Authors: Caitlin Kittredge
“And I’m guessing I wouldn’t be here if you didn’t fall down on the job,” Jack said.
Belial twitched inside his human skin. “This isn’t my mess, but I’m cleaning it sure enough.”
“Ten years isn’t exactly a weekend in time outside the Pit,” Jack said. “One of these bastards has been free a while, hasn’t he?”
“One, we could manage,” Belial said. “Hunt him with our own blokes. But the tears Nergal caused gave him the chance to let loose all of his little friends.”
“And what do they hope to accomplish by running around up here, slashing families to death?” Jack said.
“That’d be your job to figure out, wouldn’t it?” Belial said. “LA is a safe haven for things like that, but outside we could track them. You bring them to me, and I’ll be done with you and your little bit of sunshine.”
Jack pushed back from the rail. “I still don’t trust you.”
“Can’t imagine why,” Belial said as Jack walked away. “You know I’m a demon of my word.”
CHAPTER 8
Pete stayed silent until they were nearly back to Venice. “You hate me?” she said finally, pulling the Fury to the curb by Mayhew’s office.
Jack lit a cigarette and sat on the Fury’s fender. Did he? Have to be the world’s largest hypocrite if he did, one for the record books. “No.”
“I think you can understand why I didn’t tell you,” Pete said.
“It’s all a bit moot now,” Jack told her. “Belial always has a way of getting what he wants, and apparently he wants us to do his little errand.”
Pete plucked a note from Mayhew’s door. “Says he’s down the road in a bar.”
“Shocking, that.” Jack dropped his butt and stamped out the ember. “We’re going to have a little chat.”
“Be nice,” Pete called after him.
Jack thought about the likelihood of that, considering the whopper Mayhew had told to get them into this morass of Hell politics. “’M always nice,” he told Pete.
The bar fronted the beach—not the tony bit near the boardwalk, which wafted pot smoke down the sand all hours of the day and night and called out with bright lights, frying food, and pretty girls with tan lines, but the bit where all the buildings turned into cinderblock boxes. The Shanty, the place was called, and somebody had tacked driftwood and net to the front in an attempt to disguise the fact that the place was a hovel in practice as well as name.
Peanut shells and other crunchy bits crushed under his boots as he came in, giving his eyes a moment to adjust. The usual sad bastards had bellied up to the bar—a pair of old men in Bermuda shorts, the bleary-eyed, Rudolph-nosed drunk working on his glass of whatever was cheap and plentiful, and a couple of hungover gits sporting Wayfarers, even in the near-subterranean dark of the bar. Musicians, Jack guessed, although not decent ones. If they were, they would’ve known to keep hair of the dog on hand, roll out of bed, and go back to practice with a bottle of whiskey and a fistful of aspirin. Who had time to be pissing about in old man pubs?
Mayhew was at the end of the bar, the short leg, where he could keep an eye on the gents and the front door simultaneously. It’d be a good vantage if he wasn’t piss-drunk, head dipping over his glass, which was clear and slippery with ice cubes. Jack could smell the juniper when he got within a few feet.
“Hello again, Ben,” he said, sliding onto the stool next to Mayhew, blocking the view of the rest of the patrons while appearing to simply be having a friendly drink.
Mayhew looked up at him, eyes sliding blearily in and out of focus. “Oh,” he said. “Back already?”
“Too right,” Jack said. He leaned in, keeping one elbow on the sticky vinyl of the bar top and snaking his other hand out to grab Mayhew’s balls. It wasn’t the most delicate or dignified way to get somebody’s attention, but it had the bonus effect of sobering Mayhew up while inflicting the kind of tight, hot pain that inclined the subject to the truth. “What exactly,” Jack growled, leaning close enough to lick Mayhew’s ear, “did you think was going to happen when Belial showed up in your tacky little horror of an office?”
“I didn’t know,” Mayhew gasped. “A demon asks you to do something, you do it.”
“Now, I can feel you’ve got balls,” Jack said. “So unless he owns your arse, why’re you helping a Hellspawn reel me in?”
“He came to me and he said he needed to get you here,” Mayhew said. “Said if I did, I’d find out who killed the Case family. It was a good deal.” Beads of moisture worked their way down Mayhew’s glass, and down his face, and the stench of his breath enveloped Jack in a furnace of fear and desperation. “I’m not like you,” Mayhew whispered. “I’m just a scryer—I find things, people, and I’m not even very good at it. I can’t find out who killed those people and I…” He gulped. “I promised Mrs. Case I would.”
