The Curse Servant (The Dark Choir Book 2) (21 page)

I left St. Aloysius in a dour mood. It would have been better if he had turned me out, called me insane, or tried to burn me at the stake. At least he could have scowled just once. Instead he was perfectly decent, concerned for everyone involved, and unforgivably realistic about it. Perhaps my entire problem was I was looking for real help. I was all but convinced this wasn’t a Jesus-Mary-Joseph flavor of demon. Why bother with the consummate professionals who knew their asses from holes in the wrist? What I really needed was to run a ringer past the thing inside Elle’s body and see if it offered any clues as to its identity or origin. What I really needed was a rank amateur.

he Healing Waters Christian Tabernacle was one of those dizzying monstrosities along the beltway, a hulking church building with three two-story crosses on the lawn bathed in spotlights and a full color billboard screen with an animated logo and information as to their latest week-long excursion into doctrine. They had a daily spot on the local talk radio where the pastor of Healing Waters would dispense a politically seasoned platitude wrapped in a dubious scriptural quote, and conclude with the same slogan: “I’m not preachin’, I’m just sayin’.” His smug tone always made me switch stations, but today I needed him.

I had phoned ahead as I had the feeling this church was more a business than a social service, and figured they took appointments. I had a two-thirty with Pastor Wayne Scovill, and this time instead of playing it by ear, I had an entire pitch prepared.

Stepping into one of several double-doors into a vestibule larger than the mall’s, I weeded through unmanned literature tables and found a wall sign indicating the Administrative Offices, just past the book store. Inside the office, I found a diminutive young woman with platinum blonde hair and a sharp business suit. She gave me a thin-lipped grin and cocked her head.

“Welcome to Healing Waters, hon. You got an appointment?”

“Yes. Dorian Lake for a two-thirty?”

She kicked away in her chair and rolled toward a back doorway to call for Scovill down the hall. In a few seconds, a gaunt man with sandy hair stepped toward me, hand outstretched.

“Hi, Mister Lake? Wayne Scovill. Won’t you come on back?”

He wore a light gray suit with a corn-yellow tie. He had the bearing of a Southern gentleman, but his voice glistened with New Englander sharpness. I followed him into a spacious khaki-painted office brimming with sunlight and festooned with glass sculptures and world maps. Scovill settled into his plush wing-back swivel chair and spread his fingers out on his desk, grinning with a nervous energy that made my scalp itch.

“Thank you for seeing me,” I offered in a practiced miserable tone. “I’m running out of options.”

“Not at all. Linda said you’re having some trouble with a friend of yours?”

“Uh, yeah. She’s my best friend’s daughter. Something’s happening to her and, well, I don’t know what I can do. I can’t do anything. Just feels hopeless.”

He leaned forward. “Nothing’s hopeless, friend. We can do all things through He who gives us strength.”

“I hope so, Pastor.”

“What’s she gotten into? What can you tell me?”

“Oh, she isn’t into something. In fact, I beg your pardon for putting it this way, but something’s gotten into her, I think.”

He cocked his head. “Come again?”

“Okay, I need to start from the beginning.”

I sighed with just enough histrionics to pull him in, and wound him through a white-washed version of what had happened to Elle. I focused on her innocence, and the sudden descent into madness, while glossing over our peculiar belief system and the fact that all of this was probably my fault. As I finished the tale, I rubbed the bridge of my nose and added, “Pastor, I think the Devil’s inside that little girl, but I don’t think anyone will believe that.”

Scovill fidgeted in his seat, staring at me as he laid a hand on the side of his face. “I want you to know something, first off.” He pointed at the map behind his desk. “I served in three missions to Africa in the last ten years. Once to Ghana, once to Mali, then Equatorial Guinea. On that first trip to Ghana I met a young man who wanted to make some extra cash as a porter for our trucks. Name was Kwame. Nice young kid. Well-spoken, eager to dress like us and talk like us. He thought the world of us, and we were just happy to have him tag along. He got sick the third week, just before we went to the airport, and we didn’t see him again before we left. When I flew back to Mali two years later, I talked the Elders into a side trip back to Accra to see Kwame. And I found out he’d spent the last two years in hospitals, and had been nearly executed for witchcraft. He was taken with fits, especially when exposed to the Cross or a Bible. I bribed an orderly to let me see him alone.” Scovill leaned forward, his eyes rimming red. “The look in his eyes, Mister Lake? I can tell you as one intelligent man to another, he was bound by demons. His eyes held this malice, this quality of hatred that shook me. I prayed with him. Laid on hands. And I heard him groan. Wheeze. It was perfect sadness. I remember that sound vividly. He was begging me for help.”

He took a breath as he reached for a handkerchief inside his suit.

Scovill cleared his throat and added, “I believe you, Mister Lake, when you say the Devil’s inside this child. I believe it’s possible, anyway. And if that’s the case, the worst case scenario, I want you to know that God is strong enough to deliver that girl!”

I had him.

