Hexed

by Michael Alan Nelson

  He chuckled, but his laughter faded when he saw Lucifer wasn’t even cracking a smile. She was dead serious. Breaking into Graeae Towers was going to be one of the most difficult things she’d ever done, and the last thing she needed was David constantly distracting her by being so . . . so . . . him.

  Lucifer and David stepped out into the hallway. As Lucifer was locking her door, David said, “I’ll drive you there. Let me at least do that much.”

  Lucifer slipped her keys into her trick bag. “I already have a ride. Just go home, David. I’ll call you when I have the book.” She left him standing in the hallway and went downstairs.

  Buck was waiting for her on the street. She got into the cruiser and asked, “Where’s your partner?”

  “Taking the night off. Family issues.”

  Lucifer had no idea if he was telling the truth or not, but she didn’t much care.

  As they pulled onto the street, Buck said, “Sinkowicz is in jail. He wouldn’t let his lawyer post bail. He thinks he’s safer there.”

  “He probably is, though I don’t think anyone is looking for him. The book is back where he found it, and someone else took the fall for it. He’s in the clear.”

  “Not with me, he isn’t.”

  Lucifer knew that there was nothing Buck could do to him for his role in Gina’s kidnapping, but he would nail Sinkowicz to the wall for everything else.

  “You should also know that we rounded up a couple of guys as possible suspects from the gallery theft,” he said.

  “Guys?”

  “The security guard on duty and the pursuing officers described the suspect as a male.”

  Lucifer smiled to herself.

  “But all their alibis check out. Just thought you’d like to know no one is going to jail for you.” When Lucifer didn’t respond, he continued. “I’m not comfortable with this, Lucifer.”

  “Plausible deniability. Just go in, ask if they saw anything the night of the gallery theft, and leave. You’ll never notice me.”

  “This makes me an accessory.”

  “For doing your job?”

  “I’m not on the gallery case. So, no, it’s not my job.”

  Lucifer wrapped her hair in a hair band. “Security isn’t going to know that. Look, all you have to do is distract them long enough for me to get past them. I can take it from there.”

  “How? I’ve seen their security system before. It’s state of the art.”

  Lucifer gave him a sideways smile. “You’ll see. You’ll be embarrassed by how easy it is.”

  He grunted.

  Lucifer reached over and put her hand on his obscenely large bicep. “We’re going to get her back, Buck. I promise.”

  They drove a few blocks in silence before Buck said, “When Gina was five, the neighbor’s dachshund chased her up a tree. It was a loud, obnoxious thing, but harmless. Still, Gina was terrified. She shied away from dogs after that. Every time she would see one, she would run into my arms to protect her. The way that sweet little girl trembled . . .” Buck trailed off. They drove another block before he finally said, “I would tell her that she didn’t have to be afraid. That I would never let anything bad happen to her. Ever.” The tendons in his elbows popped as he squeezed the steering wheel. “I don’t know how much longer I can take this,” he said. “My little girl . . .”

  “Is going to be fine,” Lucifer finished. “This book will tell me how to get to the Shade and bring her back. But to get the book, I need your help.”

  Buck glanced at her and gave her what she could only assume was a smile. But the anguish and exhaustion etched on his face made the gesture come across as a grimace. “Whatever I need to do,” he said.

  “Good. Drop me off a couple blocks away.”

  “I’ll leave you at the alley behind Eighth Street. The cameras on the corner haven’t been working for the past three weeks. Budget cuts.”

  “Perfect,” Lucifer said.

  When Buck stopped in the alley, Lucifer got out but turned back before closing the door. “Buck,” she said. “I would give anything to have had a dad like you. Gina is a very lucky girl.”

  The big man nodded, the yellowed light of streetlamps glistening in his eyes. “Maybe if I had spent less time protecting her and more time showing her how to protect herself, this wouldn’t have happened. Maybe if she were more like you . . .”

