Note: The Bella and Edward in this story aren't the Bella and Edward in Twilight, which is a series of books with which the flaxen-haired Bella of 100 Ghost Stories is obsessed. (And as you will see, the coincidence regarding the names throws Bella for a bit of a loop when she meets a real world Edward in the first chapter below.)

If Book of Monsters wasn't to your liking, this version (EPOV) may be more to your tastes. If you read Book of Monsters, this extended EPOV may be too repetitive for your liking; you may prefer the abbreviated Book of Monsters EPOV.

Disclaimer: Characters belong to Stephanie Meyer. Plot belongs to me.

One-Hundred Ghost Stories (hyaku monogatari) – game popular in seventeenth century Japan; players would gather after dark and light one-hundred candles set in lamps covered in blue paper, then proceed to tell ghost stories; after each story, one of the candles would be put out, until the players were surrounded by utter darkness; the player who lost his nerve and fled was the loser

"In the stillness

After the storm—flies." Santōka Taneda 232 translated by John Stevens

Chapter 1

The body was left in an alley behind a Metro station. It was the kind of place you'd want to murder a person. It struck just the right balance between privacy and venality. Plus, the streetlight was broken.

So it was pretty damn annoying that some woman had just stumbled over the body.

People shouldn't be walking down dark alleys in the middle of the night, let alone stray females all on their own. It just wasn't smart.

"She the one?" I asked, eyeing the woman huddling a few yards away under a streetlight. She had a nervous look on her face, her arms were tucked around her frame defensively, all angles and elbows. She looked like she wanted to take a jab at someone. The defensiveness clashed with the farm-girl face. All youth and innocence.

"That's her," Ryan confirmed, handing me the victim's wallet.

"What's she doing back here?" Maybe Ryan had already gotten her story.

"Looking for trouble."

I snorted. The blonde with the farm-girl looks didn't exactly look like she was made for trouble, but it took all kinds.

Ignoring her for the moment, I went through the victim's wallet.

Driver's license—Mitsuhiro Murota—a couple of credit cards, and fifty-two dollars in cash.

"There's already a patrol car at the guy's place," Ryan explained.

"They go inside?"

"Looked quiet. So they're waiting for you."

I nodded, not looking forward to the long night ahead.

Since the Medical Examiner was still going over the body, I made my way over to our witness, the milkmaid with a penchant for dark alleys. I should've waited for Nichols, my partner, but I wasn't sure when he was going to show. It wasn't like me to go against procedure. I always followed the rules. Always.

But I was tired and I wanted to get the interview over with.

And maybe I was a little more irritated than usual, because I was tired, and I wasn't in a mood to deal with the kind of idiot who'd wander dark a dark alley.

"You seem nervous," I said, not bothering to beat around the bush about it.

She didn't reply, just looked me up and down, a suspicious glint in her eye.

Farm-girl maybe, but not innocent. Not by a long shot. Because she was hiding something. That was obvious.

Or else she was one of those people. The kind of person who hates cops on principle.

"Are you nervous?" I asked.

"I just found a dead body," she replied, in a tone that told me everything I needed to know.

One of those people after all.

"You seem nervous of me," I clarified.

"Oh." She dropped her arms and faced me, meeting me eye-for-eye, as if to prove me wrong. Which improved my opinion of her, if only marginally.

"What were you doing in the alley?" I wanted to know.

"It's a shortcut. From the subway." She pointed at the sign. Like maybe she thought I was the idiot in this scenario.

"Kind of dangerous, a woman going down an alley at night, don't you think?"

She shrugged, like her own safety didn't matter.

"Did you see anyone?" I asked.

She thought about it for a minute. "There was—I don't know—maybe?"

I waited.

"A reflection," she continued, her eyes shifting to the side like she was thinking about it, but her tone had taken on an uncertain quality that I didn't like. "A face in one of the windows while I was walking through the garage." She shook her head. "It was probably just pareidolia," she concluded, her tone becoming more certain.

"Para-what?

Her eyes flickered towards mine again. "You know, pareidolia. Seeing patterns when there really isn't anything there." She sounded surprised at my ignorance. "People talk about it on those ghost hunting shows," she said, like that solved everything.

And I got an awful feeling. I squinted at her. "You into ghosts?" I asked.

I was really hoping that this wasn't going to turn out to be one of those overly helpful witnesses who keep getting psychic impressions from the beyond. Witnesses like that were like candy to defense attorneys.

"Mostly demons."

I blinked. "I'm sorry. What?"

"For school. I read books about demons sometimes."

"Are you drunk?" I had to ask.

She didn't seem drunk. She wasn't slurring her speech at all.

She sounded quite lucid, in fact, but that just made the situation all the stranger, because the words coming out of her mouth didn't make much sense.

"I have drunk but I am not drunk."

I studied her for a moment. "How much did you drink?" I asked.

"Less than a glass."

"You seem like you've had more than a glass," I told her. I was trying to decide whether to run a test. But I didn't want to give the defense a reason to throw out her testimony in case she could actually ID someone.

"I don't drink. I don't usually drink."

