Brad Hebrew sucked in the last of his cigarette before entering into the mausoleum. He whispered under his breath "Let's get this gentile shtick over with". Crimson O'Meara elbowed him in the ribs and said. "Jesus it's 10pm on a Saturday night an' all you can think about is God?"
Brad glanced to her but said nothing, she was right; he sat down on one of the smooth pews provided and waited like everyone else.
Wraith decided to come early to find a nice hiding spot. If there was one thing he knew about occult detectives, they all loved to gossip.
He watched as the Mirage sisters chatted about the weird creatures seen swimming late at night in the Thames.
To Wraith's left Dr Halloween leaned back in his pew and wrapped his long dark cloak about him and said to Madam La Petite Mort who was sat next to him. "I have sensed strange watchers across the moonlit slates of late?"
Occult detectives never used their real names. It left them wide open for curses and damnation spells.
She gave a sniff behind her long black veil and said in a voice that sounded like it was within a tomb. "I have heard them sing such sweet songs. It almost made me cry out with pleasure."
Wraith slowly shook his head. Occult detectives were a strange lot. He tried to make it a habit not to mix with them too much. Magic had a very nasty habit of sending you too sane.
It was always better to stay a little crazy.
Even Moses was there. He wasn't an occult detective but he was the landlord of the only pub that catered for occult detectives: The Fiddlers Green, a back alley private club that was open from 6pm to 6am.
Then from out of nowhere Iva Dunraven stepped through the large iron mausoleum doors. Wraith waved but she brushed him aside and sat next to Mr Jinx the best hoodoo doctor this side of Haiti. Mr Jinx smiled warmly and whispered something in her ear that made her look confused.
Then from the shadows the greatest occult detective of all time stepped out.
The Dark Duke himself. There wasn't a corner of London that he hadn't casted a spell or driven out a spirit.
Wraith couldn't believe he had been stood there all this time.
He looked with more than a passing resemblance to the fictional character Thomas Carnacki in a sharp Italian Grey suit. Some occult detectives had whispered late at night that he really was the character and somehow he had brought himself out of the books and into the real world.
But it was only a whisper.
"My friends." His voice sounded old and distant. Everyone in the crowd noticed it. "Thank you all so very much for coming here this evening, so we may celebrate the tome of the unknown occult detective."
He moved nervously; his eyes flickered over the crowd. "But first, I want to say that this ill wind that we all feel. This whispering apocalypse that rattles in our bones is nothing but hell throwing a hissy fit. We have nothing to fear, but fear itself."
Wraith had told no one about the devil and how he had stopped him just a few weeks before.
Suddenly the Dark Duke clapped his hands together. It made some of the crowd jump. Particularly Miss Black Cat, she had only been an occult detective for 6 months. "Now let me, if you will, tell you about who we are where we come from. Let me speak of the occult detective, so we may each know the weight of responsibility we carry."