“I’ll try Dixon again,” Roy said. “He did say she was the best, but he might know others.”
“When I look for specialists,” Eliza said, “I usually ask Joe. He knows people. I can give him a call.”
“That makes me as useful as a football bat,” Steven said. “I know no one.”
“You just relax,” Eliza said. “Leave it to us. We’ll find someone.”
Steven sat down on the couch. He heard Roy in the kitchen, talking to Dixon on the phone. Eliza had wandered into a hallway, talking to Joe on her cell phone.
If one of them comes back with a lead, he thought, you need to be supportive. Shake off the dazed and confused air and start thinking again. They’re doing this for your benefit, too.
He looked around the room. Across from him was where Aka Manah sat, the last time he saw him. Got the location of the pit from me, and was gone. Jason’s death was just normal collateral damage.
Both Roy and Eliza walked back into the room at the same time.
“Dixon says there are others who are experts,” Roy said, “maybe even more so than Judith, but they’re all recluses and not well known. Judith was the most famous of the lot. He doesn’t know any others by name.”
“Same from Joe,” Eliza said. “Demon experts tend to stay disconnected from the rest of us. But he did have a suggestion. He has a niece who uses a guy, right here in Seattle. He has a database. She gets the names of experts from him.”
They looked at each other. “Worth a shot!” Roy said. “Do we know his name?”
“He’s calling me back with that,” Eliza said, “and a phone number.”
“Good!” Roy said enthusiastically. “We might find a way to take down this fucker! Pardon my French, Eliza. I’m swearing worse than Deem.”
“You don’t have to keep saying that, Roy. I’ve heard worse.”
Roy walked back into the kitchen to get some coffee. “My mother raised me to not swear around women.”
“Well, you’re doing a very poor job of that!” Eliza said. “Seriously, it doesn’t bother me. I’m not some delicate flower who wilts when she hears a bad word.”
“So what, we wait for the number?” Steven asked, trying to generate some enthusiasm for the impending task. “Then call the guy, make an appointment?”
“Yeah,” Eliza said. “I guess so. Roy?”
“That’s exactly what we do,” Roy said, walking back into the room holding a fresh mug. “We go see this guy, and see if he can give us a better expert to talk to than that bitch in Gig Harbor. Pardon…” He stopped himself.
“Yes,” Eliza said, turning to Steven, and smiling while she shook her head. “That bitch in Gig Harbor!”
◊
They fought their way through rush hour traffic to Magnolia, a neighborhood only a few miles away as the crow flies.
“How long have we been driving?” Roy asked. “An hour? We’re only going across town.”
“About an hour,” Eliza said from the back seat. “This traffic is terrible.”
“It’s the east-west thing,” Steven said. “Plenty of major roads running north and south, but if you want to go from the east side of town to the west side, god help you.”
They inched their way up 15th Avenue, finally reaching the Nickerson Street bridge, and crossed over into the northern section of Magnolia. Traffic eased considerably once they entered the residential neighborhoods.
Eliza’s phone map led them to a large condo building that looked modern. They found a visitor parking stall and walked into the building entry. Eliza pressed the button for 801, and a high-pitched male voice came over the speaker.
“Yes?”
“It’s Eliza.”
“Who’s with you?”
“My friends, Steven and Roy.”
They heard a buzzing sound, and Roy reached for the inner door. Then they rode the elevator up to the eighth floor.
The door to 801 was opened by a thin man, about six feet tall. He wore black framed glasses and looked like he was in his late twenties.
“Hi,” he said, and turned, letting them walk in behind him. Steven came in last and shut the door.
The condo was tiny. They walked past a miniature kitchen and into a very small living room, the majority of which was occupied by a bicycle. There was no place to sit. The only window faced the side of another building.
Eliza made the introductions. Everyone shook hands. Looks like every other young hipster who works for Amazon or Microsoft, Steven thought. Glasses, short haircut. Let’s see if his social skills match.
“You must be Elliott?” Eliza asked as she shook his hand.
