At eight o'clock the next morning, Anger was woken by a knock at the door. He had been slumped over his desk, asleep for less than three hours.

  "Come in."

  The door opened. Detective Thomas Miller stood in the doorway, a file folder in his hand.

  "Morning, Hastings. Heard you've been keeping busy lately. Never home, they say."

  Anger sat up straight.

  Miller walked in and placed the folder on the desk. "Got a call about some commotion at the West End construction site around five this morning. Went to take a look. A bit of blackmarket scuffle. One dead. The Parish Medical Examiner's Office was already there. Got on scene before I was even notified."

  "Efficient of them."

  "Quite," Miller said, dragging a chair over and sitting down, crossing his legs. "Case is already filed and closed."

  "Closed?" Anger was taken aback. "Nothing... unusual?"

  Miller raised an eyebrow. "Detective Hastings, I am an officer of the law. But not every event needs to veer into the 'peculiar'. I do hope there’s some secret to unearth, but it's just a man. Dead."

  "Of course, Detective Miller. Merely curious."

  "The body's been sent to the Containment Facility. If you fancy a look at the mess, be my guest."

  Anger waved a dismissive hand. "That won't be necessary."

  Finding no advantage here, Miller collected the file and left.

  As the footsteps faded down the corridor, Anger let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.

  ******

  Anger intended to call on this Professor Croft—perhaps he could glean some useful information from him.

  Professor Croft was a marginal scholar of the Royal Society. Once revered at the Academy, he later grew fond of studying bizarre curiosities. The Church and the Academy had spoken with him several times, after which he resigned from his post and gradually faded from the Royal Society.

  Professor Croft no longer lived in the academic quarter.

  When Anger knocked on the old door, it was a long while before it creaked open a crack.

  “Detective Hastings,” Anger said bluntly. “It’s regarding Lady Elizabeth Vinter. I need to speak with you, Professor.”

  “Vinter…” he muttered, stepping aside to let Anger in. “Come in, then. But quietly—my children don’t care for strangers.”

  Anger glanced around. The socalled “children” likely referred to the eccentric collections crammed into the room: books piled from floor to ceiling, gaps stuffed with mineral specimens and even biological samples.

  the floor littered with rusty mechanical parts; tables overflowing with formulae, charts, and papers.

  Anger’s gaze was immediately drawn to a brass mantel clock—mainly because its appearance was so utterly flamboyant. Yes, flamboyant—an inanimate object possessed of such wild, untamed presence. It was less a clock and more a gargoylelike contraption.

  And it carried a hint of peculiar coloration. Nowadays, Anger was growing increasingly sensitive to color.

  “That is a slice of stilled time—or in plainer terms, I call it the Paradox Clock,” Professor Croft remarked, noticing Anger’s focus. “Salvaged from a longvanished ruin. It has never ticked, yet it isn’t broken. Come closer. Listen with your mind.”

  Anger hesitated, then approached the mantelpiece. He heard nothing.

  Why did it stop?

  “It does not belong to our world’s flow of time,” the Professor whispered. “I’ve studied it, tried to comprehend this stillness. But what I understand may be entirely at odds with what you know.”

  “Could cessation itself be a form of motion?” the Professor added, somewhat inexplicably.

  As Anger drew near, a slight dizziness washed over him. He averted his eyes but didn’t inquire further about the Professor’s notion of “cessation.” It wasn’t so much inexplicable—rather, the Professor’s mind simply operated a few strides ahead of ordinary folk.

  ******

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  Professor Croft turned around. Anger decided to stop beating around the bush."Lady Elizabeth Vinter mentioned you several times in her diary. She said you could understand what she saw and heard. She also mentioned that the medicine you prescribed was useless. She was afraid." Anger paused. "I want to know, what exactly did she see? Or rather, hear?"

  Professor Croft did not answer immediately. Anger was in no hurry either. His hand slid into his pocket, gently tracing the cover of the Lady's notebook.

  "Elizabeth Bethany……Vinter," the professor corrected himself quickly. "She possessed a most rare... gift. Or a curse, if you will. The Bethany family curse."

  A shock ran through Anger, but his face remained impassive.

  "Her 'gift' was a form of incompletely awakened perception. She could perceive... energies invisible to ordinary people. A latent potential stirred by the bloodline she was born into."

  Anger couldn't mention that his mother was also a Bethany. He feared the professor would latch onto that and not let go. Only Old Morgan knew about that.

  "So, she heard whispers."

  "Indeed. Those whispers could be residual collective thoughtforms, echoes of some ancient pact... But for her, they were a tremendous burden. Causing severe headaches, mental disarray."

  "And seeing chains?" Anger pressed, recalling the most striking descriptions in the diary.

  A flicker of excitement passed through the professor's eyes. "A more direct, internal manifestation. The Bethany blood made her perceptions tangible. Chains. So, her feeling of suffocation... it was because she literally saw the cage she lived in."

