“Buck!” Lucifer forced her eyes open as wide as her swollen lids would allow. “He doesn’t have your daughter.”
“You don’t know that!”
“Yes, I do. Gina was pulled into another dimension. But this guy comes at me with pepper spray? Doesn’t exactly scream ‘mystical mastermind’ now, does it?”
Buck sat back, his nostrils flaring. “It was mace, not pepper spray.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t napalm?” Lucifer touched the swollen tissue around her eyes. It was still sensitive, but the pain was tolerable. “I’m sorry, Buck. I wish I could tell you more, but I couldn’t see much with my eyes, you know, melting inside my skull.”
Buck pressed the palm of his hand against his temple and sighed. His eyes were bloodshot with dark circles hanging beneath them. It was obvious that he hadn’t slept much since Gina was taken. “I’m going to find him, Lucifer. And when I do—”
“You’ll come get me.”
“Excuse me?”
“Do you want to find Gina?”
“Of course I do!”
“Then you come get me. This is my world, Buck. I know what I’m doing. And I know the right questions to ask. You don’t.”
Buck stood up, his broad chest swelling with every deep breath he took. “You said it yourself. This guy isn’t a mystical mastermind. That makes him part of my world. And I’ve been a cop longer than you’ve been alive. I know how to question a perp. He might not know where Gina is, but he damn well knows someone who does!”
Lucifer sat back and shook her head. “You don’t get it, do you? That guy knew about the book.”
“So? What’s your point?”
“My point is that someone knows I’m looking for Gina and doesn’t want me to find her.”
“Yeah, the witch that took her.”
Lucifer wiped away a stream of cold water dripping from her cheek. “Yes, but why? She pulled Gina into another dimension. The witch wouldn’t have any worries about you following after her. Why would she? You don’t know anything about dimensions, and even if you did, you don’t have the first clue about how to travel among them, let alone find the correct one and then get you and Gina back safely.”
“No, I don’t. But you do.”
Lucifer slowly nodded. “Yeah. Which means that the guy not only knew about the book, he knew about me. And I work very hard so that no one knows about me. Buck, my survival depends on it. I’m a thief who’s stolen some very powerful things from some very powerful . . . people. If the wrong person finds me, I’m dead.”
Buck’s mouth pursed in thought. “If he wanted you dead, it wouldn’t have been a can of mace he pulled on you. So maybe he doesn’t know about you. Maybe he just knows someone with knowledge of your world is looking into Gina’s disappearance.”
“Maybe.” Lucifer carefully placed the towel down next to her and watched Buck a moment before speaking. “Buck . . . how, exactly, did you find me?”
Buck frowned. “I told you. A friend of mine said you could help me.”
“What. Friend?”
“Lucifer, we’ve had this conversation. She asked I not tell you and I’m not going to break that promise. It’s not her, if that’s what you’re thinking—”
“Is her name Helen Peltier?”
“No. Who’s Helen Peltier?”
Lucifer strained her ears but couldn’t hear anything off in his voice. He was telling the truth. Or he was at least lying well enough that she couldn’t tell the difference. “The name was written on the cover of the book.”
“Is that the name of the witch?” he asked.
“I don’t know. It could be, but I doubt it—”
“Dispatch, this is Officer Pierce.” He was suddenly speaking into the handheld microphone hanging from his shoulder. “Give me what ten-fourteen you have on a Helen Peltier. Start with the web to get a DOB then cross-reference with NCIC.”
“You think she might have an outstanding ticket or something? Parked her broom in a handicapped spot?”
“I think that if she’s in the system, we can get an address. Or at least a phone number.” Buck tucked his notepad back into his pocket then stopped. He looked at Lucifer and asked, “They don’t really fly brooms, do they?”
Lucifer just glowered at him.
“I didn’t think so.”
Lucifer stood up. Her back was getting stiff from having been slammed against the pavement. It was going to be tough for her to move tomorrow.