“So, you know Frida?” Elliott asked.
“Well, she’s the niece of a good friend of mine,” Eliza said.
“Are all of you gifted?” Elliott asked, looking at each of them.
“Yes,” Eliza said. “We all are.”
“Good,” Elliott said, “would you all please jump into the River for me?”
“Alright,” Steven said. He closed his eyes. He saw Eliza and Elliott in the River at about the time he entered. Roy took a few seconds longer to join them.
Good, you can drop out, Elliott said.
“If I say ‘jump in the River’ and people look at me funny, I know I’m not dealing with gifteds,” Elliott explained. He removed his phone from his back pocket, looking down at it and swiping as he talked. “You all pass. What do you want?”
“We heard that you have a database,” Eliza said. “We’re trying to locate an expert on a particular subject.”
“What subject?” Elliott asked, not looking up from his phone.
Yup, social skills match, Steven thought.
“Demons,” Steven said.
This caused Elliott to look up. “Really?”
“Yes,” Steven said. “Really.”
“You’d better come through,” Elliott said, leading them down a short hallway. There was a single bedroom and bathroom off the hallway. It looked to Steven like the smallest apartment he’d ever seen, so he was completely confused as to where Elliott intended them to go. Then Elliott opened the door at the end of the hallway that Steven had assumed was a closet. It opened into a large space with floor-to-ceiling windows facing north.
Eliza walked to the windows and looked down. “Look at the view!” he said.
Roy joined her. “Those are the locks,” Roy said. “Saltwater on the west, freshwater on the east.” They saw a backup of four or five large boats waiting to be let through the locks into the Sound.
“I chose this spot because of those locks,” Elliott said. “All that rushing water nearby tends to keep demons away.” He sat down at a table with a laptop and began typing. The laptop was connected to three large screens above him, all dim at the moment.
Steven looked around the rest of the room. It was loaded with project tables and stacks of boxes. In the center of the room were two large server racks, filled with black boxes that twinkled little lights. Cables ran up from the racks through metal trays overhead and out the back of the room.
“Fiber,” Elliott said, catching Steven eyeing the racks and cables. “The other reason I chose here.”
“Impressive,” Steven said, “for a home setup.”
“I can’t keep what I’m doing in the cloud,” Elliott said. “It’s waaay too sensitive. Which brings me to why you’re here. Here’s how I work. I’ll do a search for you, on whatever you want. Right now the database is mostly contacts, but I’ve been enlarging it to include other things. In return, you either pay me, or give me something I can add to the database.”
“Like what?” Eliza asked.
“More information,” Elliott said.
“Like what?” Steven asked.
“Anything that other gifteds might find useful,” Elliott said. “I make enough money off this database to keep myself going and pay for all this,” he said, waving his hand around the room. “But I see this as a growth business. Once the database is big enough, I’
ll stop taking submissions for payment and move strictly to cash.” He rolled on his chair from the table with the laptop to another table with a different laptop.
“How much?” Steven asked. “How much cash?”
“How big of a search are we talking about?”
“We’d like the best demon expert we can get,” Eliza said. “Preferably close by.”
“And Judith Duke doesn’t count,” Roy piped up, the first time he’d spoken since they entered the condo. He looked decidedly uncomfortable.
“Five thousand,” Elliott said.
“Whoa,” Roy replied. “Seems high for just a name.”
“Alright,” Elliott said. “Three thousand. Or you can pay me with info.”
“If we paid with info,” Steven asked, “how would that work?”
“Well, you’d need to tell me up front what the info is, so I can make sure I’m not duplicating anything. Dupes don’t have any value for me. If I don’t already have it, I’ll weigh how much I think it’s worth. If it’s in the neighborhood of three thousand, I’ll take it instead.”
“And how exactly do you ‘take it’?” Steven asked. “What’s the process?”
