“How do you know how long I was at the Luccardi place?” I persisted. I was absolutely disturbed by the thought that J.B., or any other member of the management, was monitoring us that closely. More important, how could they do it? “Did you have some kind of magical LoJack installed on the Agents without our knowledge?”
“Your quota is dangerously low this month, Black. And Luccardi is going to count toward your numbers, not Walker’s.”
I stood up and put my hands on his desk. “I don’t know what you’re up to, J.B., but I swear, if I find out that you’re illegally monitoring Agents, I will personally ensure that you never get that corner office you want so much.”
He looked up at me, sparks in his eyes. “I think we’re finished here.”
“Not by a long shot,” I said, and turned to leave.
“And next time you come in to work, be sure to dress a little more professionally,” he added as I slammed the door shut.
“You’re lucky I remembered to take my apron off,” I muttered, and headed back to my desk to finish filling out the forms. When I got to my cubicle I looked at the forms, picked them up and then crumpled them into a ball. I wasn’t doing anything for J.B. until I found out how he knew I’d spent such a brief time picking up that soul today. Damn the consequences.
A couple of hours later I was at home trying to re-create the pear tart recipe that had been interrupted earlier. I gave up after an hour when I kept forgetting to add ingredients to the crust. I couldn’t stop thinking about my conversation with J.B.
The doorbell rang just as I finished washing up my mixing bowls. Beezle still hadn’t moved from his perch on the mantel.
“Nice to know you’re looking out for me,” I said conversationally as I went to the speaker. “It could be anything at the door.”
“It’s Patrick,” Beezle grunted. “And it doesn’t really matter what’s at the door anymore now that you’ve let in the devil.”
I stopped and glared at him. “Why don’t you just tell me what it is about Gabriel that bothers you so much?”
He gave me a cryptic look and crossed his arms.
It was my turn to grumble under my breath as I buzzed Patrick in. He swung the upstairs door open with a flourish. “I have arrived.”
“Hooray,” Beezle grumbled.
“What’s his problem?” Patrick asked as he hung a leather blazer on the coatrack by the front door and unwound a gray cabled scarf from his neck. Patrick was tall, slim, and had electric blond hair and adorable dimples.
“He’s a gargoyle,” I said in response, and kissed his cheek. “I didn’t expect to see you for a couple of days at least.”
“Sadly, Justin turned out to be decidedly not all that,” he said. “How was the pickup this morning?”
“She wanted to stay with her cats,” I said, rolling my eyes.
Patrick gave me a knowing look. “Did Jakeass chew you out?”
“And how,” I said fervently. I debated telling Patrick about my suspicion that J.B. was monitoring us, but decided against it. I wanted to look into things further myself before getting Patrick—or any other Agent—alarmed. “He’s probably going to take a bite out of your ass, too.”
“Well, it’s nothing you and I haven’t seen before.”
“Class troublemakers,” I said, and grinned.
He grinned back. “Can we have pizza and beer? I need cheese and mushrooms and alcohol, and possibly some zucchini fried in large quantities of oil.”
“I don’t have any beer,” I said.
“Then let’s have pizza and whatever you have. I’m buying,” he said firmly. Patrick was independently wealthy, which had something to do with his father making brilliant investments and passing on that talent to his only son. He’d offered to invest some money for me, but as I pointed out to him, you had to have something to invest in the first place.
“I think I have milk and chocolate syrup,” I replied.
“I can’t imagine anything better,” he said, and slung his arm around my shoulders.
Pizza, chocolate milk and my best friend. I couldn’t imagine anything better either.
A couple of hours later Patrick left to walk the six or so blocks to his home, both of us somewhat sedated by the large quantities of food we had consumed. I waved at him from my front window, which gave me a view of the residential street on which I lived, although the enormous oak tree in the parkway blocked the view. The rain had blown through and left a clear, almost perfect autumn night. The window was cracked open about an inch and I could smell cool air and the faint scent of smoke from someone’s fireplace. It was past eleven and the streets were quiet save for the hum of traffic from nearby Addison Street.
The time spent with Patrick had taken my mind off J.B. and Gabriel Angeloscuro, but I found my worries nagging at me again almost as soon as he disappeared out of sight on the street.
Beezle had barely spoken to Patrick, which was unusual since Patrick was about the only person in the world Beezle would deign to speak to other than myself. He wouldn’t tell me what was bothering him specifically about Gabriel, and I wasn’t about to let his vague pronouncements of doom stop me from taking on a badly needed tenant.
I made a note on the pad next to the phone to call Charlie McGivney the next day. He was a P.I. I knew who ran background checks on potential tenants for me at a nominal fee.
The phone rang, making me jump about twenty feet in the air. Beezle shifted restlessly on the mantel, his ears cocked forward.
“Hello?”
Nothing. Only the crackle and hiss that sounded like someone on a cell phone out of range.
“Hello?” I asked again.
“. . . ddy?” A fragment of voice came and went so quickly I wasn’t sure I’d actually heard it.
“Is someone there?”
Another hiss, and a pop, and then, “Maddy! I need you!”
I frowned at the receiver. “Patrick? What’s wrong? The connection is terrible.”
“. . . ner of Ravenswood and Grace.”
“What?”
“I’m at the corner of Ravenswood and Grace, and I’m headed back your way!” He sounded out of breath and completely terrified.
The phone clicked and went dead.
I stared in astonishment at the phone for a moment. Patrick wasn’t prone to melodramatic fits. I dialed his cell number back and listened to several rings before his voice mail clicked on. I hung up the phone in frustration, hurriedly pulled a black sweater over my jeans and T-shirt and yanked on a pair of black Converse sneakers.
“Where are you going?” Beezle asked.
