Lucifer couldn’t help but feel as if the ground was opening beneath her and trying to swallow her whole.
“So, no symbols? No bubbling cauldrons? No dark, ominous words scrawled on the walls in blood?” David waved his hands about like a Vegas magician.
“No.” Lucifer put her hands on her hips as she gazed around the room, hoping some clue would reveal itself. But other than a general feeling of “wrongness” about the room, she couldn’t see anything.
David’s sarcastic tone disappeared. “You sound disappointed.”
Worried, more like. “It’s not that. I was just hoping there would be . . . something.”
“Not to be rude, but maybe you’re not that good of a detective.”
“I told you, I’m not a detective. I’m a thief.” She took another glance around the room but saw nothing of significance. “All right, where’s this Olivia girl? The one with the book. I need to talk with her as soon as possible.”
“Home, probably. I can drop you off.”
Once Lucifer stepped out of the room, the feeling of unease lifted, as if a cold, wet towel had been lifted from her shoulders. She looked over at David and watched him reach back and squeeze his neck muscles, trying to loosen them. He felt it, too, though he was obviously unaware that it had anything to do with the room. Lucifer thought it best to leave it that way.
Outside, she and David got into his car. David slid behind the wheel but stopped just before turning the key. “Lucifer,” he said. “I need you to be honest with me. Is Gina in trouble? I don’t mean in trouble with her dad, like she’s grounded or anything. I mean . . .”
Lucifer tried her best to smile. “I’m sorry, David. I wish I could say this was all just some hoax. But it’s not.”
His skin went pale again. “So she’s really in danger.”
She reached over and patted his arm. Lucifer was surprised at the firmness of his triceps. “Not enough for you to lose any sleep over.”
“You promise?” he asked.
Lucifer glanced up at the second floor of the Worcester House to see that the window she shattered with a rock was now back in place and completely unbroken.
“I promise.”
CHAPTER 6
It was Olivia’s mother who answered the door. Her hair was shaped and curled within an inch of its life, and her bright blue dress was so tight Lucifer could have sworn someone had just stood over her with a bucket of paint and dumped it over her head. But the thing that immediately struck Lucifer was the overwhelming smell of perfume.
“May I help you?” she asked with a smile as fake as the flesh spilling from the top of her dress.
“Hi. I’m here to get a book from Olivia. For school.”
“A book. From Olivia.” The incredulous look on the woman’s face left no doubt in Lucifer’s mind that this was probably the first time she had heard the words “Olivia” and “book” in the same sentence for quite some time.
The woman turned and shouted, “Olivia! Olivia!” After getting no response, she turned back to Lucifer, her frown creating deep cracks in the thick makeup she wore around her eyes. “Come on in. She’s upstairs in her room. And you tell her I said she has to be home by eleven tonight. I’m serious! When I call, she better be here to answer the phone or she’ll be wearing an off-the-rack dress to the Homecoming Dance, I swear! You tell her that!” she said, putting her finger in Lucifer’s face.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good.” The woman grabbed her purse off the back of a suede couch, adjusted one of her heels, and then whisked out the door.
Lucifer took a moment to get her bearings. The house looked relatively new and was clearly decorated by someone with more money than taste. She scanned the abstract paintings on the walls, the trinkets on display here and there, but didn’t notice anything of mystical value. Not that she expected there to be, but on more than one occasion, Lucifer had found potentially dangerous objects in the homes of people who hadn’t the first clue of what they had.
She made her way upstairs past a dozen framed family pictures. Some were of individual people, but most were Olivia and her mom on various vacations: at the beach, on the ski slopes, posed in front of the Eiffel Tower. And in each photo, Olivia looked about as excited as someone visiting the dentist. For everything she had, she seemed to be committed to misery.
When Lucifer reached the top of the stairs, she heard voices coming from behind a closed door at the end of the hall. The voices stopped when she knocked. Without waiting for an answer, Lucifer stepped into the room.
