A/N: Sorry this has taken so long. In between employment drama and trying to get ready for a writing contest, my head's been sort of... useless, really.

Part Four

Inside the house of the undead, the stairs were creaking fitfully. Whoever it was coming up them gave a slight cough. The door knob was fumbled with, briefly.

It suddenly flung itself open as if possessed, and a yawning black hole presented itself. Flashlights shone back and forth wildly. Four voices vented themselves in various sounds of surprise.

"Gah!"

"Hey!" came from the doorway.

"Ahh!"

"Eeeeeee!" There was a brief pause after this one, and the sound of someone being comforted.

"Ned, it's alright, Ned. Look, it's—" Chuck gestured emphatically. "— just a guy!"

It was, in fact, just a guy. A young man stood in the doorway, illuminated now by the beams of three flashlights. He stared wild-eyed at them through his thick glasses, pushing them anxiously up his nose with one shaking finger.

"Jeeeeez! You guys scared me!"

"It's mutual," said Ned, who now had his hands over his face. Chuck took Emerson's free hand and used it to pat him till Emerson angrily removed himself from her grasp.

"What are you doin' here?"

"I, uh, I might ask you the same question!"

"That you might," Emerson allowed, showing his teeth in what was probably not a smile, "but I asked you first."

"Repair man," the young man said, his voice breaking slightly and quavering. He shrank back from Emerson, molding himself to the door, and faced their scrutiny without bravery. He was in fact dressed in the uniform of some sort of repairman, though it was unclear which. His one-piece was dark blue with a red horizontal stripe, which lent the impression that he'd just won first place in some repairman beauty pageant; or, at least, runner-up. The lighter blue patch over his left breast pocket proclaimed him Ray.

"What are you repairin'?" Emerson kept up his conversational pursuit as though he were treeing a easy raccoon. Ray the repairman blinked compulsively.

"Er— the lighting."

"It's pitch black down there," the Pie Maker pointed out, looking over the protective fence his fingers were forming.

"Well, I'm not done yet."

Emerson, very deliberately, smiled at the little repairman. "Now how 'bout you tell us the truth of what you're doin' here, and we won't arrest you as a possible suspect in the murder of Edmund Hillary?"

"Murder?" squeaked Ray.

"Murder!" repeated Emerson in a mocking high falsetto.

"The guy's dead?" said Ray. His face twitched. Chuck folded her arms; the twitching was something of an epidemic, it seemed, one that everyone appeared to be catching. However, she considered further, young Ray looked as though he twitched to keep another emotion from emerging— as though he were trying to keep himself from smiling.

Emerson Cod and the Pie Maker had apparently reached the same conclusion.

"Are you happy about this?" said Ned, dropping his hands altogether and placing them on his hips to stare at the repairman in a markedly accusatory manner.

"I, uh, no, it's just—" There was a definite jolly glimmer coming from the repairman, however. He folded his arms, tucking the flashlight into his elbow. "Dead, huh? Fancy that."

"I don't fancy it," rumbled Emerson. "And somethin' tells me you're doin' more than just repairs. Let's get on down to the basement and check on your work." He stepped forward and nudged Ray by sheer force of presence towards the top of the basement stairs. Ned and Chuck followed him, exchanging glances of worry and excitement; worry from Ned, for whom the thrill of detecting had long since worn off; excitement from Chuck, for whom the thrill of simply being alive would never pall.

Emerson walked Ray down the stairs, a hand on his shoulder. The young repairman did a lot sniffing in the darkness and Emerson clenched his fingers.

"What's the matter with you? Are you cryin'?"

"Allergies," explained Ray. "Basements are dusty, they get me all—" He sneezed. "Well, you can see for yourself."

"I can't see anything," came the petulant voice of the Piemaker from behind them. "Why's it so dark in here?"

"It's a basement," said Emerson. "No windows."

"I thought he said he was fixing the lights."

"Well, obviously, he was lyin'."

