Just put the pen down and wait for her to resume.
'In a job like this, you must see lots of women taken advantage of, I suppose.'
'Ava. I want you to be certain. This is not a private detective's office. I see all kinds who have been taken advantage of and... I don't care. People get taken advantage of every day. Some even get a taste for it. I'm not here to investigate an ex-boyfriend, deal out some justice or even up accounts or anything like that. I'm here because I handle problems most can't. So please, just get on with the story.'
She nods. We both light up, the tension somehow a little easier.
'We used to... dress up. It was something we liked. Do you know what I mean by that? Well. At first it was silly but he liked it. Doctors and naughty nurses. Then... queens came up. We used to smoke this preposterous hash he'd get from some Egyptian guy he knew. We could get so into it. Cloaks and crowns and a gold-leaf chair. He'd worship me like an Empress and I was so stoned I...'
'You began to feel like it was real. '
'Yes. How did you know?'
Because that's how magic works. Set the scene. Play the part until you become it. No excuse for disbelief.
It's surely my kind of job.
'I'll skip to the end. It all got too much. He would only call me Queen Ava. Or Your Majesty. He began to forget what was real. We broke up. When I was away from him, I could see it. Close, not so much.'
Nod. Here comes the bit I need.
'I booked some awful modelling job. Me in my underpants while some idiot murmurs and the makeup and hair girls bitch behind your back. What was important is that it was far, far away. 12 hour flight. I jumped on the plane and when I got into the hotel... He was there.'
Make a note and wait.
'Look, there's no way he could have done that. I took that job and was in the airport within three hours. My agent was with me, getting me through customs on both ends quickly.'
'Celebrity style.'
'It sounds awful I know but... If you could do it, wouldn't you?'
Once, I had a job just like that. The old days with Jon, before the Hollow. Say nothing.
'Limo waiting. All that. There was no way. Just physically, no way, for him to have beaten me there, let alone get into the hotel. Let alone know which hotel I was in. I've had private investigators back track this story. Real ones. You know what I mean. Licensed ones. He wasn't on my plane. They've reviewed the security tapes, checked passenger manifests. He wasn't on the plane.'
She sucks in breath. Stubs out. Lights up again, making an unpleasant face that means she's OD-ing on nicotine. Tells it in a rush.
'I told him it was done and he... he changed. I mean, he physically transformed. His skin peeled off. Became red. Horns. A tail. You know what he looked like. The Devil. Pitchfork, goat legs. All of it.'
Alright.
'He said I was never going to be the Queen of Hell, that everything he'd done was to hurt me. I ran. I just looked at him and I knew it was all real. The smell of it. Sulphur.'
Brimstone.
'His eyes. His breath. His strength.'
She ran of course. Ran across the world. Until.
'I couldn't take any more. I saw a priest. He blessed me. Suddenly, Sower couldn't get too close to me anymore. Ten feet, I think. But I'd be at a bar, there he'd be across from me. On a plane, I'd look into the economy section, there he was, front row. He found any phone number I had. The only place... we figured this out... The only place he never could just get in to was a house owned by someone. Not rented. Even then, look out the window and there he was.'
'What did he say?'
Takes a moment to think. 'He never spoke. Just stared. It scared me.'
'And that brought you here.'
'By then, all my friends saw I was losing my mind. I wasn't working. He'd get backstage. Jesus, never get in a fight with him. I saw him stare down security guys, some of the best in the world. Film shoots. Everything. Everywhere. A friend said Lazlo had helped her mother out in the 80s and to give him a try. Lazlo set this up. And here I am. Back in the fucking City. I hate it here.'
Hard to blame her.
'What friend?'
'Just a friend.'
All done. Close my notepad and stay silent for a moment. She's goes rigid, her sharp face avid.
Beautiful. Wonder if that's affected this next decision.
'I'll be expensive. Very expensive.'
'Money isn't an issue.'
'Advance of five. That again each week.'
