“Actually, since we have a Seer here,” Detective Burchard says with such forced casualness that it instantly gets my attention. “We could ask each other questions and find out the real truth, couldn’t we?”
I shrug, uncomfortable with the direction his question is leading. “I dunno.”
“I mean, hypothetically, I could ask you something like telling me what really happened with that girl on the Andersen case—”
Meints spins and jabs a finger at Burchard across me. “I told you already. Nothing happened! Give it a rest!”
Hmm. That’s interesting. I open my mouth to respond and Meints rounds on me. “Nothing. Happened. End of story.” He glares intently at me, and I concede and keep my mouth closed.
We take a long, quiet coach ride to Clark’s apartment. Greystone is waiting for me outside the building on the street. The steel-gray clouds cover the sky again. What I wouldn’t give for a few hours of sunshine, but I’m guessing it would be lethal to half the inhabitants of this place.
I pause on the sidewalk next to Greystone. Now, I’m scowling as I look at the building where Clark lived. Ms. Greystone is looking at me curiously. The other two detectives are trying to figure out what’s going on.
“Is there a problem, Green?” Meints asks. He’s looking irritated at me. Burchard is scanning the streets nearby. There are a few people out, looking our way out of curiosity. But most are steering clear from the handful of Meridian’s finest guarding the entrance to a large stone building. The building is clean, sturdy, the windows intact, the paint fresh. The double-door entryway is open, inviting. I’m pretty sure I can see marble tile inside.
“What the hell, you guys?” I finally manage to articulate. They all look at me in confusion.
“Have you seen the dump I live in? And you guys live in places like this? Seriously?”
Meints smiles. Burchard shrugs his shoulders and stares at me impatiently. “This place is a dump compared to where Meints lives. He has his own butler and everything. Don’t worry about it. Let’s go in and talk to Marsh.”
Grumbling, I follow them inside. Clark’s place is up one flight of stairs. We pass a few more officers on the way up. I’m getting a few hostile glares from the other men. I can only assume they blame me for some reason, blame me for Clark’s involvement or in his dismissal.
Perfect. Because it’s totally my fault he teamed up with a demon to start a murder spree.
The door to the apartment is open. Marsh is standing in the main room, looking at some items on a bookshelf. He grins when he sees me walk in.
“Green! How ya feelin’, buddy?”
Armstrong and Kim are here as well, searching other rooms. Yeah. Other rooms. This place is big enough to have rooms. The ceilings are high; the rooms clean. The floor tiles are gleaming where they show around thick, colorful rugs. Meints and Burchard wander back out into the hallway.
“I’m feeling a lot better, thanks.” I glance around the room we’re in. It’s neat. Tidy. In fact, I notice that there is hardly a single item out of place. It barely looks lived in. There are ashtrays on the coffee table, but they are empty. I’m sure Clark wasn’t a smoker; that’s something I would have noticed. All the dishes are put away. There’s nothing in the sink.
Marsh notices where I’m looking. “Don’t overthink it. Clark had a maid. Unfortunately, she stopped by a few days back, already threw out a bunch of stuff. We’ve been searching for anything obvious, but we haven’t uncovered anything yet.”
He smiles and turns to Greystone. “But now that you’re here, Greystone, you can do your thing.”
“Her thing?” I ask. “She has a thing?”
“That she does.”
“What’s her thing, then?”
“I’m standing right here, Detective.”
“What’s this thing of yours then, Ms. Greystone?” I ask out loud.
“I’m very observant,” she explains as she floats backward away from me, arching her eyebrows. She passes through the wall into the bedroom.
“Well, that cleared it up. Thanks,” I mutter.
Marsh laughs, clapping me on the back. This time I was ready for it and braced myself against the impact, so I don’t go sprawling. “She’s one of the best crime scene whatcha-macallums . . . analysts. We spend a few hours looking at all the stuff sitting out, easy to find. Then she spends a few minutes.”
“I thought we have scryers and sniffers. Those guys you used back at Finnegan’s lab.”
“Oh sure, we’ve got those guys too. And they’ll get their chance. And they’ll be more thorough than Greystone can be. But their work takes time. Greystone on the other hand.”
He stops as Greystone floats out of the bedroom, across the main room and into the second bedroom, which I take to be a study of some kind. Marsh waits until she’s out of sight.
“You really can’t see how smoking hot she is?” he whispers to me.
“She’s very attractive, Marsh. I just don’t see the same thing you do.”
“That’s a shame.”
“Marsh, what’s she doing? How does she analyze things?”
He smiles and holds up his hand in a placating gesture. “Just wait.”
It doesn’t take long. Greystone floats back into the main room, over to us. I don’t know exactly what Marsh is seeing when he looks at her. I still see the conservative business suit, the glasses, her hair gathered up in curls on her head. She sees me watching her float up to us. She smiles at me, and I’m relieved to see it is a smile that is completely devoid of self-consciousness. She knows that I can see her how she truly is, and while that irritated her for some reason before, it no longer bothers her. When I look at her, I see someone I trust, someone I like to be around. A friend.
