California Demon (6 page)

I didn’t manage either, and now Sinclair had the weapon—he tugged it out of his flesh and aimed it at me with a toothy grin. There was only a little blood—he was dead flesh, after all—and somehow the lack of blood made the entire situation that much more sinister.

I didn’t have time to think about that, though, because he was on me, my own arm up to deflect his blows as he tried to slam the icicle through my heart.

Old men may not be strong, but the same can’t be said about demons and, from my awkward position on my back, Sinclair definitely had the advantage. We were by the staircase, and I grabbed the bottom step with one hand, trying to use the five inches of height to lever myself up while I fended him off with the other hand.

No use. Sinclair was on top of me; so close that the putrid scent of his demon breath came through even past the spicy cinnamon gum.

And that’s when I saw it.
The screwdriver.
It had rolled under the yellow janitor’s bucket, its orange-and-black handle barely peeking out.

With one hand, I shoved against Sinclair’s chest, keeping him away, trying to prevent him from landing a fatal blow. With the other, I reached out, stretching until my fingers brushed the hard plastic handle. But I still wasn’t close enough to grab it, and Sinclair was fighting hard.

He rallied, this time coming in toward my face. I made one last thrust for the screwdriver. No use. Sinclair was on me, and at the last second, I whipped my outstretched arm forward, connecting hard with his throat.

He gagged, and dropped the icicle, but then he used his now-free hand to grab my wrist. I reacted without thinking and kneed him in the groin, screaming out in pain as I did so because my knee still hurt like hell from where he’d smashed it.

There wasn’t a lot of force behind my blow—and demons are mostly immune to being kicked in the balls—but he stumbled backwards anyway, his grip on my wrists loosening just slightly.

That was all I needed. I stretched, pushing myself along the floor until my fingers snagged the screwdriver. I tried to get up, but he’d recovered himself by then and lashed out, knocking my legs out from under me and destroying my precarious balance.

He leaped on me, his hand closing around the hand with the screwdriver. He slammed me backwards, banging my already battered hand, and then pried my fingers open.

I watched myself, like watching someone in a dream, as he hit a pressure point at the base of my thumb. My fingers slackened, and the screwdriver tumbled from my hand.

He caught it midair, then raised it, lunging for me even as he cried out, telling me in no uncertain terms that it was time to “Die, Hunter, die.”

Images of my kids flooded my brain, and I screamed in defiance as I parried to the left. I managed to avoid the brunt of his blow, but the motion shifted both of us off balance. We crashed to the floor, and I rolled to the right, barely escaping his thrust of the screwdriver.

The icicle was right there, the end now even more jagged and sharp from having smashed on the cement floor. Good.

I grabbed it up and rocketed to my feet, ignoring the searing pain that shot through my injured knee. Sinclair was up, too, and we lunged at each other, me leading with a piddly little Christmas ornament, and the demon leading with a lethal-looking screwdriver.

Not the best of odds, but I didn’t care. I didn’t intend to lose. I just wasn’t exactly sure how I was going to manage to win.

I was breathing hard now, instinct guiding my movements even as my head tried to come up with a good plan. Or, for that matter,
any
plan. We circled each other until the stairs—and the rickety railing—was right behind him.

And that’s when I got the idea . . .

I leaped forward with the icicle, shifting at the last second to avoid his face, and instead slamming the glass deep into his thigh.

He’d braced for my attack, of course, but he hadn’t expected the blow to his leg, and he reacted instinctively, turning away to protect his wound. I anticipated the move and scrambled the opposite direction, ending up behind him. Then I threw myself on his back, clutched his throat, and held on for dear life as he tumbled forward.

And then—using every ounce of willpower in my body—I aimed. And I prayed.

I heard a sharp crack, then felt a jolt as the metal post slammed home, sliding easily through the demon’s bulbous gray eye. His low moan faded quickly, and I saw the familiar shimmer in the air as the demon departed the old man’s body to return to the ether.

I sagged to the floor, my body limp with relief.