She takes out a credit card. I stare at her. She nods, puts the plastic away and counts out bills. Whenever anyone tells you that being spiritual is about being above worldly things, you know you're talking to someone who doesn't know a goddamn thing about magic.
'Then we're done. But you'll need to stay in The City. I may need your assistance. Otherwise, you'll hear from me for an update in a week, although I may need additional information.'
She tells me her contact details. Leaves. Done.
This is going to be an easy job.
Well easy.
Because there's no such thing as the Devil.
ii
First things first.
Leave this hotel and head over to another equally divey joint. Feel paranoid about it but I'm not taking chances. A beautiful woman paying large? It could be a set up. Probably not.
No point in taking chances.
I unpack the old gym bag in the ratty room and light up. Look at the pile of clothes, books, pens and scribbled notes and see my cell phone. Haven't turned it on in days. It's old and reliable and about ten people in the world have the number. Switch it on.
Two messages.
One is from the Library. Ha ha. No. Whatever they want, chastisement or apology, need no apology. Delete. Another from a number I don't recognise. Take a moment, lay it on a notepad. Draw a warding circle around it. Never been hexed by SMS but there's always a first time. Bite my lip, concentrate on that, ignoring all conscious thought. Ward spell, quick as that.
Check this message.
Luanne. Aunt Luanne.
Scarlet's Aunt.
She's in town for a few days. Luanne's smart enough to not say why. The wedding is this weekend.
Scarlet and I were never family types and we only went to see her people a time or two. Out in the hills and vales where Scarlet learnt magic in the swamps turned red by pollution. Toxic swamp hoodoo, that was the clan tradition before she came to the big city and turned wild girl in glasses. I don't play that happy families shit and her people were closed off. Her mum and dad had no need for me, I had no need for them and it was cool.
But Luanne and I always got on. Youngest of the family, she was only ten when Scarlet was born. Luanne liked to drink lightning, play cards and talk magic. We got on well enough and she was smart enough to see I was never going to be at ease with the hundred cousins Scarlet seem to have, all gathered round come Christmas.
I like Luanne well enough. But I don't know what she wants. Delete.
Daytime. Nothing interesting happens in the daytime in my line of work. I fish out a book. Skim through it. Put it back in the bag.
Haven't read much since the thing with the Old Man. Since the Library sold me out.
She's getting married this weekend.
I put on the TV. People are happy and saying clever things to each other.
I watch for a long time.
iii
The Devil, then.
So who is the Devil? Is he a fallen angel who lives in God's triplemax, messing with people over and over? Seems pointless. People can get used to anything. Make no mistake, the people in hell get happy.
Is he the beautiful Doré Devil, posing all sexy against that rock? Red skin and hooves? Martin Luther thought he was a gentleman who had a thing for dramatic shadow posing and arguing theology. The English thought he was a gentleman, blue britches and a swishing walking stick. There's some guys in the Middle East who think he's the Peacock Angel, an eman
ation of God who made the world and cried for seven thousand years after, which doesn't really make up for it.
Does he live in hell? Of course he does. "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the Devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour".
So no. Not in hell.
Perhaps he's ha-Satan. The Opposer. The Son of God who messes with humans, testing their loyalty, the cosmic political officer. Perhaps he's a dragon, waiting to wipe out the earth in the big showdown at the end of time. Perhaps he's the wandering Enemy Angel who tempts men from their prayers.
Maybe he's Ahriman, the great evil the world was created to trap, which explains a few things to me.
They're not all the same... person. The attributes clash. Is the Accuser working for God? Is he punk rebel Lucifer? Can't be both. Is there truth behind the truth? Primal myth? Sure. But how far back do you go? Because go far enough and the Devil isn't the Devil at all. He's just an angel with a job to do or a jammed up pagan god. And if that's true, then he's no Devil at all.
The Devil doesn't exist.
