“Yeah, Harker?”
“Be careful.”
“Don’t worry,” he said, pushing his wheelchair back from the keyboard. “It’s not like I’m gonna go run around in the sewers in a cape anymore.”
“Yeah, well…even so, don’t get dead.”
“You too.”
I let myself out through the front of the VCR repair shop Dennis ran as a front for his real job, which was selling information. I knew I wasn’t his only client, but I’d never seen anyone else entering or leaving the shop. I didn’t ask too many questions. I just took the information he gave me, paid the tab, and hoped someday he’d forgive me for cutting his legs off with a spell to save him from the grasp of a hungry demon.
*****
Terese Dover’s office was on one of the top floors of the AmeriBank tower, a corner office furnished in sleek chrome, glass, and black leather. Her desk was huge and designed to intimidate, but it was a lot less imposing with its drawers hanging out and fingerprint dust all over it. I ducked under the crime scene tape and stepped inside. It looked like it had been tossed, but carefully. Sponholz and his boys had obviously taken a little care in the process, making a token effort not to piss off the city’s biggest employer.
I stood in the center of the room, between the ego-boosting desk and a small sitting area set off at one end of the room, and opened my Sight. Traces of Nephilim energy glowed off every surface. This was certainly Dover’s place, and she was one hundred percent definitely half-angel. I’d felt the same energy coming off Lincoln Baxter’s body, and there was a hint of the same energy around Glory, only hers was cleaner, purer, like it was the source and Dover’s energy was a diluted version. Which I guess it probably was.
I turned to the stone-faced security guard behind me. “Are any of Ms. Dover’s co-workers available for me to speak to?”
“No, sir.” Amazing. I never even saw his lips move. The block of granite in a rent-a-cop suit just stood in the doorway, staring at me like I was something he’d scraped off his shoe.
“What about any of her superiors?”
“No, sir.”
“Her secretary?”
“Ms. Dover’s assistant has taken a personal day. She was distraught at the news. We all were.” He looked about as distraught as a brick wall, but since he was also built like one, I didn’t challenge him. It was way too early in the day to go breaking the humans. Besides, I was on the side of the angels, literally, for once, and I was kinda liking the way it felt. I decided not to screw anything up.
“Fine, take me to HR.” Sponholz had obviously beaten me to the workplace, the benefit of actually being the police, instead of just kinda working alongside them. But he was maybe the laziest cop I’d ever met, so I had high hopes that when he didn’t find anything in her office, that he wouldn’t have thought to visit Human Resources.
I followed my security golem to the elevator, and we rode down forty-something floors until the doors dinged open on the twelfth floor. I stepped out, and my shadow followed.
“I’m sure I can find it from here,” I said. I pointed to the sign on the wall with an arrow pointing right and the words “Human Resources” over it.
“You are my responsibility until you leave the building,” the guard replied. I took that to mean a lot more of “I’m not letting you out of my sight, jackass,” than “I’m terribly concerned about your well-being.”
I sighed and started down the hallway to the right. The HR office had a sizable waiting room with about ten chairs, a circular desk with a grandmotherly-looking woman seated behind it, and a wall of pamphlets with titles like “What to do if you are sexually harassed,” “How to manage intra-office relationships” and “Good personal hygiene makes a happy workplace!” The last one had a cartoon figure on the cover with wavy stink lines emanating from it. I stepped up to the desk. Aunt Bea was on the phone chatting about some pound cake she had tasted at the church dinner the night before, and when I opened my mouth to ask for the personnel records on Terese Dover, she held up one finger to shush me.
I don’t like being shushed. I don’t know anyone who does, but there are some people who deserve it. I’m typically not the chatty type, so generally if I open my mouth to say something, it’s either relevant or tied to a spell. So I don’t like being shushed. And I certainly don’t like being shushed, not once but twice, so when a glorified file clerk shushed me so she could tell Mrs. McGillicutty how many eggs to put in her pound cake, I became irritated. It’s bad for technology, and sometimes people, when I become irritated.
