“Humans can’t endure…” she started to say, then shook her head. “How many times were you possessed? By how many demons?”
“I lost count after thirty. Usually a different one every night. Night after night I was a puppet, a prisoner in my own body. The physical pain was excruciating, but that was nothing compared to what it felt like inside my head. The torrents of psychic filth, like someone pissing inside your brain and carving their initials on the back of your eyelids just to show they were there—”
We stood in a grassy meadow under a warm summer sun. Caitlin pressed her finger to my lips.
“Shh,” she said. “I know. You don’t have to talk about it.”
“Where are we?” I squinted at a French manor at the top of a hill. “This isn’t one of my memories.”
“No. It’s one of mine. A peaceful place. I thought you might like it. How did you get away?”
I shook my head. “I don’t remember. I remember running. I got out somehow, and they chased me, but…there’s a place in the city, an occultists’ hangout with an invisible door. It pulled me inside, and I passed out cold on the carpet. A couple of friendly magicians found me and took me in, taught me, made me strong.”
Caitlin tilted her head, taking me in with a curious stare.
“You were already strong. Your survival is proof. I’m curious—I would like you to explain something.”
“Ask.”
“After what you endured at the hands of my kind, and knowing full well what I am, you still saved me. You not only saved me, you risked your life to do it. Why?”
I shrugged. The answer seemed obvious.
“Because what they were doing to you was wrong,” I said, “and it needed to be stopped. Doesn’t matter who you are. Doesn’t matter what you are. Wrong is wrong.”
She blinked.
“Curious,” she said again, and I found myself staring at my bedroom ceiling. Alone in the darkness, I put my palm on my chest and felt the beating of my heart.
#
Nothing felt entirely real as I turned on the shower, scrubbing my hair under the spray and turning over the events of the dream. I’d heard of shared dreams before, but I’d never expected to experience one firsthand. Or did I? For all I knew, the entire thing was just my imagination on overdrive. It wasn’t like I hadn’t been thinking about Caitlin.
Finding Artie Kaufman’s brother was priority one, but for that I needed a name. I’d been thinking about Artie’s house, how it was so much nicer than he should have been able to afford on a low-end porn director’s budget. If his brother had helped him pay for it, his name might be on the deed. I got out of the shower and toweled off.
“I love living in the future,” I muttered to myself as I sat down and called up the Clark County property information website. Property records are public information, and thanks to modern technology I just had to type in Artie’s address and let the computer do all the work. When the results came back, I shook my head at the screen.
“Owner: Carmichael-Sterling Nevada”
I’d heard of them. The Carmichael-Sterling Group was an out-of-state concern looking to make a play for some Vegas action. In the last year they’d bought up the old Silverlode Casino and a couple of off-Strip hotels, looking to rehab and reopen them under new management. Their big claim to fame, though, was the Enclave: a sixty-five-story luxury hotel and casino whose unfinished steel skeleton now loomed at the south end of Las Vegas Boulevard. When it finally opened its doors, word had it, the Enclave was going to make Dubai look like a beggar’s slum.
So why the hell were they paying for a porn merchant’s house out in Henderson? Public relations departments have nightmares about this sort of thing. I dialed their contact number and hit buttons until a live person got on the phone.
“Carmichael-Sterling Nevada, how may I direct your call?” chirped a perky voice on the other end of the line.
“Mr. Kaufman, please,” I said, hoping there was only one of them at the company. The receptionist asked me to hold, and after another couple of rings it went to voice mail.
“This is the desk of Sheldon Kaufman, director of finance,” said a deep, sonorous voice. “I’m away from my desk right now, but if you leave your information at the tone I’ll call you back as soon as I return. If this is an emergency, please call Arthur Shaw at extension—”
I hung up. Sheldon Kaufman. Pleased to meet you. Looked like the group’s finance guy was spending company funds on a dream house for his brother. I put on a button-down shirt and a pressed pair of slacks, digging out a pair of wire-rimmed glasses from my dresser drawer. They were fakes, nothing but plain glass in the frames, but they made a nice accessory when I was trying to project a certain image.