  Lucifer shook her head. “Trust me, Buck. Of the two of us, I think Gina got the better deal.” She tapped the hood of the car and closed the door. Then she walked into the shadows of the alley and made her way toward Graeae Towers.

  CHAPTER 23

  The city of South Haven was a mass of concrete and steel with the clustered buildings of downtown rising high above the urban sprawl. Many of the buildings had been built in the mid-twentieth century when the city was thriving in the postwar economy. And though most of the buildings didn’t rise much higher than forty or fifty stories, they left a rather stunning skyline that meandered over the horizon like a lazy serpent basking its fluorescent scales under the moonlight. But the serpentine rise and fall of building tops was interrupted by a single spire that towered above its curving line like a silver arrow pinning the great serpent to the ground: Graeae Towers, the grand jewel of the city.

  The building stood in stark contrast to the blocky structures that surrounded it. While the other buildings were dark, bland slabs of brick and stone, Graeae Towers was bright and sleek with long strips of windows between the clean, minimalist lines of its supporting frame. The upper floors tapered into a point, leaving a pyramid of deep-tinted glass and steel perched on top of the great silver column. Its shining surface reflected the lights of the city like a mirror ball.

  Lucifer stepped onto the salmon marble of the courtyard in front of the building and waited underneath a flaking birch tree planted in a golden cistern. Buck had parked his cruiser across the street and was walking toward the glass doors. Lucifer mindlessly fingered the drawstring of her hoodie while she watched a pair of security guards through the windowed walls. They were sitting behind a vast maple desk, reclined in comfortable black chairs that looked to make it that much harder to leave for rounds.

  Buck pulled his nightstick and tapped on the door. One of the guards looked up at the dull, klacking sound, annoyed at the intrusion. But when he saw Buck in his police uniform, the guard pulled his feet from the desk and walked over to unlock the door.

  “Yeah?” the guard asked, doing little to hide his annoyance.

  Lucifer tied her hair up into a bun and walked toward them. Once she was done with her hair, she reached into her trick bag and pulled out an ID card. It was an expired card used to get into a cable network office across town, but Lucifer didn’t need it to unlock any doors. She just needed it to look like it could.

  “There was a robbery at the Brisendine Art Gallery a couple nights ago,” Buck said. “I’m canvassing the area to see if anyone saw anything that might help us catch the guy who did it.”

  “Unless the thief came in here—”

  “Desculpe,” Lucifer said, quickly flashing the ID card. “Limpeza. Cleaning.”

  “You sure you didn’t see anything?” Buck asked, moving aside to let Lucifer through. “Maybe your partner saw something.”

  The guard glanced at Lucifer for a second before stepping back to let her past. “Hey, Johnny. You see anything odd the other night?”

  Johnny, the guard still seated, didn’t even bother to look up from his tablet hidden under the desk. “Wasn’t on duty.”

  Lucifer walked to the elevators as Buck peppered the guard with more questions. She couldn’t hear exactly what he was asking, but it was obvious by the guard’s responses that he was annoyed and wanted to get back to whatever it was he and his partner were watching on YouTube.

  As Lucifer waited for the elevator, she scanned the large plaque of names on the wall. There were hundreds, but it didn’t take long for her to find the COO of Graeae Industries: Isaac Haldis.

&nbs
p; The elevator doors opened, and Lucifer slipped inside. She pulled out a homemade master keycard she had made by tethering a third-generation smartphone to an expired Starbucks rewards card. She slid the card into the control panel and tapped an icon of a monkey covering its eyes on the phone’s screen. Lucifer had toyed with the idea of stealing Mr. Sinkowicz’s card and using that to get around the building, but the security system would have logged it in its records. That would have left a big neon trail leading right to him. And as much as she hated that man for attacking her and for his role in Gina’s kidnapping, she didn’t think he deserved to be disappeared for it.

  Well, maybe a little.

  Lucifer’s master keycard would let her get to any floor in just about every building in the city, but before she wandered through Graeae Towers, she needed to look the part. She pressed the button for the basement floor.

