The Devil's Detective (16 page)

“What are they?” Summer asked, the first words she had spoken since they had left their rooms, and the first without prompting since that morning.

“The demons keep their Genevieves here, the ones that they put to work in the Houska,” replied Fool. “Protecting their investment. They offer them a degree of safety, they get to live among their own kind, and they travel in and out of the Houska together in packs at the beginning and end of their shifts. They have food, a place to sleep, the illusion of freedom, but they're prisoners.”

“You sound angry,” said Summer.

“No,” said Fool, and then realized he was lying. He
was
angry, not because the place existed exactly, but because it had failed; the Genevieves were supposed to be safe here, to be able to find some kind of peace between their times offering themselves to demons, and yet two of their number had been taken and killed.

“What did the Man mean, the boardinghouse with demons on the roof?” asked Summer. Her voice was still flat, but at least she was asking something, was engaging. Coming back? No, maybe not that, not yet, but it was something.

“I don't know,” said Fool. He looked at the roofs around them. Most were sloped, covered in shingling that was cracked and warping. Although he couldn't see any at that moment, there was evidence that Hell's birds, the chalkis, used the edges of the roofs for perches; smears of green and gray shit ran down the walls and pooled in thick, sludgy piles on the roofs' faces. Some of it was fresh and Fool smelled its tang as they walked; some was older, dried and disintegrating into powdery wisps as the breeze teased at it. As he and Summer walked, the humans avoided looking at them. Demons, on the other hand, peered at them with undisguised interest.

One of them, a short thing with skin the color of burned copper and with wings hanging from its back that were broken and torn, emerged
from a doorway and leaned over the porch rail, calling, “Little man! Little girl!”

Fool stopped, looking at the demon, deferential but trying not to show fear. The demon took something from a pouch hanging at its belt, a rolled tube of paper, and put it in its mouth. With its other clawed hand, it lit a match and ignited the end of the tube, drawing a breath in through the burning paper. Smoking was a rarity in Hell, partly because the leaf was hard to find but mostly because demons often didn't have lips flexible enough to hold the tube without chewing or damaging it. It was a habit brought from the worlds outside, Fool had been told, although who had told him, he didn't know. Gordie, maybe, or Elderflower in one of his more expansive moments. The demon sucked again at the tube, and as he did so its eyes glowed as red as the embers of burning paper. It let the smoke out from its mouth in a stream, sending a darting tongue into the thick clouds as though to get a last taste before it dissipated in Hell's heavy air.

“You're in the wrong place, little man, little girl,” said the demon conversationally. There was no aggression in its voice, not yet.

“No,” said Fool. “We're where we need to be. We're looking for somewhere.”

The demon looked around itself, its gestures exaggerated. “Everywhere is somewhere,” it said, “but this is not the somewhere you need to be. Turn about, little man, and take the little girl with you and go.”

“No,” said Fool, surprising himself with the steadiness of his voice. “I am one of Hell's Information Men and I am here to gather information.” He looked about, oddly hoping that he might see plants, that the Man might be watching and be amused, but there was nothing but dust and the boardinghouses.

Everything stopped. A group of men, boys really, crossing the dusty street behind Fool and Summer turned to look at them. From the corner of his eye, Fool saw more men stop and peer at him, faces appearing in doorways and from around buildings.
Noticed for one thing, noticed for all things
, he thought, and then the demon was flexing itself, swelling, the burning leaf and paper falling to the decking by its feet, forgotten. It exhaled, smoke that was not from the cigarette pouring from its mouth,
darkening and wreathing around its head, its eyes glowing red, its claws digging into the wooden rail and tearing splinters from it.

It felt like they were paused, hovering, for a moment, everything motionless around them. The demon glared at Fool and Summer, the men stared at them, the houses glowered through doorways in which the shadows were thick and heavy. Fool's instinct was to retreat, to tip his head in apology and hope that it would be enough, but he didn't. That anger still burned in him, its flames as sullen as the glow in the demon's eyes. “Tell me, demon: where is the house with demons on its roof?” he said, keeping his voice even, thinking,
Little Fool going a step too far, little overreaching Fool.

