Chapter 19

June 29, 2000, 19:00

Coralis was sent to investigate a ghoul issue with Eva, a werewolf working for the CMMA. Like Coralis, Eva was also an apprentice. They had been working a few cases together. They had resolved their cases quickly, even if neither of their mentors were with them, so they weren’t surprised to be working together again without actual agents with them. She met with Eva at a coffeehouse near the Côte-des-Neiges cemetery early evening.

“Ready to tackle this ghoulish mess?” asked Eva.

“As ready as I’m willing to be. I have a game Saturday in Thailand, hunting down ghouls isn’t on my list of things that I should be doing on a Thursday night, especially when I have no idea when I’ll be back.”

“I bet, so you’ll be travelling all day tomorrow?”

“I fly fast, but it will still take me 7-8 hours to get there. I could use a fixed portal from Vancouver, but I still got to take into account the time difference.”

“For how long do you think you are going to be away?”

“A week at minimum. We’ll be playing Thailand on Saturday, then China on Tuesday and Japan on Friday. If we make it to the playoffs, and I think we will, then it will depend on if we play home field first.”

“All right, so we need to get this wrapped up tonight!”

“Let’s do this!” said Coralis as they were heading out of the coffeehouse and walking toward the cemetery. “I doubt we’ll find anything juicy at this time: it’s still daylight, but maybe we can find something about who’s summoning them.”

They walked into the cemetery and went to the graves that had been reportedly desecrated and raided. A cemetery caretaker walked up to them.

“Hi! Are you Agent Blue and Agent Eva?” he asked.

“Hello sir,” said Eva. “Yes, I am Agent Eva and my partner is Agent Blue.”

They were not technically agents, but the humans they had to question didn’t need to know that. The generals sending them referred them as agents to facilitate their job: humans would be more likely to want to talk to two agents instead of two interns on their own.

“Perfect, I am Roger Gordon, I’m a caretaker here,” he said and pulled three small blue marbles out of his jacket. “I didn’t mention it on the phone when I spoke to your boss because I didn’t know what to make of it or if it was relevant, but I found these next to three tombstones.”

Coralis looked at the marbles in his hand. She hovered her left hand above them quickly to see if she could sense something coming from there, and pulled it back to grab a black glove out of her jacket.

“Were they by the graves that got raided?” said Coralis. “I will take these just in case. We just started our investigation. It’s too soon to tell if they’re related to our case, but can’t rule that out just yet. Thank you for bringing them to our attention.”

She knew exactly what these marbles were for, but couldn’t tell what they were to the caretaker. These were not marbles: they were spelled cages containing thick and highly concentrated smoke. If someone breaks any one of them, upon contact with the ambient air, its content will materialize into a ghoul.

“Two of them yes: I found one to the left of this tombstone here,” the caretaker said, pointing to the tombstone by the grave they were standing next to, “one was to the left of this one,” he continued, pointing to the grave across from them. “There was also one there,” he said walking to the left side of the tombstone by the grave to their right.

Eva looked at Coralis staring at the marbles, then back to the caretaker.

“Thank you, sir,” said Eva. “My partner and I will examine the crime scene and we will let you know when we’re done. Is there anything else you think we should know?”

“Hmm actually, yes,” he started, with his right hand on his chin, rubbing his beard, “I think there is something worth mentioning. The people that were buried in the five graves that had been desecrated were related to each other. The person buried in the grave where I found the 3rd marble was also related to them.”

“Thank you very much M. Gordon, that is very helpful information,” said Eva.

Roger Gordon left and Eva waited for him to be out of earshot.

“You know what these are, don’t you,” said Eva.

“Yes,” said Coralis, looking up to her partner, “and we’re lucky that no one walked on them before the caretaker picked them up, or we would have had a ghoul walking in daylight among humans.”

“All right, let’s see if we can find more of these around here and look up the family buried in that mess.”

They didn’t find more marble looking spelled cages, but found out that the family owned a textile import business. They managed to trace the address of a warehouse operated by three of their descendants.

“Hmm it’s near Acadie boulevard. There is a movie theatre nearby and a lot of businesses,” said Eva. “I think we’re better off taking the public transit to get there. Too many people and cameras pointing in all directions. Let’s check out that warehouse while it’s still daylight, and come back here later on when it gets dark.”