F³ Perfecting Recipes 05

           Ernst and I spent hours working on refining recipes. Fortunately, the ingredients were fairly common and he already had an ample supply of them, though he did remark that he would need to gather more after all we had used. It helped that we could continue to tweak the recipes by adding a little more of a given ingredient.

            Early in the testing, I realized my fingerprint oils weren’t going to last through all the tests, so with his candle, we made very thin wax fingerprints of my left hand. The wax wasn’t a perfect replica, but it worked for testing purposes. We also were using the very imprecise method of just tapping the powder off of small sheets of paper when we scooped it out of the mortar—Ernst was kind enough to instruct me on which was which.

            The latest recipe used chalk, graphite, and just a little soot, or lampblack as Ernst called it. I tapped the side of the paper with my filthy finger, and let the powder onto the wax print. I gently blew the excess off to reveal a decent print. It was fairly easy to see the powder contrasting with the yellow wax. It didn’t clump, it was just sticky enough to the print.

            “Goal!” I raised my arms and began singing the Rangers goal song.

            Ernst joined in after a few words, as if he had always been a Rangers fan, too. About halfway through, I heard people outside joining in, and somehow musical instruments played the tune.

            I had never started up a song in the Realms before, usually the spontaneous songs annoyed me, but I’d make an exception in this case.

F³ Experiments 04

           After he got over his initial wow and exclamations of magic, we settled in to work. I had thought up the chalk on the ride from my cabin to the town, but that was where I kind of got stumped. Chalk wouldn’t produce a good contrast. While it worked on something dark, it was useless against lighter materials. I also had no idea how to lift prints off a surface since tape hadn’t been invented, yet.

            One step at a time, Sam.

            In short order, Ernst, as I had learned his name after we began our experiments, and I had tried coal dust, soot, powdered ink, and even graphite—I made a mental note to save some of that to create my own pencil. I was sick of ink stains on my fingers.

            All of them had various degrees of success, but also drawbacks. The color contrast was right, but the powder clumped and didn’t produce a good print. This one was too light, that one too heavy, that one just was too sticky on everything.

            “This is getting ridiculous,” I said. “Maybe we can’t do it. Like I said, I don’t know exactly what the apothecaries in my homeland used.”

            “Don’t fret, Shamus. The work is not lost, yet. Seldom are my medicines of a single ingredient. Rather, they are recipes of ingredients working in harmony with one another.”

            “Recipes?” I perked up.

            “Yes, though I would not recommend them for the eating like the pastries Marion’s daughter makes.”

            “So we can try mixing some of these together to get the right consistency. That should—”

            I stopped as my brain caught up to what he said. Marion’s daughter. Marion was the baker in town, her daughter was Caitlyn.

Is that what the gossip is about? Me and Caitlyn?

F³ Dark Business 01

            The days were getting shorter, but for my money, the shortest day of the year was not the winter solstice, it was Halloween. Most people would call it an overactive imagination, but I knew that shadows were longer, light didn’t reach as far, and the things that went bump in the night did so with more gusto on this night, which was why I typically closed the office early on Halloween.

            I had just made it down the elevator when my phone rang, the distinctive bass chords of “Fever” instantly recognizable. “Hey, Nikki, not really feeling up for a costume ball, tonight. Just want to pass out candy to trick or treaters.”

            “As much as I would love to kidnap you to a costume ball, Matthew, that is not the purpose of my call.”

            “Well, good. Pick up some Kit Kats and you can join me in handing out candy. We can watch an awful horror movie, too.” I waved to the building’s front desk people on the way out, who waved back. Typically, only one person watched the building at night, but a string of vandalisms in the area leading up to Halloween put them on edge.

            Nikki sighed, audibly, almost melodramatically. “Sadly, I will need a raincheck. And I would ask that you take one as well. I have need of you, tonight.”

            “What’s shaking?” I asked, stepping through the door. I turned to find my car when I spotted a familiar Mercedes with blackout windows in back. The sky was still light out, though the sun had disappeared behind the buildings.

            The back window closest to me rolled down a couple of inches. I couldn’t see anything inside, but I already knew.

            “Dark business is afoot,” she said. “I need a detective. More importantly, I need a friend.”

            I clicked off my phone and went to the car. Inside, a light clicked on. I saw an immaculately made-up Nikki wearing an elegant ball gown in black.

“Hey, baby, you looking for a good time, tonight?”

Usually, innuendo like that made her smile. The corner of her mouth quirked up, but no smile. “I would like nothing better, but there will be little pleasure, tonight.”

Serious business on Halloween. Yeah, this is going to turn out great.

I got in the car.

Nikki pressed the intercom button to the driver, whom I couldn’t even see. “The Fairhaven Club.”

“Oh, hell,” I said.