We slid into the booth across from him. He leaned over his untouched plate and inhaled deeply.
“Isn’t that just divine?” he asked in a syrupy New Orleans accent. “I’ve been near and I’ve been far, and there’s nothing anywhere like a fat, fluffy stack of pancakes.”
“You must be Fontaine,” I said.
“Now, today’s been chock full of surprises. First the Gresham boys stand me up—and I thought we had such a good working relationship—and now two lovely ladies who know my name have come to call.” He sniffed delicately and wrinkled his nose. “Two lovely ladies with freshly oiled handguns. Now, that’s fine, bullets don’t affront me, but I’d love to know just who you are.”
“Temple and Black, FBI,” Jessie said. “We’re here to regulate.”
“You’ve stolen that body you’re wearing,” I added. “That’s kidnapping. Now, there’s a few ways we can address this situation, but that’s going to depend on how helpful you are.”
Fontaine laughed. “What, this old set of rags? Ladies, if you’re going to pretend I’m a criminal, there’s really only one thing you can charge me with.”
His fingers moved like a violinist as he unbuttoned his shirt, going about halfway down. He pulled back the fabric to show us the Y-shaped autopsy scar running down his torso.
“Grave robbing,” he said, buttoning back up. “Commandeering a corpse is a deeply unpleasant sensation—trust me, you can’t imagine anything quite like it—but it does make for easier cleanup and fewer questions when a job is done. When it’s time for me to move on, I’ll just dump him back in the morgue where I found him. Only problem? Corpses can’t digest food. No, no delicious pancakes for poor Fontaine, not this time around. I can just . . . smell them. Exquisite torment. Now, what exactly are you two playing at?”
“Playing at?” I asked.
“You know what I am. You’re a fair hand at magic yourself, I can tell. So why would you think, in a million years, you could flash a badge my way? I’m not subject to your laws.”
“You’re standing on American soil. So yeah,” I said, “I’m pretty sure you are.”
Fontaine chuckled. “Is that where you think you are? Oh, darlin’, bless your heart. This land belongs to the Court of Night-Blooming Flowers, and you live under their authority. You think you have a president? No. You have a prince.”
“We don’t accept that,” Jessie said.
“Now that’s just a foolish degree of stubborn. Let me pose you a conundrum. A man takes to drink and goes on a rampage. Smashing windows, hassling people. The constabulary arrives and puts him under arrest. He rages at them, saying he’s a sovereign citizen and doesn’t recognize the authority of the United States government. What happens to him?”
“He goes to jail anyway,” I said. “It doesn’t matter whether he accepts it or not.”
Fontaine leaned back and smiled. “Now you two know what you look like, from my perspective.”
“Earl Gresham told us you’re a . . . Chainman,” I said to Fontaine. “A bounty hunter.”
“Speaking of, where are those boys? They’re apparently late and loose lipped, neither of which I’m inclined to stand for.”
“Two are dead and one’s behind bars,” Jessie said. “And you aren’t laying a hand on him.”
Fontaine’s borrowed corpse arched a waxy eyebrow. “What, you think I’d hurt them? Now why would I do that? I was just gonna give ’em a good talking-to and cancel their bonus pay. Why would you think so poorly of me?”
“Because you’re a demon?” I said.
“I’m a professional. The Chainmen’s Guild holds itself to the strictest standards of conduct. We are the upholders of order. It’s expected.”
“Order,” Jessie said, “in hell.”
“You ladies are just adorable, with your little guns, and your little spells, and your entirely unearned sense of authority. Allow Fontaine to convey a bit of education. I’m just gonna need you to do one thing for me first.”
“Oh?” I asked. “What’s that?”
“Order breakfast.” He wore a lazy, reptilian smile as he leaned closer. “I want to watch you eat.”
NINETEEN
The pancakes, topped with a melting dollop of sweet butter and drizzled with maple syrup, melted in my mouth. The hash browns were lightly salted, crunchy, cooked just right.
I could have done without the staring, though.
