“Maybe he doesn’t want to hurt me, either. Have you thought of that? Maybe he’s like you. Maybe he’s sick of it.”
Imelda shook her head. “I wish that were true.”
“Ask him!” Amber said. “Talk to him! Talk to my parents! Maybe they’d change their minds if you talk to them!”
“Sweetie, no …”
“Have you tried?”
“I haven’t,” Imelda admitted.
“Then you don’t know, do you? You want to send me away when I might not even have to go. I know my parents, too, all right? I know what they’re like. Talk to them. They’re weird, but they’re practical. All you need to do is reason with them.”
“Amber, Bill and Betty aren’t going to change their minds,” said Imelda. “They’re furious. They’re desperate. They haven’t slept. They haven’t stopped searching.”
“They’re worried about me.”
“They’re worried you’ve escaped. Sweetie, you saw them. You heard what they said. If they find you, they will kill you. You have to trust me on this.”
“So that’s it? You think you can hand me a bag of clothes and a bag of money and send me off somewhere? I don’t even know where you’re sending me. I’m not going, you understand? I am not going and you can’t make me!”
Imelda glanced at Milo. “She’s not usually like this.”
“And who the hell is he?” Amber almost shouted. “You’re sending me off with a strange man I don’t even know? How is that a good idea?”
“I trust him.”
“He was going to shoot me earlier! And you want me to get in a car with this guy? For how long? How long will all this take?”
Imelda hesitated. “I don’t know. Maybe … two weeks?”
“Two weeks?”
“Or three.”
“What?”
“It’s the only safe way. You’ll have to get yourself some more clothes and things, but that bag will do for now.”
“We really need to get going,” said Milo. “I want to be on the road before dark.”
Amber held up her hands. “Okay, okay, listen to me. Just listen, all right? That’s your idea. That’s the plan you came up with. So now I have a plan. Milo here goes home. He goes home and he plays with his guns and he’s happy. And, while he’s being happy, you and me get in a car and we drive somewhere nice and we never look back.”
Imelda shook her head. “I told you, I can’t go with you.”
“Why? Why can’t you come with me? Jesus Christ, you’re the only person I know who isn’t trying to kill me.”
“It’s better for you if I stay, honey. I can keep an eye on what they’re doing. If they’re close to finding you, I can steer them away.”
“You just don’t want to be around me.”
“That’s not true.”
“Of course it is. The only reason you’re helping me is because you feel guilty. You don’t give a crap about me – if you did, you wouldn’t be handing me over to him.”
Imelda shook her head. “That’s not true.”
“Well, there we have it – we have two plans. Your stupid plan where I go with some lunatic called Milo, and my good plan, where you and me go somewhere far away, with mountains and trees and maybe a log cabin. We’ll go to Montana. It’s cool in Montana. We won’t have to live in this constant heat.”
“Let’s have a vote,” said Milo. “I vote for the stupid plan and so does Imelda.”
Amber glared at him, then redirected the glare at Imelda. “Why him? Who is he? What does he have to do with all this?”
“I have my own history with Demons,” Milo said. “I’m as qualified for this job as anyone possibly could be.”
“So you’ve made a deal, just like my parents did? Bad people make deals with Demons – bad people who like to eat their children. Have you ever murdered anyone, Milo?”
“Amber, that’s enough,” said Imelda.
“You want me to get in a car with this guy—”
“Yes,” Imelda snapped. “I do. Because I can’t be there and he’s the only one I know who’ll be able to protect you. He’s also the only one I know who’d be willing to protect you. Amber, this is messed up. Don’t you think I know that? And don’t you think this is breaking my heart, sending you away? I’ve finally been able to tell you the truth, after years of being too afraid, and instead of showing you all of the love I have for you, love that I’ve had for you since the day you were born, I have to send you away and pretend to be just like the others. I have to pretend to care nothing for you, Amber. I have to pretend to see you as nothing more than our next power boost. This is breaking me, sweetheart. This is ripping me up inside and I don’t know how the hell I’m not falling to the floor in tears, but I’m not. Because I have to be strong. For you. And you have to be strong for me. Because you’re the only person in this world that I love, and if anything happens to you I’ll … I’ll …”
“I’m sorry,” Amber said quietly.
