The Demon Hunters (26 page)

“
I wonder why the he wanted
to see us in the first place?” Daven asked.

Gia
humphed
through her nose. “So he
could humiliate us?”

I rubbed the back of my
neck. “He’d never seen anything like you. Maybe he wanted to make
sure he could identify
Dark Cousins
if he happened on them.”

Gia didn’t like the way I
emphasized the name, and I bet she didn’t miss how I called
her
anything
,
not
anyone
. She
stared at me for a second, making little icy fingers crawl up my
spine.

Royal said: “Lawrence learned of Dark
Cousins and my request provided an opportunity to see one. Merely
curiosity.”

“
He said nothing to us,”
Daven commented.

Royal hunched one shoulder and looked
away from them. “It’s not as if you three had anything to
discuss.”

Chapter
Twenty-One

Daven flew out of Salt Lake City
International Airport early Tuesday. He left Dallas early
afternoon, Dallas time, and arrived in Tokyo early Wednesday
evening. He e-mailed Gia, Royal and me collectively. The first came
from Tokyo:

“
Arrived in Tokyo. Long
and tiring flight. Leave tomorrow on the first available flight to
Yangon. Daven.
”

The next e-mail came two days later
from Myitkyina:

“
Everything proceeding
smoothly. I have hired a local to drive me to Ngawlawngtam. He will
take a seldom used route, assures me it is suitable for travel.
Will contact you again when able. Daven.
”

Everything proceeding
smoothly.
Yeah, I bet. I bet he put the
evil eye on anyone who needed
persuasion
to let him trek off across
Myanmar. I bet he could go where even the natives were not
allowed.

I spoke to some of my contacts. I
asked about a black Mercedes-Benz, a white-haired man, anyone who
could be European, but nobody had seen them. I didn’t mention the
big white van as there are always plenty of those in town, and the
description was vague. Of course, these chats were not simple
question and answer sessions. I had to spend a good amount of time
with each shade I talked to. It seemed to take an age.

Despite the activity, the days
dragged, because Royal wasn’t here. We’d not spent every moment
together, but now he felt unavailable to me. Every time I thought
to call and ask him something or tell him something, I held off. I
ran around, my head full to bursting, yet my days felt empty.
Pre-Royal, I had my part-time position with Bermans and my work for
Clarion PD. Royal and the Marchant case came along soon after
Bermans let me go. I was usually busy and Royal filled in the gaps,
not necessarily by being with me, but as a presence in my
life.

I’d have welcomed another case, any
case, even a lost kitty, so my time was one-hundred-percent
occupied, so I didn’t have one moment to spare for anything else,
not one free second during which Royal occupied my
thoughts.

That’s when I knew I didn’t want to
give him up, no matter if a lingering sense of outrage and pure
commonsense tried to tell me otherwise. I missed him. And if I
missed him after only a few days, how would I feel if we were apart
permanently?

I’d regretted splitting up with former
boyfriends, but I didn’t have heartburn over it. Losing Royal would
hurt. A relationship is all about give and take, the bad along with
the good. I could work with that. Not wanting to be alone again
didn’t make me needy and pathetic. He filled an empty space inside
me nobody else had. Maybe that was worth a second
chance.

I would not, could not, fall into his
arms and declare all forgiven, but I could try to see life through
his eyes, for a change.

As for the Borrego case, I was stuck,
at a loss, clueless. We would have to give up on Rio if something
didn’t turn up soon. I didn’t want to tell Gia.

“
Aw, honey, don’t take it
so hard,” Mel said.

I turned my head and squinted up at
her. “Call me honey again and I’ll make you wish you were
dead.”

Jack went off into peals of artificial
laughter.

Mel put hands to hips. “I could call
you Tee-fanny,” she said, drawing out the name. “See how you like
that.”

I scooted the kitchen chair back and
got to my feet. “Earplugs. I need earplugs.”

***

I stood at the counter stirring raw
brown sugar into my oatmeal, when Royal burst in. He swooped on me
and whisked the bowl away before I could have a taste.

He looked excited, but I didn’t
appreciate his putting my breakfast out of reach. My oatmeal is not
your traditional sort. I make it with lots of whole milk, not
water, and cook it for a long time until it’s all soft and creamy,
and then add just enough sugar to sweeten to perfection. Making
oatmeal is not a performance I take lightly.

I retrieved my bowl. “Do you
mind!”

He grinned, hands braced on the
counter, the muscles of shoulders and arms filling the denim fabric
of his shirt, flashing those lovely white, perfectly even teeth. “I
saw the Mercedes.”

I dropped the spoon in the bowl.
Oatmeal splattered across the counter and the back of my hand. “You
what?”

He wiped a smidge of oatmeal off my
hand with one finger. It seemed like forever since I’d felt his
skin on mine.

He licked the glob off his finger with
his pointed demon tongue, which brought other memories to mind. I
held my breath. He caught my gaze and I thought I saw a familiar
twinkle in his copper eyes. I think we both forgot to speak for a
moment.

Royal cleared his throat. ”I was
driving down Temple and realized I was right behind a black, older
model Mercedes-Benz.”

“
And?”

“
I lost it,” he said
cheerfully.

I know my eyes widened. “You were a
cop. You are now a private detective. How can you lose a
car?”

“
Got stuck at a light. But
it is here, Tiff.”

“
Well thank you, Royal, but
I already knew.” I know it came out snarky, but I smiled as I
spoke. “On Temple?”

He nodded. “Yep.”

I took a step back. “I’m going down
there. Coming?”

“
To look for the
Mercedes?”

“
To have a chat with an old
friend.”

