The Dangerous Book for Demon Slayers (22 page)

"Of course, Meko." I hated to cut the poor thing off, but we were
in the middle of a crisis here. "I should have known you'd have it
covered."

Meko glowed.

Why couldn't I meet a normal person with good information? Someone who
wasn't a biker witch, eighty years dead or a half demon? Someone who hadn't
been wandering the bowels of Hoover Dam since its construction. A real source
like any other normal frickin' woman-on-a-mission would have?

"Field trip!" Pirate declared, launching himself off the chair and
rushing for the door. He turned in a circle and sat. "You know you're
going to need a ghost sniffer along. We canines have a sixth sense about
us."

I hated to admit it, but… "You're right. We could use you."
I certainly wasn't going to leave him alone.

It would be nice to have someone along who wasn't creeped out by the devil's
mark on my hand. I adjusted my switch stars and slid my new hotel key card into
an empty slot on my utility belt.

"Lighten up, Lizzie," Pirate said, practically dancing in place.
"It's not like Joe's gonna marry a demon or start a big succubi invasion
or give you a devil's mark or—"

"No, of course not," I said, before Pirate could cheer me up any
more. For all I knew, Joe could be far worse.

Joe Lipswich lived in one of the tunnels used to inspect the dam during the
half a century it took for the concrete to cure. Naturally, Joe's residence had
to be sixty feet below the towering edge of Hoover Dam. Since he wouldn't come
to us, we went to him, via the two o'clock Deluxe Hoover Dam Tour.

"Did it start yet?" Pirate's nose tickled me from where I'd hidden
him in an oversized purse. I'd bought the thing at the Paradise Hotel gift
shop. Made of woven straw, it made everywhere it touched itchy.

"Hush," I said, arranging the purse flap over Pirate's prying
nostrils. There were no dogs allowed on the tour—or anywhere on the dam
for that matter. Pirate shifted inside my purse.

Voices tended to carry in the sparse lobby below the observation deck. Our
tour group was small, less than twenty of us in all. I tried not to fidget as
the tourists checked their cameras and flipped through their guide books. I
wished we'd had more of a crowd. It would make it easier for me to disappear
into one of the inspection tunnels. I flipped through the guide book, one eye
on Ezra. Luckily, no one seemed to be looking for a ghost squeezed behind the
bronze statue dedicated to the men who built Hoover Dam.

People liked to see what they wanted to see.

Still, I motioned for Ezra to tuck in his elbows.

At last our guide introduced himself and led us into an immense elevator.

"Hoover Dam was begun in 1931 and dedicated by President Franklin
Roosevelt in 1935," the guide said as the elevator dropped seventy feet
into the concrete bowls of the dam. It made my stomach dip to think of being
surrounded by six million tons of concrete, steel and darkness.

We exited into a tunnel that grew narrower as we went. And where was Ezra? I
craned my neck to see behind doors and into dark corners. I looked behind
fellow tourists and even past a "restricted" door. Maybe I did like
it better when he had his elbows sticking out.

We saw intake valves and turbines before our deluxe guide led us through
round tunnels smelling of concrete and old steel. The passageways were barely
taller than I was, their light bulbs dangling above us, casting shadows and
daring me to depart down a lonely dark tunnel.

A soft voice touched behind my ear, nearly scaring me out of my gourd.
"It's time," he whispered.

I whipped around to find Ezra poking his head out of the top of the tunnel.
"Where have you been?" I hissed.

He nudged his head back to a particularly dark artery we'd passed.
"Follow me."

I glanced at our guide up front, showing my fellow tourists the chalk
inspection marks left behind in the 1930s and '40s. When he turned his back to
us, I slipped into the side tunnel.

My heart echoed in my chest. I couldn't believe I was doing this. The light
quickly vanished, and I had to reach out to the cold walls of the tunnel to
guide myself. Ezra glowed faintly ahead. It was a strange feeling, this
deliberate breaking of the rules. I didn't even like to walk on other people's
lawns, much less cut out on a tour group at a major national landmark. A lot of
the things I'd had to do in the last few weeks, I'd done because they were
forced upon me. I'd had no choice, or at least that's what I'd told myself. But
now I had a choice. And I was still doing it. I think sometimes when you
change, the last person who knows about it is you.