“Well, depends on where it comes from,” Elliott said. “If it’s from a book, like a journal, there’s a good chance you’ll have to read it to me, since I wouldn’t have the experience to decipher it. I record you reading, then I turn that into database entries with tags so I can find it in future searches. If it’s some personal experience you’re sharing, I record that too. If it’s about objects, I take pictures and have you write up descriptions of what they do. So it really depends on what you have.”
“You have objects in your database?” Steven asked, intrigued.
“Some,” Elliott replied. “Like I said, at first I was just focused on contacts. But recently I started expanding into other things.”
“So it’s not a big objects database, at this stage,” Steven said.
Elliott turned his attention to his laptop and clicked at it for a minute. Then he raised his head. “About ninety. Objects. All with pictures and descriptions of what they do.”
“Yeah, that’s not big,” Steven said.
“You’ve got objects?” Elliott asked. Steven turned to look at Roy, who was turned away, looking out the windows. He looked at Eliza, and she stared back at him, pressing her lips together.
“Nah,” Steven said. “But I do have some information on a demon you might want.”
“How did you come by this information?” Elliott asked, returning his attention to his laptop.
“I had a deal with him,” Steven said.
“Oh, no,” Elliott said, looking up. “You have a deal with a demon, and you came in here? Man, I don’t like to go anywhere near that shit. That’s why I’m here, by the locks!”
“I said had,” Steven replied. “The deal is done, it’s not active anymore. It’s history. And he was ancient, so I expect the information I can give you would be valuable. Probably a lot more valuable than three thousand dollars.”
Elliott groaned and returned to his laptop. “They’re all ancient. Which demon? Do you have a name?”
“Do you want me to say it out loud?” Steven asked.
“Ah, good idea,” Elliott said. “Maybe write it down?”
Elliott handed Steven a sticky note pad and a pen. Steven wrote “Aka Manah” on the pad and handed it back. The kid didn’t seem to recognize the name. He went back to his laptop and typed it in.
“I’ve got nothing on him in the database,” Elliott said, his eyes flashing back and forth, focused on the screen. “Let me check something else…” He rolled back to his other laptop, and began typing.
“Oh,” he said, pushing back from the laptop. “He’s… ancient-ancient. And scary as fuck.” Elliott grabbed the piece of paper and walked it to a small garbage can. He removed a lighter from his pocket.
“I’m thinking what I can share about him would be worth at least twenty,” Steven said as he watched Elliott burn the page and drop it, still flaming, into the garbage can. “If you can handle having that kind of intense information in your system.”
This caused Elliott to stop and look up at Steven. “Of course I can handle it,” he said. “I can’t pay you, though. Just a credit.”
“Alright,” Steven said. “Help us out with this search, and I’ll come back and tell you the story for your database. And we’ll take a seventeen thousand dollar credit for future searches.”
“OK, I’ll take you at your word that you’ll come back,” Elliott said. “And I get to put each of you into the database as contacts, too, as part of this. Don’t ditch out on me, though, or I won’t ever help you again and I’ll list you in the database as deadbeats.” He stopped and pushed his glasses back up his nose. “Deal?”
“Deal,” Steven said.
Elliott rolled back to the other laptop and typed away. After a few seconds he raised his head. “Well, there’s a couple of hits.”
He hit a KVM switch and one of the large screens lit up, showing his laptop.
“Here’s Judith Duke,” Elliott said, rolling his mouse over the display. “She lives in Gig Harbor.”
“She doesn’t count!” Roy said emphatically. “I told you that.”
“Chill!” Elliott said. “I didn’t remember her name.”
Roy turned to look at Steven. He was clearly nonplussed. Steven knew Roy was thrown by all the technology, and the only way he knew to mask his discomfort was with displays of irritation.
“There’s two others,” Elliott said, scrolling. “A guy in Montana, and a guy in Port Townsend.”
“Who knows more?” Roy asked gruffly.
“Hard to say,” Elliott replied. “Demon experts are notorious recluses, so most of the information I have about them is from other people, kind of like Yelp reviews. The guy in Montana seems pretty active, lots of cases. Looks like the guy in Port Townsend is quiet. Might be retired.”
