Practical Demonkeeping pc-1 Read online

  “You have it,” Travis said. “But I think we should go back to Jenny’s house — be ready when Catch returns.”

  Brine said, “I want you to try to put Jenny out of your mind, Travis. That’s the only way you’ll regain control of the demon. But first, there’s something you ought to know about her.”

  “I know — she’s married.”

  “No. She’s Amanda’s granddaughter.”

  28

  EFFROM

  Never having died before, Effrom was confused about how he should go about it. It didn’t seem fair that a man his age should have to adapt to new and difficult situations. But life was seldom fair, and it was probably safe to assume that death wasn’t fair either. This wasn’t the first time he had been tempted to firmly demand to speak to the person in charge. It had never worked at the post office, the DMV, or return counters at department stores. Perhaps it would work here.

  But where was here?

  He heard voices; that was a good sign. It didn’t seem uncomfortably warm — a good sign. He sniffed the air — no sulfur fumes (brimstone, the Bible called it); that was a good sign. Perhaps he had done all right. He did a quick inventory of his life: good father, good husband, responsible if not dedicated worker. Okay, so he cheated at cards at the VFW, but eternity seemed like an awfully long sentence for shuffling aces to the bottom of the deck.

  He opened his eyes.

  He had always imagined heaven to be bigger and brighter. This looked like the inside of a cabin. Then he spotted the woman. She was dressed in an iridescent purple body stocking. Her raven-black hair hung to her waist. Heaven? Effrom thought.

  She was talking on the phone. They have phones in heaven? Why not?

  He tried to sit up and found that he was tied to the bed. Why was that? Hell?

  “Well, which is it?” he demanded.

  The woman covered the receiver with her hand and turned to him. “Say something so your wife will know you’re okay,” she said.

  “I’m not okay. I’m dead and I don’t know where I am.”

  The woman spoke into the phone, “You see, Mrs. Elliot, your husband is safe and will remain so as long as you do exactly as I have instructed.”

  The woman covered the mouthpiece again. “She says she doesn’t know about any invocation.”

  Effrom heard a gravely male voice answer her, but he couldn’t see anyone else in the cabin. “She’s lying,” the voice said.

  “I don’t think so — she’s crying.”

  “Ask her about Travis,” the voice said.

  Into the phone the woman said: “Mrs. Elliot, do you know someone named Travis?” She listened for a second and held the receiver to her breast. “She says no.”

  “It might have been a long time ago,” the voice said. Effrom kept looking for who was talking but could see no one.

  “Think,” the woman said into the phone, “it might have been a long time ago.”

  The woman listened and nodded with a smile. Effrom looked in the direction of her nod. Who the hell was she nodding to?

  “Did he give you anything?” The woman listened. “Candlesticks?”

  “Bingo!” the voice said.

  “Yes,” said the woman. “Bring the candlesticks here and your husband will be released unharmed. Tell no one, Mrs. Elliot. Fifteen minutes.”

  “Or he dies,” the voice said.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Elliot,” the woman said. She hung up.

  To Effrom she said, “Your wife is on the way to pick you up.”

  “Who else is in this room?” Effrom asked. “Who have you been talking to?”

  “You met him earlier today,” the woman said.

  “The alien? I thought he killed me.”

  “Not yet,” the voice said.

  -=*=-

  “Is she coming?” Catch asked.

  Rachel was looking out the cabin window at a cloud of dust rising from the dirt road. “I can’t tell,” she said. “Mr. Elliot, what kind of car does your wife drive?”

  “A white Ford,” Effrom said.

  “It’s her.” Rachel felt a shiver of excitement run through her. Her sense of wonder had been stretched and tested many times in the last twenty-four hours, leaving her open and raw to every emotion. She was afraid of the power she was about to gain, but at the same time, the myriad possibilities that power created diluted her fear with a breathless giddiness. She felt guilty about abusing the old couple in order to gain the invocation, but perhaps with her newfound power she could repay them. In any case, it would be over soon and they would be going home.

