by J. S. Bailey
He started toward the kitchen and froze.
A man with a thick mop of reddish-brown hair, dark eyes, and a beaming smile lounged at the card table. Bobby had never seen him before.
“Who are you?” Bobby squeaked as he tightened his grip on the handle of the PlayMate cooler he’d carried in from the Aveo. If the guy tried to come after him, Bobby could swing it at his head and maybe knock him out.
The man stood and held his palms out as if to show he meant no ill will. “A friend.”
Bobby took two tentative steps closer to the kitchen. “My friends wouldn’t barge in uninvited.” Bobby was sure the doors had been locked when he and Carly left. This man must have broken in through a back window.
Bobby’s unwanted visitor gave a casual shrug. “Nevertheless, I’m still your friend.”
“Do you have a name?”
“Of course: I’m Thane. And you, my friend, are Bobby Roland.”
Bobby raced to think of any Thanes he may have encountered during the past year but drew a blank. And although he was getting some mighty strange vibes from the visitor, none of them were bad enough that he felt the need to run and call Officers Dodgson and Jergens back to the scene.
Then it hit him. “You left the notes and picture on my door.”
“I’m afraid you’re mistaken. It wasn’t me.”
Bobby’s heart sank. “Then you know about the notes?”
“Only because you do.”
“You’re saying you can read my mind?”
Thane’s smile broadened.
This conversation was getting weirder by the second. “Seriously. Who are you and why are you here?”
Amusement flickered in Thane’s dark eyes. “I already told you who I am. And I’m here because you need help.”
“I’m pretty sure I can manage things just fine by myself.”
“If you think you’re fine on your own, you never would have joined forces with Randy Bellison and his friends.”
Bobby gaped at him. “You know about that.”
“I know many things.”
“Okay,” Bobby said, aware that the Spirit was telling him to not try anything rash. “If you know so much, what am I thinking?” He envisioned his stepmother and held the image of her in his mind’s eye.
“I see a woman,” Thane said. “She’s in her forties, has dark brown hair in a braid, and is wearing black yoga pants and a fluorescent pink tank top. Quite attractive, really. Her name is Charlotte Roland, and she’s raised you since you were a small child. You don’t need to tell me I’m right.”
Bobby wasn’t sure what to do or say. “You’re—you’re like Caleb,” he managed after long seconds of awkward silence. Caleb, his old roommate, had vanished without warning the week before. Bobby had pieced together some clues that made him realize Caleb was far more than the unassuming college student he’d seemed.
“Did Caleb know your innermost thoughts?”
“I don’t know. If he did, he never mentioned them.”
“I wonder why.”
“It would have been rude,” Bobby blurted, his face hot. “Sorry.”
Thane didn’t appear to have taken offense. “It’s only natural for you to be wary of someone like me. After all, we don’t really know each other and have yet to gain each other’s trust.”
“Digging around in my head won’t earn you mine.”
Thane shrugged. “Fair enough. But back to your problem. You wish to find the woman whose picture was taped to your door.”
“That’s right. What’s her name?”
“I can’t say.”
“Let me guess: I don’t know her name so you don’t, either.”
“Bingo.”
“I take it you can’t tell me who made the notes for the same reason.”
“You’re becoming more astute by the second.”
Bobby set the cooler down and crossed his arms. “What help is it if you can’t tell me who these people are? What’s in it for you, besides?”
Thane’s eyebrows rose. “You’re asking me why I’ve bothered to help when you’re the one willing to drive all over the county to find a woman you don’t know just because you think she’s in danger?”
“Okay, forget I asked that. But I still want to know how you can help me.”
“I can give you advice, and we can bounce ideas off of each other. As they say, two heads are better than one.”
“I’m all ears.”
Thane tilted his head again. “What did you learn about the woman while you were at the campground?”
“Assuming those were her receipts, she came a long way to get here. And some blond guy was with her.”