Jack and Mel followed us to the door.
After they did their good deed by reminding me they were human, and
Royal was pretty human, for a demon, and pointing me in the right
direction several times, I rewarded them by telling them everything
I knew about the case, right down to the tiniest detail. But it
backfired on me, because now they were more miffed than usual at
not being able to tag along.

We took Royal’s pickup downtown and
drove the length of Temple till we reached the Megaplex.

***

A big old mall and parking garage
occupied two entire blocks in downtown Clarion when Brenda Lithgow
died. Everyone hated the garage, with its dim lighting, and mall
security rarely bothered to patrol the area. There were a number of
muggings and one murder.

The mall failed due to poor
management. Most of the stores had already moved to the new
Westgate Mall in West Clarion when the owners announced the
closure. It was torn down, along with the parking garage. Now the
Megaplex - which houses a movie theater, a conference center, the
extreme sports center with climbing walls and wind tunnel, a
bowling alley and two restaurants - occupies the space. But Brenda
is still there, where the garage used to be.

Brenda was sixty-two when she died and
still trying to sell her body, although men no longer considered it
saleable. A bag-lady, she pushed a shopping cart loaded with old
clothes and god-knows-what-else about town, sometimes trying to
entice a man into an alley. A junkie murdered her for the few
dollars left over from her social security check after she spent
the rest on booze. He strangled her as she settled down for the
night in a corner of the mall’s parking garage. Poor, deluded
woman, she thought she had a customer.

Brenda wears so many sweaters, I
cannot see the shape of her body, much less the mark on her neck. I
think an equal number of skirts cover her, and her legs are thick
with torn, dirty-blue hose. Her streaked gray and yellow hair
sticks out from beneath a navy-blue beret.

Brenda stands in the middle of the
pedestrian-only walkway between the west end of the Megaplex and
sports center with one hand on her shopping cart. Why is she stuck
in one place when other ghosts, like Jack and Mel, can roam a
bigger area? I have never figured that out.

Her voice came out low and rasping.
“Hello, lovely.” She nodded to where Royal stood at the curb. “I
see you brought Sir Gorgeous along.”

I paid my regular fee of a half hour
of conversation and asked my question.

“
Yeah, I see it around
here. Can’t miss it, can you. They knew how to make cars in them
days.”

Brenda is reliable. Unlike shades I
meet for the first time, who are likely to tell me anything to make
me happy, thinking it will draw me back to them, Brenda knows a lie
will have the opposite effect. Brenda and I go way back. She was
the first shade I met in downtown Clarion.

“
Where was it?”

She gestured at the narrow street
ahead. “Around here and on Temple. You should ask
Irving.”

She waved, high in the air, at the
little man who stood on the sidewalk on the east side of Temple.
“Hi, Irv!” she shouted. He waved back crookedly with his left
hand.

At night, when the streets are almost
free of traffic and quiet, they shout back and forth to each
other.

“
He’s next on my list,” I
told her.

After exchanging a few more words with
Brenda, Royal and I headed down the walkway and along Twenty-First
to Temple.

The car which hit Irving Prentice
didn’t stop to see what happened to the man it tossed on the
sidewalk. Irving died right there of massive head injuries.
Consequently, he is not a pretty sight. You know how it is when you
know someone with a disfigurement, and after a time you don’t
notice - I don’t think I will ever reach that stage with Irving.
Seeing him still gives me a jolt. The right side of his head and
face are bashed in and bloody, and his body is crooked. He shuffles
in his little area like a skinny Quasimodo in a business
suit.

“
Hi there, Irv. How’s
tricks?”

Irving’s voice is upper-class
American. “How do you expect me to reply? Do you see me performing
for the masses? Do you see anything up my sleeve?”

He didn’t stay irritable for long. “I
see it all the time.”

“
You don’t happen to know
in what direction it heads?”

“
I do.” He pointed with his
index finger, across the street and half a block down. “Right in
there.”

I looked back at Royal, pointed. He
was in the Emerson Building’s parking garage in a flash, demon
style.

Chapter
Twenty-Two

“
What
is the Phillip Vance Executive Agency?”

“
It’s new, not listed in
the phone directory yet. There is a nameplate by the elevator, but
does that indicate it is a private elevator to their floor, or the
agency uses all four?”

We got to our feet simultaneously, but
Royal went through the kitchen door first and up the stairs to my
bedroom. I stood behind him chewing on a hangnail as he booted up
my computer. Jack and Mel were already there.

The Phillip Vance Executive Agency was
a fancy temp agency. In other words, they placed employees in
executive positions on a temporary basis, with the option of the
employer taking them on permanently. Although they had their head
office in Clarion, their employees worked throughout
Utah.

Temporary executive positions? Did the
agency mean actual executives, or executive-type assistants? You
would need exemplary qualifications to walk into a business and
immediately take over an executive position. Why did they operate
out of Clarion? Wouldn’t Salt Lake City or St. George be a better
location?

Unless they had a specific reason for
setting up in Clarion. Like, two Dark Cousins lived here. I hoped
they didn’t know a Gelpha also lived in Clarion.

More delving found agency offices
listed all over the country. Some were still open and profitable,
but several had lasted only a few months before closing shop. Royal
brought up a data base with the one already on the screen. Trust
Royal to keep a digital record of Gelpha and Dark Cousin
deaths.

I tried to count down the list. “But
there are. . . . How many were killed?”

“
Here in the States? Seven.
We found the other three, took their bodies and cleaned up the
crime scenes.”

Murders had not occurred in every city
with an agency, but every kill on Royal’s list matched up with an
agency location.