Darren didn't speak at first. He let the silence hang, savoring it. He stared at Ace with wide eyes, taking in the dirt-stained clothes and panicked look. Then a huge, ugly smile broke across his face. It was the kind of grin that was purely, perfectly annoying.
"I thought you were grounded," Darren said. His voice was light and sing-song, full of fake innocence.
Ace's stomach dropped. Darren. The king of all snitches. No—the prince of blackmail. The kid had a radar for secrets. Once he dug one up, he'd hold it over you forever. He'd make you do his chores, give him your last cookie, or listen to his boring stories. If you said no? He'd tell. Ace and Cedric had a name for him: Darren the Snitcher. The name was earned.
Pure panic shot through Ace, sharper than the pain in his ribs. This could not get out. Not now.
He didn't think. He moved. Ignoring the fire in his side, he launched into a limping, desperate sprint across the weedy lot. Every footfall was a jolt of agony. He dove at Darren, who was still sitting in the dirt, and slapped a hand over the kid's mouth.
"Hush!" Ace hissed, his own breath coming in ragged gasps.
"Mmmph! Mmph!" Darren's eyes bulged. He shoved at Ace's chest with surprising strength. The push landed right on Ace's bruised ribs. Ace grunted, pain blinding him for a second. He stumbled back, his hand falling away.
"What the hell, bro?" Darren gasped, scrubbing his mouth. "You smell like dirt and you're all sweaty!"
"Just shut up," Ace whispered fiercely. He spun around, scanning the back fences, the blank windows of the neighboring houses. Had anyone heard? The world was still. He turned back to Darren, putting a finger to his own lips. "Can you please keep it down? For five seconds?"
Darren cracked his neck side to side—a weird, practiced habit he did when he felt he had the upper hand. "Why should I?" he asked, his tone all fake curiosity.
Ace let out a long, slow breath. It did nothing to calm the storm in his chest. Here it came. The transaction.
He looked down at his cousin with a flat, utterly done expression. "What do you want, Darren?"
The ugly, triumphant smile was back. It was the kind of smile that could make a happy person grumpy. "Now you're speaking my language," Darren said. He brushed dirt off his knees as he stood up, trying to look older.
"Look, if it's money, I don't have any," Ace said, his voice monotone. "My mom cut off my allowance. I'm probably the brokest motherfucker on the planet right now."
Darren shook his head, looking almost offended. "Who said anything about money? I'm not a… a capitalist." He said the word carefully, like he'd just learned it.
Ace raised an eyebrow. That was debatable. "Then what? My comics? You already stole the good ones last summer."
"Take me with you."
Ace blinked. He replayed the words. They didn't make sense. "What?"
"Take. Me. With you," Darren repeated, puffing out his scrawny chest. He hooked his thumbs in his belt loops. "I'm not dumb, okay? I know you're sneaking out for hunter stuff. For the case. I can help."
"No," Ace said immediately. The word was absolute. "No. Absolutely, one hundred percent, no-way-in-hell not. Never."
"Why not?"
"You're ten, Darren."
"Hey! I'm eleven!" Darren snapped, genuinely insulted. His cheeks flushed. "My birthday was in March! You didn't even come! You didn't get me anything!"
"Eleven, ten, it doesn't change a thing! You're a kid! You shouldn't even be thinking about this stuff!"
"So were you when you started!" Darren shot back, his voice rising before he remembered to whisper. "Uncle Neal started bringing you on hunts when you were way younger than me! Garath told me!"
Ace stared, speechless for a second. The kid had a point, and it pissed him off.
Darren saw his hesitation and pounced. "Fine. Your choice. Take me with you, or I'm gonna call your mom right now." He patted his pockets dramatically. "I know her number. It's on our fridge. Under the magnet with the ugly fruit." He took a deep, theatrical breath, puffing out his cheeks, getting ready to yell.
Instinct took over. Ace's hand shot out and slammed against the metal fence post right next to Darren's head. WHAM.
The sound was shockingly loud in the quiet lot. The whole section of chain-link rattled and sang.
Darren flinched hard. All his bravado vanished in a heartbeat. He shuffled back two full steps, his eyes wide with real, sudden fear. He recovered quickly, his stubbornness fighting the scare, but his voice was smaller now. "Don't… don't underestimate me, okay? Garath lets me clean his gun. I know how to check the safety. I know stuff."
"The answer is no," Ace said, his voice low and gravelly. He was angry—at Darren, at the situation, at the pain in his side. "It's not about underestimating you. It's about you getting hurt. Or killed. You don't get that."