"You were on a date?" I asked, because maybe that would explain what she was doing in the alley, whether it really was for a shortcut (less ominous, with a guy to tag-along) or a make-out spot. And this guy, whoever he was, didn't want to talk to cops, so he beat it when she insisted on reporting the body.

But she didn't look as if she was dressed for a date.

Not that she didn't look alright, but she didn't look like she was trying to impress anyone. Business casual.

"Happy hour," she explained.

"You work?" I didn't think she was independently wealthy, but I couldn't help wondering where a woman like her would work. Probably read tea leaves for a living.

"George Washington University."

I blinked. GW wasn't exactly Hogwarts.

"I just push papers for medical studies," she clarified.

It sounded surprisingly down-to-earth.

I made her give me the names of the co-workers who were supposedly at this happy hour with her.

"Pretty grisly stuff," I said, glancing at the book in her hands. Violence in Late Antiquity.

"For school," she said, curling her hands around the book in question, as if to hide it from me. "I get reduced tuition, because of my job. I'm studying history."

Which explained everything I needed to know.

She was an intellectual.

Lawyers hated seating people like her on juries. Always thinking they knew more than the people running the show.

"You'll have to come into the station so that we can get a sketch of that person you saw," I explained.

"Aren't there cameras?" she asked.

Oh, the naïvete. No doubt she'd assumed that there was a camera on her the whole time, with a superhero on the other end watching, ready to step in if something went wrong.

"No," I said, a trifle harsher than was probably necessary. "There aren't any cameras in that part of the garage."

And I handed her my card, ready to pick up the conversation when she came into the station the next day.

But something must have spooked her. All of a sudden, she was coughing and looking down at my card like it was a free ticket to hell.

It was just my phone number, the name of the precinct, and, of course, my own name, Edward McMullin.

"You okay?" I asked.

She nodded awkwardly, but I wasn't buying it.

She didn't have a record—Ryan had checked—and she didn't exactly look like the type who'd attract a criminal element, but she did fit into a certain type, with those country looks. So innocent. No good for running jobs—people like her talked too much—but fun to play with.

Clearly from a good middle- to upper-class family—pareidolia, my ass—a sitting room Socialist, who likes to throw around slogans about the "police state" to show that she's woke, with a weed-dealer on speed-dial.

Thanks to my time in vice, I had plenty of experience with creatures like her, hipsters collected and kept around like pets for the mere pleasure of corruption. Creatures like her were too naïve and inept and nervous for dealers to trust them with anything of real merit. But they were useful for irritating anyone with a badge.

She had probably overheard my name from one of her friends.

I was trying to figure out a way to convince a judge to order a drug test—

Not that she exhibited any signs of habitual drug use. She looked tired, but that made sense if she was going to school and working.

Just a casual user then.

But then it occurred to me that maybe I was reading too much into it.

She was probably one of Lisa's friends.

And I didn't need that crap.

I could just see this idiot—this Isabella Spencer—running back to Lisa to spill all of the details.

No, I wasn't freshly shaved. And my shirt was wrinkled. I needed a shower.

But I'd been up for a solid twenty-four hours trying to close another case.

I looked like hell. So what?

And it had been two months. Two months since Lisa had declared herself too good to date a cop.

Lisa could mind her own damn business.

"Miss Spencer," I paused. "Ms.?"

"I don't care," she said, like she was beyond titles. Sitting room Socialist, indeed.

"Miss Spencer, do you want an officer to escort you home?"

Her eyes widened. "Oh no, I wouldn't want to inconvenience anyone."

So damn proper. So clearly desperate to get away from that alley—away from the cops in that alley—that she didn't care about her own safety.

It wasn't in the least bit suspicious.

I sent her off, and told Ryan to follow her, to make sure she got home safe and sound.

By the time I got back to the Medical Examiner, he had finished his examination of the body.

"That's some tattoo," he observed, indicating a swirl of ink on the victim's back. Caine had pulled up the victim's shirt to do his examination.

"What is it?" I asked, trying to make out the design.

"A samurai?" Caine speculated.

"Guess so." I shrugged. "So, he was stabbed?"

Caine nodded. "At least four times. Perp was probably standing behind him."

"Male or female?"

"Male, but it's just a guess. I think the perp wrapped an arm around the victim's neck, to hold him in place while he stabbed him. The victim's at least six foot. Hard target for a woman."

Spencer was tall, but not that tall. And she didn't look strong enough to pull off a stunt like that.

Caine was finishing up his notes just as my partner arrived.

"What've we got here?" Nichols asked, joining us.

"Took you long enough," I complained, not really annoyed.

"Had to take Dory back to her mom's," Nichols' explained.

Not for the first time, I was happy that I didn't have any kids.

But that just made me wonder if Lisa was right to break up with me, and I wasn't in the mood to think about Lisa.

I updated Nichols on everything he'd missed, adding that it didn't look like a robbery, which was interesting, considering the victim's address.

"Potomac?" Nichols said. "What the hell was he doing all the way out here then?"

"He's definitely on the wrong side of town."

"What about the witness?"

"Isabella Spencer. I already talked to her."

Nichols eyed me. "You didn't wait for me?"

"Knew you were busy."