“Lucifer, you should really rest for a while. At least until I can get some info on this Helen Peltier.”
Lucifer slung her trick bag over her shoulder. “If you do find any info, send it to me. You’ve got my number. Same thing with the guy who mugged me. You find him, you let me know. I’m serious, Buck. It’s very difficult to question a dead body.”
Buck shirked back, clearly offended. “What kind of person do you think I am?”
“The kind of person who would have no trouble going to jail for putting the hurt on a suspect if it meant finding his daughter. Besides, if anyone has the right to hurt this guy, it’s me. I don’t want you bogarting my payback.”
When Buck spoke, he didn’t bother disguising the worry in his voice. “Are we going to be able to find Gina without the book?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “but I do know that we can’t leave it out in the wild. It’s dangerous in the wrong hands. And if you do find it before I do, whatever you do, don’t open it.” She grabbed the glass and downed the rest of the water in one big gulp.
“Where are you going?” Buck asked.
Lucifer was halfway out the front door when she said, “To the mall.”
CHAPTER 9
The mall was cold and crowded. Small groups of people lumbered down the halls like blood clots being flushed through bright, fluorescent veins. Some groups would duck into every store they passed while others moved from display window to display window without ever committing to anything more than a casual glance at the merchandise.
Lucifer listened to the sounds of laughter, shouts, and the occasional baby’s cry bouncing off the walls. She saw several children taking turns on a coin-operated rocking horse until a woman huddled them together to give them each a fistful of candy. The woman glanced up and saw Lucifer, gave her a weak smile, then quickly ushered the children in the opposite direction.
Everyone who walked past Lucifer looked at her, letting their stares linger for a second or two longer than was comfortable before stepping aside to give her a wider berth. Though the swelling in her face had gone away, her eyes were still bloodshot and her skin red and irritated. She thought about putting her hood up over her head to hide her face, but she knew that would only make her look even more suspicious. She wasn’t used to being noticed. Lucifer prided herself on her ability to move through the world without attracting attention. It’s part of what made her such a great thief. But she didn’t have the several hours to wait for her face to heal. Lucifer needed to find Brooklyn and Isis, not just to make sure they hadn’t been possessed, but to find out just where the book came from. She highly doubted it came from a library.
As Lucifer looked in her trick bag for Gina’s yearbook, she took quick stock of the items inside. Thankfully, nothing was damaged during the attack. The only thing the man stole from the bag was the book. But that was small consolation. He had taken something from her. And not just the book. He had taken her sense of security.
It wasn’t the first time Lucifer had ever been attacked. Such things were, sadly, a part of life for a street kid in Recife, not to mention a thief in an underworld of the mystical and magical. But this . . . this was just an old guy with a can of mace. Lucifer had survived death squads and roving street gangs, stood against hordes of unnatural horrors, and had come face-to-face with things that have driven men mad just to look upon. But some bald asshat in a cheap suit had come along and made her feel helpless.
And that really pissed her off.
Lucifer realize
d that her anger must have been showing on her face. Coupled with the aftereffects of the mace, it was no wonder people were giving her strange looks. As if she didn’t feel out of place enough as it was.
All the people Lucifer’s age didn’t seem to be doing a great deal of shopping. Instead, they wandered the halls, laughing at each other’s jokes, flirting with other groups of kids that happened by, just enjoying being together. This was the life of the average American teenager. No fear, no concern of where their next meal was coming from, no burden of inconvenient knowledge that underneath their world of friends and boys and music was a seething nation of darkness that wanted nothing but to swallow whole everything they knew and held dear. It was as if Lucifer was at a zoo, watching some exotic animal exhibit, though Lucifer couldn’t help but feel that she was the one caged behind six inches of plexiglass.
She took a deep, calming breath and flipped through the pages of the yearbook, looking for circled pictures of Brooklyn and Isis. Both girls were photogenic and, judging by the number of times their photos appeared, nearly as popular as David. Lucifer stopped turning the pages when she came across a picture of David in a suit and tie, speaking in front of a small group of students. He photographed equally well, but Lucifer thought he was even more handsome in person.