The room looked just like Lucifer expected a typical girl’s room to look like. It was bright but cluttered with posters of boys and pictures of friends, though everything was a bit . . . pinker than she was expecting.
Olivia and another girl were sitting on a large bed, a cache of outfits strewn between them. Olivia was covered in as much makeup as her mother. It was heavy, bright, and thicker where she wanted to hide her blemishes, blemishes no doubt caused by her heavy use of makeup. Lucifer could see her harsh blue eyes staring at her through a shock of stick-straight blonde hair.
Lucifer recognized the other girl from Gina’s yearbook but couldn’t recall her name. She was much more attractive than Olivia but seemed to work at trying not to overshadow her friend. Her brown curly hair was pulled back in a haphazard way, and her fashionable clothes were at least a size too big. But whoever she was, she smiled at Lucifer until she noticed Olivia scowling. Then her smile dissolved, silently waiting for permission to return.
“Who the hell are you?” Olivia asked.
“Lucifer. David just dropped me off. He called and told you I was coming.”
“For the book, yeah.” Olivia made a show of examining Lucifer from head to toe.
“Is your name really Lucifer?” the other girl asked, leaning forward, a small smile of wonder across her face.
As a thief, Lucifer had to learn how to blend in, how not to stand out in a crowd. The way she dressed, the way she wore her hair, the way she carried herself, all of it was designed to make her completely forgettable. So it was odd having someone stare at her with such pleasant fascination. Even so, Lucifer couldn’t help but smile back. “Yes, that really is my name.”
“You’re a friend of Gina’s?” Olivia asked. “I’ve never seen you at school.”
Lucifer didn’t have the time or the desire to explain why she had never set foot in a classroom, but she knew that the truth always led to more questions. So she said, “I don’t go to your school. I’m . . . homeschooled.”
Both girls sat up straight and exchanged uncomfortable looks. “Don’t worry,” Lucifer said. “I’m not going to brainwash you into joining a cult or anything like that. I just need the book and I can get out of your hair.”
Olivia got off of the bed and walked over to a desk just large enough to hold the massive computer monitor resting on it. She opened a drawer and pulled out a large book, bound in dark aged leather. When Lucifer saw it, her heart went cold. Even from across the room, she could tell that it was bad business. Mostly because it was bound in human skin. But that was a detail she thought best to keep to herself.
“So . . . where exactly did you get that?” Lucifer asked.
“Isis picked it up at the library. She found it in the rare books section.”
“Did she.” Lucifer seriously doubted an ancient book bound in human skin came from a public library. Even if a library did have such a book, it would never let it be checked out, especially by someone obviously looking for some cheap scares.
Olivia walked over and held out the book toward her. But just as Lucifer was about to take it, Olivia pulled it back. “Are you going to tell me why David was lying to me?”
“Lying? About what?”
Olivia tucked the book under her arm. “Please. I know when a boy is lying to me. Gina isn’t sick. That girl is never too sick to text or e-mail. She’s grounded, isn’t she?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
The other girl, Kenna, looked horrified. “Do you think he’ll call my parents?”
Olivia shrugged her shoulders and said, “Probably.” She then turned back to Lucifer, handing her the book. “Let me guess. Gina’s dad is now part of this homeschooling cult of yours and you guys are going to have some kind of old-fashioned book burning.”
“My parents are dead and Gina’s dad could care less about calling yours,” Lucifer said without even looking up. “But burning this book might not be such a bad idea.”
Lucifer took the book and began to examine the cover. The leather was old, scarred, and there was no printing anywhere, not even on the spine. The only marking she could find was a handwritten name toward the bottom of the front cover: Helen Peltier.
The name was written in smooth, clean lines. Whoever had written the name—Helen herself?—had taken great care to do so. It was something Lucifer would definitely have to look into.
Lucifer walked over to the bed and sat down. Kenna shifted her weight away from her. “That book creeps me right the hell out,” she said.
