Roguish Demon

by Kat Cotton

  AT THE MARKET, I GOT the creepy feeling someone was following me. I was difficult to tell though with all those old ladies in a cheap meat frenzy. Still, I didn’t want to head straight to Timon in case there was someone. I took a detour through the dried foods section. I pretended to have an interest in a barrel of lentils so I could get a clear picture of my surroundings. As I looked around, I realised half the people at the market had a dodgy edge to them. There were a few swarthy guys lurking in the shadows and a guy in a business suit trying to look casual. Over by the beans, two women with hats obscuring their faces chatted while giving me sideways glances. Just because the old ladies seemed totally focussed on beating each other to bargains, didn’t mean that one of them wasn’t a mole. Jeepers.

  I cut down through the rows of polenta and discontinued foods. I couldn’t see anyone behind me but that might’ve meant that they were just really good at tailing people. I then turned down the fashion section, fashion meaning polyester old lady dresses. I’d just hidden behind a rack of them to see if anyone went by when I spotted the business suit man acting as though he was browsing the racks. Totally suspicious. No one would seriously look at those.

  I ducked under the rails of old lady dresses.

  I’m not sure how this businessman fit into the general scheme of things. Maybe Mrs Duffy had sent him to tail me, maybe the liderc had. But now the tailer would become the tailee and I’d be the one tracking him.

  He picked up a mauve frock and held it in front of himself while looking around. He couldn’t see me under the rack of clothes. If he put down his briefcase, then I could nab it and investigate him.

  Before I could make a move though, he’d taken the dress into the change room, well if you could call a curtained off area in the corner of the stall a change room. Why would he do that if he was tailing me?

  Then it dawned on me that he wasn’t tailing me. He wanted to buy the dress. For himself. That’s why he was acting suspiciously.

  I scrambled out of my hiding place and dusted myself off. Well, that was embarrassing.

  Since no one else was around, I figured I’d be safe to get to Timon.

  6 The Big Reveal

  I PUT THE VIAL OF LIQUID in my back pocket.

  “No, no! Not there. It’ll break and all my work will be for nothing. Put it somewhere safe. Not in your bag either. Here, I’ll wrap it up for you.”

  The liquid didn’t look that precious. It was just clear and had no smell. I’d been expecting something lurid and bubbling.

  “Na, that’s just for show,” Timon said. “People like the fancy stuff. Anyway, you have what you want, you can go now. And don’t bother coming back anytime soon because frankly, Clem, you are trouble.”

  That kind of hurt my feelings. I knew our history hadn’t been the best but I’d turned up and paid him this time. And there’d been minimal violence.

  I rushed out of the market area so I could take the vial to Duffy before Mrs Duffy got home from work. I wanted to be there to see the liderc take the potion. I’d need to gauge Mrs Duffy’s reaction and work out the best way to get her on board for the banishing.

  The plan was pretty simple and I’d have the rest of my money by the end of the night. Also, I’d totally fix Harry McConchie. Screw him and his trying to undercut me.

  When I got to Duffy’s, he rushed me inside.

  “She said she’s coming home earlier tonight. She’s not been feeling well.”

  Yeah, I could understand that after seeing her in the coffee shop. That woman was fading away. It was only through the power of her stubborn, smug personality that she was surviving so well.

  I handed him the vial.

  “He doesn’t have to drink it all. So long as he gets a few drops into him, it should work. Do you normally make him a drink when he’s here? Get him a glass of wine?”

  “He is fond of a glass of wine. Although I never offer him one. It might make suspicious if I offer now.” Duffy kept jingling the keys in his pocket and hoping from foot to foot.

  “Wait for your wife to offer then you go get it from the kitchen.”

  “Yes, brilliant. I can do that. So, what are you going to do? You need to hide somewhere so you can watch without her getting suspicious. You could hide in the linen closet.”

  “Except that it’s at the other end of the house and full of gold.”

  “Oh darn, I’d forgotten that. We need to find somewhere else.”

