The Hell You Say (30 page)
By the power of She
By the power of He
By the power of Three
We call upon thee and CAST YOU OUT!
The tallest woman, a freckled, rawboned, red-haired lady, sprinkled water from a silver bowl in three shakes of her hand.
Next to her, a plump, middle-aged woman in spectacles solemnly rang a silver bell three times.
Holy moly. It was the Wiccans from Dragonwyck. Despite the early hour, their performance was drawing quite an audience. The Sunday before Christmas is one of the busiest shopping days of the year. People who normally react like vampires to cock’s crow hit the streets early, shopping lists clenched tight in their sweaty paws. Several people poked their heads out of shop doorways to watch.
The third woman, whom I did not recognize, made a production of pulling out a decorative-looking knife. The crowd around the ring of candles backed away. She held the athame in front of her and began to trace the outline of a pentacle over where I had scrubbed and painted over the inverted pentagram.
“What are they doing?” one woman asked another bystander.
That bystander shrugged, but another answered knowledgeably, “A purification rite. I saw this on the Discovery Channel.”
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Josh Lanyon
I edged around the crowd toward the front of the bookstore. Velvet must not have arrived yet. The doors were still locked, the security gate pulled across the front. But the lights were on inside.
By the power of the pentagram we lay
Protection here both night and day
We now invoke the Law of Three
This be our will, so mote it be!
Three more shakes of the bell, three more sprinkles of water, and the show was over.
The Wiccan I didn’t recognize pulled out a candle snuffer and went counterclockwise around the circle of candles, putting them out. The other two began to shake hands with people, murmuring those “Blessed be’s” as they worked the crowd.
I approached the plump lady who had given me Selene Wolfe’s business card. She looked up, beaming. “There you are! Blessed be!”
“This is a surprise,” I said.
She took both my hands and squeezed them tightly in hers. “I know. But we tried, you know. We had so little to go on.”
The tall one, who I seemed to recall had been named Ariel, reached us. She also took both my hands and squeezed them warmly. It was hard not to feel touched by all this apparent goodwill. “Blessed be!”
“Hi again.”
She shook her head at me as though I were a naughty little boy. “It took us such a long time to find you,” she said. “You didn’t contact Selene for ages!”
The third woman approached, nodded gravely. “Blessed be.”
“Blessed be,” I said, giving up. “And…er…thanks.”
She nodded, like, Damn straight! And don’t let this demon stuff happen again! Then she turned to the other two. “I’ve got to get home. I’ve got so much shopping to do, you would not believe!”
There was a sudden flurry of activity while they gathered their candles and chalice and bag of salt. The crowd had mostly dispersed by now. I glimpsed Velvet moving around inside the store. Had she barricaded herself in?
I went to move my car. The last I saw of the three witches, they were squeezing into a blue pickup truck. I pulled around the corner, parked in back, and slipped in through the side.
Velvet was behind the counter. She glared at me.
“Give me ten minutes,” I told her, starting the stairs to my living quarters. “I want to take a quick shower and change.”
“Forget it,” she said. “I quit.”
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189
I stopped. “Huh? Why?” I came back down the stairs. “What’s going on?”
“What’s going on is that I quit. That’s all.” She was stuffing her personal possessions in her knapsack as fast as she could jam them in.
“But why?”
She glared at me. “But why? Why? Because of that!” She beckoned toward the front of the shop and the street now empty of bell, book, and candle. “Because every day is Halloween around here.”
I stared, perplexed.
Wrong again, Adrien. Apparently she was not a foot soldier in the shock troops of The Damned. What did I know? Maybe she really was just a freaked out and much put-upon sales associate in a bookstore.
“Hey, but that’s over. From now on it’s strictly business as usual.”
As I told her this, I mentally crossed my fingers. I was pretty sure Jake would get a search warrant, and I was pretty sure what a search of the Hobb Street building would reveal.
“This is your usual business,” she said acidly. “I’m not stupid. I watch the news. The first guy you had working here was murdered by a serial killer. The next guy was a serial killer.”