I guess there’s nothing like several near-death experiences to help you focus on what’s important.
“There is a wall safe in the bedroom behind the photo of the cat,” she says.
“A cat photo? Really?” I ask Marsh.
“There is a stash in the floor under false floorboards near the dresser,” Greystone continues. “And in the study, there is a fake panel in the desk on the back.”
“On it,” Kim says, going to the study. Armstrong walks over to the bedroom.
“How?” I start to ask, then think about it. She can just float through objects. She can look behind walls and floors. Handy.
Marsh and I go over to the couch and sit down, and soon, Armstrong and Kim join us with what they’ve found.
Kim slams a stack of books and papers down on the coffee table that he found in the desk. Armstrong has two armloads of things. He sets a stash of gold and silver bricks down, wrapped in clear plastic.
“The metal was in the floor, but these were in the safe,” he explains as he sets down a black ledger and a few photos.
We start to pour through our new clues. The gold we don’t need to worry about right now. I mean, it’s a lot of gold; don’t get me wrong. But gold doesn’t do me a whole lot of good right now. I wouldn’t even know what to do with it. What kind of value does it have here? Is it equivalent to what I’m used to, or maybe it’s used in magic rituals in some way? The silver has definite value for magical items and is definitely contraband. I’m much more interested in the other things he had.
The books and papers are all about demons. It’s bizarre. We’re talking actual demonology books, like instructions on how to summon them, lists of demon names, descriptions of their natures, stories of past exploits. Books written in Latin and German with annotated notes in English. And these demon names, I now know that they represent real creatures, actual beings I could run into here, not characters from some story. It’s good information but doesn’t necessarily give us any clues to help us now. Armstrong is glancing through it.
“Hmm,” he says, stopping on a page.
“What?�
�� Marsh asks. Then, before Armstrong can respond, he says, “And don’t say any of the freaking demons’ names! The last thing we need is calling their attention to us.”
“I wasn’t going to say any names,” Armstrong explains patiently.
“Well, Green here would probably say the names out loud. So you,” he points at me. “Do not say any demon names out loud.”
“Does that really work?” I ask.
Armstrong and Kim shrug. Marsh throws his hands up in the air, as if I’ve just proven his point. “What the hell do I know? Let’s not take any chances, OK?”
“As I was saying,” Armstrong harrumphs. “There is a name circled here. But, a few pages earlier, there were a couple other names circled.”
“Demon names?” Marsh asks.
Armstrong nods. “I count around half a dozen or so. Maybe ones he was interested in or trying to summon?”
“But which one did he summon? If it was even him that summoned the thing?” I wonder.
The ledger proves to be more interesting. It has a list of names, not demon names, but the names of regular people. I recognize some of the names on this list as being names of our victims we’ve been investigating.
“I think it’s his kill list,” Kim says. “Or at least his list of bodies he’s gotten rid of.”
My jaw drops. “But there are hundreds of names on this list.”
Kim’s expression doesn’t change; it’s still the same flat stoic stare. He continues. “There are also some photos.”
He lays the photos on the table. They’re of me. Then some other people. Then some of Jessica with me. Marsh points to me in one of the photos with Jessica standing next to me. “Who’s this?”
I think Marsh is making a joke.
“Detective Green! That’s you,” Greystone says.
What? Of course, it’s me. I can see that.
“But it doesn’t look like you. When Miss Everin put that glamour on you. You looked different, like another person entirely.”
Oh. Interesting. I can’t see the glamour in the photograph.
“I recognize that guy,” Armstrong says. “He was following me around a while back. You think he’s one of Clark’s conspirators?”
“Um . . .” I say.
Kim ignores me. “We can ask Everin back at the station. We’ve got her there in protective custody. She can tell us who this is.”
I raise my hand uncomfortably. Marsh raises an eyebrow. “Yes, Green?” he asks patiently.
“It’s me. In the photo. That’s me.”
“Yes, Green. We can see he has some photos of you.”
“No, I mean that one,” pointing to the photo of Jessica and the glamoured version of me. “That’s me next to Jessica. That’s me with a glamour she put on me.”
Armstrong glowers at me. He glances at Kim, who merely shrugs his shoulders again. A few uncomfortable moments of silence pass. Then Armstrong breaks into a smile. “Well, that explains it then! Damn, Green, we couldn’t for the life of us figure out how you were watching us.”
“That was back when I didn’t know who was working against us,” I explain, trying to defend myself.
Armstrong laughs away my words. “Don’t worry about it. We just wanted to know how you were doing it.” Kim nods.
“So, Clark had Jessica and I under surveillance,” I say.
Marsh sifts through the photos. “And they knew what you looked like when you were glamoured. That must have been how he knew you were following him when he ambushed us.”
“Who are these others?”
Greystone interrupts from over near the window. “One of the men in the photo. He’s across the street.”
I resist the urge to rush over and stare out the window. What I need to do is be more circumspect. I casually walk over to the window’s edge and peek my eye out of the corner.
