“Hello?” A woman’s voice, from the head of the basement stairs. “Jamie?”
Jamie closed his eyes. “We’re—we’re down here, Ms. Kincaid!”
“Kincaid?” Just when you thought things couldn’t get worse, fate went and slammed your fingers in the door. “What is she doing here?”
“I told her we’d be finished by eleven.” Jamie’s face flushed. “Don’t give me that look—this has never happened before. This is Elysian Fields subdivision, not the House on Haunted Hill.”
“You never saw ‘Poltergeist’, did you?”
“Yes—you forced me to watch it three times. Need I remind you that it was a movie.”
“In my house, it was a training film. This is what happens when you get in over your head. This is when a smart housecleaner bails and calls a pro.” I looked around the blasted basement and swore under my breath while the stairs squeaked, announcing our client’s descent.
Rina Kincaid wore taupe and pearls, and held a thin brown briefcase in one manicured hand. “I’m sorry I took so long—” She stopped in her expensively-shod tracks, eyes widening as the condition of her surroundings sank in. “What—?”
“Ms. Kincaid.” I nodded to her, but kept my distance. Every time I moved, I shed plaster dust and soot, and I didn’t want a bill for a designer suit on top of my impending mortgage payment. “You have a portal problem, which is beyond the expertise of any housecleaner. We can’t help you, but can refer you to one of several discrete licensed practitioners.”
Kincaid’s well-glossed lips moved, but the only sound that emerged was a stricken “Jamie?”
Jamie tried to approach her, but stopped as she took a good look at his filthy appearance and backed away. “Rina—”
“You said she was good. You said she could help.”
“She is. She can. She—”
An ear-splitting shriek blasted out the hole. I clapped my hands over my ears, then looked at Jamie and Kincaid to find them arguing as though they hadn’t heard.
“What happened to my pool table?”
“Rina, please calm down—”
“It was my pool table, and I liked it.”
“What do you mean, your pool table?” I shot a look at Jamie, who turned his back to me. “This is your house?”
“It was…” Kincaid hesitated. “My first house.” She looked toward the hole, and shivered. “I thought I lost him, but he’s found me.” She rummaged through her briefcase, and pulled out a cigarette case and a gold lighter. “It’s not fair.”
Jamie held out a hand to her. “Look, I know—”
“Well, it’s not.” Kincaid stuck a cigarette in her mouth, then lit it with a shaky hand. “Everything I’ve worked for all these years.” She took a deep drag, then pulled the cigarette from her mouth and paced back and forth, like Bette Davis in a 30s melodrama. “Everything I’ve built—” Another drag. “If he thinks for one damned second I’ll let him take me away—” Another drag. “—he’s got another thing coming.”
My mouth went dry as I watched Kincaid stalk back and forth and smoke while the air around her remained as clean as…really clean air. Even the smoke that emanated from the cigarette found its way to her nose and... vanished. She isn’t exhaling. She didn’t have to. Hers was a breathing-optional sort of life. “You’re a demon.”
Kincaid wheeled to stare at me. Yup, it was Davis, down to the pencil-thin eyebrows and the go-to-hell look in her eye. “Oh, you’re fast, aren’t you, Miss Worthless Housecleaner? Nothing gets past you, does it?”
“Well, it’s not as though you’d want her to figure it out just by looking at you, is it?” Jamie’s voice sounded as it had when he thought I had passed out, roughened by temper and guttering fast.
In all the time I’ve known him, I’ve never seen him angry. Come to think, he hadn’t seen me torqued, either. “You knew she was a demon?” When he tried to turn his back again, I grabbed his arm and spun him to face me. “You knew?”
“Caro, please.”
“If he thinks he’s taking me back, he’s in for a bumpy night!”
The second shriek silenced us all.
Then came the flies. They swarmed out of the hole in a thick ribbon and alit on the walls, the ceiling and floor, coating them like paint, their buzzing drowning out the pervasive hum.
Then came—
I felt the presence before I saw it. It entered my brain as the hole itself had, but there the similarity ended. The hole had been gentle, in its way. It sought to conquer through persuasion. The presence didn’t care. It drilled like an icepick, driving me to my knees.
