A shadow passed over the opening. Strangehold watched it. He had made a fatal miscalculation. He was at the bottom of the hidden hole. His enemy was at the top with one hand on the metal door he had found and opened.

He lashed out with his ectoplasmic arms. They couldn’t stop the heavy door from dropping into place. He pushed on the door, astounded by the extra weight on it. He remembered the cabinet he had moved earlier to get to the door. That was extra weight he would have to lift if he wanted to get out of there.

He had trapped himself while his enemy could reset without worrying about him interfering any more. He slapped the wall with his normal hand. He had to do something to get out before something got in that he didn’t like.

He decided that he should see if he could move the cart with an ectoplasmic hand. That should be enough of a distraction for him to move the thing and open the door so he could climb out.

Strangehold looked up at the closed door. He let the ectoplasm glow to combat the dark. He had thought he was being so clever. His enemy had probably been in the kitchen the whole time and took the chance to try to make sure he couldn’t interfere in his ectoplasm gathering again.

This was not going to stop him from doing what he could to prevent any more of the harvesting.

People would die eventually. Someone with a weak body would give up under the pressure of ectoplasm being forced out of their body. It would look like a heart attack with some kind of complication. If the music was played long enough, even healthy people would start dropping dead.

The human body was not designed to have its living essence forced out of it for someone else to use.

Strangehold looked up at the door. He needed to get through that and the cart above it. Then he could try to track down his enemy. How did he do it?

He reached up with his glowing arms, looking for cracks. He could push his

ectoplasm through any opening. Then the cart should be easy to move one way or another. His waxy hands flattened against the seam the ceiling of his cell. He closed his eyes as he asked for it to spread out. He found a crack that let air through. He pushed his ectoplasm through that.

He felt his hands stretching out on the other side of the door. He felt around until he felt the cart on top of the door. He pushed the cart as much as he could with his hands. It rolled out of the way. He grabbed the handle of the door and worked it. A surge of his arms pushed the door out of the way. He grabbed the edge of the opening with his four arms and yanked himself through to land on the floor.

The crew stared at him. He glared at them. One of them had probably told his quarry he was waiting below. He could deal with them later. He had to find his murderer before he got away.

He flicked his normal hands to see the traces of people who weren’t there. His spell locked on someone heading out the back door. He jogged after the moving mist.

Strangehold stepped out the back. His marker headed for the street. That was not good. Traces from other people could dilute his spell. He grimaced as he chased after it. He hoped the murderer stayed on foot. An enclosed area like a car would cut off the flow of the trace and stop him dead in his tracks.

He thought he could figure something out if that happened.

Strangehold walked after his spell. He examined anyone who crossed his path for the spell to latch on. That would be the man he would have to try to take in for Burly to question.

The line of ectoplasm stretched to a set of stores fronting the sidewalk. They were short, brick, and had bars over the windows and the glass of the door. The strand flattened against the door for a woman’s clothing place that was closed for business at the moment.

Why would his ectoplasm farmer go in there? He looked around. The sidewalk had people coming from the clubs, but no one seemed to be paying attention to him. He needed to get into the shop and look around.

His grandchildren would learn the wrong kind of lessons about burglary if he allowed them to accompany him on his cases for the police.

He saw a shadow moving beyond the glass as he approached. Was that his sasquatch murderer? Was it a clerk putting things in order for the night? Did he want to wait until the person came out, or go in while he had the element of surprise?

He decided he needed to find out where his farmer had gone beyond the store. If he had to talk to a clerk, then that was all right. Any clue to what was going on was better than the morass he was mired in at the moment.

He flicked one of his phantom arms and the hand at the end entered the keyhole for the door. He willed the hand to work the tumblers. The knob turned, the door opened under the pressure.

He pulled his hand free. He couldn’t remember the first time he had broken into some place. He thought it was long before the city had gone from a small town to a small city.

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He looked around before he entered. No one seemed to have noticed what he had done. He supposed something that looked like a tentacle in the middle of the air would be disbelieved immediately.

That wasn’t his problem at the moment. He stepped inside the shop and closed the door. He looked around, letting his mental senses pick up anything living. Nothing fit that bill in the shop.

Where did the farmer go when she stepped inside the shop? Why had she come here in the first place? Was this another of her ectoplasm farms?

Strangehold sent out a flash of ectoplasm to see what he could find. His quarry had gone out the back. He didn’t sense anything strange. He wondered what would happen if he came back in the daytime.

Was the place a farm from the customers that came in to buy clothes? Where was the collector?

He decided to take a closer look after he had tracked his enemy to his lair.

Another farm could cause women changing clothes to give part of themselves to the collector. Storage meant the farmer could come around any time to pick up the ectoplasm to put in his personal reserve. The problem, like the club, was that someone weak enough could die from such a taking and not know why.