  The actual nature of the Earth spirit bothered her as well. Why did it seem… well… so impious? And why did it seem so male?

  The Ford pulled up in front of the cabin and stopped. Rachel watched a frail old woman get out of the car holding two ornate candlesticks. The woman clutched the candlesticks to her and stood by the car looking around, waiting. She was obviously terrified and Rachel, feeling a stab of guilt, looked away. “She’s here,” Rachel said.

  Catch said, “Tell her to come in.”

  Effrom looked up from the bed, but he could not rise enough to see out the window. “What are you going to do to the wife?” he demanded.

  “Nothing at all,” Rachel said. “She has something I need. When I get it, you can both go home.”

  Rachel went to the door and threw it open as if she were welcoming home a long-lost relative. Amanda stood by the car, thirty feet away. “Mrs. Elliot, you’ll need to bring the candlesticks in so we can inspect them.”

  “No.” Amanda stood firm. “Not until I know that Effrom is safe.”

  Rachel turned to Effrom. “Say something to your wife, Mr. Elliot.”

  “Nope,” Effrom said. “I’m not speaking to her. This is all her fault.”

  “Please cooperate, Mr. Elliot, so we can let you go home.” To Amanda, Rachel said, “He doesn’t want to talk, Mrs. Elliot. Why don’t you bring the candlesticks in? I assure you that neither one of you will be harmed.” Rachel couldn’t believe that she was saying these things. She felt as if she were reading the script from a bad gangster movie.

  Amanda stood clutching the candlesticks, uncertain of what she should do. Rachel watched the old woman take a tentative step toward the cabin, then, suddenly, the candlesticks were ripped from her grasp and Amanda was thrown to the ground as if she’d been hit by a shotgun blast.

  “No!” Rachel screamed.

  The candlesticks seemed to float in the air as Catch carried them to her. She ignored them and ran to where Amanda lay on the ground. She cradled the old woman’s head in her arms. Amanda opened her eyes and Rachel breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Are you all right, Mrs. Elliot? I’m so sorry.”

  “Leave her,” Catch said. “I’ll take care of both of them in a second.”

  Rachel turned toward Catch’s voice. The candlesticks were shaking in the air. She still found it unsettling to talk to a disembodied voice.

  “I don’t want these people hurt, do you understand?”

  “But now that we have the invocation, they are insignificant.” The candlesticks turned in the air as Catch examined them. “Come now, I think there’s a seam on one of these, but I can’t grip it. Come open it.”

  “In a minute,” Rachel said. She helped Amanda get to her feet. “Let’s go in the house, Mrs. Elliot. It’s all over. You can go home as soon as you feel up to it.”

  Rachel led Amanda through the front door, holding her by the shoulders. The old woman seemed dazed and listless. Rachel was afraid she would drop any second, but when Amanda saw Effrom tied to the bed, she shrugged off Rachel’s support and went to him.

  “Effrom.” She sat on the bed and stroked his bald head.

  “Well, wife,” Effrom said, “I hope you’re happy. You go gallivanting all over the state and you see what happens? I get kidnapped by invisible moon-men. I hope you had a good trip — I can’t even feel my hands anymore. Probably gangrene. They’ll probably have t
o cut them off.”

  “I’m sorry, Effrom.” Amanda turned to Rachel. “Can I untie him, please?”

  The pleading in her eyes almost broke Rachel’s heart. She had never felt so cruel. She nodded. “You can go now. I’m sorry it had to be this way.”

  “Open this,” Catch said. He was tapping a candlestick on Rachel’s shoulder.

  While Amanda untied Effrom’s wrists and ankles and rubbed them to restore the circulation, Rachel examined one of the candlesticks. She gave it a quick twist and it unscrewed at the seam. From the weight of it, Rachel would have never guessed that it was hollow. As she unscrewed it, she noticed that the threads were gold. That accounted for the extra weight. Whoever had made the candlesticks had gone to great lengths to conceal the hollow interior.