"What about you, huh?" Darren's tone changed. It lost its whiny, negotiating edge and became strangely, painfully direct. He pointed a grubby finger at Ace. "Garath tells you to stay out of it. Axl told you to stay home. Your mom ordered you to stay in your room. Yet here you are." He took a step forward, his small face earnest. "You know what it feels like. When everyone looks at you and decides you're too little, too stupid, too… too anything to do the thing you know you have to do. Right?"
The words hit Ace like a physical blow, right in the center of his chest where all his frustration and pride lived.
He stared at his annoying, bratty, gap-toothed cousin. He saw the stubborn set of his jaw, the desperate, eager light in his eyes that wasn't just about causing trouble or being a pest. It was about being seen. Being taken seriously. Being part of the family business, not just the annoying kid who got left behind.
In that moment, Ace saw a tiny, ridiculous, mirror-image reflection of himself.
A wave of exhaustion washed over him, mixed with a grudging, awful understanding. "Damn it," he muttered, not to Darren, but to the universe, to his own terrible luck. He looked up at the grey sky, as if asking for some kind of sign. This was the stupidest decision he would ever make. "Alright. Fine."
"Yes!" Darren whispered, exploding into a silent, jittery victory dance. He pumped his fists in the air without making a sound. "Where are we going? We gonna find a poltergeist? Should I run home and get my gear? I have a gun! It's a revolver!"
"Woah, calm down, action hero," Ace said, grabbing Darren's wrist before he could sprint off towards home. "We're going to the library."
Darren's face fell so fast it was comical. All the excitement drained out of him, replaced by utter disbelief. "The what?"
"The library. I need information. On the murders. The pattern. All of it. I can't just go charging in. I need to know what we're dealing with first."
Darren scrunched up his whole face in disgust. "Doesn't Axl have, like, a whole secret cave full of that stuff? With maps and red string and everything?"
"Yeah. In my dad's study. And he won't let me within ten feet of it," Ace said, the old bitterness rising in his throat like bile. "So I'm starting from scratch. Doing my own research."
Darren let out a sigh so deep and world-weary it would have fit a retired, grumpy old hunter. His shoulders slumped. "Boring," he declared, kicking a clump of dirt.
"Tough," Ace said, and started tugging him toward the break in the fence that led to the alley. "You blackmailed your way onto this mission. Now you get to be quiet and look like a nerd."
***
The Brelle Central Library didn't look like a place for secrets. It looked like a place where facts went to be sterilized and put in order. A giant, blocky building made of white concrete and glass, all sharp, modern angles. The afternoon sun glared off its huge windows. It was quiet, clean, and intimidating in a way a dark forest never was.
People moved in and out of the automatic doors: students with headphones, elderly people with trolleys, parents trying to herd children. Normal people living normal, Veil-protected lives.
Ace felt like a ghost among them, visible and wrong. He pulled the hood of his grey sweatshirt up, even though the day was cool, not cold. "Act normal," he muttered to Darren, who was gawking at everything.
"I am normal," Darren whispered back, his voice still too loud. "You're the one who looks like you're gonna steal the encyclopedia."
They pushed through the heavy doors and the atmosphere shifted instantly. The world outside—the sounds of traffic, the wind—was swallowed whole. Inside, the air was cool, dry, and carried a specific smell: old paper, lemon-scented cleaner, and the faint, dusty aroma of forgotten stories. The silence was a thick, living thing, pressed down by the high ceilings. It was broken only by the distant tap of a keyboard, the shuffling of a chair, the soft rustle of a page being turned. It was a silence that demanded respect, and Ace felt immediately like he was breaking a rule just by breathing too hard.
Darren spun in a slow circle, his head tilted back to stare at the high ceiling. "Whoa. It's huge. So… what are we looking for? A magic book? A spellbook?"
"Newspapers," Ace said, keeping his voice low. He scanned the open floor plan. Information Desk. Fiction A-Z. Reference. Periodicals. His eyes landed on a cluster of study tables tucked between two towering shelves of history books. He pointed. "Go sit there. That one in the corner. Don't touch anything. Don't talk to anyone. Try to look… studious."
"Studious?" Darren asked, plopping into a hard plastic chair. The legs squeaked on the linoleum.
"Yeah. Like you're doing homework. A really boring project."
"On what?"
"I don't know! Look sad and concentrate on your hands!"