“He'll kill you,” said a voice from behind the demon. It started, jumping slightly and looking around and then whirling back to stare at Fool. The glow in its eyes had faded and it was trembling, and the smoke pouring from its mouth was uneven for a moment.

“Is it him?” the demon said, and it moaned, low and uneven.

He's scared!
Fool realized, and the realization astonished him.
He's scared of
me
!

“Better tell him,” said the voice again, and a man stepped out of the house behind the demon. The man was older, fat and scarred and hard looking.

“He might shoot you otherwise,” the man continued, “and then where would we be, without our owner?” The demon looked at the man, and the glow came back into its eyes, furious and hot. The fat man, perhaps realizing he had gone too far, stepped back, mumbling something that might have been an apology or a more general susurrus of fealty and obedience.

“I won't shoot you,” said Fool. “Why would I?”

“You shoot demons,” said the demon, surly, turning back to Fool. “You've shot hundreds. Why should I be any different?”

“I haven't shot hundreds,” said Fool. Hundreds? Where had that come from?

“You kill demons when they don't tell you what you want. You've been seen,” said the demon. “You're a human but you kill demons. It shouldn't be allowed.”

Allowed?
thought Fool.
I'm not allowed, I don't do it!

Only, that wasn't true, was it? He hadn't done it hundreds of times, true, but he
had
done it. Experimentally, he let his hand fall to the butt of his gun; the demon flinched. It pulled itself another tube of rolled paper from its pouch and lit it. Its hand shook slightly as it held the flame.

“You kill demons?” said someone on the street behind Fool. When he turned, he found that a large number of young men had gathered to his rear. There were no women; they lived in another Sister, he remembered, and the places they were sent to and the demons they serviced were different from the men's.

“No,” he replied.

“Yes he does,” said Summer, her voice still flat but loud, rolling across the street. “He slaughters them when they don't obey him.”

“What do you want from me?” the demon asked, and its voice was wheedling, unhappy. It had shrunk again, appeared thinner, its skin a dirty bronze, the glow in its eyes guttering. It was only a minor one, Fool realized, puffing itself up to be bigger than it was, and now it was punctured, back to small again. It probably didn't even have a name, only a species, like the chalkis, things without individual identities. Unimportant to Hell, important only to the things and people they could control and brutalize.

“Tell me about the house with the demons on its roof. Where is it?”

For a second the demon was quiet, and then it spat on the ground at Fool's feet. Its spittle bubbled and steamed, a cheap trick intended to frighten. “At Sister's end,” he said, pointing to the end of the long street. “The biggest house.”

As Fool started walking, Summer by his side, he was aware that they were being followed, not by demons but by humans, by men who came out of the boardinghouses and joined a swelling crowd trailing behind them. They didn't talk, these men, and their feet were a soft shuffle in the dirt. When Fool glanced back, he saw that most were barefoot or had cloth wrapped around their feet; their clothes, however, were gaudy, glittered with brightly colored rags and polished stones or pieces of rubbed metal or glass, things to make them attractive, to catch the eye of potential clients. They looked clean, some still with wet hair or skin, but they kept their eyes down and walked hunched over, shrinking into themselves.

“Why are they following us?” he asked.

“Because you kill demons,” said Summer. “Maybe they're hoping to see you do it.”

“I don't,” said Fool, helplessly.

“You do,” said Summer. “You killed two the other day. You killed orphans. Not enough orphans. Not enough.” Fool didn't reply; what could he say? Behind them, the crowd followed.

The largest house in the Sister was three stories tall, although it was no grander than the others. Like them, it had roughly constructed walls of thick planking with holes hewn out for the doorways and windows on the higher floors. Fool saw the thick tangles of bush growing around the boardinghouse and thought of the Man. He smiled, having to stop himself from nodding or gesturing at the plants.

The roof of the building was sloped, coming downward from the rear, and at its front edge were several smaller demons.

