Harmony Black (11 page)

EIGHTEEN

T
ucker hit the road. I watched him leave, then walked back to the group in the driveway.

“What’d he say?” Barry asked me, looking nervous.

Or maybe I just imagined he looked nervous. Still, a nasty suspicion crept into my brain and carved out a little place to live.

“Nothing, he was full of crap,” I said. “Look, we’ve got some leads to follow up on. I’ll call you at the station later and catch you up, okay?”

“Yeah, okay.” He gave me a brief, tight hug. I didn’t say another word until his cruiser was rumbling down the driveway, turning onto the main road. Cody stuck around, lingering at the edge of the driveway, looking like he had something to say.

“What’s on your mind?” I asked him.

He moved a little closer. I could smell his cologne, a musk that made me think of open fields after a fresh rain.

“I’m sorry you had to deal with that,” he said, nodding back over his shoulder. “Tucker thinks he’s a local celebrity. Local asshole’s more like it.”

I looked into his eyes. Longer than I needed to, but I was having a little trouble pulling away.

“It’s fine. Goes with the territory.”

He smiled and shook his head, his eyes lighting up. “True enough. So where are you off to now?”

I almost told him about Tucker’s clue. Almost. I thought I could trust him. I
wanted
to trust him. But keeping him at arm’s length was safer for both of us.

“Not sure yet,” I said. “We have a few leads. Nothing major yet.”

“Okay,” he said, nodding but not sounding so sure. “Hey, I was gonna ask. I mean, tonight, if you have some free time . . . ”

He trailed off. I tilted my head. “What?”

He looked over at April and Jessie, then shook his head. “Nah, it was nothing. I’d better get back to work before Barry starts squawking at me. Give me a call if you need anything, okay? Anything at all.”

His hand brushed against mine as he turned to go. Just a fleeting, warm touch. I smiled and waved as he jumped into his cruiser and pulled away from the curb. Then I took a deep breath and walked over to April and Jessie.

“We’ve got a problem,” I said through clenched teeth, still waving. Cody waved back and gave us a thumbs-up from his open window. “And Barry’s in the thick of it. Bag up that wicker ball and let’s get out of here.”

“Barry?” Jessie asked. “Why? What’s up?”

I relayed Tucker’s story. “Barry was my father’s chief deputy, and he took over as sheriff after he died. He was on top of the Bogeyman investigation from day one. He would have known about that newspaper article. Maybe even investigated it himself.”

“And yet,” April mused, “he never mentioned it to you. It
is
entirely possible that the article was a genuine mistake.”

“Lots of things are possible. Until we check it out for ourselves, though, we don’t trust anyone
but
ourselves.”

Jessie snorted and unlocked the car. “Hell, that’s standard operating procedure. So what about Cody?”

What about Cody? I’d been thinking about that. No, not really. I’d been thinking about
him
. Just him in general. His confident smile, the curve of his shoulder. That split-second touch of his hand. This was strange territory, and I didn’t have a map.

“He’s trustworthy,” I said, “but no telling what he might slip to Barry by mistake. Let’s keep our distance until we sort this out.”

“That’s all?” Jessie asked.

“Hmm?”

“That’s your
entire
assessment of the deputy?”

“Yes,” I said, “that’s my entire assessment.”

Jessie wriggled back against her seat and got comfortable. “Mmm-hmm. Whatever you say.”

In the car, April leaned forward in the backseat and tapped my shoulder.

“Out of curiosity, why did you spin that particular story for our intrepid ‘journalist’? About the security system, I mean.”

“I couldn’t risk a claim that might be true. Like, what if I said, ‘Both mothers had the same hairdresser,’ and it turned out the perp
was
their hairdresser? Serious long shot, but we’d be sunk. Whatever I told Tucker had to be believable—to him
and
to the Bogeyman’s summoner—but unquestionably false.”

“Which is why you asked me about the security system at Helen’s place,” Jessie said.

“The summoner leaves his tokens outside the houses he’s targeting. As far as we know, he’s never been inside. He wouldn’t
know
that Helen Gunderson didn’t have a security system—so if he reads Tucker’s ‘big scoop,’ he’s going to assume we’re going off in the wrong direction and feel safe.”

