The first thing that didn’t belong was the massive, gaping hole in the display unit where something was obviously missing. It was so obviously missing that it somehow overshadowed the dead man and the huge bloody smear around the room.

An enormous variety of supplementary material surrounded the gaping area: glass-encased books, a few manuscript pages, bronze and iron swords, a tattered remnant of leather armor. I was too far away to read the information docket set slightly to one side, but I had no doubt we’d get to it.

I exchanged glances with Billy. He nodded, which told me there was a ghost, and I put away my curiosity to give him space to work. My part of the esoteric investigation was less pressing: ghosts faded fast, and their ability to communicate depended on how fresh they were. Billy’d told me that before, but the previous night’s experiences had hammered it home. I took Sandburg’s elbow and directed him a few steps away from the dead man, partly so he didn’t have to look at the body and partly so Billy could do his thing.

“What’s he doing?” Sandburg looked over his shoulder as Billy crouched beside the corpse. I turned him back toward me as gently as I could.

“Preliminary investigation. The forensics team’s on its way, but I’d like you to tell me what happened in your own words. Then I’m going to need you to help calm everyone else down so we can talk to them individually. I know it’s a lot to ask.” That was true. It was a lot to ask. However, many people—especially men—seemed to function better if they knew they had a specific and helpful task to perform. If I could make him an ally who felt important in the investigative process without actually getting in our way, it was good for everybody.

Sandburg bucked right up. He was holding it together pretty damn well as it was, but his posture straightened and his gaze cleared as he pulled his thoughts together. “We open late on Sundays, not until noon. There’s twenty-four-hour security, but the first staff don’t come in until eleven to set up.”

“Are you among that staff?” It seemed unlikely. Directorial bigwigs didn’t typically do the drudge work alongside their minimum-wage employees. I was flummoxed when Sandburg nodded.

“The museum’s only open for four hours on Sunday. I work so I don’t feel wholly divorced from the day-to-day running of the facility. Besides, sacrificing a few hours of my time means someone else can spend a weekend day at home with their family. I don’t have any myself, but I appreciate its importance.”

“That must make you popular. So you’re here every Sunday?”

“It helps me avoid the pointy-haired boss label, at least.” Sandburg offered a brief smile, then shook his head. “Three Sundays out of four. We usually have two people on, one for reception and ticket sales, the other to give guided tours every hour. The first one begins at twelve-fifteen.” He looked at his watch like he was already running late, and his features crumpled. I gave him a few seconds, waiting to see if he’d recover on his own. After a couple of long breaths, he did.

“I did the usual morning routine, which is to glance at the security tapes, count the till, that sort of thing. Meghan came in at a quarter to twelve. She’s the one who found the—” He broke again, then drew himself up with a shudder. “She found Jason when she went to check the security ropes around the exhibits. It’s always the last thing we do before we open. Security does it, too, obviously, but children like to play on them and they get knocked out of place, so we double-check to keep it tidy. Appearances, you know…” It was a strange comment from a man with scruff and cargo pants, but I could see where he might lend a certain romanticism to a cultural arts museum. It probably needed all the romance it could get.

“What time did the deceased arrive at work?” Jason. Jason Chan, who was twenty-four years old and who would never be twenty-five. It didn’t help to think about him in those terms; the deceased was much easier, and in some ways, much worse.

“Six last night. Our security works twelve-hour shifts, six to six. Jason and Archie just worked Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights,” Sandburg replied. I nodded and wrote it down—I’d been writing everything down, in a semi-comprehensible shorthand that I’d be able to read later because what Sandburg was saying was too hard to forget.

“Archie. That would be Archie Redding, your missing guard?” I knew he was; it’d been in the hysterical call that had brought us to the museum, but I’d learned two things as a detective. One, if your witnesses start babbling, listen, because they might say something important, and two, try to deal with one subject at a time when talking to them, even if it’s all interconnected. It was the focus thing again: chances were their thoughts were already fractured and running amok. Asking them to deduce concurrent events was asking for trouble.

Right on cue, Sandburg sagged, as if the thought of another crisis was too much to bear. “Yes. He was a lot older than Jason, in his fifties—”

“Was?” I put too much emphasis on the word, but couldn’t stop myself. “Is there another body, Mr. Sandburg?” I shot a look at Billy, wondering if he had more than one ghost to chat up.

Sandburg turned a bleak expression on me. “No, but isn’t it just a matter of time?”

“Not necessarily. If Mr. Redding is missing but there’s neither blood nor a body, he may have been kidnapped. We can hope our perpetrator has no reason to resort to more violence.” Perpetrator. I felt all official, using words like that. I could’ve said perp, but I’d realized that made me feel like I was in a Chicago crime story, so I stuck with the multisyllabic version.

Sandburg’s face didn’t lighten any. “It’s a thin hope, though, isn’t it?”

“I’m afraid so. Still, I’d rather assume the best.” We went through another round of routine questions before I finally bit back a sigh and brought my attention around to the elephant missing from the room. “What’s been taken from the display, Mr. Sandburg?”

I’d been avoiding asking for two reasons. One, I wanted to get the details about the dead and missing men out of the way before moving on to missing property, which, in my opinion, wasn’t as important. Two, I suspected whatever had disappeared was a lot nearer and dearer to Sandburg’s museum-director heart than a couple of security guards, and I’d been afraid letting him focus on it would wipe out any details he might remember about our victims.

I was right. Sandburg very nearly moaned, not at all a sound I expected from a hale-looking man in his late fifties. If he’d sagged when I mentioned the second guard, he deflated now. “The Cauldron of Matholwch.”

Billy looked up from his conversation with dead people and said, “The what?”

So did I, but when I said it, it was with bewilderment, and when Billy said it, it was with dread and amazement. I’d spent a lot of quality time online and in libraries the last few months, reading up on shamanism and the occult, but all it took was one phrase to let me know just how far at the back of the class I still was.

Fortunately, Sandburg didn’t seem to expect that I’d recognize the name. “You might know it by its more common name, the Black Cauldron. It—”

“Wait! Wait! I know this one!” I bounced and waved my hand in the air, then remembered there was a dead man not fifteen feet away and tried to pull together a little decorum. “Like from the movie, right? I saw it when I was little. There’s an army of undead in it, right?”

There’s an expression of betrayal that I associate with deceptions on the magnitude of learning there’s no Santa Claus. It says, You have taken my childhood and crushed it utterly. There is nothing left in this world for me to remember kindly, or to hope for in the future. I am lost, and you are dead to me for all time.

Billy and Sandburg both had that look. My hand sank and I looked between them, finally venturing, “No?” in a small, apologetic voice.