Jesus Christ, I’m losing my shit. She checked the clock again. Ten on the dot. Guy didn’t materialize from the air.
She scratched at her thigh. Any minute now, that dumb-shit College Republican or whatever he was would get here and they’d get on with this. Any minute.
A minute went by. Another. She went out to the hall and lit a cigarette, then came back. Somebody across the street might see the cherry, but probably not. Nobody seemed to care anyway.
The cigarette burned down, and she lit another from its last ember. Then another from that one. Halfway through the third, she felt kind of sick, and she put it out.
Five minutes until ten.
What if he stands me up?
At last, a question she had an easy answer for. If he didn’t show, she was going in. Period. Maybe he’d flaked out, or his car broke down, or the goddamn Rapture took him—it didn’t matter. If he was a no-show, she wasn’t going to rely on him to get this done.
A man walked into view. Visibility wasn’t great, but he was clearly wearing a suit, and the stiff posture was instantly recognizable.
Am I really gonna do this?
She picked her gun up from the bed. Pepper spray was all well and good for staying out of some kinds of trouble, but as rotten as this neighborhood was, and that house at the center of it, she wasn’t going in without something lethal. She just wished she had some silver bullets.
The gun went in her waistband.
Anna went downstairs. She came around the side of the house, crunching through dead locusts on the lawn, doing her best to ignore the dozens of beady little eyes on her and the sense that the house across the way watched as well.
Guy smiled as she crossed the street and approached him. “Good to see you,” he said. “I’m glad you could make it.”
“This isn’t a fucking dinner party. Let’s go.”
“Stay close.”
“Or what?”
“I told you, we’re at the center of a great conflict. We have many enemies. With me, nobody will mistake you for someone who doesn’t belong.”
He walked up the path to the front door. She followed half a dozen steps back, watching. Not a twitch from the windows. No sound from the street, or from inside, for that matter.
Guy opened the door.
Anna stopped. The smell rolling out of the house hit her like a slap, and she fought back a gag. There was something dead in that house, yes, something large and dead, but it was worse than that. Rot mingled with an eye-watering burned metal stench and—what the hell?—lavender? And something else, too, like gasoline or fuel oil. Anna opened her mouth to breathe through it instead of her nose—and then, crazily, thinking that the stench itself might somehow settle on her tongue, might somehow get inside her, infect her, she closed it. It triggered a memory—a dark room, something horrifying and invisible in a cloud of blackness. Tommy taking a bullet in the guts.
“I’m not going in there,” she said.
He gestured toward the black hole of the doorway. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay, Guy. There aren’t any damn lights on, and it smells like Hell’s back porch.”
An expression of discomfort briefly disturbed his bland features, and then it was gone. “The forces of evil are pressing in on us.”
“That’s one way to look at it. Another way is that all the bad shit on this street is radiating from this house, and you want me to come inside and have coffee.”
“Please,” he said. “It’s important.”
There were two options, she thought. Get the hell out of here and come back later, with help, to get what she needed. She’d be going in blind, though. No clue of the layout, very little idea of who or what was in here, or how many. The other option was to go in now, with a guide. Maybe get what she wanted the easy way.
Maybe get killed.
She pulled her gun. She kept it by her side, pointed at the ground, but Guy’s eyes still bugged out.
“You first,” she said.
He hadn’t taken his eyes from the gun. “I don’t think that’s necessary.”
“I do. Take it or leave it.”
“Have it your way,” he said, and he put on an unsteady smile.
He went in. After a moment’s hesitation, Anna followed. The stench enveloped her as she crossed the threshold, and a weird thought formed: this isn’t a house, it’s a coffin. Random, and obviously inappropriate—a house was a house, even if something dead was in it—but unshakable. This place was a box for dead things, a burial container, a place where the once-living made their last transition.
“Close the door,” Guy said.
“No fucking way.”
He flipped on a flashlight. A blue-white beam threw a distorted oval across a scratched parquet floor.
“What’s wrong with the light switch?” Anna asked.
“Nothing, but the power is out.”
“Did you try paying the bill?”
“Will you please shut the door?”
Anna didn’t move. Guy made an exaggerated sigh—good, Anna thought—and went around her.
She pulled her own light, the small one on her key chain, and shone it around the room while Guy closed the front door. It was a big room, and her flashlight did little to clear away the darkness, the beam becoming far too diffuse by the time it reached the far walls, and even the ceiling. Twenty-foot ceiling, she judged. On the right and left edges of the room, a pair of wide staircases led up to a balcony and the second floor. Directly ahead, on the ground floor, a pair of double doors guarded the way deeper into the house. A panel had been knocked in on one, exposing splintered wood.
No furniture, wall hangings, or decorations of any kind livened up the room, as far as Anna could see. Kinda like home.
Behind her, the lock on the front door clicked home.
“Afraid something’s going to get in or out?” she asked.
“We’re doing God’s work here. You’ll see.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Come on.” He headed right, toward the stairs.
