“Oh, yeah, grace. Could you have knocked anything else over?”
She cringed at the reminder. “Do you think they suspected anything?”
So many possibilities came to mind: Duh. Ya think? Only if they weren’t complete idiots. “Yes,” I said instead, the lack of inflection in my voice insinuating all of the above.
“But, shouldn’t we be working with them instead of against them?” she asked.
“Not at this precise moment in time.”
“Why not?”
“Mostly ’cause they’re not FBI agents.”
She sucked in a soft breath. “How do you know?”
“Really?” I asked. The last thing I wanted to explain was how I could tell when someone was lying. For the thousandth time.
“Right,” she said, shaking her head, “sorry.” Then she gasped. “You knew they weren’t real FBI agents?”
“I had my suspicions.”
“And you led them into your office anyway? Alone?”
“My suspicions don’t always pan out.”
She thought about that a moment and calmed. “True. Remember that time you tackled the mailman and—”
I held up a hand to stop her. Some things were just better left unsaid. “Cancel looking into the business stuff,” I said, thinking out loud. “I’d bet my virtual farm that’s a dead end. Concentrate on finding a connection between Mimi and Janelle York.”
“Besides the fact that they went to high school together?” she asked.
“No. Let’s start there. Dig into both their backgrounds, see if anything stands out.”
Just then, Uncle Bob walked into the office. Or, well, stormed into the office. He was always so stressed. It was probably time for us to have the talk. He needed a girlfriend before he stroked. Or maybe a blowup doll.
“If you’re going to be a grumpy bear,” I said, pointing to the door, “you can just leave the same way you came in, Mr. Man.” I twirled my finger in circles, motioning for him to do an about-face, make like a sheep, and get the flock outta there.
He stopped short, eyeing me with a mixture of confusion and annoyance. “I’m not grumpy.” He sounded offended. It was funny. “I just want to know what you’ve gotten yourself into now.”
It was my turn to be offended. “What?” I asked. “Why I never—”
“No time for your theatrics,” he said, shaking a finger. That’d teach me. “How do you know Warren Jacobs?”
What the heck? Word traveled fast in the crime-fighting world. “I just met him this morning. Why?”
“Because he’s asking for you. Not only is his wife missing, but a car dealer he stalked and threatened to kill was found dead last night. Call me crazy, but I think there might be a connection.”
Son of a bitch, I thought with a heavy sigh. “Instead of plain old Crazy, can I call you Crazy Bob?”
“No.”
“CB for short?” When I only got a glare, I asked, “Then can I see him?”
“He’s being questioned right now and he’ll probably lawyer up any second. What’s going on?”
Cookie and I glanced at each other then spilled our guts like frogs in biology lab.
We told Uncle Bob everything, even the writing-on-the-wall thing. He took out his phone and ordered one of his minions to check out the diner. “You should have told me,” he said after hanging up, his tone scolding.
“Like I’ve had a chance. But since we’re on the subject, there are two men posing as FBI agents to get to her. And they want her bad.”
Alarmed, Uncle Bob—or Ubie as I liked to call him, though rarely to his face—took down their description. “This is serious stuff,” he said.
“Tell me about it. We have to find Mimi before they do.”
“I’ll get a hold of the local feds and let them know they have a couple of impersonators. But you should have called me when this whole thing started.”
“Well, I didn’t think I would need to, since you’re having me tailed and all.”
His jaw clamped down, totally busted. With a heavy sigh, he stepped closer, towering over me, and lifted my chin gently. “Reyes Farrow is a convicted murderer, Charley. This is for your own protection. If he contacts you, will you please let me know?”
“Will you call off the tail?” I asked in turn. When he hesitated then shook his head, I added, “Then may the best detective win.”
I strode out the door, realizing what a ridiculous statement that was, as Uncle Bob, a veteran detective for the Albuquerque Police Department, was the ace of spades when it came to investigations. I was kind of like a three of hearts.
