Smoke and Ashes (27 page)

“He was nearly eaten.”

“Yeah, well, I'm fine.” Arms folded, he swept a scowl around the soundstage. “I'd be better if I knew how that thing got in.”

“That's easy enough to answer; we left the door to the carpentry shop unlocked. I didn't want any more of my property destroyed,” CB added as the constable's scowl lit on him.

“We wanted it in here,” Henry reminded him, coiling the yellow nylon rope, “so it could be taken down without risking innocent lives.”

“Right. We wanted it in here.” A glance toward the place where the demon had lain. “Okay. Then tell me this? If we knew it was coming in a specific door, why did Tony put his warning thing around the whole place?”

“For the same reason we're ankle-deep in fake fruit,” Leah snorted coming around the edge of the set, Kevin Groves following behind like a puppy. “Tony doesn't know what he's doing. He's making things up as he goes along.”

Jack shifted slightly so that he was between Leah and Tony. Familiar with the protective instincts of the police, Henry decided to let it pass. It was interesting that on some instinctive level the constable thought Tony needed protecting from Leah. “He's doing
fine
.”

Stopped about two meters away, Leah folded her arms, metaphysical seductress buried under indignation. “Well, according to you, everything's fine. You're fine, Tony's fine. Everything is
not
fine. We have demons…”

“Who don't always use doors,” Henry interjected. “Leaving a door open does not guarantee they'll go through it. Tony laid out his wards wide enough to take that into account.”

“And the cherries?” she asked, kicking at a piece of fruit Zev had missed.

Henry waited until it rolled to a stop. “I'm not saying he doesn't need to refine his technique.”

“Perhaps it would be a good idea…” CB's tone had nothing of
perhaps
about it. “…if we move to another part of the soundstage and leave Mr. Foster to his rest.”

Jack shook his head. “We shouldn't leave him alone.”

“No, we shouldn't.”

“I'll stay with him,” Zev offered, stepping carefully over the pile of fruit he'd collected and walking to the chaise. “You guys can go make plans for dealing with demons and just leave me out of them.”

“If you're sure, Mr. Sero.”

“Oh, yeah.” He held the broom across his body like a weapon. “I'm sure.”

“If you hear or see anything, anything at all…”

“Trust me. I'll yell.”

 

Henry had always liked Raymond Dark's office. It was, he thought, the kind of office a vampire should have—all dark wood and heavy velvet curtains and shelves of ancient knickknacks. It had weight. Authority. It wasn't anything like his office, which tended toward beech veneer, piles of research books, and stacks of author's copies he hadn't been able to give away, but that was the difference between artifice and reality.

The black leather desk chair creaked as CB lowered himself carefully into it. “Now then, Mr. Groves; your documentation.”

But Kevin Groves was staring at Henry. He swallowed once, punctuated by his Adam's apple rising and falling in the column of his throat. “You're not…I mean, you're…”

“He's what?” Jack asked from where he leaned against the corner of the set, positioned so that he could see both the desk and a bit of Tony's head on the upper end of the distant chaise.

“Good question.” Frowning, Henry caught Kevin's gaze and held it. The Hunger had been buried deep, the masks were in place disguising the Hunter, and yet this reporter knew exactly what he was—which was both disturbing and useful. He smiled and then a little more broadly as, behind his glasses, Kevin's left eye began to twitch. “I'm what?”

“Nothing.” Kevin started to shake as his muscles tensed for a flight not permitted to him. He stank of fear. Fear and…

Henry's attention flicked for an instant to Leah, tucked up in one corner of the red velvet sofa. That explained why it had taken her those extra moments to retrieve the reporter from the office.

She blew him a one-finger kiss.

“Nothing,” Kevin repeated as he staggered, released but still unable to run. “You're nothing.”

“You didn't see him earlier,” Jack muttered.

Before Kevin could turn, Henry shook his head and the reporter froze.

“The page, Mr. Groves.”

His head jerked around toward CB. Then back to Henry.

Still smiling, Henry stepped away. “We'll talk later, you and I. Right now, I think you should get Mr. Bane that page.”

“Oh, for pity's sake,” Leah sighed as Kevin dropped his backpack off his shoulder and began to rummage frantically in its depths, “leave the poor guy alone.”

“
I
have done nothing to him. Which is more than you can say.”

“Hey, I did nothing to him.
With
him, yes. Not to.”

“Are you so sure of that?”
Demongate.

She straightened. “Don't push me.”
Nightwalker.

CB cleared his throat.

Silence fell.

“What the hell is going on?” Jack demanded.

“Mr. Groves has brought us a piece of a manuscript that seems to define the Demonic Convergence.”

“From the crazy monk guy Leah mentioned this afternoon?”

“That has yet to be determined.” With the page on the desk in front of him, CB leaned back and steepled his fingers. “Mr. Fitzroy and Ms. Burnett are going to have a look at it.”

“What, is he a demonic consultant, too?”

“In a manner of speaking.” CB shot a look at the reporter that cut off an already somewhat strangled laugh.

“Tony's the wizard,” Jack said pointedly. “He should examine it.”

“Later,” Henry said as he moved around the desk. “Right now, he needs to regain his strength.” The vellum was badly yellowed, the edges touched with water damage.

