Dane's a Decrypter down on his luck -- after accidentally dispatching the wrong creature, he's sent to a small town where the cryptids he hunts are sparse. Crypt Coffee becomes his business front, but instead of a thrilling new mission on the side, he's stuck sending ghosts back to where they came from. Dane can annoy customers, at least, and tries to scare off Professor Sean Sanderson when he starts poking around too much.<br><br>But Sean isn’t about to stay away. Not when he hears about the murder of a former student, and definitely not if young, exciting Dane has information about it. But the more he allows himself to get dragged into this supernatural world of monsters and ghosts, the more the danger escalates. And if Sean and Dane aren’t careful, tracking down a murderer who can use magic might just get them killed.

Bad Seed

“Lock it, will you?” asked Sean from the couch. He sank back down to the cushions, papers spread out, laptop open, and bottle of wine down to its last quarter cluttering the coffee table. Dane did as told and dropped his bag before sitting in the nearby chair. He wanted to say about a hundred things, but he shoved them all back down.


“You avoiding me, professor?” he asked instead.


“What makes you say that,” said Sean, not a question but an offhand-type comment as he circled a thirdof a sentence and scrawled something in the margin of the paper.


“I have a lot of paperwork, as you can see.”


“Yeah, your Friday night is thrilling.” Dane paused. “Is that your first bottle?”


Dane snorted, leaned over, and grabbed the bottle.


“You weren’t using a glass,” he said, and drank. That seemed to get Sean’s attention; when Dane lowered the bottle Sean was staring at him. He set down his pen, pulled off his reading glasses.


Chapter 69