Strangehold felt the urge to let his extra hands talk for him. He pulled them in before they seized the employee and did something bad to him. He decided he could step back and figure another route to what he wanted to know.

He had time. He could be patient. He doubted someone else would be ripped apart unless the murderer was personally crossed. He turned from the bar and looked across the room. No one looked out of place to him.

Unless the ectoplasm was going in a storage container somewhere, someone had to be close by to collect the life force. Either the roof, or a basement, had to be in play. He could check the roof, and wait for anyone to leave the club when it closed.

He could check the basement when no one was around to get in his way. He didn’t want to hurt someone trying to do a legitimate job and not involved in the crime. He wanted to save that for someone who deserved what they were about to be handed.

The doctor left the club and walked around the outside of the building. He scanned the skyline from the ground. He didn’t see any warps in the air he associated with ectoplasm freefloating without a wizard to give it commands.

He still needed to check the roof to make sure. Once he had done that, he could wait for the building to clear. Then he could clear the basement.

He knew that he might not find anything. It didn’t take much to move ectoplasm around. And his quarry might have already got clear when the music stopped playing at the right frequency to drain the audience.

He frowned at his options. He decided that all he could do was eliminate the obvious until he had something to work on.

His four liquidly arms sprouted from his back. He secured handholds and pulled himself up the side of the building. He stepped on the roof of the Note. No one readied to fight him for the dominance of living energy.

He extended his sense out to cover the roof. He didn’t see any traces of ectoplasm. He nodded to himself. The raider had decided to set up his gathering point somewhere else.

He needed to check out the basement. If that was clear, he would have to think of some other place the ectoplasm could be going. Maybe there was a siphon somewhere outside the club.

There had to be something unless it was just floating around and vanishing into the air.

Strangehold didn’t believe that for a second. His quarry had assembled a song to draw out the living substance of people. No way was he just letting all that dissipate in the air. You couldn’t get any of it back if you did that, and that did nothing but slowly kill whomever you drew the ectoplasm from since it was made of people’s inner workings.

The next question after where was the ectoplasm going was why did the man need so much of it? Why use the club to harvest it? Why not just use a park, or some other public place with more people to gather more of the stuff?

And why kill Crenshaw over it?

If he knew that, maybe that would be the key he needed to turn the rest.

Strangehold sat on the roof. He closed his eyes. There had to be some trace he could use. He extended his senses out as far as he could, stretching out over the neighboring buildings.

He felt nothing reaching back to him. He frowned at that. The traces he would

normally feel were absent.

Had his enemy cleared all the places around the club with his gathering?

Strangehold tried to reach out further with his sense. He couldn’t feel anything at the edges of his reach. He wondered how far the clear zone reached.

How many people were missing their ectoplasm?

He let his sense return to his body. He had a puzzle related to the one he was already investigating. It was too much to say they weren’t caused by the same man.

He listened to the air. The patrons of the Note were leaving. Another show was advertised, but he didn’t know if he had wrecked the song for good, or just for the night. The band might not be able to play it without a drum to hit the right notes.

It would be fortunate for him that he had stopped things for the night. That would force the brain to reset his scheme, or start somewhere else.

He had until the second show to figure out his next move.

He decided to drop off the roof and gain another vantage point. Maybe the patrons would give him something to look for later.

Strangehold grabbed his roof with two of his arms and swung out over the street. His other two arms grabbed the roof of a building on the other side of the road. They yanked him across to a precise landing away from the rampart.

He turned to watch the street. People moved along the sidewalk toward cars parked in lots, or hailed cabs. He didn’t see anyone with the glow he used as an indicator.

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He needed to check the basement of the Note. Once he had cleared that, he could start expanding his search. How did he get pass the staff?

He could still wait until after the second show was over and then break in. It wasn’t heroic, but he didn’t want to hurt people who might not be involved in this. He could ask Burly to shut the place down long enough for him to look around. That would cause some friction with the police. He could yank the manager into a dark alley and ask some pointed questions. That could cause trouble down the line.

The man might deserve any beating the doctor desired to hand out.

Strangehold shook his head. Middleton wasn’t a frontier town that needed Wyatt Earp to tame it. It was a quiet place that had survived because of shipping down the local waters to the Mississippi.

It did draw a collection of mages and monsters who wanted to set up shop. This master of ectoplasm was just the latest to come along with a scheme to build something that was bound to get out of control and cause problems for the local populace. The doctor wondered if there was something in the air that enticed the menaces he dealt with to the city.

He supposed he should consult with another mage who could point him to the local siren of his adversaries so he could think of some way of cutting it off. He wanted his grandchildren to have safer lives than the one he had lived.