That emotion was short-lived, however. I’d gotten rid of one problem (the demon), but now I had a whole new one (his plan). He’d been down in the basement for a reason. I needed to figure out what it was.

The stone he’d tossed at me had been large, and it had left an equally large hole in the wall. A dark hole, actually, and I moved toward it with trepidation. I bent down and squinted into it, but I couldn’t see a thing.

Since I’m not crazy about spiders and other basement-dwelling critters, I wasn’t too keen on sticking my hand in the gap and feeling around, but I did it anyway. (This job is not for the squeamish.) Fortunately, I encountered nothing slithery nor slimy. In fact, I encountered nothing at all.

Well, damn. I’d been so sure that Sinclair knew what he was doing. Had someone beaten him to the punch? Or had Sinclair himself already squirreled the thing away? Maybe hidden it on his person?

I made a face as I considered that possibility, my fingers still probing the dark. I’d changed a lot of nasty Pull-Ups in my day, but the idea of patting down a dead demon still had me cringing.

I’d about convinced myself that I really did have to frisk Sinclair when my fingers found a crevice in the stone. A place in the very back where the mortar no longer felt rough. Instead, it felt smooth and cool, with only the slightest hint of texture.

I felt around some more, my heart beating faster. I ran my finger down the length of the crevice until I encountered mortar again. That’s when it hit me.
A book.
I was feeling the spine of a book lodged between two stones.

I settled my shoulder against the cool stone wall, hooked my fingertips around the edge of the volume, and pulled. It shifted, but only slightly, and I felt a momentary burst of irritation. If the book had been placed years ago and literally mortared in with the stone, then I’d need something a lot stronger than my fingernails, even with the Sally Hansen acrylic topcoat.

I took a breath and tugged again, hoping it had merely been placed in the wall for safekeeping, and not made a permanent part of the architecture.

This time, I got lucky. True, I ruined the polish on three nails and broke the nail on my forefinger off at the quick, but the book was in my hand, and I was victorious. Unmanicured, but victorious.

I pulled it out into the light and studied it, searching the outside for clues as to its purpose. None were apparent. The book was large—about the same size as Timmy’s lap books but thicker than his battered copy of
How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night?
About an inch thick, actually. And unlike Timmy’s reptile-covered storybooks, this one was bound in dark red leather, cracked and scarred with age. The spine may once have reflected a title, but now all that remained of the gilt lettering was tiny flecks of gold.

At one point, the book must have been extraordinary. But now the thing was battered and shabby, the embossing worn down so that there were no identifying marks at all, no title, no telltale demonic symbols. Just a hint of a raised design that may or may not have been a triangle.

Well, hell.

As a rule, I don’t go around opening books that the demon population is scrambling for. You just never know what you might find.

But in this case, I wanted to know. No, it was more than that. I
needed
to know. Sinclair had said that I was too late. That the wheels were already in motion. He’d raced to the school—a place I’d always believed was safe. Willful blindness on my part, maybe, but it made the mornings easier when I sent my daughter out into what I knew, better than any mom, was a dangerous world.

The demons had a plan, and this book was part of it. I needed to know how. I needed to make sure nothing was going to happen now. That hordes of demons weren’t about to descend on the school.

In other words, I needed to know that my kid was safe.

And so, with a holy water-drenched baby wipe held tight as a defense against any evil that might spew forth, I plunked the book on a worktable and then slowly lifted the cover.

The spine creaked in protest, but no evil emerged, and the flames of Hell didn’t leap forth to engulf me. Thus encouraged, I opened the cover a bit more, then bent low and peered into the dark space between cover and flyleaf. I saw nothing, and so I continued until the cover was flipped entirely open.

Nothing.

And I mean that literally.

Not demons. Not incantations. Not even a copyright page with the Library of Congress information.

Just blank paper, brittle and slightly stained.

Frowning, I carefully flipped through the rest of the volume. Nothing.

Every page was completely blank. The book told me nothing. Absolutely nothing.

I turned to look at the grotesque form of Sinclair, the vertical beam protruding from the back of his skull.