  “She thinks I’m coming to redo the pest control. I’ll just get in the kitchen and rummage around under the sink. That should be enough.”

  “Yes, right.”

  I got to work in the kitchen. I hoped there weren’t really pests in there because I hated creepy crawlies. Gooey, horned monsters and slimy demons were fine but cockroaches gave me the willies.

  I heard Mrs Duffy come in and the two of them chatted. Soon, the liderc would turn up and it’d be show time. I was surprised he wasn’t here already. Then I heard the third voice. Yes. I’d tried to think of some awesomely original incompletable task for him to do so he’d combust from the strain of doing it but I figured there was no need to be too clever so we had a sieve and bucket ready to go. He could fill the bucket with the sieve or die trying.

  Soon, Duffy came shuffling into the kitchen to get the wine. He had a gleam in his eyes and he kept jingling those keys. He rubbed his hands together and winked at me. The effect was totally disgusting. When he poured the wine and added the potion to it, he winked again.

  If he didn’t calm the fuck down, he’d give the game away. Nobody in this world gets that excited about getting someone a glass of wine.

  “Calm down,” I hissed at him.

  I lay on my back under the sink in a way that looked kind of pest controly. Duffy gave me very lame finger guns and took the wine back into the living room. I got up and headed into the other room to see the transformation.

  The liderc took the glass of wine. Duffy got all up in his face. No Duffy, not like that. Just relax and let the guy drink it.

  He set the wine on the table beside him as he explained something to Mrs Duffy. The two of them laughed. He wasn’t drinking the wine. Did he know? It had no smell and no taste, so he couldn’t pick it. Then he stood up. What the hell?

  He walked over to the stereo and turned on some music, some soft, laid back jazz. Surely now he’d sit back down and drink his drink, but he paced around the room. Duffy must be having a heart attack because even my heart raced.

  The liderc walked over and smoothed a strand of Mrs Duffy’s hair behind her ear. No wonder Duffy wanted him gone, having to watch someone act like that with his wife.

  Then Duffy jumped up suddenly.

  “Maybe I’ll have a glass of wine myself.”

  He came into the kitchen and got the wine bottle out. I followed him.

  “What’s going on? Why isn’t he drinking it?” he whispered at me.

  “I don’t know. You can’t force him. Offer to make a toast when you go back in. That way he’ll have to drink it.” I thought that was a pretty amazing idea.

  Duffy grinned and nodded to himself. He took his wine back into the room.

  “It’s so great to have old friends here with us.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Mrs Duffy. “Don’t make a fool of yourself, Percy.”

  Duffy deflated. But he had to keep talking. He had to do the toast.

  “Umm, yes dear. I just wanted to propose a toast. It’s not often we get a chance to —”

  “See, that’s being silly. The three of us spend every night together. It’s gotten quite cosy. A bit too cosy. That’s something we wanted to talk to you about, Percy. I know you don’t want to discuss it.”

  Hell no. Mrs Duffy couldn’t say those words. Once she started down that track, Duffy would probably cry or something. This was not the way things should work out. I had to help. If Duffy lost his nerve now, we’d never get another chance.

  I jumped up and grabbed the bottle of wine
in one hand, a wine glass in the other then waltzed into the living room. If Duffy couldn’t do the deed, I’d do it myself.

  “What he was trying to say is that we should drink a toast to the eradication of the cockroaches. I think I got them all this time.”

  Mrs Duffy gave a dry laugh.

  “This is just getting ridiculous now. We aren’t drinking to pest control. Although if you’d done the job properly the first time, you wouldn’t need to be here now. I don’t think there’s any need for you to linger.”

  But the liderc jumped up.

  “Of course, we can drink a toast. Any reason is a good reason to drink.” He winked at me and gave a leering look at my cleavage. Even though I was wearing overalls to add to my pest control look, the top studs had come undone. I really didn’t like the way he looked at me. Was he intending me to be his next victim when he sucked Mrs Duffy dry?

