Redeemer

by C. E. Murphy

  "You're saying his loyalty was to some European demon? Not somebody here?"

  Rosie's face fell. "Demons have loyalties? Really?"

  "Only because some are stronger than others and can command it. The really strong ones, they can double themselves. Redoubling, we call it. They can take over more than one human soul at a time. It weakens them, but it also spreads them out so they're that much harder to capture. Unless you get the original host, you're basically just letting the demon go. The vampires are the only ones who don't do that, because they need flesh and spirit to survive. Most demons just eat souls."

  "This keeps getting better and better."

  "I could write to her," Pearl said slowly. "To Johnny's mistress. I could write and see what she knows about the boss demon. I could—I could make up a story and tell her the boss killed him, or something, something that might make her want to tell me anything she knows? I mean, she couldn't tell I was lying to her from across a whole ocean, right?" She looked nervously at Hank. "Right?"

  "Can demons kill each other?" Rosie demanded over Pearl's question. "You said only Redeemers could kill them."

  "Redeemers are the only humans who can kill them," Hank corrected. "Demons fight and kill each other sometimes. But we don't want demons declaring war on each other, Miss Ransom. Whether the rock hits the pitcher or the pitcher hits the rock …"

  Rosie sighed. "Right. It's not good for the pitcher either way. But they can? So Pearl's story could work. And maybe we'd learn something about the king, which is more than you've managed to do so far."

  "Thanks for the reminder. I'm doing what I can without many resources, Miss Ransom. There've been a whole rash of—" Hank clicked his jaw shut and Rosie sat up straight.

  "A rash of what? Something that Detective Johnson knows about and they're not letting on the news? What is it?"

  "Deaths," Hank said after a pause. "The past year or so, there've been a lot of deaths. Suicides, car wrecks, dead wives, that kind of thing. Stuff that looks mostly normal from the outside, except one thing. Their eyes are white. The pupils and irises are gone. It's a sign that a soul has been eaten by a demon, and there have been a lot of those here in Detroit. My counterparts over in Chicago haven't seen so many of them. I'll have to check in with St. Louis and New Orleans." He nodded to Pearl in thanks for the pointer, and she flushed with pleasure. "Johnson doesn't like it," he said to Rosie, "and I can't tell him what's going on. But what I don't understand is why I can't find any hint of their hideout. You said yourself that I'm young, Miss Ransom, and I am. But I'm still good at my job, and I should have found them by now. I'm afraid somebody high up in the city—and maybe in Ex Libris—is deliberately keeping me in the dark."

  NINE

  A cold drop spilled down Rosie's spine, making her sit up even straighter. "That's why you don't want to tell your superiors about me. It's not that you're all alone out here—"

  "I am!"

  "—it's that you think they're out to get you!" Rosie jolted out of the couch, hands snapping into the air in exasperation. "The boy who's part of a secret society thinks there's somebody out to get him! That's just rich! Gosh, mister, how much do they pay you to be this paranoid? And if you think your bosses are the bad guys, how come you brought us to one of their hideouts? You're nice to look at, library man, but I'm starting to think maybe you're not too smart."

  "He makes nice sandwiches," Pearl whispered from the couch, like she didn't want to call attention to herself but couldn't help it at the same time. "He doesn't have to be so smart."

  Insult flew across Hank's face, but Rosie laughed aloud. "I guess you'll make somebody a good wife someday, library man." Her laughter fled, and Hank's glare faded into satisfaction, like he thought he'd been dour enough to chase her laughter away. His satisfaction faded too, though, as she said, "Honestly, just give it to me straight, Hank, or I'm gonna start thinking Irene's right and you're just a creep trying to make time with me. What's your deal?"