I wanted a closer look at Sheldon Kaufman’s office, and I knew exactly how I was going to get it.
18.
I made a second call before my drive over, putting on a thick Southern accent just to be safe and asking for the public relations department. They sent me to the voice mail for a woman named Meadow Brand, and again, I hung up without leaving a message. All I needed was a name.
Carmichael-Sterling had bought up a three-story wedge of granite and glass on the outskirts of the city, perfectly modern and perfectly forgettable. With a leather valise in hand, I jogged up a short flight of steps and through a softly whirring automatic door, adjusting my fake glasses as I cased the room.
A row of overstuffed powder-blue chairs curved along the inside of the lobby wall under the watchful eye of a rounded receptionist’s desk. Not many people around, a few coming and going from the elevator banks or wandering down the hallway behind the front desk, but my gaze immediately shot toward the security camera looking down from its steel perch in the corner of the room.
I put on a smile and strolled up to greet the receptionist. I could see the tilt of her computer monitor from where I stood, but not well enough to read her screen without being obvious. Between that and the lack of any kind of building directory on display, this wasn’t going to be the cakewalk I’d hoped for.
“Hi!” I said, “Peter Greyson, Las Vegas Sun. I’d like to speak with Meadow Brand, please.”
“Certainly, sir,” she said, her voice trailing off as she rattled her keyboard. “I’m sorry, I’m not seeing you on the schedule. Did you have an appointment?”
“No, this is regarding an urgent piece of breaking news. We’re running with it in this evening’s edition, and we’d really like to have an official comment from Carmichael-Sterling on the matter.”
She looked at me like she’d just bitten into a lemon. Dealing with this was above her pay grade. “Well, I’m sorry, sir, but she’s booked in meetings all day. I could possibly set up something for you tomorrow?”
I made a show of looking over my shoulder, then leaned toward the desk, pitching my voice low.
“You might want to tell Ms. Brand,” I said, “that our readers are going to be very curious about why the Carmichael-Sterling Group was bankrolling a Satan-worshipping porn director. Said director having been brutally murdered in a home your company paid for.”
Like I said, the real-estate connection was a PR person’s worst nightmare. No sense letting a good catastrophe go to waste. The receptionist paled and reached for her telephone.
“I’ll see what I can do, sir, if you could have a seat please?”
I wandered over by the chairs, watching in my peripheral vision as she cupped a hand over her mouth and whispered into the telephone. The back and forth went on for a couple of minutes before she finally hung up and called me over.
“Sir? Ms. Brand has an opening in her schedule. If you’d like to go up to her office, she’s in room 371 on the third floor. She’ll be free in about ten minutes.”
Probably frantically calling people, trying to figure out what I was about to confront her with and get her ducks in a row. “Great, thanks! Oh, before I go up, do you have a washroom?”
She pointed me to the men’s room down t
he hall, a short walk past the elevator banks. I ducked in just long enough to unzip my valise and pull out a sheaf of papers, random tax forms I’d picked up at the local library and scribbled numbers on. At a distance, they looked just boring enough to be important. I returned to the hall, walking fast and trying to look harried, and made a beeline to a couple of middle-manager types hanging out by hallway water cooler.
“Hi, sorry, this is my first day,” I said, trying to look helpless as I held up the papers. “I’m supposed to bring these to Mr. Kaufman’s office right away, but I have no idea where the finance department is. Can you point me in the right direction?”
“One floor up,” one of them told me. “Take the elevators up, go to the end of the hall, and turn left. Shel’s office is right there. I don’t think he’s in today, though.”
I thanked them profusely and strode back toward the lobby, hitting the stairwell and jogging up the steps two at a time. I’d only have a few minutes before Meadow started to wonder where I was. Sheldon Kaufman’s office was dark, his Ikea-grade furniture shadowed behind a small glass window. The doorknob barely jiggled when I turned it, locked up tight, but I’d come prepared for that possibility. After a moment listening for any oncoming foot traffic, I fished my lockpick kit out of the valise and selected a tension wrench and a slender metal rake.