“Real subtle,” Marsh snickers, but I ignore him. I spot the guy immediately, on the other side of the street, in a crowd of a half-dozen others. He is watching what is going on at Clark’s building. It’s hard to explain what is so different about him. Where I see everyone else walking around normally, he looks to me like he is trapped inside a costume, or like he’s concentrating on manipulating each piece of his body separately instead of just moving. Regardless of the body he’s wearing, I can easily see him now that I know what I’m looking for. I wasn’t sure I would be able to spot the demon when I told Captain Radu I could, but I didn’t want to admit that.
The demon is in the man’s body. One of the people in the photos on the table is now an empty shell, standing across the street from us. I don’t know who it is. He’s speaking to one of the people next to him, laughing. I’ve never seen the second man either.
“Well, share with the class, Green,” Marsh says. “Is the guy out there?”
“Yes,” I answer, still looking out the window. “But the demon is wearing his skin.”
Stunned silence hangs in the air behind me. I turn to see Armstrong and Kim looking at each other, gauging each other skeptically. Kim finally nods, Armstrong shrugs, and Marsh punches his fist into his open palm. “Let’s get him,” Marsh says.
I glance back out the window and see the demon staring right at me from the street.
“Crap.”
Greystone’s voice whispers fearfully. “He knows. He’s looking at us now.”
“Go! Go!” Marsh bellows at the other detectives. “Green, who are we looking for?” he yells over his shoulder.
“White hair, green suit, black tie!” I yell back. I follow more slowly. I might be healed from most of the damage done to me, but I’m far from being in top form. Burchard and Meints fall into step beside me, their guns drawn. I look at them strangely.
“Captain’s orders,” Burchard explains as we hurry down the stairs. “He’s tired of you getting used for punching bags and target practice.”
“Marsh threatened to cut our balls off if we let you get hurt again,” Meints adds. “Burchard might know what that feels like; he’s married, but I don’t want to live for eternity without them.”
By the time I get to the street, he’s long gone. Marsh is organizing officers to fan out looking for him.
It only takes about ten minutes to locate him. I catch up to Marsh, who is swearing up a storm. We find the body face down in a gutter about four blocks away. Green suit, crumpled shirt, eyes empty—the corpse vacant, a hollow shell. The demon has jumped bodies. We lost it again.
Chapter 40
We’re back to the drawing board. Again. We’ve hit another dead end, short of me scouring this whole city trying to look at every single soul that lives here. Meridian is made up of forgotten things. Every building, alleyway, room, and hole is something that has been thoroughly scrubbed from the collective memory of the world.
Even here, no one truly knows every corner. There are doorways hidden from view, buildings tucked into folds in reality, probably whole neighborhoods that can only be found by walking the correct steps in hidden paths. There are no maps of Meridian; at best, there are only guides who know those paths that they themselves have walked.
I have been looking at our case files all morning. We know that the demon has been jumping bodies. We know Clark was working with it to conceal evidence of its actions. We suspect a group of zealots has been helping them as well. Was Clark involved with them? No way to tell in the evidence we’ve found so far. If Clark was working with others, he didn’t keep a record of it. We know he worked with officer Chuck, but even Chuck’s partner didn’t know anything about it. I questioned him personally, and he was telling the truth; he just thought it was official business any time Clark came by to talk in secretive conversations.
The members of the squad have been treating me marginally better, though. Now that we all know Clark was actively working against us, my “suspicions” proven justif
ied, they are more accepting of me. They protect me because the captain has ordered them to. But I’d like to think they don’t actually mean me harm anymore.
“Yo, Green!” Burchard hollers from the doorway to the office. “Someone here to see you.”
He ducks out before I can ask who. I’m a little puzzled. Jessica is in one of the rooms upstairs, under protection until this all gets sorted out. She has free reign to come down and check in on us. On me. Outside of her, I don’t know anyone who would want to come to see me.
I walk out of our office into the squad room. The place is as busy as I’ve ever seen it. A little loud, to be honest, which is unusual here. Dead detectives and officers shuffling from desk to desk. Typewriters clacking away. Raised voices calling to each other. I look around for Burchard and see him waving to get my attention up by the front desk. I don’t see anyone with him.
“What’s going on, Burchard?”
Detective Burchard points down, in front of the long wood counter. “This guy is asking for you by name. You figure it out.”
I have to lean over the desk to see who it is. There, his head barely peeking over the top, is the doorman of Jessica’s building. The one who took a bite out of my hand a few days ago. I lurch back quickly, out of reach.
“What the hell?” I say, slightly panicked, reaching for my gun—which I realize I left on my desk, so I end up slapping at my waist like an idiot.
The doorman is dressed in a black suit, red velvet vest, and is holding a dark fedora in his hands over his chest. He is clutching it tightly.
“Detective Green. My name is Archibald Smith.” He bows his head slightly. I calm down a little bit when I realize he’s not trying to snack on me again. “I’ve come to turn myself in.”
“Eh, what’s that?” I ask, confused.
He bows his head again, struggling to meet my eyes. But he does look at me, and I can tell he is mortified.
“I’ve come to turn myself in for assaulting an officer. My behavior was deplorable, and I offer no excuse for my actions.”
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