“I do,” Karyn said. “It’s not going to be just him, either. We need to figure out how to fix these guys.”
“If I concede, for the moment, that these men are infested with demons, I still don’t know how that’s possible, nor how to get rid of them.”
“You can’t exorcise them?”
“There are dozens of documented approaches to that problem, and as far as I can tell they are all completely worthless. Most of them do nothing at all. A handful kill the host, which at least gives the exorcist the opportunity to claim that the soul is free, not that anybody could contradict him at that point.” She cleared her throat. “I don’t believe for a minute that you really need me to fix those men, or that you even care what happens to them. What is really going on here?”
Karyn searched her mind for an explanation that would hold up to more than a moment’s scrutiny, but she came up with nothing before Elliot continued.
“It’s you, isn’t it?” Elliot asked. “You were at the old prison, and now you’re in the same boat as these guys.”
“No. Definitely not.”
Whether something in her voice gave it away or whether Elliot was sharper than Karyn gave her credit for, Elliot jumped straight to the answer. “It’s Anna, then.” She didn’t even have the good grace to frame it as a question.
“I don’t—”
Elliot cut her off. “How bad is she?”
“It’s . . . under control. She’s leaving the magic alone, which we think keeps it from progressing as quickly.”
“I don’t know whether to believe that. I can’t help you if you won’t be straight with me.”
Karyn’s fingers tightened on the chair. “I can’t trust you without some documentation.”
“If that’s the level of trust we have, this won’t go very far. You know that.”
Man, she was relentless. Every angle, over and over. The hell of it was, Karyn did need her help. “Give me something. A show of good faith.”
“Like what?”
“Tell me what you know about Belial,” Karyn said.
“That’s . . . a name to conjure by, as the saying goes.” There was a sound as Elliot shifted in her chair. “It’s a name that shows up in the Old Testament quite a bit, but not necessarily as a name. You know how translations work—the word often stands in for ‘worthless’ or ‘perversion’ or something like that. In other documents, it’s more specifically a demon or a fallen angel. An enemy of God. In some sources, the name is used instead of Satan or Lucifer to refer to the Lord of Hell.”
She paused, perhaps to see if that nugget was enough to count as good faith. Karyn waited, and sure enough, she continued.
“The problem with figuring out anything about demons is that the source documents are terrible. Sometimes there are translation issues, sometimes the authors are mistaken, and sometimes the authors are outright lying, to throw off would-be successors. Sometimes the names are reused by what seem to be different entities entirely. And sometimes the demons lie.”
“Imagine that.”
“The upshot is that I’m not sure I have anything reliable to convey on the subject. If you could give me some more context, I might be able to figure out at least in what general area to start.”
“I have to have something papered up,” Karyn said. She could hear the naked curiosity in Elliot’s voice, a drive to know that was so intense it leaked into her every word. Why couldn’t the woman just work something out? She had to know that the crew had no reason to trust her, not to begin with and certainly not after the shenanigans she’d pulled with Nail and his brother.
“You don’t get it. I can’t do this on the books. Not without getting something big in return. I’m not the final authority on this. I need my boss to sign off, not to mention a U.S. Attorney.” A rustling as she moved some papers. “I shouldn’t even be talking about this on the phone.”
“Figure something out,” Karyn said.
“Goddammit, I—”
Karyn hung up.
Chapter 6
I could run, Genevieve thought. It would be so easy. “Run” wasn’t even the right word—she’d just start walking and not come back. How long would it be before Sobell and Belial caught on? Six hours? Eight? How far could she get in eight hours?
“Not far enough,” she muttered. It would be little more than a head start, in any case. Sobell had “requested” a lock of her hair before sending her out. The reason he’d given was plausible on its face: “If he takes it into his head to hold you hostage, or anything so absurd as that, I’ll want to be able to track you down and get you out of there.” Uh-huh. The operative part of the sentence was “track you down,” and everybody in the room had known it.
She’d given him the hair without, she thought, the slightest hesitation or outward sign of reluctance, though she’d felt queasy as she wondered what else he could do with it besides track her down. There was nothing she could do, though. Her loyalty was already in question, to some degree, and giving either Sobell or Belial any reason to doubt her would end very badly indeed.
Instead of running, she headed toward the 7-Eleven, where she’d arranged for a taxi to pick her up so she could run errands on Sobell’s behalf. She’d protested, at first. Sure, Sobell needed to keep out of sight, and it was probably best for Belial to do the same, but surely Tran could have given her a ride. But no—Tran had, somewhat frantically, insisted that even that wasn’t safe. Then she’d handed Sobell a piece of paper. “I can’t do you any good here,” she’d said. “I’m leaving. Here’s a burner number if you need me. Don’t call it. A simple text will do. ‘S.O.S.’” Sobell had simply nodded and put the paper in his shirt pocket. He’d said nothing as Tran let herself out.
When Genevieve got to the 7-Eleven, the taxi was nowhere in sight. She checked her phone. She was a little early. It still rankled. She’d vastly have preferred to get around under her own power. She had suggested just getting a ride to her car, but Tran and Sobell had both warned her against that.
