“No,” Matt and Bridget said in unison.
The waitress pulled back like she’d been slapped. “Okay then. I’ll just leave you two alone.” Bridget heard her whistle low and long as she walked back to the kitchen.
“So Father Santos showed me this old manuscript from the Vatican,” Bridget continued. “He said it was the only one of its kind and it tells the story of the Emim and the Watchers.”
“Sounds like a comic book.”
“Nerd.”
“Crazy.” Matt smiled at her. It wasn’t his patented sparkly smile—just a hint of grin around the corners of his mouth—but it gave Bridget a warm, homey feeling inside.
“I don’t remember all of it, but basically a bunch of angels fell from Heaven to have sex with mortal women and then got banished to Hell. Some of those angels repented, and God granted their half-mortal offspring special powers to control the offspring of the nonrepenting angels. The Watchers and the Emim.”
Matt’s eyes grew wide as Bridget took a huge bite of her sandwich, trailing a long strand of melted cheese away from her mouth. “Which one are you?”
“Watcher. I think we’re supposed to be the good guys.”
“Supposed to be?”
Bridget dropped her sandwich on her plate. “Look, I don’t know. All I’ve got is two priests who, according to a demon messenger, I’m not supposed to trust. It’s not like this thing came with an instruction manual. Page one—You’re the Good Guy! I mean, until a month ago I didn’t believe any of this was real.”
Matt dropped his eyes. “Sorry.”
“S’okay.” Bridget crammed some fries into her mouth and washed them down with a long sip of her soda. She was suddenly ravenous, like she hadn’t eaten in weeks.
“So you’re one of them?” Matt asked.
“One of who?”
“One of them. A demon.”
Bridget winced. She was instantly nauseous at the idea that she was part supernatural anything. “Do I look like a demon?” she asked by way of an evasion.
“Yeah, like I know.” Matt finally picked up his untouched food. “What are they like? The demons, I mean?”
Bridget hadn’t really thought about it before. “Kind of like nasty little kids. They like to scare you, slam doors, and show up as ominous shadows. They’re not really dangerous until they get their hooks into a human.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. They can make you do things, give you extra strength, make you levitate. All kinds of crazy stuff.”
“Like with Milton Undermeyer?”
Bridget smiled. The boy was quick. “Yeah.”
“And that can happen to just anyone?”
“I don’t think so.” Bridget took a contemplative bite of french fry. What had Monsignor told her? “You have to invite them in somehow. Let them into your house and then once you engage with them, it’s game on.”
Matt pondered Bridget’s words before he launched into his next question. “So, it sounds like real cases of possession are pretty rare, huh?”
“I think so, yeah.”
“Then how come you’ve had four of them in the last few weeks?”
It was a good point, one that had been bothering Bridget. The Vatican seemed to agree with Matt and had sent Father Santos to investigate the swell in demonic activity in the area. But Monsignor seemed more excited by it than anything, because it gave him a chance to test Bridget’s abilities. Meanwhile, the more Bridget contemplated the eerie events of the last few weeks, the more she was determined to get to the bottom of things.
They fell silent as they finished lunch, but after the waitress brought the check, Matt had one last question.
“What did they tell you?”
“Who?”
“The demons inside Milton Undermeyer. You kept ordering them to tell you something.”
“Oh, right.” He was in it up to his neck at this point, might as well finish the job. “They said that the Emim are attempting to summon a demon, Amaymon, who’s a king of Hell, and that they are using a priest to do so. I’m supposed to stop the priest.”
“That narrows it down,” Matt snorted.
“Yeah.”
“Do you think it’s Father Santos or Monsignor?”
Bridget bit her lip.
“I hope not,” she said. “But the only thing I know for sure is that Milton Undermeyer did not kill my dad. Maybe if we find the real killer, it’ll lead to the priest?”
“All right,” Matt said, scooting out of the booth. “Let’s go, then.”
“Go where?”
Matt took her hand as she climbed to her feet. “Let’s go find your priest.”