I focused my will, flicked a finger toward the telephone, and whispered “mortus.” I released the power, and the line indicator lights on the phone went dead. Aunt Bea looked around, puzzled, then pressed a few buttons on her phone. She looked around, puzzled, then finally seemed to notice me standing there. Directly over her desk. With a two hundred-fifty-pound security guard beside me. Because we were hard to notice.
“Huh,” she said with a puzzled look up at me. “My phone’s on the fritz.”
“You should call tech support,” I said without a hint of a smile, even when she turned and picked up the handset as if to dial. “But before you do, I need to speak with someone about Terese Dover.”
“Oh, Ms. Dover? Wasn’t that such a tragedy what happened to her? And right there on the steps of a church and everything. I didn’t even know she went to church, do you know that? And I make it a point to know a little something about almost everybody.” She beamed like being a busybody was an achievement.
“I’m sure you do,” I said with what I hoped was an ingratiating smile that kept all the “I want to strangle you” off my face. “I’m working with the police investigating Ms. Dover’s death. Who could I speak to about her?”
“That would be me,” came a new voice from off to my right. I turned to see a trim Asian woman in her thirties standing outside the door to one of the offices. She was dressed for downtown, with a black skirt and burgundy blouse under a long jacket. She walked over to me and gave me firm handshake. “My name is Lina Flores, VP of HR. Please come this way.”
She turned around and walked off in that “I know you’ll follow me” way that people who are very much in charge of their environment have. I did just what she expected and followed her into a small office with a desk, two chairs, and one moderately sad-looking plant. There were a few diplomas on the walls and a couple of photos of Ms. Flores—one that looked like her college graduation, one of her with a man in ski gear in front of a snowy backdrop, one a big family photo with her face smiling in the front row. I gave her a look and a nod at the security golem.
“Gerald, please wait outside,” she said. Now I knew the golem’s name at least.
Gerald frowned. “I have strict instructions not to—”
She waved a hand. “Where do you think he’s going to go, Gerald? I doubt he’d survive a jump from my twelfth-floor window, and you’ll be right outside. Now get out. I will likely have to discuss sensitive personnel matters, and I can’t do that with you here.”
I didn’t bother to correct the sharp little HR vice-president that a twelve-story drop would hurt like a sonofabitch, but it wouldn’t even come close to killing me. I tend to leave out the “I’m not completely human” conversation until my second date. Or at least my second meeting over a murdered coworker. Tomato, to-mah-to.
Flores sat down behind her desk, so I followed her lead and took one of the armless chairs facing her. She opened a file drawer, pulled out a manila folder, and placed it on her desk.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Harker?” she asked with a little smile.
“As you know, Ms. Dover was killed this morning. While we understand the shock and grief her coworkers must be facing, time is always of the essence in these types of investigations, so we cannot allow people a typically appropriate time of mourning before we begin our investigation.”
“Let me stop you right there, Mr. Harker. The police were already here, and they co
nfiscated Ms. Dover’s computer, searched her office, and interviewed several of her coworkers. And you haven’t shown me a badge, or any type of official ID. You also seem to know nothing at all about the activities of the police department, and those things all add up to you not being with the police. So who are you, and why are you snooping around my dead employee?”
Fuck. I needed to think quick. Fuck it, here goes nothing. “Ms. Flores, do you believe in magic?” I asked, whispering “incindare” under my breath and sending a small gout of flame up from my palm.
The startled executive jerked back, almost toppling over in her chair. “What the hell?!?” She stood up and backed away, bumping into the bookcase behind her.
I closed my fist and the flame winked out. “Ms. Flores, there are things in the world that most people never hear of outside of children’s stories. The monster under the bed, the boogeyman in the closet, the thing that goes bump in the night. They’re all real, and I have spent my life fighting them. I think that Ms. Dover got mixed up in something ugly, something way outside her experience, and she paid the ultimate price for it. This is the kind of thing the local police are not very well-equipped to deal with, so I’m piggybacking on their mundane investigation with my very much not mundane one. But I need your help.