  It sounded plausible. But it was absolutely, categorically not the whole truth.

  "Curses... do such things truly exist?" Anger ventured.

  "Oh, Inspector," the professor said, as if suddenly remembering his audience, yet carried away by his own train of thought. "They exist, Inspector. They do. It's simply that you've never paid attention to the right details. Or been... meticulous enough to notice."

  Anger understood, perhaps all too well. But as an inspector, he couldn't lay all his cards on the table during a first meeting. The professor might have studied many things, but he hadn't lived them. Anger had no intention of being led by the nose.

  "Well, that's certainly something I'll have to look into," Anger said, his tone deliberately neutral. "I may have a few more questions for you later."

  ******

  "Did the Lady mention a shadow that always lingered nearby, leaving notes warning her to beware of the Crimson Moon? Do you know who that might be?" Anger posed another crucial question.

  Professor Croft’s expression turned cautious. "A shadow... warnings... Yes, I too have sensed something. It wasn’t just aimed at the Viscountess. Certain... elements have been active in the Fog City lately. They deal with curses, and sometimes accidents occur... To cover up anomalies that are too conspicuous. Some whispers call them the Night Watchers."

  "The Night Watchers?" It was the first time Anger had heard such a novel term.

  "A very loose organization. I’ve... trailed traces of their activities, but much remains shrouded in fog." The professor’s tone held a peculiar respect.

  Well, fascinating. But not terribly useful to you at the moment, I imagine.

  "As for the Crimson Moon... it is a dangerous omen. In certain esoteric calendars or astrological systems, its influence is... potent. It is a key piece in the grand secret of the curses."

  Anger continued questioning the professor about several matters concerning the Viscountess. The professor was indeed a very talkative man.

  Mysterious curses, the Viscountess's peculiar abilities, the enigmatic Night Watchers, the ominous Crimson Moon... Now Anger understood why the Church sought the professor out.

  Are you sure you're not just dabbling in the occult, Professor?

  "The Church permits you to... curse the world like this?"

  "Thank you for your insights. They are most helpful." Anger initially made to rise but suddenly recalled another matter. "Oh, one more thing, if I may. Have you heard of something called 'Bone Coin'? Or by another name... 'Mute Coin'?"

  "'Pence of Dust.' Yes, it's called Pence of Dust."

  "What's the lore?"

  "Look, but do not touch, Inspector," the professor warned.

  "What is it?" Anger was puzzled.

  "A kind of contract, Inspector. It circulates within some... very particular debt relationships."

  "More curses?"

  "More than that," Professor Croft shook his head. "These debts demand repayment in things unseen. It could be luck, health, fragments of memory... even life itself. I’ve seen cases: someone inexplicably loses their sense of smell, another ages ten years overnight, and some... well. Once you possess this thing, you incur a debt that must be settled. But there are those who collect such tokens. I am still researching specific instances."

  "An unfathomable rule... Professor, this sounds like—"

  "—like witchcraft?" Professor Croft finished for him.

  "Alright. As an Inspector, I suppose this is precisely the sort of thing I must lend an ear to. Thank you again for your enlightenment." As Anger stood to leave, he glanced back once more at the carving on that clock.

  "Incidentally, the almanac marks today as a Crimson Moon night. I wonder if we shall have the chance to witness it." The professor offered this final remark as Anger was departing.

  ******

  Anger hailed a passing hansom cab and gave the driver the address of the police station. He needed to return, organize his thoughts, and perhaps review the relevant case files once more.

  The cab jolted along the cobblestone streets, passing through a rather desolate part of the city. Glancing up, Anger's eyes were drawn to a distant, abandoned clock tower. The structure appeared dilapidated, its bricks a somber black, standing starkly apart from the surrounding buildings.

  "Cabbie," Anger found himself asking, "that clock tower over there looks ancient. Any stories about it?"

  The driver, an old local, tilted his head from the box seat and shot a glance. "Oh, you mean the Mute Tower, sir? That place hasn't been right for years. Downright queer lately."

  "Queer?" Anger straightened up in his seat.

  "I'll say," the cabbie warmed to his topic. "Just last month, good heavens, everyone saw it—the moon turned red as blood. Folks living nearby all heard this... commotion coming from the top of that tower."

  "What sort of commotion?"

  "Hard to describe. Not human, that's for sure." A flicker of fear crossed the driver's face. "Like something roaring, sharp and piercing enough to make your hair stand on end. Heard it shattered windows in several houses nearby. The Parish lads were there first thing the next morning, put up barricades. Said there were dangerous structural issues, forbade anyone from getting close. All draped in black cloth, very mysterious."

  The red moon Professor Croft just mentioned... Could it really be connected?

  "Hold here," Anger said abruptly.

  "But sir, we're not at the station yet—"

  "Right here. Keep the fare." Anger handed over the coins, his gaze fixed on the distant silhouette of the Mute Tower.