“Swear to God,” Jessie said, cutting into a sausage link and scooping up a forkful. “If your hands go anywhere near your pants, this discussion is over.”
Fontaine cast a rueful glance downward. “Alas, that’s another part that doesn’t work on a corpse. My sensual pleasures, for the moment, are entirely cerebral.”
“You were talking about order,” I said.
“Right, right.” He picked up his fork. “We are a rather . . . rambunctious people, my kind, prone to excess. When Big Daddy went on his permanent vacation, we all went a little crazy down there. Those were the Years of Iron and Fire, and they were a bad time. A bad time, indeed. What came out of that, though, was order. The courts of hell. Divisions of power.”
He held the fork straight, rested it on its tines, and slowly pulled his hand away. It stood there, perfectly and impossibly balanced.
“But the courts feud,” he said, “and the schemers scheme, and everybody’s hungry. Everybody’s hungry, but there’s only one fork.”
He inhaled and gave a little puff of air. The fork toppled over, rattling on the table.
“It’d be just that easy for everything to fall apart all over again. So we have laws. Laws with punishments, terrible and cruel. They have to be, to keep everyone in line. To keep the fork standing on its tines.”
“And you . . . pursue other demons, who have broken these laws,” I said.
“It’s a living. Sometimes I hunt my own kind, and sometimes yours, if you cross certain lines. Word of general advice: if you make a deal with hell, you’d best keep your word, lest dire consequences ensue.”
“A deal,” I said. “Like the power to summon the Bogeyman.”
“Ah, now that’s a morbid tale indeed. But thank you for revealing why you’re poking around this humble little town. Tell you what, ladies: Go home. Go home and forget all about the Bogeyman. That’s one problem that’ll take care of itself, once my work is done.”
“Not happening.” Jessie waved a forkful of pancake at him. “You think we’re going to trust one demon to get rid of another one?”
Fontaine arched one thin eyebrow. “Is that what you think it is? Blessed innocents. I’m almost glad we crossed paths. You would’ve gotten yourselves ripped limb from limb, trying your little chants and exorcisms on that monster. That, ladies, is no demon. No . . . Bogeymen aren’t born. They’re made.”
I was about to take another bite, fork halfway to my mouth. I set it down on the plate instead.
“Made, how?”
He shook his head. “Same way they always have been, miss. Same way as ever. But that’s not a tale I feel like telling today. Again, I must request that you vacate this fine municipality, for your own personal safety.”
“You threatening us?” Jessie said.
“Me? Oh, not in the slightest. Long as you don’t block my road, I’ve got no reason to run you down. But a little crow tells me my competition just arrived last night.”
“Earl mentioned him,” I said. “Another Chainman, named Nyx?”
“Her. And she is not as cultured as I am, or as patient. Nyx is a daughter of the choir of wrath. She was personally trained by the matriarch of the House of Dead Roses. Believe you me, that’s one bed you never want to find yourself sharing, not unless your sexual proclivities extend to barbed wire and rusty razors. If she learns that there are humans on her trail, aware of hell’s influence and interfering with the hunt, she won’t sit down to pancakes and pleasant conversation. She’ll skin you alive just for kicks and giggles.”
“We can handle ourselves,” I s
aid.
“Really?” He chuckled and folded his hands. “Have you ever faced the wrath of an incarnate demon, darlin’? Stared down a predator with eight hundred years of experience hunting and killing and lovin’ every second of it?”
I thought back to Las Vegas.
“Once,” I said.
“Oh?” His eyebrows went up in surprise. “Did you win?”
I shrugged. “I broke even.”
“This time, sad to say? You won’t.”
“I don’t see why you won’t share what you know,” I told him. “We’re after the same thing.”
“You don’t even know what you’re after. You’re not ready for what’s waiting at the end of this road, ladies. I’m trying to be kind. But I’m not dissuading you at all, am I?”
“Nope,” Jessie said.
“Let me ask you something,” I told him. “Is this just a job to you, or do you actually care?”
“That is,” he said, “quite possibly the rudest thing you could say to a Chainman. If you were one of my breed, it’d be grounds for claws and teeth. But seeing as you’re human and, well, ignorant, I’ll let it slide. Yes. I care very deeply about my people.”
