Beeval scooted off the chair and circled around me, looking like a cat investigating something new. “Demon, yes. Something more.”
“Beeval, hang on,” I said. I set the bottle on the floor. “What do you see?”
“Demon, other magic. Not demon, something… something more,” Beeval said. He leaned down and sniffed the bottle. “Old. This demon old. Used to be angry, now tired.”
“How can you tell?” I asked, fascinated.
“Demons know demons,” he said.
“Can we open it?” I asked. “Or should we leave it closed?”
Beeval looked at me, and then back at the bottle. He put a hand on it, and his large eyes closed, then snapped back open. “Open. Make promise.”
“What do you want me to promise?” I asked.
“No. Make bottle demon promise. Not hurt. No harm.”
“Ah, got it.” I looked up at my sisters. “We need to get ready.”
“You really want to open this?” Daniella was skeptical.
“Beeval, is it safe?” I turned to our demon again.
“No demon ever totally safe. Demons,” Beeval shrugged. “But when help given, demons grateful.” He smiled then, and the frisson of unease I’d felt when he said no demons were ever safe melted away.
“Let’s go out in the back yard,” Daniella said.
“No,” Beeval said. “Here, your place. Demon know your place, who free.”
I think I got it. If we freed the demon, she or he would be grateful, and they would know it was us, and that would keep us safe.
“You’re sure?” Deirdre asked Beeval.
He nodded, his large ears flopping.
It was good to have a demon in the house.
The bottle was corked, and there was a wax seal over the cork. The wax was so old that it had turned black.
“Tell demon, no break. No mess. Behave,” Beeval said.
The thought of telling a demon to settle down tickled me. I had to hold back a laugh. “Do we just tell it?” I said quietly to Beeval.
He nodded again.
“All right, person in the bottle,” I raised my voice. “I’m going to open it, but you need to be calm, and not break up my house. Got it?”
The bottle didn’t move, shimmy, shake, nothing.
“Well, that was great,” Deirdre said.
“Demon hear,” Beeval said. “You open.”
“Holy hell, I can’t believe we’re doing this,” DeAnna muttered.
“That makes five of us,” Daniella replied.
I got up and got a knife and corkscrew from the kitchen to break the wax. It broke off easily after I managed to get a piece off. Then I put the corkscrew in, and started to ease the cork out.
Whatever was in the bottle was ready to go, because I could feel a vibration, almost like a humming, where my hands touched the body of the bottle.
As the cork came out, the bottle shot out of my hands, and I was falling back again. This was not my day for staying off my ass.
A dark cloud shot up toward the ceiling, swirling faster and faster as it drew down to a smaller cloud until a form took shape.
It was a demon. It was a female demon. She wore a vest of armor over a shapely chest. Her hair was long and black and horns came up through her hair on the top of her head. She had on a wide belt, and I could see the tang of a knife in the belt. But that was where the demon stopped. Below the belt, her dark red skin faded to smoke, the way that you’d think of a genie.
“Who are you?” she asked.
Her voice, although deep, was musical. I mean, for a demon. I’d only met three, and two of them were jerks.
“The Nightingales,” I said. May as well get all of us on her good side.
“Why have you freed me?”
“Do you want to go back into the bottle?” I asked. “Should I have left you there?”
“No,” she said.
“Who are you?” Deirdre asked.
“I am Catallah, and I have been in the bottle for many moons.”
“How’d you end up there?” I asked.
She looked off over our heads, and then down at us. The intensity of her gaze was nearly overwhelming. “I made a mistake. I fell in love.”
“Well, love does that kind of thing,” Daniella said.
“Indeed, Nightingale. It does. He was not like me, but a djinn, a spirit of the air. It was not allowed.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, although I wasn’t sure anything was really required of me.
“Because of my transgression, my master banished me to the bottle after making me like that which I loved. He said that I should suffer for it, for my boldness and daring.”
“Well, that dude was an asshole,” I said.
“Yes,” Catallah said. “I do not know the word, but the tone in which you speak makes the insult clear.”
“Where is he now?” Dee asked. Her eyes were wide.
I got it. I felt a bit overwhelmed myself.
“My master? Or my love?”
“Either?” Daniella said.
“I would wish my master far from here. My love…” she stopped. “I do not know.”
“Could you find him?” I asked.
“I am tied to the bottle. I am yours to command, in the way of the djinn.”
“What? No!” I said. “I don’t—I mean, I’m flattered,” I didn’t want to offend her.
“Bottle demon go free,” Beeval said.
When I’d opened the bottle, he ducked behind the island. Now he came out.
Catallah narrowed her eyes and floated upwards upon seeing Beeval. “Why is the demon here?”
Beeval puffed out his chest. “My home. I live here with Desimo.”
Catallah turned her gaze to me. “You are Desimo?”
“Desdemona,” I said.
She nodded. “And you opened your home to a demon?”
“He saved me,” I replied.
She looked between Beeval and I, and then around. “But you are human.”
“Yeah, well, we’re all in the same boat,” I said.
“What boat?” Catallah looked around.
