Pockets of Darkness (20 page)

“I’ll buy you more stuff, Otter.”

“Mom, my laptop and—”

“Please shut up.” Bridget said, as she led them down three more side streets, picking a subway entrance that was far enough away that the sirens and the fire and the conversations of the lookiloos were deadened by the urban canyons. Sparse traffic shushed by, sluicing up the sleety snow mixture. The steps down were an icy mess, and Bridget took them slow; she didn’t want to risk dropping the package, hoping it contained what Rob advertised: two demon bowls.

“Mom, where are we—”

“Going?”

“Yeah,” Alvin said. “I’m old. Not used to this walking.”

“Not used to seeing monsters, either,” Quin said. Softer, but still Bridget could hear him. “I’m quitting, Alvin. After this, I’m retired. To Florida, I’m going.”

“Where we going?” This from Marsh. “Boss?”

“To a pit,” Bridget said, stopping on the bottom step. “Three connections from here.”

“A pit? Mom?”

“It’s nowhere you’re gonna like, Otter. But you’ll be safe there. All of you will be safe.” She squared her shoulders and headed toward the turnstiles. Good thing she’d grabbed money; she wouldn’t be able to sneak them all through. “One of you brought a flashlight, I hope. Please tell me we have at least one flashlight.”

***

Twenty Seven

Bridget glanced at her watch: 3:44. It looked black as night in this godforsaken neighborhood, the sky so overcast, most of the streetlights in this block broken, apartment windows dark, the sidewalk empty. As crowded as New York City was, she found it odd and disconcerting to be alone, save for the company of her babbling demon—which had rejoined her after she’d stuffed her entourage into Adiella’s pit and made a stop in a subway bathroom to cut her hair, leaving about an inch all the way around and wondering if she should have just shaved it all off. Bridget had no clue where the other two beasts were, and didn’t want to think about them right now. She knew the tentacled beast had visited her antique store; she’d stopped there to retrieve the other Sumerian piece, the astrology tablet the history professor was buying, thought she might delve into and gain more language and insight into ancient Sumer. But she discovered fire trucks on the scene, watering down what was left of her place. It would be a total loss, most of the treasures ashes or slagged. The astrology tablet? It was a rock and would survive; maybe she’d come back and sift through the rubble for it later.

It was snowing again, fat flakes that settled on top of the curb drifts and cut some of the sooty-cityness that made winter look dirty. Bridget loved New York and normally couldn’t envision living anywhere else. But a beach in the Caribbean wouldn’t be so bad, would it? Blue sky and sunshine, sipping something sweet and intoxicating with a paper umbrella in it, not a demon in sight.

She couldn’t stop the tears, and her shoulders shook as she walked. She’d been crying since the squatty demon rejoined her. It had blood on its claws and on its lower lip.

Bridget knew it had killed Dustin.

And it was her fault. She could have let the subway tough keep the buckle.

The last thing Dustin had said to her: “Call me when—if—you come to your senses.”

“Mmmmmmmmmm,” the demon had said as Dustin left.

Bridget could have stopped him. She could have used Alvin’s gun … and what? Threatened to shoot him if he didn’t go with her little entourage down into Adiella’s pit in the subway? She could have tied him up, carried him if necessary. She could have kept him alive. She should have. Her feckin’ fault Dustin was dead. One more body because of her.

One more.

She’d
known
the demon would kill him,
known
it the moment she let Dustin walk out of her house.

Her fault. One more death on her fingers.

One more.

Empty. Bridget felt wholly empty. Had she loved Dustin? Maybe, or close to it. She loved the way he made her feel, loved the way his hands and lips traveled over her skin, loved the scent of him, loved the sex, his cooking, his smile, that he called her “my Brie” and
mon amour
. She hadn’t let anyone else get so close to her, not since Tavio. Hadn’t let anyone into her heart.

Now all she had left was Otter.

Her crew? She had them, some would remain loyal and with her while she rebuilt her smuggling operation. No doubt she’d have to start from scratch. If the lava demon had burned her brownstone and her antique store, it had certainly slagged her warehouse too. Her crew was a family of a sort, but it wasn’t the same … it wasn’t Tavio or Dustin. It wasn’t like her “adopted” son Jimmy.

Why the hell hadn’t she let the subway thug keep the damn buckle and the damn demon? Why did she have to grow a feckin’ conscious and go all righteous about saving strangers? Dustin would still be alive. And maybe, just maybe, she wouldn’t feel like worthless garbage.

Could she keep Otter safe? She couldn’t make him spend the rest of his life in Adiella’s pit.