This was impossible. It was one thing to have a warrant out on you for an unpaid parking ticket or a drunk and disorderly, but the idea that Sobell was going to avoid the FBI for murder and racketeering was insane.
How does this end? Genevieve asked herself for the thousandth time. Even if Sobell found whatever it was he was looking for and got himself out of his supernatural troubles—a big “if” given the constraints—he was now a fugitive. It was hard to imagine how any amount of legal chicanery could keep him out of prison now. Would she be implicated as part of his criminal organization? Of course. How else would that go down?
The other likely outcome was that he stayed ahead of the feds but didn’t solve his occult problem, and he dropped dead. All things being equal, that might be the best for Genevieve.
In the short-term, maybe. But there’s so much I won’t learn . . . And not least of that was the trick of staving off the inevitable. The magic would claim her eventually, as it had Hector, and she only had to look at him to get a very good feel for how awful that could be.
Sobell was the only person she knew of who might be able to find a solution to that problem, and with all his resources and knowledge even he didn’t know what it was yet. She’d never manage to find it without him. Not in a million years.
The taxi, a cartoonish yellow minivan, pulled up and a wave of heat and exhaust rolled up with it, enveloping Genevieve in a smothering cloud. It was September but still damn hot, the sun glaring down as if it were pissed off at her personally, and the heat baking off the van didn’t help. Sweat trickled down her forehead, the small of her back.
She got in. The driver barely glanced in the rearview mirror at her, and she still felt as if he was surreptitiously making note of her for a later report to the authorities. Tran’s paranoia rubbing off. She gave the guy the address and sat back as he drove. The taxi was old, the i
nterior abused. A cigarette burn decorated the upholstery near her leg despite the No Smoking sign on the back of the seat ahead of her, and the floor was grimy and stained. It smelled like french fries in there.
She waited a few blocks, continually checking the driver. He had some kind of frenetic drum-and-bass music playing up front and he seemed totally absorbed in that, paying little attention to the road and even less to Genevieve. She got out her phone and dialed.
No answer at Anna’s old number, so she moved on to the backup burners, as usual. On the third one, somebody picked up halfway through the first ring.
“Hello?” Anna’s voice.
“Jesus, it’s good to hear you.”
A pause. It went on for too long. “Gen.” Not quite a question, not quite a statement, her tone was impossible to read.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Karyn? Nail?”
“Both good.” Another pause, during which it felt as if Anna was beaming resentment at her through the phone.
“Good? That’s all you got? Up until the other night, Karyn was basically catatonic.”
No answer at all this time. Only the static of the line and something that might conceivably have been Anna’s breathing indicated that she hadn’t hung up.
Genevieve sighed. “Look, things are messed up, I know. I mean, hell, I panicked, you know?”
“I get that.” Maybe she did, but that wasn’t a forgiving tone of voice. Neutral at best.
“You sure about that?”
“How long do I have, Gen?”
“What . . . I mean . . .” She had to be asking about the demon Belial had afflicted her with. “We’ll fix it,” she said, without the foggiest idea how. She glanced at the driver and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Maybe Sobell knows something. He’ll help us, if we—”
“How long?”
“I don’t know. Van Horn’s entourage—they were all Brotherhood people.” When, exactly, Belial had taken over that cult and planted demons into his closest acolytes she didn’t know. “Months, I guess . . .”
“I’m gonna hurt someone, Gen.”
“Wait—who?”
“I don’t know yet, but it’s gonna happen.”
“We’ll fix this, I swear. I’m so sorry. Everything just got messed up. There was nothing I could do.”
“I know.”
She kept agreeing, but it didn’t make Genevieve feel any better. It sounded perfunctory, as if she was just getting the obligatory responses out of the way. “Sobell can help us, I’m almost sure of it.”
“Sobell’s dying. He can’t even help himself.”
Genevieve pressed against the window. She wanted to curl up and go to sleep here, forget about all this shit. Even shacking up with Anna in that horrible school building, lying together on the grimy tile or dirty concrete, had been a huge step above this. She hadn’t felt this disconnected, this adrift since her parents’ divorce when she was twelve, watching the day-to-day activities of the stream of people around her go on uninterrupted while her family tore itself into awkward, misshapen pieces. She’d gotten close to her father after that, eventually, and a couple of different girlfriends. A little goth/occult community, mostly full of posers, but comfortable enough. Her father had died, she’d broken up with the girlfriends and abandoned the posers, but by then there was Hector and the occult, and after that Sobell. Then Anna. It had all gone to hell, though. Hector had turned into a demon. Sobell, it had become clear, was nobody’s friend—a useful mentor, yes, and entertaining enough in his way, but he’d throw her piecemeal to wild dogs if he thought it convenient. And Genevieve had alienated Anna, and by extension Karyn—who, it had to be remembered, had never liked her much anyway. Nail was likely in the same category.
For the first time in years, she thought of calling her mom.
Now I know it’s getting bad.
“There’s nobody I know who’s got a better chance.”
“Why would he help me?”