I hunched into a ball. Closed my eyes so tight, and saw only the pulsing white. Felt the cold steel spike.
Screamed.
“Caro.”
Felt arms around me, opened my eyes, and found Jamie kneeling beside me. Jamie, who hadn’t told me the truth. Who had known our client was a demon, and didn’t tell me.
“I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t know how.”
Jamie, who knew everything about demons, and pitied them. Who couldn’t risk aiding a spell because he had learned that he couldn’t trust himself with the power.
“Caro? I’m sorry.”
I looked in his eyes and saw them go strange again. Heard how his voice had deepened, and realized I was the only human in the room.
I pushed him away and sprang to my feet. Circled the hole and watched a head emerge, then shoulders, in a sick mockery of birth. “What House are you?” I looked back at Kincaid, who had backed into the shadows and was only visible as a dot of cigarette light in the dark.
“House?” The dot whipped around. “What do you know about our Houses?”
“Answer the damned question!”
“Damned quesstion,” a voice intoned from behind. “Sso amussing.”
I turned to find the demon had emerged from the hole. Almost. Pretty much.
“She iss Sseventh Housse.” Even though he still stood in the hole up to his knees, the top of his head grazed the ceiling. Bottle blue as the flies that attended him, with wings that beat so quickly they seemed a blur. Compound eyes set in a human-like face. Naked. And definitely a ‘he’. No question at all. Surgical examination not necessary, nope.
“Seventh House,” I said, just to say something. “She’s an emotion of some sort.”
“Sshe iz exzaperation, and zelfishness.”
I can see that. I shut up so I could breathe through my mouth—the thrumming wings kicked up the remains of the stench’s stench and mixed it with the effluence that flowed from the hole. Rotted flowers. Sweat. Shit and spoiled food. “What are you?”
He looked down at me. “You have to asssk?” Disgust colored his voice. He drew himself up so that his head bumped the ceiling, sending tile crumbling down about him like snow. “I am Lord of the Fliesss.”
“I should have guessed.”
“Thiss iss not your conzern, cleaner.” He looked toward Kincaid, who still stood in the shadows. “Rina?” At least, it sounded like “Rina,” as uttered by a mouth that wasn’t quite human. “You never write. You never call.” The glitter in his eyes dimmed. “You are missed.”
Kincaid stepped into the light. She held a fresh cigarette, which she jabbed in her mouth between short, clipped sentences. “I’m not going back.” Pull. “You can’t make me.” Pull. “I’m staying here.”
“It izzn’t your choize to make.” The Lord of the Flies lifted one leg out of the hole, then bent forward and leaned, elbows on knee, like a farmer at a fence. “To live amid the ssoundss and the ssmellss iz not for one ssuch az you. He wantz you back.” The buzzing voice lowered. “We all want you back.” He stilled, then slowly turned toward the far wall. “You are not alone here.”
I searched the shadows along the wall, and caught sight of Jamie trying to make himself very small in a junk-strewn corner.
“You.” The Lord of the Flies pointed to Jamie. “You sought to vanquish us! To keep us from her! We, who love—” T
he arm fell. The jaw snapped shut. Compound gaze darted about the room.
Even demons commit sharing violations. I looked at Rina, who stood chin held high.
“I told you it was over.” She paused to light another cigarette, the lighter flame flaring blue in the aromatic atmosphere. “It wasn’t working. I’m a Seven, and you’re…with headquarters. No room to maneuver. No sense of adventure. Just work, work, work all the live-long millennium.”
“It iz never over, when you are forever.” The Lord of the Flies straightened. More ceiling tile flaked down. “You will return as well, hider in cornerz, so we may dizcusss your rule-breaking.” He eyed Jamie sidelong, and smiled. “We will enjoy that.”
I circled around, positioning myself between the Lord of the Flies and Jamie. “So, Buzzy, you want her back?”
The Lord of the Flies looked down at me, eventually. Faceted eyes narrowed. “Yess.”
“She came here, to a place you despise, to live among the humans you disdain, and you still—”
”Yess.” He pounded his fist into the flat of his hand. “And yess, again.”
