Demon Moon (Prof Croft Book 1) (21 page)

“Y-y-you-y-
you
!” He stood and shuffled backwards in a pair of ragged tennis shoes.

I was pretty sure he didn’t recognize me. The only time we’d been this close, he’d been out like a light, the filaments of his mind blown. This was mental illness talking. I decided to use it to my advantage, ethics be damned. I needed to find out where he’d gotten the spell to summon a shrieker.

“Is that Clifford?” I asked, affecting pleasant surprise. “Wow, I haven’t seen you in a month of Sundays.”

He hesitated, his grimy fingers wringing between the flaps of an army surplus jacket.

I patted my chest. “St. Martin’s outreach service?”

I was trying to present myself as harmlessly as I could, but at mention of the church, Clifford’s face contorted in what seemed pain. Tendons popped from his shaggy neck. His thick lips sputtered, but the words, as well as his breath, were trapped in his shuddering chest. When a bluish shade of burgundy spread from his cheeks to his forehead, I reached out a hand.

“Hey, are you—”

“Demon!” he shrieked, stumbling backwards.

Demon?
Was he picking up the shadow of Thelonious I carried? Sometimes the mentally afflicted were also endowed with powers of perception.

“No, no,” I tried, “I’m with St. Martin’s—”

“Demon!” he repeated.
“You are of your father SATAN and he was a MURDERER and abode NOT in the truth because there is NO truth in him and when he speaketh a LIE he speaketh of his own for he is a LIAR and deceiveth the whole world and he was cast OUT into the earth and his angels were cast out with him…”
His words expired in a straining gasp, even as his lips continued to move. But in the mash-up of biblical passages, I’d picked up a theme.

“Who lied?” I asked.

“The demon,” he whispered. “The demon in the glass.”

“Demon in the glass?”

He jabbed a finger at my chest, the bugging madness of his eyes replaced by the roundness of fear. He babbled and staggered backwards. When he tripped over an ankle-high fence bordering the lawn that hedged the library, he screamed and fell. I rushed to help him, even as his backpedaling heels kicked up chunks of brown sod and his cries grew more piercing.

I only realized a loose crowd had gathered when one of their members spoke.

“Hey, man,” an edgy voice said. “What’s your problem? Leave the dude alone.”

I turned. The dozen or so homeless advancing on me were in their twenties and thirties. They had been working students before the Crash: bartenders and baristas. Cut off from income, they’d given the middle finger to their massive student debt. Even now they wore their scavenged coats and patched pants with defiant pride, as though they were all members of the same clan. A clan Clifford belonged to more than I did. I was the outsider here.

I watched two young women separate from the group to help Clifford up.

“It’s not what you think,” I said, taking a step toward them. “I actually know him.”

The man who’d first spoken drew up in front of me, black discs in his stretched earlobes, fierce judgment in his eyes. “Leave him. The Fuck. Alone.”

The others took up positions around me. Geez, what was it about me that inspired a let’s-beat-his-ass mentality? Whatever the reason, I had a lot to piece together and not a lot of time to do it.

“All right,” I said, showing my palms. “I just caught Clifford on a bad day.”

The group let me edge from their circle, then formed a barricade in case I changed my mind and made another go for their compatriot. I watched as, with hard backward glances, they escorted Clifford away. As much as I needed answers, I let him leave. I’d gotten some information, scattered though it was.

I wheeled and strode for the payphone.
Demon in the glass, demon in the glass.
What in the hell did it mean? As my reflection rose up in the phone’s steel body, I saw the answer.

The mirror in Clifford’s apartment. It had been in the summoning room, intact, the first time I’d seen it. But on my second visit, the mirror was shattered, its round frame a mouth of silver shards. I imagined Clifford driving a fist against it in fear and horror before he clunked off with his trunk.

I thought back to the apartment of the Chinatown conjurer. Yes, there had been a mirror in Chin’s summoning space, as well. And the crime photo in the
Scream
showing Flash’s apartment? Another mirror.

The spells had never been written down and distributed, as I’d first thought. No, someone had contacted the conjurers, using their mirrors as portals, promising them God only knew what—money, power, salvation—and then dictating spells that would summon shriekers. And I now had a good idea who that someone was. I lowered my gaze to my chest.

