“I will.” Evan reached in through the open window of the BMW and grabbed the flashlight and a small digital camera from the front seat. Then he opened the wide front door of Grayson Donne’s house of horrors and stepped inside.
Chapter 25
“DISCEDE AB HOC FAMULO DEI ...” Depart from this servant of God . . . The exorcism resonated in Brad’s human bones and he could feel the air pressure rising like a corona around Lily. He had to stop this before she lost her temper, because he didn’t think Claire Murphy would come back to fix the ceiling again. And he knew she couldn’t fix the planet if Lily broke it. Evan could make do with a cracked ceiling, but he’d been pretty emphatic about needing the planet in one piece.
The ritual had power, but since they weren’t Satan and weren’t inhabiting someone else’s body, the power didn’t go anywhere, just built in urgency with no direction. It was a distinctly human power, and he didn’t like touching it, but he figured only a graphic demonstration would stop it. So he took a deep breath, ignoring the impulse to destruction building with the words, and said “Te adiuro, Satan,” just as Bertrande LeRoux shouted, “Not yet! I don’t have the ruby!”
The bodyguards broke through the door, guns in hand. Brad hoped they’d misinterpreted the situation. He was pretty sure there’d be no more chess with Ellen Li if he killed Madame LeRoux, but it might be better than letting the cutthroat world of art theft find out that a priest and a little old lady had tried to rob them and actually got into the house.
“The door was unlocked,” Brad pointed out. Maybe they could get Matt Shields to fix it as part of his fee.
The snap of a round chambering reminded Brad that the bodyguards were still reacting to an emergency that didn’t exist. Yet. “I don’t think that will be necessary,” he said, but the driver with the Uzi didn’t budge.
Bullets couldn’t do him any permanent harm. They did smart, though. Mai Sien Chong’s housekeeper had shot him once, and he hadn’t liked it. But Lily had regained her sense of humor, if not composure. She patted Madame LeRoux’s hand. “It’s all right,” she said, “Satan isn’t here, so no harm is done, but it would be nice if your priest stopped chanting, since it is making your guards nervous. If you don’t want the ruby, please say so. In English, French, or Italian—I understand and speak all three tolerably well—but I hadn’t counted on Latin.”
In fact, Lily’s first priest had impressed upon her more Latin than Madame LeRoux’s priest would ever know, but it wouldn’t help the situation to tell him that.
“My son,” Madame LeRoux shook her head. “Michel, it’s not working.”
The priest buried his face in his hands. “You’re not supposed to be able to do that,” he muttered between his fingers.
Brad did not feel sorry for the man, but he still needed to trade Matt Shields’ ruby for his mother’s millions. “It was awkward,” he offered, though he could have meant in an ordinary way and hoped the damned priest took it that way. He didn’t want exorcists showing up on his doorstep on a regular basis.
Michel LeRoux—Father Michel—pulled his head out of his hands to glare at him. “What are you?” He asked it like an order.
Brad just raised an eyebrow. “Detectives?” he said and met more glares, but Madame LeRoux dismissed her firepower with a wave of a hand.
“We like to think we provide a distinctive service.”
Lily followed the bodyguards as far as the credenza against the wall—under the pentagram in the ceiling while Father Michel titled his head back and frowned—and returned with the brandy in one hand and a clutch of snifters dangling from their stems in the other. She poured, handed out drinks. Madame LeRoux took hers, sipped. “A fine brandy calms the nerves and raises the spirits,” she approved.
Father Michel didn’t touch his drink. Lily left it on the desk and leaned back in her chair, running a finger around the rim of a glass she’d taken for herself.
Brad took a sip, contemplated the rich bouquet while he gathered his thoughts, but Michel LeRoux still looked like he wanted to smite something.
“Why are you here?” Father Michel had his hand wrapped around the cross at his neck again. He was using it as a lifeline and Brad wondered what he’d seen, what they hadn’t hidden well enough against a spell aimed at commanding them, no matter whose spell or how it was intended against something else entirely.
“It’s my house.”