  But I smiled and filled my wine glass. I held it up.

  He picked up his glass. I tried to hide my smile.

  “To the end of cockroaches,” I said. It wasn’t a classy toast but it would do the job. The liderc tried to make eye contact with me, which made it hard to watch him.

  The three of us clinked glasses while Mrs Duffy sneered at us. I couldn’t wait for the liderc to show his true form. That’d wipe that smug look off her face. She was far too self-satisfied for my liking.

  I took a sip of my wine without taking my eyes off the liderc.

  He raised his glass to his lips and slowly, slowly took a sip. I watched the movement in his throat as he swallowed the potion. Then he tipped his head back and took a large chug.

  I tightened my grip on my wine glass waiting for the change to come over him. Duffy and I both stared as he sat his glass down.

  “What? Do I have wine on my face?”

  He hadn’t changed. Nothing about him changed. His eyes stayed brown. His hair stayed black with streaks of grey. His limbs long and lanky. A slow grin spread over his face.

  I could only stare at him in horror while my face flushed. I wanted to get out of there fast. I could feel Mr Duffy’s gaze on me, drilling into my skull but I looked away, pretending fascination with the curtain rod. He couldn’t say anything in front of them but I bet he’d have plenty to say once he got me alone.

  Maybe it took a little while to work?

  He picked up his wine glass and took another sip. Still nothing. He remained in his human form in front of us. Maybe because he only had his human form. For one brief second, his eyes flashed green and I held my breath. Surely that was the start of the transformation. I waited but nothing. He remained as human as ever.

  “Well, this has gotten very strange. If you have finished your job, Miss Starr, you can leave now.”

  Wow, Mrs Duffy really didn’t like me. Not that I minded. Perfect excuse for me to leave. I grabbed my stuff and rushed out the door, with an apologetic look at Mr Duffy. I know he wanted to interrogate me but I had no answers to give him.

  When I got back in my car, I rang Timon.

  “It didn’t work. What happened? You gave me the wrong stuff or something went wrong. That potion was dodgy. The liderc is still in human form.”

  “There was nothing wrong. If he didn’t transform back, you’ve got the wrong man. Did his eyes flash green?”

  “Yeah, yeah they did. What does that mean?”

  “That means he’s human. You did check all the facts?”

  “There were no facts to check, buddy. He’s the dead husband, risen. Who else could it be?”

  But it was true. I hadn’t checked. It’d been too obvious. Total rookie mistake, not checking all the suspects.

  He’d had the fire in his eyes and he all the other signs of being a demon. There was something shady about the ex-husband but this case was about destroying the incubus. If Duffy had other demon issues that was a whole new case.

  7 Dead Husband

  I GOT INTO THE OFFICE early, with the intention of checking the background of all the possible suspects. No skimming this time. I’d make sure every fact was double checked. This was one of the most embarrassing incidents of my career.

  First, I phoned the hospital where Frank, I guess I couldn’t keep calling him liderc now that he’d proven he wasn’t, had supposedly been recuperating when he had the amnesia. The first person I spoke to was all over the confidentiality thing so I hung up and called back and got someone else on the line, saying I needed to have his records sent to my clinic. She was a chatty one.

  “Yes, I remember him well. Lovely man and so unfortunate that he had that amnesia. So good-looking too with that salt and pepper hair and the cheeky grin. We were all sorry to see him go although it was a miracle that he got his memory back when everyone had given him up for dead.”

  Okay, that was probably something I should’ve checked before I’d put all my eggs in that basket. I needed to get an actual look at the guy they had on record to make sure it was the same guy. A lot of guys fit that description. The woman agreed to send me the records and that included his ID.

  I’d just finished on the call when Duffy turned up.

  “Are you sure this is worth doing? I might just go to that other guy...”

  No way. No poaching of my clients.

