The Hermetic Detective (A Riga Hayworth Paranormal Mystery Book 7)

by Kirsten Weiss

  “And the kids are down for the count.” Donovan rose.

  Riga followed him up the stairs to the nursery, and they laid the children in their crib.

  “Thank you for them.” Donovan rested his muscular arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer.

  “You can take some credit for the process.” She touched their son’s back, the twins’ innocence swelling her heart. How blissfully unaware they were of the evils of this world.

  Pen, holding a tablet computer, strolled into the nursery. “I managed to enhance that photo of the chalk marks you took at the Sunset Towers.”

  “Fantastic,” Riga whispered.

  “Here.” Pen extended the tablet and Riga took it. “You were right. It was a sigil used to call a demon.”

  Brigitte soared through the door and landed on the thick carpet, knocking a striped, rubber ball. It careened into a wicker end table and ricocheted beneath the crib. “And it is time Pen begin her studies of demonology.”

  “That’s right, Brigitte.” Pen grimaced. “It’s all about me. And I’d rather not play with demons, thanks.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” the gargoyle said. “One does not play with ze demons, especially not this one. This demon is powerful. Pen discovered his name. Tell her.”

  Donovan straightened away from the crib. “Is saying the demon’s name out loud a good idea? Especially around…” He angled her head toward the twins.

  “No demonology in front of the children,” Pen whispered.

  The gargoyle scowled.

  “Let’s take this somewhere more private.” Riga crossed the hall to the master bedroom and ushered her niece inside. Pen dropped into an overstuffed white wingchair.

  The gargoyle hopped, ungainly, through the open door. She sprang atop the bed, rumpling the white coverlet.

  “And FYI, Pen,” Riga said, “Donovan’s right. Only speak a demon’s name aloud when you’re ready to use it against him.” She examined the photo of the boiler room on the computer. Whatever magic Pen had worked on the picture, she’d resolved the chalk marks to a circle of symbols and letters. Riga’s eyes widened. “He just spelled out the demon’s name.”

  “Is that normal?” Pen asked.

  Donovan walked into the room, scrubbing his hands on a green towel.

  “No.” Riga grinned. “But it makes my life easier.” She knew its name now. She had the demon.

  Brigitte sniffed. “Spelling it out like a child lacks style. Your sorcerer is an amateur.”

  “My sorcerer is over once I call that demon out,” Riga said.

  “Is he?” Brigitte asked.

  Riga shifted. “The solstice is at 9:38 AM tomorrow. Whatever dark magic they’ve got planned, that’s when it will happen.” She walked to the bookcase and unlatched it. Swinging the door open, she disappeared inside. A few minutes later, she reemerged with a thick, leather-bound book. Kneeling on the kilim, she spread it open on the coffee table, flipped through the pages. “Fortunately, this book lists the demons alphabeti…” She swallowed. Hell.

  “What’s wrong?” Donovan asked.

  “It’s an archdemon.” Riga rubbed her temple. An archdemon. She’d heard of them, never gone up against one. Her stomach churned. Scratch that, she had fought one, earlier this week. And lost.

  He frowned. “Archdemons? Are those the demonic version of archangels?”

  “Yes,” Riga said.

  “It is impressive,” Brigitte said.

  “Not impressive,” Riga snarled. “NOT impressive.” Disastrous. Deadly. Terrifying.

  “I meant it is impressive that your wards prevented its attack on this house,” Brigitte said. “Perhaps there are a few things you can teach Pen.”

  “That’s not the point!” Riga clawed her scalp. An archdemon. An archdemon! How had her wards held it off?

  “Explain,” Donovan said.

  “During yesterday’s attack,” Riga said, “it was a close thing. I could feel the wards shaking. But I was here, in the house, and I boosted their strength. Now that the archdemon has tested them, I can’t count on them holding. An entity with an archdemon’s power may be able to figure a way through.”

  “And if he pulls off this big magic tomorrow,” Donovan said, “he’ll be stronger.”

  “We need to take him out before he finishes his ritual,” Riga said. “The best time to do that is while he’s in the middle of the rite, distracted.”

