Read The Demon You Know Online
Authors: Christine Warren
As if. All three were well past their prime, and two of them looked positively stringy.
He sighed. He should have let Tess handle this interview and gone with Noah to check out thescene of a recent fiend sighting.
"—tend to concentrate more on objects, you know. Wedding rings, wills, important legal documents, that kind of thing," one of the thin ones was saying. Rule thought her name was something like Daisy. "It was really Heather's suggestion that we branch out into missing persons. Children, mostly. It turned out to be a great success. And so rewarding, you know, to be able to see the little ones safely home.”
The other two nodded. One of them, presumably, was Heather. Rule was going to go with thesecond stringy one. The plump one he thought had been introduced as Claire.
"Of course, those are the good days," Heather added. "Sometimes all we can provide is a senseof closure, and we have to be content with that.”
Rule fought the urge to roll his eyes. If these were what witches were normally like, he needed to
remind Rafe what a lucky man he was to have found a sane one to mate with.
"So, really, since then we've looked on branching out our services as something of a challenge,"
Daisy continued. "I have to admit, though, your request did strike us as a bit unusual.”
Heather nodded and made a face. "Fairly unpleasant, too. I have to tell you, Tess, this isn't thesort of energy we would normally expose ourselves to. Very violent. Very unclean.”
"The word you're looking for," Claire said from over the rim of her teacup just as Rule wasbeginning to wonder if she ever spoke, "is 'evil.'“
Heather glared at her. "You know I don't like that word, Claire. It's so…unforgiving.”
Claire snorted. "Hard to be all that forgiving of something that wants to chew on your entrails.”
Rule took back his uncharitable thoughts. Daisy and Heather might be fluffy-bunny idiot witches,but that Claire had a good head on her shoulders, even if it was long gone gray.
"In any event, we appreciate you helping us out," Tess said, almost as diplomatically as her
husband. Had she been taking lessons? "We haven't had any luck finding it on our own, so of course I immediately thought of you three. You have such a gift with location spells.”
Daisy preened. "We all have our talents, dear. Take your potions, for instance. Why, I couldn't brew a decent cup of willow bark if my life depended on it!”
Rule fought the urge to tell the woman that her life
did
depend on getting to the point and telling him what they had learned about Uzkiel.
"It's nothing." Tess waved away the compliment. "I'm fascinated by what you ladies do, though. Why don't you explain the process to me?”
Was she out of her mind? If they answered that question, it would take these three old biddies forever to get to the point. Rule glared at Tess, who pointedly ignored him.
"Well, of course, dear." Daisy set aside her teacup and folded her hands in her lap. "Usually we
start with something that belonged to the missing soul. With children, we like stuffed animals. They absorb so much energy, and well, it's just pleasant to hold on to one for a couple of hours, isn't it?" She
laughed.
Heather nodded. "We take it into our circle with us and call on the Goddess to open our minds
to the child's mind. Once we've tapped into the little one's energy through the toy, it's much easier to locate that energy somewhere else. Wherever it's gone missing to.”
"Of course, we didn't want to do that in this case." Daisy frowned in distaste. "Not only did we not have a personal object from the fiend, but allowing its mind to join with ours ..." She shuddered. "Well, that would have just been dangerous.”
"Very. You did give us the fiend's proper name, though," Heather said. "And that meant a lot. Not that we normally dabble in summoning, you know—nasty work, that—but we do pride ourselves on knowing a little bit about most of the major forms of magic. And when it comes to summoning magic, the most important tool you can have is the name of the demon.”
Rule growled. "The fiend.”
Daisy and Heather jumped a little in their seats and eyed him suspiciously, as if they'd forgotten
he was there and now that they remembered, he'd be feeling all noshy.
Tess sent him another glare and he subsided back into his chair. "So with its name, you were able to call on it?" she prompted the women.
"Oh no. That would be the equivalent of a summoning, and we certainly didn't want a creature like that popping up inside our temple room," Daisy said, aghast. "We'd never get the taint out.”
Not to mention the bloodstains that would be left behind when Uzkiel tore the three of them limb
from little old limb, Rule thought uncharitably.