“What’s going on, Sinclair?” I asked.

The demon, however, stayed stubbornly silent.

Four

Disposing Of A dead demon is a lot harder than it sounds, and if Marissa found me keeping company with a dead body, you can be damn sure Coastal Mists wouldn’t be inviting me to the annual Volunteer Appreciation Dinner.

In the past, I simply would have called the kill in, and
Forza
would send a dispatch team to do the dirty work. But in the last decade or so,
Forza
has suffered staffing problems, and that simply wasn’t an option. (I’d been a little surprised when I’d learned of the dwindling ranks within
Forza,
actually. But after I thought about it, I began to understand. It’s a hard life. And what sounds like fun on a Nintendo GameCube loses a lot of its appeal in the harsh light of reality.)

I could try to hide the body myself—getting my new
alimentatore
to give me a hand with the heavy lifting—but that plan involved schlepping the body out of the high school, and that was too risky for my taste. I’ve wanted a lot of things in my life, but a future in prison was not one of them.

No, my best bet was to simply clean up any evidence of the fight, wipe off my fingerprints, and leave. The body was just a body now, so whoever discovered it would most likely believe that Sinclair had fallen victim to an unfortunate accident. I just needed to head up to the gym, find my kids, do my Mommy-At-Family-Day routine, and try my damnedest not to look distracted.

When it was time to head back to Coastal Mists, I’d feign concern and start a search. I could come back then and discover the tragedy. I probably still wouldn’t win volunteer of the year (I mean, I
had
been in charge of the man), but I doubted anyone would suspect I’d killed him. I was on the PTA, after all.

On that note, I got busy cleaning up, wiping off fingerprints and picking up the junk that had scattered from my purse. I took the screwdriver, too, for good measure.

My forensic concerns allayed as much as possible, I gathered my things. The book was too tall to fit neatly in my purse, so I took off my cardigan and tossed it between the shoulder straps so it lay over the top of my bag, hiding the section of leather than peeked out from the Dooney & Bourke knockoff.

Then I hurried up the stairs, pausing at the door to wipe the dust off my clothes as I considered the situation. Since the assembly was already underway, I assumed the halls would be clear. With any luck, I could find the gym, find Allie, then slide into my seat with the efficient expression of a PTA committee member who’s just finished doing her civic—academic?—duty.

Because I was having one of those days, the luck I’d wished for didn’t materialize. David Long, however, did. I ran smack into him not two seconds after I’d turned from the purple hall to the brown.

“Oh!” I said, and he looked just as startled—and guilty— as I felt. Although, to be honest, I’m probably projecting the guilt part. Or maybe not. This was the students’ big day, after all. Awards. Pomp. Circumstance. Shouldn’t he be in the gym by now? I knew I should.

“Got a hall pass, Mister?” I asked, flashing what I hoped was a disarming—and charming—grin. I learned years ago that an offensive approach is almost always better than struggling to play defense.

He patted himself down, then shrugged. “Guess I left it in homeroom.”

I made a
tsk-tsk
sound. “I see detention in your future.”

“I teach chemistry,” he said, deadpan. “I spend my days staring at dozens of blank faces who think a valence bond is an old Sean Connery movie. Isn’t that punishment enough?”

I pretended to consider. “I see your point. I’ll let you off the hook. This time,” I added, in my most stern voice.

He nodded, just as seriously. “Yes, ma’am.”

“What were you doing out here, anyway?” I asked.

“Still rounding up students,” he said. “A lot of the kids will skip assembly. Hide out in the common areas. It’s my job to wrangle them back.” He leaned casually against the wall, his cane propped beside him, then hooked his thumbs in the front pockets of his slacks in a move so suddenly familiar it made my heart stutter in my chest.

Mentally, I shook myself, willing myself not to slide into my memories. Lots of men are easy to talk to and have familiar mannerisms. Yes, David Long reminded me of Eric. But no, I couldn’t afford to be rattled. Not today. Not with a stolen book in my purse, a dead demon in the basement, and a hellacious plot brewing.