Lucifer slammed the yearbook shut and shoved it back in her trick bag. Focus, girl. She scanned the various groups of girls meandering through the mall until she found the ones she was looking for. Brooklyn and Isis were with several other girls and one boy on the level below her. They were coming out of a shoe store, all following behind Brooklyn like ducklings.
As she rode the escalator down to the lower level, Lucifer watched Brooklyn and the others stop in front of a kiosk to try on some hats. They all took turns showcasing their favorite finds with grand poses and gestures while the poor young woman working the kiosk did her best to smile.
Brooklyn slowly pulled a red bowler from off her head when she saw Lucifer approaching. The others stopped their conversations and stared as well. Brooklyn smiled, her teeth bright and perfect. “You must be the devil girl who tied Olivia to a chair,” she said.
Lucifer glanced around to see who was listening in, but everyone other than Brooklyn’s friends were too busy going about their own lives to pay any attention. “So, she called you. What all did she say?”
“Enough to make me think she got into her mother’s medicine cabinet. That girl was talking cray-cray. Did you really try to kill her with paprika?”
“I thought it’d be cleaner than a butcher knife,” Lucifer said as she pulled out her phone and tapped the screen. “Tell me, what do you see?”
Brooklyn didn’t bother looking at the screen but continued to stare at Lucifer. “If I say I don’t see anything, that means I’m possessed, right?” She made air quotes when she said the word.
“What you say doesn’t matter. What you see does,” Lucifer said, giving some air quotes of her own.
Brooklyn held Lucifer’s gaze for a moment before glancing down at the screen. “I see spirals.”
“Good.”
“Good? So . . . that’s it? You’re not going to try and tie me to a chair?”
Lucifer winked at her. “Not unless you want me to.” She walked over to Isis, who was standing at the back of the group of friends. Unlike Brooklyn, Isis didn’t appear to find any of this amusing. “Isis, what do you see?”
“I see the scaly bitch who’s about to get my fist down her throat for kicking my boyfriend.”
“You want to go that route, fine,” Lucifer said, “but mall security would most likely call the cops and have us arrested. Now, I’d be fine in jail, but you look a bit . . . fragile. So why don’t we skip all that and you just tell me what you see.”
Isis peered at the screen, but her eyes went wide. “I . . . I don’t see anything.”
“No?” Lucifer looked at her phone, feigning confusion. “Oh, sorry. I must have pressed the wrong button.” She tapped her phone’s screen and held it up. “Okay, now tell me what you see,” she said, trying her best not to let her smirk show.
“I see spirals, too,” Isis said flatly.
“Why are you asking her?” Brooklyn asked.
“Because she looked inside the book, too.”
“Is that what this is about? That stupid book?” Brooklyn tossed the red hat back on the rack. “God, no one cares! Our parents were cool with us sneaking into the Worcester House because they knew we weren’t drinking or getting high. We were just having fun trying to scare each other. But Gina’s dad has to go sniffing around for something to get us in trouble with the ’rents so he doesn’t look like such a fascist troglodyte.”
Brooklyn walked up to Lucifer and folded her arms across her chest. “Let me guess. You’re one of his undercover cop buddies. One of those old people who only looks sixteen, right?”
“I can assure you,” Lucifer said. “I’m not a cop. I just want to know about the book. Where did you get it?”
Brooklyn was athletic and at least six inches taller than Lucifer. She leaned over, forcing Lucifer to strain her neck. “The library. You know. Where the books come from.”
“There’s no way that book came from a library.”
“Are you calling me a liar?” Brooklyn’s half-smile dissolved into a sneer.
Lucifer shrugged her shoulders. “Well, I don’t know of many libraries that let people check out books bound in human skin.”
Brooklyn pulled back. “Shut up. It was not.”
“It was.” Lucifer leaned in close to Brooklyn and whispered, “And not from the nice pieces, either.”