“That is no answer.”
If Father Michel expected an interdimensional confession he had badly misread the situation. But Madame LeRoux’s money was still not on the table, so Brad tried again with the backstory they had put in place four years ago. “My son was born in this town. He wanted to come home, and it seemed as good a place as any to open a business. Nothing more mysterious than that.”
“Evan Davis. We know what happened in New York. We know what was going on in that club—we’ve been watching him.”
Watching? The Black Masque? While Omage tortured and nearly murdered his son? And now this man wanted to exorcise him?
“This meeting is over.” Brad took a step around the desk. “And if you hurt Evan, your Uzi-toting muscle will not be able to help you.” He let a little of what he was show through in the glitter of his eyes. It was stupid, but Evan Davis belonged to Ariton. Brad would not tolerate threats against his Prince.
“Abomination!” Father Michel stood to face Brad eye-to-eye, his shoulders set for a fight he couldn’t possibly imagine. “I know what you are. My God will defend against you.”
Brad didn’t think so, not on either count. Figured he was going to need a new rug.
“I gather, then, that you did not come here to purchase the Lyon ruby?” Lily pushed back in her chair, interrupting the brewing disaster. She masked it well, but she was angrier than he was, and for more reasons. He was focused on the threat to Evan and didn’t really care about the fucking ruby. Lily still had all the balls in the air even if they were all spitting sparks.
Then Madame LeRoux said, “Sit down, Michel,” and tugged on the priest’s sleeve. “I apologize for my son. Our own family history shames us, but believe me that we are trying to make amends now.”
Lily fluttered blood- red fingertips, dismissing the apology as too little and far too late. “If you are looking for absolution, find a church. If you want the ruby, we need to talk money. Now would be best.”
Chapter 26
GRAYSON DONNE’S HOUSE OPENED ON either side of a grand hall painted with murals of pastoral scenes, more or less. An equally grand staircase rose to a gallery with an oak balustrade twined with carved bunches of grapes and a row of portraits watching the door from the upper hall. Bacchus, the grapes meant. He turned the flashlight on, checked to make sure it worked, then turned it off again. He might need the batteries later and was just as glad that the dim light inside the house made it impossible to see what the figures in the murals were doing among their painted trees. The floor was marble, pieced so that the veins of black and rust spread like heart’s blood throbbing through the house.
A crystal chandelier hung from the high- beamed ceiling and wall sconces were set at intervals between the murals, enough faux candles to light the room like Times Square for a party. He left them turned off, waited while his eyes adjusted to the shadows.
The woman at the dry cleaner had been right about the feel of the place. In spite of the open hall, the house felt close, guarded. Mostly, Evan couldn’t shake the feeling that it was waiting for something. Empty—he was pretty sure of that. Wasn’t going to let his guard down, though, not on the uncertain evidence of senses he didn’t fully understand. The house could be lying to him.
He first checked the parlor on the left, empty, as he’d expected, except for the heavy brocaded curtains drawn over the windows. His footsteps sounded strange in his ears, heavy and muffled, as if weighed down when he crossed to open the pocket doors on the right.
Nothing, though the marks on the threadbare Turkish carpet indicated a desk on
ce stood in front of the curtained window and the shapes of absent bookcases left bright holes in the shadows on the walls. Not the library Brad wanted him to look for, however. These were quiet rooms, and not just because the furniture was gone. Whatever terrors the house had seen, they hadn’t happened here. That left the stairs, or a hall leading to the back of the house. He took the hall. Basic rule—know your exits—and he didn’t know why that thought tumbled into his forebrain like a warning, but he was not stupid and he didn’t ignore things like that.
The light grew stronger as he moved toward the back of the house. Halfway down the hall the dining room was also empty, except for a big fireplace with a carved oak mantel and a small warming cupboard set into the wall above it. The room had a double door from the hall, and a narrow one that led from the kitchen. Afternoon light poured in through a cut-glass window that looked out on a sculpture garden. He thought the shapes looked familiar, but the glass fractured the light, distorting the squared hedges so he couldn’t quite process what had set off his back brain. With a mental note to check it out later, he moved on.