"No, we wanted to sneak up on the creature, so to speak," Heather agreed. "To find out what it
was up to without it doing the reverse. That type of snooping requires quite a bit of stealth.”
Rule closed his eyes. In that case, his hopes for getting any useful information out of them weredoomed.
"Oh, for the Lady's sake," Claire snapped, setting her cup down on the table with a thump.
"These children don't want a blow-by-blow account of your highly innovative method for psychic spying, Heather. They want to know what we found out.”
Rule could have kissed Claire. In fact, he'd talk to Abby about naming their first daughter after her.
She turned to face Rule and Tess and continued. "We can't give you an address. Our magicdoesn't work that way. In fact, I can't think of a single kind that does. But we can tell you that it's somekind of old warehouse or factory and that it's located on the river.”
His heart sank. Manhattan was surrounded by water on four sides, and most of the waterfront
areas had been commercial property at one time or another. All this information had done was eliminate
the interior of the island.
"Now don't look so stricken, boy," Claire said, shaking a finger at him. "That's not all we saw. If you look out straight over the water, you can see the sun going down behind the Statue of Liberty.”
Tess looked at him. "It's got to be Battery Park City.”
Claire nodded. "That's what I said. But there's one more piece of information you two should have. The building this fiend is hiding in, it's not just using it because it's abandoned. It's got a bigger reason than that. First off, the place has a basement. It's wet as a well-digger's arse down there, but it keeps out the light, and the fiend likes that.”
Rule nodded, but he was already sorting through possibilities in his head. He didn't know Manhattan that well, but Tess had grown up here, and even if she couldn't name the building, they could
probably get blueprints from the Planning Authority. Not many of the places on the water had full basements. Like Claire said, they tended to leak.
"You listen to me, boy." Claire grabbed Rule's hand, interrupting his thoughts and dragging him back to the present. "I wasn't finished with my story. The other reason that fiend has set up shop in this building is the energy in the place. It's as foul as he is. I don't know the history, and I tell you here, I don't care to. Not after feeling it for myself. But I'm telling you, something nasty happened in that place, and happened more than once, I can tell you. Enough misery and pain in that building that it's sunk into the
brick, and that fiend is only adding to it. You ask me, when you're done, you should tear that place down to rubble and salt the land good. Maybe after the earth gets wiped clean, something decent can spring up
in its place. But for now ..." She shook her head. "If a place can be called evil, that one is. Mark my words.”
Rule nodded and turned to Tess, trying to ignore the uneasy feeling the old witch's words had caused.
"The Council library will have records we can go through," Tess said. "It had to have been a pretty high-profile case to have been as bad as Claire says. I'll call a friend on the Witches' Council and ask her to start digging." She grimaced. "I know it's not as fast as we would have liked, but at least now we have someplace to start.”
Rule nodded.
"Thank you, ladies." He rose and pulled back his chair. "You've been very helpful.”
Claire struggled to her feet, waving away the hand Tess offered to assist her. When she hadsteadied herself on the handle of a carved wooden cane, she lifted her pale blue eyes to Rule and pursedher lips. "I'm going to help you just a little more," she said, nodding as if to herself. "I'm going to tell youthat if you move fast and trust her good sense, it will all work out in the end. Mark my words.”
The jingle of the cheery little bell Tess had mounted over the door of the shop told them someonehad entered, but it was the pounding of heavy footsteps that alerted Rule that something was wrong.
Noah shoved his way past Tess's assistant and into the back room. From the way he wassucking in air, it almost looked like he'd run all the way from the Upper East Side.
"Abby," he gasped, leaning over and bracing his hands on his thighs as he struggled for air.
Rule felt the world shift on its access and suddenly stop spinning. He shook his head, as if he
could deny what he knew was coming. His heart froze in his chest, and his stomach clenched before he
even heard Noah's next words.
"Abby's missing."
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
How Tess got Rule back to Vircolac, he never knew, but she managed it with almost frighteningefficiency. Noah helped, too, primarily by restraining Rule from tearing the entire city apart brick by brickto find his missing woman. Between the two of them—ably assisted by Bette, Tess's shop manager, whoherded the curious covenmates out the back door and out of the way—they got him into a cab andunloaded him into the front hall of the club in less than fifteen minutes.