  "You don't really think that." Hank sank into one of the chairs and rubbed long hands over his face. "I am good at my job," he repeated, more quietly than before. "I have a knack for rooting out demon nests. I used to do it for them in Europe, get our teams pointed in the right direction. It's why they gave me an assignment this big to begin with. I should have dug up something by now, and I haven't, and that bothers me. So yeah. If I keep you out of Ex Libris's sights but give you everything I know, maybe you'll be able to see what I'm missing. You just being here already shed light on Goode killing girls, and that's something I should have known was happening. If I'm being blindsided …" He drew a breath and looked up, letting his hands fall between his knees. "Then I need help. And if I need help, I don't want to show my hand to Ex Libris. I want to keep you secret."

  "Like a secret romance," Pearl breathed. Hank and Rosie both turned wrinkled eyebrows at her, and her eyes widened. "What? It's romantic!"

  "Honey, I think you need some more to eat and some sleep." Rosie went past the sofa to the kitchen and made another sandwich for Pearl, saying, "Now was it so hard to say you needed help?" to Hank. "Couldn't you have just done that in the first place? Blond men shouldn't try to be mysterious, and girls don't need a big strong handsome man to lead them through danger without telling them what's going on. I'm the Redeemer here, mister. I'm the one you're going to want between you and trouble, anyways."

  She brought Pearl's sandwich out to her and found Hank staring up at her from his seat in the chair. "I almost wish I'd known you before, Miss Ransom. I'd like to know if you were always this cocky, or if it's something that happens when you become a Redeemer."

  Rosie shrugged. "Probably anybody who can punch rivets all day long gets pretty confident. Are you really on your own out here?"

  "Largely, yes. There are passers-through, and my supervisor comes over from Chicago quarterly. He's due before the end of the month." Hank sat back again to pinch the bridge of his nose. "I'd like to have something before then."

  "Something more than me." Rosie sat down too, using the pad of her index finger to pick up crumbs from her sandwich plate. "Is there anybody else in Detroit who might rat me—us—out?"

  "Demons." Hank's hand moved to his knee, massaging it. "Sometimes there are informants. Someone willing to risk selling a more powerful demon out, in the hopes we'll overlook them in the name of bagging bigger game. Even the powerful do it once in a while, hoping to create an opening for themselves."

  "And the librarians?"

  Rosie bit her cheek to keep a smile inside as Hank sighed. "We're not librarians. We try to set it up so we nab the informer, too, either during our sting or soon after. But they'll stop offering information if we don't keep our end of the bargain, so sometimes …" He spread his hands.

  "So sometimes, you let the demons go. Are you sure you're the good guys?"

  "Lady, if you're ever out there with nothing between you and evisceration but a quaking kid with a piece of paper and a stick of charcoal, then you can talk, all right? Until then, zip it, sweetheart."

  "Unless I can figure out how to carry a riveting gun around all the time, I might end up there. Do demons know when a Redeemer is around?" Rosie pushed her plate away, shivering. She kept asking questions like they were so normal, so reasonable, except they were about demons and her own ability to kill them. Maybe her parents were right and it hadn't really hit her yet.

  Hank's mouth twisted in frustration. "I don't know. I told you, there's not a lot in the literature about your kind."

  "I could ask Johnny's mistress. Maybe—maybe tell her the king had a girl soldier who was the one that killed Johnny?" Pearl asked hesitantly.

  "No. That's setting Miss Ransom up as a target. If they can't tell when a Redeemer is near, pointing them at her is just asking for trouble. It's not a bad thought, though," Hank admitted as Pearl slumped with disappointment. She perked up, reminding Rosie of a puppy who'd been given a treat. The poor girl needed someone to take care of her, although it sure as heck
couldn't be Rosie.

  She glanced around the little apartment. "Hank, is there any reason Pearl can't stay here a while? More than a couple days, I mean. You said it's a safe place, and that you're the only active librarian—"

  He opened his mouth and shut it again, resigned. Rosie grinned and kept talking. "—in Detroit. Can't she just stay here a while, where it's safe and she can get her feet back under her? She needs some time to find a place of her own. She's still got the factory job, if she wants to go back to it, and—do you have any savings, Pearl?"

  Pearl shook her head. "I gave my paychecks to Johnny. He said he'd take care of us."