“But --”
“Not only that, you’ve got reporters and detectives and police and all kinds of people asking questions about you.”
“What kinds of questions?” I asked, distracted from my original argument.
“Who knows! I mean, I can’t get anything done without some weirdo walking in here.”
She was not rude enough to say so, but I had a feeling she was including me in that category.
“Velvet,” I coaxed. “I know how it seems, but really, usually it’s not like this at all.
Usually it’s so quiet you can hear the dust fall. Truly. Hang in for a while longer. Life will be back to normal.”
She straightened, slung her bag over her shoulder, and gave me a long, level look. “No way. I don’t want to wake up dead one morning. Oh, and Adrien? Get some more help in here!”
With that, she marched out.
* * * * *
190
Josh Lanyon
I didn’t expect to be proven wrong quite so fast though. After a hellacious day of serving irritable and tired holiday shoppers, I closed up, went upstairs, kicked off my shoes, and dropped down on the sofa. I was drifting into an exhausted sleep, when the phone rang.
I rolled off the sofa and dived to grab it before the machine kicked in.
“Thought you’d want to know,” Jake said dryly. “Satan’s Grotto was a wash.”
I wiped my eyes with the heel of my hand, trying to focus. “You didn’t find anything?”
“Nothing.”
“Did you --”
“We tore the place apart. We sprayed with luminol. No blood stains of any kind anywhere.”
I was trying to absorb this as Jake added, “And we dusted for prints. It’s going to take awhile to get the complete results on those, but so far none of the victims’ prints have turned up. Neither did Gordon’s.”
“I see.” I didn’t though. Not at all.
“Also there was no indication that anyone had been held prisoner there at any time.”
“Oh.”
He sighed. “So whatever your pet nutcase told you, it was a sack of shit.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I really thought there might be something to it.”
“Yeah. Well. Now we all know there wasn’t.” He was silent for a moment.
“Thanks for checking.”
“I’ve got to go.”
“Right.”
He hung up.
I put the phone down.
Don’t think about it, I told myself. You’ve got much bigger problems than that.
If my position had been precarious before, it was all the more perilous following a police raid. Like all good sales people, Garibaldi believed in his product, and he had believed that I was in the market for that product; he had been sincere during our conversation. But now…I could always plead that I had, all unknowing, led the cops to their hangout, but I was pretty sure any doubts Garibaldi and/or the Fifty-sixth Duke of Hell may have had about my dishonorable intentions were gone.
I could come clean to the police, tell everything I knew, but it was so pitifully little. I had zero proof of anything. The proof I had been counting on hadn’t turned up.
Did it even exist? Maybe I was letting my imagination run wild, reading threats into innocuous conversations, jumping to the same bigoted conclusions about what I didn’t understand, what didn’t fit into my preconceived notions of religion and spirituality.
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The phone rang again. I ignored it and went into the kitchen. I hadn’t eaten all day. No wonder I felt like something the cat dragged in. I opened the fridge.
The machine picked up.
Silence.
I felt a ripple of unease, but then Guy spoke, sounding reluctant. More. He sounded grim. “Adrien, apparently I was wrong. Peter is not in Germany. I’d like to….” I missed the next word or two. “Call me. Please.”
Dial tone.
192
Josh Lanyon
I called Guy. Unsurprisingly, he was out.
I tried him again in the morning. No answer. On impulse I called the university, and was informed by an uncomfortable-sounding secretary that Professor Snowden was in his office. She put me through.
“Snowden,” Guy said, sounding weary.
“It’s Adrien,” I said. “I tried to call you last night, but --”
“I was out last night.”
He sounded like that was my fault.
I said, “Well, one good thing. It looks like the university has cleared you of wrongdoing.”
“Hardly. I’m here to clear out my desk.”
I didn’t know what to say. Into the silence that followed his words, he said, “Look, I’ve reason to believe that Peter lied to me. I don’t know if that matters anymore. Angus has been released.”