“Never mind. It’s just an expression. Listen, you can stay here if you want, but if you’d rather go find your guy, you can leave.” I shrugged. “If you stay, though, you can’t trash the place and you have to get along with the ghosts, and not eat the chicken.”
“I have a choice?” Catallah asked.
“Sure,” I said.
“I need to think on it, Desdemona Nightingale. May I return to the bottle?”
“If that’s what you want. You want me to leave the top off?”
Catallah gazed at me for what seemed like a long time. “Yes,” she said. Then she whooshed in a puff of smoke back into the brown whiskey bottle.
No one spoke.
“Well. That was…” Daniella said.
“Interesting,” Deirdre finished.
“That was holy shit,” I said.
Beeval leaned over, patted the bottle, patted me on the head, and walked out of the kitchen.
“I think I’m going to lie down,” I said.
“Take her with you,” Deirdre said.
“OK. Only wake me up if we’re on fire,” I replied. Anything else, I didn’t care about. I picked up the bottle, which felt warm, and trudged back up to my room. Even though it was still daylight, I set the bottle on my nightstand, and crawled into bed.
I hadn’t thought about Zane since this morning.
I thought that might be a good thing.
I ignored the few tears that slid down my face.
Then I closed my eyes and stopped thinking.
Chapter Fourteen
I opened my eyes to a darkened room. I had no idea what day it was, but I got up, grabbed Catallah’s bottle, although I couldn’t tell why, and went downstairs.
DeAnna and Dee were huddled around Dee’s phone, and Dee was crying. Deirdre and Daniella stood together, arms around each other’s waists. Doc was hovering nea
r the stove.
“What’s going on?” I whispered.
“All right, please let me know,” Dee said, choking on her words as she wiped her eyes. She hung up and began dialing someone else.
“What is going on?” I asked again.
Daniella shushed me.
“Deana!” she shouted.
There was a silence as Dee waited, listening. Then, “Oh, my goddess, Deana, are you all right?”
Another silence.
“I just got a call from the police,” Dee said, and then she burst into tears.
Daniella stepped over to Dee and took the phone. She hit a button on it and said, “Deana, you’re on speaker.”
“Hang on, I think I need to pull over,” Deana said. We could hear noise in the background, and then it got quieter. “Okay, I’m back. What’s happened?”
“The house in Venice is gone,” DeAnna said, wiping her eyes. “The police called, and told us it was on fire, and it burned to the ground.”
“What?” Deana whispered, “How?”
“They don’t know,” DeAnna said. “They told us they couldn’t tell if anyone was in there. Dee told us about your call the other day, but she didn’t know the details. Are you all right?”
“That utter bastard,” Deana practically growled.
“Who?” we all shouted.
“Alfonso Delgado. This is his doing. I’d bet Baby on it.”
“You’re that sure?” Dee said.
“Who is Baby?” I asked.
“My car,” Deana said. “My wonderful car, which was not in the house when it blew up. No, I’m not there. I am on the road, and I’ll let you know where I am a little later.”
“Are you on the run?” Deirdre asked.
“Apparently so.” Deana sounded pissed. “I thought it would be a good idea to get the hell out of Dodge, so to speak, since I thwarted the plans of Delgado, but now he’s upped the stakes.”
“You know,” I said slowly, “we might be able to buy you some time.”
“How?” Dee and DeAnna spoke together.
“Now that we know you’re safe, you get to wherever. We’ll call you back when we have some idea of whether this can work,” I said. “Stay safe, Deana.”
“Love you,” Deana said. She had grasped Meema’s rule from the first time she heard it. She never hung up or left without saying it. I loved this girl.
“Love you,” we all said back to her.
Dee hung up, and turned to me. “What’s your idea?”
“We need to let everyone know that our niece, our beloved niece, is dead. And after she solved a mystery for Alfonso Delgado, too. Just when she thought she was able to move on, and now the house is gone, she is gone. I think there was a vampire staying there, too. We need to get moving.”
“I’m missing something entirely,” DeAnna said.
“Yes, you are, but it’s all right,” I said. “I need to make some calls.”
“Des?”
I turned around to see Deirdre looking at me. “What?”
“You going to carry that thing around?” She gestured at the bottle.
I’d forgotten I was carrying it. “Yes. I think I am.”
“Well, all right. But if it starts feeling weird, put it down, OK?”
“I will,” I said. “Stop worrying. Hey,” I said, as a thought struck me. “Has anyone seen Zane?”
“Not since he came by to cancel last night,” Daniella said.
“That’s not a great sign,” I said. “No, don’t look at me like that.”
Dee was looking reproachful.
“He’s up to something, and he didn’t tell me, and he broke a date. So… I have to be real. Something’s up. It’s probably not anything good for us.”
“That’s pretty pessimistic,” DeAnna said.
“Well, it’s true,” I said. “We’ll see when he comes by again.” I felt energized as I went back upstairs and pulled out my cell phone.
An hour later, I came back downstairs.
“Well?” Daniella said.
“There will be a body at the house. We will have it brought back here, and we’ll throw the biggest wake Deadwood’s ever seen. Bigger than Meema’s,” I said. “We’re going to make a huge fuss. And drop lots of hints about this Alfonso Delgado guy. So that everyone knows he was responsible.”