  Rich would probably expect Rosie to do the same thing, if she could even keep her job after he came home. A hollow place opened up in Rosie's belly, but she pushed it down. "So you need a while to save some up. Please, Hank? Besides," she added quickly, as his face tightened like he was preparing to deliver bad news, "she's the first still-living person a Redeemer's ever, uh, Redeemed. Don't you want to keep an eye on her, make sure she's okay? Where better than in one of your own safehouses?"

  Hank's blue gaze sharpened on her. "You play dirty, Miss Ransom."

  "Don't I just." Rosie smiled at Pearl. "Six weeks tops, okay? You need to work hard and save up so you can get a place of your own." She turned the smile to Hank, whose expression softened. "Okay, so that's dealt with. If we don't know whether demons can sense me, do we know if I can sense them?"

  "You ask a lot of smart questions, Miss Ransom. I wish I had the answers. Could you tell with Pearl?"

  "Not until I got kind of angry and cold inside. I can't go around angry all the time."

  "But it means the ability is there, so it can be trained. Ex Libris trains artists to capture demons. I don't see why I couldn't train a Redeemer to sense them."

  The corner of Rosie's mouth quirked. "Except you can't find any demons here anyways, so who am I going to practice on? Look, as long as you don't go getting high and mighty about what you know, when it's not a lot more than I do—"

  "I do have access to archives here," Hank said, offended again. "But the information about Redeemers is limited."

  "Like I said," Rosie said dryly. "Anyways, we can figure it out. This is what we do know: your bosses sent you here because they heard about a king demon running the Midwest. Pearl says there's a boss demon that runs the whole Detroit River at least, so that's some, what do you call it, um—"

  "Corroboration," Hank said.

  Rosie's eyebrows rose. "I was gonna go for ‘support', but okay, Mister Dictionary Man. Anyways, you say there's people turning up dead, demon-killed, but there's no sign of where they're at, and you reckon you're good enough at your job that you'd be able to find a, uh, what did you call it, a nest, if it was here, unless somebody's hiding it from you."

  "And the only people who should know enough about demons to hide a nest are Ex Libris," Hank finished.

  "Or demons," Rosie argued. "Pearl says there are industrialists involved. People come from a pretty good distance away to work in the factories, Hank. Maybe your nest isn't in Detroit at all. Maybe it's out in Flint, and they just come into the big city to hunt."

  "My superiors would have sent me to Flint—"

  "If they knew they should," Rosie said impatiently. "But you said you're shorthanded, that all your librarians are over fighting in Europe, and nobody knows what's going on here. Maybe they figured a big city's easy to hide in and a smart place to start, but if you can't find anything here, you might need to go farther afield!"

  "They said my region was Detroit!"

  "Well, jeez, mister, you say there's no sign of monsters in Detroit, so maybe you'd better show some initiative! Or did getting your knee chewed up wreck your ambition, too? You work for the police, so use that to ask around and see if anything's gone strange in Flint or, heck, down in Toledo!"

  Hank spat, "I'm an errand boy for the police," and shoved to his feet, limping heavily toward the door. "I don't have a badge. I don't carry a gun. I'm just a shot-up local kid who needs a break, so they have me drive drunks home at three in the morning and fill out paperwork while the real officers get important work done." He leaned on the doorknob, angry face turned in profile to the women. "Pearl, you can stay here a while. I'll bring groceries in so you're not starved."

  "Are you running away from me, library man?" Rosie demanded. "Is that how you solve your troubles? By getting out of Dodge? No wonder you haven't found anything to report to Ex Libris. Don't you walk out that door! Don't you—oooh!" She stomped her foot as Hank left, then spun toward Pearl, just about spitting with fury. "I'm going to go yell at that boy some more. Will you be all right here?"

  Pearl nodded, eyes round with interest. "You have to come back and tell me what happens." She hesitated. "You will come back, right, Miss Rosie? I don't think I have any other friends left. I got kinda split up from them when Johnny came along."

  Rosie's anger faded and she crouched to take Pearl's hands. "You bet I'll come back. And we'll see each other at the factory, Pearl. It'll be all right. You've been really brave."