  “It’s just a small setback. We can get over this. I need to have a list of all the men your wife sees. Workmates, friends, people you know she has contact with. I’ll check them all out and we’ll get this sorted in no time.”

  He handed me the list he’d made out. It was a short list.

  “There are probably people not on the list. I don’t know everyone.”

  “If you think of anyone, anyone at all, I need to know. Especially anyone that has been acting strange lately. Doing tasks for her or that kind of thing.”

  Duffy nodded.

  “Another thing, how did that gold get into your house if Frank didn’t bring it there?”

  Duffy shrugged.

  “I’ve got no idea. It just appeared so I put it in the cupboard. It scared me so I didn’t want to think about it.” He looked around as though someone was going to pop up in my office out of the blue, demanding the gold back.

  He hurried out after that.

  I needed to tail Mrs Duffy but she’d freak if she saw me. Even if I wore a cap and a wig, I didn’t think I’d fool her.

  Doing research was dead boring. It drove me nuts sitting at the computer all day. I went through the list and did a background check on each of the names. Nothing of interest came up. I figured I might swing by the Duffys’ place. While I was there, I could check on those lovely gold bars again.

  I was sure there was something I was missing about this case. I’d never been tripped up like that before. I was the demon hunting expert. I won the awards and did the hard yards. It really disturbed me to think that something had gotten under my radar. It’d seemed so easy at the start. I got out the notebook where I’d written down the stuff that the old Hungarian lady had told me. Maybe I’d not paid attention to the right things when she’d been talking since I’d assumed that Frank was our demon.

  I stopped to get a coffee on the way to the Duffy house.

  I needed some way of identifying the demon. There hadn’t been anything in the book that said how exactly to identify them.

  At the coffee shop, I tried to decipher my scrawling handwriting. I really needed to make neater notes. I could barely read what I’d written. The only thing I could see was that the liderc would be doing tasks.

  I took a swig of my coffee. It was too bitter for my liking.

  I figured it had to be someone in the workplace because Mrs Duffy didn’t have many male friends outside of work that Mr Duffy knew about and anyway, she spent all her time with that not-liderc ex-husband of hers. Maybe he wasn’t an ex-husband since she’d never officially been unmarried to him. It was a mess but one they’d have to figure out. And it looked like Mr Duffy would be the loser in that situation. He’d already been pushed out to the sides.
<
br />   Well, not my problem.

  I picked up my coffee cup again but it was empty. I had no real leads, a nervous client threatening to go elsewhere and no coffee. This situation was not getting any better.

  I headed to Mrs Duffy’s office. I could get coffee from that cafe and I bet the barista knew everything about that office.

  My timing was perfect. It was between break times; the cafe was empty and the barista bored and wanting to talk.

  I told him I wanted to work with Mrs Duffy’s office.

  He gave me a sweeping look as though he thought I was dreaming.

  “I’m a graphic designer,” I told him.

  He nodded. Yep, you could get away with wearing anything if you told people that.

  “It’s not a big office.” He told me about the five women who worked there. That didn’t help me.

  “Then there’s that guy, Jim. But he’s away on a business trip. Has been for about a month.”

  Jim was out.

  “Oh, and Raoul. He doesn’t often come in for coffee.”

  I went to make some notes about him in the notebook when something from my conversation stood out. Why had I not realised before? The old lady had said that the liderc had to be allowed access to the home. Not the office or place of work, but the home. That might be because, in ye olde Hungary, most people worked at home anyway but it couldn’t be disregarded.

  I rang Duffy to find out who had access to their house, if they had a gardener or someone who worked around the place.

  While I waited for him to answer, I went back to get another coffee. I tapped my foot impatiently while the woman in front of me tried to decide on her order.

  “Excuse me.”

  I stood out of the way as a workman tried to make his way through the cafe. Poor bugger had a huge box of supplies and no one bothered moving for him. I looked at his overalls, wondering if I should add a pair of delivery man overalls to my disguise kit. They’d come in mighty handy for accessing places. No one questions a delivery man.