  The basement was mostly a collection of small maintenance offices and supply closets wedged between cold concrete walls. Thankfully, the basement was empty with only the sound of humming fluorescent lights overhead to keep her company. It didn’t take long for Lucifer to find a cleaning uniform that fit and a handful of supplies to finish off the costume.

  Sufficiently disguised, Lucifer stepped back in the elevator and pressed the button for the executive floor. She glanced up at the small, dark sphere of glass hiding the security camera in the corner of the elevator. That particular security measure didn’t worry her. Chances were the guards were too interested in whatever they were doing to pay her any attention. Lucifer had learned pretty quickly that if she ever wanted to get around unnoticed, just dress like a member of the cleaning staff, and no one would pay you a second glance.

  As Lucifer rode the elevator up to the executive floor, she couldn’t help but think of David. Was he mad at her for not letting him come? It was certainly for his own good, but she was devastated by the thought that he might be angry with her. She wanted nothing more than to make him smile. It was such a beautiful smile. The way one corner of his mouth curled just a bit more than the other, how his teeth flashed like ivory rose petals in sunlight. . . .

  Dammit!

  Even without being there, David was still a distraction. Lucifer needed to concentrate on the job at hand, otherwise she was going to get herself killed.

  She wondered if David would be sad if she died. Probably not, at least not really. And even if he was, he’d still have Gina to comfort him.

  Gina.

  Lucifer took a deep breath. Gina was in Witchdown and most likely terrified beyond the imagining of it. It was time to stop daydreaming about such ridiculous fantasies and focus on the job. Get the book, get to Witchdown, bring Gina back.

  But . . . what if she didn’t?

  What would happen if Lucifer didn’t steal the book? She could come out in a couple of hours and tell Buck and David the book simply wasn’t there. It’s gone forever and so is Gina. To be honest, it would be all Gina’s fault since she was the one foolish enough to stand in front of the mirror in the first place. There would be no one to blame but herself. She would disappear just like Carey from accounting. So how bad would that be, really?

  Buck would be inconsolable. And Lucifer had no doubt that he would kill Mr. Sinkowicz the first chance he had. Both of their lives would be over. And whatever plan the Sisters had would come to pass. Lucifer highly doubted the plan was to give the world more puppies and rainbows. But David . . . Lucifer could comfort him in his moment of loss. She could be the shoulder he cried on, the person he clinged to in his sadness, and the one who would ultimately make him smile again. And why not? Why shouldn’t she know what it’s like to have a boyfriend? A month ago, that idea would have seemed completely absurd. But now Lucifer had to admit that it was something she wanted. It was something she wanted badly. And all she had to do to get it was hide in a broom closet for a couple of hours, let a girl die at the hands of a witch, and wait for her father to murder the man responsible.

  Lucifer rolled her eyes. As if she would ever let that happen.

  When the elevator doors finally opened, the presence of magic hit her like an ocean wave. Lucifer’s thoughts quickly came into sharp focus. She was back in her world, doing what she did best. Playtime was over.

  The aura of magic was so thick that the air practically crackled with it. But the magical energy didn’t seem to be coming from a single direction. It was as if the entire space was infused with sorcery. It was obvious to Lucifer that Mr. Sinkowicz had greatly undersold just how much his coworkers “dabbled” in the arcane.

  Lucifer stepped out onto the immaculate navy carpet, the sound of her footsteps lost in the soft fabric. There was a large mahogany receptionist desk in front of a wall fountain that dribbled silently into a narrow pool. Lucifer was impressed by the engineering that must have gone into designing a completely silent fountain. Most people installed fountains specifically for the sound. It can be relaxing, calming, and welcoming. But here, it only served as a visual. The quiet was unnerving, lingering in the office like an invisible fog.

  She suddenly realized what it was that was responsible for much of the magic she was feeling: a silence spell. As a test, she cleared her throat. She felt the familiar rumble in her throat, but what she heard was a muffled and distant cough that she would have missed had it not come from her.

