by Kat Cotton
Table of Contents
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 1
I FOLLOWED LILLY DOWN the hallway. She stepped so lightly, you couldn’t even hear her steps. Lithe, like a cat. Even her heels didn’t make a clank but seemed to glide above the floorboards.
I tried to do the same but my footfalls thudded loudly. She glared as though to silence me.
“Quiet,” she hissed.
“I’m trying,” I hissed back. “I’m not good at this.”
Not only was I not good, I didn’t exactly want to be here. No matter how Lilly justified it, this was breaking and entering. While it was a misdemeanor rather than a felony, it still could get you a one-year sentence. If we got caught, I wouldn’t have to take the rap since I’m an undercover cop, but it wouldn’t look good on my record either. I’d have black marks for both committing the crime and not discouraging Lilly.
I couldn’t exactly spell out to Lilly that this was a bad thing we were doing. For starters, I couldn’t exactly tell her I was an undercover cop, and if I told her about the consequences, she wouldn’t listen to me. If she did, she’d just brush away any arguments I had.
“Well, I couldn’t exactly get Nuno to be lookout for me,” she hissed. “Because of—” She waved her hand over her mouth, meaning he was mute.
I hadn’t really gotten the details behind Nuno’s muteness. I knew he could speak, if he wanted to but his voice came out as a shriek, like a banshee. You had to hear that noise for yourself to comprehend how awful it was. It wasn’t so much a sound as a sensation that cut to the bone, releasing all the things inside you that you never wanted to face. I hoped never to hear his voice again.
Nuno was definitely no good as a lookout.
Lilly suddenly stopped walking. She squatted down, peering at an apartment door. This must be it. Duke’s apartment.
Lilly pulled a pin out of her hair and waved me into position to cover her.
“So... umm... you’re experienced at this?” I whispered.
“If I was, I wouldn’t need you to cover me,” she said. “I’d be inside so fast.”
Thank goodness. When she’d suggested breaking into Duke’s apartment to look for clues to his disappearance, I’d assumed she’d be a top-notch lock picker.
I knew from my research that she had no prior convictions on record. The “on record” part of that was a big deal. One of the reasons I’d been send on this assignment, undercover as a performer with the Sequins & Daggers troupe, was because there was no history of any of their members going back further than the last year. Even with fingerprints and DNA, it’d seemed the three of them had sprung from nowhere.
That was suspicious enough in itself but the reason they’d attracted law enforcement attention was that wherever they toured, people died. Grisly deaths. We had no direct link between the troupe and those deaths. That’s what I was supposed to be looking for.
One thing I knew for sure but could never tell my boss was that all three of the troupe members had paranormal powers. Larry would never believe me, and would question my sanity. With powers of my own, I didn’t want to call attention to that kind of thing. I had good reason to think that murders involved demons in one form or another as well.
Lilly definitely hadn’t lied about not being experienced at picking locks. I’d have that lock open in less than a minute but she still fiddled around with the hair pin, no closer to opening that door than when she’d started. I held my breath, wanting to push her out of the way and do it myself, but not wanting to reveal my more criminal skills.
Still, the longer we spend in this hallway, the more chance of being caught.
I wasn’t even sure we’d find anything. Tomorrow I’d leave town with Sequin & Daggers for an interstate tour. I’d expected Lilly and Nuno to put the performance off when Duke disappeared but they said that wasn’t possible. The show must go on, blah, blah, blah.
We’d searched the entire town the past few days without turning up a thing, although I think half the places Lilly had asked me to check had been red herrings to get me out of the way. Meanwhile, she and Nuno delved into stuff they didn’t want me to know about. We hadn’t had one single clue about where he’d gone. Then Lilly had decided the final option was to check his apartment.
Lilly still fiddled with the lock when the elevator beeped.
Someone was coming.
“Budgerigar,” I said, using the code word Lilly had given me.
Footsteps sounded in the hallway, not even attempting to be quiet. I guess they didn’t need to be if they legitimately lived here, although that thudding would be annoying to the other residents.
Lilly and I exchanged looks. We had no cover story. Even though I’d been nervous as hell, I hadn’t expected anyone much to be home in the middle of the afternoon. A man in a suit approached. I got out my phone, figuring it’d just look like I was waiting for someone. Nothing suspicious about that, except this was a security apartment and no one had buzzed us up. We’d sneaked past the concierge.
The man stopped and stared at us.
“Are you right?” he asked.
I hoped Lilly would do the talking. She shimmered in and out of focus, suddenly no longer Lilly but Duke. Even her strappy yellow dress transformed into a vintage suit like Duke would wear. The only thing that didn’t change about her were the shoes on her feet. Oops. Slight oversight there. I just hoped the neighbor didn’t look down.