"It's not like you to bend the rules."

I shrugged. Then I told him what Spencer had said.

"You think she actually saw something?" Nichols asked.

I shook my head. "Don't know. She was—strange."

"Strange?"

"I don't know. Not all there."

Nichols laughed. "Glad I missed her then."

"You can see her tomorrow. She's coming into the station to give a description of the person she thinks that she saw in the garage."

"Defense'll have a field day with that."

"Yep."

"So, we'll talk to Metro security about your witness, and then Potomac?"

"I'm not dressed for a dinner party," I said, glancing down at myself.

Nichols laughed. "Come on, it'll give 'em something to talk about."

-100-100-100-100-100-100-100-100-100-100-100-100-

"It's creepy as fuck."

I shrugged. The painting was obviously Japanese, but that was about all that I could tell.

I didn't go in for art myself. My walls were absolutely bare.

But my mother had family portraits everywhere you turned, even a couple of those old black-and-white daguer-whatchamacallits with silver-eyes looking out of 'em. I hated them. My dad'd never let her put any of them up. But after he was shot—

"Come on, you'd have that hanging in your living room?" Nichols pointed at a particularly colorful print of two blood-spattered figures—ghosts?—attacking a couple.

"The composition has a pleasing symmetry," Sanders said, glancing up from her camera.

"It'd give Dory nightmares," Nichols observed.

"But you're fine brainwashing your five-year-old daughter with Disney."

"Disney isn't—"

"This one looks like the vic's tattoo," I interrupted, pointing out another print.

Sanders stepped up to get a picture of it as I started inspecting the bookshelves, the volumes on Japanese art and Zen Buddhism.

We'd yet to turn up anything suspicious, except for the pictures, of course.

And when Nichols and Sanders went into the other room, I stopped to study the prints once more.

They were all done in the same strange style—like comic books, but not—but they didn't appear to have been done by the same artist. And the subjects were all supernatural. Ghosts and skeletons and demons, against a medieval Japanese backdrop.

Ghouls were besieging some sort of party, men cowering with their heads pressed into the floor as craven, rat-like and snakish one-eyed monsters leered over them.

Another fellow, however, looked utterly unimpressed, gazing over his shoulder at a black cloud of smoke with zero chill. Of course he had two swords at the ready and a bamboo umbrella that looked like it could do a bit of damage if handled the right way.

And the samurai from the tattoo was also there, in a larger print that included a wild, horned, gray-blue demon raising a sword behind the samurai's back. The samurai didn't look worried. At all.

There was something about the compositions of the pictures—the brilliant coloring of the scenery and the bright shades used to render the living, juxtaposed against the grey-white, almost nauseating yellow used for the ghosts, and the contrast between the easy, whimsical lines of the living, against the eerie, grotesque features of the dead—it was unsettling.

Nichols was right. It was creepy as fuck.

And expensive. I couldn't tell if these were original prints. But they definitely looked expensive.

The whole place looked like money, in fact. It was positively sleek. Dark, smooth lines.

This Murota guy had expensive tastes.

"Gun in the bedroom closet," Nichols said returning. "Checking to see if it was registered. Some cash too. Nearly a thousand. And there was a wall safe in the office. Not open yet. Nothing suspicious in the desk."

"Pretty cozy place for a real estate agent," I observed.

"Popular guy, too," Nichols said, nodding at the potted plant in the entryway, obviously a new delivery.

"It's hideous," Sanders said, passing by.

And it was ugly. An assortment of yellow, leafy foliage. Thick green vines crept out of the pot, trailing, broken, on the floor.

It looked like something out of The Little Shop of Horrors.

One of those plastic sticks was poking out of the greenery, but there was no card.

I spied something crumpled in the wastebasket. "Anyone check this yet?" I asked.

"It's all yours," Nichols said.

It was a card, but with no note. And the picture was another ghoulish print: A man, clearly terrified, recoiling from a bizarre, spectral head.

I handed the card to Nichols.

"Hey," he said, turning the card over. "It's the plant."

I glanced back at the pot on the ground, then the card. It was the same plant.

"They look like eyes," Nichols said, pointing at the picture.

And he was right again. The black spots in the center of the yellow leaves looked like eyes.

"You alright?" I asked, squinting at him.

"I just don't want a weird case."

"This isn't a weird case."

"We already have a weird witness," Nichols reminded me.

And I had to admit that he was right, again. Three for three.

What were the chances that a woman who studied demons would accidentally stumble across the body of a guy who collected pictures of them?

AN:

The picture on the card was Utagawa Kuniyoshi's Snake Mountain. The tattoo was Tsukioka Yoshitoshi's Sadanobu and Oni. The prints in the living room were Utagawa Kunisada's The Ghosts of Matahachi and Kikuno, Katsushika Hokusai's New Version of a Perspective Print: Haunted House, and Kanagai Robun's Fuwa Bansaku.

Rating is for language. Unbetaed. 16 chapters.

This isn't fluff. Neither Edward nor Bella go out of their way to make themselves likable. (It's my experience that people are, as a rule, assholes. And parts of this little novella are inspired by a true story.) But there's minimal angst.

Thank you for reading.