A mob middle manager and some additional cronies bother Christine Heterodyne
one fine Thursday evening in March, 1942.  The middle manager acts weird,
asking repeatedly about someone called Dreamcutter.  (Woman, Short black
hair, about so tall...)  When he won't leave, and his cronies break in the
door, Christine bails out the back,  but follows them when they leave.

They proceed down Jackson Street, looking for more people to bother.  The
next person they find is Penny W., who is having dinner in the apartment
attached to her (husband's) garage.  She reacts more strongly to the
mobster's unwillingness to leave, spannering him in the head, and slamming
the door in his face.  Next, a ghostly hispanic girl floats through the
door.  Some miscommunication later, the girl floats back out.  Shots are
fired, which causes Granny Gunderson to bail her canasta game a few blocks
over, and Nora Stanwyck to abandon her dinner at a nearby greasy spoon.

Granny easily stands off the thugs, then the floating girl (she's visibly
floating above the ground) asks Granny if she's one of those people who
thinks she's better than everyone, to which Granny replies, with some
justification, "yes".  This causes freezy floaty girl (did I mention that
she's leaving frost on the ground) to attack Granny.  The thugs flee,
except the big one trying to carry his boss off, who Penny spanners in the
kneecaps.  Granny shoots up freezy floaty girl for a while, until Nora
finally gets a big pyrokinesis effect to connect, when freezy floaty girl
decids that Nora is a better target and attacks her.  Nora cooks her to
ectoplasm, much to everyone's surprise.

The cops who Penny called arrive, and take statements, but Nora interrupts
before Penny can tell about freezy floaty girl.  The cops are ushered off
after donuts and motherly advice from Granny.  Nora recognizes the unconcious
mob middle-manager as Samuel Smith, and has also heard of Dreamcutter, a
mysterious killer for hire with alleged psychic abilities (if you believe
in that sort of thing).

The next day, Granny talks to her son Tommy, who is a detective in the
LAPD, and learns that they know a little about Dreamcutter, who has been
suspected in at least one strange case where a victim was entirely
exsanguinated without visible wounds.

Nora asks around among her contacts, but learns very little that isn't
already known about Dreamcutter, who is allegedly not in town, and that
Mr. Smith worked for the protection racket part of the mob.

Christine lures Nora to her lab and offers to experiment on her, in order
to learn how Nora's pyrokinesis works, but Nora declines.  Christine got
samples of the ectoplasm from freezy floaty girl, and has injected some
into a rat, who is exhibiting sluggish behavior.

That evening, Penny is paid a visit by half a dozen mobsters, who try to
convince her not to spanner any future visiting mobsters, or else.  Penny
fails to get the point, so she has to spanner five of the six, but gets
shot in the process.  Nora, having been on her way to warn Penny about
possible future mob visits, gets a ride to the hospital in Penny's ambulance,
where she sweet-talks her way past the police outside Mr. Smith's door.

A little convincing later (a hot-foot does wonders for clearing the mind
of pain-killers) Mr. Smith revelas that he has no recollection of the
events of last night, but that he and his cronies were poking around a
disused warehouse on Church and Kimball with the intention of salvaging
the contents or turning it into a hideaway.

Nora collects Christine and they go exploring.  In the warehouse they find
a makeshift cell, where someone was being held, though not recently,
although the chains were recently cut.  They also find some shot up
electronic equipment, and the dessicated body of the shootist, a woman in
aviatrix gear and utility belt.  The body seems to have been exsanguinated
without marks, the M.O. of Dreamcutter.

Christine goes off to find a truck to lug off all the equipment and find
out what it does, while Nora pays a visit to the kneecapped thug in the
hospital, this time entering through the third-floor window.  After some
persuasion, the thug admits to being in the warehouse, where they found a
body of a Mexican woman (whose description matches freezy floaty girl)
chained in the cell, and Mr. Smith got agitated, had it cut it down, and
carried it off.  He returned shortly afterwards, and then they all set off
down Jackson street to bother people as described earlier.

Nora's conclusion is that the Mexican woman was captured and held by
Dreamcutter, who also killed the aviatrix, and then bailed town, leaving
the woman to starve to death.  Somehow Mr. Smith got posessed by her when
he and his cronies came poking into the warehouse, and set off looking for
Dreamcutter, until his brain was rendered temporarily non-functional by
Penny's spanner, whereupon the ghost manifested as freezy floaty girl and
the misunderstanding with Granny happened.