Brooklyn started rapidly shaking her hands as if she were trying to dry them. “I’m going to retch. That is so foul.”
“You didn’t know?”
“Are you retarded? Of course I didn’t know!” Brooklyn looked at Isis and said, “How could you let me touch that?”
The rest of Brooklyn’s friends were giggling to themselves as Brooklyn made a show of how disgusted she was having touched the book. Isis ignored her and said, “We did get it from the library. We just didn’t check it out. We didn’t want anyone to know we were reading that kind of stuff so we . . . we stole it.”
“But it was at the library? Do you remember which section?” Lucifer asked.
Isis shook her head, her blonde hair whipping back and forth over her tiny shoulders. “I don’t know. Somewhere in the back with all the books that nobody ever reads.”
“Then what were you doing back there?”
“What’s it to you?” Isis snapped.
“I know what she was doing back there,” the only boy in the group said.
“Shut up, Greg. It wasn’t like that. We were just talking.”
“Well, you were using your mouths, anyway.”
Isis punched Greg in the arm. Then the two of them began hurling ugly insults at one another, trying to one up each other with just how disgusting and crude they could be. Lucifer wondered if they were really friends or not, but the way the others playfully joined in suggested that this was fairly common behavior.
Lucifer tried to break into the chaotic conversation to ask more questions, but the group talked around her as if she wasn’t even there. It was like a game of verbal keep-away. They tossed clusters of words back and forth, keeping them just out of Lucifer’s reach. She knew that she could get their attention if she really wanted to, but she doubted they had any more useful information for her.
Brooklyn led the boisterous gaggle of friends back into the general din of the mall, leaving Lucifer standing back at the kiosk like one of the colorful hats. She had been just interesting enough to notice for a moment, but once that interest faded, she was tossed aside and easily forgotten.
Lucifer stood at the calm center of the human cacophony swirling around her. For a moment, she pretended to be a part of it all, just another piece in the grand machine of ordinary life. But the illusion only lasted for a moment. She reached back and felt the
imperceptible weight of the mark on her shoulder, the hex that stuck to her skin like the lifeless wing of a melted sparrow. As much as Lucifer hoped and dreamed otherwise, she knew she belonged to another world. She belonged to another. And there was no escape from it. At least, not for her.
But maybe, just maybe, there would be for Gina.
Lucifer readjusted her trick bag to a more comfortable position then left to find someplace a bit more quiet.
CHAPTER 10
The Yarsborough County library was at the corner of one of the city’s busiest intersections, directly across from the modest Brisendine Art Gallery and a coffee shop bursting at the seams with the young and beautiful waiting for their morning dose of steaming energy potions. The library sprawled across most of the block with thick green vines winding along its marble walls.
Lucifer smiled when she saw the two granite griffins on top of the towering columns that flanked the library’s doorway. She loved libraries. They were temples of knowledge, and this building looked every bit the part. Even inside, the silence was reverential. The shelves were dark and weathered from decades of use, and the natural light shining through the vast windows gave the appearance that the books were glowing.
She made her way past the front desk. A young librarian looked up from carefully inventorying returned books and gave Lucifer a quick smile. Lucifer took care to notice the woman’s name tag and the titles of her personal recommendations displayed on the desk in front of her. She then walked to the far side of the first floor, where a row of computer screens sat on top of long tables in perfect alignment like tiny square soldiers awaiting orders. Since most people had laptops or tablets of their own, the library’s public computers often sat empty and unused.
Lucifer picked the one most out of view of the people browsing behind her and started logging in. After a few minutes, she was able figure out the young librarian’s username and password. It wasn’t very hard. Most librarians used the title of their favorite books as passwords, and since Ms. Mendez was kind enough to give Lucifer a list to choose from, it was just a matter of trial and error before she figured it out. But hacking into the system as a librarian wasn’t about hiding her tracks. It was about gaining access to restricted records.
Hexed Page 7