  The two pieces separated. A piece of parchment was tightly rolled inside. Rachel placed the base of the candlestick on the table, slid out the yellow tube of parchment, and slowly began to unroll it. The parchment crackled, and the edges flaked away as it unrolled. Rachel felt her pulse increase as the first few letters appeared. When half the page was revealed, her excitement was replaced with anxiety.

  “We may be in trouble,” she said.

  “Why?” Catch’s voice emanated from a spot only inches away from her face.

  “I can’t read this; it’s in some foreign language — Greek, I think. Can you read Greek?”

  “I can’t read at all,” Catch said. “Open the other candlestick. Maybe what we need is in there.

  Rachel picked up the other candlestick and turned it in her hands. “There’s no seam on this one.”

  “Look for one; it might be hidden,” the demon said.

  Rachel went to the kitchen area of the cabin and got a knife from the silverware drawer to scrape away the silver. Amanda was helping Effrom get to his feet, urging him across the room.

  Rachel found the seam and worked the knife into it. “I’ve got it.” She unscrewed the candlestick and pulled out a second parchment.

  “Can you read this one?” Catch said.

  “No. This one’s in Greek, too. We’ll have to get it translated. I don’t even know anyone who reads Greek.”

  “Travis,” Catch said.

  Amanda had Effrom almost to the door when she heard Travis’s name. “Is he still alive?” she asked.

  “For a while,” Catch said.

  “Who is this Travis?” Rachel asked. She was supposed to be the one in charge here, yet the old woman and the demon seemed to know more about what was going on than she did.

  “They can’t go,” Catch said.

  “Why? We have the invocation; we just need to get it translated. Let them go.”

  “No,” Catch said. “If they warn Travis, he will find a way to protect the girl.”

  “What girl?” Rachel felt as if she had walked into the middle of a plot-heavy mystery movie and no one was going to tell her what was happening.

  “We have to get the girl and hold her hostage until Travis translates the invocation.”

  “What girl?” Rachel repeated.

  “A waitress at the cafe in town. Her name is Jenny.”

  “Jenny Masterson? She’s a member of the coven. What does she have to do with this?”

  “Travis loves her.”

  “Who is Travis?”

  There was a pause. Rachel, Amanda, and Effrom all stared at empty air waiting for the answer.

  “He is my master,” Catch said.

  “This is really weird,” Rachel said.

  “You’re a little slow on the uptake, aren’t you, honey?” Effrom said.

  29

  RIVERA

  Right in the middle of the interrogation Detective Sergeant Alphonse Rivera had a vision. He saw himself behind the counter at Seven-Eleven, bagging microwave burritos and pumping Slush-Puppies. It was obvious that the suspect, Robert Masterson, was telling the truth. What was worse was that he not only didn’t have any connection with the marijuana Rivera’s men had found in the trailer, but he didn’t have the slightest idea where The Breeze had gone.

  The deputy district attorney, an officious little weasel who was only putting time in at the D.A.’s office until his fangs were sharp enough for private practice, had made the state’s position on the case clear and simple: “You’re fucked, Rivera. Cut him loose.”

  Rivera was clinging to a single, micro-thin strand of hope: the second suitcase, the one that Masterson had made such a big deal about back at the trailer. It lay open on Rivera’s desk. A jumble of notebook paper, cocktail napkins, matchbook covers, old business cards, and candy wrappers stared out of the suitcase at him. On each one was written a name, an address, and a date. The dates were obviously bogus, as they went back to the 1920s. Rivera had riffled through the mess a dozen times without making any sort of connection.

  Deputy Perez approached Rivera’s desk. He was doing his best to affect an attitude of sympathy, without much success. Everything he had said that morning had carried with it a sideways smirk. Twain had put it succinctly: “Never underestimate the number of people who would love to see you fail.”

  “Find anything yet?” Perez asked. The smirk was there.

  Rivera looked up from the papers, took out a cigarette, and lit it. A long stream of smoke came out with his sigh.