"Can we get him to, then? It's so dark in here I can't even see my own hand in front of my—" The lights came on and chased away the darkness. Ned squinted, cross-eyed, at his hand. "Oh. There it is."

"Light switches," said Chuck, moving back towards them. "Don't leave home without 'em."

They clicked off their flashlights and had a glance around the room. The basement suite was lushly appointed in traditional bachelor style: a bed in the corner, a giant TV against the wall, a foozball table in the middle of the floor, and a complete lack of chairs.

Ray shoved Emerson's hand off his shoulder and moved a few steps away. "Besides. You guys didn't tell me what you were doing here, either. How do I know you're not just common, ordinary thieves?"

"We are private investigators," said Emerson, drawing himself up to his full height. "We are investigatin'."

"Privately?" questioned Ray.

"On the down low," acknowledged Emerson.

"Then maybe you don't want the lights on."

"Whatchou talkin' about? Can't do no investigatin' in the dark."

Ned coughed and muttered something that sounded like, "Sentence structure." Emerson waved at him to shut up.

"Then why didn't you turn the lights on upstairs?" Ray pointed out, with admirable quickness for a repairman. He leaned back against a wall and folded his arms. "You guys don't seem very legit, to me."

"Nobody asked you," said Emerson, a bit angrily. "All you need to know is I'm the one givin' orders around here. Now what was it you were 'repairing'?" He caressed the final word with almost loving sarcasm, as though it were an underperforming step child. Ned rolled his eyes.

Ray the repairman considered his options for a moment, looking from one to the other. Then he sighed, dropped his arms, and led them to the coffin-shaped bed in the corner that, on further investigation, turned out to just be a coffin. He paused for a moment with his hands tense on the lid, then lifted it. It went up smoothly, without a squeak or a groan, but they all shuddered regardless.

"Always gives me the creeps, the way they sleep," said Ray quietly. Emerson jabbed at his shoulder with one finger.

"It's explanation time," he pronounced. "Just who are you, anyway?"

The repairman only looked at him; and it was enigmatic a look as anyone with thick black plastic glasses has ever managed. The private detective stared back, but enigmatic expressions had never been his forte, and he was soon forced to back down and acknowledge the young repairman to be the master.

He pointed at him with one finger.

"You," he said deliberately, "got somethin' wrong with you."

"Maybe if you weren't so rude," suggested Chuck, pushing him aside. "Pointing at people all the time, poking them, telling them there's something wrong with them—"

"There is," insisted Emerson. "This kid's got somethin' freaky goin' on, and I don't mean freaky in a good way. This kid's— oh, look who I'm talkin' to." He rolled his eyes and turned away from the lonely tourist. Emerson felt once again the sense of disappointment that comes from being the only normal person on an entire planet full of lunatics, and he fretted inwardly about being haunted by the moon. He wished he had time for a few calming rows, but his needles were in the car and there was a vampire on the loose. He didn't have time for anything.

"We're trying to clear this problem up," Chuck was saying to the repairman. "And if you could only help us out a little, I'm sure everything would be much more clear."

"Listen to Dead Girl," Emerson muttered. "Talkin' to Freaky MacFreakerson like he's still watchin' Sesame Street."

"She's right, you know," Ned told him quietly. His arms were folded, his shoulders hunched. He watched the alive-again love of his life reason with a repairman in a vampire's bedroom and could not bring himself to feel good about this situation. "You really are rude."

"In vampire parlance?" began Emerson. "Bite me."

"Well," said the repairman to Chuck, who had concluded her plea for assistance with clasped hands and a winsome look, "since you asked nicely." He bent and reached for the electrical outlet on the wall next to the head of the coffin. There was a small white box plugged into it, which Ray removed and handed to Chuck. "This. This is what I was repairing."

She squinted at it, turned it side to side. Emerson reached for it and she pulled it away from him, lifting her eyebrows to make her point. "Maybe next time you'll be more polite?"

"Here—" She dropped it into Ned's outstretched palm. He frowned down at it. "What is it? It looks like a night light, except—"

"It's a daydark," explained Ray. "Vampires use them. Doesn't really do anything for them except make them a little more comfortable."