Clifford had pointed right at him.

Protruding from my shirt pocket was the folded-over printout of the obituary I’d slid there. For the minute or so we’d talked, Clifford had been at eye level with the reverend’s sideways face and dark stare. The reverend was the man he’d been referring to as a liar. He was the demon in the glass, and likely the hooded figure Effie’s friend had seen creeping around the tomb—not Malachi.

I pulled the obituary from my pocket and stared at the image.

Bartholomew frigging Higham.

I thought back to the thousands of remains he had warehoused at St. Martin’s. One of them could well have held a demon—a demon that took possession of Reverend Higham. The reverend had died, or been slain, shortly after, but if no exorcism had been performed, the demon would still be inside him.

But why emerge now? Had someone called him up, or were there other forces at work?

I crammed some coins into the payphone and punched Father Vick’s number. I didn’t know what the reanimated reverend was up to, but bludgeoning Father Richard and summoning lower demons? Yeah, it couldn’t be good. I needed to warn Father Vick and the others. By the fifth ring, the muscles around my clenched jaw began to ache with urgency.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” I muttered.

The hard male voice that answered sounded like no one I knew. “Yeah?” it said.

“Who’s this?”

“NYPD. Who’s this?” the voice shot back.

“I’m with the diocese,” I lied. “I’m trying to reach Father Victor.”

“Well, he’s not here. He’s missing.”

“Missing?” My heartbeats punched through my voice.

“Yeah, him and the bishop both,” the officer said. “Got a manhunt going on down here. I’m gonna need to get your name and ask a few questions.”

I hung up and closed my eyes to a wave of dizziness. Was I too late?

There was only one way to find out. I hurried west toward the line that would deliver me back to the West Village. I needed to cook up another hunting spell and ready myself for the mother of all banishments.

Assuming, of course, the Order didn’t kill me first.

37

“Has anyone been here?” I asked as soon as I’d crossed the threshold of my apartment. I triple locked the door and checked to ensure my magical wards were at full strength.

“No,” Tabitha answered, but not from the divan.

I turned, surprised to find her on her feet for a change. She was near my reading chair, and by her posture, it looked as if I’d caught her in the middle of pacing. For some reason, her hair was stiff with static, but I was too focused on my next steps to pay her appearance much heed.

“How about outside?” I asked. “Anyone watching the building?”

I believed now that she
had
seen someone, and I was starting to suspect the long-haired person wasn’t a woman, but Malachi. He could have observed me talking with Father Vick on Thursday morning, when Detective Vega brought me to the church, and then followed me home. Even if he hadn’t reanimated the demon rector, he could have fallen under his influence, become a spy for him. I thought of him standing outside Father Vick’s door.

“I’ve been out every hour and haven’t seen anyone,” Tabitha said, her voice edged with something. Nerves? Add that to the static, the pacing, the
very
uncharacteristic touring on the hour…

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s the bloody demon moon,” she replied, irritably. “It’s on the rise again. Gets me in a fucking state every time.”

I was too stuck on her first line to rebuke her for the last. I wasn’t big into consulting the star and moon cycles—my brand of wizardry didn’t require it. But I knew from my study of lore that a demon moon was the fourth blood moon in a season and exceedingly rare. It carried End Times portents, if you believed in that sort of thing. But from an energy standpoint, blood moons were opportune times for casting black magic and all manner of devilry, which explained Tabitha’s agitation. She was practically a demon herself.

Might the moon also connect to the reanimated reverend?

“Is there one tonight?” I asked, ducking my head to peer out a window. The low clouds had taken on a subtle red tinge.

“My urges are never wrong,” Tabitha replied. “They’ve been screaming at me all day to feast on male energy. In fact, if it weren’t for your damned wards, I’d be long gone—and about time.”

I disregarded her comment as another empty threat, but at the ladder to my lab, I turned and took in her poofed-out state again. That particular effect hadn’t come from the demon moon.

“You tried to get out, didn’t you?”

She narrowed her green eyes at me and resumed pacing, which told me she had. I imagined the shock the wards must have delivered. Under different circumstances, I’d be on the floor, choking on my own laughter. Instead, I said, “I warned you they were strong.”