Ezra halted and I had to make a quick stop myself to keep from barreling
straight through him. "Joe does like to wander," he said with an
apologetic glance over his shoulder. "Fortunately, he's not going too
far."

Yeah, well those two might have all the time in the world, but I didn't.

"You ready, babe?" I dug Pirate, warm and snuggly, out of the bag.

"Hee-yah. I was born ready!" Pirate's nails scratched at the
concrete as I eased him down next to me. He took the curve of the tunnel
NASCAR-style.

Pirate took a quick left, with Ezra and I right behind. I cringed as the
soles of my sandals hit a hollow metal grate. "Hold up, everybody."
My voice echoed down the round passageways. "How sturdy is this?"

"It's hard to say," Ezra said. "But I've seen inspectors in
here."

"What? In 1952?" I said, fighting a twinge of panic. I could see
it now. Lizzie Brown, survivor of multiple demon attacks, taken out by a
tunnel. This Joe person had better be worth it.

"Come on, Lizzie." Pirate took off, his tags jingling.
"Follow me. I can take the pressure. I was bred to take the heat."

I pried my hand off the wall. The eerie red light revealed a metal grate
with nothing underneath. The emptiness under my feet seemed to stretch into
oblivion.

We took a series of twists and turns, more than I wanted to think about.
Still, I tracked them like my life depended on it—which it would if
Pirate lost his way.

Near the end of a shaft that I swear curved unnaturally to the left, Pirate
hitched up on his back legs. "Hey! Nice hat."

Ezra let out a whoop. "Joe, you clown!" He clapped at a glowing,
yellow orb. "I've got visitors for you."

The orb lengthened and grew into a lanky construction worker in dusty
1930s-style overalls. His white shirt stretched around muscular arms streaked
with dust and sweat. He wore a crude-looking hat covered in what looked to be
black goo.

He lifted his head and grinned as if he hadn't seen a woman in years. Joe
had a rawboned, friendly face, with a hooked, Roman nose and a dimple at the
chin. "Well, dang, aren't you a sight?" he said, eyeing me a bit too
appreciatively.

"Joe," Ezra said, embarrassed. "She's about seventy years too
late."

Joe shook his head, as if to clear it. "My apologies, ma'am. It gets
lonely down here. Add that to the fact that nobody can see me, hear me, talk to
me. 'Cept Ezra here. And Mad Mertle, who jumped in '62."

"And Farsworth," Ezra added.

Joe rubbed his hand against his chin. "Nah. He gave up. Went to the
light." His eyes searched as if we were outside instead of in a narrow
tunnel deep in the dam.

"Aw, now that's too bad," Ezra murmured.

"I was hoping you could answer a few questions for me," I said to
Joe. "I have an uncle who works here. Phil Whirley. I'm not sure what he
does, but whatever it is, he's got demons after him."

Joe winced at the mention of demons. "Used to be I could go years without
even smelling one. Now I have to work to avoid them."

"At the dam?" Now we were getting somewhere.

"How much do you like your uncle?" Joe asked.

"What do you mean?" I asked slowly.

Pirate wound his stubby little body around my legs. "Enough that she
got the devil's mark," he said.

Joe's gaze swept over my body and rested on my glowing palm. "So I
see." The muscles in his jaw worked. "In that case, you'd better act
fast. Your man is sabotaging the dam's turbine timing system."

A shiver ran through me. "Not Phil." He wouldn't.

Ezra shot me an apologetic glance. "You said he married a
she-demon."

"I said?" I hadn't told Ezra anything. "You've been telling
him our business?" I asked Pirate.

He shot me an innocent doggie look. "Oh, this and that. In between
high-stakes, winner-take-all Scrabble trash talk."

Ezra cleared his throat. "It's unnatural, a succubus marrying a half
fairy. She probably hooked the human side of him, but with her ability to
enhance people's powers, I'm willing to bet your uncle could do some serious
damage."

Oh frig. I hadn't thought about the succubus giving
Phil
power.

Joe nodded. "He's got something going on. I've seen it myself. Now I'm
no engineer, but I've been around long enough to know Phil Whirley's working on
a massive power outage. This place lights up a good chunk of the West
Coast."

We still didn't have all the facts. "Why would the demons want Phil to
knock out the lights?"

