The Devil You Know (20 page)

Chapter Eighteen

Julian
Piedmont floated on his back and smiled at the irony of it all: an actor so
good at his role that no one ever guesses he’s acting, and he ends up running
the whole studio, telling the actors, directors and producers what to do.
Julian’s acting had nothing to do with film crews or lighting, though; the role
he played was on a bigger stage, and he had mastered it long ago. He was the
life of the party, the one who knew where to find the best liquor and the
easiest women. He told the best jokes and knew how to make sure everyone
laughed at them. He was the hub, the center, the gravity that held together
every social scene he had commandeered since boarding school. Best of all, he
had learned how to make anyone near him want so badly to stay around and to
fear exclusion so desperately that they would work to please him at any cost.
None of them had ever known that he was just a scared boy who needed to be
liked and had gone about getting approval the only way that worked. His father
had been the only one he’d never been able to fool, and with the old man dead
now, Julian finally had everything he’d ever wanted.

And
now, this. He took a deep breath and let his stomach drop, folding his body at
his hips and feeling the water close around his head as he sank below the
surface. His eyes open underwater, he looked across the pool to see Dick
Sheridan’s legs kicking toward the far edge. There was a time when the pool
would have had at least one woman in it for each of the men, but now Julian had
needed to impose a strict “roosters only” policy. He had thought he’d had
things well enough under control at the house until the little maid had turned
up at the end of a rope yesterday morning. Now he knew the incubi were not to
be trusted; he’d been a fool to think he could control them so thoroughly. For
years, he’d been used to everyone kowtowing to him, and he’d grown complacent
to the point of assuming the demons were just as subservient. They acted
reverentially enough toward him, after all, doing as he said, taking on the
faces and personalities he assigned them, chasing after the skirts he said were
best and leaving alone the ones he forbade. But they weren’t lanky frat boys or
pouty-lipped ingénues hopeful for a break in the business. They were demons
from hell—
from fucking hell
, he
told himself—and they were loyal to him only to the degree that it served
their needs. And now that one of them had driven the maid to suicide—and
had done so with impunity—there was no telling in what other ways they
would start to assert themselves.

He
let his feet touch the bottom and stood up, the skin on his upper body now cold
in the afternoon air. Looking past the pool deck and the expansive view he had
from this spot on the hill, he told himself that it was good to be king. The
only problem was that his kingdom was unraveling a bit more every day, and he
shuddered inwardly at the thought of what new horrors he’d face in the wake of
the maid’s death. It wasn’t the inquest or the police he had to worry about.
His connections at the Hall of Justice assured him it would be ruled a suicide
and that his name would be kept out of it. But there would be other things the
demons would do, other mischief. For a while, he had seen their presence here
and their fealty to him as the ultimate manifestation of his power, but it had
weakened now, and he wondered what other chinks in his armor would be revealed
to the humans whose loyalty he still counted on.

“Mr.
Piedmont, sir?” The voice from the intercom speaker was tiny and distant.

“Tell
him to hold on, Eddie,” Julian said as he waded to the side of the pool.
Dutifully, Eddie Teagarten hauled himself up from his lounge chair and walked
to the intercom to do Julian’s bidding—a bit more slowly than expected,
though, Julian noticed.

He
climbed out of the water and grabbed a towel, rubbing his head and chest as he
walked around the pool and toward the door that led into the ground floor of
the house. The intercom speaker was mounted next to the door, and when he
reached it, he leaned against the wall and hit the button below the speaker.
“What is it, Edgar?” he said.

“Sorry
to disturb you, sir,” Julian’s butler said. “There are some people at the gate
who say they had some business with your father. A Mr. Aaron Sheffield and his
assistant. Shall I admit them?”

Julian
hesitated for a moment, his finger just above the button. He turned his head to
look again at the view from the pool deck and then turned back toward the wall.
“Did he say what kind of business?”

“No,
sir. Just that Mr. Leonard had been in negotiations with him before his death.
This Mr. Sheffield seemed surprised to learn of your father’s passing, sir.”

“All
right,” Julian said. “Let him in. I’ll be up in a minute.”

Not
waiting for Edgar’s reply, he stepped away from the intercom and walked back
around the pool. He had a robe and sandals on a deck chair, and he put them on
without saying a word to his friends. Before turning away from the pool again,
he said, “Come up in a few. We’ll go into town and get dinner.”

Going
up the long stairway that led to the main floor of the mansion, he considered
the decision he’d made to let all the women on his staff go. That included the
cooks. The prospect of running the estate with a limited staff did not appeal
to him, but it was worse to consider the possibility of more dead women on the
property, or of others driven into the strange, vacant state that the incubi
caused in some of their victims.

When
he reached the main floor and entered the great room, he found an old man and a
young woman standing near the picture window and admiring the view of the
distant hills and the pool directly below.

“I’m
sorry to have kept you waiting,” he said.

The
pair turned toward him. The old man had thinning gray hair that he wore a bit
longer than was fashionable. His tan suit looked similarly out of fashion, and
Julian expected that it had not seen the outside of a closet in several years.
A bit hunched over, the old man moved toward him with twinkling eyes and an
outstretched hand. Moving to meet him halfway, Julian looked toward his
companion. The woman was a bit taller than average height; she had auburn hair
that she had put up in a bun, and she wore a conservative blue skirt and a
blouse buttoned to the collar. Covered up so thoroughly, she left him thinking
of nothing more than seeing what she had hidden. Even as he shook the old man’s
hand, he thought about the woman and how good it would be to watch as she shook
her hair free from the bun.

“Aaron
Sheffield,” the old man said.

“Nice
to meet you, Mr. Sheffield. I’m Julian Piedmont.” He smiled pleasantly at the
old man and turned his eyes to the woman again.

