Chapter Nine

After Partners in Crime broke for the evening, I went upstairs and discovered that Guy Snowden had left another of those cautious, noncommittal messages on my machine. I figured if he was still noncommittal, Jake must not have got hold of him. I tried calling him back, got his machine again, and left a less cautious message of my own.

Still no word from the Dark Realm regarding Blade Sable. My online query lay right where I had left it. Discussion did not exactly scintillate. Spells were exchanged, political opinions were exchanged, a video was recommended: Cursed with Christina Ricci. This triggered an unexpectedly heated debate of the flick’s cinematic merits and Ricci’s physical ones. I sighed. Signed out.

An evening of surfing the ’Net for information on local Satanic organizations did little for my nerves, although I thought I had a better understanding of what Satanism was.

As with Christianity, there appeared to be several different religious belief systems and practices in Satanism. Traditional Satanists worshiped the deity Satan, aka the Christian Devil. But the majority of Satanists seemed to view Satanism as an abstract philosophy with Satan functioning as a symbol for pre-Christian life concepts.

Of course, according to the Religious Right, anyone who wasn’t practicing conservative Christianity was a Satanist.

The ugly stuff, the stuff that got the media attention, seemed to fall into the category of Satanic dabbling. A mix of everything from Wicca to psychotropic werewolves with, as far as I could tell, no connection to religious Satanism, this junk seemed to attract the young (pissy adolescents in particular) and the mentally ill.

I was reading up on the more horrific manifestations of this mystical acting out, when the phone rang next to my elbow, and I almost went through the roof.

By the time I had regained composure enough to pick up the receiver, I hoped it might be Jake, but nope, the hoarse whisper on the other end belonged to Angus.

“Adrien…?”

“Angus, speak up,” I said crisply. Hours of reading about the Sign of the Beast, ritual torture, crazed killers, and equally crazed Christian fundamentalists made me less patient than usual. “Where are you?”

“I don’t think I should tell you,” Angus mumbled. “It might not be safe.”

Swell. Was he anticipating my being captured and tortured for the information?

I heard a sound like a garbage disposal running in the background, which I deduced was Wanda, offering Angus guidance. “Adrien, I think I made a big mistake,” he said.

That made two of us. “What mistake?” I asked.

“I think I left stuff at my place that might help them track us.”

“Angus, who is ‘them’? Wait — forget I asked. You’ve got to call Jake right away.”

“I’m not talking to him,” Angus said in perfectly normal and perfectly hostile tones. “He doesn’t give a rat’s ass what happens to me.”

“Listen to me carefully,” I said. “They dug up a body in Eaton Canyon a couple of days ago. A kid named Tony Zellig. Jake’s part of the investigation. He wants to talk to you.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” he said desperately. My heart sank. Not: “I don’t know anything about any body!” Not: “Who’s Tony Zellig?”

“Adrien, please listen. If they find that letter, they’ll be able to hunt us down. Adrien…are you there?”

“I’m here.” I rested my forehead on my hand, tried to think. “What letter?”

“The letter from my Grampy. I left it right there on the coffee table. If they find it, they’ll make the connection…”

His Grampy? How desperate a character could a kid be who called his grandfather “Grampy”?

“Do they know where you live? Maybe they’ve already found it.”

I didn’t actually believe that. I had trouble with the idea of this vast conspiracy of evil, but I felt the panic vibrate all the way down the line. He covered the mouthpiece and held a quick, ragged discussion with Wanda.

“If they —” His voice cracked. He tried again. “If they’ve found out, we need to know.”

The minute hand of the clock on my desk clicked onto the six. Eleven-thirty. I listened to Angus breathing noisily on the other end. He sounded like he was about to cry.

“How do I get in?” I asked at last.

“There’s a key in the dragon planter on the back porch.”

“Terrific,” I said briefly. “No one will ever think of looking there.”

“Are you going to do it?”

“What exactly am I doing? Retrieving a letter that has the location of your secret hideout?”

His voice wavered. “Why are you mad at me?”

“Because you knew —” My voice shook. I cleared my throat and said, “Because you knew about the body in Eaton Canyon. Because you’re involved in a goddamned murder — and I helped you —”

He slammed the phone down.

I pressed Call Return. The number flashed on the screen. Up north somewhere, judging by the area code. I scribbled the number. Then I called Jake’s cell. It was busy. I pressed pound to leave a message.

“It’s me.” I explained briefly, recited Angus’s phone number. “He asked me to pick something up for him at his place. It’s eleven-thirty now. I should be over there by twelve, if you want to have a look around without a warrant.” I pulled the address out of my Rolodex, read it over the phone, and hung up.