Scovill invited some of the secretaries into the office, and we held hands as they prayed with me in a circle. They lapsed into babbling at times, squinting hard, and generally overloading their own chakras with unfocused energy. This wasn’t new to me. It was a simple way for anyone to manufacture an ecstatic experience, the result of energy overpowering the third eye and crown to reproduce spiritual sensations. It was the opposite of the discipline Emil taught me. When working with intent, one had to keep one’s energy completely checked, grounded, and focused.

We made an appointment that evening to meet at the Swains. There was no talk of money, donations, or compensation. Scovill seemed motivated by something deeper. Perhaps I misjudged yet another clergyman?

On my way out of the church, I called Edgar to fill him in. He sounded exhausted, so much so, it felt contagious. I only had a few hours to rest before I had to take my second trip to Frederick that day, so I made quick time to Amity and the comfort of my obscenely dark room.

Unfortunately, I found a town car waiting for me in front of my house. Two thick men in suits stood outside, one by my stoop and one by the car. When I pulled into the lane between buildings, one of the goons opened the rear passenger door, and out stepped the last person I expected to see at that moment.

Joey McHenry.

He took two steps up my walk, then paused, shoving his hands into his pockets. His hair was a little grayer than when we last met. That was the day he witnessed me taking down Osterhaus. That was my first Nether Curse, and it’s what put me on McHenry’s radar. The man was a wrecking ball in a Fioravanti, so I checked my usual attitude.

“McHenry?”

He squinted at me, then peered up at the façade of my two-story row house. With a slow nod he commented, “The Poe House. Nice.”

“No shit, it’s actually the Poe House? I thought that was a line the realtor fed me when I signed.”

“It was.” He sniffled and turned to his left to gesture down Amity. “The actual house he lived in was two blocks west. It burned down in the nineteen teens, and the owner just moved the address sign to this property. But you’re not actually from Baltimore. You just live here, so you wouldn’t know that.”

What a dick.

“What do you want, McHenry?”

“Sixty-two oh one, three, five and seven, Fayette.”

I smirked. “I’m reasonably familiar with those properties.”

“You asked what I wanted. That’s what I want.”

“Ah yes,” I chimed, lifting a thoughtful finger. “Manor at Carrollton. It’s a brave new Baltimore, all of a sudden.”

“It can be. Depends largely on whether the residents will embrace change.”

“Change meaning they get squeezed out of their neighborhoods block by block until they can’t afford to live in the city anymore?”

McHenry rolled his eyes. “No one lives in these buildings anymore, Lake. We’re going to put that land to actual use.”

“I have four tenant families who beg to differ.”

“Which is why I’m here.”

“Obviously.”

I glared at McHenry for a long moment, forcing him to state the matter plainly. “Choose to believe this,” he said, “or don’t. But I understand you, Lake. Even though you’re an arrogant, little snot hell-bent on being something greater than you actually are, I understand what puts the steel in your shorts.”

“Stop it. You’re giving me the vapors.” So much for checking my attitude.

“I know this because you remind me a lot of my own son.”

Being compared to a known rapist did nothing to improve my attitude.

He continued, “He feels everything. And he feels like he’s entitled to everything. He likes the way people look at him, likes to feel important. But he isn’t willing to put in the work to get there. He’s happy to inherit his lifestyle, and he has zero appreciation for it.”

I pushed my hand into my pocket to ball a fist. “You don’t know a thing about my life, McHenry.”

“I don’t have to know your life story, Lake. I judge a tree by the fruit it produces, and you are positively crawling with the kind of lazy self-importance that makes me want to put your face through a plate glass window.”

I held my breath. His nostrils were flaring, and he was exactly the kind of person who could put my face through a window. I cleared my throat and calmly countered, “Is that why you convinced the Druid Hill board to boot me out of the Club? Because I remind you of Joey Junior?”

He sneered. “There were so many reasons for the board to kick you out of the Club, I didn’t have to convince them.”

“And I’m sure the election had nothing to do with it.”

“Correct. And don’t you even give me that look! You just don’t realize, Lake. That club has operated for over a hundred and thirty years. It was born in Reconstruction, survived Prohibition, the Great Depression, two World Wars, the Red Scare in the fifties, the Japanese speculators in the eighties, and the stock market crash a few years ago. You know how it survived? Because we leave our politics outside.”

I snickered. “Hate to break this to you, McHenry, but more than half the members are politicians.”

“But we do business in the Club. We don’t steer the sails for the prevailing political winds, and we don’t campaign inside the Club. You and your ankle-grabbing boyfriend were the ones who made an embarrassment of yourselves.”

“… and we’re done here,” I stated, turning for the door.

“I came to make you an offer.”

“Funny, because it sounds like you’re just demonstrating your lack of class. I’m not selling you the properties.”

“Before you draw your line in the sand, why not hear what I’m offering? You’re not earning a lot of money from Bright. I know that. Not enough to maintain your standard of living. You can’t raise rent on those tenants because they can’t pay it. You’re doing your little magic business, whatever that is. I certainly don’t understand it.”