Catching
the shift in his glance, Sheffield said, “My assistant, Miss Nelson.”

“How
do you do?” the woman said with a polite smile. She made no effort to step
forward and shake his hand.

Fine
, Julian thought. He had
chased his share of hard-to-get and had never been disappointed. “Very well,”
he said, returning her smile and imagining her buttons undone.

“We’re
very sorry to hear about your father, Mr. Piedmont,” the old man began. “You
see, I had no idea.”

Julian
raised an eyebrow. “My father was rather well-known. His death was in all the
papers, the newsreels.”

Sheffield
gave him an embarrassed grin. “I’m afraid I don’t go in much for…modern texts,
Mr. Piedmont. Newspapers, films…I tend to be a little out of touch.”

“And
Miss Nelson?” Piedmont asked, turning toward the woman. “Are you…out of touch
as well?”

The
woman smiled, a bit nervously Julian thought.
Good.
He liked catching women off their guard—and keeping
them there.

Before
Miss Nelson could reply, her companion directed the conversation back to his
main interest. “Your father and I had corresponded off and on about my
acquiring some parts of his collection.”

“Art?”
Julian asked with mild interest.

“No.
Books.”

“Ahh.
I see.” He had long felt disdain for his father’s collections—until the
night the demons had been conjured. Then he had begun to see the value in the
books; he had since directed several of his corps of friends to scour the
shelves for more books on the occult in the hope that they might yield more
information on how to handle the incubi or how to get more power from other
dark spirits—things he would have scoffed at a month ago. While the
literature and other antiquities on the shelves meant nothing to him, he had no
intention of parting with any of it until he knew exactly what he had. None of
this could be explained to Aaron Sheffield, though. “Well, I’m sorry,” he said,
thinking quickly of an excuse to keep him from honoring whatever deal his
father had entered into with the old man, “but since the estate has shifted
over to me, well, I just haven’t had the time to catalog everything yet. I’m
sure there will be some things I’ll part with, but…you know. Sentimental value
and all.”

“Yes,
of course,” the old man said. “I’m awfully sorry to bother you about any of it,
but we have come all the way from San Francisco, and so I thought if there was
any chance at all of your seeing your way to completing the sale your father
and I had been negotiating…” The sentence trailed off into a hopeful smile.

Julian
shook his head and waved a hand to indicate that no apology was necessary. “I
completely understand. I would have done the same thing in your position.” It
struck him as odd that Sheffield had not proffered a business card. That,
combined with the shabby suit and the old man’s claim about not knowing about
his father death, made Julian begin to wonder if Aaron Sheffield wasn’t
completely on the level.
Are you trying
to con the con man, old boy?
Julian thought. If that was the case, Julian
decided to give the old man a little rope and see what happened. “So tell me,
what was it Father had planned to sell?” he asked.

“Why,
several volumes really. Miss Nelson?” He turned to his assistant, who opened
the leather folder she had been carrying. She took out a sheet of paper with a
typewritten list on it and handed it to Sheffield, who passed it on to Julian.

He
scanned the list. A few of the titles he had heard of, but he had no idea if
the books on the list were actually part of his father’s collection. Most of
the titles meant nothing to him, and several were in foreign languages. But
when his eyes scanned over the words
Gelamen
Malum Lacuna
, he had to force himself to keep moving them down the list. His
mind raced. There was a chance his father had intended to sell the book of
spells to the old man, but given Sheffield’s odd traits, Julian concluded that
it was only a slim chance at best. What the devil the old man was doing here,
then, Julian could not begin to surmise. There was no possibility that
Sheffield could know about the incubi and what they’d been up to, but Julian
reasoned that anyone interested in
Gelamen
Malum Lacuna
would know a fair amount more than he did about controlling
demons and harnessing their power. Furthermore, anyone who hoped to add the
book of spells to his collection would most likely have similar books that
could be of use.

“Quite
a list,” he said after several seconds. “I know a few of these volumes, but not
all of them.” He handed the list back to the old man. “I’m afraid they’re no
longer for sale. Very sorry for you to have wasted your time.”

“I
see.” Sheffield sounded disappointed. “You won’t reconsider? I was prepared to
pay your father five thousand dollars. I can afford to increase the amount a
bit given the change in circumstances.”

Piedmont
smiled. “A generous offer, I’m sure. But you see, Mr. Sheffield, I’m just not
an expert on old books. I couldn’t let these go without having the whole
collection appraised. I’m sure you understand.”

“I
do understand, Mr. Piedmont. Absolutely. I won’t say I’m not disappointed, but…Thank
you for your time, anyway. Would you object to my phoning you in a month or so
to see if the situation has changed?”

Julian
smiled and said, “Of course not. Feel free to call at any time.” He shook the
old man’s hand again and stepped aside to let him pass. In doing so, he moved
directly in front of Miss Nelson so that she would have to walk around him to
get out of the room. He caught her eye, hoping for a moment’s flirtation, but
her gaze was cool and steely; she looked back at him without blinking, and he
detected real anger there. Why she would feel that way, he had no idea, but her
expression added to his sense that something about the pair was not as it
seemed. “You know,” he said as the woman edged past him, “I could actually use
an expert here to help me catalog all the books. Perhaps Miss Nelson would be
available?”

He
relished the way she moved several feet away from him before stopping to acknowledge
his comment. It was as though she feared he had some disease that would spread
to her if she stayed too near him. Then she affected a professional looking
smile and said, “I’m afraid I need to go with Mr. Sheffield.”

“Yes,”
the old man said. He had turned when Julian made his proposition and now looked
nervously in his direction. For the first time since they had met, Sheffield
appeared uncomfortable, his expression reminding Julian of how a boy might look
when he fears his dog is about to be given away. “Miss Nelson and I are
expected back in San Francisco by morning.”