Farther down the hall, the kitchen opened to a back door with a hook for the key set into the frame. The morning room to the left had no curtains; diffuse light from the corner windows left no pools of warmth or shadow, but he figured the morning sun would be pretty spectacular. Pantry on the right. The kitchen had been modernized about sixty years ago, but now held nothing but rusting appliances and a narrow pantry staircase snaking up the back way. The staircase exuded an oily, claustrophobic dread the closer he got to it. He took that for the clue it was, and started up.
Bedrooms on the second floor—a lot of them—with doors opening onto a central corridor. The state had taken out the furniture for auction, but he could see the wear on the wood where heavy beds had stood, blocks of light and dark that marked where rugs had lain. Some of the rooms had plain walls, cream wallpaper over aged plaster. Some had elaborate decorations of leering satyrs and naked women with rounded curves who ran with outstretched arms and horrified glances cast behind them. The satyrs always caught up above the bright space where the head of the bed would have stood against the wall. Evan turned away from depictions that fell somewhere between cannibalism and rape, except that satyrs weren’t human. The women were prey.
Sometimes the running figures were naked boys instead, but the outcome was the same. It didn’t tell him anything he didn’t know already. Grayson Donne had been a sick fuck.
Evan found another staircase going up and took it, to a round turret room with an orrery suspended from the ceiling. A table or desk had stood under it, and curved shelves lined the walls. The movers had left behind a few jars, nearly empty and worthless, based on casual examination. Evan didn’t want to know what left those residues at the bottom of the jars, or what Donne had used them for.
Between the shelves four windows looked out to the four quarters and three of them looked down on the formal gardens. He stopped at the west window—from above he could see the pattern that had nudged at his memory. The yew hedges formed a maze encircled like a pentacle. Pebbled walks wandered purposefully through the maze, where figures of stone and bronze marked the key turnings. With the beds, mostly greenery but some in bloom, the garden formed a sigil, but not for summoning a daemon, he was sure of that.
He let his mind go wide- focus, imagined the shelves of books in the private study at home. He’d seen this mark before—Agrippa? Paracelsus? No. Then he had it. A confounding seal, that prevented the escape of a rebellious daemon. A daemon couldn’t say “no” to a master. He knew that, to his shame. But a daemon could twist a command out of true, do something unexpected and unintended with it. Lily had escaped the Russian priest that way, killing him and a small village along the way.
The garden below was meant to punish a daemon or hold it. A prison of sorts, facing west, and Paimon was prince of the west wind in the old lore—odd constraint on creatures that existed in a realm that seemed to have no connection to this one, except that it shared the same space somehow. Destroy a world in the second sphere and it died as surely in this one. Trap a daemon in a box or tangle it in that garden, it wasn’t going anywhere. Except that in the garden, Grayson Donne could watch. And Carlos Sanchez said they’d had no clothes. Evan turned away before the rage building behind his eyes turned into something with rain and wind behind it. Losing his temper wouldn’t help Matt Shields, so he focused on finding the secrets Donne’s turret room still held.
Tucked between the north and west windows, a rectangle of wood floor showed discoloration where a small carpet had worn away the finish. When Donne had lived here, the trapdoor would have been hidden under it. There was no handhold—Evan ran his hands over the braces for the shelves, looking for a mechanical release, and found it on the opposite wall.
Inside, a hidden staircase led down at an angle diagonal to the one he’d come up on. Evan found a switch, of all things, and flipped it. A series of naked bulbs gave little more light than a trail of candles. It was enough of an invitation to keep him moving and enough light to keep him from breaking his neck.
He’d have expected a secret passage to be rough and unfinished, but he found the way filled with paintings here as well—of rape and torture, and he guessed the satyr must be the devil, because other paintings showed Donne himself, or a close relative, naked on a throne above the flaming pit. In his hand he held a scepter of flame, and under his foot groveled the satyr. Evan wondered briefly how things had turned out for Donne in the afterlife, hoped he was burning. He was pretty sure the devil was laughing, Around the central figure of Grayson Donne milled the demon minions of hell, and at his left and right, other men, the features too specific to be an allegory. So Donne hadn’t been in this alone. Matt Shields had some explaining to do.