  "I was really dumb," Pearl whispered.

  "People do a lot of dumb things for love."

  "If I loved him why aren't I sad he's dead? How come I'm just glad I'm not?"

  "Because he was a monster, and you're not." Rosie stood and stepped back. "Get some rest, all right? And maybe start writing that letter to Goode's mistress back in France." She hesitated. "If you think she might know something about Redeemers, ask."

  Pearl nodded and Rosie chased out the door after Hank, her anger rekindling easily as she caught him hitching down the first flight of stairs. "So what is it?" she shouted after him. "Another one of those three out of seven days? So what if you're an errand boy? You're still with the police. Use it! Or are you afraid if you push hard on this, you'll fail, and then what with the knee and the errand boy and everything, you won't have anything left at all? So you got torn up, Hank. At least you came home alive. A lot of boys haven't."

  "I shouldn't have either!"

  "You want to tell that to your mom? Your pop? You want to tell that to anybody who loves you? Because I've seen a lot of girls who've gotten telegrams, Hank, and I don't think one of them would give a damn if their soldiers came home broken or changed, just as long as he got to come home."

  Rosie sat down suddenly on the top stair, face in her hands as the fight ran out of her. "I can't know what it's like," she said, muffled, then dropped her hands. Hank stood at the landing, leaning on the stair rail. He looked slimmer without the coat, afternoon heat sticking his button-down shirt to his shoulders, and the line of his undershirt making a wrinkle along his shoulder blade. "Watching the men in your unit get killed by monsters, and making it out of that yourself, I can't know what that's like. But I guess I know what it's like to find out too late that there are monsters, and things that can stop them. I guess I know what it's like to feel like now the only thing you can do is try to stop them yourself, in memory of your friends. And I guess I know what it's like to have somebody look at you and figure you're not worth spit, whether it's because your knee doesn't work anymore or if it's because you're a woman. So don't you get angry at me, mister. We can be angry together, that's fine, but don't you dare walk out on me, because I might be brassy, but if demons can tell when a Redeemer is around, then the truth is …" Rosie trailed off, then finished more quietly. "The truth is that without your help I'm not going to last a week. I can't walk around with a rivet gun all the time."

  Hank turned around as she fell silent, looking up the stairs at her. His hair, wet enough from sweat to be brown at his temples, needed to be combed. He looked younger with it messy, and sounded younger still. "Are you scared?"

  "No. Yes." Rosie thinned her lips and glanced at the wall beside her. Child-sized handprints and dents from knees or furniture marred it with ordinary little scars. "I'm not scared or upset by what I did, even though everybody thinks I should be. I'm scared to death of runnin
g into another demon and being unprepared. If there are others here, more than just Goode—"

  "There are. There have to be," Hank said with a certainty that sounded like he hoped to convince himself.

  Rosie nodded. "Then I want to help find them, and save them if I can, like I did with Pearl. And if I can't …" She sighed. "Then I want to make sure they don't hurt anybody else. So even if you're scared, library man, I'm going to need you to push, because nobody's going to tell me anything."

  "I am scared. I'm afraid I've been put here because they figure I'm a good patsy. Crippled kid back from the war, of course he couldn't be expected to find anything, so when there's an uprising, they've got somebody convenient to blame."

  "You really don't trust your bosses, do you?"

  "It's not that I don't trust them. It's that I do trust myself. If there are demons here, Rosie, I should be able to find them. If I can't, then something else is happening. I can't explain it. I just know it's true."

  "Say I believe you. It could be something simple. Something like they're not in Detroit. That means we need to start looking in other places."

  "It could be. I'd just like to think the men who sent me home to protect my city know enough to be certain it's the source of trouble. But if they do know that much, and I still can't find it …."

  Rosie nodded. "Then either you can't trust them, or you can't trust yourself."

  "And I've known myself a lot longer."

  Rosie smiled, and Hank studied her before offering a bleak smile in return. "You know, you could just tell me to go to Hell. Walk away, leave all this behind you. Nobody would blame you."