"There are several places 'round here that barter or trade. We'll start there," Sheriff Cadimere Warselight said to Teerkedas.

"What makes you think they bartered or traded anything? I was there at the crime scene before the police got there. There was nothing missing even though there was signs of a brawl."

"Your mother's spirit is missing."

"How do you know that? Even with my abilities I couldn't see that."

"There is an aura around or underneath the natural aura a being has. Your mother's is gone."

"Wouldn't that be because she's dead?"

"No, even when the spirit leaves the body after death it leaves a residue behind to show there was once life in the body or a life lived once upon a time. There's no residue. It's the life and death's timeline. Because the residue is not there, this tells me her spirit was taken from her body before her death and shortly after she was killed," Cadimere said pointing to the photo of Teerkedas's deceased mother.

"You still didn't answer my question. How do you know?"

"I have talents just like you. Let's forge ahead. You don't want to get distracted."

"Sheriff Warselight shouldn't we change our clothes to blend in with the locals?" Sailil asked.

"No, you're at home here. We have so much diversity here. There's no need," the sheriff said.

The store owner was dressed in a doublet with trousers. He was in his mid-twenties. He had transparent Pthalo-Anthraquinone Blue-Green with reflecting strong flecks of Napthol red, Quinacridone magenta. His eyes were a translucent titanium white-hansa yellow medium color. He had a Roman nose with a slight upturned peak. His lips were a mixture of stone-leather and braided rope which as he spoke looked like that of a handmade figment of the imagination. His hair was live wild orchids and snowflakes moving like the inside contents of a lava lamp atop his head.

"What's your danger variable?" he asked them meaning "What's your fancy?" or "What's your pleasure?" according to another modern language or phrase. "Or would you prefer to gander about for a little while?"

"Sure, why not?" Apatt said to the store owner taking Sailil by the hand through the aisles.

Jezromiah and Teerkedas went down opposite aisles in the store.

"What brings you here, Sheriff Warselight?"

"Has anyone come here in the last few days with a spirit in their possession to trade or barter with?" she asked.

"Hard to say. What year?"

"It was in the year 1959 in Anagram. But if it was imported here it would've come in by partner or by transport maybe as far back as six months or at the bare minimum one to two business days."

"The spirit would have to be incubated in between transporting and finding someone or someplace to barter or trade it. I'm not saying it's here. But you can browse around in the front of the store where the Ghost Jars are on display while I look at my inventory," he pointed to the collection of jars on several adjoining shelves with steel glass protecting each one of them with a lunar-electric- combination deadlock alarm. "Must have a lunar-electric-key along with the combination code to open it simultaneously. No magic or force can break in," the engraved words read across the wall above the shelves.

"Ghost Jars?" Sheriff Warselight asked raising a brow looking at the jars with the spectral energy particles that looked like a mixture of lightning bugs and multi-colored glowing leaves and feathers blended into a smoothie consistency.

"Yes. There are some beings before death who willing sign a contract to donate or sell their ghost or life force upon the date of their death. Some even donate their organs in addition to that but they are taken before the deceased's ghost is taken."

"This victim was murdered and their spirit obtained illegally."

"I don't do illegal barter or trade of ghosts. The barterer or trader would have to come here with a notarized copy of said contract before any transaction can occur. And they would have to be kin to the dearly departed by blood, by marriage or in some cases power of attorney. And they have to have legal proof of that, too. I'll get my inventory ledger and we can go over it together, Sheriff, thoroughly."

"If you have a copy of those documents on hand, I'd like to see those, too," she said to him as he turned around heading toward the back of the store to his office.

"Did you hear that Sailil? Ghosts put in jars like preserves. How fantastic and fascinating? It's a bit barbaric but enterprising. There's a science behind it. I want to know what," Apatt said with a hungry look on his face.

"It's the equivalent of the cremation process where afterwards a mourner puts their loved ones ashes in an urn. It's somewhat both disturbing and sad," Sailil shoulders shook from the chill sprinting up and down her spine to the nape of her neck. "But I do like seeing when your creatively analytical mind starts spinning its wheels and cogs," she smiled putting her arms around his neck.

He bit his lower lip with his eyes resting on her lips. They kissed passionately.

He growled and hungrily moaned against her lips as she made a soft, melodious sound in reverence.