Lucifer placed the book down and said, “Me too.” Then reached into her trick bag, pulling out a pair of novelty sunglasses. The sunglasses were bright green, and each lens was in the shape of a giant butterfly.
“Nice glasses,” Olivia said through a contemptible snort.
Lucifer put them on and gave Olivia a friendly smile before looking back at the book. “Ridiculous, right? But they do the job.”
Kenna leaned a little closer. “What job is that?”
“They let me see things that aren’t visible to the naked eye.”
“Like a microscope?”
“No.” Lucifer put on the glasses and examined the cover of the book again. “More like polarized sunglasses that let me see under the surface of a lake.”
With the glasses on, Lucifer could make out dark, striated shapes on the cover, as if the veins in the skin used to make the cover had been rearranged to form symbols. But one symbol stood out among the rest. It was a circle with two jagged hooks spiraling away from its center. She hadn’t even opened the book yet and already things weren’t going well. Lucifer was going to have to take this home and study it thoroughly, but first, she had to deal with a much more pressing problem.
Lucifer took off the glasses and closed the book. “Did either of you open this book? Look inside?”
Olivia stepped over toward the bed and sat down next to Kenna. “Just the night we were in the Worcester House. Why?”
“You too, Kenna?” Lucifer asked.
Kenna nodded yes. Lucifer put the glasses and the book into her trick bag and pulled out her cell phone. With a couple quick swipes of her finger across the screen, she opened up a simple app and began scrolling through a gallery of symbols, picts, and simple images until she found the one from the cover of the book. She tapped it, and a symbol filled the screen. This one was a series of elegant lines all converging to a single point.
Lucifer held her phone up for Kenna. “Kenna, what do you see?”
“Oh, how pretty. It’s like those old Spirographs my dad used to have. Did you draw that yourself?”
“No, but I did make the app.” Lucifer held the phone out toward Olivia. “Olivia?”
Olivia frowned as she folded her arms across her chest. “What?”
“On my phone. What do you see on the screen?”
Olivia rolled her eyes before leaning forward to get a good view of the phone’s screen. She squinted her eyes before settling back. “I see your greasy fingerprints smudged everywhere. Seriously, do you ever clean that thing?”
“Take a look again. Do you see anything else? Anything at all?”
Olivia squinted at the screen again. “No.”
Kenna pointed to the screen. “It’s right there! You can’t see that? The lines go from here—”
“Please, don’t trace the symbol, Kenna. That would . . . complicate things.”
“But how come she can’t see it?”
“Because there’s nothing there,” Olivia insisted.
“Is it like some color-blind kind of thing?” Kenna asked.
“I’m not color-blind!” Olivia shouted. But then she looked at Lucifer from the corner of her eye. “Am I color-blind?”
Lucifer quickly put her phone away and turned to squarely face Olivia. “The good news is that no, you’re not color-blind.”
Olivia turned to Kenna. “I told you I wasn’t color-blind. I’ve had LASIK surgery.”
“That doesn’t have anything to do with—” Lucifer started to say before Kenna interrupted her.
“Wait, you said, ‘Good news.’ That kind of means there’s bad news, doesn’t it?”
“Bad news?” Olivia squeaked. “What do you mean bad news?”
Lucifer grabbed both of Olivia’s hands. The gesture was meant to calm her, but it seemed to only make Olivia even more anxious. “Okay, you know how sometimes things sound a lot worse than they really are? This is one of those things, so I need you to not panic, okay?”
“Panic? Why would I panic? What things are you talking about? I don’t know any of those things. What sounds worse than it really is?” Olivia was squeezing Lucifer’s hands hard enough that her fingers were going numb. “Why couldn’t I see it?”
“All right, this? This right here? This is the panicking thing that I didn’t want you to do. You have to calm down,” though as soon as the words left her mouth, Lucifer was fully aware that the horse had already left the barn on that one.