I gritted my teeth as I slid the tools into the lock and felt along the pins for pressure. If anyone happened to stroll around the corner right now, I’d be sunk. Fortunately, most office buildings have laughably cheap interior locks, installed under the assumption that all they need to keep out guys like me is a sturdy front door and an alarm system. That’s a lousy assumption.
The tumblers clicked. I slid my picks back into the valise and let myself in. I’d barely lifted my foot over the threshold when I froze, a sudden sharp pressure flaring behind my sinuses. Like any sorcerer worth his salt, Sheldon had warded the place. If I let my eyes go slightly out of focus, a webwork of delicate saffron-yellow threads glowed against the navy-blue carpeting.
I used the same kind of wards to guard my apartment. If I tripped the spell, nothing would happen to me, but he’d instantly know someone had set foot on his territory. If he was really good, he might even get a mental image of me or worse, echoes of my thoughts. I could slice through the threads like a knife through butter, attacking the wards at their root and cutting them off before they could sound an alarm, but then he’d know he’d been invaded the next time he came back to the office.
I didn’t have time to do this the right way, taking hours to gently unravel and replace each strand of magic, covering my tracks. It was brute force or walk away, no other options. I didn’t want to put him on guard…or did I?
By now Sheldon had to know his brother was dead. He’d had some hand in Stacy’s murder, giving Artie the soul-trap, so he’d be worried and wondering if any evidence at the house pointed his way. He’d also know Caitlin was on the loose. I realized I was playing this the wrong way. I didn’t want Sheldon relaxed. I wanted him terrified. Scared people make stupid decisions.
I gathered my focus, gaze fixed at the middle of the floor, slowly raising the knife edge of my hand high above my head. A knot of tension rose, burbling up, filling my hand with trembling energy until I let out a sudden exhale of breath and dropped hard to one knee. My hand slammed down on the carpet. The threads of his warding spell unspooled like the parting of the Red Sea, whipping away and dissolving into thin air. When Sheldon came back, he’d know he had an uninvited visitor.
I rummaged through his desk, not entirely sure what I was looking for but hoping to find some kind of lead. All of his folders and binders were distressingly mundane. Apart from the wards, you’d never guess Sheldon Kaufman was anything but an ordinary accountant.
I pulled out his bottom drawer and found a .40-caliber pistol, a Sig Sauer P226 with matte black grips. Definitely not standard accounting gear. I left it untouched and checked out the rest of the office, feeling every passing minute weigh heavier on my shoulders.
His desk blotter drew my eye. He had a calendar-style pad, most of the boxes filled with scribbled notes on meeting this person or that or his various lunch reservations, except for Tuesdays. Every Tuesday was carefully circled, the lettering clear as he listed his golf arrangements.
“Red Rock Country Club,” I murmured. “Tomorrow morning. Sounds great, Sheldon, I’ll see you there.”
That was all I was going to get. Not the windfall of information I had hoped for, but at least I knew where he’d be tomorrow, assuming he didn’t break his routine. It was the closest thing I had to a lead, so it would have to do. I locked the door behind me and jogged up the stairs to the third floor.
I heard a brusque voice as I approached Meadow Brand’s open office door, and slowed down to listen to the one-sided conversation.
“—no, I just want to know what you were thinking. Were you thinking?” she snapped. “You’d better be there tomorrow. Lauren’s flying in from Seattle tonight, and we will get this sorted.”
I poked my head around the corner, giving a little wave. Meadow Brand sat behind her desk, a larger woman who knew how to dress for her curves. She held her desk phone in one hand and an iPhone in the other, tapping out a text message as she spoke.
“I have a reporter here, I have to go,” she said, hanging up. She flashed me a million-dollar smile and rose to shake my hand, her grip reassuring and firm. “Sorry about that, please, have a seat. I was starting to think you got lost.”
“The receptionist said you needed a few minutes. I didn’t want to rush you.” I nodded to the telephone. “Problems?”