“We don’t know it was him,” Daniella said.
“Do you think Deana is wrong?” Dee asked.
“No, just saying that we don’t know.”
“Well, if it was him, he’ll do something to prove it wasn’t. If it wasn’t him, he’ll be outraged, carry on about his honor, blah blah blah,” I said. “Either way, we’ll get a sense of things.”
“Then what?” Dee asked. “We have no home anymore.” Her voice dropped, and she looked like she was about to cry again.
“Yes you do,” I said. “You have a home with us always. This way, having the funeral here, and you two moving in, you don’t even have to go back there. You’ll be safer,” I finished.
“You don’t mind having us here?” DeAnna asked.
Seeing my nieces, who were well on their way to being like sisters to me, brought so low by the vicious act of some petty vampire made me so angry I could have spit nails.
“We love having you here,” Daniella said.
“I was trying to figure out how to ask you to move in,” Deirdre said. “Without offending you.”
“Really, what is there to go back to?” I asked. “Deana’s not there anymore, and she’s safe. We’re here. So you should be here, too.”
Dee and DeAnna burst into tears, and we all spent a little time crying and talking and planning.
But first, we had to get our shit together, and get Deadwood back on the rails.
Daniella got to work planning the funeral. Deirdre went online, posting in great detail and with much flowery language about the loss of our niece.
And I started building her a new life. She couldn’t be Deana Holliday anymore. Not if a vampire was willing to torch her house to keep her quiet, or whatever it was he was after. She needed an entirely new identity.
We worked through the day, and Dee and DeAnna took turns cooking. I was glad to see them taking it easy—they had just lost everything. Although they had us, to lose your entire base—that was tough.
By the end of the day, all the things we needed for Deana were in motion. I sat on the couch in the front room, tired but happy. I hadn’t thought about Zane all day. I looked down to see that I was still carrying the brown whiskey bottle.
This was getting weird. As though she knew I was thinking about her, Catallah whooshed up out of the bottle, startling everyone. Dee let out a little yelp of surprise.
“Hey,” I said. “What’s up?”
“I have been considering your offer,” Catallah said. “I would like to be free.”
“OK, you’re free,” I said.
“As the mistress of the bottle, you must wish it so.”
It took me a moment, but then I got it. “Ah. OK. Well. OK. Catallah, I wish that you were freed from the bottle.”
There was a wind that came out of nowhere, whirling through our front room and kitchen, and it wrapped around Catallah. Then the bottle next to me cracked in two.
The wind disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.
“Is that it?” I asked.
Catallah smiled, and I saw that she had fangs. Like a vampire, only far more scary. “Yes, it is done. I am free.”
“Will you be all right? What are you going to do?” I asked. “I meant what I said. You can stay here.”
There was a strangled sound from what I thought was one of my sisters, but I couldn’t see who it was.
Catallah smiled, and the intensity of her gaze lessened. “I thank you, Desdemona Nightingale, and all the Nightingales. I am in your debt. Because I do not wish to remain so, I shall grant you three wishes.”
“Can you do that, without, you know, the bottle or whatever?” Deirdre asked
.
“I can do as I please,” Catallah said, and there was no mistaking the satisfaction in her tone.
“We don’t—” I began.
“Yes, we do,” Daniella said.
“What?” I asked. “Can my sisters speak for me?” I asked Catallah.
“Are they Nightingales?” the demon djinn asked.
“They are.”
“Then they make make a wish in your name,” Catallah said. “If you agree.”
“I agree,” I said, looking to Daniella. “What do you want?” I couldn’t think of anything.
“I would like to ask that you make life difficult for a vampire named Alfonso Delgado,” Daniella said. “He has tried to hurt a Nightingale, and he needs to pay for that.”
Catallah nodded. “It will be done. Do you have a particular price you wish him to pay?”
“I want his life to suck,” Daniella said.
“Then it will.”
A thought hit me. “I have a wish!” I said.
“What is it?” Catallah asked.
“Can you make a sarcophagus, a coffin, and make it look enchanted forever? It doesn’t have to be magic, but it has to fool a magic user.”
“Oh, that’s good,” Deirdre said.
“So you wish a box that human put their dead in to be enchanted to look like it is magic, but to not actually be magic?” Catallah’s brows came together.
“I do. I want to keep someone busy forever,” I said.
“That is an odd request, but yes, I can do that.”
“You know, we could manage that,” Daniella said.
“We don’t have demon magic,” I said in an undertone. “This thing needs to fool Brian Earl DeGroate to the point that he leaves Deadwood.”
“He might not leave alone,” Daniella warned.
That’s when I knew I wasn’t the only one thinking that something had gone badly awry with Zane. That maybe he wasn’t who he had presented himself to be.
What if it was all a ruse? To find the sarcophagus?
Well, if it was, then I’d rather know.
“I know that,” I said.
“I think the box should also mess with the magic of the person who has it,” Deirdre said.
“That will be a third wish,” Catallah said.
“That’s fine with me,” I said. “We can handle everything else. But—”
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