Tragedy, right? Worst year of my life? Not a bit of it. I’m a born wanderer, I’m happy to say, always kicking on for a new horizon. I needed to earn money so I went into consulting—you go through a lot of cash as a translife, between covering your tracks and bribing the local constabulary. So now I advise other would-be or troubled restaurateurs in the translife catering trade. I like going somewhere with fresh faces, fresh preferences, fresh customs, and fresh victims. Fresh horses, too, for a good, sweaty night ride, since most translife eateries keep out of the cities for safety’s sake.

So, the call came to go to Wisconsin in the early summer, in the southwest corner on the bluffs overlooking that big, winding river through the heart of North America. Beer and dairy farm country, smelling of hot asphalt, manure, and crabapple trees. Sounded like a challenge; that bit of the world’s almost off the translife grid, culturally and logistically. I had to wonder who’d be mad enough to try to cater to translife in the middle of a teat-pulling human nowhere.

A madman or a visionary, I guessed. I drew up a mental sketch of a discerning vampire retiring from hectic urban life, or an old banshee reconnecting with her childhood roots. As usual in matters unrelated to food, I was wrong.

THE SECLUDED SKYLINERestaurant had a promising enough setting for catering to translife appetites. From the outside, not even visible from any highway, it didn’t look like anything much—just another distressed barn in a part of the country full of them.

I had to follow the verbal directions given by the owner, as the little farm access road leading to the Skyline didn’t appear on any database. The road had cheap, mass-produced red-and-white NO TRESPASSING and NO HUNTING signs, with a BEWARE OF DOG as you came to the flat ground surrounding the barn. I pulled up in my rental van—in this business you never know what you might have to run out and acquire at the last minute, and a van is perfect for discreet haulage—and decided I liked the look of the place. The barn was green rather than the more usual reds or whites, with a pinkish-white roof. Lonely, windy, remote. Cold as Jadis’s tit in January, certainly, but on a deliciously firelit Beltane . . .

A walkaround reaffirmed my positive first impression. The building was shabby-looking and plain from a distance, but up close I could see that it had been largely rebuilt in the past ten years or so. One might wonder why a barn had a superb view from high on the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi Valley, perhaps halfway between La Crosse and Dubuque, or well-kept gravel paths leading into an abandoned quarry, or a small planted trellis over the stairs leading down into the former pigpens. Someone really curious might venture around to the valley-facing side and wonder at all the windows and the little patio around brick fire pits.

But I’d have to enter to find out if this place passed my most important criteria.

First, security. If I don’t think a location is safe, or run with the wellbeing of its translife clientele in mind, I won’t touch it, no matter what the fee. Location, location, location, as the real estate fleshies say. I’m a hungry Irish night-rider, not a wizard; I can’t do anything about location.

Second, staff. Staff can sometimes make me walk right out the door within an hour of entering, if I think there’s absolutely nothing that can be done with them. I looked forward to meeting them, starting with the owner.

The Skyline’s owner, Mason Mastiff, came out to greet me, looking flushed and out of breath. He walked with short steps and crackled with a touch of other worlds about him, but he was as human as any of the dairy drivers whose rigs I’d been caught behind on the drive over from Madison. A wig cut to resemble the youthful, carefully crafted parted-on-the-left hair of a politician rested on his head, as out of place as a napping dove. I’ve always found wigs on men a little unsettling. Or maybe it’s the kind of men who wear wigs that I find strange. I should have trusted my instincts that Mason Mastiff would be arse-over trouble. Staring, suspicious eyes, vaguely mad and dangerous like Rasputin or an Old West gunfighter thirsty for blood and whiskey, blazed out of a fleshy, pale face.

“Chef Woolsley, I apprehend,” he said. His high-pitched voice rang out across the hills. He peeked over my shoulder into the van, perhaps wondering if a more impressive figure was waiting to be introduced.

I don’t look like much in the day, I’ll grant. My arms are out of proportion to my body and I’m a bit bowlegged. Haggard and limp when I’m not riding. I usually tell humans I’m between chemotherapies. Once the moon is up I’m not much better, but my hair comes alive and I’m hungry for fun.

Mastiff wore a brilliant azure smoking jacket and neat twill trousers that made him look as though he should be leading a marching band in a salute to John Philip Sousa. A cravat with a little golden skull stickpin at his throat screamed trouble.

I mean it literally. The feckin’ thing was enchanted.

“Welcome, monsieur, set yourself down,” it sang out.

Strike the enchanted, probably possessed.

“Quiet, Hellzapoppin,” Mastiff said. “Business, not a customer. Have trouble finding the place, Woolsley?”

We exchanged politenesses. As we toured his grounds, Mastiff told me a little about his background. He’d started out as a restaurant writer and critic, or at least that was his dream. Strictly for human consumption back then. There was too much competition for the big names and the Michelin-guide stuff, so he started to specialize in dive eateries, bohemian cafés, and theaters where you could get a bit of performance art with your canapés and coffee.

“I was killing an hour with a custom appliance installer in a little Seattle bistro, asking him about odd little places he’d seen. The dear man had had a few tales to tell and told me about a place he’d done when he lived in San Francisco. Not in the city, mind you, out in the wine country. There were some cages behind the kitchen and a special table that looked like something out of an episode of CSI. He figured it was some kinky sex establishment.

“I smelled a unique story there, and dredged up every piece of information I could about it. I tracked it down and tried to get in. No luck, private club, membership card only, that sort of story. No record of it with the health department, no advertising. So I started watching the clientele going in and out, always in late at night, always out again well before dawn or leaving in a well-tinted limo the next day from a lightless garage. I managed to meet the owner and talked him into letting me work there.”

He nudged some cold embers back into one of the fire pits with a polished dress shoe. The skull pin broke into the dwarf “Whistle While You Work,” but quietly.

“I met my first translife there. From then on, I was hooked. So many legends, so much human history, quietly filling forgotten corners, unrecognized.”

“We like it that way,” I said.

“At first, I thought I had a food exposé that would win me a Pulitzer, but I found the customers were more interesting than the story—and the money! The money, my dear Woolsley. I learned everything I could about the business and found this place. Sunk my life savings into it, but the game hasn’t gone my way. Hoped you’d tell me where I’ve gone wrong, dear fellow.”

“Let’s take a look inside,” I suggested.

Third, décor. An easyish fix most of the time. We walked in through the front door. If Mastiff’s own eyes couldn’t tell him where he’d gone wrong, nothing short of a burning bush on a Sinai mountaintop could.

As soon as I saw his interior I decided this would be an easy job. All I needed was to find a couple of crowbars and a flamethrower.