“I need to know everything about Terese Dover. Who loved her, who hated her, where she shopped, where she ate lunch, what she liked, what she disliked, where she vacationed—I need to know everything. And I need you to help me.”
Now that the initial shock of seeing the world beneath her world was fading a little, Flores latched on to the only thing she still understood—rules. “I’m sorry, Mr. Harker. I can’t help you. I don’t know what your little magic trick was supposed to prove, but it didn’t work. There are very strict regulations that cover what I can and cannot discuss with you and…”
Her words trailed off and her eyes went wide. I swept myself a clear spot about two feet in diameter on her desk, drew a quick circle with a piece of chalk I carried in a pocket, and muttered a short incantation. An imp appeared in the circle on her desk, a twelve-inch naked red man with goat hooves, bat wings, a forked tail, and short red horns curving from his skull. You know, basically every childhood nightmare of the devil? Well, that was standing on her desk.
The imp turned around, looked up at me, then started hopping up and down, shaking his fists. “Goddammit, Harker!” the tiny demon yelled, and its voice was shrill and almost comical. “I told you to stop bringing me up here if I can’t eat or fuck anything!” He turned to Flores and leered at her. “Hey baby,” he said, grabbing his penis, which was large out of all proportion to his size. “You want some of this? Come on sweet cheeks, you know you want to try it. You know what they say, ‘Once you go red, you fuck ‘til you’re dead’.” The horny little demonlet cackled like he’d invented the dirty limerick and turned back to me.
“Whatever you want, the answer is go fuck yourself.”
“Why you gotta be like that, ‘Thew?” I asked, a small smile threatening to crack my face.
“It’s gotta be like that because fuck you, that’s why.” He turned back to Flores. “What about it, baby girl? You decided you want to come ride the crimson pony? Just reach out with your hand and erase the circle old Fuckwit McDickhead over there called me into, and I’ll make you scream in ways you’ve never imagined.”
“He’s probably right there,” I said. “Demons have barbed penises, kinda like cats, only with more sulfur smell. You get hooked up with ‘Thew and you’ll definitely scream.”
“And don’t worry about size, sexy,” the imp chimed in. “My thundercock isn’t the only thing that grows.” As if to prove his point, he swelled to twice his size, almost completely filling the circle. He jerked his tail back as it grazed the chalk line, a yellow spark of magical energy arcing out from the circle to zap him.
“Ow, Lucifer damn it!” he yelled, pulling his tail around and putting the tip in his mouth. After a few seconds, he looked back up at Flores and held out the tail. “It’s pretty flexible,” he said, a lascivious grin splitting his crimson features. “You should see the things I can do with it. I can tickle your—”
I cut him off with a word. “Silencio.” The demon’s lips kept moving, but no sound came out. “Now do you believe in monsters?” I asked. “If you need a little more convincing, feel free to let the little guy out. I’m sure he’d love to show you all the things he can tickle with that tail.”
Flores looked up from the imp on her desk. She was very pale, and for a moment I thought she was going to faint. Then she turned to the side and vomited very quietly into a trash can next to her desk. She stayed hunched over the black Rubbermaid receptacle for several long moments before she sat up, wiped her mouth with a tissue from a desk drawer, and looked at me, her composure completely restored.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Harker? And would you please remove your demon from my office?”
I waved a hand, and the illusion of the demon winked out of existence. I reached out with my finger and scrubbed out a tiny part of the circle, making it useless for any real spellcasting. I wouldn’t want anyone to actually summon a demon into the woman’s office, after all. Real demons don’t come in miniature sizes. The smallest ones I’ve ever heard of are the size of a large dog and will reduce a human being to nothing more than scraps in less than five minutes flat. But my illusionary hornball demon was pretty useful in convincing people that the supernatural is real. After all, who wouldn’t get nervous at the thought of a hellspawn with a crush on them?