“Do you know where Peter lives?”
“Yes.”
I didn’t know how to ask. I was aware that Guy was torn over this apparent defection by Peter Verlane. Assuming that Guy was on the level.
Instead I said, “Did you need help?”
He hesitated, then said, “Yes.”
So I closed the shop and drove to UCLA. I found Guy in his office, surrounded by boxes and stacks of books.
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“Is this official?” I asked. “I thought you were on suspension?”
“It’s inevitable,” Guy said, tying string around a stack of books. “I prefer the dignity of walking away as opposed to being put out to pasture.” He pointed to a stack of photos. “There are several snaps of Peter in there.”
I sorted through the photos quickly. Most of them were of Guy and people I’d never seen in places I did not recognize. But toward the bottom of the stack were a couple of photos of a tall, thin, dark-haired boy of about Angus’s age. I recognized the flyaway dark hair and round spectacles.
“This kid who looks like Harry Potter, is he Peter?”
“Yes,” Guy said without pausing to glance at a photograph of himself, his arm around Peter’s slim shoulders. They were both laughing. I peered closer. There was a glint of silver on Peter’s chest -- a star on a silver chain?
“He was at Hell’s Kitchen that night.”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t think he was involved?”
The green eyes held mine. “That club was packed with kids interested in the occult who have absolutely nothing to do with this. Why would I instantly assume that Peter was part of this…this madness?”
“He sent us there!”
“The girl -- Betty Sansone -- that you wanted to talk to was there. He didn’t lie.”
“He set us up.”
“No one could have known you were going to walk out into that alley. They just seized the opportunity.”
Yeah, safe to say Guy’s feelings on the subject of Peter Verlane were mixed.
I said, “Guy, I’ve seen Peter with Betty Sansone a couple of times. He may not be involved in murder, but I’m sure he took part in the abduction of Gabriel Savant.”
“Gabriel Savant!” Guy looked disgusted. “Please tell me you’re not a fan of that hack. If Savant was kidnapped, it was by socially conscious literary critics.”
Literary snobbery, alive and well on the astral plane.
“Fine,” I said. “Why don’t we go ask Peter?”
He stared at me. “All right. Why don’t we.”
Neither of us moved. Guy reached out and touched my jaw. I blinked.
“Shaving cream,” he explained.
“Thanks.”
He looked past me. I glanced around. Detectives Rossini and Riordan stood in the doorway of Guy’s office.
194
Josh Lanyon
“Can I help you, detectives?” Guy asked frostily.
Rossini eyed me with open curiosity. Jake never looked my way. I could have been invisible.
“Well, Mr. English, we meet again,” Rossini said cordially.
“Always a pleasure,” I said.
His smile was caustic. “We wanted to ask you a couple more questions, professor,” he said, turning to Guy.
I said, “Why don’t I carry this out to my car?”
Guy nodded.
I lifted the nearest box, squeezed through the doorway past Rossini and Jake, who barely moved out of my way.
* * * * *
When they were out of sight, I got up and returned to Guy’s office. He had made a lot of progress in the last minutes. Practically everything was boxed or tied, ready to be moved.
“What was that about?” I asked.
“More of the same. I think their plan is to bore me into a confession.”
We carried the rest of Guy’s stuff to my car, which was better suited to hauling boxes and a potted palm. I followed Guy over to his place. He suggested that we wait to unload the Forester until after we’d seen Peter, which suited me, and we climbed into the Miata to drive to Peter’s.
* * * * *
Guy and I returned to the car.
“We could wait?” I said doubtfully.
Guy considered this. “We could have a long wait.”
No lie, considering Peter’s active social life.
We waited.
A Miata is not the best vehicle for stakeout.
We talked.
“Are you hungry?” Guy inquired at last.
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I looked at the clock in the dashboard. Three. Yeah, I was sort of hungry. As hungry as I could get with that perpetual knot in my stomach.
I said, “We’re liable to miss him.”
