Demon Demon Burning Bright, Whisperings book four (10 page)

He gave me a slitty-eyed scowl, but leaned
into my hand. I doubt I’ll ever know whether Mac sees my roommates,
but he knows they are here and he doesn’t care for them. This time,
when normally he scuttles to the pantry the moment I come home,
their bickering drove him from the kitchen.

“It just lasts half an hour,” Mel
pressed.

“Thirty minutes I could do without.”

Sighing, I heaved to my feet, peeled my coat
off and hung it on the peg. I sat on the bottom step of the
staircase to take my boots off. Shrugging out of my shoulder
holster, I removed my Ruger and hung the holster, then went in the
kitchen carrying my gun.

“There you are!” from Jack. “I want to watch
Channel 4!”

“What’s stopping you?” I crossed the kitchen
to put my Ruger in a drawer. Closing the drawer, I eyed Jack
thoughtfully. “Hm, couldn’t be something to do with the fact you
can’t turn it on, could it?”

“That’s right, rub it in.” Jack fluttered
his hands. “You’ve established, yet again, we’re wholly reliant on
you. Now turn the damn thing on!”

I opened the pantry door, got Mac’s little
ceramic bowl and filled it with kibble. “Yeah, as if
that’s
gonna make me jump. A few pleases and thank yous would go a long
way.”

“Please,” Mel said. She spun on Jack. “I
said it first! I get to watch Channel 5!”

“What’s on Channel 5?” I bent to put the
bowl on the floor. Mac magically materialized next my ankles and
dove in.

“A fashion show.” Mel whizzed to the
television and stared at the blank screen with hands clasped at her
breast as if praying to the god of fashion. “You’ll love it.”

“I will?”

She brought her hand up to her face and
cupped her chin, looking me over. “In your case, it’ll be
educational.”

I plucked at my thick cable knit sweater.
“I’d like to see you outside wearing one of those New York City
outfits when temps drop below zero.”

“I don’t remember what cold feels like, but
I’m sure it was nasty. Anyway, they’re previewing next spring’s
fashions.”

Living with Jack and Mel taught me patience,
but also puts pressure on me. I’m judge, jury and executioner all
in one. And whatever I do, I’ll miff one of them. So, Cirque du
Soleil or a catwalk show?

I pulled a diet cola from my old pink
refrigerator. The tab popped with a hiss. We already watched Cirque
last week, but Mel had not seen a fashion show in a long time, and
she did love them.

Mac left his now spotless bowl and ambled to
the backdoor. I opened it for him and stood there, looking at the
fruit trees’ frosted branches, the scrub oaks’ tangled gray limbs
with their dusting of snow, the thin white blanket covering the
grass. Chickadees flitted from bird feeder to tree, each taking a
single sunflower seed to crack on a branch, then back for another.
Junco and towhee rooted for fallen seed beneath the feeder and
rummaged noisily under the scrub oaks’ ghostly branches. Making
tracks, Mac chugged to an apple tree and lifted his leg.

Leaving the door cracked so Mac could push
back in, I went to the small television, turned it on and clicked
to Channel 5.

Jack groaned, “You hate me.”

I winked at him. “Aw, live a little,
Jack.”

Nose in the air, he sniffed. “You think
you’re funny, don’t you.” He sighed as he lowered his rump to a
kitchen chair, seeming to sit on it.

Icy air seeped through the open backdoor. I
shivered, and reconsidered my beverage of choice. Coffee or hot
chocolate sounded good for a cold day such as this.

Yeah, hot chocolate. Better yet, get into my
nightshirt and snuggle under the duvet with a big mug of hot
chocolate and a good book.

I sighed. I had things to do. No daytime
snuggling for me.

I used the landline to call Gorge’s manager
Perry Wick. No, Gorge was not there. Perry last saw him in August.
If I wanted to talk to Gorge, he’d be back in January to do the
annual tax reports and help with inventory. No, Perry didn’t have a
way to contact Gorge. Was it urgent?

“No. Just wondered how he’s doing. I’ll see
him next month.” I rested the phone in the cradle, turned my spine
to the counter and chewed on a hangnail.

What did I have?
Royal is God only knows
where. Lawrence wants me to find Gorge, but gave me no clue to his
whereabouts. Someone he calls the Burning Man is trying to kill
Lawrence. Maybe the person Jack and Mel saw in my backyard?
Lawrence didn’t want his Council to know he gave me that note. I
think the kid’s scared.

