Murders at Lake Wyrd

Chapter 1: The Nervous Client
The sorcerer dealt directly with spirits, and operated as a mediator between the world of humans and the realm of spirits. The…spirits seem to give identity and form to many phenomena in life which contemporary psychology recognizes but often fails to deal with directly: coincidence, deep seated fears, psychic experience, prophetic dreams and nightmares, and other aspects of ourselves that remain unconscious.
Brian Bates, The Way of Wyrd, p. 13
The phone rang as I filled my coffee cup. I did my best to use my professional voice. “Good morning. Reginal Neet here.”
“Glad you’re up, Neet,” my boss said. “Just wanted to make sure you’ll be in today.”
“Yes, of course. Halloween is not a bank holiday.”
The boss paused, maybe to process that. “Damn right it isn’t. Get to the bank a half hour early. We have to talk about your market analysis, or misanalysis.”
I assured my overseer of my eagerness to communicate and wished that the last day of October was a holiday for adults. Not that I had fond memories of Halloween as a child, the day when purportedly rational people who had no reason to think that the worlds of living and departed overlapped in any way, imagined spirit invasion. Celebration of the supposedly porous barrier between the realms of the quick and the dead would peak this evening with parties of costumed children and adults and the ritual of disguised boys and girls threatening mean tricks, mayhem, and vandalism if they didn’t get their treats.
I had avoided this morbid extortion ritual as a child. Primarily because of the risk. Stomping around in the dark in ill-fitting, flimsy monster garb, complete with sight-limiting or vision-cancelling masks struck me even as a youngster as the height of danger and folly. No thank you.
I sat at the small breakfast table and pushed away the two bags of candy I’d bought to pay off the horde of vampires, zombies, ghosts, witches, and superheroes who would materialize at my door this evening. My third-story city apartment was a convenient target for tricksters. I chose my building to be near where I worked, but it had negatives: city noise and traffic, dirty windows with vistas of buildings, and lack of trees. On cue, the 6:17 a.m. bus rumbled on the street below, a car horn blared, and the garbage truck growled at the curb. A banging of cans ensued, then the truck rolled on, rattling the windowpane. A blue-gray pigeon landed on the windowsill and pooped. I sipped my coffee and unfolded the paper.
In a less-than-relaxed state, I focused on The Wall Street Journal and did not like what I saw. The news echoed the prognostications of the TV reporters and their guests about morning market trends. Volatility was up, prices were high, earnings would disappoint. Somehow, I had to convince my boss that it was time to reallocate our clients’ portfolios to minimize the impact of a market correction. He wanted no sudden moves and refused to see the possibility of a sudden move downward. I wondered if I could change his mind.