Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (5 page)

“No,” I said. “But nothing’s fair anymore,” I said. “Not even the law.”

He began laughing.. “Especially not the law,” he said, and his thin ribcage shook violently as he laughed.

“Will you answer my questions?” I said.

“Of course,” he said. “Anything.” His face was the pure essence of a father’s love. Half-smile with his head cocked to the side and hands folded as if in prayer. But his eyes: nothing. No emotion about me whatsoever. I was willing to wager that he’d been practicing that expression for years. Alexei Slobodian didn’t experience any feeling unless it was about himself.

“Are you the only Summoner in the city?”

The confusion was real enough, as well as the suspicion that followed. He narrowed his eyes. “Why?”

I shrugged and leaned up against the wall with my shoulder. “You’ve probably already heard that someone tried to bust into Hell last night,” I said.

“Tried? Don’t be coy, Nikita,” he said. He’d dropped the Daddy dearest act. “That is not what I heard. The way I hear it, they succeeded.”

“And how does one hear things locked away as solitary’s only inhabitant?” I said. “I’m curious.”

He looked smug. “I may be locked up, Nikita, but I am never helpless. What are you really trying to ask me? If it was me? How could it be? I am stuck here thanks to dirty politicians.”

“Well, they had some pretty good reasons,” I said.

“Perhaps,” he said. Now he was being coy.

“Well, have you heard of any other Summoners?”

“Who are you working for, daughter?” he said.

“Why?”

“Because men are never what they seem to be.” He was looking at Gage, who was immersed in his big book. “Maybe you do not really know what you are looking for.”

“I can take care of myself,” I said. “I always have. I’m a Slobodian, remember?”

He nodded. “Yes, yes you are,” he said, his gaze returning to me. “And this makes me worry more. We are not careful, we Slobodians.”

“Come on, Sasha,” I said. “Who else is summoning these days?”

“Do you know what they let out?” he said.

“They let out a Dark,” I said.

“A Dark Spirit,” he said. “Very dangerous. Murderous. The only thing it loves is killing and pain. They lock them deep in the pits because they like to slip into people’s bodies. Does not matter if human or demon.”

“What do you mean ‘slip into’?” I said.

He frowned. “I cannot think of the word. You know like the movie with the little girl with the spinning head?”

“They possess people?” I said.

He snapped his fingers. “Yes.”

“Peachy. So these Dark things, they’ll start killing?”

“It is a sure thing,” he said.

“How long before they start?”

He shrugged. “It is very tiring coming up out of the pits. The Dark will want to rest for many days. A week, maybe.”

“How do you know all this stuff?”

“I know many things,” he said. “You can never really know a person, Nikita. I have many secrets.”

“I don’t doubt that.”

“There is time still to walk away from this job,” he said.

“No, Dad, I can’t. I need the money. Sofi’s in the hospital again.”

“I know,” he said. “She is old, Nikita. You have to let her go. Do not kill yourself for a sick old woman.”

“I suppose I should just leave her behind?” I said. “Like you did with Mom? Like how you left me behind?”

“Someday you will understand,” he said.

“I’ll never understand that,” I said. “I don’t want to understand.”

The hospital was just a few blocks from the prison, so I asked Gage if we could stop off there for a bit.

“No problem,” he said. “I love cafeteria food.” I was pretty sure he was being serious.

I left Gage at the entrance. He had his satchel and headed to the cafeteria. I took the elevator to Sofi’s room on the sixth floor. She looked about the same as the last time. Her hair was falling out in clumps and she had bald patches all over her head. She was startlingly thin, even for her. Her birdlike bones jutted out under her nightgown and she had a sheen of sweat on her face even though the room was freezing. Her eyes were closed and I could see tiny veins bright red on the surface of her eyelids. I sat down next to her in a large padded chair.

“Baba?” I said softly. Her bony chest rose and fell only slightly. I put my head in my hands.

“Niki?” she rasped in a voice so soft it was a whisper. “It is about time.”

I smiled and took her small hand in mine. It was so cold. “Sorry to wake you.”

“Pah,” she said. “I sleep all the time. I would rather see you. Now, tell me about this job of yours. You could not talk long on the phone.”

“Sorry about that,” I said. “I was in a hurry.”

“So now you tell me,” she said.

“Well,” I said, “for starters, I got off the Registry.”

Her eyes became saucers. “How? It cannot be done.”

“It can,” I said. I gave her the condensed version of the events last night and this morning, leaving out the parts about drinking and working for Hell. “And I went to see Sasha just now.”

“Will wonders never cease?” she said. “How is he?”

“He looks terrible. I think they’re starving him or something. And he still doesn’t take responsibility for anything.”

“Well, what did you expect?”

“I don’t know. But I did manage to get some information about my case out of him.”

“That is something,” she said. She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. She opened them again and looked at me.

“I’m tiring you out,” I said. “I’ll go now. You need your sleep.”

She squeezed my hand. “Wait. One thing. I have had a vision. Just after we talked on the phone. I do not know what it means, but I had the strangest feeling that it had to do with you.”

“What is it?” I said. Sofi’s visions were notoriously reliable. She had used her gift over the years to support us doing sittings with clients, at least until it got too dangerous to even think about advertising such things. If only I’d been so careful.

“It is strange,” she said slowly. “Two lions fighting, both black. A woman in a blue dress, a business lady with little round glasses. Only she has a shotgun and blood on her dress.” She frowned. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why, but I felt I needed to tell you.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t a dream?” I said. “They say those drugs are pretty powerful.”

