My eyes travel stage right and freeze. Suddenly I understand the demarcation.
Sota Gamagori is immense in both body and presence. He’s about five and a half feet tall and at least two hundred and fifty jowly pounds sheathed in two suits worth of Armani fabric, but I don’t get any sense of softness about him. He’s built like the prow of an icebreaker. His hair is a bulletproof black flat top, and underneath it his eyes devour the auditorium like miniature event horizons. Unlike Clive Reese, this is the only face I’ve ever seen him wear. Like Reese, Sota Gamagori also spends a lot of time and money in the town. His passion is Three Saints, Superstition Bay’s hospital. He’s donated a ton of money to it, possibly literally. They installed a helipad two months ago, a first for this area.
Sota Gamagori and Clive Reese have been at each other’s throats for months, a tough but gradually escalating series of conflicts that have left blood spatters, broken bones and police reports, and sooner or later is bound to produce a body. At least for tonight, though, a truce seems to have been called. Tonight, the Montagues and Capulets have a common enemy. Me.
A folding chair is brought out from the wings and placed in between the two paterfamiliases. I’m escorted to the chair and slammed down into it, but at least they let me walk that far. I put a mask of politeness to disguise my concern.
“Mister DeLong,” Clive Reese says, and I can tell it’s an effort to keep himself from roaring, “would you mind explaining to me why you decided to break into my home tonight?”
“Tough question,” I say. “Probably has something to do with a young woman being held prisoner in her own home.”
He makes a face like a frog just farted on his tongue. “I heard that about you. You just can’t leave well enough alone sometimes.”
“Depends on your point of view. You think I’m intruding on your turf. I think you had your own daughter imprisoned in your house. Guess who the law would side with.”
“This has nothing to do with the law, either human or the Aegis.”
I can’t help sighing. “I’m not going to go around and round with you, Reese. You did what you did and to hell with semantics. All I did was what was right.”
“You’re a fucking idiot, DeLong. Let me tell you something else, too: if people die tonight, it’s all your fault.”
“Yeah, your attack dog here said that I’ve doomed this town, but he wouldn’t explain. Just what is it that you say I’ve done?”
Reese beckons and Hollett climbs the stage to stand next to him. “You’ve met before, right?” Reese asks him.
“A couple of times.”
“How long since you’ve seen him?”
“Six years, in China. Give or take.”
“The Song Shan mountain,” I add.
“You cost me half a million dollars.”
“You were trying to steal dragon eggs.”
“You never even asked who they were for.”
“Didn’t matter. Whoever they were for wasn’t supposed to have them.”
“Then we’ll just overlook the fact that you were there to steal them yourself.”
“The Aegis was going to relocate them, not try to farm raise them.”
“Still boils down to stealing.”
“Both of you shut up.” Sota Gamagori chimes in. His voice is as massive as his body and as polished, without any trace of accent. Clive Reese stabs a red glare at his Japanese counterpart.
“Don’t even think of talking to my man that way,” he all but snarls.
“Then you get him to focus. We do not have time to waste.” Gamagori fixes Hollett with those cannon-bore eyes as he jerks his head at me. “Can he be trusted?”
Hollett looks from Reese to Gamagori. Reese doesn’t do or say anything to oppose the question, so he says, “In a situation like this, yes. He’s got pitifully outmoded ethics and an entirely unreasonable sense of morals, but he won’t let anyone come to harm if he can help it.”
I’m beginning to feel like I missed a fork in the road. “Anyone care to catch me up?”
“There was a reason the children were kept separated,” Gamagori says. With his massive frame he could be inflicting some serious damage on me if he really wanted to, but luckily for me he seems far more composed than Clive Reese. “They have found, or created, some manner of supernatural weapon of mass destruction, and we fear that they mean to utilize it.”
I look around, waiting for the punchline. Nobody is smiling, but I’m not especially concerned. I’ve seen more than my share of purported magical WMD’s, and none of them have been worth the parchment the naive goofs who dreamed them up drew them on.
Some days it seems like every person on Earth who’s ever walked past a deck of Tarot cards has a plan to unleash some kind of magical apocalypse. Some clod always has aspirations of godhood and sundering humanity to his will, of opening some forbidden gate that will usher in a new age of darkness, or using some trinket that will Exterminate All Life As We Know It. You know what? It’s all bullshit. Even if there weren’t people like me knocking them down, it wouldn’t matter. The Earth is resilient and, though the evening news might not make it seem that way, so are her inhabitants. Some tyrant might one day finally succeed in laying the world low, but it’s sure not going to be two millennials from Louisiana.
“Oh, okay.” I don’t have to try to look unimpressed. “Mass destruction. Well. That changes everything, doesn’t it. Tell me a story. Take me back to the beginning.”
“Nobody was very happy when they first started seeing each other,” Reese starts. I don’t know how he manages to avoid my sarcasm. I wasn’t really trying to ration it, but he pushes blithely on. “We don’t even know how they met. Nobody in either of our families knew about the affair for months, but eventually their luck ran out and they were spotted together by my son Carter.”