“Here’s a tip,” Jack said. “Don’t make promises to the dead. It never ends well for the living.”
“I swear I didn’t think he’d hurt you,” Mayhew said. “Did he? Hurt you?”
Jack released Mayhew’s crotch. “You’re a fucking idiot,” he said. “What do you know about the things Belial has me looking for?”
“Nothing,” Mayhew muttered, dipping back into his gin. “Less than nothing. If I knew, don’t you think I would’ve gone after them myself by now?” He gave Jack a grin, loose and pink with gums. “I wasn’t always a lush who calls himself a PI, you know. I used to be a good cop.”
“I used to be a dead man,” Jack said. “We all used to be something, Ben.”
“And now you’re the demon’s bitch.” Mayhew chuckled to himself. “Better you than me, that’s all I’ve got to say.”
Jack told himself Mayhew was a drunk, a washout, and a fringe practitioner who didn’t have the sense of a gnat, but he still found himself standing up, fisting a handful of Mayhew’s Hawaiian shirt, and shoving him against the nearest wall. “You have no bloody idea who you’re talking to,” Jack snarled. “Or what you’re talking about.”
“You’re some big-shot badass where you come from,” Mayhew muttered. “I get that. But this isn’t London, and I’m not fucking impressed. I did what I had to do to get you here and put a stop to these murders. You don’t scare me.”
That was the problem with losing your temper—you didn’t think beyond the violence, and now Jack had the choice of propping Mayhew back on his bar stool or beating the shit out of him, neither of which particularly filled him with joy.
“Hey, man.” One of the hungover hipsters tapped him on the arm. “Gonna have to ask you to cut that out.”
“Fuck off,” Jack said. “This ain’t your business.”
“Actually, I think it is,” the git said. He flicked his sunglasses down, and Jack caught a flash of pure white eye.
“Ah, shit,” he muttered.
“You can leave now, or you can go through the wall,” the creature said. “Either way, let go of Ben.”
Jack let Mayhew drop. He hadn’t clocked the creature coming through the door. Not human, not dead. That didn’t narrow it down a whole hell of a lot.
“You let any sloppy drunkard who’ll deal with a demon into your pub?” Jack asked it. “Bad for business.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that.” The creature gripped Jack’s forearm. “I do know strangers busting in and starting fights isn’t something we allow. Now are you going to move, or do I move you?”
The touch spread cold through his entire body, and Jack placed the sightless eyes and the pale corpse-colored skin. “All right, all right,” he told the wraith. “’M not here to cause you trouble.”
He knocked open the door to the alley behind the bar, and stepped out, patting himself down for a cigarette.
The wraith came after him, shutting the door. “Sorry about that. For what it’s worth, Mayhew had that coming, but nobody causes trouble in my bar.”
“Your bar? Monsters Incorporated, is it?”
The wraith shrugged its narrow shoulders. “Not a lot of safe havens for us. Even in this city.”
“Might have something to do with the whole draining people of their blood and leaving them frozen to death bit,” Jack said. “Humans tend to get upset about that.”
The wraith grinned. “You don’t seem to be afraid of me, Mr. Winter.”
“Ah, my reputation precedes me,” Jack said. “Tell me, did it piss on the carpet or just pass out in the corner?”
“Somebody like Jack Winter, the man who nearly ripped Europe in half over a pissing contest with necromancers,” the wraith said. “He lands in your city, you hear about it.”
“Seems unfair,” Jack said. “You know me, but I don’t know you.”
“People call me Sliver,” the wraith said. “I don’t have a name where I come from.”
“Sliver.” Jack held out his hand. He didn’t relish touching the inhuman thing, but he also didn’t relish Sliver thinking he was some kind of racist prick. “Pleased to meet you, I suppose.”
“Not surprised Mayhew’s mixed up with demons now,” Sliver said. “He always had his head up his ass in one way or another.”
“Yeah, well,” Jack said. “My problem now, isn’t it?” Not that Belial had been any help at all. The demon loved being cryptic almost as much as he loved his poncey black suits.
“You looking for his phantom killer?” Sliver chuckled. “I’ve heard that sad story so many times I could tell it myself.”
“The demon thinks there’s something to it,” Jack muttered.
“Yeah, well,” Sliver said. “That’s a demon for you.”