“Not a dream,” she said, rising above a whisper. She coughed and her whole body shuddered. I got her some water from a nearby stand and let her drink it from a straw. “Not a dream,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “Be careful, Niki.” I set the water back on the stand and turned back to Sofi, but she was asleep.

I grabbed a cheese sandwich in the cafeteria, then looked for Gage. He was sitting by himself at a big table and had his giant book in front of him. As I approached I saw there was an untouched cup of coffee and an empty plate that used to have something with red sauce on it. He had the same sauce around his mouth. He was flipping through the pages of the book, his face screwed up in concentration. I sat across from him, munching on my tasteless cuisine choice.

“What are you looking for?” I said. He started, actually jumping about an inch off his chair.

“Jesus, warn a guy, would you? “

“Sorry.” I looked at the book. There were strange symbols all over the page and they seemed to be moving. I watched as a set of runic-looking cones moved side to side, then seemed to become far away, then got bigger again. Then they morphed into a different set of symbols that looked like stick-drawings of constellations. “So, that’s why it’s such a big deal to be able to read this stuff.”

“Yep.” The page started swirling around like water down the drain, then the symbols practically jumped off the page before shifting into another set of symbols again. This time they formed different sizes of spirals.

“How do you know what it says?”

“How do you see dead guys?”

I shrugged. “I just see them. I look at them and know they’re ghosts.”

“I just look at this stuff and know what it means. Something in my brain is different I guess. Yours too probably.”

“They say Abnormals came from people eating preservatives and being exposed to radiation all the time,” I said. “Scientists are doing all these studies.”

He looked at me. “You believe that?”

“No,” I said after pausing for a moment. “I don’t think they know. Besides, they think we all just popped up one day.”

“You don’t think so?”

“I think we’ve always been here. Just no one ever let themselves see us before. And all these other things wandering around, the politicians have never mentioned them.”

“Like demons,” Gage said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Like them. Though they sure like to talk about Hell a lot.”

“Your friend all right? The one that’s sick?”

“She’s fine,” I said, but I wasn’t so sure. Her vision had disturbed me, as well as her condition, and I was looking forward to getting back to work to get my mind off of it. “So what are you looking for in that–?”

“Grimoire,” he said. “I’m not really sure. I heard what your dad said, and I thought maybe an exorcism spell or maybe a Binding would be useful. I’m working blind, though. And if I don’t know, the Grimoire won’t help me.”

“Help you?”

“Yeah, sometimes the books help you out a little. That’s how I see it. Maybe it’s another force, or another kind of magic.” He shrugged. “But I got nothing so far.”

“Maybe if we see the place where it all started it’ll help,” I said. “Start from the beginning.”

“You want to go to the place the seal was broken?” said Gage.

“You know where it is?”

“Yep.”

“Peachy.”

The traffic detours started five blocks from the scene, with barricades and blinking lights blocking every street. Gage steered into an alley, then another, and parked next to a dumpster in a garbage-strewn dead end behind some dingy brick buildings. The man knew his alleys, I’d give him that.

I opened the rear door in Gage’s car and dug through the guns in the box, each with a tag tied to it, some of them in plastic bags. I found what I was looking for after a few minutes, and the ammo a minute later.

There was only one thing of Sasha’s that I kept after he was arrested. A gun. It was a Makarov 9mm, a handgun he’d gotten off a Russian ex-soldier, though he never said how and I tried not to think about it. It was Russian-made, and cheap, but Sasha, I was more than sure, had made some adjustments to it. For example, I’d never not hit what I was aiming for. My aim is pretty good, granted, but you have to expect the occasional off-day. I didn’t have off-days. Not with my Makarov. It slid into my hand like it had been molded there. I looked it over. Someone had been taking care of it; it had been recently oiled. I looked into the boxes. All the guns were clean and in good shape, even my old shotgun. I’d have to thank Smithy for that, or maybe Eli. I took out the Beretta and zipped it into my jacket pocket. I loaded up the clip of the Makarov and clipped it onto my belt. I filled my other jacket pocket with the bullets. I felt better.

We walked the remaining few blocks to get to the place. I saw now the reason for the detour. Yellow police tape stretched across the wide, now-deserted street, guarded by a lone officer drinking coffee out of a styrofoam cup. Behind the police tape I could see small fissures in the surface of the blacktop that seemed to multiply further down the street until, where it intersected with Fourth Street, the ground collapsed into a massive sort of pit, taking with it street signs, a semi truck that must have been parked nearby, and which had gone nose first into the pit, with its rear bumper now at street level, next to an angled pole holding a streetlight.

We had come from a traffic jam, with honking horns, yelling and cursing, cars sputtering and backfiring, police sirens, and the general sounds of the city. That’s why it was so eerie when we stepped into this scene and heard absolutely nothing. Complete silence. I looked at Gage.

“That’s weird, right? It’s not just me?”

“Not just you, sis,” he agreed. “It’s damn creepy.”

The officer with the coffee noticed us and almost looked relieved for a moment before frowning and heading over.

“They always like to look tough,” said Gage as we watched the cop come toward us.

“They have to,” I said. “They’re what people see. A face on the law.”

“You’ve known a lot of cops, haven’t you?” he said. “That suit in the station, you seemed pretty chummy.”

“We were,” I said. Gage grunted, I guessed in disapproval. But the cop interrupted any further inquiry, which was a blessing in disguise in my book. I didn’t like talking about the past. And I wasn’t comfortable enough with Gage to tell him not only was I friends with cops, but I used to be crazy about one.