As I walked down the block to my friend Pari’s tattoo parlor, I scanned the street for the shadow Ubie’d assigned to me, with no luck. It had to be someone good. Uncle Bob wouldn’t send a rookie to watch over me.
I stopped in front of Pari’s shop, not because I particularly needed a tattoo, but because Pari could see auras. I could see auras as well, but I figured maybe I’d missed something over the years. How could I see auras and dead people and sons of Satan and yet in all my days never see a demon? Heck, I didn’t even know demons existed until Reyes told me, much less that they would be fighting tooth and nail to get to me. To get through me. My breath caught as another realization dawned. If demons existed, heck, if Satan himself existed, then angels surely existed as well. Seriously, how could I be so out of the loop?
Hopefully, Pari knew something I didn’t, other than the correct timing for a 1970 Plymouth Duster with a supercharged 440 big block. I didn’t even know cars had timing issues—speaking of which, it was still early in tattoo parlor time, so I was surprised to see Pari’s front door open. I stepped inside.
“I need some light,” I heard her call out from the back.
“On it,” came a male voice.
Then I heard scrambling in the back room as I walked up behind Pari. She was bent under a refurbished dentist’s chair, electrical wires in a heap at her knees.
“Thanks,” she said, quietly deciphering the wires.
“What?” the guy in the back room called out.
Startled, Pari jolted upright and hit her head on the seat of the chair before turning back to me. “Charley, damn it,” she said, raising one hand to shield her eyes and the other to rub the sting from her head. “You can’t just walk up behind me. You’re like one of those floodlights shining from a cop car in the middle of the night.”
I chuckled as she fumbled for her sunglasses. “You said you needed light.”
Pari was a graphic designer who’d turned to body art to keep the bill collectors at bay. Luckily, she’d found her calling, and she did the profession proud with full sleeves of sleek lines, tiger lilies and fleur-de-lis. And a couple of skulls thrown in to impress the clientele.
She’d designed the grim reaper I now sported on my left shoulder blade. It was a tiny being with huge, innocent eyes and a fluid robe that looked like smoke. How she managed that with tattoo ink was beyond me.
She slipped her shades on, then looked back at me with a sigh. “I said I needed light, not a starburst. I swear you’re going to permanently blind me one day.” As I said, Pari could see auras; mine was just really bright.
She grabbed a bottle of water off the counter and sat on the broken dentist’s chair, propping her hiking boots onto two crates on either side of her and resting her elbows on her knees. I grabbed a water out of a small fridge and turned back to her, struggling not to crack up at her indelicate position.
“So, what’s up, Reaper?”
“I can’t find the flashlight!” the guy yelled from the back room.
“Never mind,” she called back before grinning at me. “All beauty, no brains, that one.”
I nodded. She liked beauty. Who didn’t?
“Okay, so you’re pretending to be all cool and collected,” she said, studying me with a practiced eye, “but you’re about as serene as a chicken on the chopping block. What’s going on?”
Dang, she was good.
I decided to get right to the point. “Have you ever seen a demon?”
Her breathing slowed as she absorbed my question. “You mean like a hellfire and brimstone demon?”
“Yes.”
“Like a minion of hell demon?”
“Yes,” I said again.
“Like—”
“Yes,” I repeated for the third time. The subject made my stomach queasy. And the thought of one torturing Reyes … not that the little shit didn’t deserve to be tortured just a tad, but still.
“So, they’re real?”
“I’m going to take that as a no,” I said, my hopes evaporating. “It’s just, I think I have a few after me, and I was hoping you might know something I didn’t.”
“Damn.” She glanced at the floor in thought then refocused on me. At least I think she did. It was hard to tell with her shades on. “Wait, there are demons after you?”
“Sort of.”
