Free Midnight's Angels - 03 by Tony Richards

noticed that the old man’s head had popped out again across the way. The fellow was not as good at following instructions as he’d first appeared. He had on a pair of thick-lensed glasses this time, and was peering curiously at something.
    “What’s happened to the windows?”
    “Sir?”
    “Have George and Vi fitted blackouts? Why the hell would they do that?”
    Harrison turned back around, and stared at the front windowpanes. The sun had risen by a few more inches, its reflection glinting on the glass. But he still couldn’t see inside. He knew the downstairs curtains were not drawn. You ought to have been able to make out some furniture, the flat surfaces of the inner walls if nothing else.
    Instead of which, it was like gazing into a perfectly rectangular tar pit. That troubled him badly.
    And then he noticed something even more unsettling. Around the edges of the house, in the porch and below the eaves, the shadows that the sunlight had melted away …
    They were returning.
    They spread as he watched, darkness beginning to reclaim the whole exterior of the place. That couldn’t be. He didn’t see how it was possible.
    “What the --“ he heard Lee Drake blurt.
    It was like the Hermann residence had become detached from the regular world, no longer subject to its influence. The place was not merely dark, he reckoned. No, it was in the total grip of darkness.
    Harrison stared at it coldly for a while, and then a new thought struck him. Was this the case with the other affected dwellings too?
    He went across to his car and got quickly on the radio.

CHAPTER 11
    Levin offered him a glass of brandy too. He’d left the decanter downstairs, but an adept could put that right easily enough.
    “At this time of day?” Willets declined with a small shake of his head. He still looked breathless, but his strength seemed to be coming back. “Is there any coffee left in that pot? Aw, the hell with it!”
    He snapped the fingers of his left hand, and a steaming mug of java appeared in his right. It had the crest of Boston U. on it, which was where he’d been a lecturer before he had come here.
    A shaft of golden light was streaming in through the dormer window, making the brass fittings in the room gleam and lighting up the big, glass-fronted armoires that hugged the wall on one side. I felt glad of the warmth that accompanied it, the way that everything looked sharper, clearer. I spend too many of my working hours hunting vague shapes through the murk.
    But it was not a sentiment shared by our host. Levin squinted and ducked his chin a little when the sunlight brushed against him. Almost as if he had something to hide, some kind of ugly blemish. That wasn’t the case, but I could see already the problem. Those who venture constantly into witchcraft’s realms -- they prefer sticking to the gloom. “Let not too much light in upon magic,” Willets had once told me. It’s a notion that the major players on the Hill take very seriously.
    So the judge went across to the heavy maroon velvet drapes, and pulled them most of the way shut. Only a gap about a finger’s width remained. In the sudden dimness, Willets’s pupils shone like molten metal. Levin reached out with his power and switched his desk lamp on.
    Damn, I hated being in the adepts’ world, where something as simple and natural as the broad clear light of day becomes a problem. I had learned to live with it, but only partially. Heaven help me if I ever learned to live with it the entire way.
    “So, doctor?” Ritchie put in gently. He had never met the man before, but had to know his reputation, and was still being a lot more deferential than was usually the case. “Maybe you can tell us what exactly’s going on here?”
    The man peered at him, studying him up and down. Trying to get his measure. And he appeared to see what a straight shooter Vallencourt was, a solid and committed cop.
    Willets smiled again, a little more warmly than before.
    “Maybe I can,