The Devil You Know (12 page)

Finally, she said against my mouth, “Is your girlfriend angry with me, Nick?”

“She’s not my girlfriend. She’s my partner.”

“But you live together.”

“We cohabitate. The shop is holy ground. That prevents creatures like Malach from killing me.”

She thought about that. “Do you have sex?” She said it not in some accusing way but like she was genuinely curious.

I found it very difficult to lie to Vivian. “Sometimes,” I said. “But we’re not a couple.”

She looked at me earnestly. “I don’t mind, you know.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t mind if you have sex with someone else. But I’d like to be your girl. I mean, your number one. Your girlfriend.”

I looked at her in surprise. “You’re like some guy’s wet dream, do you know that, Vivian?”

She shrugged. Her eyes were much older than the rest of her, thousands of years, at least. “I’m just realistic. My roommate Brittany is all about commitments. She gets serious with every guy she does. You know, every guy is the
one
, but then he leaves her. I know it’s hard for people to commit in this day and age.” She talked like someone who’d seen it all, who’d lived a hundred lifetimes. While she talked, her hand wandered to the fly of my jeans where she pressed with unsubtle intent.

Her touch made me lurch in my seat. “How old were you when you lost your virginity?” I asked suddenly.

She held my eyes. She wasn’t ashamed. “I was nine. And no, it wasn’t consensual. My science teacher Mr. McCarty took advantage of me. He asked me to stay after school to help him with a project for the state fair and then he forced himself on me.”

I felt a dull shock. “Did you report him?”

“No. When we were done, I realized I liked it a lot. We did it maybe a dozen more times over the school year until he lost interest. He was into the whole fear thing, and I wasn’t afraid. He’s probably still dicking little girls even today. It wouldn’t surprise me.” She had undone my jeans and begun stroking me in that way she had. Then she lowered her head, her long red hair brushing over my lap, and licked me until I shivered. “Does it make me a bad person that I don’t care what happens to him?” she asked. “That I don’t care if he’s still doing little girls?”

“No,” I said. In that moment, I wouldn’t have cared if she’d told me she’d committed capital murder. She was exquisite. Unbelievable. Everything I wanted. Everything I’d been waiting for. “But you should have told me,” I said, my voice hitching in my throat.

She licked and kissed me some more. “Why?”

I watched her as she worked me slowly and inexorably up to climax. I could feel it building in the base of my spine. I pushed my shoulders back into the seat. I thrust up and up into her warm, wet, feral mouth.

She stopped and I groaned in frustration. “How old were you?” she finally asked.

I was finding it very difficult to formulate any coherent thoughts at the moment. “Sixteen and twenty-one,” I said, grunting with the effort and clutching the back of her head. “Sixteen with a girl, twenty-one with a guy.”

I waited for her to say something. Despite the big modern trend toward bisexuality, I’ve found there are many girls who don’t like to know that. But all she said was, “You waited.”

“I just found it difficult to find partners because of the . . . peculiarities of my situation.” I lurched as she pushed me closer to the edge, her teeth grazing me deliciously. “I feel like we shouldn’t be doing this,” I said as I undulated against her, forcing more of myself down her throat, following the pattern she had set forth.

Her eyes flickered up. “Why?” she asked when she’d let me go, a simple statement. “I like sex with you, Nick.”

“I’m much older than I look.”

“So am I.” She turned all her attention back to tormenting me.

She certainly knew how to bring a guy. I grunted and dug my fingernails deep into the upholstery as I shuddered and came hard in her mouth. After she had exhausted me, she sat up and kissed me so I tasted myself in her mouth. “I like being with you, Nick, and talking to you. I don’t expect you to commit. I don’t care who else you’re fucking. I just hope we can continue to have sex, and talk, and I want you to teach me magic. That’s all I want from you.” She stared at me directly, challenging me to say something to that.

I tucked myself away, realizing I had no argument. She was being honest. How many girls are honest like that? I realized I’d likely give her anything she asked, even my soul if she wanted it. If she wanted to learn magic, I would teach her. If she wanted to have wild, no-commitment sex where neither of us was monogamous, I could do that too. At least, I hoped I could.

“You know that Mr. Fernstermacher likely saw us just now,” I said.

She stroked my cheek with her fingertips. “You know, for the future ruler of hell, you’re awful prudish,” she said.

I laughed and started the car.

Vivian lived in a side-by-side family house on Baker’s Lane, which was pretty funny when I thought about it, since she was studying to be a pastry chef. As we cruised down the tree-lined, suburban-perfect street, passing the occasional Saturday morning garage sale, Vivian told me about her roommate Brittany, about the classes she took, and her schedule. We decided that Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday nights would be best to work on her magic. She didn’t work those evenings at the steakhouse and she had classes in the early morning. She was available Saturday and Sunday mornings as well, but the shop was busy on the weekend so that wouldn’t work for me. I would teach her at her apartment in an effort to avoid Morgana.

She then asked me some personal questions, mostly about sex, what I liked and didn’t like. I discovered that Vivian was very interested in the swinger lifestyle. She wanted to be in a solid relationship with someone she trusted, someone like me, but still be able to bring a third party in on occasion. She didn’t mind doing it with a girl, though that wasn’t her preference. She did want to see me do it with a guy. I think I was more embarrassed than she was. Sometimes the era I live in just boggles my mind.