“Nothing newsworthy,” she said with a practiced chuckle. “When it’s finished, the Enclave Resort and Casino will be the new heart of Las Vegas. You don’t build a piece of history without the occasional miscommunication.”
Something had nagged at the back of my mind, like an itch I couldn’t scratch, ever since I walked in the door. Glancing around the office, past a motivational poster of a balloon soaring over the Grand Canyon, I spotted the source. A foot-high kachina doll, a masked Hopi warrior in turquoise and black, perched on the shelf behind Meadow. I’d seen them before, mostly as tourist kitsch brought back from Arizona, but none of those blazed so strongly with magic that they left an imprint on my psychic retina. I was too slow to conceal my surprise. Meadow followed my gaze, looked back to me, and grinned.
19.
“Do you like it?” Meadow gestured at the kachina doll. “It’s not authentic, I’m afraid, I made it myself last summer. Arts and crafts are kind of my thing. Not as good as the real ones, but still, not bad for a first try, huh?”
“It’s great!” I told her, feeling my gut clench. I couldn’t tell what the doll was capable of, not without a closer inspection, but it told me one vital fact: Meadow Brand was some kind of magician, just like her coworker Sheldon. The two of them would have to know about each other. The question was, how close were they?
“So,” she said, folding her hands on the desk. “I know what you’re here about, and I’m glad you’re giving us a chance to set the record straight instead of just running off and printing wild innuendo. The truth is, the house in Henderson was purchased for Sheldon Kaufman, our director of finance. Like most of the group’s employees, he was relocated from our home office in Seattle once we launched the Enclave project and established Carmichael-Sterling Nevada as a subsidiary of our parent company. The house was a perk, you could say.”
“Sheldon Kaufman,” I said, nodding slowly and putting on my imaginary reporter hat. “So Artie Kaufman is…?”
“His brother. His estranged brother. The black sheep of the family, for what I hope are obvious reasons. A few months ago, they made an attempt at reconciliation, and since his brother was on the verge of homelessness Sheldon agreed to let him use the house. Sheldon, meanwhile, bought a condo closer to the office and started living there.
“Artie swore to Sheldon that he’d gotten
an office job and cleaned up his life. If Sheldon had any idea, any idea at all that anything untoward was happening in that house, he’d have evicted his brother immediately. As it stands, he’s very, very embarrassed by the whole affair, not to mention heartbroken over his brother’s death. I do hope you can respect his privacy, if you decide to go forward with this story.”
I made a show of thinking about it, adjusting my glasses and pretending to make a few notes.
“When you explain it that way,” I said, “I’m not sure there’s even a story worth running. It all sounds pretty cut and dried. I’ll talk to my editor, but I doubt we’ll pursue this any further. Personally, I’d rather be reporting on the Enclave’s progress. This city needs some positive news.”
“I agree wholeheartedly.” Meadow beamed. “Now, I’m not promising anything, but play your cards right and a certain someone might get invited to the preview-night press gala.”
“I’ll be there with bells on,” I said, shaking her hand as I rose from my chair.
The story was solid enough to be legit. I’d have believed it myself, if I didn’t already know the brothers were in dirty business up to their necks together. Of course, the best lies are always wrapped in verifiable truth. It makes the filling easier to swallow.
Out in the parking lot, strolling in the arid sunshine and turning the situation around and around in my mind, I barely noticed the windowless van pulling up alongside me.
Then someone jabbed a stubby plastic wand against the small of my back and hit me with eighty thousand volts of electricity.
Every muscle in my body went rigid, and I flopped like a fish on the pavement, hitting the ground hard. Faces blurred around me, hands lifting me, pushing me forward as the van’s side door flung open. The stun gun hit me again, firing against my hip. I couldn’t control my own limbs, couldn’t fight back as a black canvas bag dropped over my head and rough hands yanked my wrists behind my back, securing them with plastic zip-ties.
The Shadow Box: Paranormal Suspense and Dark Fantasy Thriller Novels Page 233