"Uh-huh." Ned turned it over to squint at the manufacturer's information. 100% recycled plastic with a 15 watt black glass bulb. He was invited to direct questions or comments to Van Helsing DayDarks Inc., complete with 800 number and website. "What kind of vampire buys something made by someone named Van Helsing?"

"A very unobservant one," said Ray. "Statistics show that vampires never read labels. That 800 number has never been called."

"You've got statistics on this?" asked Ned, brow furrowing as though he were going to plant a crop. Ray shrugged.

"Part of my job to know what's going on in the vampire world," he said. "All in a day's work."

The three intrepid Pie Holers stared at him for a moment. "Who are you?" asked Chuck at last, with very little care for how rude she was sounding.

"Ray Van Helsing." The repairman stuck out a hand for them to shake, which no one took him up on. "Vampire hunter."

"So then when Emerson showed up, and this whole partnership thing started, we were saved. And let me tell you, we'd been seriously floundering up till then. We were a sinking ship. Even the rats had left. Not that we've ever actually had rats," Olive hastened to add. "Because we're really a very clean establishment."

The Coroner leaned to one side to glance around the counter into the kitchen. A fluffy yellow tail thumped on the floor; the canine caboose it was attached to and, presumably, the remainder of the dog were obscured from view around the corner. The Coroner sat up straight again.

"Mmmmhmm."

"Oh, that's Digby. He's very clean." Olive grinned. "Plus, he helps clean up any scraps that get dropped when we're baking, so he's helpful too." She planted her elbows on the counter. "That— didn't come out quite as sanitary-sounding as I'd hoped."

The Coroner had now been sitting in the Pie Hole for a number of hours. Were his ears of the detachable persuasion, they would long ago have been talked off. Olive, notwithstanding the ebb and flow of increasingly frustrated customers, had never had an audience like this one and was not keen on giving up. The Coroner, for his part, found himself reminded strongly of the first few years of his long-ago marriage, and stayed put out of a keen sense of nostalgic inertia. Now, their conversation had drifted around to their mutual acquaintances the Pie Maker and Emerson Cod, Private Detective. Both Olive and the Coroner found themselves puzzling over the multitude of visits Ned and Emerson paid to the morgue.

"I wonder what they do there, anyway?" mused Olive. "Emerson I could see checking up on a body now and then, he's got a suspicious mind. But Ned? I mean, it's not like he's trained for that kind of thing. What does he want to go stare at corpses for?"

"And that girl," murmured the Coroner.

"Yeah! Why do they always take Chuck with them? Why can't they take me? I mean, notwithstanding the Pie Hole, I know someone's gotta keep it open, but— why can't we trade off? What if I want to go look at corpses. Dang it!" She slapped a hand down on the counter. "Now I want to know what they do there."

"So do I," murmured the Coroner.

Olive Snook adored the idea of being a conspirator. Looking at the dour man seated across from her, a glow lit her up from within and her eyes began to shine. This, she realized, could be it. Finally, she might have met the man who would be on her side, who would help her in her constant struggle against the Three Investigative Musketeers. The man who would share secrets with her, and make the three of them feel left out for once. The man who would help her discover the riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in Morse code that was the Pie Maker's emotional state.

She leaned in close.

"Want to find out together?"

The Coroner only stared at her for a moment. She deflated quickly.

"Oh," she said. "—I guess that's not what you meant."

Emerson Cod cleared his throat.

"Moving on," he said. "What's with the nightlight?"

"Daydark," Ray Van Helsing corrected him. "It's called a daydark. It's the complete opposite of a nightlight."

"Whatever," said Emerson, unoriginally. He was quickly losing his patience, not something he'd had abundant supplies of in the first place. "Why's a family of vampire hunters helpin' the vampire's to sleep easy?"

"Well, that's the thing. We're not." Ray whipped a screwdriver from his pocket and opened the daydark, displaying its innards to the others. "See that small vial there?"