“Oh god, it’s eye cancer, isn’t it?” Olivia whimpered. “I have eye cancer!”
Sometimes it was better to just yank the Band-Aid off as quickly as you could. “No, you don’t have eye cancer, Olivia . . .
“You’re possessed.”
CHAPTER 7
Olivia shared a glance with Kenna before looking back at Lucifer. “Possessed? Okaaay . . .” Olivia let the word hang in the air, not even attempting to mask her contempt. “You should probably go now.”
Lucifer understood her skepticism, but there was something about Olivia’s dismissive attitude that really rubbed her the wrong way. Part of her wanted to leave and just let Olivia deal with this herself, but that would be completely unfair. Olivia didn’t grow up in a world of demons and magic and monsters, human or otherwise. She didn’t know any better. As far as Olivia knew, Lucifer was just some crazy zealot come to preach the evils of her lavish lifestyle. Still, educating her might be a bit of fun.
Lucifer rummaged through her trick bag until she found a silver Zippo lighter engraved with the image of broad, feathery wings. She reached toward Olivia, but she jumped from the bed when Lucifer got close. “What are you doing?” she asked, holding her arms up in a decent facsimile of a defensive position. “Get out of my house! I have a purple belt in tae kwon do, so you better run if you know what’s good for you!”
Lucifer held her hands up in submission. “Well, lucky for me I have a black belt in running for my life. I just want to show you something. But to do it, I need a hair from your head.”
“Is this part of your crazy cult thing? You use your phone to trick me, then try to fix me with your creepy homeschooled . . . voodoo or whatnot?”
Lucifer held out her hand. “Olivia, please. Just one hair. I swear, if I can’t convince you, I’ll leave and you’ll never see me again. I promise.”
Olivia stared at Lucifer’s outstretched hand, thinking. Eventually, she said, “Fine,” and plucked a strand of perfect gold from her head. “Take it. Little Miss Cray-Cray.”
Lucifer took the hair, ignoring the insult. “Kenna, come closer so you can see, too.” Lucifer opened the lighter and flicked it to life. She slowly lowered Olivia’s hair over the flame until it began to curl and smolder in the heat.
“Oh, yes,” Olivia said, her voice flat and mocking. “B
urning hair. I’ve never seen that before—”
The hair suddenly split open at the end, peeling back on itself like the skin of a tiny banana. Thick black smoke rose from the withering hair and formed tiny wisps of fangs and claws born on sharp, angular wings before dissipating into the air with a foul and acrid stench.
Both Olivia and Kenna stood in stunned silence until Kenna excitedly shouted, “Do it again!”
“NOOO!” Olivia shot Kenna a look of utter shock and disgust before recoiling into the corner of her room, hugging herself.
“What the hell was that?”
“Calm down, Olivia—”
“Don’t tell me to calm down! What did you do? How did you do that?!”
“Kenna, why don’t you grab that chair and put it in the center of the room for me, please,” Lucifer said as she pointed to the small wooden chair in front of Olivia’s desk. Lucifer walked over to Olivia and gently put her hands on her shoulders. “Olivia, look at me. Look at me.” Olivia’s wide blue eyes slowly rolled back to Lucifer. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Now why don’t you come over here and sit down in the chair.”
Olivia pushed Lucifer out of the way and began violently tearing at her hair, yanking out thick blonde hunks with every pull. “Get it out of me! Get it OUT!” Lucifer grabbed her wrists and spun behind her, pinning her arms to her side in a bear hug. “Kenna, the chair!”
Instead of getting the chair, Kenna was slowly backing toward the door. “Is . . . is that the demon?”
“No, this is just your friend panicking like I asked her not to. Now please, grab the chair and put it in the center of the room before I have to do something drastic!”
“Drastic like what?”
“Kenna!”
“Okay, okay!”
Kenna rushed over and grabbed the chair. She slid it to the center of the room and then took a few tentative steps back as Lucifer led Olivia to the chair and sat her down.
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