Unearthed (34 page)

When Kitty made it back into the new house, she took only a moment to look the place over. It wasn’t as nicely furnished as the Venus Plantation, that was for sure. This was a simple enough house, not opulent, because now that she’d made the big noise, she needed to keep a lower profile. It wasn’t that she couldn’t kill every cop and however many demon hunters were left in this town, it was that she didn’t
want
to right now. She had other things to do, other interests to pursue, and they were all nuisances that she’d get to in her own time. What if one of them came knocking when she was busy breaking the cowboy or excavating one of the last two pieces of the Rog’tausch? Then she’d have to stop what she was doing and engage them, beat them senseless, chain them up for later submission … who had time for that right now? Not her.

Feegan Bardsley waited inside with one of the sealed boxes in his arms. He sat in the living room of the country house Rousseau had rented for her, with Detmar Lawrence next to her, his eyes on another box that waited on a coffee table in the middle of the room. Everything here was so simple; it lacked class. It was all frilly, overwrought, and looked like someone had come through with doilies aplenty. Tacky, tacky, tacky.

Bardsley scrambled to his feet as she approached, and Lawrence made it up a half-second after he did. Kitty noted it, of course, because Bardsley had his arms full and still made it up first. That was a sign of a man who was looking to make the right impression. Lawrence lost points in her estimation for his failure to be quite as quick.

“I bring you what I promised,” Bardsley said, bowing. More points.

“I see you’ve found another,” Lawrence said, inclining his head toward her.

Kitty breezed past Bardsley and took his box, giving him a gentle nod in acknowledgment of his kindness. She set it upon the table next to the other, then paused, repeating those same words again, at the top of her lungs, the ones that made the Rog’tausch submissive to her. “
Et-esh-komn-bah et-anyana-seer-la-oranlee
.” She said them loudly enough to be heard through the wood encasement, and in the distance she could hear the arm and the leg shuffling their way toward her from another room.

“Let’s see what we have,” she said and opened the first box. This one was obvious from the shape; it was just like the one she’d gotten from the dig site, and as soon as it was open a hand stuck out, all Frankenstein in asserting its liveliness. She placed it upon the floor as gently as she could. “And now you,” she said, turning her attention to the much larger parcel beneath the first.

This one was massive. It filled the surface of the coffee table and then some, hanging off the edge on either end by several inches. It was oblong, rectangular. When she pried the top off, the whole box shuddered slightly. “It’s like it’s my birthday,” she said under her breath.

“How many have you had now?” Lawrence asked, sounding almost polite. Almost. But you didn’t ask a demon lady that fucking question.

“More than you,” she said, keeping it cool. She threw the lid off, letting it fall to the floor with a clatter. Within the box she found exactly what she expected—a torso, bare from the neck to the groin, a Ken-doll in its absence of exterior anatomy. “Oh, yes, my dear. You are just what I’ve always wanted.”

“Seems a bit … lacking,” Lawrence said. She didn’t know where this annoying smugness had sprung from, but she didn’t like it. Yesterday he’d been ever so humble in his proposal for alliance. “You know, for what a lady would be looking for.”

She looked up at him without amusement. “I don’t need one of those, thank you.” She ran a hand across the muscled chest, the odd colored skin of the torso. “Well … I think it’s about time we start putting together the pieces.” She wavered, just for a moment—considering how best to have Bardsley and Lawrence remove themselves from the room so that she could do this privately. Uniting the Rog’tausch had been her longest dream, the one thing she’d wanted above all else, the one thing she was willing to put her favorite hobby—rampant torture and forcible knifepoint cunnilingus—on hold for a few minutes to achieve.

It only took a moment for her to concede that there was little hope of this being a private moment, though. Bardsley had done his part, and she’d made her deal. She looked up to find him staring just as intently at the torso as she had. He was a true believer, and she couldn’t fault him for that. Be annoyed that he was here now, stepping on her moment, but she could hardly fault him for feeling the same as she did.