Anna went up and followed Guy through the depths of the house. The place was big, too goddamn big, the kind of place she imagined you needed to have an army of servants to maintain, and anytime you wanted a damn sandwich, you had to get on the phone. That was no big deal by itself, but it was dark, and before long Guy had taken her up some stairs and down some others and all over the place, and while she normally had a pretty good sense of direction, she was beginning to wonder if she’d lost her bearings.
Seemingly forty minutes after coming inside, Anna followed Guy into what looked like a game room. By her flashlight, she saw that somebody had upended a billiards table, and somebody else had shot about fifty bullets into it, shredding the red felt to tatters. The plaster had rained from the walls, revealing skeletal ribs of lath, and a potted plant had been sprayed over one corner.
“This looks like a war zone,” Anna said.
“Yes. It is.”
“That’s what you got? ‘Yes, it is’? This is some lady’s house, not goddamn Fallujah.”
“You don’t think there’s somebody’s house in Fallujah?”
“You know what I mean.”
He walked around the table and cracked open the door to the next room. “Come on,” he said, and he went in.
“Sure, why not?”
She heard voices from the other side of the door, more than just Guy’s. She readied her gun and flashlight, and then she walked to the door and shoved it open with her foot.
Three people, clustered close together, stood in the beam of her flashlight. Guy and a shorter Latino guy to his left squinted. The woman standing in the room behind them held up a hand to block the light.
“That’s not necessary,” the woman said. Anna looked her over. She was in her mid-forties, Anna guessed, and she had a soft-looking pale face and copper-colored hair that had to have been dyed. She stood leaning against a desk, wearing a maroon robe or nightdress. The only note amiss was a
deep hollowness around her eyes. Anna could relate.
“Mona Gorow,” Anna said.
“Yes. Can you point that somewhere else?”
Anna moved the light around the room. It was a library, of sorts, or had been. The whole room was lined with shelves, but the shelves sported as many curios as books—candlesticks, figurines, a silver bell, an ugly porcelain duck. A dozen or so candles illuminated the room, and moonlight came in through a couple of small windows.
The smell in here was eye-wateringly strong, so powerful Anna half expected to see a wavering in the air, like that above a pool of gasoline. Not death or rot, but that pervasive burned-metal smell. Nobody else seemed to give it the slightest notice.
If the men were armed, it wasn’t obvious. Anna lowered her gun but kept it in hand. The flashlight she switched off and put in her pocket.
“Thank you,” Mona said. “Guy tells me you have some concerns about bringing the prophet to us.”
“And I can’t say this visit has made me feel a hell of a lot better about the idea so far.” Three people, no obvious weapons, she reminded herself. Windows. Anything got weird, she had an escape route, and probably enough time to get to it before they could do much.
“My home. It . . . bothers you.”
“Your agenda bothers me. Your home grosses me right the fuck out.”
Anna’d said the words to provoke the woman, but Mona’s expression didn’t change. “Does that matter?” Mona asked.
“I don’t know. I guess not.”
“Not if I can give you what you want.”
“Pretty much, yeah.” Almost exactly what Anna had been thinking, in fact. “Only thing is, this looks like it might not be something I want.”
“Why not?”
“You might have these jackasses fooled, but I don’t think you and God are on speaking terms, let alone a first-name basis.”
“Hey!” the Latino guy said. Guy, as usual, ignored the gibe.
“Also, you want to drag Karyn into the middle of some shit I don’t understand, and I don’t like that at all.”
“Shouldn’t Karyn get to make that decision?”
Oh, shit. Names. Jesus Christ, I’m getting sloppy. “No.” She stifled the urge to elaborate.
“Why not?”
“None of your business.”
“She’s already in the middle of it,” Mona said, words firing back before Anna had gotten her entire sentence out. “You, too. You wouldn’t be ‘dragging’ her anywhere.”
“You need to be more respectful,” the Latino guy said.
“You need to go fuck yourself,” Anna said.
“Terry, Guy—can you let us speak privately for a moment?” Mona asked.
Shock on Terry’s face, fear on Guy’s, but neither one hesitated. They went straight for the door. Ten seconds later, Anna and Mona were alone in the room.
It would be so easy, Anna thought. She was armed, and Mona was not. She could simply force the woman to hand over her toothpick stash at gunpoint. Being a stick-up guy was repellent, but she wasn’t sure she had any other good options. What if she screams? What if she won’t give up the goods and insists I shoot her? Could I even get out of here with the damn things alive?
“Of course God doesn’t talk to me,” Mona said. “I don’t even believe there is a God.”
“What?”
“Let’s put our cards on the table, shall we? Guy and Terry are useful idiots, and if they’ve drawn some conclusions about the nature of our patron, who am I to tell them otherwise? Lots of people have concluded they are working God’s will on a lot less.”
“Uh. Okay.”
“Now, the rest of the cards. What about your agenda? Why are you really here?”
“Guy brought me. I want more of your magic toothpicks. That’s why I came.”
“You’ve been watching my house since before Guy told you where to find it.”