Genevieve had no answer. But surely, surely if they got his problem figured out, he’d have to help Anna, right? It would be . . . good business. Keeping his employees happy. “We’ll figure it out, okay? Look, we need to get together. Where are you guys?”
“Bye.”
The line went dead. Genevieve started to dial again and then gave it up. The whole conversation had been weird, like talking to somebody who’d been told a lot about Anna rather than talking to Anna herself. Even her cadence was stiff. Genevieve wanted to believe that was the demon talking, but probably not this soon. It was just that Anna had frozen her out.
She resisted the urge to chuck her phone out the window and instead put it back in her pocket. She settled in to watch the sidewalk and strip malls go by.
After about half an hour, she got to her first stop. It turned out to be a combination head shop and secondhand clothing store just off the main drag, hard to miss with its oversize hippy-dippy sign out front. The idea of Sobell setting foot on the same street as this place was so incongruous it brought a smile, however slight, to Genevieve’s face. The driver eased around the parked cars out front and parked near the corner, and Genevieve got out. She told the guy to sit tight for a bit, and then she went into the store. There was the scent of patchouli, of course, and some kind of incense, but it was pleasant enough and not overpowering. Tie-dyed everything hung from everywhere. There was a young woman behind the counter—a girl, really, no more than sixteen—who smiled and gave her a friendly greeting. It felt jarring. Was this how people normally interacted? She’d lost track.
Genevieve smiled back and, per instruction, asked for the manager. The girl went in back, emerging a minute later with an older version of herself who gave Genevieve the same smile.
“How can I help you?” the woman asked.
“The trunk.”
The woman’s smile didn’t waver. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
“There’s a trunk in back, or there had better be. I’m told you get a hundred bucks a month just to keep it back there and leave it alone.”
“Mmm.” The woman’s gaze darted over Genevieve’s body. Checking for a weapon, maybe? Some sort of reassessment was clearly being made. “Are you with the police?”
Genevieve laughed. “Do I look like I’m with the police?”
“You didn’t answer.”
“No. Not even close. I can open the damn box, though.”
The magic words, as Sobell had said they’d be. Genevieve wondered what the woman had been told. She wondered if Sobell himself had ever even been here, or if he’d dispatched someone else to set this up.
“Follow me,” the woman said.
Genevieve came around the counter, through the obligatory curtain of beads, and into the back, a combination office/stockroom that revealed the tie-dyed profusion out front for the warm-up act it was. The room was sizable, but there was barely space to move between crates of mysterious organic foods, boxes of candles, incense, and enough T-shirts to outfit the fans for an entire Grateful Dead tour.
I’d have paid this woman a hundred bucks just to invite me over and let me watch Sobell maneuver through all this.
The woman lifted a limp stack of dresses and put them on the office chair, then cleared a few boxes away, revealing the trunk against the back wall. It looked like an old army footlocker, aside from a few markings around the lock.
Genevieve squatted in front of it and got out a knife. Like every other goddamn thing, this would need a little blood. She held the blade to the end of her thumb, then paused, realizing the woman still stood behind her. “Could I get a little privacy?”
“Does the money stop? After this, I mean?”
“I don’t know.”
The woman nodded. She looked as though she wanted to ask another question, but after a moment’s hesitation
she nodded again and left. Genevieve supposed Sobell didn’t pick people for this kind of job who couldn’t keep their mouths shut.
She cut her thumb. A little blood in the right places plus the incantation Sobell had taught her, and the lock popped open. She opened the box.
Inside was a piece of luggage, one of the small carry-on types with wheels and a collapsible handle. She took it out and opened that, too.
Cash. A hundred and fifty grand, if nobody had messed with it, and the warding on the box should have ensured that. Also, a complete set of identification—driver’s license, passport, credit cards—for one Frederik Strauss, who looked suspiciously like Enoch Sobell; a small pistol with extra ammunition; a set of black candles; and a handful of pages.
In short, a getaway bag.
Genevieve took a five-thousand-dollar bundle of bills out of the suitcase and set it aside. Then she zipped the suitcase. Wheeling the suitcase behind her, she went back out front. She gave the manager a tight-lipped smile, tossed the five grand on the counter, and headed back to the taxi.
Her shoulders tensed as she stepped outside, and an awful hyperawareness came over her. Nothing occult or anything like that, but every person on the street, from the pair of women at the crosswalk to the teenager on his bike across the street, had suddenly acquired a new dimension that needed to be measured: how likely is this person to jack my suitcase? She’d carried cash for Sobell one other time, but it had been a quick trip from his office to her car, and she’d been escorted. This was wholly different. A hundred and fifty grand was ten years’ wages for most of the people down here, and the suitcase was stupidly conspicuous. Black, leather, probably not the most expensive available, but swank enough that it would fit with Sobell’s new persona. It looked ludicrous with her.
Somebody shouted behind her, and her heart lurched into her throat. She spun to see two kids blaze around the corner, the lagging one yelling something at the other. They both blew past her without a second glance, but the damage was done. She thought it might take a week for her pulse to come back down to normal, and it felt as if half the people on the street were staring at her for the way she’d jumped.
Sacrifices Page 7
