and washed away everything. My Christmas stood here. She was a detective in her world, and I was just her fantasy. She lived alone, with her own tulpa and couldn't tolerate the touch of a man in real-life. Here, she needed me to see into the dark places she couldn't look.

"She had stopped and waited there. The van pulled up and she walked towards the back of it." I crossed my arms. "That part always seemed strange. But look here, the van would have pulled over that curb there to get up here. Very dramatic-looking driving, come on up over the curb and swerve out in front of her. It would have taken her several seconds to get to the back of the van as she and her kids kept walking. She didn't alter her path to go around it in any way: let alone stop out-of-alarm."

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

"This is why they call me Spooky. Thanks, Traqueur." She looked to where I floated and I could see she appreciated me. It was hard for her to take credit for her leaps of intuitive conclusions. I knew that she knew what had really happened. I was a useful tool, for her, in explaining how she knew. She had to make her male colleagues understand her thought process. I represented that conversation, as well as her relationships, as difficult as they were to maintain.

Later on, when she explained to her boss what she felt was wrong with the cold case, he gave her the file. Then he timidly asked her if he could have a meal with her sometime. She politely told him that she needed to be able to look up to him as a father figure: in order to stay focused and functional. Also that she might feel confused if she ate a meal with him and enjoyed his handsome charms, that she couldn't afford to be distracted with such sentiment and physical attraction. He blushed at her rejection and I watched as he sat down, flattered.

Every time she read another page she handed it to me, where I sat in the empty chair at her desk. They stacked up in front of me one-by-one and I tried to read them at her pace. Then I noticed something she had ignored, since I cannot know anything she does not, as she cannot in my realm. But I can have my own thoughts, about her observations. I can see into the darkness for her.

"She wasn't their mother." I pointed out.

"The FBI already had a file on her, when she was suspected in a conspiracy to kidnap her own stepchildren." Christmas declared weirdly. I gave her a quizzical look:

"Will there be anything in these files that indicates that?" I asked, believing she knew what she was talking about and not questioning that part of her statement. Just the competency of the file in front of her. She smiled, pretending she would get the same response from the men in her department.

"I need to contact the FBI and ask. It is just a theory." She was still smiling at me, glad it was easy to explain.

"You've got this. She left a trail, trying to cover the places where she stepped." I told her something from my own methods.

"I know that, Traqueur. I love having you here while I do this, believing in me till four in the morning. It gets so tiring..." Christmas had one eye watering. She started weakening whenever she became tired. I resolved to remind her how strong she could be:

"You are worth believing in. You never give up. Not ever." I told her. "I love you."

"I love you too." She said as I awoke and Midnight was licking my face, having found me there on the moss.

"You okay, Samual?" Commiste and Jacques were there with the necromancy dogs. They had the job of sniffing out the graves of murdered children. Then they got a treat.

"My foot. I fucked my foot." I tried to sit up and the pain reminded me my foot was still completely ruined. "Someone get that trap and get the dogs back. Get them out of here. Bring in...SWAT...the traps..." I fainted again.

Christmas was asleep. She had called the FBI already. She didn't look as pretty when she slept. Her's was an alert beauty, the sharpness of her gaze, the petulance of her lips. These were her beautiful features. Sleeping, she looked docile and childish.

I looked at what she had written down. The words: "Jamboree Chemicals. Jefferson Avenue. March Thirtieth." I said aloud and she stirred, hearing my voice. She sat up and put on her reading glasses.

"When you return, I can smell the cigarettes you have smoked." She complained.

"I've never smelled you in my world." I complained back.

"That's too bad. I just let myself smell natural, no conditioner even. Men always compliment my perfume. I'm not wearing any." Christmas smiled seductively for me. She could do it, she just chose not to. I never understood, really, why she wanted to be so lonely and untouched. For me it was part of the job.

"Why don't you get one? I won't stop you. It would be good for you." I told her.

"No thanks." She went right back to work like always, when I brought up the subject of her dating.

"What was that stuff you wrote down?" I floated around the desk and pointed at her writing.

"A weird date, March Thirtieth. Keeps coming up with her. Anyway, this chemical place is where they found the bodies."

"Of the kids?"

"No, of the step kids. I was right. She was married before and her two stepchildren vanished the same way."

"Whose kids were these, then?" I was frowning at the development. Christmas had done her homework: this cold case was about to flash boil.

"Her fiance'." Christmas said slowly and looked up, taking off her reading glasses. "He works for a bottling company that uses vans like that for company vehicles."

"What about the accomplices?" I felt sick, even in spectral form.

"She has two brothers that work at her fiance's work. They worked there and got him the job. But they are the brothers of her previous identity. He doesn't know they know her."

"What are we looking at? This is organized, ritualized, handed down, trained. What are they doing?" I pondered.

"I sorta thought something like that too. The bodies from before were shown to be mutilated and probably tied up, tortured. They had a boy and a girl, in both cases. They choose the victims, get close to them. It involves more than what we are seeing." Christmas handed me a printout of her timeline, holding it out for me to take and then she sighed and set it down in front of me.

"Who are you talking to?" Jack had walked in and asked. Christmas blushed.

She liked Jack's appearance. I looked like Jack for the most part. Jack though: didn't really appeal to her. He didn't get her sense-of-humor and that was turnoff for Christmas. If she was going to tell a joke: he needed to get it. Or she needed him to get it. I shrugged.

"My imaginary friend. He looks like you." She admitted. She hated to: but telling the truth was her way, even if it made things worse.

"Laugh and say you have one that looks like her." I whispered into Jack's ear. He couldn't hear me and just said:

"Okay Spooky. I know you're not crazy." And then he walked away. I glared after him.

"I know you're not crazy. He doesn't know what he is talking about." I apologized for the behavior of another man. "Let's go to the bottling place and find them, shall we?"

"Yes, my love." Christmas was very tired now.

We went out there and arrived at dusk. She gained access with a smile and a badge, saying she just wanted to look around for a few minutes and it was probably nothing to worry about. The young man was so enchanted he agreed to assist her.

We went around and looked here and there, turning up nothing interesting until I saw two old silos just off the edge of campus. I pointed them out the Christmas. She had glanced at them and thought nothing, I had a feeling this time.

We left him there and found that someone had broken-in at some point. We let ourselves into the ruins. Christmas walked over the bits of broken pipes and rusted framework where it lay like metal skeletons all around. I just floated and kept my eyes open for anything unusual.

There was little attempt to hide what we found.

Her flashlight shown onto the blood-soaked altar. Ropes and candles and ancient and demonic symbols written in human blood. This is where the victims had died. Christmas was right about the whole thing.

I wanted to compliment her. Then I turned to see how she wept. I only wanted to hold her.

When I was fully conscious I was out of surgery. They had taken my foot. I checked to make sure they hadn't gotten carried away and checked my cancerous nuts. I sighed in relief. Never know with these bastards. Give them a foot and they saw off your nutsack while they are at it.

"Samual?" Commiste was visiting me in the hospital. She brushed her hair back with her fingertips and smiled.

"Yeah, kid?" I asked her for the news.

"Midnight found the grave."