A crumpled up fast food bag scudded past her in the wind, coming to rest against a snowdrift wrapped around the base of a street sign. A skinny mongrel poked its head out of an alley, regarded her with matted eyes and worked its nose.

“Nothing to feed you,” she told it. “And you better disappear or my demon might eat you.”

The dog made a snuffling sound, and then darted away.

Not a two-legged denizen to be seen. Within an hour or so that would change. The Mexican bakery a handful of doors down would open, renters would come out heading to work. Cars would chug by with more frequency on the street. The noise would ratchet up to its comfortable and cacophonic New York City level.

Where the hell was the witch?

Adiella had not appeared in the hole where Bridget had left Otter and the others. Granted, the witch had other pits in the city, probably all of them underground, and maybe Adiella was sound asleep in one of them right now. Or maybe she had an apartment somewhere in this very neighborhood. Bridget had figured some magical gewgaw or ward would have alerted Adiella that they’d trespassed last night in one of her holes, and that the witch would have arrived out of anger or curiosity.

Though Bridget hated the woman, she didn’t know where else to turn right now. And since the witch hadn’t showed down in the subway, and since Otter had fallen asleep, Bridget set out to find her. Was it possible the demon had slipped away sometime in the past few hours and killed Adiella like it had killed Tavio and Jimmy and no doubt Dustin? Yes, possible, Bridget had to admit, but she doubted it. The demon only seemed interested in eating the hearts of people Bridget cared about.

It didn’t look like Adiella was in the bookshop. The front window was softly lit, displaying an array of hardcovers and paperbacks, some new, some used. Bridget pressed her face to the glass and made out the shadow-images of shelves upon shelves farther back, but nothing else, nothing moving in any event. But the shop was deep, and she couldn’t see all of it. “Pissmires. Where the hell are you?”

She reached into her back pocket for a small leather case. She selected a thin metal pick and started working on the lock, using her body as a shield to hide her hands. Bridget hadn’t seen anyone on the street, but that didn’t mean there weren’t early-risers or all-nighters up in apartments overlooking this sidewalk. Let any lookiloos think she had a key and was supposed to be here.

It was an old brass lock and an almost-effortless pick. She twisted the knob and swallowed a scream as a burst of fiery pain hit her. Bridget was a statue. She couldn’t move and the agony intensified, turning from fire to ice, then again a searing heat hit her that was even worse than the previous jolt.

The witch didn’t need traditional security or burglar bars like the other establishments in the block. All Adiella required was her accursed bone-numbing magic. Bridget had expected some sort of arcane defense, but nothing this severe.

The alternating waves of extreme heat and cold chased each other through her body as she finally managed to inch forward. One step, two, pushing the door wider, and then feeling like her teeth had been replaced by constant lightning strikes. A third step and the pain wholly consumed her, all of it scalding now. Bridget fell into the shop and fought for air. Her pulse, the rush of blood pounding in her ears, was as loud as a crashing wave.

She didn’t know how long she lay there before she could move again, though likely only moments, curling into a fetal position but able to crook her foot and give a kick that closed the door behind her. Faintly, she heard the latch catch, and in that moment the fiery pulses stopped and the crashing noise in her head died away. The pain lingered, though.

The demon had followed her into the bookstore, apparently unaffected by Adiella’s magical ward. The light that spilled from the front display window made its warty hide faintly gleam. It scuttled close and sat in front of her face, babbling in its ancient tongue and Bridget of no mind to attempt to pick out familiar words. Rivulets of pussy goo continued to trickle down its hide, wider than before. Or maybe the rivulets hadn’t changed at all and only her perspective had; she’d not been this close and eye-level with its repulsive skin for more than a few seconds before. One thing that certainly had changed was its odor. The demon still reeked, just as horribly, but there was a different component to the stench, a strong sulfuric acid odor that clung to the roof of her mouth.

“The feckin’ witch,” Bridget cursed through clenched teeth. “Where the hell is she?” She waited for her pain to lessen to a more manageable level, and then started to uncurl herself.

Was the ward meant to kill a burglar or just discourage one with a thousand volts of eldritch energy? Kill the sucker, she guessed. If Bridget hadn’t been so blessed and cursed with the demon buckle—the thing she was certain had saved her when the Yankee Fan jammed a knife in her stomach—she would have died to Adiella’s security measure, and maybe been incinerated in the process. The witch’s magic probably would have wholly eliminated a normal burglar, not left a body behind that had to be explained or disposed of.

She got to her knees and grabbed a nearby shelf, using it to help pull herself up.