Chapter 10
I spent about an hour chatting with the suddenly cooperative HR guru and came away with the contact information for three people who filed complaints about Terese Dover within the past six months; a folder containing no fewer than seventeen letters of recommendation, promotion, and awards for productivity from her superiors; and Ms. Flores’ phone number. You never know.
Loud music blared down the hall as I stepped off the elevator at 340 South, an upscale apartment building on the edge of Southend, a recently revitalized part of town that went from strip clubs to antique stores almost overnight. I checked numbers on doors against the piece of paper in my hand, my confusion rising every step I drew nearer to apartment 614. I stopped in front of the right door and raised my hand to knock, although with the level of Metallica that was screeching at me in the hallway, I knew no one in the apartment had any chance of hearing me knock.
But I knocked anyway, with the expected lack of result. I tried again, and the third time I switched over to pounding. After that, with my temper growing and the amount of time before the Equinox shrinking, I kicked it in. The frame splintered, the door crashed in, the chain holding it shut snapped, and my foot hurt.
A young woman in exercise gear was on a treadmill in the middle of the room screaming heavy metal along with the cable TV music station at the top of her lungs. She froze in mid-chorus when I came crashing in, her hand upraised in a stuck salute to the gods of rock. She looked to be in her mid-twenties, and judging by the six-pack she was sporting in her sports bra and her sweatpants, she spent a lot of time on that treadmill.
“What the fuck?” She hopped off the treadmill and took a couple of quick steps to a small table next to the couch. She pushed a button on a remote and turned off the TV, then picked up her cell phone with one hand and started rummaging around in her purse with the other.
I didn’t move any closer, just closed the door behind me and stood a foot or so into the foyer. I was a good fifteen feet away from her, trying to stay as far away as the small apartment would let me so she didn’t feel any more threatened by the big guy who just kicked her door in. Plus, if she tried to shoot me, the farther away I was, the better. I just focused my will in case I needed a quick spell and tried to look harmless.
“Are you Janet Hamilton?” I asked.
“That depends completely on who the fuck you are and what the fuck you’re doing in my apartment.” She t
urned to the phone. “Hello, 911? There’s a—”
So much for harmless. I released my will with a whispered “magnos.” A focused little pulse of electromagnetic energy flickered out from my fingers, and her cell phone was a paperweight. Her TV and DVR were also probably fried, as well as the remote, anything else electronic in her purse, and probably the stereo. At least this time I managed not to blow out all the power in the building.
She tossed her useless cell phone and pulled her other hand out of her purse. She held a small canister with a red button on top of it. “Don’t come any closer. I’ve got pepper spray.”
“Calm down, Ms. Hamilton. My name is Quincy Harker, and I’m working with the police.” I held up the wallet containing my PI credentials, including what might or might not have been a fake badge I picked up at Morris Costumes a couple years ago. She lowered the pepper spray and her shoulders immediately relaxed. It was amazing how effective that line was. I might have to consider actually working with the cops if this kept up.
“I’m a private investigator consulting with the Homicide Division. We’re looking into the death of your employer, Ms. Dover.”
A sneer crossed her previously gorgeous face. Nobody’s attractive when they sneer. “That bitch? Who cares? Everybody I know is glad she’s dead.”
This wasn’t exactly what I expected to hear. “I met a woman at your office who told me you were so upset over Ms. Dover’s death that you were unable to come in to work.”
“That’s HR-speak for ‘she called in and told us to fuck off.’ I figured if Satanna wasn’t coming in, I’d take a little vacation, have some ‘me’ time, and generally chill. That keeps me from having to pretend that everybody in the world didn’t hate her when people call in to give their bullshit fake condolences all day.”
Heaven Sent - a Quincy Harker Novella (Quincy Harker Demon Hunter Book 5) Page 7