Possession

Chapter Thirty-nine

As the sun came up, Adrian was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee that did not taste as good as the stuff Sissy had made the morning before. With any luck she’d come down again, take pity on his sorry ass, and hook him up. If not? He might have to go the Egg McMuffin route.

He really didn’t like this waiting, though, and not just because he was hungry—and the coffee really did suck.

Shifting around and trying to get that bum leg quiet, he was stiffer than he usually was. Then again, he’d had to stay on his feet while he’d been down below with Devina yesterday, and the effects of all that vertical were still with him.

Man, that demon could follow through when she wanted something.

Tenacity like a parasite. Natch.

He’d really enjoyed humiliating her—watching her work so hard and get nowhere? Short of killing her, which he couldn’t do without her precious mirror, it had been utterly satisfying.

Better than a fuckload of orgasms he wouldn’t have wanted anyway.

“What’s up, man.”

Ad looked over his shoulder and cursed. “I was hoping you were Sissy. We need breakfast and she’s a hell of a cook.”

As Jim wandered in, he was walking stiffly, too, which was a surprise. All the grim on his face was not, however.

For some reason, Ad thought of the guy staring at Sissy: It was the only time he’d ever seen the savior look alive. And not as in pissed off.

They were both dead men walking in a lot of ways.

“What happened to you last night?” Ad asked.

“We gotta talk.”

Something in that voice made Ad straighten in his chair, even though his hip didn’t appreciate the added stress. “What.”

Jim took his own goddamn time getting some of that watery coffee. And he waited until he was seated across the table to drop his bomb: “Nigel’s gone.”

Ad frowned. No way he’d heard that right. “Gone as in ‘taking a breather from the game’? As in, ‘off to the tailors’? Or…”

“He’s gone.”

An icy-cold mantle settled across Ad’s shoulders. “Disappeared, you mean.”

“No.” Jim shook out a cigarette from a pack of Reds and lit it with his Bic. “I found him dead in his tent last night.”

Ad’s jaw unhinged, and he let his mouth fall open. “You can’t … no, that’s not…”

Jim answered without words, just staring right into his face.

“Give me one of those,” Ad muttered, holding out his palm.

“You don’t smoke.”

“This morning I do.”

Jim popped a brow, but shared, pushing over his cigs and his lighter. And Ad made like the guy, putting a cancer stick between his teeth, bringing flame to tip, breathing in.

The sense of suffocation was not remotely pleasurable. The buzz that came shortly after the inhale? Not bad.

“I was with that demon all day long,” Ad said, shaking his head. “How did Devina—”

“Nigel’s hand was on the hilt.”

Ad felt his eyes bulge. “He did it?”

“Far as I can tell.”

Adrian shook his head again. “Colin. Oh, shit, Colin—did you see him?”

“We traded some words, yeah.” Jim rubbed his chest and grimaced. “He had some sharp points to make.”

Adrian scrubbed his face. He’d never particularly cared one way or the other about those archangels. At their worst, they were obstacles to work around. At best, they were so busy with their tea and crumpets, they stayed out of his way.

Well, except for that one time. At band camp.

But after losing Eddie? He felt for Colin. Best unkept secret in the universe, those two archangels had been. So that must hurt.

“This fucking war.”

“Amen to that,” Jim said, leaning back and tapping his ash into the sink.

Being immortal, Ad had never thought much about dying in the conventional “game over” sense. Lately? It was on his mind constantly—no doubt thanks to bunking in with Eddie.

Hard to lose your other half.

On that note … “Everything okay with Sissy?” As Jim glanced up in surprise, Adrian rolled his eyes. “Look, it’s still none of my business what you do with her. But … she’s okay. She’s a good girl, that one—what.”

“Ahhh, that’s just a big fat one-eighty for you. As recently as yesterday morning, you were ready to clock me about her.”

Adrian took another inhale and then stared at his cigarette’s tip, because it was easier than looking at the savior. “I don’t know, I guess I don’t really blame you for trying to find a safe haven in all this. Just be careful. No foundation is sturdy in this game.”

Jim studiously avoided all that. “Thanks for buying those clothes for her. What do I owe you?”

