Wild Ride (19 page)

Mab took a deep breath. “I was possessed by a demon.”

She pulled back. “Whoa, he's that good?”

“No,” Mab said. “Well, yes, but—”

Cindy threw her hands up. “You've, like, won the life lottery. Robot clowns and legends coming true and now a guy who's a demon in the sack. I've been making ice cream here for fifteen years, and nothing like that has ever happened to me.”

Mab stopped. “Fifteen years?”

Cindy nodded. “I've worked in Dreamland longer than that, but I started making ice cream when I was eighteen. And in fifteen years, I never had anything like you've had in the past three days.”

“You've been here for fifteen years? And you never noticed the demons?”

“Well, I got married once and moved to Columbus. But the only place I could find work was Baskin-Robbins, and it just wasn't the same. So I came back here. And then about five years ago, this fancy restaurant in Cincinnati offered me some big bucks to make ice cream just for them, so I went for it, but two months later I had to come back. They liked the ice cream just fine, but I knew it wasn't right. This is the only place I can make truly great ice cream. Like you restoring amusement parks. Once you find what you're meant to do, you have to do that.”

“Okay,” Mab said. “Did you miss the part about the demon?”

“Joe as a demon in the sack?” Cindy said, refocusing.

“No, real demons. There are real demons in the park.”

Cindy blinked at her.

“They're real. Demons. They're real. One possessed me last night. It had Ashley and she knocked on the door and I let her in and then the demon flowed out of her and into me and tried to stop my heart and lungs. They're real. Joe knows about it. He came here to hunt them. And Delpha and Glenda and Gus, they're the Guardia, they—”

Cindy pulled over a step stool and sat down. “Demons.”

“They're real. I swear, they're real. They possess people. They can be
anybody.
Maybe that guy with the glasses out at the counter.
Anybody.
”

Her voice rose at the end, and Cindy got up and shoved the step stool over to her.

“I'm still a little upset,” Mab said, sitting down.

“I . . . yeah,” Cindy said. “Demons. Okay.”

“You believe me?”

“I think you're the only person I would believe. You're not . . . fanciful. You don't joke around. If you say there are demons, there are demons. Wow. So now what?”

“I go talk to Delpha.” Mab nodded, even surer now that she'd said it out loud. “She tried to tell me about them, but I wouldn't listen. Now I'll listen.”

“Good.” Cindy nodded. “Delpha's good. Go talk to her. And take notes and then come back and tell me because this is really . . .”

“Unbelievable?”

“Kind of exciting,” Cindy said. “Assuming, you know, nobody dies or anything.”

“Dead Karl,” Mab said.

“Nobody else.” Cindy straightened. “And look on the bright side. You're sleeping with a demon hunter.”

“Yeah,” Mab said.

“And what's wrong with that?”

“He lied to me. Well, he didn't lie to me, he just didn't tell me he was a demon hunter. That's kind of big.”

Cindy frowned. “I don't think that's the kind of thing you drop on a woman you're trying to get into bed.”

Mab thought about it. “That's a good point. But—”

“Did he say ‘I'm not a demon hunter'?”

“No.”

“Did he say he was something else?”

“No.”

“And he's good in bed.”

“Yeah,” Mab said.

“Might want to lower your standards there,” Cindy said.

Emily knocked on the door of the storeroom and said, “Cindy?” in a high voice that meant
Help
, and Cindy opened the door and then turned back to Mab.

“I'll help all I can. Can you defeat demons with ice cream?”

“If anybody can, you can,” Mab said, and followed her back out to the counter.

The guy in the Coke-bottle glasses had his notebook open in front of him, but he was looking into his empty coffee cup.

“I'll get that for you.” Mab went behind the counter to get the pot, and when she filled his cup, he looked up and said, “Thank you.”

She looked into his sharp gray eyes, sharp even behind those thick glasses, trying to see if there was a demon in there—

“Something wrong?” he said, and she realized she'd been staring.