Leaving Darren to attempt looking academically miserable, Ace took a steadying breath. He wiped his own dirty hands on his jeans and walked toward the large, circular information desk in the center of the floor.
The librarian was a woman in her fifties with kind eyes behind stylish glasses and a sweater draped over her shoulders. She looked up and gave him a polite, professional smile. Ace forced one in return. It felt stiff on his face.
"Hi," he said, his voice barely above the library-approved whisper. "I'm, uh, doing a project. For a… sociology class. On a country wide crime history." The lie felt clumsy in his mouth. "I was wondering if I could see any newspapers that mention, um, murders? From the last year or so?"
The librarian's smile warmed. "A project! How interesting. We don't keep physical copies of the dailies that far back on the public floor, I'm afraid. The space, you know." She peered at her computer screen, her fingers clicking softly. "But we do have a full digital archive. It's accessible on our dedicated research terminals upstairs."
"Digital is perfect," Ace said, a little too quickly. "That's actually better."
"I'll need to sign you in for a guest session. Do you have a library card with us?"
Ace's mind went blank. A library card? He hadn't had one since elementary school, and that was for the tiny branch near his old house. He certainly didn't have one for the central library. "I, uh… I must have forgotten it."
The librarian's kind smile didn't falter. "Not a problem at all. I can issue a day-pass for the terminal. You'll be up in the supervised research area." She picked up a small, beige phone receiver. "Martin? Could you come to the main desk, please? I have a guest researcher for the archive terminal."
A moment later, a young man with a lanyard and a perpetually bored expression ambled over. He looked like a college student working a dull job. "This way," he said, without inflection.
Ace waved urgently at Darren, who sprang from his chair with enough force to make it scrape again. He scurried over, trying to look serious and failing. The staff member, Martin, led them past the rows of books, toward a wide staircase with worn wooden steps.
The second floor was quieter, if that was possible. The lighting was softer, more focused on the individual study carrels that lined the walls. The air was even drier. Martin led them to a cubicle at the very back, away from the few other researchers—a man taking notes on legal pads and a woman squinting at a microfilm reader.
The cubicle contained a large, old desktop computer, a bulky CRT monitor, a keyboard yellowed with age, and a chunky, wired mouse. Martin woke the computer with a tap. The monitor flickered to life with a loud hum. He clicked through several slow-moving menus, his movements efficient and bored. Finally, he navigated to a directory and opened a folder labeled LOCAL NEWS ARCHIVE (DIGITAL) - RESTRICTED ACCESS. Inside were hundreds of PDF files, named by date and newspaper title: Brelle_Gazette_01-15, Brelle_Tribune_03-22, County_Record_05-04.
"You can browse and view here," Martin said, his voice a low monotone. "The files are read-only. If you need to print, the network printer is by my desk. You pay per page at the main desk. Don't try to download or copy the files. The system is locked. Don't mess with the settings." He gave them both a final, appraising look. His eyes lingered on Ace's hoodie and the faint smudges of dirt, then on Darren's restless energy. The look clearly said, You two are not sociology students. But it wasn't his job to care, as long as they didn't break the computer. With a slight shrug, he wandered back to his station by the printer twenty feet away.
The moment he settled into his chair and put on headphones, Darren leaned in, his shoulder bumping Ace's. "So, we just… open all of these? There's like a million."
"No," Ace said, rolling the stiff, squeaky office chair closer to the desk. The mechanism groaned in protest. "We're not reading the news. We're hunting. We look for a pattern. Specific dates. Specific parts of the city. Specific… methods." He moved the mouse, the cursor jerking across the slow screen. He double-clicked the file at the top of the list: Brelle_Gazette_01-02.
The software opened with a grinding whir from the computer's innards. The screen flickered, then slowly painted in the front page of the local newspaper from the second day of the year. The headline was about a New Year's resolution initiative by the mayor. It loaded line by line, painfully slow.
Ace leaned forward, elbows on the cool desk, his focus narrowing to the glowing screen. The pale blue light reflected in his eyes. Next to him, Darren mimicked his posture, scooting his own chair in until his nose was almost touching the monitor, his breath fogging the glass slightly.
"So," Darren whispered, the sound barely escaping his lips. The library's quiet seemed to absorb it. "What are we looking for, exactly?"
Ace didn't look away from the screen. His finger moved the mouse, clicking to the next page, and the next, scanning headlines and photos for words like "death," "investigation," "body."
"A pattern," he muttered, his voice low and intent. He clicked again. The screen refreshed with a sluggish sigh. "And the monster who thinks he's clever enough to make one."