“Do you know any blond guys?”
“Yeah.” Bobby counted them off on his fingers. “The guy who brought mail to the bungalow, my old boss, the dude who works at the bagel shop, Phil Mason…” He paused. “Phil couldn’t have been at the campground. He works four or five days a week.” Well, he did before he got his hours cut the other day.
“He could have been there early in the morning.”
“I don’t believe it. Phil isn’t that type of person.” Though Phil and Bobby had initially gotten off on the wrong foot, Bobby wasn’t about to believe that Phil met a strange out-of-state woman for a romantic rendezvous at a local state park. He had a wife and kid, and he’d been a Servant.
Graham Willard was a Servant, too.
Well, Graham was an oddity. Not every Servant could have ended up evil. That would defeat the purpose of the program.
“Suit yourself, then,” Thane said with a smile.
“When I go to the bar, I’m going to ask if anyone’s seen the woman. I can ask if they saw a blond guy with her.”
“That’s a logical place to start.”
“It’s all I’ve got.”
“You’ll do anything to save her?”
Bobby narrowed his eyes. “Within reason.”
“Sometimes you have to do things that make you uncomfortable in order to get what you want.”
Bobby’s thoughts jumped to the day he’d gone to the property where Graham had lured Randy. He’d snuck through the woods, expecting certain doom, yet he kept his head enough to call the authorities in time for Randy’s life to be saved.
Nothing about that day qualified as “comfortable.”
Grimacing, Bobby said, “Yeah, I guess sometimes you do.”
“Exactly.” Thane smiled. “I’m afraid I have to go for now. If you need anything, don’t hesitate to call.”
“How do I—”
Thane blinked out of existence as if he’d never been there.
Bobby swayed where he stood. No, Thane wasn’t like Caleb. Both had made unexpected departures from his life, but at least Caleb hadn’t done it in front of Bobby’s astonished face.
It occurred to him that if this same thing had happened before he became the Servant, he would have fled the house in terror. Interesting, how the bizarre had become as commonplace as air.
Now that Thane was gone, Bobby felt as though he’d just awakened from a dream. He shook his head. What had he been about to do when he discovered he wasn’t alone? Get the phonebook. Of course.
A RECORDING told him The Pink Rooster didn’t open until one, so Bobby took a detour to Randy’s house to pay him a visit.
A sour-faced Phil Mason answered Bobby’s knock. As usual, the bespectacled thirty-eight-year-old wore a nondescript polo shirt and khaki slacks, which were evidently his casual clothes since he wore scrubs at work. “Well if it isn’t the bad penny again.”
Bobby walked past the short man into the living room. “You can’t get rid of me now.”
“It’s a shame.” A muscle twitched in Phil’s cheek, and he made a furtive glance behind him before turning his attention back to Bobby. “I’m actually glad you came. I was about to call you.”
Bobby sensed Phil’s unease. “What’s this about?”
“We’ll discuss it once Randy’s more coherent.”
<
br /> Bobby saw that Randy, who had been discharged from the hospital two days ago, rested on one of the IKEA couches with his upper half propped up by about five pillows. Ever a fan of black t-shirts, the one Randy wore today had a picture of a skull wearing sunglasses printed on it.
Despite Randy’s pallor and the fact that he lay as though dead, the living room held a much warmer ambience than when Bobby first set foot in it last week because he, Phil, and Lupe had removed the plywood from the windows the day before Randy came home. In his paranoia, Randy had covered the windows to make the house look unoccupied in case Graham showed up looking for him. The sunlight shining through the windows now made the coral walls glow.
Bobby lowered his voice. “Is he asleep?”
Randy’s eyes fluttered open before Phil could reply. “Roberto, my love! You’re here!”
“His painkillers have been making him loopy,” Phil said with a smirk.