After she stared a long time, long enough to be considered culturally insensitive, she bowed her head. “I’ve never seen one,” she said, her voice quiet, “but I know there are things out there, things that go bump in the night. And not just the prostitute next door. Scary things. Things that are impossible to forget.”
I tilted my head in question. “What do you mean?”
“When I was fourteen, a group of friends and I were having a slumber party, and like most fourteen-year-olds do eventually, we decided to have a séance.”
“Okay.” This was going nowhere good.
“So, we went down into my basement and were all séancing and chanting and conjuring a spirit from beyond when I felt something. Like a presence.”
“Like a departed?”
“No.” She shook her head, thinking back. “At least I don’t think so. They’re cold. This being was just sort of there. I felt it brush up against me like a dog.” One hand gripped the opposite arm in remembrance, a soft shiver echoing through her body. “No one else felt it, of course, until I said something.” She glanced up at me, a dire warning in her eyes. “Never tell a group of fourteen-year-old girls having a séance in a dark basement that you felt something brush up against you. For your own safety.”
I chuckled. “I promise. What happened?”
“They jumped up screaming and ran for the stairs. It freaked me out so, naturally, I ran, too.”
“Naturally.”
“I just wanted away from whatever had materialized in my basement, so I ran like I had a reason to live despite my suicidal tendencies.”
Pari had been Goth when Goth wasn’t cool. Kinda like now.
“I thought I was in the clear when I reached the top stair. Then I heard a growl, deep, guttural. Before I knew what was happening, I fell halfway down the stairs, spraining a wrist and bruising my ribs. I scrambled up and out of there without looking back. It took a while for me to realize I didn’t fall. My legs were pulled out from under me and I was dragged.” She lifted her pant leg and unzipped her knee-high boots to show me a jagged scar on her calf. It looked like claw marks. “I’ve never been so scared.”
“Holy crap, Par. What happened then?”
“When my dad found out why we were all screaming, he laughed and went down into the basement to prove to us nothing was there.”
“And?”
“Nothing was there,” she said with a shrug.
“Did you show him the wound?”
“Oh, hell no.” She shook her head like I’d just asked her if she ate children for breakfast. “They’d already filed me in the F’s for ‘freak of nature.’ I wasn’t about to confirm their suspicions.”
“Holy crap, Par,” I repeated.
“Tell me about it.”
“So, what makes you think it was a demon?”
“I don’t. It wasn’t a demon. Or, well, I don’t think it was. It was something more.”
“How do you know?”
She twisted the leather straps at her wrist. “Mostly because I knew its name.”
I froze for a moment before saying, “Come again?”
“Do you remember what I told you about my accident?” She glanced at me, her brows drawn together.
“Sure I do.” Pari had died when she was six in a car accident. Thankfully, an industrious EMT brought her back. After that, she could see auras, including those of the departed. She’d learned that if she saw an aura with a particularly grayish tint and no body attached, it was the soul of someone who’d passed. It was a ghost.
“When I died, my grandfather was waiting for me.”
“I remember,” I said, “and thankfully he sent you back. I owe him a fruit basket when I get to heaven.”
She reached over and squeezed my hand in a rare moment of appreciation. Awkward. “I’d met him only once,” she said, wrapping both hands around her water. “The only thing I remembered about him was that he had Great Danes taller than I was, yet I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt he was my grandfather. And when he told me it wasn’t my time, that I had to go back, the last thing I wanted to do was leave him.”
“Well, I for one am glad he sent your ass packing. You would have been hell on wheels in heaven.”
She smiled. “You’re probably right. But I never told you the strange part.”
“Most people find near-death experiences pretty strange.”
“True,” she said with a grin.
“So it gets stranger?”
“A lot stranger.” She hesitated, drew in a long breath, then rested her gaze on me. “On the way back, you know, to Earth, I heard things.”
That was new. “What kinds of things?”
“Voices. I heard a conversation.”
“You eavesdropped?” I asked, a little amazed such a thing was possible. “On celestial beings?”