Twenty-Seven
A MIDDLE-AGED OFFICER WITH A steel gray topknot and horn-rimmed glasses circa 1973 pushed the door open with her ample rump and deposited a heavy file box on the table.
“Is that all?” Bridget asked.
The officer leaned against the table to catch her breath. “Yes, that’s all, honey.”
Bridget eyed the box. All the evidence from the Undermeyer case shoved into a single two-by-three-foot box.
“Thanks, Agnes,” Matt said. Bridget saw him flash the officer his winning, toothy smile.
Agnes melted. “Don’t mention it. Anything for you and your dad, Mattie.”
“Does that work on everyone?” Bridget said after Agnes waddled from the room.
“What?”
Bridget did her best imitation of Matt’s smile and puppy-dog-eye combo. “Thanks, Agnes.”
Matt drew his face close to hers. “Not on everyone.”
Bridget turned her head and hoped Matt didn’t notice the faint pink blush rising from her chest to her neck. “Well, apparently it worked on Alexa Darlington.”
Matt’s mood changed as soon as he heard Alexa’s name. His smile vanished, and he reached over to the box and took out a stack of CDs burned from the audio recordings of her dad’s sessions with Undermeyer. “I’ll start with these.”
“Um, okay.” Bridget bit the inside of her cheek as she grabbed Undermeyer’s patient file from the box.
She’d been half joking, bringing up Alexa, but only half. The rest of her still wondered how a guy like Matt, cute and popular and clearly not a total douchebag, would go for a bitch like Alexa Darlington. Sure she was hot and dripping with money, but was that what he was looking for?
She stole a glance at Matt while he pushed a CD into his MacBook and pulled a set of headphones over his ears. He’d sounded so weird last night when he talked about Alexa, like he’d tried to forget those months of his life. And the look on his face when she spoke to him, like he was biting through nails. Maybe he’d really loved her and she’d broken his heart? The thought made Bridget want to hurl.
Bridget sighed and turned to the stack of file folders. As she opened the first file, she grimaced. What exactly was she looking for? She knew her dad’s record keeping pretty well: audio recordings of each session, which he would burn onto a CD; notes on topics and comments of interest during the session; postsession impressions of each client, along with medications prescribed and suggestions for the next session. All completely, one hundred percent straightforward. No codes, no gimmicks, no secret shorthand. There was no reason to believe she’d find anything that had been missed the first bazillion times these notes had been examined.
Still, this was her dad, and after her mom, Bridget knew him best. Maybe she’d see something everyone else missed.
Undermeyer’s file started out normal enough. The first session was mainly for initial reactions, stating that the patient arrived heavily sedated, and that acute schizophrenia and possible multiple personality disorder were the most likely culprits for his condition. Not a word, not a hint of anything out of the ordinary.
But there wouldn’t have been, right? Her dad couldn’t very well have said, “Undermeyer is possessed by several demonic entities that only I can communicate with.” It wouldn’t exactly fly with Sergeant Quinn and the assistant dis
trict attorney. The session ended with the request that he see Undermeyer again, this time without any drugs in his system.
The next session was a week later and was, apparently, a complete disaster. At the end of the session Dr. Liu had to call in the accompanying officers from the other room and have Undermeyer restrained after he attempted to throw himself through the fourth-story window of Dr. Liu’s office. Not much there, other than that her dad requested another interview.
This was a bust. They weren’t going to find anything here that the police missed. She’d hit a dead end.
Matt sat bolt upright in his chair. “Whoa.”
“What?”
He held up a hand. “Hold on. Let me check something.” Matt scrolled the recording ahead two, three times, then cupped his hands over his ears, listening acutely. After a few seconds his hand flew to the space bar and he paused the recording. “Whoa.”
“What?”
“I think I found something.”
Bridget sucked in a breath. “Really?”