Randy sat up straighter so it seemed that the skull on his shirt was staring at Bobby from behind its shades. His shaggy, coffee-colored hair hadn’t been combed, stubble covered his chin, and the bags under his eyes were more pronounced than Bobby had ever seen them, but other than that Randy looked at peace.
He still appeared much older than his twenty-six years.
“How’s it going?” Bobby drifted over to Randy’s side. He hadn’t spoken with him since his release.
Randy shifted and winced. “Just swell. How do you like my nurse? I told him he’d look much cuter if he put on one of those sexy nurse costumes but he said he’d put arsenic in my next meal if I said that again.”
Phil rolled his eyes. “All right. It’s time we got down to business.” At that moment, Phil’s cell phone let out a ring. He withdrew it from his pocket, stared at the screen, and frowned. “Hold that thought. I’m taking this outside.”
When Phil went out to the concrete porch and closed the door behind him, Randy grinned.
“Let me guess,” Bobby said. “The painkillers haven’t really done a thing.”
“Oh, they’ve done plenty. I completely understand why people end up addicted to the stuff.”
“Why the crazy act?”
“Because it’s fun driving Phil nuts. He deserves to have his feathers ruffled once in a while. It’s good for his health.”
Bobby found himself grinning, too. “It’s good to see you here.”
“As opposed to a casket? Can’t help but agree.” A wistful look entered Randy’s eyes, and he became more serious. “And thank you for taking my place.”
Bobby nodded, a knot of emotion dampening his ability to speak.
“So what do you think about your new job?”
Bobby had to search for the right words. “It’s different from what I expected. At first I felt all light inside, like I could jump up and fly.”
“But it wore off, didn’t it?”
Unfortunately. “Phil said that the beginning was the honeymoon stage and that now is the beginning of the rest of the marriage. It’s weird calling it a marriage, though.”
“You’ll get used to it soon enough, among other things.”
Bobby gave an involuntary shiver. “I haven’t run into anyone who’s possessed yet. Phil said I’ll have to be on the lookout for them these next few weeks to get an idea of what I’ll be up against.” Phil told him it wouldn’t be easy the first few times Bobby ran into such a person. But then again, Bobby couldn’t ever remember his life being easy, so maybe confronting demons on a regular basis wouldn’t be so bad.
Randy’s expression sobered. “That reminds me. There’s something I should tell you.”
Bobby’s insides began to churn. “Yeah?”
“When I was in the hospital, I had this crazy dream that something was after you.”
Bobby made an involuntary glance out the window. “Aren’t things supposed to be after me now?”
“Like I said, it was just a dream. But it shouldn’t hurt to be careful.”
I thought I already was careful, he thought, but he said, “Okay. Do you know what Phil wants to talk to us about?”
“I haven’t got a clue.”
Phil came back inside, his face white, and disappeared into the kitchen without a word to either of them. Bobby heard the fridge open and close, followed by the sound of a drink can cracking open.
That couldn’t be good.
“Anyway,” Randy continued, “I want you to be as vigilant as possible.”
His words made Bobby nervous. He’d always thought he was vigilant, but maybe it wasn’t enough. “Won’t God warn me if someone’s coming after me?”
“The Spirit gives us guidance, not play-by-play instructions. Haven’t you noticed?”
“I get messages from time to time. Like little urges. I don’t know how else to describe it.”
“The still, small voice that isn’t so small,” Randy said. “I can still hear faint whispers of it, but nothing like before.”
“You know,” Bobby said, “if anyone tries to kill me, I’ll have one of my premonitions first.”
Randy raised his eyebrows. “Will you?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“It seems to me you’re only forewarned when other people are in danger. Not you.”
Bobby wanted to object but kept his mouth shut. He’d known something bad would happen at the restaurant he used to work at, but he hadn’t been there alone—Chrissy, a coworker, had been clocked in, too. And Bobby had been with Randy and Phil when he’d had the premonition that they would be killed if they stayed at Randy’s house.
