“He was,” Jason agreed. “And now he’s not. Word of advice? Let him do what needs to be done.”
“Which is?” Linus asked slowly.
Jason grinned at them. “Oh, are you in for a treat.”
The interior of the house was much better than the exterior. Cluttered—bookshelves overflowing, random chairs placed all around—but clean, the surfaces without dust, the floors freshly swept and mopped, the faint scent of lemon in the air.
Linus and Arthur followed Jason down a short hallway. To their right, a kitchen with industrial-sized appliances, and a long oak dining table with benches for seats sitting on cracked linoleum. Two adults sat at the table, one with his head bowed over a mug of steaming liquid, the other rubbing his back and whispering quietly. The figure lifted their head, and Arthur saw long white hair pulled into a messy bun, held together by a thick green ribbon. They wore high-waisted slacks and a teal Ship’n Shore blouse over a narrow chest.
“That’s B,” Jason whispered. “Aren’t they a sight?”
As Arthur and Linus looked on, Byron lifted their hand from the man’s back and held it up, palm toward the ceiling, fingers curled. Lights began to glow from their fingertips, dripping down onto the palm, forming a ball of shimmering colors. The ball collapsed, and from it rose a butterfly with golden wings. It flew across the kitchen, fluttering in front of Jason, wings brushing against his right cheek. Then, in a furious burst of glitter, it exploded with a low pop!
“Butterfly kiss,” Jason said, winking at B. “My favorite.”
Byron smiled, then went back to the man sitting next to them, rubbing his back in soothing circles once more.
To their right, a sitting room with overstuffed chairs and the biggest sofa Arthur had ever seen, able to seat at least ten comfortably, if one didn’t mind close quarters. A few more people—two older women and a young man—sat on the couches, the women with open books in their laps, the man leaning his head back and staring at the ceiling.
“Have a bit more in common than you thought, yeah?” Jason whispered, elbowing Linus in the gut. “Funny how that works out, eh?”
He led them farther into the house, down a long hallway. Muffled sound from behind a closed door on the right, like singing. Arthur felt a strange pull toward it, was about to knock on the door when Jason gently pulled his hand back. “Siren,” he said quietly. “She’s newer. Still working a few things out.”
Jason led them to the door at the end of the hall and stopped before opening it. “David’s been bunking with us. Offered him his own room, but he wanted to be near B in case … well. He just wanted someone near. We gave him his own bed and a privacy screen. You ready?” Without waiting for an answer, he pushed open the door.
It was dark in the room. Heavy curtains had been pulled over the large windows against the wall to the right, with only a sliver of gray light peeking through. Arthur could make out a massive bed at the other end of the room, piled high with blankets and pillows. To the left, a pair of large double doors that led to a walk-in closet, the light on. Next to the closet, a wooden partition, with the name DAVID written in black ink on a white page hanging crooked from the front.
And there, lying on the scarred wooden floor in a daring pink dress covered in blood, a pile of thick white strings.
Or, at least, that was what Arthur thought when he first saw the yeti known as David.
The boy’s eyes were closed, his black lashes like soot against snow-white hair on his face. His gray tongue lolled from between ice-blue lips. He was as big as Arthur had expected. Like Chauncey, Arthur had done his research and knew that yetis could grow to ten feet tall or more, though it was more common for them to top out at around eight feet. David appeared to be—at age ten—already over five feet.
And that was to say nothing about his glorious hair. From tip to toe, David was covered in long white hair, corded together and hanging in thick strands. His hands and feet—though similar to a human’s with five digits on each appendage—were tipped with black claws, short and sharp. Atop his head, a messy blond wig, the hair spread out on the floor around him.
But it was the blood that concerned Arthur most. It was splashed against the dress, and the hair on David’s chest. Even a bit in the wig.
Linus gasped, looking as if he were about to rush to the child when Jason grabbed him by the arm, shaking his head. He brought a finger to his lips and then cleared his throat pointedly.
The boy on the floor twitched. Then, out of the corner of his mouth, he hissed, “Jason. Jason,” without opening his eyes. His voice was—for lack of a better word—frosty, brittle, like crackling ice.
“Yes, David?”
“Are they ready?”
“Ready as they’ll ever be.”
“Good.”
Jason reached behind him to the wall, flipping a switch. A light burst from the ceiling, shining down directly on David, almost like a spotlight. The blood—which Arthur could see now was likely a concoction similar to the one made for Linus’s birt—glistened wetly on his dress and chest.
Jason cleared his throat and said, “PI Dirk Dasher knew she was trouble the moment she walked through his door. Dame like her, looking like she did, brought back memories of his beloved Agatha, four years gone, taken too soon by a killer only known as the Beast. And now, three days later, finding the dame’s body like this, same as Agatha’s was, Dirk Dasher knew only two things: the taste of the bottom of a bottle, and the desire for revenge.”
“What,” Linus said.
“Flashback,” Jason said, and David shot to his feet, ignoring them all as he rushed toward the closet, slamming the doors shut behind him. A moment later, the sound of clothes being tossed around, along with David muttering, “Where is my fedora? I—aha!”
The doors burst open. Gone was the dress (though a little bit of “blood” remained on the hairs on his chin and chest), replaced by a wide-brimmed hat cocked at an angle that meant danger, and a long brown coat, cinched at the waist, the bottom dragging along the floor. In his fingers, what appeared to be a piece of chalk that he brought up to his lips and sucked on, then blew out a puff of air that formed into a crystalline cloud in front of his face.
He hurried across the room, nearly tripping over his coat. Once he reached the desk, David sat in the chair and propped his hairy feet up on the desk. He took another drag from the chalk, blowing cold steam from his mouth and nose, a black oval twice the size of one of Theodore’s buttons.
“It was a day like any other,” he said, affecting a low, guttural voice that cracked. “Headache like a pulse in my head after another night spent drowning nightmares in cheap whiskey. There I was, up to my eyeballs in debt given my gambling addiction. A pile of bills, all stamped PAST DUE, sat in a drawer, waiting for me to get my shit together.”
“David,” Jason said sternly.
David ignored him. “The bottle in the cabinet called to me. Hair of the dog, it said. And just as I was about to answer that call, she walked in.”
He jumped from the chair and ran past them again to the closet, slamming the doors.
When the doors burst open again, David wore the dress once more, the blond wig askew on his head. His blue eyes shifted from Linus to Arthur, and settled on Jason. Then he changed his posture, legs slightly bent, hip cocked. When he spoke, his voice took on a breathy quality, though it still sounded distinctly David. “Are you Dirk Dasher, private investigator extraordinaire? My name is Jacqueline St. Bartholomew. I am very wealthy. And seductive, and I’m a widow.”
Linus coughed roughly into his hands.
“I need to hire you,” Jacqueline St. Bartholomew said, “to find the monster who murdered my husband, Count Deveraux St. Bartholomew. I hear you’re hunting the same thing. The Beast.”
Back into the closet. A shout, followed by a rattling crash. When David returned, he wore the trench coat over the dress, the wig bunched up messily under the fedora. He looked a little harried, but determined. As it often did with children, this back and forth went on for some time, though Arthur didn’t once consider interrupting. Not when David seemed to be in his element.
David stopped, then, head in his hands. When nothing happened, out of the corner of his mouth, he whispered, “You forgot your line.”
