“I’d give her a bit to settle down,” Vera said, waving her off. “Oh, Lordy, the biscuits are burning.” She went for the oven and pulled out a pan that brought with it a smoky aroma to fill the kitchen. The white doughy biscuits looked fine on top but Lauren knew from long experience that the bottoms were singed to the pan. “Well, what are we gonna do now?”
“Eat the tops of them,” Lauren said, staring at the biscuits stoically. She just didn’t have enough emotion to channel into anything else. “It’s not like it’s the first time you’ve burned the biscuits.”
“I meant about your daughter,” Vera said in a huff. “She’s getting—”
“Worse,” Lauren said, nodding slowly. She thought she could almost feel the color draining out of her face, but it was probably her imagination. “She’s getting worse. I’d ask if I was this bad at her age, but I think we both know the answer is—”
“You were hell on sixteen wheels, girl,” her mother said, now positioned by the stovetop and working a wooden spoon through the gravy. “At least she hasn’t come home pregnant yet, unlike some people in this kitchen I could name.”
And there was the color returning to her face. It was still a slightly raw spot to Lauren after sixteen years that she’d gotten pregnant at sixteen. Now she was thirty-two, and her daughter was where she was when she’d had her. Not an appealing thought when you were watching your daughter veer off the road. “I should go talk to her,” Lauren said again.
But she stayed right there in the kitchen and worked her way over to the pan of biscuits sitting on a towel on the table. She nibbled from the top of one and just kept thinking, because at least if that was all she did she wouldn’t stir up another storm in the house.
***
Mick was hanging out on the town square. Place was quiet as quiet could get, like a thousand other towns in America, time passing them by and moving all the shops out to the freeway.
He’d seen that a lot lately. Or maybe he was noticing it a lot lately. He’d been around long enough to remember when it was the other way, when everything happening in a town was on the square. There’d maybe be a malt shop, with a buzz of conversation at this time of night, where you could get a tall glass of sweet malted chocolatey goodness slid in front of you with two straws so you could share. Sipping it while you were looking at the person across from you, eyes meeting while you drank it all in.
Mick missed that. It was an easy setup, and a great way to get a girl loose and ready for the finale. He remembered doing that back in the fifties and it had worked really well.
It had been a while since the last time he’d done it. Probably at least … thirty years? Something like that. Some town in Alabama, if he remembered right. The thing about Mick was, he didn’t need it that often. He saw the human men in the carnival, and they could go a couple-three times a night, some of them. That was almost obscene to him. Like rabbits to humans, he figured. No, once every thirty years was good for him, maybe a little more, maybe a little less.
But when he let it all go, boy, was it a doozy.
Mick was swinging his arms as he walked, just a natural rhythm he barely noticed anymore. He’d learned to adapt when he first got here, learned to watch the natives so he could blend in. You walked with your arms straight at your sides, you looked weird. Weird got attention. Normal let you blend, let you fade into the background.
Which was not a bad place for a demon to be.
It was a pretty warm night. Mick had been up north a couple times during the winter for winter carnivals, which was a damned asinine idea in his mind. Staying south during the winter was a winning idea to him, but he just worked here, he didn’t run the show.
The light was fading in the western sky, purple and orange kaleidoscoping together for a fantastic view. Mick wasn’t exactly a connoisseur of sunsets—he tended not to notice them when he was working—but this one was pretty amazing. The town was so quiet that the only thing he could hear was the sound of one other person walking just across the square.
He caught her eye as he made his way around. She was young, a pretty thing. Porcelain face like a little doll and big eyes. She just screamed with innocence. It was dripping off of her in the way she wore her jeans just a degree too loose for her body, in the way she averted her gaze after she caught him looking.
He sped up and changed directions. If she noticed, she didn’t panic, which was good. This was small town America, right? Nothing to fear here.
At least not yet.
“Hey,” Mick announced himself once he was within a half dozen feet of her. He’d crossed under some statue in the middle of the green space in the square just to get to her. She had been eyeing him warily as he’d approached but pretended she wasn’t. Mick caught it anyway.
“Hey, yourself,” she said, still wary. She’d stopped, but her whole body was held at an angle, like she was about to jackrabbit if he took another step toward her.
“My name’s Mick,” he said, nodding. He’d updated his wardrobe just for this. He always looked young, but some ragged skinny jeans from a thrift store in the last town coupled with a tight t-shirt and some black nail polish gave him a look he figured might appeal to a girl of her age. He called it his tortured-soul look.
“Okay,” she said, and he could tell she either wasn’t instantly impressed or she was a little too stunned to fall into the rhythm of a proper conversation.
“And you are …?” he prompted.
“Busy at the moment,” she said. She had the arms folded across her chest in a very obvious fuck off! manner. Still looked ready to run, though slightly less so than she had. More aggravated. Gave a little flush to her cheeks that Mick found appealing.
“Sorry to hear that,” Mick said, nodding his head. He applied the false sincerity like Spackle to try and keep her in place. “I’m only in town for a few days, and I was looking for somebody to show me around.”