“Oh, honey,” Imelda said, pulling her into an embrace. Amber didn’t know what to do for a moment. This wasn’t the quick hug of Grant or Kirsty, or the picked-up-off-the-ground hug of Alastair. This was something else. This was genuine, and Amber found herself lost as to how to respond.
But she gradually wrapped her arms round Imelda and hugged her back, and she didn’t even notice the tears that were spilling off her cheeks and soaking through Imelda’s blouse. She felt Imelda cry, and realised she was crying herself. This one hug was the warmest, most sincere physical contact she had ever experienced, and she didn’t want it to ever end.
RAIN MINGLED WITH THE tears on her face as Amber got into the SUV.
Milo had parked it round the back of Imelda’s apartment building. They didn’t want Amber in plain view. They didn’t want her walking across the sidewalk for a few seconds because that was a risk they couldn’t afford to take. Their paranoia was affecting Amber. She waited until Milo had the back door open, and then she ran through the heat and the rain, practically dived in. Milo threw a blanket over her and closed the door.
He got in the front, started the engine, and as the SUV was pulling out on to the street Amber realised she hadn’t said goodbye to Imelda, and a sliver of anguish pierced her heart.
She made sure she wasn’t about to cry, and then pulled the blanket back.
The SUV’s exterior may have needed a wash, but the interior was clean and smelled of polish. Milo struck her as the type to maintain his vehicle in perfect running order, and she realised that she wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the dirt and the dust on the outside were nothing more than camouflage.
They drove without speaking for five minutes. Amber resisted the urge to speak. She wanted Milo to get uncomfortable in the silence. When the clock on the dash showed 8pm, she sat up, but kept the blanket wrapped round her head like a shawl. To her irritation, he looked perfectly comfortable.
“So where are we going?”
Milo moved into another lane. “We’re going to see a friend of mine. He might be able to help.”
“Help how?”
“We’re hoping he’ll have some ideas on how to evade your parents.”
“You’re hoping? Imelda said there was a plan. Hoping for ideas does not sound like a plan. Who is he, this friend of yours?”
“His name’s Edgar Spurrier,” Milo said as they slowed at the lights. “He used to be a journalist. His investigations took him deeper and darker than any respectable news agency was willing to delve, so now he’s a freelance … something.”
“So he’s unemployed, basically.”
They started driving again. “He prefers the term ‘freelance something’.”
She frowned. “Was that a joke?”
Milo shrugged.
“Where does he live?”
“Miami.”
“That’s, like, three or four hours away. Why aren’t you more organised? Why isn’t he here? Or why can’t you call him? I’d loan you my phone only, oh
yeah, you destroyed it.”
“No phone calls, if we can help it,” said Milo, totally missing Amber’s subtle jibe.
“I have a new plan,” she said, sitting forward. “Turn around. Take me to Montana. That’s where they film In The Dark Places, so I’d be able to just hang out, watch them film, and I have plenty of money now so I could afford to rent a cabin there until all this dies down.”
Milo glanced at her in the rear-view. “This isn’t going to die down.”
“No, I know that, I just—”
“I don’t think you do,” said Milo. “This isn’t a problem that’s going to go away, Amber. Your parents aren’t going to change their minds. Your life, as you knew it, is over. You have to leave behind your friends and family. There’s no going back.”
“I know that,” she insisted, though even she was aware how unconvincing she sounded.
An accident on the turnpike delayed them, forced them into a slow-moving convoy that crawled through Miami’s sprawl of Art-Deco architecture. The rain was heavier here. Neon lights bounced off the wet blackness of the asphalt. It would have been beautiful if Amber hadn’t shrunk away from every car that passed them, just waiting to see her parents’ faces staring out at her.