I rapped my fork against my plate. “So do we. You’re basically a cop. So are we. And that’s why you should know we aren’t leaving. We’ve got a job to do, and people to protect. We don’t quit.”
“All right,” Fontaine murmured to himself, nodding slowly. “All right, all right. You’ll do.”
“Do what?”
He spread his hands and grinned. “What you will! You’ll do what you will. I’m going to extend you ladies my professional courtesy. Go ahead. Stay. Hunt. I won’t help and I won’t hinder. Let’s see how far you get on your own.”
I didn’t like it. I’d seen human bounty hunters less friendly than Fontaine claimed to be, and never one that was happy about people getting in the way of their claim. Did he think we were that insignificant, that we couldn’t get in his way? Or did he stand to gain something by sharing the field with us? He didn’t have any kind words to say about his rival Nyx, and they were obviously racing each other for—
I sipped my ice water, the answer suddenly obvious.
“And while we’re doing that,” I said, setting down my glass, “you’re hoping we draw Nyx’s attention and slow her down, so you can catch this guy first.”
“Why, heavens, the thought hadn’t even occurred to me. Though she is unlikely to be as considerate as I am. But as you said, you can take care of yourselves, isn’t that right?”
“Watch and see,” Jessie told him.
“Out of curiosity,” I said, “who pays you?”
His gaze flicked toward me. “Hmm?”
“This is a job, right? So who pays you?”
“Oh,” he said, “whoever hires me for the hunt. Usually the prince of a court, or some aggrieved noble. And they are always aggrieved.”
“The guy you’re after now, the one summoning the Bogeyman and sending it after people. He busted a deal with a demon, didn’t he? And that’s who hired you to hunt him down.”
Fontaine shook his head. “Now, I didn’t say that. I said words that could be construed in that particular pattern, but I did not say that.”
“You didn’t have to. So your client, he hired you and he hired Nyx. Who else? How many demons will converge on Talbot Cove before this is all over?”
He smiled. “You’re asking the wrong question.”
“What’s the right one?”
“My client . . . did not hire Nyx.”
“Who did?” I asked.
“That,” he said, “is the right question.”
“What’s the answer?”
Fontaine took the unused paper napkin from his lap and daintily pressed it to his lips. Then he folded it, set it next to his untouched plate, and slid out of the booth.
“Worth pursuing,” he said. “The answer is worth pursuing. Happy hunting, ladies.”
Fontaine drifted through the restaurant, strolling away.
“We really gonna let him go?” Jessie said.
I sighed. “I don’t see any other option. If we corner him, he’ll just jump into another body. You’ve got to have a plan to take down a hijacker. A snare, binding wards, something to pin him down while I do a full exorcism. It’s not improv work.”
I tried another bite of my pancake. Suddenly, I wasn’t hungry anymore. I set my fork down and shoved the plate back.
“So what do we know,” Jessie asked, “and what do we think we know?”
I ran down the points on my fingertips. “We know that the Bogeyman has to be deliberately summoned and sicced on your enemies. You enchant the token, set it on the target’s lawn, and the Bogeyman hits that house. It’s a weapon. It’s also—if we can believe Fontaine, and for the sake of discussion, let’s say we do—not a demon.”
“He used the plural, too,” Jessie said. “Made it sound like people have been creating these things for a long time. Not only might this not be the same summoner from thirty years ago, it might not even be the same Bogeyman.”
I thought about my baby sister, clutched in that monster’s arms. Then I pushed the image away. It didn’t help me work any harder.
“Either way, they’re both going down,” I said. “Doesn’t matter. Okay. We know Fontaine was hired by another demon. We think we know he’s here to hunt the Bogeyman’s summoner. He pulled a double cross, and now Fontaine’s here to bring down hell’s hammer on him.”