“Guy found me,” Anna said, trying to keep her voice even rather than shout over the sudden pounding of her heart in her ears. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Are you here to kill me?”
“What? Jesus, what is wrong with you people? You brought me here, Guy practically dragged me inside, and now—”
“You’ve thwarted Belial’s will. I’ve seen it.”
“I don’t know any Belial.”
Mona watched her face and waited.
“Really,” Anna said. “I don’t know anybody called Belial.”
“That’s too bad, because you’re on the short list of people it would like to squash like a cockroach. Probably not before pulling your legs off, though.”
“‘It’? I don’t like the sound of that.”
“There are demons and there are demons, child, and they all have different goals, when they can be bothered to focus on them. One wants to wipe you out. Another, however, might be the best friend you ever had.”
“I like to think I got a better class of friends than that.”
“Better than what? ‘Demon’ is just a word, just a name for something powerful we don’t understand. There is no ‘evil.’ There’s simply functional, or not. Antagonistic or not. Surely you’ve figured this out by now.” She grinned, and a silver crown glinted somewhere toward the back of her mouth. “‘Demon’ is just a word. ‘God’ works just as well. Ask Guy.”
Anna said nothing.
“Cards on the table, then,” Mona said. “I’ve put mine down. Now you: why are you here?”
All the cards, Anna thought. Something inside her shouted that this was not the way to do business. She ignored it. Business was fucked these days. At least Mona was being straight with her.
“I’ve been hired to steal some kind of bullshit magic tooth. That’s why I’ve been watching the house. That’s it. The whole thing got all fucked when I met Guy. I didn’t know he had anything to do with this. With you. I just want my friend to get better. I don’t even give a damn about the tooth anymore.”
“Who hired you?” Mona asked.
“Your turn. Belial. How does it know me?”
“It used to run a little cult. You and your friends, according to rumor, wrecked its day a little while back.”
“You mean . . . Hector?”
“Your turn.”
“What’s the real cost?” Anna asked. “That’s all I want to know.”
“Of what?”
“Of using those . . . things. The relics. I saw Karyn’s face. She was suspicious at first. Then something scared the hell out of her. It helped break through the visions, but if it’s doing so out of the goodness of its heart, I’m the undead corpse of Elvis. So. What’s the cost? What’s she getting into, if I hook her up with you?”
“You never answered my question. Who hired you?”
“Enoch Sobell, the motherfucking Prince of Darkness.”
For the first time, Mona looked genuinely surprised. She broke eye contact and stared at a spot a few feet to Anna’s left, eyes unfocused while she thought. “What does he want out of all this?” she said after a while.
“Hell if I know. You wanna call him?”
“What does he want it for?”
“I don’t ask those questions. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had a buyer order up some useless bullshit.” It wouldn’t, but she didn’t believe that was the case this time. Not for an instant. Not Sobell.
From the look on Mona’s face, it was clear the other woman wasn’t buying it, either.
“What else did he say?”
“I . . . Nothing, I don’t think. I mean, he moved Heaven and earth to set up that meeting, but all he wanted was the damn tooth, I swear.”
“He’s playing you.”
Anna said nothing. Seemed like everybody thought she was being played these days.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” Anna shifted uncomfortably. “What is it you want, lady?”
“I told you. I want a prophet. Seems there’s a lot of that going around lately.�
��
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“You want to know the cost? You’re looking at it wrong. For my patron, it’s no hardship to help your friend—the help is a benefit in itself. It can see what she sees.”
“The visions.”
“Yes. Helping your friend is quite literally its own reward, for my patron.”
“Your patron. A demon.”
Mona shrugged. “If you have to attach a name to it.”
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
“I’m telling you more of the truth than Enoch Sobell is. Isn’t that much obvious?”
Anna nodded. “I’ll bring her.”
Chapter 20
Anna paused outside the room she shared with Genevieve. There was no way around it, now—they had to talk, the three of them. Nail nodded at her. She wished they could have this conversation after she’d had about ten hours of sleep. Her eyes felt gritty, and she knew her patience was a single thin filament on the verge of snapping, but there was no way to put this off.
She opened the door. Genevieve rolled over and groaned. “Oh my God, what does it take to get a nap around here?”
“Get up,” Anna said. “We need to talk.”
Genevieve looked from her to Nail, face bunched up in confusion. “Who’s watching the house?”
“Nobody. This is more important.”
That seemed to clear some of the fog away. “Okay. Come on in.”
Anna came in, stepped over Genevieve, and sat against the wall. Nail followed suit, sitting with one leg stretched in front of him, his back to the corner.
“What is it?” Genevieve asked.
Anna gave her the short version: Guy, toothpicks, Mona. Mona’s offer. It took surprisingly little time, and as Genevieve’s expression curdled, Anna found herself wondering if she could string it out longer, keep the eventual explosion at bay. But there was only so much story, and anyway, she was tired. “She can fix Karyn, maybe. The toothpicks can, and she has them.”
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