A doctor, or coroner, would put the death down as dehydration, or something related, and just move on. Ectoplasm extraction would not be on their top ten causes of death in those cases.

Strangehold would not blame them. Without his senses, he would do the same thing.

He went out the back of the shop. His opponent had got away from him while he was navigating the shop. He sensed another cut off and realized his spell had locked on again when the other man had come out of the shop, but a car had stopped it long enough for an escape to be made.

What did that leave him?

He decided to ask Burly about the women’s clothing store and the Note. Maybe there was a connection he could put together.

He wondered if there was a connection to the victim’s work place.

That might get him something to look at once the police had sifted through the paperwork involved in a business ownership.

Before he called Burly and asked for that information, he had to make sure any collector in the store was broken. That would prevent problems for them while helping to cripple their enemy.

How many other places had been set up with collectors?

He put that down as something he would have to look into in the course of the

investigation.

Strangehold cast a search with his ectoplasm throughout the shop. He found the inactive collector in the ceiling, drawn in the wood. He suspected either a knife, or a phantom limb like he used. It was more permanent than the club’s so he thought that it had been done first and etched in to gather power passively from the customers.

It didn’t matter. It wasn’t an indestructible artifact. That meant he could take it

apart with a pull of his extra arms. He squinted at the drawing. Maybe he could use this to his advantage.

He wondered if Burly would approve of what he was about to do. He decided in the negative. The policeman would already be upset that he had chased their suspect and let him get away because he wanted to act alone. Another scheme like this would not please the sergeant.

He decided he should at least call and tell the detective he was curious about who owned the Note and the women’s clothing shop. Maybe the same person owned both of them.

That might be the connection they needed to wrap the case up and bring in their culprit.

He definitely didn’t want the detective to try to arrest their quarry on his own. There was no telling how much protection the ectoplasmic disguise gave him with the additional strength and speed.

Strangehold sprouted his limbs as he looked up at the engraving on the ceiling. He checked every angle with his eye. He nodded to himself that his idea could work.

He used the fingers of his ghost limbs to write his own spell on the collector. He imposed his will on it to activate it. Then he went to the phone behind the counter. It was time to update Burly and watch what happened to the shop.

He had the feeling that the killer would not wait for his reserves to drop to zero because of his collector. He would come back to fix things.

When he did, the doctor would be waiting to deal with him.

Strangehold hoped he came back before the sun came up. He still had to take the kids to school and teach. He couldn’t watch the shop that whole day to see who tried to fix the carving.

There was another way he could use the drain to his advantage if he hurried.

He needed to let Burly know in case he was killed going ahead with his scheme.

Strangehold picked up the phone and asked for the sergeant’s home phone from the operator. He doubted that the detective was still at his desk at this hour. He was either called away on a case, or at home. Trying home seemed the best bet, then he could call the station and see if Burly was there.

Letting him know about the clothing shop might allow him to tie some bit of

evidence to the murderer without the connection to magic, and the other esoteric things about the case.

He doubted this murderer would be tried in a criminal court. There just wasn’t enough real evidence for a prosecutor to take to a judge, or a jury, and prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it was possible to rip a man to pieces.

And his finding of the collectors would mean nothing to anyone who didn’t know how ectoplasm worked.

And Strangehold admitted to himself that he didn’t want to sit in court and prove ectoplasm existed to people who would just dismiss it as some kind of power like the Rocket, or the Mark.

“Burly here,” said the sergeant. “Go ahead.”

“I have found something at Fine Looks clothing store,” said Strangehold. “I just need to know who the owner is, and if they have a connection to the Note.”

“Give me the name again,” said Burly. Strangehold did, hearing the scratching of a pen in the background. “I won’t be able to search the records until tomorrow when the hall of records opens.”

“That’s fine,” said Strangehold. “I just want to know in case I miss. It might be a lead to the identity of our sasquatch. I have to go. I have some things in the fire, and I need to put them out.”

“Are you at this clothing store,” asked the detective.

“I’ll be gone,” said Strangehold. “I’m going to try to execute a trick and see if I can at least identify our villain. I’ll call if it works.”

“What’s the trick?,” asked Burly.

“It’s something that only magicians like me can do,” said Strangehold. “I’m trying to use his own spell against him. If it works, then we might see something.”

“Don’t do anything I will have to explain to your grandkids as reckless and foolish,” said Burly.

“There won’t be any explanation necessary,” said Strangehold. “They know how dangerous this is, and what my will has left them.”

“I don’t think that’s my point,” said Burly.

“Don’t worry,” said the doctor. “If this works, you will be able to close your case as an exotic animal attack.”

“That’s great,” said Burly.

Strangehold hung up with a smile.