“I don’t know.” Jessie tapped her fingertip against her chin, thinking. “Isn’t that . . . weirdly reckless? I mean, okay, you screwed over a demon. You’ve got two bounty hunters from hell, literally, tracking you down. Is that a good time to hang out in a small town, sending your pet monster to screw with people you don’t like? If I was this guy, I’d go so far underground I’d burrow a hole straight to China.”
“If he feels that injured by these people, if he’s that obsessed, maybe not.” I shook my head. “But neither Helen Gunderson nor Bill and Shelly Morris have any obvious skeletons in their closet. And then there’s the place. If there’s no connection to the last two times the Bogeyman showed up, why this town? What’s so special about Talbot Cove? That’s why I don’t buy it. There’s no way the Bogeyman was summoned here in the ’40s, the ’80s, and now, all by random chance.”
“Or even farther back,” Jessie said. “Remember, Kevin just couldn’t find proof of any abductions before the ’40s. He sure as hell found hints and rumors. Considering there’s a human hand behind the monster, it can’t be the same person calling it. They’d be ancient now.”
“So. More than one perp. The current one may or may not be the same person behind the ’80s abductions. Probably not the one who did the summonings in the ’40s, and definitely not any earlier than that. And this all has to be tied to Talbot Cove itself, somehow.”
“The Nyx thing,” Jessie said. “That was weird. Fontaine really wants us to know who hired her.”
“Yeah, but not enough to just make it easy and tell us. He wants us to blunder into her path. If she kills us, one less thing for him to deal with. If we slow her down, same outcome. Letting us stumble around blind is a win-win situation for him. Me, I’m thinking about what Tucker said.”
“The newspaper article?”
I sipped my water. The ice had melted down to little slivers, bobbing at the top of the glass.
“The Bogeyman’s victims are never found. No bodies, no trail, not even a trace. They just vanish off the face of the earth. If Tucker is telling the truth, and if the article wasn’t a mistake, then one time—just one time—the Bogeyman returned one of its victims. We need to know why.”
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Jessie asked.
“Yep. Let’s go do a little light reading.”
TWENTY
We asked for the check at the front counter, but the cashier just shook her head and smiled.
“That gentleman you were with? He alr
eady paid the bill and covered the tip. He asked me to give you this.”
She handed me a slip of cream-colored cardboard. A business card with no phone number, no e-mail address, just a name—FONTAINE—in crisp black type. Written on the back, a line of neat cursive read, “Next time’s on you. —F.”
I kept the card.
Talbot Cove’s town hall wouldn’t have looked out of place in a movie about colonial times, with its redbrick facade and whitewashed window slats. A great brass bell hung inside the open arch of the hall’s clock tower, and the clock above was set to run exactly five minutes slow.
The police station sat on the far side of the parking lot. I didn’t feel like stopping in to pay Barry a visit. Not until we knew how clean his hands were. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. I wanted a lot of things I didn’t have.
The Talbot Cove town seal, a vinyl decal faded and scuffed by time and shoe leather, was laid into the lobby floor. It depicted a giant eagle in flight, one talon clutching a fresh-cut log of pine, the other a sheaf of papers. I knew enough Latin to understand the motto that encircled the picture: Through the grace of the land, we prevail.
One wall bore photographs of the town’s mayors, going back to the early 1920s. The current one, Mitchum Kite, was a plump and apple-cheeked man with a big, gregarious smile and a checkered sport coat. I was more interested in the directory on the opposite wall, where there was a corrugated metal board with big, white magnetic letters.
“Archives and public records,” I said. “Sounds about right.”
On the other side of a frosted glass door, the smell of mothballs and brittle paper clung to the humid air. A slip of a man in a tweed vest, who was peering at a ledger through his bifocals, sat on the opposite side of a long wooden counter. Jazz music crackled on an old portable radio, its antenna jutting out like a fencing foil.
The old man looked up and smiled. “Help you, ladies?”
“Special Agents Temple and Black,” I said. We flashed our identification. “We understand that you store the old town newspaper archives here?”
Something flashed in his eyes, just for a heartbeat. Fear. He tried to put his smile back on, but it didn’t fit his face anymore.
Harmony Black (Harmony Black Series Book 1) Page 13