an episodic Vivian Locke occult noir

Sunny Day Parasol Co.

Case File #15: Absolute Zero

This is a serialized story. Start with Case File #1 here.

Kogan’s lead ampoule shattered under my bandaged knuckles. The purified salt and cold iron filings scattered across the green felt, but the dead quicksilver didn’t just spill… It leapt. It shot from the broken glass like a liquid soul, violently drawn to the impossible shape of the Black Sulfur token.

It hit the velvet exactly as Cross’s rotting entropy and Gallow’s crushing stasis slammed into the table.

The ignition didn’t produce a fireball. It produced an execution.

an episodic Vivian Locke occult noir

Sunny Day Parasol Co.

Case File #14: Lead Comes to Dinner

This is a serialized story. Start with Case File #1 here.

Cross’s amused smile vanished, replaced by a look of ancient, profound annoyance.

I sat dead still in the crushing quiet, my breath shallow and held tight. The dull, rhythmic ache from the deep cuts on my left hand from the shattered neon glass was a sharp, ordinary pain, the only thing anchoring me against the impossible physics tearing the air apart. My bandaged fingers held steady over the lead ampoule, caught in the dead center of a hurricane where absolute stasis was locked in a brutal collision with pure, corrosive entropy.

an episodic Vivian Locke occult noir

Sunny Day Parasol Co.

Case File #13: Quicksilver

This is a serialized story. Start with Case File #1 here.

“I’ll pass on the gin,” I said, keeping my posture relaxed but ensuring my right hand rested casually near the slit in the midnight blue silk. “It dulls the reflexes, and I prefer to keep my head clear when I’m collecting a fee.”

Cross’s smile didn’t waver. He leaned back, his tailored suit seeming to absorb the harsh glare of the chandelier above us.

“Fair enough. Though I notice you are traveling remarkably light for a retrieval job, Miss Locke. Tell me you didn’t leave my property sitting in the back of that rented hack you took from the Brass Canary. It would be a terrible shame to lose our investment to a common cab driver.”

“I wouldn’t insult either of us by being careless,” I said. My left hand, wrapped tight in fresh white gauze, went to the velvet clutch resting in my lap. My burnt fingers brushed the velvet, feeling the unnatural, freezing weight of Kogan’s ward humming against the escrow token.