* * * * *

The house was at the end of a cul-de-sac. One of those rectangular, L-shaped, ranch-style fixer-uppers that no one had bothered to fix up. It looked blue in the moonlight. The peeling shutters were blood-colored — possibly brown in the light of day. The attached garage sagged wearily on its posts. Apparently Angus wasn’t a big fan of HGTV.

For laughs, I walked to the front and tried the door. It was locked. I decided that was a good sign. I went around to the side gate. It was also locked, fastened by a padlock on the other side of the tall wooden gate.

I weighed alternatives while keeping an eye on the neighbor’s house. The windows next door were dark, so either no one was home, or everyone was in bed. I didn’t fancy getting snagged for burglary by a Citizen’s Watch zealot. I suspected Angus might not stay around long enough to back my story.

It was a reasonably sturdy gate. I decided it could likely take my weight. I grabbed the top board and swung myself up. I balanced briefly, the fence groaning in alarm. I jumped, landing in tall grass and weeds.

That had been easier than expected. I went around the corner of the house. The patio was a cement slab with a metal canopy. There was a selection of withered plants in pots of various sizes. I didn’t need to use my flashlight thanks to the dramatic full moon, and the fact that the dragon planter had been painted in Day-Glo paint. Red eyes glowed eerily from the shadows. I poked around in the dirt and dead twigs, found the key, and opened the sliding glass door.

I stepped inside. The place stank of cigarettes, marijuana, garbage…

“Hello?”

The sound of my voice was startling in the emptiness of that house. I’d never been anywhere that felt so cold, so devoid of life.

I turned on the nearest lamp.

The room looked shockingly ordinary. No horned goat image painted on the walls, no altar festooned with black candles.

The shag carpet looked like Rice-A-Roni, and there was an assortment of furniture ready for the Goodwill, although, come to think of it, that was probably where Angus had purchased it. The coffee table was littered with music magazines and bills. There were several books on astrology, including a copy of The Devil’s Disciple by Garibaldi.

There was also a copy of The Satanic Bible. I felt the hair on the back of my neck rise at the sight of the ominous scarlet pentagram on that stark black cover.

After a moment I shook off my inertia, telling myself not to be an ass. I quickly shuffled through the papers scattered across the coffee table. No letters. I glanced around the room.

Not a single picture on the wall. Now that truly was weird.

I made tracks for the kitchen. It was disorderly, but not dirty, despite the persistent reek of garbage. A phone book lay open on the table. I glanced at the yellow pages: locksmiths. Was that significant?

Next to the fake oak cabinets was a bulletin board with photos of Angus and Wanda — Wanda in a giant sombrero, her face smeared in whipped cream. Birthday party, California style. There were a couple of postcards, a schedule of classes that neither of them was attending. That was about it.

All the while I searched, the quiet chill of the place gnawed at me. I began to feel like I was being watched. Every time the house creaked — and sometimes when it didn’t — I snapped to attention, staring about myself uneasily.

If I hadn’t already told Jake I would be there, I’d have walked out a dozen times. As it was, I’d been inside about eight minutes when I decided I’d had it. I would wait for Jake out front in the Forester. For that matter, I didn’t even know if Jake had got my message. He likely hadn’t. He hadn’t called me back. He was probably home in bed, sound asleep, right now. Which is where I would have been if I had any sense at all.

As I crossed the living room, heading for the glass door, it occurred to me that the sour sick smell that hung over the place like a pall was stronger from the hall that led to the bedrooms.

I stood rooted in the intersection of rooms, my mouth dry with dread.

Thank you and good night, I thought. At the same instant, I realized that I couldn’t walk away. Never mind the ethics of the situation, I’d touched the front door knob, the sliding glass door, the lamp — and those were the articles I knew for sure would retain fingerprints. The articles I remembered touching.

I could be wrong, I reassured myself. I was often wrong. More and more often, it seemed lately.

But I knew I wasn’t wrong. Not this time. Not about this.

I turned down the hallway. It felt like when you’re trying to run in nightmare. Despite the adrenaline overdrive, my footsteps dragged as I paced the length of the hall. I poked my head around the doorframe.

Moonlight poured from the back window onto the thing sprawled on the bed. White, limp, and streaked with dark: a body.

“No,” I said. “No. No fucking way.” My voice sounded shocked and loud. Way too loud. Too loud for the room, too loud in my head. I clamped down on it.

Dimly, I made out the giant circle scrawled on the wall above the headboard. Circle with a five-point star, and in the center, a terrible symbol — the calling card of a high-ranking demon.