“Adiella?” Bridget called for the witch a few times. The only reply was the demon babbling. “Yeah, I heard you. Free the Aldî-nîfaeti. You’re a broken record. Well, I did free two of them. You ought to count that as one in the plus column.”

Bridget had no intention of freeing even one more demon. She had too much blood on her hands and wasn’t going to add another drop to it. Again the image of the museum guards popped into her mind. There had to be a way to keep Otter safe … other than him living in one of Adiella’s holes for the rest of his life.

There had to be a way to get rid of the demon.

The demon snarled at her, acid goo spilling over its bulbous lip and hitting the floor, sizzling. It belched a cloud of something noxious that made her head spin.

“Free Aldî-nîfaeti,” it said, adding a string of words she couldn’t comprehend.

“Adiella!” Bridget walked to the back of the shop, the demon stopping under the poster of the dog with a Frisbee and seeming to study it. “Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck,” she read. “My soul’s not going up.”

She paused a moment, listening. Then: “Adiella!”

Maybe the witch would show up here if Bridget kept hollering. Maybe her painfully triggering the ward at the shop door would alert Adiella, and the witch would arrive soon. Or maybe Bridget could find Adiella’s other holes if she rummaged around here for clues: that was what she’d anticipated doing by coming here.

Bridget padded to the back counter, flipped the switch on a single fluorescent light that hung above it, and laid her hand flat against the side of the cash register. Maybe by using her psychometry to call up an image of the witch, Bridget could discover the woman’s whereabouts.

Bridget’s palm tingled and her mind pressed in. The cash register gave up its details: Model 356 Brass National Cash Register, manufactured in 1909, a crack in the marble plate below the keys, good working condition, not cleaned or restored, value $900 dollars. Looking out from the cash register she caught a glimpse of the witch’s fingers, smooth in this image from yesterday, bedecked with baubles that might have been costume jewelry.

Bridget watched Adiella ring up a customer’s purchases—a stack of more than a dozen paperback fantasy romance titles with scantily clad busty women and shirtless musclemen on the covers. The buyer was an elderly woman with wrinkles poorly masked by too much pancake makeup. The smile was nice, though, and her eyes looked engaging. She spoke Spanish.

“
Espero que
la lectura de
todos estos,”
the old woman said. Bridget understood every word: I look forward to reading all of these.

“Podrá disfrutar de
ellos,”
Adiella returned. “
Vuelva cuando se necesita más.”

Yes, lots of romance books, Bridget noted from the sign above a wide set of shelves. Still looking out from the cash register, she saw Adiella close up the bookstore and leave.

Bridget removed her hand from the cash register, balled her fists and set them against her hips. What the hell had she really hoped to accomplish by coming here? Listening to an image of Adiella say where she was going, hopefully. Catching some comment about where the witch lived, where her holes were under the city. Bridget indeed might get one of those crucial tidbits of information, but it could take some time, delving deeper into the cash register or the counter or the stool worn smooth by the witch’s posterior, flipping through days or perhaps months with her psychometry. Or simply waiting until the witch showed up to open the store.

The demon waddled toward her and reached out a claw, nudging her leg. “Unshackle Aldî-nîfaeti.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know, unshackle all the Aldî-nîfaeti feckers in New York.” Good thing the beast couldn’t wholly read her mind. It would know she’d never bust another Sumerian bowl again.

Bridget unbuttoned her coat and took it off, draping it over the counter. Adiella obviously craved the heat and didn’t bother to turn down the thermostat even when she wasn’t here.

She sat on the wooden stool and steadied her breathing, looking over the cash register to see the demon squatting in front of the counter, tracing a whorl in the wood floor with a talon. It still babbled, but softly, and nothing Bridget could understand other than “Aldî-nîfaeti” and “Dustin. Mmmmmmmm.” She wished she would have brought some coffee … or anything for that matter to drink. So thirsty. There was a small refrigerator under the counter, and Bridget cracked it open to see three bottles of Jarritos grapefruit soda, a package labeled chili-flavored salted plums, and a half-full jar of pinto bean dip. Maybe the witch had warded her larder, too; Bridget didn’t want to be on the receiving end again of Adiella’s magic. Besides, grapefruit soda didn’t sound thirst quenching.

Just work, dammit
, she told herself.
Get to work and delve into this and find Adiella
.

Bridget reached for the cash register again, and then stopped, noticing an open shoebox just under the counter, filled with scraps of paper and business cards. Perhaps there were bills in there. Even though Adiella lived off the grid, chances were she had to pay bills for the shop, and maybe some other address or a phone number was listed. It was worth a look.