She stared at him, like she was trying to decide how much more she was willing to tolerate from him. “Okay. Well. Here’s the square.” She unfolded her arms and waved them around to encompass the series of buildings around them. “This concludes our tour. Bye, now.” She started to turn but hesitated, and he caught it.
“Wait,” he said, utterly calm. She was right where he wanted her. “What’s your name?”
She turned back to him, and here he saw she was torn, like that age-old programming she’d been hit with since she was a child telling her not to talk with strangers was warring with her common sense which was saying, What does it matter? It’s just a name.
Common sense won the battle. “I’m Molly.”
“Nice to meet you, Molly.” He smiled at her.
“I gotta go,” she said. “See ya later.” She walked off but not quite so fast as she had when he’d first seen her.
Mick watched her go, nodding his head. Yep, she’d do. “Yes,” he said once she was good and out of earshot. “Yes, you will.”
3.
Lerner stood on the street in the warm summer night, trying to pretend he gave a shit about what he was looking at. Which was basically just a lot of blood at this point and not a lot else. “You seeing anything here?”
Duncan didn’t speak. He had his eyes closed, sniffing his way through what was left behind here. Lerner blew out air between his lips and made a raspberry noise that Duncan probably pretended not to notice. Ever since they’d come to this town and started mingling with the humans, Duncan had started acting more like them. It was bad enough he didn’t like to engage in any edifying discussions of the sort Lerner enjoyed, but now he was starting to pick up some eccentricities of the sort that made Lerner feel ill. “No, that’s fine,” Lerner said. “Just ignore me. No big deal. I’ll just sit here on the street and listen to those cicadas bitching in the distance while I wait for you to finish your guided meditation—or whatever these trendy humans would call it.”
“There’s a lot of blood here,” Duncan said. Quietly, of course.
“That’s something I could have told you without the need for guided meditation,” Lerner said. He leaned against the town car and tried to look like a government stiff. If he made himself look unapproachable enough, most people—surprise!—didn’t try to approach him.
“I can see something hit him …” Duncan said, musing to himself.
“I can see that too,” Lerner said.
“… but I can’t see what,” Duncan said, and his voice was all ponder and wondering. Which was not quite usual for him. “Runes.”
“Fucking Spellman,” Lerner swore, spitting little flecks of the saliva he barely produced out of his mouth. “That screen has caused us more problems since we’ve gotten here than any ten fuv’quava or thirty eich’yurn. So help me, if anyone drops a dime on him, I will give them a full-on human kiss on any part of their anatomy they want.”
Duncan just gave him the look, the one with the raised eyebrow. It was most of an expression, anyway.
Lerner turned away, fuming. It should have been easy, tracking down Spellman. It wasn’t like they hadn’t tried; the bastard had sold that Sygraath Gideon some highly objectionable shit. The sort of stuff that broke every single law of the Pact with room left over to break ’em again. But he’d also figured out how to dip some conjurings into the deep waters of the internet, and somehow every time Lerner or Duncan—or even Hendricks, when they’d tried to get him to do it for them—performed a search for the bastard, his website flashed nothing but taunting messages in old gril’vech. Which was insulting in and of itself, really, since the fucking gril’vech were a dirty, dirty people that were fully deserving of their special place in hell.
“I can’t see anything after the hit,” Duncan pronounced, and he almost sounded sad.
Lerner’s annoyance flashed a little hotter. “Oh, no, another one of the seven billion people on this world has met a tragic end. Whatever will we do?” He snorted. “Oh, right, somehow carry on living like every other person in history.”
Duncan was staring at the bloodstain, looking fucking solemn. “This man was the only one of them specifically like himself. No one else will ever be the same.”
Lerner felt his jaw drop slightly. “Did you just … pontificate?”
Duncan turned his head slowly to look at Lerner. “If each of them is individual, and different, then that makes them special. Special means unique, worthy of preservation.”
Lerner sucked in a breath that would ultimately do nothing but circulate in his essence before he let it back out. He took it anyway. “So grab a jar of formaldehyde and get to preserving. Where is this soft-hearted Duncan coming from? You’re beginning to alarm me with your thoughts on humans, and I’ve pondered just about every angle I can in this life and the next.”
“I just see … something special is all,” Duncan said. “Something worthy of upholding and protecting.”
Lerner felt a grudging, partial agreement to that. “Well, we’ve got protecting and upholding to do, that’s for sure.” But at least part of it was protecting his own ass, Lerner reflected, because an OOC who didn’t do his job ended up in a much warmer climate. Lerner was about to mention that to Duncan, but he dismissed it as a waste of that breath he’d just taken. Besides, it was easier to just stand here and listen to the faint hum in the night of … something?
Lerner frowned and jerked upright. What the hell was that?
***
“You want my wife to go to a whorehouse with you,” Arch said, staring at Hendricks, who was standing in his living room. Erin had dropped him off on the way to her patrol. Apparently she’d known why he was coming over—which was to ask this very thing. Arch made a mental note to have a word with Erin on his next shift—and to try very hard not to make it a swear word.
“When you say it like that,” Hendricks said, standing in the middle of the living room, shrinking inside his big black drover coat and cowboy hat, “it sounds …” His voice trailed off.