“Would it have killed you to pick another letter, or was there a bulk discount on children’s wear with embroidered “C”s?”
The blood runs up Clive’s face like red in a thermometer. He jerks his head towards me and Hollett throws a tight left hook into my stomach. My body folds in half around the punch, and I start to gasp and choke as he stands back next to his boss. I might have hit my knees, but two more Reese cousins step in to catch hold of my arms and steady me. It’s a battle, but I use what composure I still have to throw a baleful glare in Clive’s direction.
I hate a man who can’t throw his own punches.
“Both of them were ordered to cut their romance off,” Gamagori continues. Good to know they have their stories straight. “That worked about as well as could be expected, given the passions of youth. Still, we knew that eventually the novelty would wear off and they would part ways.”
“But it didn’t, did it?” I only have half a lung’s worth of air, but it’s enough to talk. Reese leans forward, elbows on knees.
“I don’t know what you were told, DeLong, but I didn’t lock Celeste up just because she was hooking up with Gamagori’s son.”
Sota’s face is as unreadable as an Easter Island head. “And though I also disapproved of Kenta’s romance, I had other reasons to imprison him.”
“You were,” I cough, catch my breath, and continue, “you were keeping your man locked up, too?”
“Yes.”
“When did he go missing?”
“Yesterday our servant brought his dinner to his room. Kenta was gone.”
And the next morning he was part of the scenery at a pancake house, helping to bait the trap. “Why did you keep your children prisoner?” I ask.
“It was sadly necessary, given the situation.”
If my stare was a blade they’d both be hemorrhaging. “Your. Children. You locked them up like goddamn criminals. Why? What was so freaking important that you had to commit actual felonies?”
Reese isn’t amused by my outburst. “You met Celeste. What did you think of her?”
“She seemed like a nice kid. Maybe lacking in judgment a little bit, but what
do you expect from someone her age.”
“Yes, well, that’s what she wanted you to see. It’s what she wants everyone to see. The reality of it is she’s spent a lot of time perfecting her image. I don’t suppose you’d believe me when I say that she’s psychopathic.”
I have to admit; I wasn’t expecting him to say that. If he’d said she’d been a spoiled brat I’d have believed him, but nothing I’d seen from Celeste Reese had suggested any kind of mental illness. Granted, I haven’t had much experience when it comes to human monsters, but I’ve met enough fanatics, servants, slaves and thralls to have at least a passing familiarity with headcases to know when I’m talking to one. If Calvin Reese is on the level, I haven’t talked to enough. Absolutely nothing that Celeste did or said set off any warning bells, but there’s no upside I can see to her father claiming she has a mental illness. I can’t discount his words out of hand, and I don’t like that a bit. It occurs to me that two of the goons still have a hold of my arms. I shake them off with annoyance.
“What are you talking about?”
“Run down the checklist. No empathy. No emotional grounding or connection. Utter and complete lack of remorse. Manipulative, charming and witty. They all apply. Even worse, she’s a psychopath with enough arcane knowledge to do a lot of damage. That’s why I was keeping her confined to the house. It took time to arrange care for her in a hospital that specializes in mentally ill sorceresses.”
“Kenta, too, was being kept in enforced isolation,” Sota Gamagori says, his deep voice an intonation. “He is… weak. Easily influenced. Easily confused. Fortunately for us all, he is no different when he is not with Celeste. Not long ago he let slip to one of his friends that the two of them were planning some kind of attack on the town, not thinking that his friends are only there for him because I pay them. When I found out about their plans I contacted Mr. Reese.”
“And I had to take action,” Reese says. “For the good of this backwater, second rate New Orleans I held my own daughter prisoner. It tore my heart out, but everyone around was safe. Until you came along.”
There’s a lot to think about, but I push it all down. I’m looking at Clive Reese and Sota Gamagori instead. Their faces are dead solemn, with no trace of indecision. They absolutely believe in what they’re saying, and neither of them are fools.
The same might not be said about me.
I’ve gotten things wrong before. I’m not superhuman. On occasion, my mistakes have caused lasting problems for myself or others, due to anything from bad intelligence to bad luck. This time it feels worse. It feels like I might have underestimated Celeste Reese, and possibly this whole situation. I don’t like the feeling.
I keep flashing back to my thoughts when I was breaking through the Reese mansion defenses. It felt so damn good to be on a mission again, to be more than some sorry supernatural rent-a-cop for a little while. What has my little bout of ego stroking cost? The sour feeling in my stomach and the inexorable tightening of my shoulder muscles is leading me to believe that I’ve done something far, far worse than I’ve ever done before. This time, I might have really stepped in it.
I think I’ve made a terrible, terrible mistake.
Eight
I take a couple of slow, measured breaths, settling myself down. I don’t like the revelation of Celeste Reese’s mental instability, and I don’t like how I managed to overlook it, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that she and Kenta actually managed to find a way to be a threat to the population. Of course, if they did, then she might be more likely to use it than someone who has both of their oars in the water.
“Okay, I fucked up. I admit that, but I’m still not convinced that they’ve got access to anything more threatening than sneezing powder. No matter what, though, there was absolutely no way I could have known any of this.”