She’d done the transforming thing before, when a demon attacked during our last performance. I wasn’t sure if it was sham or how it worked. I mean, I could see the change in her just as much as her victim could but it seemed to only work while she kept eye contact with the victim. And that shimmering in and out of focus, I wasn’t sure if other people saw that too.
“Just testing out this lock,” Lilly said, her voice so much like Duke’s it made me jump.
The man nodded, looking confused. He kept on walking down the hallway. The two of us leaned against the wall until he opened his door and went inside.
I finally exhaled.
“Give me that damn pin,” I told Lilly. “We don’t have time to muck around.”
She raised her eyebrows, full of questions.
“I lived on the streets,” I told her, not wanting to even scratch the surface of my history. “I know a trick or too.”
Of course, I could’ve told her that from the start but I’d hoped we could do this with me just being an accessory, not the perp. I took the hair pin from her and opened the door.
“How?” she asked, wide eyed.
I shrugged. Once you know how to pick a lock, you never forgot and the lock on Duke’s place hadn’t even been tha
t complicated.
She opened the door and I followed her in.
It didn’t take much of my police ability to work out what had gone on. Judging from the disarray, he’d been taken from his apartment.
“Holy shit,” I said. “He put one helluva fight.”
Lilly just laughed. “Fight? There was no fight. Duke’s just a slob. He acts all pompous and demanding so you’d expect him to have a meticulously tidy home but the reality doesn’t match up.”
He lived like this all the time? How the hell did he find anything. I stepped over a pile of clothes on the floor, itching to pick them up but I didn’t want to tamper with anything.
“Well he obviously has been gone a while judging by the state of this pizza,” I said checking out the pizza box on the sofa.
Even the takeout pizza box didn’t mesh with my idea of Duke. He seemed like he’d be some kind of health nut. The type that only ate grass fed beef and organic vegetables.
Lilly raised her eyebrows then grinned.
“It’s not a clue?” I asked.
“Definitely not. Well, maybe. He usually has the sense to throw out food scraps before we go on tour. Otherwise he’d return to an place full of rats. But let’s snoop some more.”
“Investigate,” I said. “Not snoop.”
I needed to make that distinction even if Lilly didn’t.
“Let’s investigate, then. We’ll investigate the hell out of Duke’s apartment. There has to be some clue here.”
For all this mess, the place wasn’t a cheap rental. Like the rehearsal space the troupe used, you needed serious money to rent an place around here. More money than a performing troupe would make.
Lilly opened the door to what was obviously Duke’s bedroom.
“Should we go in there?” I asked. “It’s really infringing on his privacy.”
Lilly sighed and rolled her eyes. “We broke into his apartment. We need to find him. We can’t do that by being coy. Now help me lift the mattress. I want to see if he has girlie mags under there.”
Lilly’s eyes sparkled with mischief.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” I asked her.
“A little. When Duke comes back, I want blackmail material.”
There were no magazines under his mattress. Nothing at all except some fluff.
“Damn it,” Lilly said.
“You really expected something? Surely he’d just use the Internet for that kind of thing.”
She gave me a strange look then nodded. “Of course. Is there a computer here? Or maybe his phone?”
I couldn’t see a laptop or anything. We’d already been through the entire hard drive of the laptop in their office and hadn’t found anything helpful.
Clothes flew onto the bed as Lilly rummaged through Duke’s drawers. As she threw the clothes, I folded them and put them in piles. We didn’t need to make it too obvious we’d been here. Even if this place was a mess, we didn’t need to make things worse.
“Anything interesting?” I asked.
“Just that Duke buys really cheap underwear. He’s always struck me as an expensive underwear type of guy but these are the kind of jocks you’d wear once or twice then have to throw out.”
I didn’t want to ask Lilly how she knew so much about men’s underwear.
We went into the living area and moved every book on the bookshelf to check behind them. Then we checked less obvious places. Lilly took all the cushions off the sofa and ran her hands along the cracks.
“No evidence,” she said. “But I got two dollars and fifty-five cents.”
“To be honest, what are we looking for? I don’t think Duke is going to have a hidden message somewhere saying he’s at the old quarry or other suspicious spot.”
Lilly’s eyes widened. “We haven’t checked the quarry.”
I shook my head and put the cushions back on the sofa. I’d just been using that as an example. I wasn’t even sure if there was a quarry in town.
“I’m not sure what we’re looking for,” she said. “I thought he might’ve left something written down. Maybe someone had called him and he went off to meet them. Or maybe there’d be the signs of a struggle with a major clue.”
“Everything looks normal,” Lilly said. “But there might be something around here. Why can you have one of those weird visions of yours? That’d really help.”
I didn’t need to explain to her that weird visions didn’t happen on command, but she was right. It would be damn handy.
Chapter 2
I FOLLOWED LILLY INTO the kitchen alcove.
“It’s strange that he’s just disappeared,” I said.