“Yeah.” Matt moved quickly. He reset the recording back near the beginning and handed the headphones to Bridget. “So that CD has Undermeyer’s first and second sessions with your dad. They’re each thirty minutes long, and pretty much what you’d expect. But this CD, with the third and fourth sessions, they’re shorter. The third session is only twenty-two minutes, the fourth only fifteen.”
Bridget felt a ripple of excitement race through her body. “That doesn’t sound like my dad.”
“Right? So I went through them again and . . . well, listen for yourself.”
Bridget slipped the headphones on while Matt started the recording.
“And have you been taking your medication, Mr. Undermeyer?” Dr. Liu asked.
A lump welled up in Bridget’s throat at her dad’s voice. He sounded infinitely calm, totally professional, not an ounce of emotion reflected through the even cadence of his words. God, she missed him.
“Yes. Yes, yes, yes.” It was Undermeyer’s voice, with that taunting style of the demoniac that Bridget had come to know so well.
“Excellent. And do you care to tell me why you broke into the Church of St. Michael?”
“No. No, no, no.” Bridget could almost see the taunting grin on Undermeyer’s face.
“I see.”
Matt held up a finger. On the recording, Bridget heard a faint click.
Dr. Liu’s voice picked up almost immediately with a heavy thumping sound in the background, like chair legs bouncing on the floor. “Well, then, Mr. Undermeyer, I will see you next week.”
“Not safe!” Undermeyer shrieked. “Not safe here! Not safe! Not safe here!”
Another click, and the session was over.
Matt paused the recording. “Did you hear the click, right before your dad told Undermeyer he’d see him next week?”
“Yeah.”
“Same as the click at the end of the recording.”
Bridget gasped. “He turned it off. My dad didn’t want something to be on the official session recording.”
“Exactly. And it happened again, exactly the same way, in session four.” Matt slumped back into his chair. “Which means something is missing.”
The missing tapes, just like Undermeyer said. Bridget leaned her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands. “My dad kept recordings of every second of every patient session. If he turned off the official police recording, he must have had a second recorder going. For his personal files.”
“But where? My dad went through both of Dr. Liu’s offices with tweezers and a magnifying glass. There’s no way he missed anything.”
“Nothing that he was meant to find.”
Matt tilted his head. “What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s just this. If my dad was a Watcher, he wasn’t exactly going to advertise that fact, right? I mean, it’s not something you brag about at the office Christmas party.”
“It might make the Christmas party more interesting.”
Bridget rolled her eyes. “Focus.”
“Sorry.”
“My point is, what if what’s missing here—the audio, maybe even some notes—what if they were never here?”
“You mean he hid them?”
Bridget shrugged. “That’s what I’d do. Especially if I thought the Emim were on to me.”
Matt ran his fingers absentmindedly through his hair. “And my dad wouldn’t have missed it. He wouldn’t have realized there was anything wrong with what he found in Dr. Liu’s office.” He sounded relieved.
“I wasn’t blaming your dad. I never thought he screwed this up.”
“Oh, I know. It’s just . . .” Matt shifted in his chair so he faced her. “This is some really weird shit we’re dealing with.”
Bridget couldn’t help herself. His serious expression and the way he described her situation, it was too perfect. She burst out laughing, head thrown back, hand slapping the table. Her cheeks ached, her stomach felt like it was going to burst right out of her body with the effort. It was the first time she’d laughed like that in months.
Matt pursed his lips and folded his arms across his chest. He clearly didn’t appreciate Bridget’s mood. She immediately put on a serious face.
“I wasn’t trying to be funny,” Matt said, once she’d quieted down.
“I know, I’m sorry,” she said, wiping a tear from her eye. “Don’t be mad. It was just so . . . perfect.”
“So if he kept secret notes, they weren’t in his office,” Matt said, ignoring her apology. “My dad would have found them.”
Bridget wasn’t entirely sure that was true, but she decided not to press the point. Besides, she had a more likely place in mind.
She dug into the pocket of her jeans and whipped out her cell phone.
“Who are you calling?” Matt said.