So, maybe, this woman's Devil is just one of a thousand different petty spirits who like to pretend to be the Devil. Gods and spirits don't rise up just because you believe in them. They come into the world because you need them. And that works different ways. Some godforms are made because human language gives them a shape. Zeus is every story about every angry dad. Coyote is every sly bastard. We make stories up and the gods slip into them like fine tailoring. Some are entities that are already there who demand we make up stories about them.
So perhaps this Devil is just a little story, a little idea given form and ambition, fashionable for a hundred years or so until the culture needs another Devil, a better story to describe evil and temptation. It stays the same while our stories conjure up some more modern Satan, leaving it to wander the earth again, or living in some sadist dream of hellfire.
That's not the Devil then either. That's just a spirit.
Although. Could be a tough one, this shadow of the serpent.
Easy money. Something to do while the woman I want, who shopped me, gets married to her man.
iv
Something brewing. Night time now. This is wolf territory. The gangsters are patrolling their hunting grounds. Dealers on street corners. The live shows are starting up and the night is sick and green with sodium lights. Slumming students from midtown, money in their pockets, come to see the shows. Fat as lambs.
The lifers, old ones on the stoops of townhouses, watching the same old scenes, some playing dominoes or chess, been looking the same scenes thirty years or more. The shooting galleries opening up, where a concerned local government gives junkies a place to nod out. The bodegas where they'll sell you a cigarette for fifty cents. The food joints, selling lamb and garlic and blasts of hot air. Summer so thick it runs down your back and all the girls are dressed tiny.
Walk through it all. Eyes straight ahead. No one knows me here. Everything is too loud and too alive and I have nothing to offer it.
Walk east, heading into midtown where the townhouses and walk -ups give way to condominiums and confections of metal and glass. This is where I'm going. The trees on the street look healthier. The men are wearing suits, the women in silk. Restaurants here, dining by candlelight.
No dealers on the street. You go to them in this part of the City. Ten more blocks richward and they come to you.
Upmarket apartment blocks. Here to visit a guy I know. He's alright.
Buzz the number. Wait a moment. Again. A code. The door opens with the zippo click of the invisible unlock. Ride the elevator. Hah. Pizzalgo has left his mark, a tiny rune in this cab, a child's scrawl of graffiti not many eyes would notice.
Pizzalgo has the door open. He's waiting. We shake hands. No hugs, thank Christ. He brings me in.
'How's is hip?' is all he says as I sit down at his dining table, ignoring the couch. He hands me a beer. Nice place. Soft lightning. Carpets. Kitchen overlooking the lounge room. Balcony open to let in the breeze, looking out over a boring street scene. Weird place for a punk. Suspect he's dossing down at a slumming rich girl's place.
'Not so bad.'
How does he know about that? A sadist of my former acquaintance worked it over in a pair of steel caps. Smashed the knee, hip and ankle, hip the worst. Not many people saw it.
'Such a wound, take care of it. My uncle, he get a thing like that, soon, he cannot walk too far. Stops. Gets fat and weird.'
'I'm already weird and I'm working on fat.'
He's cooking and he makes me a plate. Thai. He sits down with me and we eat in quiet. He's listening to 70s Rough Trade punk. He's waiting for me to make the move. He can wait a bit longer.
Pizzalgo used to be an exorcist. Proper. For the office in Rome.
Exorcists used to be priests who took minor orders in the Church about five hundred years ago before they outsourced the job to civilians, but the Church has a bad habit of holding on to traditions. About twenty five years ago, a new order of exorcists formed and they sort of informally revived some traditions. Pizzalgo, a young postulant, got involved with them. He'd had a run in with a pretty nasty possessing entity as a boy. He worked with the International Order of Exorcists for ten years.
But Pizzalgo was a young Italian punk. He couldn't help his faith and his desire to serve God anymore than he could help his desire to get drunk and smash inherited power structures in the face. In the end, they found him passed out on the streets, his head carved open by Roman skinheads after a fight at a fascist Oi! gig. By then, he'd embraced Liberation Theology. The Exorcists kicked him out, Liberation was too far for their political tastes.