Something up with the new Council. The new
informality of a formal people mired in tradition. That they
changed their seating arrangement so they no longer face Lawrence
smacks of disrespect.

I hefted a mighty sigh and pushed away from
the counter. I tried to erase anxiety for Royal from my mind.
Obsessing helped neither me nor him when it didn’t get me anywhere.
Maybe a solution would pop out of nowhere if I concentrated on
something else. It has happened before. I opened the fridge, tried
to decide what to eat for supper, but nothing in there
appealed.

I poked in the pantry and came out with a
packet of precooked rice and veggies. I had onion, garlic, eggs and
spices. Fried rice sounded good. I tore the packet so steam could
escape as it cooked, put it in the microwave and watched a skinny
girl wearing a white paper bag contort along the catwalk as the
rice heated.

Mel had the tips of her fingers to her lips.
“Oh, would you look at that,” she gushed.

“Is that tulle?” Jack leaned over the table.
“Chiffon?”

My heavy skillet came from the cabinet and
onto the stove. I sprayed it with oil. The burners on the old stove
take a long time to heat so I chopped the onion while I waited. The
microwave dinged.

I had to get back in Bel-Athaer. I might
have let the Council’s disinterest pass, if not for Lawrence. He
didn’t want me to push them about Royal. Why? Was Royal involved in
whatever made Lawrence fear for his life?

The Burning Man?

I fried the onion first, scooped it out and
cracked two eggs in the pan. I stirred them briskly as they
solidified. When they were set, I added the rice, onion and minced
garlic, mixed it and listened to it sizzle.

But where to start, where to go? I would be
on my own. I had one clue. Cicero. I couldn’t hang around waiting
for Gareth to contact me, if he ever did.

A dash of red pepper and ginger. I added soy
sauce and stirred it all together.

Would the Council try to stop me? Could I
help Lawrence?

“Oh my god! Fried rice!” Jack exclaimed
reverently. I hadn’t noticed him at my shoulder.

I waved the spoon under his nose. “Want a
taste?”

He said a word beneath his breath and went
back to the table. I’m not sure, but it may have rhymed with
witch
.

Royal was a grown man and Lawrence a child.
I should be using what resources were at my disposal to help
Lawrence, but I didn’t have any. Without Royal, I didn’t know who
to trust, if I could trust anyone.

And I needed him here to eradicate the
hollow ache of impending loss taking root in my belly.

I got a fork, a big ceramic bowl from a
cabinet, filled it with rice and took it to the table. Mac barreled
through the backdoor and leaned against my ankle, peering up at me
through long brindle-black brows. I got upright and closed the
backdoor, taking the bowl with me so my little friend didn’t feel
compelled to jump on the chair and sample my supper. I plopped down
so hard, the chair creaked as if in pain.

I have felt helpless before, too many times
to count, but now the addition of hopelessness made it daunting,
will-sapping. How could I, a stranger, search out clues in a world
of which I knew so little, with no place to start? I doubted I
would get anywhere marching into Bel-Athaer and asking the first
person I met the whereabouts of Cicero, not after what Gareth said
about the Seer.

I lifted my head to see Royal across the
table from me. His hair blazed in the evening sunlight coming
through the big west windows. Pale copper gilded his skin. His
richly hued copper eyes sparkled with mica in their depths. His
smile. . . .

I blinked him away, wanting more than
anything to see him there, real, not an image conjured by my
anxious imagination.

No longer hungry, I pushed my bowl
aside.

My head sank in my hands. Wondering what
happened to Royal was an ache in my chest. Now I had to discover if
Lawrence’s life was at risk and how I could protect him. And Gorge,
too. If finding Royal was beyond my capabilities, how was I
supposed to find Gorge?

I hoped inspiration would jump out at me as
my gaze drifted through the kitchen, until it settled on Gia
Sabato’s book.

Book. Gorge.

My spine straightened. “Well I’ll be
damned,” I said to the room at large. I knew where I saw that
Gelpha writing.
Gorge’s book.