“It came to two hundred and eighty-seven bucks. But Devina put it on her credit card, so I think we should consider them gifts.”

“You went shopping with her?”

“You told me to keep her busy, and she likes clothes. Whatever. The sex shit doesn’t work anymore for me—although I have to say, it was amusing as fuck to watch her try to get me up.”

Jim winced. “I’m sorry.”

“What for? I’ve had to do worse down there. Her masturbating for hours was a vacay compared to the other shit. Just think, if I’d had a video camera, I could have Kim Kardashian’d her.”

As they fell into a silence, he knew they were both thinking about that worktable of hers. Eddie was the only one out of the three of them who hadn’t been down there in that capacity. He’d also never been with Devina in the conventional sense, either.

Another reason he should have been the last of them to go.

“So Sissy’s been doing a great job with this place,” Ad murmured.

Jim looked over again. “What do you mean?”

“You know, cleaning it up? Shit’s looking much better since she’s moved in.”

“Last time I saw, she was trying to burn it down.”

“Excuse me?”

“Long story. The transition’s just been rough.”

Ad nodded. “Nothing’s easy in this, is it.”

“So, are you going to tell me where we are? I’m ready to get back to work.”

Ad got up and went to the sink, dousing his cig, the habit still not doing it for him. Turning around, he wondered where to start. “Colin said he could only go part of the way with the intel.”

“Whatever we got, we can run with.”

“That’s what I told him…”

Across town, as the angels commiserated and Jim got his update, Cait was sitting at her desk, brushing a tear from her cheek. Clearing her throat, she prayed she didn’t completely crumble. “I’m sorry, what was that, Mrs. Barten? The connection is bad.”

Untrue. She was having trouble keeping her cell phone against her ear.

“Yes, of course,” she said into the thing. “Yes. Absolutely…”

Even though she never wrote on drawing paper, she slid a fresh sheet over. And even though she never wrote with drawing pencils, she made sure she had all the details down.

“I’m honored.” She wiped away another tear. “Yes, I have some stands—I know exactly what we need. You can count on me. See you then. Yes … God willing.”

As she ended the call, she got up slowly and went into the kitchen. Everything was tidy as always, not even dishes drying in the rack—because she had to put them away before she left the kitchen or she couldn’t sit still at her desk.

She’d had some kind of destination. But abruptly, she found herself walking around on her linoleum, making a tight little circle, eyes lighting on the hand towels that were neatly hanging off the handle of the oven, and the napkins on the table in their rack, and the two place mats she had out even though she always ate alone. If she opened any of the cupboards? Soup cans and boxes of low-fat crackers and jars of pickles were lined up by type. Same in her refrigerator, the skim milk never mixing with the yogurt or the butter or the veggies.

The first line against chaos. And to think she’d always assumed the anal retentiveness would help, a kind of talisman against the whirlpool of life, a way of taming the hard edges of fate.

Wasn’t doing anything for her at the moment. Not about her heading to see G.B. at noontime to tell him she was kind of in a relationship with someone else. Not with the desperate anticipation she had for nightfall.

Certainly not at all with what she was about to do.

“Shit.”

Bracing herself, she went over to the door that led down into the cellar. It took her a moment before she could turn the knob and pull the panels open and reach forward to flick the light switch. As the fixture came on, the rough wooden steps were illuminated, as was the dark gray concrete floor below. The scent that rose to her nose was both earthy from the fifties-era concrete walls, and sweet from her fabric softener sheets.

Long trip down. A kind of forever to reach the bottom.

She didn’t head over to her washing machine and ironing board. She went in the opposite direction, to the sealed plastic tubs that held her Christmas decorations and lights, and her Halloween things, and that sleeping bag she’d only used once or twice.

It was past all that that she kept her artwork on shelves, her tubes of drawings and flat boxes of paintings and so much more ordered chronologically by medium.

The things she had taken out of Sissy’s locker at school were right where she’d put them. Cait had had to move some of her own pastels onto the floor to make room, something she had never felt comfortable doing before—especially not in the spring, when the rains came and leaks happened.

But as important as her things were, Sissy’s were so much more so.