“It’s not just other people,” Bobby said, a new realization sinking into him. “It’s other people I’ve met.” He bit his lip. “But that doesn’t explain the one I had last night.” He recounted what had happened on Oakland Avenue in the wee morning hours and even showed Randy the items left on his door. While he talked, Phil entered the room holding a can of beer, his expression tight. “So because I had the premonition that someone would be hurt, and because I know it has to have been this woman, I know I have to go find her,” Bobby finished.
“Don’t you think it’s a little too soon for you to be putting yourself in danger?” Phil asked.
“I’m not planning on driving a demon out of anyone. I just want to find her.”
“Someone wants you to go after her. Can’t you see? She’s bait.”
“Like Lupe was bait for Randy.”
“That’s why I don’t like this.”
“If God didn’t want me to go after her, he wouldn’t have told me to run outside and witness her kidnapping.”
“You don’t even know for certain that’s who it was.” Phil’s frown deepened. “You said it was so dark you couldn’t see what they looked like.”
“I just have this feeling.”
“The Spirit warns you about people you know. You don’t know this woman. Therefore your premonition wasn’t from God.”
“Maybe Bobby does know her and he just doesn’t remember,” Randy said.
I doubt it. “Or maybe I was upgraded to Premonitions 2.0.”
Exasperation shone in Phil’s eyes. “If that were the case, you would have been forewarned early enough that you would have been able to stop the abduction.”
Bobby frowned as he thought about the demonic voice that had greeted him upon his return home last night. “Maybe a demon was suppressing it.”
Phil paused to take a sip of his beer. “I don’t like this at all. I didn’t face my first task until I’d been the Servant for two months, and it was about the same for Randy. You need to be better prepared before you take anything on.”
Phil obviously wasn’t getting it. “I told you, I’m not driving out demons. I’m tracking this woman down and getting her away from whatever creep pulled her into that van.”
“Do you at least understand why I have misgivings about this?”
“Sure. You don’t want me to get killed.”
Phil moved to a chair. “Sit down and let me tel
l you a story so you might understand a bit better.”
Bobby took the other couch. “Let me guess. Once upon a time, there was a Servant.”
“His name was Hans Mueller.”
“Wow, I’m really good at this.”
“Just shut your mouth and listen. Hans was born in present-day Germany.”
“There were Servants in Europe?”
“Yes, and before that they were in Asia Minor and the Holy Land. Hans died on June 28, 1914 when a demoniac stabbed him in the heart. He had no replacement.”
Bobby had been told that when a Servant died without a replacement, evil would reign free for the next eighteen years. “Okay. So then what happened?”
Phil and Randy exchanged glances. “You don’t know what happened that day?” Randy asked.
“Aside from this Hans guy getting stabbed? No.”
“You have no idea what happened on June 28, 1914.”
Bobby had never paid particular attention to his history lessons since he never felt that the troubles of long ago had any bearing on his own life. “I’m guessing it wasn’t something good.”
They both gave him hopeless looks. “That may have just been the understatement of the millennium,” Phil said. “Bobby, that was the day Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary and his wife were publicly assassinated by a Bosnian Serb.”
Bobby didn’t think he should mention that the only Franz Ferdinand he’d heard of was a Scottish indie rock band he used to listen to. “That doesn’t sound like evil reigning free. That sounds like every day on the news.”
“One month after the assassination,” Phil went on, “Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Austria and its allies became known as the Central Powers, and Serbia aligned itself with Russia, France, and the U.K., who became the Allied Forces. Is this ringing any bells yet?”
It did. A bead of sweat rolled down the back of Bobby’s neck. “You’re talking about World War I.”
Phil bowed his head. “Do I need to go on?”
Bobby swallowed. “So you’re saying the whole war happened because this Hans guy got stabbed?” He looked to Randy for clarification.
“We wouldn’t say it happened because of it,” Randy said, “considering it’s unlikely that Hans had anything to do with the assassin himself.”