Eventually he found his way to The City, fell in with the Chorister, a Christian magic order, and specialised in casting out bad spirits. Asked them for consults on a case, I recognised the bands he played to get him into Gnosis. We had a few bands we liked in common so even when I was working for the Library, we could swap Batmobile LPs or whatever. We're okay with each other.
We drink beer. He talks about his new band. He's a drummer, inevitably.
Food finished, he cleans up while I have a smoke on his balcony.
Calls me in.
'Where is your girl tonight? The one, you know with the muscles?'
'Couldn't make it'
'I want to ask you, have you taken her as a famulous. Or a soror mystica?'
He means like an apprentice or have we formed a bond, man and woman, union of opposites type thing.
'Nah. She doesn't Work. Not her scene.'
'This is good news for Pizzalgo. I want to ask her to go out!'
Not happening but no need to spike his tyres. Raise an eyebrow at him and he takes the point.
'Alright, to work then.'
The Hollow. The mask-thing that stole my best and only friend. Time to take it down. Time to get Jon back.
'This is a bad thing my friend and perhaps not my line of work. This Hollow thing. Perhaps it is no Devil like we think, eh?
'I never thought it had to be a demon.'
'But demons are the spirit most like to possess a body, eh? Just like in the movies.'
'Pizzalgo, this isn't amateur hour, mate. We don't need to swap Linda Blair war stories.'
'Your mother sorts socks in hell, no?'
'What?'
'TV where I grow up, very censored, yes? Not much swearing on it.'
'Let's get on with it.'
'You are a serious man, Lark. No time for jokes.'
'Not about this. To the meat of it.'
He grins and runs a hand over his shaved head. He's got fading wounds. He's been in it again, throwing punches for anarchy.
'You know magic. Spirits go where we want them to go. Only very strong ones keep their own sense of... sense of themself, no? Magicians like you and me, we fuck them up. Their identities. So at first I think, perhaps this is some spirit that thinks it is a Devil and takes over bodies.'
'I don't think it
's a Devil.'
'Neither do I. Too strong. I read your notes. I listen to you talk. You do not have faith, is this the right thing to think?'
Do I believe in God? It's the same as the Devil. Is he the supreme architect of the universe? Spinoza's boring natural laws? Judge God of a desert tribe that got real lucky?
'Not in the way you mean.'
'You should come with me to church. Get washed in the blood, my friend. Give away all this badness in your life and follow Him.'
'Sure. Just as soon as you get to the fucking point.'
He looks at me and his smile fades away.
'OK you serious man. I look at all my old books and this and that and I even make some phone calls to old friends who are not so happy to hear from me. We cross check all the names you give me that the Hollow is known as. Nothing serious learnt. No promising leads. It is not a Devil. The people I know, they would recognise a demon.'
I light a smoke. He frowns at me and extends a dirty cup to use as an ashtray.
'Give this up. Tobacco companies are bad. They do not treat their workers well and they tell many lies.'
I rest my fingers against my forehead. Hurry him up. No mood for world-saving tonight.
'So we do more research. It is an African thing, in sub-Saharan art style. We look and we find history of Leopard cults, or Jaguars. I forget which. Men dress up as these big cats and take on a bad spirit. Kill enemies of the tribe in bad ways. Cut them up with sharp rocks, eat them. Is an ok thing, to tribe. Does not break taboos because, hey, was not young warrior, was leopard or jaguar totem.'
Ash into the cup. Promising.
'We follow this lead because, if this is not a Devil but takes over the minds of young warriors, we can make better guesses. Deduction, yeah? This takes some big work, Lark. You will be impressed with me I think.'
Wait.
'Okay. We do some reading, find a link to something Hollowing. Find this in missionary notes, hidden in certain archives. These are brave men and women, spreading the Good Word but they are not sensitive people. They want to save souls, not respect tribal faiths. This is a troubling thing for a man like me.'
Devil City Page 2