The Mysterious World of Eddy Shade

Chapter 10: A Good Neighbor?

     "She gave you a what?" came Xander's voice through Eddy's cell phone as he made his way up the stairs to his apartment. 

     "A sprite. It is only an inch tall too" he said as he glanced over at the minuscule women fluttering along side him. 

     "I can hear you" Sara objected. 

     Eddy pretended to not hear her "she is kind of cute though, with her little red ladybug wings." He then gave Sara a small smile "her name is Sarafin. Have you ever met her?" Eddy shifted the veil back into place to see the large lady bug next to him. 

     "No" Xander answered. 

     "Excuse me" came a voice from the end of the hall. Coming up the back stairs at the far end of the hall was a small group of men and women. They were dressed in leather jackets and blue jeans, some in leather pants. All were wearing gloves and a bandanna or a hat. One of the women even had goggles on their head. "Are you Detective Edward Shade?" asked the one in front. 

      "Yeah that's him. It's gotta be" said the woman in the goggles. The one in front was talking again now "We hear you're looking for a friend of ours. We don't like that, so we thought we might, persuade you to stop." 

     Oh this is so not good Eddy thought "and how are you going to do that?" he said as he slowly began to back toward the other end of the hall. 

     The woman with the goggles pulled out a pocket watch "we figured if you were dead, you would stop." She let the watch drop down from her hand and let it dangle by its chain. She smiled a devilish grin and the chain of the watch grew longer and the watch its self suddenly tripled in size becoming perfectly round in the process. "That work for you?" at that the metal ball erupted in blue flames. 

      "To be honest, not really." 

     He suddenly became aware of a ladybug that was hovering in front of his face, Sarafin, he had completely forgotten about her. He removed the veil from his vision and jumped a little as the quarter inch lady bug became a one inch tall person who was screaming at him "Eddy we need to get out of here!" 

     "You think?" Eddy said sarcastically. He looked back at the people at the end of the hall and blinked. Where the people had been standing were now just their clothes floating in the air like they were hanging on invisible manikins. "What in the world" he whispered. 

     "Eddy what's going on! Eddy are you there?" came Xander's voice as he yelled into the phone. Eddy lifted the phone back up to his ear "Um, well that depends. There is a group of people in the hall, and they don't seem to have any bodies. There a bunch of, well, clothes." 

     "Eddy we need to go, NOW!" Sara screamed at him in a voice so high it hurt his ears. 

     "She is right. Those are wraiths. You need to get out of there right now" said Xander so loudly Eddy had to pull the phone away from his ear. Eddy turned to go back down the stairs, but found two more people coming up from behind him. He looked back towards the other end of the hall when he heard a door open. Mrs. Vallen and her pet chupacabra had stepped into the hall. 

     Mrs. Vallen looked at both ends of the hall as her pet snarled and showed its multitude of pointed teeth. "What is going on out here? Are these people bothering you Eddy?" the old troll women asked. 

     "Go back inside Mrs. Vallen. It will be okay, just go back in." He wished he could believe his own words, but he didn't. He knew he was going to die. He knew what a wraith was, and had no delusions of how this might turn out. He looked at the flail wrapped in flickering blue flame that was dangling from the hand of the wraith with the goggles and pictured them using it to bust down the old women's door and killing her just for having seen them. Thena was right, when he stepped in it, he really stepped in it. "Sara, get out of here. Go tell Thena what happened."