Lawrence, on the other hand, seemed to be watching with thinly veiled disinterest. She caught him looking at her instead of the Rog’tausch, which revealed his hand probably more than he’d intended. This wasn’t his game; he didn’t care for the Rog’tausch so much as he wanted something from her. Well, that would keep. She had work to do now in any case—

“Madam,” Rousseau said, sticking his head in. The man looked pale, face color all washed out. It was one of the less charming attributes of humans, always being dependent on their blood to flow. “You have another … caller.”

“Tell them I’ll call them back if they’re on the phone,” Kitty said, waving him off. “And if they’re here, I’m busy and they’re uninvited.”

“They’re here,” Rousseau said, and she looked up to see him flushing. He was only sticking his head in the door, which was unusual—and a breach of some protocol, probably. “You will need to take this appointment.”

“Will I?” She could feel the crackle of flames in the back of her throat. She didn’t breathe fire unless she got truly angry, but she felt it now. She ran a hand into her pocket and felt that rune that the vendor had sold Rousseau to keep her cloaked from mystical influences and seekers. “I’m not in much of a mood for—” She paused, realizing what he’d just said. “Need?”

Rousseau nodded, once, slowly. The meaning was unmistakably clear.

“Out,” she said, standing abruptly. “Wait outside. I’ll call you back in as soon as I’m done.”

“But the—” Lawrence began. Bardsley knew better or sensed what was afoot, and Kitty respected him all the more for it. Lawrence caught the feeling, just a little late. “Oh.”

“Yes,” Kitty said and turned her head to Rousseau. “See these gentlemen to the sitting room and then … show our guest in. The Rog’tausch will simply have to wait … until this is over …”

“What does he have on you?” Lex Deivrel asked as soon as Reeve was out of the room. Arch felt himself look around instinctively, as though Reeve would have structured this as a trick just to get him to talk. It was pretty doubtful, though, since Reeve hated Deivrel, but …

“Who hired you?” Arch asked, getting right to the nub.

“Your father-in-law,” Deivrel said, not backing off. “What does Reeve have on you?” She paused, waiting, and when Arch didn’t answer after a moment she favored him with a patronizing smile. “Listen. I bill by the hour, so if you just want to sit here and stare at each other, I can do that. I can do that all day, all night, for the next six weeks until Sheriff Montresor decides to brick up that doorway and rid himself of his problems at a rate of two for one.” She leaned in a little, and her smile got a little more patronizing. “But it’d cost your father-in-law money I suspect you wouldn’t want him to spend, so … I’m your lawyer, you’re protected by attorney-client privilege. Spill.”

“He’s got cartridges,” Arch said, after considering it for a moment. “Shell casings from shots I fired in the town square a couple months ago.”

“Anyone harmed there?” Deivrel asked. She had a pad out, was jotting notes.

“Not exactly,” Arch said and felt the tension keeping him from just lying and saying no.

She looked up, giving him an eyebrow. “Was anybody hurt or not?”

“No person was hurt,” Arch said.

She stared him down. “Any animals?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“All right, then,” Deivrel said. “Property destroyed?”

“No.”

“That’s going to be an easy charge to get rid of,” Deivrel said. “Police officer accidentally discharges his gun under mysterious circumstances, no one harmed, yadda yadda. Done. What else?”

“He caught me with a rifle tonight,” Arch said.

“Where?”

“In the woods next to the Venus Plantation,” Arch said.

She looked up at him, and he saw a flicker of something. “So, you were hunting.”

He stared back. “It was pretty well after sundown, so I don’t think he’s going to buy that.”

“Because people never break the rules while hunting?” Deivrel was grinning now. “I handle a dozen cases like that each year. This one’s easy, too.”

“The rifle he caught me with will match ballistics for shots fired at the Summer Lights festival a few weeks ago,” Arch said.

She put her pen down, made eye contact, and didn’t let it go. “Did you fire those shots?”

“No.”

“Were you present when they were fired?” She brought the pen up, touching the tip to the corner of her mouth. She had little in the way of lines, enough to tell Arch she was probably in her early forties, maybe late thirties.

“I was down in the crowd,” Arch said.

“Anyone see you?”

“Hundreds of people,” Arch said.

She shrugged. “Basically, thus far he’s got shells from an accidental discharge, and you with a rifle that was used in a crime at some point which you have an ironclad alibi for. Anything else?”

