The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

Phyllis saw me not quite slavering and made an exasperated noise. I suppose I can't blame hen I must have seemed more like part of the problem than part of the solution. She said, "What do you plan on doing, Dave? Will you whip out your little tin badge and run them all in?"

You don't want to get into a war of sarcasm with Phyllis, or at least I don't. I've been scorched often enough to keep that in mind at all times. So - please believe me - I was about to answer with something mild and soothing.

But before I could, the succubus in blue said, "I'm sure he'd rather whip out something else instead, dear." Just listening to her was enough to set my heart racing like a couple of laps around the track. But when she licked her lips again, I started sweating so hard I did the only thing I could (short of whipping out something else, I mean)-I fled.

Phyllis lost it. Again, I can't say I blame her - here she was, watching one of her own people turned into a bowl of quivering gelatin (I was definitely quivering, but at least part of me was a lot stiffer than gelatin) by one of the sexy little demons she was trying to control. She started screaming at the succubus. The succubus screamed right back, with invective from just about every language since primeval Indo-European.

She'd had a lot of satisfied customers, all right.

Since I obviously wasn't going to be of any use at the demon stration, I went upstairs to work on other tilings.

Rose had left a message on my desk: Professor Blank of UCAC had called while I was out.

Scratching my head, I took the message up to her. "Professor Blank?" I said, pointing. "Wouldn't he leave his name?"

Now Rose looked puzzled. "I think he said his first name was Harvey."

There I was, looking and feeling like an idiot twice in the space of ten minutes. Harvey Blank was chair of the Goetic Sciences Department at UCAC; he was one of the first people I'd phoned about investigating whether the Chumash Powers were still around. I slunk back to my desk and returned his call.

The telephone imps reproduced his voice even more blurrfly than is their habit; he must have been eating something when he answered. After a sentence or two, he spoke more clearly: "Hello, Inspector Fisher. Thanks for returning my call. I wanted to get back to you about some preliminary results of the extinction investigation."

"Go ahead," I said, grabbing for a pencil and a scrap of parchment. "What have you learned?"

"Not as much as I'd like," he answered: yes, he was a professor. "The experiments I have conducted, however, do indicate that the Powers formerly venerated by the Chumash Indians are not currently manifesting themselves in the Barony of Angels."

"They're extinct, you mean?" I had curiously mixed feelings. Most of me was sorry, as I'm always sorry (well, almost always - I'd make an exception for Huitzflopochtii) to see the Other Side diminished. But that nasty, lazy piece everyone has lurking inside, the one Christians identify with Original Sin, let out a cheer because I wouldn't have to work as hard on the leprechauns if the Chumash Powers were gone for good.

"I didn't quite say that," Professor Blank said.

"That's what it sounded like to me," I told him.

"It was the first conclusion I drew from the thaumaturgic regression analysis," he admitted. "A more thorough evaluation of the data, however, leads to a different interpretation: it seems more likely that the Powers in question have not so much vanished as withdrawn from any contact with This Side. The withdrawal appears volitional."

"Are you sure?" I said. "I've never heard of anything like that." The general rule is that Powers will keep a toehold on This Side if they possibly can: the more active they are, the more they show themselves in the world, the better chance they have of attracting and keeping worshipers to give them the veneration they need, Professor Blank said, "No, I'm not sure. The void in the thecological contours of the barony is certainly there. It is, however, if you will permit me to employ metaphorical language, more as if the Powers made the hole and pufled it in after themselves than as if they simply disappeared from spiritual starvation."

"They are gone, though?"

"They're gone," he agreed. "That much is indisputable. I have been unable to contact or detect them in any way, either by recreating the old Chumash rituals or through modem scientific sorcery."

"But they might come back?"

"If the situation is as I envision in the highest - probability scenario, that possibility remains open, yes. If on the other hand this is merely an unusually sudden extinction, as remains possible, they are indeed gone for good."