  “Can’t we just call the cops?” Pen asked.

  “And tell them what?” Riga asked. “That a dementia patient told me something’s going down on the Solstice? That a senator’s aide is a sorcerer inhabited by a demon? Sheriff King would have listened. No one else will.” She rubbed the heel of her palm against her chest, pressing on the ache. Her best ally had been removed from the board.

  “We know when the attack is planned for,” Donovan said, “and we know where: the Sunset Towers. And we have a pretty good idea who the target is — Hallie Stile.”

  “A… How do you say?” Brigitte asked. “A senior facility is so much better than a hospital for ritual sacrifice. All those ripe souls for ze taking.”

  “Ripe?” Pen asked.

  “Ze souls of ze innocent are powerful aphrodisiacs to darkness, but so are ze souls of ze elderly.”

  “I don’t get it,” Pen said. “Aren’t babies and senior citizens sort of… opposites?”

  “How shall I express it?” the gargoyle asked. “The old are… ripe. Ready. Or so I have heard.” Brigitte sighed. “I have so much to teach you.”

  “I can’t wait,” Pen said, expressionless.

  “The senator’s wife,” Riga said, “we can’t be certain she’s a target. This could be a twisted plot to save her, by using magic to return her sanity.”

  Brigitte shrugged. “Does it matter? People will be sacrificed. You must stop the spell, banish the demon, kill the host.”

  “It’s so simple when you put it that way.” Riga folded her arms over her chest.

  “That is why I say it,” Brigitte said.

  On the bed, Riga’s cell phone rang.

  Riga scooped it up from beside Brigitte’s talons. “Hello?”

  “I got the dirt.” Dora coughed. “Sorry. Something in my throat.”

  “A cigarette?” Riga asked.

  “Aren’t we in a mood today? And no, the coffin nail’s in my mouth, not my throat. I’m thinking of switching to those e-cigs though. Ever tried one?”

  “No.” And she couldn’t imagine the newspaper editor vaping. Dora was old school — paper, ink, tobacco. “What do you have?”

  “What do you have?”

  Riga blew out her breath, collapsed onto the couch opposite Pen. “The senator’s aide, Tanhauser, has been lurking around the Sunset Towers. Senator Stile’s wife is a guest in its dementia ward.” Her thoughts flit to her first visit to the Towers, the private nurse reading in the hallway. Could the nurse work for the senator?

  “The wife is at the Sunset Towers? Is that a facility near you?”

  “South Shore,” Riga said.

  “So what’s Tanhauser doing there? Checking in on his boss’s wife out of the goodness of his heart?”

  “He’s practicing black magic.”

  Dora gasped, and there was a fit of coughing. “Oh, God,” she choked out. “I think I swallowed my cigarette.”

  “Those things are going to kill you one way or another.”

  “Forget the cigarettes! The occult? The senator’s aide is an occultist? Tell me you’ve got pictures.”

  “Not of him in the act, but I did get a shot of the ritual site in the basement of the Towers.”

  “And can you link Tanhauser to the site?”

  “Not yet.” Not the way Dora would need, and anyway, that wasn’t Riga’s goal. “Your turn.”

  “Tanhauser’s got a questionable past, but nothing that will stick. The police were called to his house once — a domestic dispute that went nowhere.”

  “I talked to his wife,�
�� Riga mused.

  “And?”

  “She hung up on me.” Riga leaned back, crossed her legs.

  “Wow. Someone didn’t want to talk to you? I’m shocked.”

  “She seemed frightened.”

  “She may have reason to be,” Dora said. “There are ugly rumors surrounding Tanhauser — drugs, sex with underage girls, that sort of thing. But no sooner do the rumors pop up than everyone involved goes mum.”

  “Payoffs?”

  “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  “You said it was in his past. How far in the past?” Riga asked.

  “He seemed to clean up his act five years ago, when he began working for the senator.”

  “Why would the senator hire him with that background?”

  “This stuff is buried deep, and it’s just rumor. Besides, Tanhauser knows his stuff. Stile was just another senator until Tanhauser came along. Then that reporter got at the senator’s wife, and Tanhauser spun it like nobody’s business.”