They were short, crouching and staring at him and Summer and the crowd behind them. Their eyes glittered, segmented and dark. They were the color of dead and rotting leaves, mottled in shades of brown and black and gray, and their outlines were hard to make out against the layered planks of the roof until they moved.

“This is the house of the Bar-Igura,” one called down. “What is it you want? You do not belong here.”

“I want information,” replied Fool, “about one of the Genevieves who lived here.”

“We have no information,” said one of the things, although whether it was the same one Fool couldn't tell. “Best to leave, Information Man.”

“We came for information,” repeated Fool.

“Perhaps you mishear, little Information Man,” said the demon and then its head exploded.

It was Summer. Her gun was out, the barrel dribbling smoke as the demon's corpse rolled off the edge of the roof and fell to the ground with a damp thud. The noise of the shot rumbled away, echoing down the street in a flat plosive and then, for a moment, there was silence. Fool stared at Summer, but she was looking at the roof and ignored him. She jerked her hand as the next bullet formed in her gun and then she swung the weapon to point at the next demon along.

“He is not a little man and I am not a little girl,” she said loudly. “We are not little, none of us.” The demons on the roof began to screech, and then there was bedlam.

The crowd behind them began to cheer, muted but clear, as people and demons poured out of the buildings around them. One of the things on the roof dropped, landing with a heavy crash on the porch in front of the house, raising clouds of dust around it. Even as it landed it was skittering forward, low and quick, leaping down from the porch toward them. More of the things were dropping from the roof, loosing howls and screams as they came. The crowd behind them screamed as well, shouts mingling with the cheers as it surged forward, flowing around Summer and Fool, buffeting them. The demons and humans met, two waves crashing against each other, snarling and slashing and kicking.

The demons were stronger, more violent, but the humans had the weight of numbers and soon there were tumbling, writhing clusters around, masses pinioning the demons, hauling them back, attacking them.
What's happening here
, thought Fool,
what?
Over his shoulder, he saw demons emerging from the other boardinghouses, wings and claws and teeth and limbs unfurling, moving toward the struggling mess of humans and demons.
They'll slaughter them
, Fool thought.
They'll slaughter us!

The first of the new demons reached them as Fool pulled his gun free from its holster and fired upward. The blast was loud, louder than the noises around him, another plosive shock of noise that crashed over everything around him, dragging silence in its wake. Humans and demons stopped, startled into stillness by the noise.

“Stop!” Fool shouted into the silence, moving as swiftly as he could to the porch. The reassuring weight of a new bullet was in the gun as he reached it, turning so that he faced the crowd. “We just want information. Give it to us and we'll go.”

Summer stepped out of the crowd; she had a fresh bruise forming across her cheek and her hair was disheveled, but the hand holding her gun was steady, pointing at the demons that remained on the roof. Fool's own gun had pointed itself, apparently unbidden, at the nearest demon and the humans holding it down. “Let it up,” he said.

He wasn't sure at first whether the humans would do as he said, but
they eventually did. Already whatever rage had driven them was evaporating, he saw, and the realization of what they had done was coming upon them. Their eyes wouldn't rise from the ground and they were backing away, hunching their shoulders back and trying to bury their faces into the crowd's anonymity. The demons, hissing and spitting, started to move after the men, but Fool raised his gun and fired again, another burst of flame and smoke and metal tearing into the sky, and said, “No.”

There was another of those pauses during which Fool felt his world teetering. The demons glanced looks off each other, calculating, the humans backing away, trying to undo the notice they had brought upon themselves, and there were Fool and Summer, pivots around which everything seemed to move. Then, with a sensation like the slipping of some great weight, things untangled slightly. Claws retracted, the demons pulling themselves back a little.

“Let them in. Give them what they need.” A voice from above, from another of the little demons on the roof. Fool looked up at it; it was peering down at him and Summer with a strange expression in its baleful eyes. Hate? Fear? No, something else, something Fool had never seen before in a demon's eyes.