“And criminals who feel safe quickly become overconfident,” April said. “Nicely done. Drop me off at the motel, would you? I need to update Kevin and see how his research is coming. Where are you two headed next? Records archive?”

“Food first?” Jessie asked, looking my way. “Seriously, I’m famished.”

I hadn’t even thought about eating—I get that way when I’m working—but now that she mentioned it, my stomach started growling, too.

“Sure,” I said, “and I know just the place.”

Norma’s All-Day Café squatted on the edge of Stag Head Road, a four-lane highway that buzzed with eighteen-wheelers and tanker trucks on the way to bigger towns than this one. Norma’s didn’t look like much—just a long tin-roofed shack with dirty white walls and a gravel parking lot—but the number of trucks parked out front said good things about the quality of the food.

“You think this Fontaine guy is gonna be here?” Jessie asked as we got out of the car.

I shrugged. “Not likely, but we know he was going to meet the Gresham brothers here, and the Gresham brothers haven’t shown up. He’s bound to want to know why.”

Spotting him, that was the hard part. From what I understood, most demons in our world arrive as hijackers: they aren’t capable of creating their own bodies from soul stuff, so they jump inside any brain they can overpower. I know how to handle creatures like that. I can drive out a possessing entity, bottle it up, or send it screaming back to hell . . . but
finding
one, especially when it doesn’t want to be found and it’s masquerading as a human, that’s another thing entirely.

Earl Gresham had told us that Fontaine liked the smell of Norma’s pancakes. As we walked through the front door and onto a long rubber welcome mat, bells jingling behind us, I understood what he meant. I could taste the flavor in the air, a medley of fresh-churned butter and warm maple syrup.

“Shoulda brought Cody,” Jessie said. “You know that’s what he wanted, right?”

I blinked. “Huh?”

“You’re kidding me. You
really
didn’t pick up on that.”

“Pick up on what?”

“He was trying to
ask you out
.” Jessie punched my shoulder. “He just didn’t want to get shot down in front of me and Aunt April. He’s totally into you. I could smell it.”

Had
he been? I thought back, walking through my memory like I was reconstructing a crime scene. I hadn’t had anything resembling a date in three years. I guess if you go long enough without picking up those social cues, you just stop noticing them altogether.

Okay, more important question: Did I
want
him to ask me out?

Ugh,
I thought,
complicated. Change of subject.

“I don’t care if it’s lunchtime,” I told Jessie. “I’m having breakfast. And what do you mean, you could
smell
it?”

“Look at you, living dangerously. And I mean, I could smell it.” She tapped the side of her nose. “Pheromones. Told you, I’m a little sharper than most people in the senses department. Speaking of senses, are yours tingling? Spot anything weird?”

As a waitress in a pink frilled apron walked us to our table, a four-seater in the middle of the crowded room, I focused and took a long look around. Nothing suspicious, just a bunch of locals and long-haul truckers stopping in for a solid bite to eat.

Except for one.

The man in the corner booth had a waxy complexion, that jaundiced yellow look that alcoholics with bad kidneys get, and stringy, short hair combed in a side part. He wasn’t eating at all. He had a full stack of pancakes, a side of hash browns, a steaming mug of coffee . . . and he was just
staring
at it, with his palms placed flat on the table and motionless.

“Seven o’clock,” I murmured to Jessie as we sat down. “Guy with the bad haircut. He look hinky to you?”

She pretended to stretch and yawn, craning her neck to look. “Oh, yeah. Don’t know if he’s our guy, but he’s giving off some serious creeper vibes. How do you want to play it?”

Demonic hijackers are bad news to start with, but if this guy was as good as Earl Gresham said he was—jumping bodies on a whim—the last thing we wanted was a violent confrontation in a room full of innocent bystanders. We needed to get his attention, subtly. Make him curious.

Flexing a little muscle might do the trick,
I thought, and picked up the saltshaker.

“Little thing my mother taught me,” I told Jessie. “African cleansing rite. Makes a room distinctly unpleasant for unclean spirits.”

I held the saltshaker loosely and tapped it against the tabletop.
Tap. Tap.

Taptap. Taptap. Tap taptaptap tap.
Slowly, a rhythm grew, blossoming from the simple sound.