  “What was Tanhauser doing before he became Stile’s aide?” Riga asked.

  “PR. Media relations. You know the gig. You used to do it.”

  “Could he have sent that reporter after Hallie Stile?”

  Dora croaked a laugh. “I like the way you think. But if he did, the reporter didn’t give him up.”

  “And the senator?”

  “Real golden boy. Big on social issues — children, animals, old people. A foreign policy hawk, on the Senate subcommittee for Crime and Terrorism. But you must know all that.”

  “Yeah. I was hoping for information I couldn’t find online.”

  Dora took another drag. “I saw you were at the Stenger place.”

  “Saw me?”

  “You were in a photo. Your husband is news, darling, and I’ve got an alert set up whenever either of you makes news. So, spill. What was your take on the sovereign citizen blockade?”

  Riga thought about that. “I’m not sure I’d call them sovereign citizens.”

  “Oh?”

  “The protesters seemed a lot less angry than I expected. And they didn’t seem political.”

  “They’re protesting. Of course they’re political.”

  “Just because you protest the government, it doesn’t mean you’re a terrorist threat.” Riga tapped her foot against the coffee table.

  “Doesn’t mean you’re not.”

  “Seriously?”

  “What were you doing there?”

  Riga sighed. “We were trying to track down the senator.”

  “Any joy?”

  “We were interrupted. Our local sheriff was shot.”

  “I heard.” She inhaled. Exhaled.

  Riga imagined coils of smoke whirling about the editor’s head.

  “King’s a good man. How is he?” Dora asked.

  “I forgot you met him at our wedding. He’s still in a coma. How did you hear about the shooting?” Dora lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the attack had happened mere hours ago.

  “When a rightwing extremist group takes down a sheriff, it’s national news, dear.”

  “Rightwing extremists?” Riga thought about the swastika at the earlier murder scene. “Has any group taken credit for it?”

  “No, but the pundits are drawing lines between the shooting and the Stenger Farm standoff.”

  “Are they? How?” She hadn’t seen any skinheads at the Stenger Farm. Most of the men had been beneath cowboy hats.

  “I feel like a traitor to my profession saying it, but you really should watch TV.”

  “I haven’t had time. Did they name which group was responsible?”

  “No-o. Not surprising at this stage of the investigation. The FBI likes to play things close to the vest.”

  “The Stenger Farm protesters are focused on a specific issue — the Feds and a farm near Vegas. There’s no reason for them to go after a Tahoe sheriff.”

  “You think it’s connected to this Tanhauser business.”

  “I don’t have any evidence.”

  “Bullshit. It’s connected. What are you holding back?”

  “The sheriff was investigating Tanhauser. The timing seems more than a coincidence.” And someone had been bugging King’s office. But that was King’s story to reveal. She hoped he got a chance to tell it.

  “This plays right into Stile’s hands,” Dora said. “He’s been all over the news about sovereign citizens and domestic terrorists. If his man is behind this… Do you know what this means?”

  Pen tiptoed from the room, computer beneath her arm.

  “It means we’ve got no evidence,” Riga said.

  “Well, get some. And I’ll keep looking.”

  “Thanks, Dora. If you find anything, send it to me, will you?”

  “Sure thing, and right back atcha.” Dora hung up.

  Riga hurried after Pen and found her in the nursery. Her niece bent over the crib, watching the children.

  “Thanks for the tech assist, Pen. Enhancing the photos, I mean,” Riga whispered. “You’ve been wonderful. With everything.”

  She shrugged, walking into the hallway. “The kids are easy. It’s taking down this demon that worries me.”

  Riga followed, half-closing the door behind her. “Donovan and I will manage.”

  “Not alone you won’t. It’s an archdemon. I should go with you.”

  “I need you here, watching the twins.”

  “You can hire a babysitter for that. Brigitte says—”

  “Brigitte knows magic, but she doesn’t understand family. I can’t do what I need to do and worry about you.”

  “I understand.” Pen’s mercury gaze held no frustration, no annoyance, no pride. She simply… was, and Riga’s anxiety cooled.