  Scientists had once designed the quietest room in the world by making walls that absorbed every sound so nothing reverberated back to the listener. The effect was so unsettling that the longest any one person could stay in the room without going insane was forty-five minutes. Lucifer suspected the quiet spell served the same purpose. She was already feeling uncomfortable.

  Lucifer ignored her discomfort and moved through the office, searching. Grand abstract paintings lined the walls, each with a host of colors that perfectly accented the navy decor. On the floor next to those paintings were large leafy plants in lavender vases, giving the sense that the office had been carved out of the wilderness and Mother Nature was slowly trying to reclaim her territory.

  Lucifer pulled out a feather duster from the cleaning supplies she took from the basement and began dusting. Though she doubted the bored guards monitoring the security feeds would pay her much mind, it didn’t hurt to be too careful. She made a show of moving vases, telephones, even reaching for the tops of the paintings as she scanned for Isaac Haldis’s office. She also kept a sharp lookout for any other security measures in place. She wasn’t so much concerned with mundane measures like pressure-sensitive floors or fingerprint-ID locks on the office doors. It was the magical security that worried her. Before long, the silence spell would make it as difficult for Lucifer to concentrate as if David was around.

  Well, almost as difficult.

  She moved past a large conference room. The Graeae Industries logo was frosted on the glass walls that separated it from the rest of the offices on the floor. Each of the offices had similar glass walls allowing Lucifer to look inside. They each had the same minimalist design with a sturdy desk, ergonomic chair, a single piece of art on the wall, and not much else.

  Lucifer turned a corner and found a short hallway that ended abruptly with the ladies’ room on one side and the men’s on the other. At the end of the hall was a small table underneath a large mirror attached to the wall. Resting on the table were a handful of objects that Lucifer didn’t recognize. She stepped closer and wiped them with her duster. A glass sphere sat on a short pedestal with what looked like a dinosaur tooth resting at its base. It made sense for a company named after the three old crones of legend who shared an eye and tooth among themselves. That the company felt compelled to adorn the office with a tiny shrine to their memory only added to Lucifer’s discomfort.

  Outside each office was a small plaque with the name and position of the person who used it. It didn’t take long for Lucifer to find the COO’s office. Unlike the others, its walls were solid wood. Isaac Haldis did not seem to have the same desire for transparency his colleagu
es were required to have. And Haldis’s apparent need for privacy extended beyond just having solid walls to his office. His office was also out of view of any security cameras, so Lucifer didn’t bother to hide her actions.

  Before she touched the door, she carefully examined every aspect of it: the handle, the hinges, the wood, the lock. Most office doors, even executive offices, only had a single lock in the handle of their doors. This door was no different. But Haldis had more than just a basic lock. Etched in the brass of the bottom door hinge was a small symbol. A symbol Lucifer didn’t fully recognize. She quickly grabbed her smartphone and punched up her database app. She found it in the hybrid sub-folder. The core symbol was Mesopotamian but had been modified with a dash of Corsican pict-magic to give the spell some added punch. It was impressive work and not easily done. Lucifer doubted she even had the skill to craft that kind of spell without it blowing up in her face.

  Lucifer knew that if she opened the door, the spell would activate. The symbol would emit a burst of energy that would bind anything in its path, like catching a fly in amber. But because the symbol was on the bottom hinge, it would only lock the trespasser’s feet. It would be enough to immobilize them yet keep them alive until someone happened along, allowing the company to deal with the would-be thief any way they wanted to. Clever.

  Lucifer thought she might be able to use her own brand of hybrid symbols to counteract the trap, but she wasn’t familiar enough with Corsican pict-magic to trust herself. There was a good chance it would just make things worse. So she decided to go with the easier option.

  Lucifer grabbed a set of lock picks from her trick bag and began on the lock. She had to work completely by feel since there was no sound to guide her. Eventually, she felt something give way. But before she opened the door, she reached up and curled her fingers on the top of the door jamb. Digging in, she pulled herself up off the ground and used her feet to manipulate the handle.