By the time they pulled up outside Edgar Spurrier’s crappy condo, it was past twelve and fully dark. The humidity closed in on Amber the moment she left the confines of the SUV. The rain eased off slightly, but the clouds were still heavy. Lightning flickered like a badly placed bulb and in the distance she heard thunder.
Edgar’s condo was not air-conditioned. A large fan hung from the ceiling and threatened to move the warm air around, but couldn’t work up the energy to do so with any degree of conviction.
Edgar himself was a tubby guy with blond hair that hung limply to his shoulders. He had an easy smile and nice twinkling eyes, and beneath his shorts his legs were surprisingly hairless. He handed Amber and Milo a glass of iced tea and took one for himself, then they all sat in his mess of a living room. Books and papers competed for space with notepads bursting with scribbles. No pizza boxes or empty beer bottles, though. Edgar may have been disorganised, but he was no slob.
“Milo has already briefed me on your situation,” Edgar said, settling back into his chair. “You’ve got yourself into what we in the trade call a pickle, Amber. Milo could have taken you to a dozen so-called occult experts around the country and they would have sent you away with useless advice and a headful of mumbo jumbo. Instead, he brought you to me, where deals with the Devil are something of a specialty. The Shining Demon is one of my particular areas of interest.”
He paused, and Amber felt the overwhelming need to fill the silence.
“Okay,” she said.
That seemed to satisfy him. “Now then,” Edgar continued, “your particular quandary is that running isn’t going to work.”
A bead of perspiration trickled down Amber’s spine. “It isn’t?”
“It isn’t,” said Edgar. “Your parents will eventually find you. It’s inevitable. I’m sure Milo will explain this to you later. They will find you and they will kill you. So you need to be proactive, am I right? You need to take the fight to your parents.”
Amber hesitated. “Uh yeah, except, I mean, I don’t want to actually fight them.”
“No, no,” said Edgar, “you don’t want to physically take them on, not at all. I’m not suggesting that for a minute. But you want to take the figurative fight to them, agreed?”
“I guess.”
“You can’t spend the rest of your life running. You can’t spend the rest of your life hiding. Because, if you do, the rest of your life will be very short indeed. So you need an alternative. If I were in your position, what would I do? I’ve given this a lot of thought since Milo approached me. A lot of thought. But only this morning did the obvious course of action occur to me.” He sat forward. “Amber, what you’re going to need to do is talk to the Shining Demon yourself.”
She blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“Not going to happen,” said Milo.
Edgar held up a hand. “Hear me out.”
“Not going to happen, Edgar.”
“Just hear me out, buddy, okay? Keep an open mind about this. There’s nothing we can do to stop her folks from wanting to eat her. There just isn’t. Consuming her flesh is the only way they can grow stronger, and the only way they can pay the tribute they owe. Because, don’t forget, they do owe that tribute.”
“We haven’t forgotten,” said Milo.
“So there’s nothing we can do there,” Edgar said, leaning back in his chair. “If you don’t want to talk to the Shining Demon, what does that leave us with? You could go after them. Take them out. Kill them before they kill you.”
“I don’t want to kill my parents,” Amber said, aghast.
“They want to kill you,” said Edgar. “You’re going to have to reconcile yourself with the facts here, Amber. This is life or death we’re talking about. It’s kill or be killed.”
“She doesn’t want to kill her parents,” Milo said. “So we’re not killing her parents.”
“I figured as much,” said Edgar. “I’m a pretty smart guy, remember? You may have thought I was sitting here looking pretty, but what I was actually doing was going through all the options and throwing out those that were a no-go. I threw out everything except the one I started with – Amber here summoning the Shining Demon, sitting him down and having a chat.”
Amber glanced at Milo. He wasn’t saying anything, but he didn’t look happy.
“So that’s my idea,” said Edgar, talking straight to Amber now. “You explain how unfair all of this is. You didn’t ask for it, after all. You are an innocent party, caught up in your parents’ diabolical machinations.”
“Why would he care?” she asked.