“It sure is.” Then she smiled. “But the show must go on, as they say. If we let things go to ruin while he’s away, Duke will kill us when he returns.
Lilly opened the fridge.
“What are you doing?” I asked her. There’d be no evidence in the fridge.
“There’s perfectly good food in here. It’ll be ruined when Duke gets back though.” Lilly opened a milk carton and sniffed it then emptied the milk down the sink.
“You can’t do that. That’s tampering with evidence!”
She put some food containers on the counter.
“Evidence of what?” she asked. “That Duke had some kind of curry a few days ago?”
“It might be important. You don’t know.”
“It’s not important. It’s just food.” Her smiled suggested she knew more than she let on. “You can’t let perfectly good food go to waste.”
She grabbed a bag and began filling it up.
“We’re going on tour tomorrow, Lilly. This food isn’t going to last until you get back either.”
“I’ll make sandwiches I can eat on the way.”
“Not with that leftover tuna, you won’t. Nuno and I are going to be in the van with you.”
I wandered around the living area, trying to see if there was anything important we’d missed. There was no one thing that indicated what had happened to him though. All we knew was that he’d been expected at the rehearsal space and he hadn’t shown up.
I’d suggested reporting this to police as a missing persons case but both Lilly and Nuno had been so shocked by that.
“He will come back, you think?” I called to Lilly. I didn’t want her seeing my face as I asked.
“Positive.”
She actually did sound positive, like there was no question of his return at all. But how could she know that? Even a strong guy like Duke could easily disappear on the streets. He might have unhuman powers but that wouldn’t protect him against guns and other weapons. I’d seen enough in my time as a cop to know that nobody was safe.
I tried pulling books out of the bookcase again. There might be a note in one or something to let us know where he’d gone.
“You can’t be sure of that,” I said, not really wanting to bring her spirits down but not able to lie either.
“Oh yes I can. Duke’s protected, like me.”
I spun around to see Lilly cover her mouth. Lilly had told me she couldn’t die but I’d never found out any more about that.
“What do you mean?” I asked, but she turned her back and started singing. “Lilly, what do you mean?”
A loud crash from outside the apartment interrupted our conversation.
We’d been sprung. I knew it. That suit guy had called the cops. Lilly’s illusion hadn’t worked properly on him and he’d worked out we were breaking in. That was the only explanation.
I stepped forward, ready to explain, when the door smashed open and an ugly great demon crashed inside. The guy looked almost human. Just an extra big, extra slimy human. But there was no mistaking that smell like a combination of blue cheese and rotting fish. Demon smell.
“Shit!” I called out.
“You’d better handle this,” said Lilly, rushing back into the kitchen.
“Me? Why me?”
“You’re better at these things than I am.”
&n
bsp; Just because I had the power to vanquish demons didn’t mean I liked using it. After denying that power for ten years, recently I’d started working with my foster father Buzz to control it. That didn’t mean that I wanted to use. I still wasn’t sure how well I could control it and it left me drained. If I could, I’d rather use more mundane methods.
“Salt,” I called to Lilly.
I rushed at the demon. At least this one didn’t have razor claws just slimy, smelly skin. The demon roared as I booted it in the belly but didn’t go down. I booted it again, slamming my foot into his thigh, hoping to take him down. He was a strong bastard even if he didn’t seem big on the demon powers.
I had no weapons but I looked for something handy to use. Smelly socks, books and moldy pizza? Not exactly the kind of things that would repulse a demon.
Why didn’t Duke have a knife sitting around? The guy loved knives. His whole life revolved around knives. Yet he didn’t have a single one on hand when needed.
The demon grunted and lunged at me. I spun and kicked him again, this time my foot connecting with his side. Hard, so that the impact rebounded.
“Jayne,” Lilly called, throwing something at me. One of those tiny salt sachets.
“It’s a demon, not a chicken nugget,” I said but I tore open the sachet and pelted salt at the demon.
The salt hit him. The demon ripped at his face as the stench of searing flesh filled the air.
He roared. I ducked behind the sofa out of his way. I’d just made him angry.
Lilly throw another sachet at me. She stayed back, not wanting to get too close to the demon herself. She wouldn’t want demon gunk on her pretty dress.
As I ripped open the sachet, the demon smashed into the sofa. I dropped to the floor as the back edge of the sofa crashed into the wall. Meanwhile the demon bashed his way around the apartment.
I grabbed him from behind, rubbing the salt into his eyes.
“Knife,” I yelled to Lilly. There had to be one in the kitchen.
While she ran to get it, I held on tight to the demon. He might not be able to see but that didn’t stop him. He jerked around, trying to throw me off his back.
If the place had been a shambles when we’d arrived, it was a disaster now. The demon knocked down shelves and smashed everything into a mess on the floor. Books and clothes mashed together with pizza remains. A putrid smell came from somewhere, maybe the demon, maybe the mess.