There was, indeed, a small slim glass vial filled with some whitish liquid nestled in the midst of the wires. Emerson sniffed. "What is it?"

"And why does it smell like an Italian restaurant?" queried Chuck.

"Garlic!" said the vampire hunter/repairman triumphantly. "Essence of garlic."

"I thought that was just supposed to keep vampires away," objected the lonely tourist reasonably. "Why is it in his daydark?"

"Ah, see, that's where the legend has it wrong. It keeps vampires away for a reason. Prolonged exposure to garlic gives you one very sick vampire. Too long, and—" He waved a hand. "Pshh. One dead bat."

Chuck stared at him in horror. "You really mean it? You go around killing them? Just because they're, you know— undead? Alive again?"

The Pie Maker wished devoutly that he could comfort lonely tourist Charlotte Charles. In her eyes he could see that she identified heavily with the hunted vampires and wished that even these unsaveable souls could yet retain their right to life, again. She reveled in the gift of life that he had given her, and was not willing to see it taken away from others. It was a large part of why he loved her as he did, yet he still did not like to see her in such anguish. He opened his mouth without being quite sure of what he should say. Undoubtedly it must be something wise, loving, comforting; it must be his arms around her, in sentence form.

He took a breath.

"Never mind the ethical complications," broke in Emerson. "That's not what we're here about. Now we know how the vampire ended up on the slab. That's good. A little knowledge never hurt anybody. We've still got to figure out where he is now."

"You know what I don't get?" said Ray, tilting his head to one side and grabbing at his glasses as they started to slide off. "How the bat got up again. I mean, he was dead, right?"

The three investigators stared at him.

"Never you mind," said Emerson darkly. "Like I said, that's beside the point. What we need to know is what's going on in Edmund Hillary's mind. He's gotta be hidin' out somewhere. But where? Who'd harbor a vampire?"

Ned, distracted, found himself staring at Edmund Hillary's place of rest. "That's an awfully big coffin, isn't it?" he said. They all turned to look at it. "Like it could be— big enough for two."

"Hmm," rumbled Emerson.

"And—" Ned strode forwards and lifted the top cover gingerly. "Floral sheets!"

He waited; Emerson grumbled and rolled his eyes. "Okay, Sherlock. What's the deal with the flowery sheets?"

The Pie Maker replaced the cover with a look of triumph. "Only a woman buys floral sheets."

"Maybe his momma donated 'em to him when he moved out."

"I don't think so. Mothers generally give their children old sheets, so the patterns will almost always be from the sixties and seventies." Ray moved forward to confer with the Pie Maker. "I agree with him. These sheets lack the general artistic miasma that everyone suffered in that time period. I'd say they're not more than—" He sniffed. "Two months out of package."

"And a stuffed bat!" Ned pounced on it and held it up. "What kind of self-respecting male vampire buys a stuffed bat to put on his bed?"

"So, someone else bought the bat and the sheets—" began Chuck.

"Someone else been sharin' the coffin bed," said Emerson, and shuddered violently. "This case just keeps gettin' creepier and creepier."

"But what woman would be able to bring herself to sleep in a coffin in a basement in the daytime?" pointed out Ned. "I'll tell you."

"A vampire," preempted Emerson. The Pie Maker's face crumpled into disappointment, but this was a common expression for him to be wearing and the detective took no note. "There's not one vampire on the loose— there's two."

"Esmerelda Hannity was lying to us!" said Chuck.

Ned folded his arms and sank his shoulders downwards. Deep within him the urge to twitch was approaching, and he knew he was powerless to stop it. Old tics died hard. Perhaps he should see a therapist, or at the very least a massage therapist, although he did not like to be touched so on the other hand—

Ray Van Helsing patted him on the shoulder, sporting an enormous grin.

"You did good!" he said. "Good job, buddy!" To top it off, he gave him an eager thumbs up. Ned looked at him for a moment, then relaxed.

"Well— thanks, I guess."

"Time to go hunt down the bats," said Ray Van Helsing determinedly, and together, they followed Emerson and Chuck up the stairs.