CHAPTER 9
“So you went ’round the pub, tried to beat seven colors of shit out of Mayhew, and wonder why this whole thing isn’t working in your favor?” Pete said. She sat crosslegged on the bed in Mayhew’s spare room, the photos from the case file spread around her.
“It’s not my favor,” Jack muttered. “It’s not working at all.”
“It’s a good thing I’m here,” Pete said. “Because you’re hopeless.” She held out a photo to him. “Look at this.”
Jack took the photo, showing a back door bookended by blood spatter. A small dark rectangle in one corner was marked with a yellow ruler. “What am I looking at?” he said.
“It’s a pet door,” Pete said. “The Cases had a dog, which was also never found.”
Jack tossed the photo back into the pile. “The dog did it. Mystery solved in time for tea. Agatha Christie’s ghost should tongue-kiss me.”
“You are such a bloody idiot, it’s amazing you can walk and talk at the same time,” Pete said. “Whatever came into those houses had a physical form, yeah?”
Jack shrugged. “A poltergeist doesn’t usually hack women open.” Or steal their babies. Or get a Named demon of Hell in such a lather he was recruiting human mages to go after his mistakes, contract-killer style.
“So, both of the houses had security systems,” Pete said. “On, and not compromised. Neither alarm company reported any pings the night of the murders.” She waved the photo. “This is the only way into the house that’s not alarmed.”
Jack took the photo again. The door was small, undoubtedly for one of those miniscule, hairy yapping things that rich women carried in purses. “You’d have to be a fucking midget to get through that thing,” Jack said. “And I’ve seen a lot of strange shite in my time, but murderous demonic dwarves is stretching even my credulity.”
“It’s a start,” Pete said. “There
was
a way in, and that means at some point, whoever did this had a body.” She gathered the photos into a stack. “If they have a body, somebody saw them.”
Jack doubted that Belial’s boogeymen would let themselves be seen unless they wanted it, but Pete’s idea was better than any he’d managed to come up with. How he’d hunt these things—well, he wouldn’t. He’d leave them the fuck alone, like any sensible person. Something bad enough to spook Belial wasn’t anything he wanted to meet face to face. He couldn’t tell the demon to go fuck himself, for Pete’s sake, but neither did he have to toe the line like a good boy. Chances were, whatever Belial was after could be convinced to move along from Los Angeles if Jack offered not to snitch to the demon. Belial wasn’t the only one who could make deals.
“The old crime scene’s address,” Pete said, waving one of Mayhew’s files. “Have a look around, talk to any neighbors that are still about—what do you say?”
“Haven’t got a better idea.” Jack shrugged. “Let’s go to it.”
CHAPTER 10
The Cases’ home was in Westwood, a tony spot populated by shiny, beetlelike cars and nice-looking white people. The UCLA campus kept the bars along the main drag hopping, even at the late hour. Pete rolled slowly with the ever-present molasseslike slog of traffic, guiding the Fury onto side streets, along a row of gates and low-hanging trees. Each home was more brightly spotlit than the last, security systems gleaming like the metal teeth of cybernetic dogs.
Look,
the neighborhood whispered,
but don’t think you can ever be a part of what’s behind these gates.
The Cases’ home was dark, and an estate agent’s sign sat crookedly on the fence, faded by sun and wind.
Jack wasn’t surprised—even if you weren’t psychic, who wanted to live in a murder house? The Black had an effect on mundane sorts, too, except they wrote it off to “intuition,” or bad dreams, or Jesus appearing in their cereal.
Pete eased the Fury to the curb and shut off the lights. Jack got out and examined the gate. The alarm was a good one, but the estate agent’s key box gave him an in. He passed his fingers across the slot and whispered a few words of persuasion he’d picked up long ago, when his talent was primarily aimed at breaking into places and nicking things. The box popped, and he found the alarm code and a front door key in his palm.
Locks were his faithful lady—he and locks understood one another, and they understood his talent. Now if he could just get his sight to mind, he’d be ahead of the game. But you were never really ahead—look over your shoulder and you’d see the hounds snapping at your heels.
Sprinklers hissed on as he and Pete crested the walk, wafting the scent of something sweet and earthbound through the air. The Case house wasn’t a screaming void like the Herreras’, but there was a dome of oppressive air over the low, rambling stucco palace, a prick of chill in the warm night that warned anyone with a modicum of talent to turn the fuck around and run.
Pete wriggled her shoulders inside her cotton jacket. “Spooky, isn’t it?” she said.