“I guess you could call it that, but I didn’t do it on purpose. I heard an entire conversation in an instant, like it just appeared in my head. Yet I knew I wasn’t supposed to hear it. I knew the information was dangerous. I learned the name of a being powerful enough to bring about the end of the world.”
“The end of the world?” I asked, gulping when I did so.
“I know how it sounds, believe me. But they were talking about this being that had escaped from hell and was born on Earth.”
My pulse accelerated by a hairsbreadth, just enough to cause a tingling flutter in my stomach.
“They said that he could destroy the world, he could bring on the apocalypse if he so chose.”
I knew of only one being who had escaped from hell. Only one being who had been born on Earth. And while I knew he was powerful, I couldn’t imagine him powerful enough to bring about the freaking apocalypse. Then again, what was? I totally should have paid attention in catechism.
“And so the night of the séance, in all my teenaged wisdom, I decided to summon him.”
I gaped, but only a little. “Right. Because that’s what we want to do. Summon the very being who can destroy every living thing on Earth.”
“Exactly,” she said, spacing my sarcasm. “I thought I might convince him not to. You know, talk some sense into him.”
“And how did that work out for you?”
She stopped and pursed her lips at me. “I was fourteen, smart-ass.”
I tried to laugh, but it didn’t quite make it past the lump in my throat. “So, for real? This being is going to bring on the apocalypse?”
“No, you’re not listening.” She pressed her lips together before explaining. “I said he is powerful enough to bring on the apocalypse.”
Okay, well, that was a plus. No prophecies of mass destruction.
“And so that night during the séance, I summoned him. By name.”
Goose bumps crept up my legs and over my arms in anticipation. Either that or Dead Trunk Guy had found me again. I glanced around just in case.
“But, like I said,” she continued, “he’s not what you think. He’s not a demon.”
“Well, that’s taking a frown and turning it upside down.
”
“From the gist of the conversation, he is something so very much more.”
He was more, all right. “Pari,” I said, growing impatient, “what’s its name?”
“No way am I telling you,” she said with a teasing sparkle in her eyes.
“Pari.”
“No, really.” She turned serious again. “I don’t say it aloud. Ever. Not since that day.”
“Oh, right. Well—”
Before I could say anything else, she grabbed a piece of paper and scribbled onto it. “This is it, but don’t say it out loud. I get the feeling he doesn’t like being summoned.”
I took the paper, my hand shaking more than I’d have liked, and gasped softly when I read the name. Rey’aziel. Rey’az … Reyes. The son of Satan.
“It means ‘the beautiful one,’” she said as I read it over and over again. “I don’t know what he is,” she continued, unaware of my stupor, “but he caused quite a stir on the other side, if you know what I mean. Chaos. Upheaval. Panic.”
Yep. That would be Reyes. Damn it.
Chapter Five
WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU GET SCARED HALF TO DEATH, TWICE?
—T-SHIRT
My head reeling, I left Pari’s shop stunned, wandering aimlessly toward home before I remembered I had a job to do. And a job I would do. Time to pull the curtains back on my shadow. Whomever Uncle Bob had assigned to follow me was about to have a very bad day.
I opened my cell phone and answered as if it had been ringing. I stopped, incredulous. I looked around. Gestured wildly. “Meet? Now? Well, darn it, okay. You’re in the alley to my right? You’re that close? Are you crazy? You’ll be caught. Surely someone will suspect you might get in touch with me. Surely … Okay, fine.” I closed the phone, scanned the area, then eased between two buildings, the passageway leading to an alley, all the while throwing furtive glances over my shoulder.
After my production of Casablanca meets Mission: Impossible, I hightailed it toward a Dumpster and ducked behind it, waiting for my shadow to appear. As I sat scrunched, feeling oddly ridiculous, I played with Reyes’s name in my head, let it shape and slide over my tongue. Rey’aziel. The beautiful one. Boy did they have that right.