“Wildly inappropriate?” Arch asked. He cast a look over at Alison, who was watching the proceedings with muted interest. She did pretty much everything with muted interest lately, at least since that blow-up they’d had after the dam. Actually, before that, even. The fight after the dam was just a short moment where things had seemed to be different.
Although what she’d done to him in the car earlier had been a pretty big departure from the norm of late, too.
“I was gonna just stay simple and go with ‘bad,’” Hendricks said, “but if you want to get specific, I think we could add ‘awkward’ and ‘illegal’ to the billing.”
“What does this gain us?” Arch asked. “Other than a possible solicitation charge for the two of you?” Arch’s expression deepened to genuine vexation. “Also, how do you even know that Starling—Lucia—whatever—will accept both of you as … clients?” He said the word with a genuine distaste, though he was trying desperately not to be overly judgmental.
“Just a hunch,” Hendricks said, glancing at Alison and smiling tightly.
“And if she says, ‘No way in Hades’?” Arch asked.
“We’ll tell her Alison is there to watch,” Hendricks said.
Arch knew he blanched at that. Knew it, and could do nothing about it. The whole discussion sent an uncomfortable spasm up his spine. The thought of his wife with anyone else—woman, man or anything in between—was enough to cause discomfort. The thought of putting her in a position where she might get arrested for it, well, that was—
“I’ll do it,” Alison said languidly, like it was of no more import than switching the wash to the dryer.
“Why?” Arch asked with a blessed fire from on high.
“I want to meet this Starling,” Alison said, and she shifted her attention to look at him. He could see her eyes prodding at him, gauging his reaction. “She saved your life, too, after all.”
“We don’t even know if this is Starling,” Arch said weakly. He could feel the conversation spinning out of his control, that he was losing the argument. He hadn’t even known he was in an argument, he had just figured he’d batter Hendricks over the head with how dumb the idea was for a few minutes before turning him loose the way a dog finally lets go of a bone.
“And we never will if we don’t chase this rabbit down her hole,” Hendricks said with a grin that disappeared after a moment. “I should probably avoid hole-related metaphors until we’re done with this mission.”
“It’s not a mission,” Arch said. “It’s not an anything. You’re trying to have a conversation with a lady of the evening about something that she has already assured me she has no knowledge of.”
“You believe her?” Hendricks said. “Erin says this Lucia is the spitting image of Starling. Said she was in the car with her at the dam and suddenly our red-headed Clark Kent disappears and Super Starling swoops in to help save the day.”
“I don’t like it,” Arch said, crossing his arms against his chest. He flexed his pectorals against his arm.
“Relax,” Hendricks said. “Nothing’s gonna happen.”
Arch just looked at him like he was dumb. “You’re taking my wife to a brothel where some red-headed mystery lady with super powers resides in her mild-mannered secret identity as a hooker. Yeah, there’s no potential for that to go awry at all.”
“When you put it like that,” Hendricks said, almost sarcastic. Then he turned to Alison. “Shall we go pay for a sex act that’s still unlawful in Tennessee?”
Alison frowned at him. “What act are you talking about?”
Hendricks looked like he was going answer bluntly, but Arch caught his eye and the cowboy withered a little. “Uh … um, well, the uh … oral kind.”
“That’s not illegal here,” Alison said calmly.
“What?” Hendricks had that squinched-face frown like he was caught by surprise. “Erin told me it was.”
“Well, she’s wrong,” Alison said, getting up. Arch watched her as she made her way toward the bedroom. “Arch would never let me give him head if
it was illegal.” She paused at the door and looked back. “Ask him. I just did it earlier tonight, in fact, in the patrol car.” She disappeared into the bedroom.
Arch felt his face squeeze tight for some reason. Some real obvious reason. But all he could do was look down at his shoes.
***
Erin had gotten a call about a disturbance over near the park on Creek Boulevard. She was the only one on patrol tonight, though Fries and Reines were supposed to be hanging close to a radio in case she needed an assist. It was getting near midnight, though, and nothing had come in so far that would require her full attention, much less the assistance of another deputy.
She’d had to get out of the car for this one. Rafton Park overlooked the Caledonia River, and she could see it up ahead, sparkles moving over the water from the moon overhead and the street lamps that lined the walkways of the park. Still, she had that big damned Maglite in her hand and at the ready. She wondered if she’d feel less jumpy if she’d been doing this a week earlier and decided that, absent the knowledge of the existence of demons, this still would be a creepy-ass way to spend the witching hour, knowing how many people had died of mysterious and horrible causes in Midian this week.
She spared a thought for Lerner and Duncan and wondered if they’d found anything at the site of Tim Connor’s unfortunate end. Probably not. After all, what clue was there in blood splatters?
The wind whispered to her as she walked, boots squishing in the damp grass. The park was stretched out in front of her, the streetlamps flickering overhead like someone at the power company was refusing to give them the juice they needed to run properly. That wasn’t technically her problem, but it would be if they went out.
Crane, R [ Southern Watch 03] Corrupted Page 7