“Bite me.”

Her insult was actually a reassurance, I thought as I scaled the ladder. If my wards were strong enough to keep a determined succubus spirit in, they would keep all manner of baddies out.

That was when the final pieces snapped into place.

Tabitha must have seen the change come over my face. “What?”

“I don’t need a hunting spell,” I said. “The threshold.”

“What threshold?”

“At St. Martin’s Cathedral.” I descended and released the ladder. “The reanimated reverend, he isn’t hiding somewhere in the city. He’s stuck on the cathedral grounds, trapped behind the threshold. He can’t get out. He’s not strong enough.” Tabitha’s ears bent in confusion, but I couldn’t slow down to explain. The logic was rushing out of me. “He murdered the rector to weaken the threshold. He’s planning to do the same to the vicar and bishop. Extinguish two of the remaining bulwarks of faith that give the cathedral its strength. With the added power of the demon moon, he’ll get out. And when he does, he’ll have a small army of shriekers at his command. Shriekers he’s been too weak to summon himself.”

Blood pumped hard behind my eyes as I pictured the ensuing carnage. The Church had prevented it from happening in the 1800s by executing the reverend—I was all but sure of that now. Problem was, destroying the host wouldn’t banish the demon. The creature had only to lie dormant in the reverend’s remains—for two centuries, in this case—until the conditions were opportune.

I imagined an arriving demon moon would do.

I rushed back to the newspaper I’d dropped on the counter and flipped to the weather. Noting the times for moonrise and moonset, I did a quick calculation. The demon moon would be peaking in a couple of hours. I had to get to Father Vick and the bishop before that happened. I turned over the vicar’s business card in my pocket. I’d been planning to use the card for the hunting spell, but it would only lead me to the cathedral, whose threshold would then snuff out the magic.

“So where in the cathedral are they being held?” I asked aloud. From my brief conversation with the officer at the scene, it sounded as though their manhunt had yet to turn up anyone.

A second later, I answered my own question. “Wherever Reverend Higham had room enough to store those thousands of remains without anyone knowing.” Panic flashed hot inside me. “Beneath the cathedral.”

Tired of being my sounding board, Tabitha began pacing away. “Fascinating,” she muttered. A bout of knocking froze her. We both turned. The hard knocking at the door sounded a second time.

38

By the time the second bout of knocking subsided, I had a short list of candidates—none of them good guys, unfortunately.

One, it was someone from the White Hand, wanting to know who had supplied Chin the shrieker spell. The deadline was today. The damned thing of it was, I had an answer, but something told me Bashi wasn’t going to accept a two-hundred-year-dead reverend. And I couldn’t afford to be dragged into his basement and finger-cranked again. There wasn’t time.

Two, it was the NYPD, coming to arrest me for my chewed-on pencil ending up in Chin’s apartment. That would be worse. With Bashi, there was at least the chance he’d take me at my word. After all, he’d accepted that dark magic was at play. The same wouldn’t fly with Vega. I’d be looking at incarceration.

Candidate number three? Arnaud’s goons. I’d strolled into the vampire’s territory twice now after he’d warned me away. And he clearly wanted Grandpa’s ring. He wouldn’t think twice about having me killed to get it. Unlike Father Richard, I was a nobody in the city.

Finally—and the one that scared me the most—was plump little Chicory, coming to execute me for violating the Order’s mandates. Bullets I could handle. A dissolution spell? Not so much.

I waved Tabitha back as I stole up to the door. Gripping my cane, I peered through the peephole. My list of candidates erupted in smoke—it wasn’t any of them. A thin back was to the door, brown hair falling down a khaki coat, as though the person was contemplating leaving.

Malachi?

With energy crackling around my prism, ready to cast, I twisted the bolts and opened the door a crack. Fully expecting a man’s narrow face to round into view, I started to discover a woman’s instead. A young woman’s, and one I recognized from Midtown College.

“Meredith Proctor,” I said, opening the door to my overachieving student.

“Hi, Professor.” Her face looked strange, almost sinister, and then I realized I’d never seen Meredith without her glasses—or in makeup. She’d gone especially heavy on the eye shadow and lipstick. “May I come in?” she asked.