She playfully ran her fingers through his platinum-blue hair at the nape of his neck, tugging a little on each handful. Her fluorescent rainbow-colored eyes gazed into his blacker than black almost unseen ones as they continued to kiss.

They both smiled at each other with their eyes; a gleam that sparkled in their irises like a halo. They both closed their eyes as he kissed her neck and shoulder.

"I've missed you so much," he whispered breathlessly.

"I've missed you, too, handsome," she said struggling to catch her breath from his kisses. "Promise me, when we get back home we'll spend some much needed time alone together. No lab, no missions for a while."

"I promise. We can go to my home country of Idiosyncrasies in a couple of weeks for our one year anniversary."

"That'll be boss," she said smiling as he held her in his arms.

The vampire needles in Teerkedas's body were ravenous for power and kept quickly depleting the power he had and any outside power he used to sustain himself. He needed to regenerate. And he hadn't for a long time. He was feeling weaker. Even his natural unlimited wealth of power wasn't enough to curb its hunger. He left the store without mentioning it to anyone.

There was a flea market at the apex of the heart of the clockwork where sixteenth and eighteen century residents sold products such as TVs and radios, appliances, gadgets. Teerkedas's hearing was wacky and darting from supersonic to great hearing loss. At the systolic points of the clockwork underground, he could hear through his supersonic stream, a series of clicks at the apex.

There was a murmur which caused the seconds and minutes to become shortened like a breath, delaying the rhythm of the clockwork. As he headed to the market, the clock sped up fast, but at the same time there was restrictiveness there in the detail of its cadence. This left him with a disconcerting thought. "The clockwork will need to be tested."

"Do you want a talking box with no pictures or a talking box with pictures?" the woman at the market asked dressed in a short gown; a hip-length garment worn like a jacket or overcoat with a petticoat skirt and pattens on her feet from the seventeenth century, her hand on one of the radios and the other hand on one of the television sets. "They're both battery operated."

He paused for a moment to read her lips as she said the words. He could hear certain pitches of tone or sound in her voice. He could understand some words but it was like being underwater and her voice sounded garbled. Cognitively and receptively he was struggling.

"Turn the radio on so I can hear if it's working well," he pointed at the radio.

She turned on the radio. The music from the station it was on was both agony and relief feeding him with energy bit by bit. A fritzy buzz piped through his brain like a chimney through his eardrum. "Turn on another one and another. I can make a better decision then."

Each radio frequency melded into his neurons and synapses like a fine wine. He savored the radio waves even though it was a clinical process. The battery power gave him an unusual boost he'd never had before, awkwardly feeding his superlunary soul making him feel exposed as if he was naked in front of an ogling crowd. He shuffled his feet nervously as he siphoned all the radios' energy through his auditory senses. The awkwardness settled away from the battery life and he was confident and strong again.

"The radios were in ship shape before but have no sound, not static, nothing. I don't know what happened. Maybe you'll be interested in something else we have here for sale," she said shrugging, tapping the flat part of her hand on top of the television.

"Maybe next time, thanks," Teerkedas said with a sly look on his face as he walked away. He shuddered with a grin on his face as the radio waves slivered through him. The bruises on his body were healing and his body didn't ache so much anymore. It was a temporary fix since the sugarcane was still coagulating in his pores from being inside that viscous liquid prison for so long.

He went back into the store and as he was walking in Sheriff Warselight, Jezromiah, Apatt and Sailil were leaving. Jezromiah grabbed Teerkedas by the arm and walked him backward out the door.

Sheriff Warselight said over her shoulder to Teerkedas and the others. "We're heading to Cannonball Lanet where the Thrine of Saolomont is. Come with me to the nearest wagonette stop."

The sheriff, Teerkedas, Jezromiah, Apatt and Sailil walked to the wagonette stop in front of a burger joint, thirty minutes up the road.

Wagonettes are small horse-cars with springs. They have two benches along the right and left side of the platform with the passengers facing each other. The driver side is separate in a front-facing bench similar to the larger horse-bus. Some wagonettes are open or have a tilt. Others have a lower hatchback for cargo or other supplies and a diesel and steam-powered dual engines, in case flesh and blood horses weren't available. A few had quadruple seating.

The wagonette came an hour later and they boarded.