The hands that had made them were gone forever.

It took Cait a couple of trips to carry the folios and the box up to her kitchen table. And after a moment, she thought better about the placement and moved them away from the window. Maybe she should have left them downstairs? It wasn’t like she was going to forget to bring them to the funeral at St. Patrick’s.

Staring at it all, she stepped back in time, reversing the mental DVD of her life until she was once again twelve and living under the same roof with her parents. After her brother had died, she had been the one to pack up his things: Her mother and father had disappeared within days of the burial, going off on the first of all those mission trips, her grandmother moving in to take care of her.

She’d like her grandmother just fine, but it had felt like both she and Charlie had been deserted. And that sense had intensified when her parents had called a week later and said that they were bringing home a preacher who needed a place to stay for a month. In that small house, where else were they going to put the guy but Charlie’s room?

It had seemed an insult to let some stranger sleep in her brother’s bed or use his bureau and his closet, all while his clothes and car magazines and CDs were all over the place.

Using her own allowance money, she’d bought U-Haul boxes, and put everything in the attic … and when she had moved out east, she had taken it with her.

For all their pontificating, her parents had never really talked to her about the loss. Plenty of generic praying advice, yes, and she had to admit, the cynic in her aside, she had done some of that on her own. Still did. But she could have used some more conventional support in the form of talking, hugs, understanding, compassion.

Then again, her brother had always been her family.

It was weird, weird, weird to be thinking of all of this right now. But another funeral of another young life lost too early was likely to bring up things that were unresolved—

The knocking on her door was probably the FedEx man delivering the supply of pencils she’d ordered last week.

Wiping her cheeks on a just-in-case, she took out her scrunchie and re-pulled her hair back as she went for the door.

Not FedEx, although the box had been left on her front stoop.

Teresa was dressed in a pale blue business suit that did absolutely nothing for her coloring, and she was pissed, hands on her hips, glare on her face. “You never call, you never write. You suck. Now let me in—I have forty-five minutes before I have to be back to the office, and you’re going to tell me everything.”

Her oldest and dearest pushed past her, marching into the kitchen and sitting down next to all the artwork.

“So.” Teresa crossed her arms over her chest and tapped her high-heeled shoe. “What’s happening—”

Cait burst into tears.

“Oh, shit.” Teresa jumped up and went in for the hug. “I’m such an ass. Are you okay? What’s wrong? If he hurt you, I’ll screw his reputation twelve ways to Sunday on the Internet. And key his car. And do some other stuff that you won’t want to know about beforehand, but will certainly read of in the CCJ.”

Cait held on tight. It was a while before she could say anything intelligent—but that was the thing with true friends.

They didn’t necessarily need to hear the details of where you were … to be there for you.

Another one?

As Duke walked into the Shed and heard his name get called out, he eyed the guy standing by the muni truck he himself had been assigned to for the shift. Man, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had two subs in three days working with him. Maybe they’d fired the first? Turned out that one had had a bad limp, and though the city of Caldwell didn’t discriminate, it was hard to be a laborer if you couldn’t even stand up for any period of time.

“So are you Duke Phillips?” the man asked.

“Yeah. You with me for the day?” he muttered as he walked over with the keys.

“Yup.”

“Well, I drive.” Duke unlocked the doors and got in. “And set the route.”

“No problem.”

“We’re going to be ripping out a hedgerow,” Duke said, as they shut their doors and he started the engine. “After that, we’ve got inventory to do.”

“What’s that?”

Duke drove them out of the garage and into the sunlight. He’d come in at eleven, and was grateful for the extra hour of work. With any luck, he’d be back to full-time in another week or ten days.

“We drive through parks and cemeteries and make up a work list for the spring cleanup. If the projects are approved, we get more hours.”

“Can I smoke in here?”

“Doesn’t bother me.” At least he wouldn’t get a contact high, like he did at home with Rolly’s pot. “Crack a window, though, so I don’t have to hear about it.”

As Duke’s phone went off, he took the thing out. Checked the screen. Closed his eyes for a split second and then bumped the call.

It was Nicole. Wanting to talk about the kid, no doubt.