Edgar chuckled. “Good question. And of course you’re right. The Shining Demon isn’t going to give one whit about any of that. He’s a capital D Demon, after all. He likes it when innocent people suffer. That’s kind of his thing.” Edgar sat forward. “But you, my dear girl, hold a special appeal. The Shining Demon is notoriously picky about who he appears to. He’ll only do a deal with someone if they pique his curiosity. But here’s the thing. You, Amber, are enough to pique anyone’s curiosity.”
She suddenly felt uncomfortable. “Why?”
“You’re the demon offspring of demon parents,” Edgar said. “But whereas your folks are demons by circumstance, you are demon by birth. That makes you, technically, a purer form of monster – if you’ll forgive the description. You have also, by virtue of being alive right now, potentially compromised their original deal, which will certainly have got his attention.”
“So summon the Shining Demon and say what?” Amber asked. “‘Hey there, please could you change the terms of my parents’ deal?’”
Edgar shook his head. “The terms are unbreakable, there’s no getting around that. But he could make it so that your parents and their friends never find you. He could make it impossible for them to hurt you. He could do a hundred things that would ruin your parents’ plans and make eating you redundant.”
“What would I have to do in return?”
Edgar shrugged. “Seeing as how your parents and their friends were going to eat you and then give him their supercharged blood, it stands to reason that he’d want to get that same energy some other way. Sending you out to harvest souls is a very common method of payment.”
“I’m not killing anyone. I’m not doing that.”
“Very well. If those are the terms of the deal he offers, you just say no. No harm, no foul. But he might not want you to kill. There might be something else.”
Amber raised her eyebrows. “Could I offer him my demon side? Is that possible?”
“Even if it were, I doubt that would entice him.”
“I’m not going to give him my soul,” she said, a little sharply. “It’s mine and he’s not getting it.”
“Sounds reas
onable,” said Edgar. “Not to worry, however – I do have a suggestion of my own. You’re unique enough to summon him and, if you offer him something equally as unique, you might just find yourself with a deal.”
“What do you have in mind?” Milo asked.
“The one that got away,” Edgar said. “It’s a story I was told by a very dangerous man, name of Dacre Shanks. You heard of him?”
Milo shook his head. Amber didn’t bother.
“Dacre Shanks was a particularly nasty serial killer back in the late sixties, early seventies. This small-town Sheriff’s Department eventually tracked him down, in 1974 I think, and went in all guns blazing. Shanks fell in a hail of bullets. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. Anyway, I met him a few years ago, and he told—”
“Wait,” said Amber. “You just said he died in 1974.”
“He did,” Edgar said, nodding. “But before the cops closed in on him, he’d already made his deal with the Shining Demon.”
“He’s still alive?”
“Technically? No. But he’s still around. Last I heard he was in his hometown of Springton, Wisconsin, happily killing a bunch of teenagers, but that was fifteen or so years ago. If you can find him, he might be able to help you.”
“You want us to ask a serial killer for help?”
Edgar shrugged. “It’s a scary world – you got to be prepared to meet scary people. Dacre Shanks qualifies as a scary person. He’s up there with Elias Mauk and Leighton Utt … maybe even the Narrow Man. Outwardly, charming as all heck, but … well. Serial killer, you know? I met him through a mutual acquaintance and arranged an interview of sorts. The man just wanted someone to talk to, and he talked a lot. I got some very graphic descriptions of what he’d done to his victims, some very disturbing insights into his mind … We talked about death, about how it felt when those bullets riddled his body, about what happened after. Milo knows what I’m talking about, right?”
Milo said nothing, and Amber frowned.
“And we talked about the deal he’d made with the Shining Demon,” Edgar continued. “How he summoned him, what the terms were, how he found out about him in the first place. And he told me a story I’d never heard before, and I thought I’d heard all the stories about our shining friend. He told me about a man who’d made a deal – I don’t know the circumstances surrounding it, but it was a deal like any other – and then welched on it. The Shining Demon granted him whatever he wanted, but, instead of paying him back in the agreed-upon fashion, this guy skips town, and the Shining Demon loses him. And the Shining Demon never loses a mark.”