  “I can’t see how any of this connects with The Breeze. The addresses are spread all over the country. The dates run too far back to be real.”

  “Maybe it’s a list of connections The Breeze was planning to dump the pot on,” Perez suggested. “You know the Feds estimate that more than ten percent of the drugs in this country move through the postal system.”

  “What about the dates?”

  “Some kind of code, maybe. Did the handwriting check out?”

  Rivera had sent Perez back to the trailer to find a sample of The Breeze’s handwriting. He had returned with a list of engine parts for a Ford truck.

  “No match,” Rivera said.

  “Maybe the list was written by his connection.”

  Rivera blew a blast of smoke in Perez’s face. “Think about it, dipshit. I was his connection.”

  “Well, someone blew your cover, and The Breeze ran.”

  “Why didn’t he take the pot?”

  “I don’t know, Sergeant. I’m just a uniformed deputy. This sounds like detective work to me.” Perez had stopped trying to hide his smirk. “I’d take it to the Spider if I were you.”

  That made a consensus. Everyone who had seen or heard about the suitcase had suggested that Rivera take it to the Spider. He sat back in his chair and finished his cigarette, enjoying his last few moments of peace before the inevitable confrontation with the Spider. After a few long drags he stubbed the cigarette in the ashtray on his desk, gathered the papers into the suitcase, closed it, and started down the steps into the bowels of the station and the Spider’s lair.

  -=*=-

  Throughout his life Rivera had known half a dozen men nicknamed Spider. Most were tall men with angular features and the wiry agility that one associates with a wolf spider. Chief Technical Sergeant Irving Nailsworth was the exception.

  Nailsworth stood five feet nine inches tall and weighed over three hundred pounds. When he sat before his consoles in the main computer room of the San Junipero Sheriff Department, he was locked into a matrix that extended not only throughout the county but to every state capital in the nation, as well as to the main computer banks at the FBI and the Justice Department in Washington. The matrix was the Spider’s web and he lorded over it like a fat black widow.

  As Rivera opened the steel door that led into the computer room, he was hit with a blast of cold, dry air. Nailsworth insisted the computers functioned better in this environment, so the department had installed a special climate control and filtration system to accommodate him.

  Rivera entered and, suppressing a shudder, closed the door behind him. The computer room was dark except for the soft green glow of a dozen computer screens. The Spider sa
t in the middle of a horseshoe of keyboards and screens, his huge buttocks spilling over the sides of a tiny typist’s chair. Beside him a steel typing table was covered with junk food in various stages of distress, mostly cupcakes covered with marshmallow and pink coconut. While Rivera watched, the Spider peeled the marshmallow cap off a cupcake and popped it in his mouth. He threw the chocolate-cake insides into a wastebasket atop a pile of crumpled tractor-feed paper.

  Because of the sedentary nature of the Spider’s job, the department had excused him from the minimum physical fitness standards set for field officers. The department had also created the position of chief technical sergeant in order to feed the Spider’s ego and keep him happily clicking away at the keyboards. The Spider had never gone on patrol, never arrested a suspect, never even qualified on the shooting range, yet after only four years with the department, Nailsworth effectively held the same rank that Rivera had attained in fifteen years on the street. It was criminal.

  The Spider looked up. His eyes were sunk so far into his fat face that Rivera could see only a beady green glow.

  “You smell of smoke,” the Spider said. “You can’t smoke in here.”

  “I’m not here to smoke, I need some help.”

  The Spider checked the data spooling across his screens, then turned his full attention to Rivera. Bits of pink coconut phosphoresced on the front of his uniform.

  “You’ve been working up in Pine Cove, haven’t you?”

  “A narcotics sting.” Rivera held up the suitcase. “We found this. It’s full of names and addresses, but I can’t make any connections. I thought you might…”

  “No problem,” the Spider said. “The Nailgun will find an opening where there was none.” The Spider had given himself the nickname “Nailgun.” No one called him the Spider to his face, and no one called him Nailgun unless they needed something.