by R. L. King
“But what about whenever this thing was created?” Stone pointed at the box photo. “Do you think this might be connected with an exorcist?”
“I couldn’t begin to say, Dr. Stone.” Father Reed took a deep breath. Suddenly, he didn’t look like he was enjoying the conversation any longer. “I won’t rule it out, of course. And should you happen to find out where this box and the cross are located, I’d be very interested in seeing them in person. They certainly look as if they belong with the Church.” He finished off his coffee and stood, glancing at his watch. “I hope I’ve answered at least some of your questions satisfactorily. I do apologize, but I have an appointment in a few minutes.”
“Of course.” It was clear to Stone that he wasn’t going to get anything else out of Father Reed—at least not now. “You have my card if you think of happen to think of anything. If you do, I’d very much appreciate a call.”
“If I do, I will certainly contact you.” Reed offered his hand again, and Stone shook it. “Thank you for coming by, Dr. Stone.”
Stone mulled over his new information as he walked the four blocks back to his car. If the Church had indeed owned the land where the box had been found, it was beginning to sound as if someone—either a clergyman or someone else knowledgeable enough to realize that imprisoning Archie’s heart in the box and interring it on holy ground would be sufficient to keep him under wraps, perhaps indefinitely—had been behind it. Whether this person (or persons) had been magically talented or merely highly devout was still up in the air, and he didn’t think at this point he’d be able to find out which was true.
If only he could get his hands on the box or the cross. They had to be somewhere, but now that he no longer had Johnny Cheng to consult with, his chances of finding out where had diminished significantly. His best bet was Maria Alvarez: she could be pretty damn tenacious when on the trail of some interesting artifact relevant to her areas of study. If she could manage to get some time with it, he was sure he could persuade her to let him at least take a look.
He got back to his office a little after five. Hubbard, Mortenson, and even Laura the admin had left by then, so aside from an Anthropology professor at the end of the hall holding a late office hour, he had the place to himself. He glanced at the paper to make sure there weren’t any new murders and noticed his voicemail light was on. Still skimming the headlines, he used magic to shut the door and then hit the button.
The first four messages were the typical stuff from students wanting to meet with him or asking questions about upcoming exams. The fifth was from Mortenson, wanting to schedule a meeting for next week. He let them wash over him, jotting down the occasional note but not really paying attention.
The sixth message was a female voice he didn’t recognize. “Dr. Stone? You don’t know me, but my name’s Grace Ruiz. You were talking to Father Reed today. I’m sorry I eavesdropped, but I had to tell you this. I know it’s going to sound weird, but if you’re trying to find out about demons—well…you shouldn’t. Please. I don’t think you realize how dangerous it could be. Could I talk to you? I’ll try calling back tomorrow during the day. Please, listen to me, though. Stay away from it.”
The line went dead.
Stone stared at the phone, only then realizing that he was gripping the paper so tightly that his fingers had torn holes in it.
Grace Ruiz, like hell.
He flung the paper at the trash can across the room. It slammed into the wall and landed on the floor next to the receptacle as he shoved his chair back and got up, fist still clenched.
“Archie, you bastard,” he murmured under his breath. “You might have fooled me once, but it won’t happen again.”
Chapter Thirty-One
True to her word, “Grace Ruiz” or whoever the hell she was called just after noon the next day. “Stone,” he snapped when he answered, unable to keep the sharp edge out of his voice. He’d already startled two students and Mortenson with it on earlier calls.
“Dr. Stone?” It was the same voice as the one on his voicemail. “This is Grace Ruiz. I left you a message last night?” She sounded tentative, nervous.
“Listen,” he said, his tone dripping with sarcasm. “I don’t know who you are or what you want—no, wait, actually I do. I know exactly what you want, Archie. I might have fallen for your little trick before, but you won’t fool me again. I told you—you’re not going to frighten me off this.”
There was a long pause. “Archie? I’m sorry, but I don’t know who that is. Is this Dr. Stone?”
He sighed. “All right, fine. I’ll play it your way for the moment, just so you know you’re not fooling anyone. What did you say your name was again?”
“Maria Graciela Ruiz. You can call me Grace. I was at St. Joseph’s yesterday, in the break room while you were talking to Father Reed.”
Stone did vaguely remember seeing someone else in the room, but he hadn’t paid much attention to her. “All right. Did you need something from me?”
Another long pause, then a swallow. “Like I said on the message—I know this is going to sound really weird. I—would there be any chance I could meet with you in person? It’s hard to do this on the phone.”
“Meet with me about what?”
“You’re the Dr. Stone who was working with the police about those murder cases, aren’t you?”
Stone frowned. It had been long enough since his photo had been published that he didn’t think anyone who didn’t know him would have remembered it. Of course, if this was Archie trying to deceive him again, of course he’d use that. “Listen, Ms. Ruiz or whatever your name is—I think you’d best not call me anymore. I don’t know what you want, but I can’t help you.”
“I know that.” She swallowed again. “I think I can help you. I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“Hurt? By what?”