“No.” She put the coffeepot back. “Sorry, I just—”

His eyes were really sharp behind those glasses. Glasses that thick shouldn't be that clear; glasses that thick almost always distorted what was behind them—

“Are those just plain glass?” she said.

“No.” He picked up his coffee cup.

“Oh.” She hesitated, but he went back to his notebook, so she went back around the counter and waved to Cindy, heading for the door and Delpha for some answers.

A whistle, sharp and short, made her turn around.

He was holding out her work bag to her with one hand, not even looking at her while he drank his coffee and read his notebook.

She went and got her bag. “Thank you,” she said, and he nodded, his eyes still on his notebook, but she saw that grin flash again.

So he's probably not a demon
, she thought, and went out to find Delpha.

 

M
ab dropped her bag at the Fortune-Telling Machine and headed down the midway to the back of the park and Delpha's trailer. She ignored everything on the way except for Sam the maintenance guy, who returned her wave with a polite hello as if he'd never met her before—so much for her deathless allure—and Carl Whack-A-Mole, who was standing in front of his booth, looking annoyed.

“What's wrong?” she said, slowing.

“Somebody broke in here last night,” he said, disgust in his voice. “Didn't take nothing, but some of the bears are dirty. Don't make no sense to do that.”

“There's a lot of that going around,” Mab said. “I have to go see Delpha, but I can come back and help you if—”

“Nah,” Carl said. “Can't give out dirty bears. I'll get some new ones. But thank you just the same.”

“You're welcome,” Mab said, and picked up speed, moving past the Dragon and the hulking orange Strong Man statue, and then through the woods, between Old Fred's and Hank's empty trailers on the left and Gus's and Glenda's trailers on the right and down the path to the edge of the island and Delpha's Airstream.

When she got there, the door was ajar, which was odd since it was cold.

Too cold.

That's not right
, Mab thought, and even though the door was in her way, she suddenly saw Delpha lying on the floor, her eyes staring up at the ceiling, her hands clenched into fists—

“No, no,
no
.” Mab ran to the trailer and yanked the door wide open.

Delpha was lying on the floor, her eyes staring up at the ceiling, her hands clenched into fists. . . .

“Glenda!”
Mab screamed, and turned and ran for Glenda's trailer.

E
than had woken slowly with a hangover, easing up on the banquette, his hand over his chest to press down the pain from the old bullet, which seemed not so bad these days. Probably because of all the other pain he'd been feeling. Given the number of hits he'd taken in the past few days, he was grateful to be alive.

Then he heard Mab scream, and he was out the door before Glenda made it out of her bedroom.

He ran down the steps and looked down the path to the park, and Mab hit him from behind, pulling at him, crying,
“Delpha,”
and he pushed her aside and ran back to Delpha's trailer.

She was on the floor, and he knelt down beside her, but it was obvious she was gone, had been gone since the night before. Probably not too long after he'd left her to go back to his mother's and find his flask.

He should have stayed.

He touched her and she was icy cold, beyond death cold, and he looked up and saw that the window over her couch was open. It didn't matter, she hadn't frozen to death, but he still hated that she'd lain there all night in the cold. . . .

“What is it?” Glenda said from behind him, and then drew in her breath.
“No.”

“I'm sorry, Mom,” Ethan said, not turning around. “I should have stayed with her.”

“Oh, no,” Glenda said, coming in to kneel down beside him. “Not like this. She knew it was her time, but not like this.”

Ethan frowned at her, but she was crying now, picking up Delpha's hand to hold it, so he went outside to see what in hell had murdered his mother's best friend.

It had to be demons, but somehow, this didn't seem like Tura's style. Maybe Fufluns wasn't as harmless as they thought.

He walked around to the side of the trailer to look at the open window. The hitch was there with a cigar butt beneath it, and an old, rotting lawn chair had been dragged over beside it, under the window, but it was one with strips of plastic for a seat, ancient strips of plastic at that; it could never have held a human being.

Something bright blue was caught in the window, between the casement and the frame. He stood on the hitch to reach it, tugging it free, and then couldn't figure out what it was: something kind of . . . fluffy.

