After a moment, I turned and looked out over the arriving crowd.

“Let me know if you see anything,” I said.

The two of us looked around the tent, which was filling up. I recognized a few of the faces in the crowd from television or film, but I was more interested in the camera crews that were busy setting up their equipment. I pointed them out to Jane.

“So it looks like tonight’s going to be televised,” she said. “Good thing I spent some time on my makeup.”

“You look beautiful,” I said without hesitation, “no question about that, but with those cameras here, it pretty much means that if anything paranormal goes down, we’re screwed. That’s not just local news. It’s national television. And Cyrus Mandalay wants to go large scale with evil.”

Jane’s eyes danced as the lights went down and the music rose. The fashion show started, and all we could do was keep vigilant while ignoring the pageantry before us. My head pounded from all the lights and from peering into the darkened crowd for signs of anything paranormal. My phone, my third one in as many days, vibrated to life in my pocket. I discreetly pulled it out and checked the display.

The Inspectre.

I tapped Jane on the shoulder before flipping it open. I held the phone up between the two of us and we leaned our heads in.

“Anything out there yet, sir?” I whispered into it.

“Negative,” he said. “There’s been nothing reported on our end. How are things in there, boy? Anything out of the ordinary?”

“Other than anorexics walking up and down the runway in flamboyant outfits? No, sir.”

“Damn and blast,” the Inspectre swore. “If Cyrus was going to do something, I would have expected him to make his move by now. There’s simply no activity out here, so keep your eyes sharp . . . and keep an eye on the girl, too, my boy.”

The fatherly concern in his voice nearly broke my heart.

“Will do, Inspectre.”

As I flipped my phone shut, a couple approached and I assumed it was for the two unoccupied seats next to us. I rose to let them in.

“I’m sorry . . .” I started, but stopped when I saw who it was. “Godfrey?”

It was Godfrey and he nodded curtly, shushing me.

Gone were his pristine suit and tie. He was dressed in a tuxedo far more fashionable than mine, and he looked nervous. When I saw the woman on his arm, I could see why. She was dark-haired and gorgeous. I definitely knew her from somewhere, but I couldn’t place her.

“Hello, Simon,” he said. “Hello, Jane.”

The two of us were speechless and all we could do was nod hello.

Godfrey seated the woman with him and then sat down next to me, the nervous look still on his face.

“Godfrey,” I said. “Are you okay?”

He looked a little breathless, but gave me a thumbs-up. “Just . . . nerves . . .” he said between breaths.

“What are you doing here?” I whispered. “You shouldn’t be here.”

I had already gotten myself into a little bit of heat with Connor over the poor guy, and now he was here in potential harm’s way.

Godfrey pulled off his glasses and cleaned them. This seemed to calm him a little. He slid them back on his nose. “It’s funny. The other day in the café, there was a Village Voice open on one of the coffee tables when I sat down. This one personal ad caught my eye and I responded to it, and well, turns out that Mandi here was looking for an escort to this event at Fashion Week. She was in last year’s show but her modeling shoot in Thailand conflicted with the week leading up to it so she couldn’t participate this year.”

“So you answered a personal ad in the Voice and you ended up with a supermodel on your arm?” I said. No wonder she looked familiar. I had probably seen her on a cover somewhere.

Godfrey nodded, smiling. “What are the odds on that?”

Pretty good, actually, I thought, considering what I knew about his power. He truly was the luckiest man in the world.

“Excuse us,” I said to his date, and grabbed Godfrey and Jane, dragging them off behind our seating area.

“Godfrey, you’ve got to get you and your date out of here now,” I said. “The Inspectre will kill me if he finds you in here. They don’t want you anywhere near this type of field work. Something weird’s going down.”

“What? Tell me.”

“We don’t know,” Jane chimed in.

“Maybe I can help,” he offered. He looked like a big sad-eyed puppy who just wanted to do good.

Realizing that arguing with Godfrey wasn’t going to work, I caved. Maybe if I threw him a bone it would get him out of here faster. “Fine. Um, can you think of anything supernatural about Bryant Park?”

Godfrey’s eyes rolled back into his head as he searched through his vast array of mental records. Twenty seconds later, the pupils rolled back into place. Godfrey shook his head.

“Nothing supernatural,” he said. “Sorry.”

“Dammit,” I said.

“I do remember something creepy, though,” Godfrey said.

“I’m sorry?” Jane said.

“There’s this one fact about Bryant Park . . . like I just said, it’s actually a bit more creepy than anything. Nothing supernatural has been documented about Bryant Park.”

“But . . . ?” I said, urging him on. Somewhere off behind me the tone of the room shifted and a low murmur began to spread through the crowd. “But what?”

“Well, before the Crystal Palace fire that happened here around 1858, the park had actually been used as a potter’s field from 1823 to 1840.”

“Potter’s field . . . ?” Jane said. “Is that some sort of quidditch thing?”

Godfrey shook his head.

“No,” he said. “You know. A potter’s field . . . a graveyard for the indigent, the poor.”

I was already redialing the Inspectre. From across the tent, several screams erupted from the crowd.

“You mean to tell me,” I said to Godfrey, “that we’ve been looking all over the place for a psychotic necromancer and we’re sitting on top of a graveyard full of bodies?”

“Well, when you put it like that . . .” Godfrey started. “Still, we’re talking seventeen years of that mass grave filling up. So that puts the number in the thousands, but you have to figure there’s only about a ten percent viability of corpses in any shape to be reanimated.”

Godfrey whistled.

“Still,” he continued, “that’s going to be an impressive number of raised undead.”

When the Inspectre answered his phone, I held up my hand for Godfrey to stop.

“Cyrus isn’t going to be attacking from the outside,” I shouted into the phone. “His army is already in here, inside. The tent is set up over a graveyard!”

“Damn and blast,” the Inspectre shouted, and I could already hear him moving away from the phone. “Everyone move in.”

My line went dead as Inspectre Quimbley disconnected, still shouting out orders.

I slipped my phone back into my pocket as the inside of the tent erupted into chaos, and I turned to inspect all the sudden shouting and screaming. People were jumping up from their seats everywhere, pushing and shoving one another as they tried to run from an unseen enemy for the exits at the far end of the runway. Fear filled the air.

“Simon,” Jane screamed. “Look out!”

What felt like a leather glove wrapped itself around my leg, and I looked down. A corpse was pulling its body up from under the ground with one free hand and digging into my leg with the other. The skin was dry and taut like scratchy leather but hung in strips from the body through its tattered remains of clothing.

I reached inside my tuxedo coat and pulled out the retractable bat, extending it. “Good thing I brought my dress bat,” I said, and swung it down at the poor reanimated soul clawing at me. The head came free with a dry snap and the body slumped over, releasing me. I shook my leg to get the hand free and resisted the willies in front of my girlfriend.