  “I believe in you,” Riga said. “I know you can help. The problem is me. It’s always been me, from the moment I blew up my own alchemy lab. If you join us in this fight — and there will be a fight — I won’t be able to hold my focus. I’ll be thinking about you and your mother and everything you mean to us both. I’m sorry. It’s not you, Pen, it’s me.”

  Pen’s lips curved in a smile. “You’re dumping me?”

  Riga looked at the white carpet. “You’re the only person aside from Donovan I trust with the twins.”

  “Because of their magic,” Pen said.

  “You know about that?” Riga touched the small, silver cross in the hollow of her neck. “How?”

  “I can feel it every time I get near them. Even sometimes when I’m not. They’re buzzing with magic.” Pen blinked. “Wait. Don’t tell me you haven’t felt it?”

  “I’ve noticed Jack seems to suddenly appear in places he shouldn’t be. And I think Emma may have levitated my Tarot cards. But I haven’t felt their magic.”

  “Maybe you’re too close? I mean, they were literally inside you for nine months.”

  “Maybe.” And maybe Pen knew more about magic than Riga had given her credit for. But there was still no way she was coming to the Towers tomorrow. “Pen, can I count on you to protect the twins tomorrow?”

  “Protect?” Two lines appeared between Pen’s brows. “You think the bad guys are coming to the house?”

  “No,” she said quickly. “We’re going to cut Tanhauser off at the source. But I need to know you’re here with them.”

  “If that’s what you want, I’ll stay behind. But some day, I’ll be doing the hard and dangerous bits.”

  “I know. But not this week.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The twins shrieked, battering Riga’s ears.

  Head pounding, Riga rubbed Emma’s back beneath her soft, white shirt. Riga stared out the kitchen window and swayed, cooing. Thunderheads massed over the lake, a mass of steel. The solstice was in little over an hour.

  Face red and swollen with tears, Emma wailed.

  Donovan, carrying Jack, paced the kitchen. The twins had cried steadily for the last two hours. They’d been changed, offered bottles, changed again, tempe
ratures checked. Nothing seemed to be wrong.

  Brigitte hunched on the granite counter, her stone shoulders pulled to her ears.

  At the breakfast table, Pen bit into a bagel. “They must—”

  Whatever she had to say was lost in Jack’s shriek.

  Donovan winced.

  “What did you say?” Riga asked.

  “I said, they must know something bad is going down.”

  And now the twins were prophetic as well? “Babies sometimes do this,” Riga shouted over the noise.

  Her niece shrugged. “Brigitte said—”

  “I don’t care what Brigitte said,” Riga snapped. Oh, hell. She hadn’t meant that. She turned to the gargoyle to apologize, but Brigitte sat on the counter, unmoving. Riga frowned. Two small blue buds protruded from the gargoyle’s ears.

  Brigitte was wearing earplugs, and Riga felt a surge of jealousy. If only she could tune out.

  “The twins can’t possibly know…” Frustration tightening her muscles, Riga turned toward the windows. Her holstered Glock weighed the belt around her black linen slacks, scraped against her bare skin.

  She had to relax, calm down, because babies picked up on non-verbal cues of stress. But Riga was ready to weep. Two hours of shrieking, while she’d tried to collect her gear, to mentally prepare, to strategize their assault on the Sunset Towers.

  Donovan’s gaze moved to the clock above the stove. “We need to go.”

  Riga’s jaw tightened. She didn’t want to leave the twins like this, but there was no choice. The babies weren’t sick, and eventually they would tire of crying. “Pen, are you okay with this?”

  “I can handle them. They’re babies. What’s the worst that can happen?”

  Riga stared at her. “You did not just say that.”

  “What’s the…” Pen’s face fell. “Oh.”

  “Good thing we’re not superstitious,” Donovan said. “What do you think, Riga? Crib?”

  “Maybe they’ll fall asleep there,” Riga said, not believing it.

  They took the red-faced twins to the nursery and laid them in their crib. Book beneath her arm, Pen dropped into the lounge chair and pulled a set of earplugs from her pocket. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I can still hear them crying. The earplugs only muffle the sound.”