Free Ghost Dancer (A Modern Magics Story) by Maer Wilson Page A

and there was no trace of the dimples he ruthlessly used to charm the world.
    Thulu and I had been working with the supernatural since we were kids. After college we opened an office where we could see our clients away from the prying eyes of the living and non-supernatural humans. It was an odd, but lucrative business. The dead paid us with knowledge of treasure, lost money or information. We had even inherited our house from a former client.
    Our services were pretty basic - deliver messages to loved ones, find lost items and get them to the living, or find someone’s killer in rarer instances. I did the translating and Thulu did the finding. It was a great partnership.
    Danika and I waited for Thulu to do his finding thing. The refrigerator in the kitchen section of our office hummed quietly as the seconds ticked by.
    When Thulu opened his eyes, he quickly nodded at me. He gave an address in a less than savory part of town - that wasn’t too far from the unsavory part of town where we deliberately kept our own office. “Does that sound like the place, Danika?” he asked.
    She nodded uncertainly. “I think so. It’s not too far from where I live.”
    “Danika, can you describe your dog to us? Is he wearing a collar with name tags?” asked Thulu.
    “Well, he’s white and tan and he’s not big, but he has a really loud bark, so he sounds bigger than he is. I don’t really know what kind of dog he looks like. Just a dog. My uncle said he had some terrier in him. Rudy has a green collar and a heart name tag. He had his shots tag on, too.”
    She looked from Thulu back to me. “Can we please hurry? I don’t know how long he has with that guy.”
    I nodded, my attention shifting to Thulu. “How do we approach this?”
    Thulu looked down at the desk where he had started doodling on a notepad.
    “I think we do a door to door saying we lost our own dog in the area.” He turned to his computer and brought up a lot of pictures of dogs. “Danika can you look at these pictures and tell me if any look like Rudy?”
    She floated over to join Thulu, and I rolled my own chair over to his as he scrolled through the pictures.
    “There! That looks something like Rudy, only Rudy’s fur is shorter.” She pointed to a picture of a Jack Russell mix and Thulu clicked to bring up a larger picture. She tilted her head to one side as she gazed at the picture. “And Rudy’s legs are shorter.”
    Thulu’s fingers flew over the keys and within minutes the printer slid out a “Lost Dog” flyer, complete with description, picture and a fictitious phone number. He’d called the dog Rudy. I wondered if that would sound suspicious, but I figured only the killer would think that. Thulu quickly printed up some more flyers. For our ruse to work we’d have to go to more than just the killer’s house.
    I mentioned my concern to Thulu.
    “We could call the cops,” he said, one eyebrow raised and a hint of dimples telling me he wasn’t serious. He knew damned well I would not willingly interact with authorities of any kind. Explaining how we knew things would sound nuts, and I had a long-time wariness that the authorities would snatch us up and lock us away in a super-secret lab somewhere.
    “Let’s give this a try.” I said, scowling. “If we find the pup, we can make an anonymous tip.” It wouldn’t be the first time we’d done that over the years.
    We turned off the computers, locked up the office and headed out. Thulu and I shrugged into our winter jackets and set the alarm as Danika followed us. The air outside had a bite to it and it wasn’t the best kind of weather to do house-to-house visits, but hopefully that would make it seem more real. The morning fog hadn’t yet burned off, even though it was almost noon. We slid into our SUV, and I motioned for Danika to join us.
    Thulu drove to a nearby residential district with small, narrow houses and tiny backyards. He found parking around the corner, and we made a show of