“Yeah, all right,” Jessie said, nodding slowly. “Can I get in on this?”

“Please do.”

Jessie’s fingertips drummed the edge of the table, filling in the gaps and adding a strident beat. Focused now, feeling my power welling up, I willed it to spiral in time with the rhythm.

In the beginning was the sound. Music has the power to bind and compel, to stir the soul. Don’t believe me? Turn on the radio. The universe was birthed in the beat of countless burning stars, and stardust is in our bones. Yoruban words spilled from my lips now, a low, keening song, shifting tones weaving in with the drumming.

We caught funny looks from the nearby tables, but I couldn’t care. I was watching the white mist spread across the room in my second sight, glowing and warm, banishing all evils with the sheer joy of—

“Would you kindly stop doing that?” the waitress said, suddenly looming over our table.

The saltshaker slipped from my hand. Jessie missed the beat and froze, confused. The spell shattered.

I looked the waitress in the eye. Something moved in there. A squirming shadow behind her left pupil.

“Are we disturbing the other patrons?” I asked.

“You’re disturbing
me
,” she said, “which I assume was the point.”

I glanced back toward the corner booth. The guy we’d picked out before was sound asleep, slumped back against the wall.

“Why don’t you get out of that nice lady’s body,” I said, “so we can have a conversation?”

“You’ve got my attention,” she said. The waitress turned and strolled back to the corner booth. She leaned in and brushed her fingertips across the sleeping man’s shoulder. He woke with a jolt, sitting up straight and eyes shooting open, and she took a confused half step back.

The waitress rubbed at her forehead, looking like she had a headache coming on, and went back on her rounds like nothing had happened. The man just beckoned us over with a slow wave of his hand.

“Well,” Jessie said, pushing back her chair, “this should be good.”

We slid into the booth across from him. He leaned over his untouched plate and inhaled deeply.

“Isn’t that just
divine
?” he asked in a syrupy New Orleans accent. “I’ve been near and I’ve been far, and there’s nothing anywhere like a fat, fluffy stack of pancakes.”

“You must be Fontaine,” I said.

“Now, today’s been chock full of surprises. First the Gresham boys stand me up—and I thought we had such a good working relationship—and now two lovely ladies who know my name have come to call.” He sniffed delicately and wrinkled his nose. “Two lovely ladies with freshly oiled handguns. Now, that’s fine, bullets don’t affront me, but I’d love to know just who you are.”

“Temple and Black, FBI,” Jessie said. “We’re here to regulate.”

“You’ve stolen that body you’re wearing,” I added. “That’s kidnapping. Now, there’s a few ways we can address this situation, but that’s going to depend on how helpful you are.”

Fontaine laughed. “What, this old set of rags? Ladies, if you’re going to pretend I’m a criminal, there’s really only one thing you can charge me with.”

His fingers moved like a violinist as he unbuttoned his shirt, going about halfway down. He pulled back the fabric to show us the Y-shaped autopsy scar running down his torso.

“Grave robbing,” he said, buttoning back up. “Commandeering a corpse is a deeply unpleasant sensation—trust me, you can’t imagine anything quite like it—but it does make for easier cleanup and fewer questions when a job is done. When it’s time for me to move on, I’ll just dump him back in the morgue where I found him. Only problem? Corpses can’t digest food. No, no delicious pancakes for poor Fontaine, not this time around. I can just . . . 
smell
them. Exquisite torment. Now, what exactly are you two playing at?”

“Playing at?” I asked.

“You know what I am. You’re a fair hand at magic yourself, I can tell. So why would you think, in a million years, you could flash a badge my way? I’m not subject to your laws.”

“You’re standing on American soil. So yeah,” I said, “I’m pretty sure you are.”

Fontaine chuckled. “Is that where you think you are? Oh, darlin’, bless your heart. This land belongs to the Court of Night-Blooming Flowers, and you live under their authority. You think you have a president? No. You have a
prince
.”

“We don’t accept that,” Jessie said.

“Now that’s just a foolish degree of stubborn. Let me pose you a conundrum. A man takes to drink and goes on a rampage. Smashing windows, hassling people. The constabulary arrives and puts him under arrest. He rages at them, saying he’s a sovereign citizen and doesn’t recognize the authority of the United States government. What happens to him?”