Arch stirred, felt the cuffs as they rattled when he shifted. “He suspects me for—”

She waved a hand. “I don’t care what he suspects. What does he
have
?”

Arch thought about it, running his tired mind through the possibilities. “Some vague eyewitness testimony about a giant, flaming cow, maybe.”

She dropped the pen from the corner of her mouth. “You set a cow on fire?”

“No!” Arch said, felt the vehemence pour right out on the table between them. “Not a—it was a—I don’t know what they saw. Something strange.”

“Any provable crime being committed?”

Arch thought it over. “I don’t think so.”

She made a few more notes and then stopped, placing the pen perfectly even, lined up with the edge of the pad. “Okay. You’ve been gone from work for a while now, right?”

Arch blinked. “Uh, yes. A few weeks.”

“Why?”

Arch ran through possible explanations before settling on one that was closest to the truth. “On the night of the Summer Lights Festival, the sheriff and I had a confrontation in which he accused me of being corrupt.”

“While you were standing in the crowd during the incident you mentioned before?” Deivrel smiled. She already knew.

“Yeah,” Arch said, watching her carefully. “How did you—”

“Doesn’t matter,” Deivrel said. “Did he bring a formal inquiry or complaint against you, based on the procedures in place to handle workplace issues?”

“What?” Arch asked. “No. No, he just said—”

“Okay,” Deivrel said and started jotting furiously again. “Do you want your job back?”

Arch blinked. “Do I want—how would I get my job back?”

“The sheriff created a hostile working environment,” Deivrel said. “He threatened you, impugned your reputation, and accused you of crimes with no basis in fact in the middle of a crowd of your fellow citizens of Calhoun County.” She looked straight at him. “I see harassment. I see racial discrimination from a white sheriff against his only African-American deputy. I see stereotyping, I see—”

Arch felt his hand go straight to his face, thumb and forefinger finding the bridge of his nose and giving them a good rub. “You’re seeing an awful lot. Not sure much of what you’re seeing is actually there, though.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Deivrel said. “What matters is what a jury sees, and with what’s happened to you, I can paint a picture so vivid and bright that any jury around is going to see a man who was systematically intimidated by his boss, harassed out of town—this is some serious Jim Crow stuff here. These charges are easy.” She waved her hand. “Consider them gone. But better than that, if we sue Calhoun County to get you your job back on this basis, you could get a seven-figure cash settlement. Maybe eight figures if we go to court.”

Arch felt his head spin. “I don’t really have time to go to court at the moment—”

“Seven figures,” Deivrel said. “Maybe high six figures if we decided to settle early rather than let it creep close to trial.”

Arch held in a sigh. He needed to deal with a lawsuit right now like he needed a few extra pairs of handcuffs to chain him down. What was it with lawyers, always searching for the advantage, the nasty hit, the dagger to the back? He tried to imagine Reeve getting served for a civil suit that called him a racist, accused him of everything he’d done just because Arch was black. It wasn’t the sort of thing that sounded good to anyone’s ears; it was the sort of thing that hung around your neck for a good long while afterward. The tiniest, pettiest, most vindictive part of him might have enjoyed it for about five seconds, but the rest of him felt pretty damned near aghast at the thought of what that would mean for the man. It wasn’t his fault he didn’t have a clue about what was going on. If Arch had seen his own evidence attached to anyone else’s case, he would have jumped to some of the same conclusions, without doubt.

He lifted his hands, showing the cuffs to the lawyer, and said, “Why don’t we start by getting me turned loose, and we can talk about the rest some other time, okay?” Diplomacy was best, especially when you had a fire-breather like Lex Deivrel sitting across the table from you. And he had no interest in getting on her bad side like Reeve had, especially not when she held the figurative keys to his freedom in her hands.

Lauren sat next to the mattress in the living room, her ass on the hard wood floor. The floor had probably been nice once; it had a light tone to it, something that would have given the place a great look on a sunny, summer day. The remains of white baseboards and a cheery paint in the spots where the walls hadn’t been ripped open, hinted at a house that was probably deeply cared for, once upon a time. That it hadn’t been cared for in quite a while was obvious, though—obvious as hell to anyone with a pair of eyes to witness what had happened here.