The pause stretched out for nearly thirty seconds, until Stone thought perhaps she’d broken the connection. Finally, she said in a soft, resolute tone: “Demons.”
Now it was his turn to pause. “Demons.”
“Yes.”
“You think I’m in danger from demons.”
“Dr. Stone, I know it sounds crazy. I know you don’t believe me. But I really need to talk to you. If you’re messing with something you don’t understand, your life could be in danger.”
“And how do you know this?”
“I…Could we meet? Like I said, this is really hard to do on the phone.”
He considered. This could well be Archie trying to lure him off somewhere again. The thing—the demon—had already called him on the phone once, and had proven capable of getting around his mental shields, at least when he wasn’t expecting it. But he was expecting it this time. And he had managed to break Archie’s hold once he’d twigged to the fact that things weren’t making sense. “Fine,” he said. “We can meet, but I can’t get away until this afternoon.”
“That’s fine. This afternoon is good—I’m off at three. Do you know where the San Pedro Street Market is?”
Stone had passed it as he’d walked back to his car the previous day. “That’s the one with all the food places?”
“Yes. I’ll meet you in there, near the potato place? Does four o’clock work?”
“Yes, I’ll be there. And I’m warning you—if you are Archie and you’ve got anything planned, I’m ready for you this time. You won’t find me such an easy mark.”
“I don’t know who Archie is, but I promise you, I’m not him. Please be careful, Dr. Stone. You have to take this seriously. I’ll see you there.”
Stone hung up, more confused than ever. Assuming this girl was telling the truth and she wasn’t Archie playing his tricks again, who was she? What had she been doing at the church? And what did she know about demons?
She said she’d overheard him talking with Father Reed, or at least the p
art where he’d mentioned demons. Probably just some superstitious church volunteer, he decided. He didn’t like handing off his afternoon class to a TA for such a flimsy reason, but at this point, at least until he’d heard back from Maria Alvarez (assuming he did—he had no guarantee she’d even find anything about the box and its current location) he had no more leads to follow.
He was about to leave when someone knocked on his door.
He opened it on a young man with close-cropped green hair, wearing a black T-shirt and ripped jeans. “Hi, Dr. Stone,” he said. “Sorry if I’m bothering you.”
“No, no bother.” Stone couldn’t remember the kid’s name, but he recognized him as one of the students from his Occult in America course. “I can’t meet with you now, though—I was just heading out.”
“That’s okay,” he said. “It’ll just take a second. I did your extra-credit assignment, and I wanted to turn it in.” He unslung his black, patch-covered backpack from his shoulder and unzipped it.
“Which extra-credit assignment?” Stone asked, frowning.
“You know, the one about coming up with a supernatural explanation for those murders.” He pulled a stapled sheaf of papers from a binder and offered it to Stone. “Most of it I just made up—I figured it could be something like intelligent zombies, or ghouls, or something like that. But I did find some stuff that looked like those symbols you put up on the board.”
Stone froze. “You did?”
“Yeah. Looked pretty close anyway. I figured it was close enough to get credit.”
Stone flipped through the sheaf, skimming the text. Sure enough, toward the end were a series of hand-drawn symbols: one row consisted of the three Stone had written on the board the day he’d given the assignment, and three more rows beneath included several other, different ones. They weren’t well drawn, but they closely resembled sigils Stone, Eddie, and Ward had discovered in Eddie’s research material the past weekend. “Excellent work. Where did you find these?” he asked, careful to keep his tone even and only mildly interested.
“The library down at the Rosicrucian Museum. I remembered you mentioned it last quarter as a good place to find lots of weird occult texts, so I went down this weekend and poked around a little.”
Stone glanced at his watch. He’d need to leave soon if he was going to take care of a couple last-minute errands and get down to the meeting with Grace Ruiz early enough to scope the place out before she arrived. “Good job. I’ll take a look at this in more detail later, but I’ve no doubt you’ll get the extra credit. I’d like to take a look at the material where you found these. Can you tell me where it is?”
“Sure. The titles are in the footnotes, but the books were kinda hard to find.” He pulled out a piece of scratch paper and sketched a crude map of the library. “They were on the second shelf from the top over here, back in the corner. They were about demons and shit—er—stuff—like that. If they’re the same, it sounds like the guy killing those people was tryin’ to use demonology or something.”
“Yes, that was my thought too. A lot of nutters out in the world. Thank you, Mr.—” He glanced at the first page of the paper. “Mr. Lucas.”
“Yeah, no problem. See you in class tomorrow.”
Stone stood in his office doorway for a few moments, studying the sigils on the paper. He couldn’t read them, but perhaps if he compared them against the notes he’d brought home from his session with Eddie and Ward, he might be able to make sense of them. Damn, now he wished he hadn’t agreed to meet with Grace Ruiz—he could head to the library now and track down the books. Ah, well—he’d get the meeting out of the way and do it after. He couldn’t imagine it would take too long to politely listen to whatever crazy tale she told him and take his leave.