“She had all that any demon possesses. Eternal life. The power of her House. Knowledge.” I made a show of looking around the basement. “And yet she chose to live among us, in a place like this. She has to hide her true nature, hide her powers. She weighed all you could offer, and made that choice. She proved herself stupid beyond belief—”
”Hey!”
”—and you still want her back?”
The Lord of the Flies shot a look at Rina. Then he bent low and plucked something from beneath a broken chair. It was a cue ball, a survivor of the hole’s creation. He pondered it for a time, then pressed it between his palms. The humming of the flies didn’t quite drown out the crunching. “There musst be dizzipline,” he said as he wiped the plastic dust from his hands.
“Or all the demons would bail? What the hell kind of Hell are you running that even the staff want out?” I held up a finger. “I would like to confer with my partner for a few minutes, if it’s all right with you.”
The Lord of the Flies laughed, a wet, treacly sound. “I can hear all you say. You cannot keep secrets from the dark, human—” He fell silent as a black stream shot up from one corner and fluttered along the walls and through the flies, driving them from their perch and luring them to follow.
It’s the stench. I almost laughed out loud as he led the flies back to their master in a solid mass that wrapped around the demon’s head and neck, blocking his vision. Distracting him for just along enough.
“Down!” The Lord of the Flies bellowed, with as much success as any owner of an overexcited dog. “Down! SStay! Ssstill!” His hands were tied, figuratively if not literally. He couldn’t strike at the stench without harming his pets.
Which meant I had a little time.
“Jamie?”
He was beside me like a shot. “Caro, I—”
“We don’t have time.” I turned to him, and tried not to flinch. The nearness of his master had altered him—he seemed blurred around the edges, his features drawn rather than formed. “How long have you lived as a human?”
“About eight years.”
“What about her?”
“Five.” Kincaid wedged between us. “What can you do?”
I saw the fear in her eyes. It may have been a selfish, exasperating, demonoid fear, but it was all I had. “I’m going to try one more spell. It’s my last shot.” And yours, too. “You have to want to stay.”
Kincaid rolled her eyes and nodded once. “Would I be going through all this if I didn’t want to stay?”
“I do, too.” A bit of the old Jamie shone in his eyes and smile, then vanished too quickly. “You know I do.”
“Hold that thought.” I turned and walked back to the hole. “Clean for the new.”
“What?” The Lord of the Flies held the stench in one hand like a dirty rag, and used the other to herd his pets back to their perches.
I took a deep breath, gagged, then finally found my voice. “Cleansed of the old.”
The demon stilled in mid-sweep. “You call that a spell? I have known the greatest warlocks—”
“All you be waiting, return to the fold.”
“—blood sacrifice was made to us! The virtue of maidens—”
“Your father is calling. Best not make him wait.”
That got his attention. He tilted his head. Listened. “He calls to me. How did you—?” He clenched his fists, then started as flies fell crushed to the floor. “I will be back.”
“For what? You feel the pull of the spell.” I pointed to Jamie and Kincaid. Definition had returned to Jamie’s face, telling me that the connection between him and the Lord of the Flies had weakened, that I had made the right choice. “They don’t feel that pull. They may not be completely human, but they’re just human enough. What you’d take back with you wouldn’t be the same thing that left, and how would your father feel about that?” I smiled. “Oh, the trouble they could cause.”
Even the demon’s wings stilled. A hush settled over the room. “If we let them.”
“It won’t get that far.” I held out my hands to Kincaid and Jamie. Jamie grabbed and squeezed, while Kincaid took my fingers between hers in a cold fish clasp. “You believe the spells can drive you away. They believe the spells can keep you away. It’s a subtle difference. But it means the world.”
The Lord of the Flies looked into my eyes. “We harbor a few down there who think in the way you do. You would feel at home.”
“Now’s not my time. It’s not theirs, either.” I took another deep breath, and didn’t gag at all. “Clean for the new. Cleansed of the old. All you be waiting. Return to the fold.”
”I will be back.”
“Your father is calling. Best not make him wait. Your time here is passing. Your hour is late.”