“Can you give us the info on both of them?” Steven asked. “We’ll take it from there.”
Elliott pressed a few more keys, then jumped up from his chair and walked to a refrigerator sitting along one wall. Steven thought he was going to get a drink, but he pulled a couple of papers from a printer that was sitting next to the fridge and returned.
“Sorry, I only print them,” Elliott said, handing the sheets to Steven. “I know it’s so 2000, but any cloud email account can be accessed by admins at the big companies as well as the government, and I don’t trust any of them.”
Steven looked at the pages. They were inelegant record dumps, but they contained the information he was looking for – names, addresses, phone numbers, and a little history on each person.
“Thanks,” Steven said. He handed the pages to Eliza, and she began scanning them.
“Anything else?” Elliott asked, checking his phone. “I gotta make a Battlefield 4 session in like five minutes.”
“No, that’s it,” Steven said.
“Thank god,” Roy said under his breath.
They walked back to the hallway and out Elliott’s front door. He followed them.
“Thanks again,” Steven said. “I’ll be in touch about the info we agreed to.”
“Good,” Elliott said, shutting the door. Then he opened it again, quickly. “Don’t ditch me on that, dude. Seriously.”
“I won’t,” Steven said. They turned and walked back to the elevator.
“Well, that was productive,” Eliza said.
“Sometimes you have to do distasteful things to get what you need,” Roy said.
“That was distasteful?” Eliza asked as they entered the elevator.
“Oh, all that computer mumbo jumbo,” Roy said. “These kids live in their own fantasy world. I’ll bet he’s never even seen a ghost, in real life. Or a girl.”
“He did seem like your typical obnoxious Seattle hipster,” Steven said.
“I thought he was cute!” Eliza said. “You’re both a coup
le of old fuddy-duddies.”
“As uncool as you can get,” Roy said, watching the floor numbers change.
Chapter Eight
“Well, I don’t know about you,” Eliza said from the back seat of the car, “but I’d rather try Port Townsend before Montana since it’s a lot closer. If we don’t get what we want from him, we can road trip it and talk to the other guy.”
“Makes sense to me,” Roy said. “Wanna go now?”
“Sure,” Eliza said. “Steven?”
“Yeah, might as well,” Steven replied, and he turned off 15th onto Western, headed for the ferry terminal.
As they crossed Elliott Bay on the ferry, they left their car and walked up to the higher decks, stepping outside for a moment but finding the wind too cold. Roy queued up for some coffee, and the others joined him. Soon they were sitting in one of the many booths that lined the side of the ferry, watching the water speed past under them.
“What’s that over there?” Eliza asked, pointing at an outcropping of condos and businesses behind a small sandy beach.
“Alki,” Roy said. “West Seattle. Used to be houses, not long ago. Now it’s all big condo buildings.”
“Not long ago?” Steven said. “You mean forty years ago.”
“That long?” Roy asked. “Well, it’s too built up for me now.”
“Looks delightful,” Eliza said. “Do they have restaurants along there? With a view?”
“Sure,” Steven said.
“Let’s eat over there, before I leave this time,” Eliza said enthusiastically. “What do you say, Roy?”
“What’s wrong with Geraldine’s?” Roy asked. “That’s where I normally eat.”
“It won’t kill you to eat somewhere else once in a while,” Steven said.
“I’m used to the food at Geraldine’s,” Roy said. “I know the menu.”
“Won’t it be exciting to try a new menu!” Eliza said, trying to raise Roy’s enthusiasm.
“Humpf,” Roy said, and rose from the table. “I’ll be back.” He walked off in the direction of the bathrooms.
“He’s grumpy,” Eliza said.
“So far this morning, he’s met Judith, who he roundly hates, and Elliott, the computer guy who intimidated him with youth and tech. He’s oh for two, and we’re about to go meet someone else he doesn’t know. He doesn’t like meeting new people in general.”
The Diablo Horror (The River Book 7) Page 8