Bridget held up her hand for silence while she dialed. “Mom? Hey, yeah, we’re still out. Um, I was wondering what you were planning for dinner? Shepherd’s pie? Cool. Yeah, I think he’d really love to stay for dinner. Perfect. We’ll be there soon.”
“Did you just get me invited to your house for dinner?”
“Totally.”
A sly grin stole across Matt’s face. “You know, it’s amazing how you keep asking me on dates.”
“Excuse me?”
“Your Winter Formal, dinner at your house. Really, I’m flattered.”
Bridget narrowed her eyes. “You know what? Forget it. I can totally do this on my own without your help.”
“Don’t be so touchy.” Matt reached out and grazed her hand with his fingertips. “You know I want to help.”
Bridget let his touch linger, surprising herself by not pulling away. Something in the pit of her stomach shifted, like the bottom had fallen away. What was wrong with her?
“We should go,” she said at last. He pulled his hand away, and Bridget was almost sorry. “My mom’s expecting us.”
Matt loaded the evidence back into the box. “So, shepherd’s pie?”
“Every Sunday night.”
“Awesome. My dad’s going to be so jealous.”
Twenty-Eight
“HEY, MOM, WE’RE HERE,” BRIDGET called as she and Matt came through the front door. She got no answer, just the sound of laughter—male and female—coming from the kitchen. Bridget pushed open the swinging door and found her mom holding a piece of braised carrot between her fingers while Sergeant Quinn playfully took a bite. Their bodies were almost touching, her mom laughing, happy, Sergeant Quinn’s eyes fixed on her face.
“Dad?” Matt said. He sounded genuinely shocked. Time to get with the program, Matt.
“Bridget!” her mom said. She took a step away from Sergeant Quinn and straightened out her sweater. “I didn’t think you’d be back so soon.”
“Obviously.”
“Dad, what are you doing here?”
Sergeant Quinn flushed a bright shade of fuchsia. “Well, Annie called and said you were coming for di
nner, and she was kind enough to invite me over too.”
“But Sunday nights you play poker with the guys from the station.”
Sergeant Quinn shoved his hands deep into his pockets. “Er, well, Benny had to cancel tonight and Curtis’s kid has the flu so, um . . .”
Bridget felt bad for Matt as he stood there, feet rooted to the linoleum floor, realizing for the first time that his dad had the hots for her mom. It was like watching a kid finally understand that Santa Claus doesn’t exist and that your parents had been lying to you your whole life. Brutal.
“Well,” her mom said, breaking the silence. “Dinner’s almost ready. Bridget, why don’t you take Matt to your room and then you can set the table?”
Bridget shook her head. This was seriously the only household in America where the mom encouraged her daughter to take a boy to her room. She turned to leave, realized Matt was still staring dumbfounded at his dad, and grabbed his arm, yanking him into the hallway. “This way.”
“What the hell was that?” Matt said, dropping into the chair at Bridget’s desk. “You don’t even look surprised.”
“Yeah, ’cause I’m not.”
Realization dawned. “You knew?”
“Dude, your dad is here like two nights a week. Checking up on us.”
“He was worried. Felt a sense of responsibility because . . . because . . .”
Bridget’s smile was pitying. “Yeah, not so much.”
Matt pointed toward the door. “They were flirting in there.”
“I know. They’ve been doing it for, like, three months.”
He fell silent, clearly internalizing what he’d just seen. Bridget felt bad for him: He really didn’t have a clue.
“No wonder you were so pissed off at me,” he said at last.
Bridget looked at him. His hazel eyes held a hint of sadness, and she realized that he was right. She hadn’t really understood where her dislike of Matt came from. He’d been nothing but nice to her since he came back into her life, and she’d been nothing but a raging bitch in return. But suddenly it all made sense. She’d been so angry at her mom for flirting with another man less than a year after her husband’s death, so angry at Sergeant Quinn, her dad’s supposed friend, she never even realized that she’d totally and completely taken her anger out on Matt.
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