Learning to use ectoplasm to prolong your life had not been the expected result of his experiments. He had wanted to find a way to cure things that no one could then. Now science had cured some things, and held others in abeyance.

When the news had gone out that a doctor had found a cure for smallpox, he had drank himself stupid for the first and last time.

Strangehold checked for how many more were in the club. He could read their energy thanks to the ectoplasm in the air. A small staff was setting up for the next show. He could use that to get inside and check the basement under the building.

He just had to act like he belonged.

He dropped down to the street and crossed to the club. He circled to the back door. One use of his ectoplasm and he was inside the kitchen and looking around. He spotted a trap door under a heating cabinet on wheels. He pushed the appliance out of the way and opened the trap door. He descended down before anyone called for him to stop.

The place could use a light, he thought as he looked around. Glowing lines danced where he assumed the ectoplasm would be gathered. He frowned at the number of right angles he could see.

So he had the end point for the stolen life from upstairs. Did he stake it out? Did he destroy it and throw down the gauntlet? Did he want to be a target with his grandchildren under his roof? Could he make this into some sort of trap to use against his theoretical rival?

He examined the drawing and thought about it. He could reverse the effect. If he did, he had no idea what would happen to the people upstairs, or the mage.

He might supercharge them with the mage’s own supply of ectoplasm. That might cause side effects in them that included sociopathy and a form of dementia. It might kill the mage if he lost too much too fast.

The case had to be closed for Burly, but the detective could put down accidental death with the help of the medical examiner. It wouldn’t be the first time they had covered up something with a cause of death that didn’t quite fit what had happened.

Burly would have to come up with connections to Crenshaw’s death, but his own consultancy would be over as soon as the case was closed.

It didn’t matter how the case was closed to the commanders of the law.

It didn’t matter to him either as long as he had the right man. There were a few times where he had made mistakes and almost punished the wrong man or woman for something they didn’t do. He had been able to correct his mistakes so far, but it had made him cautious in accusing people, and examining things that could lead more than one way.

He didn’t have a clear picture of his enemy. Anyone could use this ectoplasm gatherer if they were told how by the person who set it up. He could get a minion and miss the real villain if he turned it into a trap.

On the other hand, minions were just as guilty as their chiefs more often than not.

Strangehold decided the best thing to do was to turn the function of the gatherer off. That would protect the people upstairs, and it would cause a problem for the maker. Then maybe they could have a meeting and talk about Crenshaw being ripped apart.

If the person he talked to was the murderer, he figured the talk wouldn’t go as

smoothly as he would like. He would have to deploy his arms and skills against the giant mask he had observed.

Then Burly would have to think of a way to make the charges stick if he could.

That also wouldn’t be the first time they had done that particular misdeed.

Modern judges didn’t believe in werewolves except as mental problems for an

unlucky few. Those people belonged in a hospital instead of a jail.

Strangehold and Burly disagreed with the sentiment when it was covered in fur and fangs trying to kill them.

The doctor looked up at the trap door over the ladder he had used to get down to the floor. He didn’t see anyone taking an interest in what he was doing. Maybe the staff knew better than to intervene in whatever went on below them. They might have been told they would be exsanguinated if they caused too much of a ruckus.

And everybody he knew liked their blood to remain in their bodies.

Strangehold used his four ectoplasmic arms to seize various lines he thought were the center of the floating diagram. He grabbed the air with his real hands and yanked on the energy like yanking a blanket to him. He watched as the drawing spun around and parts of it broke off.

Let’s see you gather up ectoplasm with that.

He hadn’t detected an alarm possibility on the drawing. That didn’t mean anything. Either the creator knew his spell was closed, partially destroyed, or would check on it when he didn’t perceive it working. Something would happen soon enough.

He had to stay on the job until the club closed at least. He doubted any of the staff had the skill to set something like the gatherer up. That person would arrive eventually to deal with his destroyed power source.

Some kind of fight would break out as soon as he revealed himself. That was a given. He needed to be ready to identify the suspect so he could pass the word to Burly and let the detective do the rest of the work.

Either holding the murderer in the basement, or forcing him to expel his reserve of energy and run, would be a victory in Strangehold’s book. That would force him on a clock where he had to get things done before his own reserve ran out, but he should be fine.

He had been storing and using ectoplasm for decades. He should have enough to fight a small war before he had to retreat and restock.

Knowing who the enemy was had to be the better thing. If the man got away before he could be identified, he could just start over somewhere else.

Who knew how many would be killed accidentally by another ectoplasm gatherer draining their life force for someone else to use?

Strangehold decided he couldn’t allow that to happen if he had to engage. One of them had to go down as soon as they closed on each other.

This was a small menace at the moment. It couldn’t be allowed to grow into

something bigger.