Royal and I were at Gorge’s apartment over
his antiques shop. Gorge settled Lawrence into bed. He came back in
the living room and got a book from a bookcase with a glass door.
He said something about Lawrence wanting a bedtime story and held
the book up for us to see. I saw the title,
Tales of the
Brothers Grimm
, and beneath it symbols which I took for
decoration. It was Gelpha script.

I sucked on my lower lip. Did Lawrence use
that page for a reason, or merely incidentally? The latter, I
decided. Lawrence couldn’t know I noticed the symbols on
Grimm
; I barely glimpsed them, and forgot them till now.

Gorge no longer lived in Clarion, but he
still owned the Emporium and used the apartment when he returned
here to check on business with his manager. Chances are, he left
his furniture and possessions in place when Lawrence insisted he
live in Bel-Athaer. I could see Gorge wanting his old home kept as
it was, as a refuge when life at Court became too much for him.

I had to check it out.

One of Clarion’s favorite myths claims secret
tunnels snake beneath the oldest parts of downtown. A documentary
was made, and the idea used in a movie, a television series and at
least two works of fiction. If asked, those who live and work
downtown will either deny there are tunnels, or swear they’ve been
in them, but do so with a wink or twinkle in their eyes so you
don’t know what to believe. Downtown Clarion is a tourist
attraction and a little mystery can be good for business.

The truth? No secret tunnels, but there are
cellars, many of them warrens of passageways and small rooms.
Chinese railroad workers who settled in Clarion set up opium dens
down there in the late 1800s. The cellars came in handy during
Prohibition as Speakeasies and strip joints. Merchant/owners
knocked holes in the connecting walls to facilitate deliveries, and
in doing so created block-long labyrinths which hindered the law
when it came calling. Local mobsters used them for various
purposes. Many a man went down there in one piece and left in
pieces, if you know what I mean.

Now, in this era of heightened security,
most are blocked and some are unsafe. One runs under Royal’s
apartment block, but I would have to break into Bailey and Cognac
to get in, and it is blocks away from Gorge’s Antiques Emporium.
But I did know a way into the cellars half a block from the
antiques shop, an old hotel which until earlier this year catered
to the down but not quite out, now locked down and boarded up. The
owner had to close when a chunk of ceiling on the third floor fell
in, and work on it had not started yet. It didn’t have an alarm
system, either.

The Emporium had an alarm system, but only
on the doors and windows, no motion detectors inside. No problem. I
would not enter by a door or window.

The Milford is on the corner of the block
with the front entrance facing south on Twenty-Second and west
service entrance on Portsmouth. The alley in the rear is dark and
narrow, the width of a sidewalk. It stank of vomit and rotting
vegetables from two overflowing garbage cans. As I expected, the
boards over one window were loose at the bottom and swiveled aside.
The glass had been knocked out. The place might be unsafe, but that
didn’t stop bums and junkies from using it. Their presence didn’t
worry me and if I left them alone they’d do the same. I pulled a
pair of thin, neoprene gloves from my back pocket and eased them
on. Would not do to leave fingerprints.

Climbing through the window wasn’t difficult
for a person of my height and I landed in a small scullery. I
grimaced and pinched my nostrils with two fingers – someone had
emptied their bladder in the rust-stained sink. My flashlight’s
beam found empty tin cans and liter soda bottles on the floor with
other trash I refused to look at too closely.

Street light slid through chinks between
boards on windows and the front entrance, so I turned off the
flashlight and cautiously walked through the ground floor.
Appliances loomed in the kitchen. A tiny body scuttled along a
shelf in the big pantry and dropped to the floor. Mice don’t
normally bother me, but I swallowed a squeak of surprise just the
same. Dust sheets covered furniture in the lunchroom. I returned to
the hall leading to the foyer, past the back staircase winding up
on my left. Thin rays and dots of light spackled the floor, walls,
a doorway, the stair’s banister. I went in the foyer, past the long
desk and age-mottled mirrors, into the big communal room, then out
again. I stood, listening, but the old hotel was silent.

I know the location of most cellar
entrances. Royal once spent I don’t know how long researching and
mapping them. He thought they might be useful one day, but he never
imagined the purpose I put them to today.

I turned my flashlight back on before
opening the door to the storage closet under the rear staircase,
and braced for claustrophobia. I’m not a classic claustrophobic,
but you don’t have to be to dislike small, dark, enclosed spaces. I
eased in a deep breath before shutting the door behind me.
Don’t
think about it, get it over with.