"Beats me," Joe replied. "But it gets their rocks off. Word
is the succubi have been hacking the power system out West for decades. They're
the ones responsible for most of the rolling blackouts. And the 2003 blackout
that hit the East Coast."

"Okay," I said. It still didn't make sense. "I hate to think
what could happen to Uncle Phil after they're done with him." Their
needing him was probably the only thing keeping him alive.

"You'd better figure it out quick," Joe said. "The way he's
been running it, the turbine timing system could blow."

"Soon?" I gaped. We needed time on this.

"It could have gone today. As it stands, he's got another shift
tomorrow," Joe said.

"Tomorrow?" I braced my hands on the sides of the tunnel. It was
too soon. I couldn't fix this by tomorrow. Even if I could get to the DIP
office before six o' clock, they'd be so tangled up in their bureaucratic
hoo-ha, they'd wait for an actual demon invasion to step up. And the nonmagical
authorities weren't going to believe me, at least not in time to get an
inspection crew in here tomorrow. And what could I possibly say to convince
them?

Hey, I've come to tell you that two ghosts warned me that a half fairy
is tinkering with the Hoover Dam to the point where we'll lose power. It's all
part of a demonic plan to trigger Armageddon when the lights are out.

"It's too soon," I said.

"The West Coast will be the first to go, right after some kind of
concert," Joe said, hovering close enough for me to smell the dampness on
him. "I heard him talking with his lady friend on the phone."

Joe looked immensely sorry as he shrugged.

I had to figure out how they planned to bring the demons in. I had to shut
off their power source, if you will. The problem was, Phil held the answers and
he was brain-warped.

Serena had been clear. I could still feel her rage.
Leave us alone,
demon slayer, and I'll only kill him when I'm finished. Push me and I'll take
his soul
.

My stomach dipped when I realized it wasn't even a matter of rescuing his
soul anymore.
Sacrifice one for the many
. I just wish I wasn't the one
who had to make that choice.

Well, I refused let her win. I braced a hand on my switch stars and asked
the ghost, "How good are you at getting into places most of us
can't?"

He nodded thoughtfully. "I can hold my own."

"If we can find Phil…" I began.

Joe grinned. "They'll be at Club Viva." He said, "Phil's been
talking about it all day."

"Okay," I said, letting out a breath I'd barely realized I was
holding. "Let's go save the world."

Excerpt from
The Dangerous Book for Demon Slayers:

Meeting a ghost reminds me of the time I bought my gold Saturn. I
thought it was unique, until I had one and started noticing every gold Saturn
on the road. I'd assumed the first ghosts I met were the only ones I'd see for
awhile. Then I opened my eyes and found them everywhere. Fortunately, most
people don't bother looking for them. Perhaps if they did, the McDonald's
drive-thru wouldn't be so popular. Some drive-up customers seem to notice the
slight chill in the air. But they never seem to notice the ghosts filching one
or two of their french fries
.

I've never been good at sneaking. I hate spying. I don't even like playing
Secret Santa. So why, oh why did I think it was a good idea to spy on my Uncle
Phil and the demon who'd stolen his mind? Simple—lack of options.

The demons were putting their plan into motion sooner rather than later. I'd
sent Dimitri away, Grandma, Max, anyone who could help me. It was time to see
what Ezra and I could do. It had better be enough.

Meko had retrieved my things from the trashed thirteenth floor and we'd
stopped by the lobby-level executive's lounge so I could shower. Afterward, I
changed into a black leather skirt and a black corset top so clingy it would
have given me hives a few months ago. Ezra found a Gucci shopping bag for
Pirate, who protested heartily. I didn't blame him one bit. But we all had a
price to pay.

Traffic whizzed past on the road out front of the club. It wasn't even nine
o'clock at night, far too early for the Las Vegas club scene. Most folks were
probably still on their way to dinner.

"What do you know about the devil's mark?" I asked Ezra as I cut
the engine on my Harley and backed it into a dark, weed-strewn corner right
outside the exit of Club Viva.

The ghost seemed startled by the question. "You mean you don't?
Oh," he said, trying to be smooth and doing a lousy job of it. "Those
who wear the devil's mark have chosen a," he chewed at his lip, "how
shall I put it? An unholy alliance."