Man, the last thing he wanted to hear was that there was more trouble at school. That Nicole was taking a second go at having Duke talk to him. That that quicksand of madness was trying to suck him in again.

He set the terms between the three of them. No one else.

Besides, he had enough on his plate.

“Bad call?” the guy beside him asked.

Duke let the question slide. He was not interested in getting familiar with the fathead in the passenger seat—and he was certainly not going to let the stranger into his biz. Hell, he didn’t allow that with people he knew.

Fortunately, there was no more talking as he took them into town, the rural miles and then the suburban blocks getting eaten up fast.

“So, I know you,” the guy said as they hit some traffic going into the thick of downtown.

Duke glanced across the seat. Nope, he didn’t recognize his one-shift partner. But that didn’t mean the man hadn’t been in line at the Iron Mask or something—although that hardly counted as “knowing.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Yeah, I do.” The man flicked the tip off his Marlboro out of the window crack and put the dead butt in his jacket pocket. “I know that you’re going to face a crossroads soon, and you’re going to have to make a choice. I’m here to help you do the right thing.”

What the fuck?

Duke hit the brakes to stop at a red light, and turned to face Mr. Chatty. Time to set the ground rules before this became the longest workday of his life. “You and I have six hours where we are required to be … together … in … this…”

Duke let the screw-you wind down into silence as he met the man’s eyes. Strange eyes. Strange color.

Just like the other “worker” he’d been paired with.

Abruptly, a cotton-wool feeling came over him—talk about your contact highs. It was a little like what he’d felt when he was around his star boarder for too long while Rolly was toking up—but it was so much more than that.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” the man said. “In another block and a half, you’re going to turn right and take us down to the river. We’re going to parallel-park and take a walk in the park so the GPS on this truck reports that we’ve done our job. But we’re not going to be digging out any bushes. You’re going to tell me where you’re at—we’re almost out of time and I need to be up to speed quick.”

Duke blinked. And then his phone started ringing again.

He took it out slowly. As he saw who was calling, he looked back at the man. With a feeling of total unreality, he heard himself say, “Do you know … a woman with brunette hair?”

As that psychic crackpot from Trade Street went into Duke’s voice mail, it was somehow not a surprise that the man beside him nodded slowly.

“Yeah, I do. And we need to keep you away from her.”

Somewhere deep in his marrow, Duke knew that this was what he’d been waiting his whole adult life for. He’d always had some sense that things were not normal for him, no matter how much he tried to pretend otherwise—and that was the reason he’d gone to that psychic for all those years.

It was also the “why” behind his nightmares, the ones he told nobody about.

Duke’s phone let out a beep, notifying him that a new message had been left for him.

Through the fog that had settled into his brain, he watched his thumb move over the smooth screen, calling the voice mail up … and then he put the cell up to his ear.

“Duke, this is Yasemin Oaks—you must come see me. At the very least, I need to speak with you urgently. The dreams are getting more intense—you are in danger—please, Duke, I’m warning you. Blood is going to flow and—”

“The light’s green,” the man next to him announced. “Hit the gas and take us down to the river. It’s time, Duke. We’ve got shit to take care of.”

For some strange reason, Duke thought of Cait. Beautiful Cait.

“I don’t know you,” he said roughly.

“You don’t have to. But you need to trust me.”

Snap out of it, he told himself. This is all bullcrap.

“Not going to happen,” he heard himself say.

Abruptly, he put his phone away. Pushed his foot down on the accelerator. And was ready to go anywhere except over to the water—just to establish who was in charge.

After a moment, he glanced over at the other man. The son of a bitch was sitting in the passenger seat, jaw set like he knew exactly how this was going to play out.

Duke cursed under his breath. Yeah, no way he was telling this guy anything … and yet he couldn’t ignore the sense of foreboding that was dogging him. Besides, he’d wanted to end this shit for so long, even as he was knee-deep in it right now. The trouble was, old habits, like bitter resentments, died hard.

“You don’t have much of a choice,” the man said. “You need me if you want to come out of this in one piece.”

One piece? Duke thought. Hah. I’m already broken.

“You’re going to tell me everything, Duke. You have to.”