Chapter Thirty-Two
He got down to San Jose around three-thirty, which gave him half an hour to make sure Archie hadn’t posted any of his dust-devils around the area before he had to meet Grace. Yes, he was probably being far too paranoid about the whole thing—but better a little paranoid than caught by surprise in a public place in the middle of the afternoon.
The San Pedro Street Market was a series of small food stalls spread out inside two separate, warehouse-like buildings with an outdoor seating area in between and more communal tables inside. This time of the afternoon the place wasn’t full; a few mothers with children, students, and downtown workers were spread out around the tables, but most were unoccupied. The workers at the food stalls wiped down counters and tried not to look too bored. Aromas of all sorts of cuisines—Mexican, Asian, Indian—joined into a tantalizing mishmash.
Stone took a slow, meandering path that led him around first one building and then the other, surreptitiously examining each person with magical sight to make sure everybody’s aura was where it belonged. After Archie’s little stunt back in London, he’d gotten into the habit of taking a few minutes each morning to beef up his already formidable mental defenses—the effort of maintaining them tired him some, but only in the same way you might get tired from concentrating too hard on something for too long. It wouldn’t do him any permanent harm, and he was damned if he’d let Archie get under his skin again.
After he finished his circuit, he returned to the area near the stall selling loaded potatoes. He found an out-of-the way corner where he could keep an eye on the nearby seating and pulled up his disregarding spell. That way, he could see Grace come in and get a good look at her before revealing his presence.
She arrived five minutes early, coming in through the side door closest to the potato stall. Stone studied her for a moment: she was definitely the same young woman who’d been in the break room during his chat with Father Reed. In her early twenties, she wore faded, flared jeans embroidered with colorful flowers, a pink T-shirt, and sneakers, and carried a small leather bag over one shoulder. Her long, dark hair was gathered into a neat ponytail. More importantly, though, her aura pulsed strong, mostly untroubled, and the same brilliant gold as Father Reed’s. If this was Archie or one of his constructs, he’d stepped up his game.
She paused a moment, looking around. When she spotted Stone, she smiled and made a tentative wave.
Stone stared. She’d spotted him? That wasn’t supposed to happen! Ah, well—his spell wasn’t completely foolproof. Maybe the fact that she’d been specifically looking for him made it easier to see through. Either way, no point in lurking in the shadows any longer—he’d been made. He stepped out and headed in her direction. “Hello, Ms. Ruiz.”
“Dr. Stone. Thank you so much for coming. I know my phone call probably sounded really weird.” Her voice was soft but strong, with a slight but obvious Spanish accent.
“‘Really weird’ is my stock in trade, Ms. Ruiz. I’ll admit to being curious about what you were talking about. You seemed quite adamant about reaching me.” He indicated the general area with a gesture. “Would you like something? Cup of coffee or tea, perhaps?”
“No…thanks. I won’t take too much of your time.” She pulled out a chair and sat at one end of the nearest table, putting her bag in front of her.
Stone took the seat across from her. Closer up, he noticed she wasn’t wearing any makeup to enhance her plain but pleasant face, and a finely wrought silver crucifix hung around her neck on a delicate chain. “I’ve got nowhere to be for the rest of the afternoon. Take all the time you need. What’s all this about demons?”
“I know. You don’t believe. That’s okay. But…” Her hands played with the strap of her purse, but she met his gaze straight on. “Let me start at the beginning. You saw me at the church yesterday, right?”
He nodded. “In the break room. You were reading a book while I talked with Father Reed.”
“Yeah. I work at the church a few days a week, helping out with whatever needs to be done. Anyway, I’m sorry I overheard you—I don’t usually eavesdrop. But then I heard Father Reed say something about demons
. After you left, I copied your number from the card you gave him, while I was in his office to pick up some files. I saw what you do, teaching about the occult.” She paused. “Dr. Stone, do you mind if I ask you why you were asking about them?”
“About demons?”
She nodded.
He didn’t answer right away. “I’ll answer your question if you’ll answer mine: why are you so concerned about it?”
“You said on the phone you thought I was somebody named Archie. Who is Archie, and why did you think I was him?”
Hmm. Stone studied her with new interest. Despite her initial impression, Grace Ruiz was no shrinking violet. “It seems, Ms. Ruiz, that we’re talking past each other. Obviously, you do believe in demons, and you’re concerned about my getting involved with them. Why is that?”
“Because I know they’re real,” she said simply, her dark-brown eyes still fixed on him. “And I know they’re dangerous. People don’t take them seriously anymore. And especially after I found out what you did for a job, I had to warn you. If you go looking for them, sometimes they find you. Even if you don’t believe. I don’t want to see that happen to you.”
Again, Stone took a few seconds before answering. Grace Ruiz’s aura remained strong and unwavering—clearly she believed everything she was telling him, and if she was another Archie illusion, even his increased scrutiny wasn’t uncovering it. “Well,” he said at last, “I don’t think you have anything to worry about. I do appreciate the warning, but—”