“That's not from the monk's book,” Leah sighed as she joined him. “It's all numbers.”

“It's astrological charts.” Kevin looked up from fussing with Raymond Dark's inkwell and added defiantly. “I told you that.”

“How did you know it had to do with the Demonic Convergence?”

“It says so on the other side.”

Frowning, Leah carefully turned the page over. In the margin, about halfway down, someone had written
charts Demonic Convergence
in pencil.

“Not me!” Kevin protested quickly. “That was there when I found the page.”

“An earlier researcher?” CB suggested.

“Probably. Hang on.” One hand holding back her hair, Leah leaned forward and squinted at the bottom of the page. “There's more writing, but it's faint.” She carefully flipped the page. “It's on both sides. I think it was done at the same time as the charts.”

“It looks around the same age,” Henry agreed, when she moved out of the way so he could examine the barely visible brown marks. “But those aren't words; that's a pattern.”

“Just because you don't recognize them, junior…” With one finger, she spun the vellum around and bent to breathe gently on the lettering. “Damp will sometimes bring the ink up a bit.”

“Or damage an irreplaceable artifact.”

“I think the margin notes have already lowered the value a bit.”

“Still.”

She flashed Henry a smile he'd very nearly seen in his mirror. The dimples were noticeably absent. “I know what I'm doing. Breath gives life to death.”

“That's a total…” He let his protest trail off when it became obvious the ink was growing darker.

“It's a prayer,” Leah announced after a moment. “Or part of one.
Keep us safe, Guardian of the West.
” She turned the page again. “
In light and life I beg thee.”

“Let me see the other side again.”

She sighed but complied. “You're still not going to be able to read it.”

“No.” Frowning, he traced the largest of the letters, its loops and swirls now visible. “But I recognize it.”

“How?” CB demanded.

Henry straightened. “I'm not entirely positive, but I think I own the rest of the book.”

“You own an ancient book on the Demonic Convergence?” Arms folded, Leah raked him with a disbelieving stare. “You don't think you might have mentioned this earlier?”

“I didn't know it earlier. But this lettering…” He tapped the air above the prayer. “…is the same. The same shape and in the same place on the page.” The document as an object was familiar. It was only the content he didn't recognize. “Unfortunately, because I couldn't read it, I didn't know what the book was about. If this is a page from it, I do now. And
you
can read it.”

Slightly mollified by his acknowledgment of her ability, Leah shook her head. “Why would you own a book you can't read?”

“He owns it so others can't,” CB said quietly.

“Oh, my.” Her eyes widened in mock outrage. “Censorship. I need to see that book,” she continued when Henry didn't bother denying it.

He looked at his watch. “It's almost three. I've time to get it and bring it back here.”

“Bring back coffees, too,” Jack told him, reaching for his wallet. “Hit a Timmy's. Extra-large double double and whatever anyone else wants. Oh, and grab some of those special Halloween donuts with the black and orange sprinkles.”

“Way to work the stereotype,” Leah snickered as Henry suggested the constable call it a night.

“No.” And if Jack didn't meet his gaze, he came closer than many who'd seen what he'd seen. “I'm here until this ends.”

“You don't have to work tomorrow?”

“I'll take a sick day. I'm not leaving until I know what's going on.”

“You know…”

“And,” he interrupted stubbornly, “until you can guarantee no more horror movie rejects will be out and about on my streets.”

“Your streets?” Leah asked.

“It's a cop thing,” Henry told her before Jack could answer. “They're all remarkably possessive.”

“Well, you'd know possessive. I should go with you,” she added crossing the office as he took Jack's money and folded it into the front pocket of his jeans. “Just in case.”

“In case there's an attack on you while Tony sleeps?”

She moved a little closer and tossed her hair back over her shoulder. “With Tony out, you're my best bet.”

Henry stared for a long moment at the creamy flesh below the curve of her ear. “No,” he said at last. “Too great a risk.”

“You think
that's
a greater risk than running into a new demonic minion?”

He gave her back the smile she'd given him earlier. “I do.”

 

“What the hell is going on between those two?” Jack muttered as Leah returned to the astrological charts on the desk and Henry headed for the back door.

“You don't know?”

He turned to see Groves standing tucked in behind his left shoulder. “No,” he snapped, putting some decent distance between them. “I don't know.”

The reporter shuddered. “Lucky.”

“You know?” Stupid question. He obviously thought he did. “So, what's going on?”

And why is a romance writer a better choice to protect her than an armed police officer?

Groves answered the actual question instead of the subtext. “She tried for power over him. He threatened to kill her.”

Jack blinked. “You're completely bugfuck; you know that, right?”

 

It wasn't so much a book Henry dropped on the desk as a collection of loose pages stuffed between wooden covers. The pages were paler and the writing darker, but that, Jack realized, had more to do with the way Groves' page had been stored than any actual differences.

He wasn't a big believer in inanimate objects having an aura—in the last few months new and unusual animate objects had pretty much used up all available ability to believe—but under oath on the stand he'd say this book felt unpleasant. He was just as glad he wasn't the one with his nose barely an inch above the writing.

“Do you think you could avoid dropping sprinkles on a priceless literary artifact?” Henry carefully swept a bit of orange icing off the top sheet.

Jack backed up a step. Not like he minded being farther away from that book. “So what's it say?”