”Bah! The Lord of the Flies looked down at the stench, which flipped and twisted in his grasp like a fish. He shook it loose, then slapped it in mid-air, sending it flying toward me.
“Go!” I turned aside just before the stench hit me in the face. It struck my shoulder and clung, scrambling across my upper back, draping itself like a particularly pungent scarf. “Go! Go!”
The flies peeled away from their perches and funneled down toward the hole, drowning the yells of their master as he lowered after them.
”You have not won!” The hole closed like an eye as his head vanished beneath the surface, then shrank to a point and winked out.
Kincaid yanked away her hand as soon as the last light extinguished. “I’ve never heard that spell before.” She rubbed at a soot smear and glared at me. “Sounded like a nursery rhyme.”
“Whatever it was, it did what it had to.” Jamie edged close, and tried to catch my eye. He looked as he always had, his features returned to normal, the connection with his old home broken. “He knew where he belonged. I guess we know where we belong, too.”
Kincaid cocked her head, a touch of wonder softening her sharp features. “We’ve become human?”
“Human enough.” Jamie reached out to touch her arm, then stopped and wiped his grimy hand on the front of his shirt. “Are you sorry?”
“No. It’s what I wanted.”” At some point, Kincaid had stashed her briefcase under the stairs. She reclaimed it now, and dug a checkbook out of the depths.
I watched her fill out the spaces as the strain of the last hours began to ebb and the anger moved in to replace it. “I’m guessing he’ll return at some point.” Damn me, but part of me relished the lick of fear that flashed across Kincaid’s high-boned face. Bad Caro. “I suggest you contract the services of a really good warlock. You’re going to need them.” I unwound the stench from around my neck and handed it to Jamie. “Don’t bother to thank me.” I took the stairs two at a time. I had never been so happy to walk out a door in my life.
I walked down the street to the place where we’d left the car, shedding flakes of soot and plaster with
every stride. Birds sang. Children’s voices sounded in the distance.
“Caro!”
I quickened my step.
“I knew you could do it.” Jamie caught me up, then fell in beside me. “Believe what you want. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but how do you tell someone that you—?” He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I mean, do I take you out, buy you a few drinks, wait until you’ve relaxed a bit and then say, oh by the way, I’m a demon.”
“Which House?” Why did I ask that—it wasn’t as though I cared.
“Fifth,” Jamie blurted, eager to keep the conversation going. “I’m a susurrus. Was a susurrus. The voice you think you hear when you’re alone. The murmur on the dead phone line.”
“Doesn’t seem like there’s much room for advancement. Not a lot of variety.”
“It is limiting.” He smiled. “There are more of us about than you think. Mikey, the meat manager at Scholl’s. He was a tender of the flies.”
I slid to a stop beside our car. “He works with meat? That people eat?”
“He can tell if it’s fresh or not. He doesn’t do anything to it.” Jamie stood, hands on hips. “You know, that’s the sort of thing we’d run into, if humans knew.” His eyes dulled. “If we were lucky, that’s what we’d run into.” He shifted his feet, stared at his shoes. “The new mechanic at the auto place was a speed demon.”
I popped open the trunk and pulled out bath sheets and a plastic bag of pre-dampened wash cloths. “That doesn’t surprise me.” I opened the car doors—Jamie helped me spread the sheets across the front seat to protect the upholstery, as we’d done so many times before.
“We don’t fit in downstairs.” He straightened his side of the sheet, then took the washcloth I handed him and wiped his face. “We prefer it here, even though we don’t quite fit in, either. We like the quiet, and the soft colors, and the light.” He concentrated on massaging the soot from his fingernails. “We like humans, too.”
I tried to wipe the plaster dust and soot from my arms. Gave it up as a job for the shower, and made do with brushing the worst of the grime from my clothes. “We’ve been working together for three years, and I never would have guessed.” My eyes filled, and I blamed the soot. “Now I feel like I never knew you at all.” I tried to open the plastic bag so I could stuff the dirty cloths inside, and as usual couldn’t pull apart the blasted interlocks. Sensed a presence beside me, and did my best to ignore it.
8 rms, full bsmt Page 2