As I made my way toward the station, I pondered the significance of the spirit I'd seen. It wasn't often that a spirit tried to communicate with the living. Generally, they only made the attempt if they had unfinished business that required the action of a living person. Typically, that meant presenting the spirit with a thing that it was looking for at the time of death, be it a lost whistle, a stolen necklace, or spare change. The boy might want nothing more than a balloon animal from the deceased clown.

On the other hand, sometimes spirits appeared because they sought justice.

It was possible that Pennywhistle, or someone dressed like him, had killed the boy. Spirits often made it their after-life's work to identify those that killed or abused them in life. Even if the child knew nothing about Pennywhistle's death, he might know something about another crime. If a boy had been murdered on that corner any time in the past century, I planned to find out all I could about him.

The station was only a few blocks away, but I took a few detours down dark alleys to get there. Once or twice I'd been approached by muggers when using such streets at night and had the opportunity to defend myself with my gun. I grinned at the memory of seeing a dead thief at my feet, blood seeping from his shiny green windbreaker.

"Sense any trouble?" I whispered, not expecting an answer.

Two streets west, I heard St. Mortense, my statue, whisper back.

I patted the pocket where I kept him and grinned. When St. Mortense spoke, it was usually to impart important information. While going west would be even further out of my way than I planned, the thought of putting someone down made me smile. There was a spring in my step as I slid through the darkness.

It seemed to take forever to cross those two blocks, but once I'd reached the place St. Mortense had told me about, I heard a a scream. A middle-aged woman, I guessed.

Because of the echoes, at first I couldn't tell which direction it came from. More puzzling, all the windows and doors nearby were locked with metal shutters. If the screaming came from inside any one of them, it should have been muffled.

Gun in hand, I spun taking in the sight of tipped trash cans, discarded needles and broken bottles, cursing under my breath as I searched frantically for something to kill. Where was that screaming coming from?

Then it stopped--or nearly so. The sound became muffled, as if a sock were jammed into the victim's mouth. Still I saw nothing.

Then, suddenly, a body dropped to the street in front of me, sounding like meat-filled crockery breaking as it struck the ground. From the way the body fell, I guessed it was lifeless before it hit the pavement. It lay there, shirt torn open, face as smooth and featureless as a department store mannequin.

Shapeless demons did that to people. Their first breath can remove the wrinkles from your skin. It's a dangerous form of cosmetic surgery, though. If they breathe a little too much of their shadowy essence on you, your nose will melt away and your skin will grow over your eyes and mouth. This woman had just spent a few seconds too long in the spa of darkness.

I looked up, only to find the likeness of Pennywhistle leering down at me. Darkness dripped from his painted mouth like blood as he leaped from the metal fire escape.

Jackpot.

Time to kill.

Before I could think, I raised my gun and fired. It was a liberating sensation, to fling metal and death at a target who deserved it, and so my grin was as wide as Pennywhistle's. Time for just desserts, you miserable child of Hell.

My smile faded, though, when Pennywhistle landed, laughing like a drunken banshee.

I screamed my fury, and fired again, holding the trigger till the clip emptied. Watching him not die was seriously ruining my fun.

Pennywhistle staggered and braced himself against a brick wall. Shadow, and a little blood, leaked from a dozen wounds all over his body, but he was still on his feet. I watched him, cautiously as I reached for another clip.

One of the nice things about shapeless ones is you can stop them with bullets. You just need a lot more. You see, they need a shape in order to attack--a mask, shoes, a set of gloves. Put too many holes in their costume, and their dark, shadowy essence disperses like so much squid ink in water.

"You can't stop me, Dark," the thing rasped as I clicked a fresh clip into place.

"That sounds like a challenge," I said, and sent a second stream of death into his painted face.

The bullets tore a line through the mask, cutting it in two. As the mask divided, the essence of the shapeless demon billowed out and away. It raised its white gloved hands to its face, a vain effort to hold the empty shadows in.

I ran forward and grabbed the upper half of the mask by its curly, crayon-red hair and pulled. As it came free, the darkness fled, and another mannequin-like corpse slumped to the ground.

That was another thing about shapeless demons. In addition to needed clothing to hold the darkness in, they needed a body to fill the clothing.

I stepped closer. Judging by the state of decay, whoever this demon had possessed had been dead for some time. Maybe two days. I wasn't quite sure how I could report it in a way that would make sense to the CSI. In fact, I wasn't sure what the lab boys would make of these two defaced corpses.

The conversation would go something like this. "So, officer Dark, why did you shoot a mutilated corpse that had been lying dead in an alley for two days?"

"Well," I could say. "He--or she, whatever, looked very threating, laying on the pavement like that with no nose or eyes."

Nope. Best not to call it in.

I holstered my weapon and grinned down at the torn mask. "Looks like I can stop you, after all."

At that moment, the fragments of mouth on each half of the mask twisted into a skull-like smile. The lips moved.

"No, Detective, you did not. There are many more of me," the empty mask replied.

That definitely should not have happened.

It laughed at me as I kicked and scuffed the thing with my feet. I continued until there was nothing left but smears of face paint. Even then, though, I swore I could hear its cackling.