She stopped talking when I slowed a few houses down from her place. There was a roadblock set up. I caught the flash of an ambulance up ahead, and a bad feeling seized me then, and apparently Vivian as well. She sat up straight and stared out of the windshield. “Fuck,” she said, softly. She unclipped her seatbelt, jerked open the passenger side, and slid out while the car was still rolling along the asphalt.

I immediately hit the brake. “Viv . . . ” I began, but she was already through the police blockade. I didn’t know what else to do, so I simply shut off the car in the middle of the street and got out. I jogged after Vivian, stopping only when I saw her standing before her yellow, vinyl-sided, side-by-side.

A half dozen police cars and two ambulances were clustered in the street, and neighbors from across the street and various yard sales were gathering like curious crows. The front door of the side-by-side was open and police from two counties were filtering in and out. I spotted the coroner’s car, then saw Deputy Branson taking a neighbor’s statement. The moment he saw me, he raised a radio to his mouth. A few seconds later, Ben stepped out of the house and headed toward us, not hurrying but determined. He wore his square mirrored Super Trooper shades, and his mouth was set in a severe all-business line under his mustache.

More cops emerged from the house, and a few from their cruisers parked somewhat randomly in the closed-off street. They too started toward us, as if to hem us in. As if we might bolt down the street when we had no idea what was going on. Vivian took my hand in hers. She was shaking.

Ben had reached us. He gave me a dismissive look before turning his full attention on Vivian. I didn’t let go of her hand, and I had to suppress the insane desire to shield Vivian with my body. “Ma’am, are you Vivian Summers?”

“Brittany,” Vivian said. I saw real, white-faced shock on her face. “What’s happened to Brittany?”

“I’m going to have to ask you to come with me,” Ben said. “We need to ask you a few questions in regards to the murder of Brittany Bennett, ma’am.”

Vivian turned white as sheet. I was afraid for a moment that she might pass out. Instead, she tried to push past Ben, to run to the house, but two officers from the Highway Patrol suddenly surrounded her and took her by both arms. They herded her toward Ben’s patrol car. I immediately started to intervene. I didn’t care if they were officers of the law, I didn’t want them touching Vivian that way. But Ben stepped in front of me and said in a low warning growl, “If you know what’s good for you, Nick, you’ll get the hell out of here
now
.”

Sometime between ten and eleven p.m. the night before, someone had taken a blunt weapon to the back Brittany Bennett’s skull
, bludgeoned her until she was dead or unconscious, then driven her body out to the empty lot behind the local adult movie store, parked the car in a slot bordering the woods, and rolled the body down the incline until it landed in Buck’s Creek. The whole thing had taken less than half an hour. That’s what the coroner told me, anyway, and he only did so because he owed me a favor. I had exorcised a low-level demon out his prize-winning Grande poodle two years ago.

The coroner, Derrek Hambly, was still trying to determine if Brittany had died of the beating or because she had landed unconscious in the creek. The information was vital, because if Brittany’s attacker had left her alive, and she had drowned after the fact, the perp would likely get life in prison without parole. But if it could be proven that Brittany had died of her injuries, the perp was facing the very real possibility of Murder One and death row in the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Yes, we have the green mile here.

Either way, Brittany Bennett had still been very dead when an early-morning jogger had spotted her body. Three sets of fingerprints had been lifted from the inside of Brittany’s abandoned car—Brittany’s, her boyfriend Mark’s, and Vivian’s. The murder weapon had not yet been found. Brittany’s boyfriend Mark had been the natural first selection for a suspect, but he had a solid alibi; he’d been busy bagging two girls from Scranton at the time. Lucky for Mark, he also filmed it.

That left Vivian as a suspect—Vivian who had no alibi. She’d gotten off shift at Molly’s Steakhouse at nine o’clock the night before, had come straight home, changed, and started out to see me, confident that all the Saturday night activity on The Strip would be enough to keep Malach at bay. It hadn’t. And Vivian had wound up taking shelter under the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ eaves for over twenty minutes before he’d finally given up and left. She’d explained about her stalker, but the police were dubious at best. The whole situation had left her a perfect window of opportunity to kill Brittany, and no alibi until she’d seen me at quarter to eleven.

I thanked Derrek and borrowed his office for ten minutes. Derrek’s computer was connected to the NCIC, the criminal database maintained by the FBI that was not made available to the private sector. Derrek, though a very good coroner, was also a Luddite. I wasn’t at all surprised to find that he used auto logins for everything because he couldn’t remember his passwords. Auto logins are bad if you have a computer that anyone can access. It means people like me can look at your shit. Remember that.

In less than five minutes I’d discovered that Vivian Summers had a criminal record longer than my arm. I was mildly surprised but not overly offended. I wasn’t exactly an angel, either. Five minutes later, Derrek’s printer spat out the last of Vivian’s criminal record and I slid it neatly into a manila folder.

Derrek chose that moment to step back into his office. He looked horrified. “Look, man, I owe you big. But I don’t owe you
that
big. You’re gonna get me fired here!”

“I wasn’t here.”

“Nick!”

“Not one word or I put the demon back.”

Derrek shut up.