Strange Haunts: Book Three

New York, February, 1946

     As she walked slow around the inner circle, the blue glow and tendrils of mist grew brighter, until, by the time she came back around to the north point, I was shielding my peepers with my mitt, squinting between them as the air throbbed with power that I could feel to the soles of my stompers, but that made not a whisper of sound. Something about the hoodoo filling the air in the room felt familiar, like a taste I knew but couldn’t quite put my finger on.

     I clocked that I’d been holding my breath since Maddy planted her pins back in the center of the circle, just as she dropped her mitts to her sides, charms jingling like a store’s entrance bell. The light faded, and as it did, the Fae flower she’d placed on the northeast compass point, the one that sat smack-dab between ‘finding’ and ‘knowledge’, ghosted to mist.

     Miss Chambers sucked in a lungful of air in a rush, and the lights popped back on.

     She turned her pan toward me, bright hazel peepers white-rimmed in horror, tears tracing paths down her cheeks. She was shaking like a leaf in a storm.

     “Oh, Mr. Chandler. Those poor women. It’s…it’s horrible!”

—

     There’s a new drug on the streets: Star Dust. It makes thieves out of regular joes, twists honest cops into crooks, and turns young gals from good homes into willing ladies of ill repute. A Mob war is brewing while New York’s Finest have had their hands tied by the new mayor, who’s as bent as a coat hanger. Meanwhile, a professional hitman is determined to fulfill his contract—by rubbing out a certain meddling private detective.

     The clock is ticking. Pierce Chandler and Associates are running out of time to find the source of the drug, stop the robberies of Syndicate operations from exploding into violence on the streets of the Big Apple, and uncover the identity of the shadowy figure behind it all.

     The Dragon.