Evan pulled the digital camera out of his pocket and snapped a few pictures for evidence. He’d thought maybe he’d go back over the house when he was finished here, get a few shots of the women in the paintings as well. See if they could match the faces with missing persons’ reports. Halfway down the first flight inside the walls, he stopped at a narrow landing. Peepholes let into one of the undecorated bedrooms. On this side of the passage there was no need for secrecy, and a button glowed with pale electric light. Evan pushed it, and a panel slid open.
Now that he knew what he was looking for, he easily found the hidden door between this bedroom and the next, larger and more elaborately decorated than any of the others he’d seen so far. The master bedroom, Donne’s own. The paintings were evidence, he knew that now, but his breath tightened in his throat when he looked at them. Torture and rape, women and men both, and for a moment he thought he saw his own face on the wall, bound by chains and screaming.
His mind went away, didn’t come back until he was gasping for air in the passageway again, teeth clenched against a keening moan that he would not let go, not even alone. He was afraid that if he started, he would never stop, so he counted to ten, a fist pressed to his forehead to remind him to think, damn it, just put it aside and think. It wasn’t him. Grayson Donne had been miles away when Omage played his nasty little games. But he recognized his own face, wouldn’t be confused about something like that. Wasn’t going back in that room to check it out, though.
Down. The hidden staircase took him down. And somewhere, right about—yes, there it was, a release hidden in the eye of the devil in the nearest paintings. Donne hadn’t wanted anyone to stumble on this room uninvited.
Chapter 27
MONEY DIDN’T MAKE AMENDS FOR THE year Evan had spent in chains, driven insane so that his captors could use him as a battering ram between the universes. But Madame LeRoux said, “Ten million,” reached into a small but expensive purse and pulled out a Blackberry. “It was all I could raise on such short notice.”
Lily looked at the screen. “Euros.”
Half again as much—fifteen million—in dollars, so maybe money could make amends. The ruby was worth more but it was enou
gh to fulfill the contract. They didn’t expect Donne’s box to cost even a fraction of that at auction. Shields didn’t plan to stick around to spend the rest, so the price didn’t really matter.
Lily entered the agency’s account number and returned the Blackberry, brought out the transfer of ownership, and signed it. “You can have your lawyer look this over if you’d like, but it’s fairly standard. You agree to the description, but not the provenance.”
“Can you lie?’ Madame LeRoux asked. Now that the money was on the table, she’d relaxed and simply seemed curious.
“All the time,” Lily answered with a raised eyebrow, “but never in a deal.”
“Ah, but you can’t always trust the truth from the mouth of a stranger, can you?”
Lily shrugged, letting Madame LeRoux think what she wanted. “There are no promises on this table. Just a wire transfer and a stone.”
Father Michel had focused on Brad from the moment he walked in, but Lily had caught Bertrande LeRoux’s attention, and not for the usual reasons she turned heads.
“He is kind to you, then? This young man who holds you here?” Not entirely out of the blue, given the exorcism at the start of the meeting, but still not what she’d expected.
“No one holds me here.” Brad recognized the bitter smile, the one with the ages of planets in her eyes. Madame LeRoux nodded as if she’d just confirmed something she’d already worked out for herself. Father Michel might have had something unpleasant in his mouth, but Madame LeRoux tapped her cane lightly on her son’s knee. “We have what we came for. Let it go.”
“The boy—”
“You were wrong,” Madame LeRoux rose painfully from her chair. “And it appears I was as well. Let it go.”
Father Michel stared at the ceiling again, as if he could shatter the protections there with the power of a glance. Fortunately, he was human, and couldn’t. Daemon lords always kept score, though, so Lily added, “We’ll send you a bill for the door,” which made Madame LeRoux smile. “I always pay my debts,” she said, “and look forward to receiving it.”
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