“There’s something wrong with Patrick,” I said as I grabbed my keys and cell phone from the basket by the door.
“I’m coming with you,” he announced.
“Why?” I asked, pausing at the open threshold.
Beezle never wanted to go anywhere. Gargoyles are homebodies, preferring to stay near the portal they guarded. Over time, their soft flesh hardened until they were near-permanent fixtures of the building. A gargoyle could get up and fly away if it liked, even after it turned to stone, but most didn’t want to, or maybe they just lost the knowledge. Beezle was still pretty active for an old gargoyle, but as a general rule he didn’t leave the house unless I was going to Dunkin’ Donuts, and only then to make sure that I got enough Boston Creams.
“Can’t I just want to get some fresh air?” Beezle asked mysteriously.
“No,” I said. “But I don’t have time to argue with you. Come on.”
I walked back to the mantelpiece and picked Beezle up, resting him on my right shoulder. His claws dug into my sweater and his wings fluttered against my ear as he settled himself in.
Ravenswood and Grace was only a few short blocks from my building. I shivered as I walked, picking up the pace. The temperature had dropped to the low forties, far too cold for a T-shirt and sweater. Beezle’s warm, heavy little body snuggled closer to my neck.
My eyes moved all over the street as I walked, looking for Patrick. There was nothing and nobody out. I saw the blue glow of televisions filtering through mini-blinds in several windows, but no one out taking their dog for one last walk or coming home late from a liquid business meeting. Everything seemed unnaturally still.
I turned onto Grace and hurried toward the El. The Brown Line and the Metra commuter train both ran parallel to Ravenswood on this section of their tracks. There was a Metra overpass bridge right at the corner from where Patrick had called. A large warehouse that tenanted an assortment of small businesses took up most of the south side of Grace and a couple of small-frame houses were on the opposite side.
I slowed as I approached the corner. I couldn’t see Patrick anywhere. It belatedly occurred to me that it was deeply stupid to walk out into the night and the quiet with nothing to protect me except one overweight gargoyle and a cell phone that may or may not be charged.
“So where is he?” Beezle whispered.
“How should I know?” I tried not to show how disturbed I was. Patrick had said that he was on his way back to my house. We should have run into him already.
I heard a sound, a flutter of movement like flapping wings, and then a wet, sucking noise. I turned toward the sound and saw the faintest of movements below the overpass.
“Don’t go in there,” Beezle said, gripping my shoulder tighter with his claws.
“Why?” I asked, walking toward the bridge anyway.
“There’s something in there,” he said. “I can’t tell what it is. I can only sense that it isn’t natural.”
Beezle sounded frightened, not exactly an everyday occurrence. There isn’t much that can frighten a gargoyle. I paused, and listened, and in that moment of silence there was a voice so soft that I wouldn’t have heard it if I wasn’t straining.
“Mad ... dy ...”
“Patrick!” I shouted, and plunged into the dark.
3
“NO, DON’T!” BEEZLE CRIED.
But it was too late, because there, crumpled on the ground, was a body. I ran toward it.
“Patrick!” I screamed again.
Don’t let it be him. It can’t be him
.
Then I noticed the shadow. Just barely silhouetted by the streetlights on the other side of the overpass, something huge and dark crouched over Patrick’s limp body. The dark form turned its head toward me. Red eyes gleamed in the darkness. I froze as it sniffed the air.
A deep rumbling began to echo in the quiet. It was a sound that held no joy for the listener, a sound that grated against your spine and the insides of your teeth, that scraped the backs of your eyeballs. It was, I realized with a start, the sound of the creature laughing.
“You,” it purred, and its voice was more horrible than its laugh, a black velvet thing with razors underneath. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
It stood to its full height, well over eight feet, and took a step toward me. I heard claws dragging on the sidewalk while my mind began to gibber. Beezle frantically implored me to move, to run, but I couldn’t. Those red eyes held me, just as Gabriel’s eyes had, except there was no pull of mystery and romance this time. There was only death.
The thought of Gabriel—a little non sequitur from my brain when I was about to get eaten alive—jolted me out of the monster’s burning gaze. It was still several feet away, apparently savoring the kill. I could smell the brimstone of its breath, and something else. Something like burnt cinnamon. And that smell made me pause again. That scent—I remembered it. It had been all over my mother when I had found her, dead in an alley. Only a few blocks from home. Only a few blocks from here.
“Maddy, come on, come on!” Beezle shouted. He was off my shoulder now, wings flapping, claws tugging at my sweater like he was trying to pick me up and carry me away.
“You,” I said, addressing the thing before me. I had the slightly hysterical thought that our conversation thus far had been less than scintillating. “I remember you.”
It paused. I still couldn’t see the features of its face, but I sensed that it smiled. Sweat pooled at the base of my spine.
“Do you, now?”
“Yes,” I said. “You killed my mother.”
A chuckle. “And a very tasty morsel she was, too.”
The sly remark filled me with rage. That was my mother it was talking about. My mother, whom I’d loved more than anyone, had been nothing but a bar snack to this . . . thing.
I felt the familiar burn of magic in my chest, filling up my throat, pulsing on my tongue. But I couldn’t control it; I didn’t know what to do with it. I’d never called magic for anything but soul release, and I wasn’t sure how I was calling it now. I gasped for air and flung my hands in front of me.
A ball of blue fire hovered above my palms for a split second, then flew where the monster’s chest should have been. I still couldn’t see much more than a huge black mass. The ball exploded and the monster howled its rage. The combined force of exploding magic and angry monster breath flung me backward through the air. I smashed into the stop sign at the corner and crashed to the ground. The last thing I remembered was knocking my forehead against concrete.