“You could have asked.”
“Oh, sure. Nothing puts a kidnapper at ease like a bunch of questions.”
“You son of a …” Reese is on his feet, fists clenched. I wonder if this is the first time he’s going to hit someone himself. A part of me is looking forward to it.
Gamagori puts a stop to it with a single harsh bark. “Stop it, Mr. Reese. Later, there will be time for anger.” Reese breathes through his nose for a second, then sits down with imperfect grace.
“Mr. DeLong,” Gamagori continues, “it is imperative that we find Kenta and Celeste before they do any harm. We have people already out looking for them, but any help would be beneficial.”
Hollett isn’t even bothering to watch my expression. He already knows what I’m going to do, and to be honest it pisses me off. Not that he’s right, but that he’s that sure of me. I hold up my zip-tied wrists.
At Clive Reese’s nod Hollett comes over with his two metal claws. They pass through the industrial strength plastic like paper. I flick my arms, dropping the zip ties to the floor, and shake some circulation into my wrists.
“Okay,” I say, “the first thing I need to know is what they’ve found. What’s their plan?”
Reese stands again and begins to pace back and forth in a tight circle, an animal trapped in a strange pen. “We don’t know specifics, but we do know that whatever their idea is they put a lot of time and effort into it. They’ve managed to find some kind of power somewhere in this town and they mean to unleash it.”
“A power. Okay, well, at least that narrows it down a little bit. What kind of power?”
“We don’t know.”
“Okay, where is it?”
“We don’t know that, either.”
“Well, fuck everything, then. How the hell do you expect to find them?”
“We don’t. We expect you to.”
Of course. “What makes you think I can do what both of your families can’t?”
Sota Gamagori rises, and it’s like an island being born in the middle of the ocean. “They’ve taken care to make themselves invisible to us. They know our spells and charms inside and out, so they have the unique know how to do that. We can’t track them, and they’re both powerful enough to stay hidden long enough to succeed in whatever it is they’re planning. You they didn’t plan on, and any countermeasures they could take wouldn’t work on you anyway.”
“Plus, their being loose is entirely your fault,” Reese adds. “So, the way we figure it you owe it to us to try to help settle this before they do something really dangerous.”
“Do you have anything of theirs that might give me a clue as to what they’re planning? Diaries, sketchbooks, printouts, anything?”
“There was a binder in Celeste’s room when this all came to light,” Reese says. “I took it away from her when I put the house arrest spell lock on her. I’ve been keeping it in a safe in my study. My son Calvin is bringing it to us now. He should be here soon. You’ve met Calvin, if I remember right.”
“I’ve had the pleasure.”
“You’re a hell of a bad liar, aren’t you, DeLong? I know the history between you two. But he’s the next generation of both my family and my business.”
“Far be it for me to argue with a man in regard to his son, but you really ought to know that he’s in on their little scheme, too.”
“The hell you say?” Clive looks ready to spit fire.
“He was their point man when it came to roping me into their scheme. You say Celeste is bonkers? Fine. I only spent about five minutes with her. But Calvin’s her brother. I don’t think she could keep him in the dark quite so easily. That means he knows the truth about her, which means that he’s part of the problem and you had no idea about that. Your family keeps secrets, Clive. I wonder if yours does, too, Sota?”
Sota Gamagori doesn’t let anything as trivial as human emotion crease his face, but Clive isn’t as restrained. He jerks his chin at me, and Hollett, as obedient as his contract states, steps up and throws a left hook at my abdomen. I wrap my right arm against my body, taking the shot on the biceps rather than the ribs, then dip and twist my knees before firin
g a tight right uppercut that catches him on the side of the jaw. He rocks back, but less than a second later he regains his stance and fires a sizzling right cross that I slap aside with my left palm. We’re about to throw down in earnest when we’re violently separated by a small figure that leaps in between us.
It’s a woman, Japanese, and judging by bone-jarring impact of the stiff-arm palm strikes to our solar plexuses, remarkably strong. The blows send us reeling away from each other, rubbing our chests and staring at the woman standing between us.
“My daughter, Nariko,” Sota Gamagori says simply.
She’s barely over five feet in height and so slight as to be nearly weightless, but even at first glance it’s obvious that despite her petite frame and cherubic face you’d be a fool to think her harmless. She’s wearing dark slacks that are snug without being tight, allowing for free range of motion without the added liability of getting your clothes snagged on anything in your environment. Her top is also dark but mostly it’s hidden by a well-fit black leather jacket with plenty of pockets. Her hair is cut short, the only concession to style a tight sweep of a wave that curls under her rather too-large ears. She might have stepped whole and entire out of a Japanese theatrical epic.
But it’s her eyes that give her away. Her pupils look flat, almost matte black, more like cameras than eyes. They capture everything around her, and I can almost see the calculations whirring in her brain as she processes her environment and formulates plans on how to deal with it. I’m sure the plans are brutally efficient. She maintains her guard until she’s satisfied that the heated moment is over, then she crosses her arms over her thin chest and steps back next to her father. She’s not breathing hard.
No More Devils: A Visit to Superstition Bay Page 7