“I need to make some calls,” Glenda said from behind him, and when he turned, her face was tearstained even though her voice had been sure.

“A human being was here,” Ethan said. “Somebody who knew Delpha was alone and lived clear back here, somebody who knew the park. Could even be another Guardia—”

“No,” Glenda said. “A Guardia cannot physically harm another Guardia. We're bound together. But other people besides the Guardia know this park. How do you know there was a human here?”

“Cigar butt,” Ethan said pointing to it.

Glenda stiffened. “Ray.” Then she shook her head. “He waited outside. Demons killed Delpha. He just . . . waited.”

“I need to go ask some questions,” Ethan said, his anger rising.

“Don't do anything to him,” Glenda said, looking with loathing at the cigar butt. “Don't give away that we know he's involved. We need to find out how involved.”

“I can ask him,” Ethan said grimly.

“No,” Glenda said. “We need to be smart. Delpha . . .” Her voice cracked. “. . . would want us to be smart.” She shook her head, blinking hard, and then went down the path, and Mab put her arm around her and went back to her trailer with her.

Ethan walked around to the path and looked through the doorway to Delpha's body, covered by a dark blue blanket now.

He shouldn't have left her the night before. He should have been there
to take out the demons and that animal Ray, who'd smoked while she suffered.

He could ask questions later. He sat down on the step to stay with Delpha until the ambulance came to take her away.

 

W
hen Delpha was gone, Ethan went to find Gus.

The old man took the bad news pretty well, shaking a bit as he sat down after Ethan told him, but calmer than Ethan had thought he'd be.

“She was a good woman,” he said. “She knew it was her time. She told us that before we went to find Tura. But I thought when she was all right after that . . .”

“I'm sorry, Gus,” Ethan said.

Gus nodded and then took a deep breath. “Now we gotta get that chalice to Mab to fix, there's a mold for it in the Keep, and there's . . .” Tears brightened his eyes. “Delpha, she was a real good woman.”

Ethan put his hand on the old man's shoulder. “Then let's get the bastards who killed her.”

“Right.” Gus blinked his eyes back to normal. “Let's go get those bastards. Put 'em back in their damn chalices. We'll go do that.” He set off down the midway, toward the front of the park.

Ethan followed him to one of the clown-topped garbage bins, this one behind the carousel. Gus put his shoulder to it, and Ethan joined him, and together they rolled the metal container out of the way, revealing a trapdoor.

Ethan pulled it open, and a shaft beckoned. Gus climbed down as Ethan put a mini-Maglite between his teeth and brought up the rear, closing the trapdoor behind.

He paused for a second to get oriented. They were in one of the tunnels that ran under Dreamland, tunnels Ethan had been expressly forbidden to explore as a boy, which was why he knew most of them. Gus was heading toward the center of the park, into a descending tunnel that Ethan was pretty sure went under the Keep lake and then up to an old wooden
door with a large iron handle in the center and an oddly shaped keyhole above it. When they reached the door, Gus produced a large ring of keys. He fumbled through them until he found an ornately crafted iron key, which he slid into the hole and turned.

There was a screech, and Gus stumbled as the key did a quarter turn. The door swung open, and Ethan felt a whoosh of stale, dry air blow over him. He followed Gus inside, his hand hovering over the grip of the pistol strapped to his thigh.

“There's a switch in here somewhere,” Gus muttered, shining his light around.

Ethan felt a chill as the wavering beam lit up the rusting, rotting odds and ends of the old amusement park, all tumbled together in the huge circular stone basement of the Keep, a place he hadn't seen for over twenty years. Faded signs, broken statues, weather-beaten trunks: Glenda never could throw anything out. He didn't shut the door behind him, afraid they might not be able to get it open again.

Gus headed in the direction of the narrow stone staircase that circled up to a wooden door one level above. He reached the bottom of it, flipped a switch, and a row of naked lightbulbs around the wall flickered to life.

Ethan followed him to the base of the stairs and climbed. The door at the top was locked.