Embers, page 22
Hair dripping over her shoulder, Anya shrugged into the vest. She slipped on some black ballerina-type slippers Katie had provided and padded out of the steamy bathroom. Sparky followed close on her heels, curling around her ankles like a cat as she navigated the back steps to the bar.
Conversation collapsed when she reached the last creaking step. Jules and Max were chucking large pieces of glass into a plastic trash can, while Katie swept. Ciro was scrubbing down the bar with something that smelled like ammonia. Renee stood over the remains of the bathtub like a child gazing upon a broken piggy bank. Windows were cracked open to let the air come through, to disperse some of Mimi’s influence. Salt gritted in the glass under their steps, grinding into the spaces between the floorboards.
Anya hugged her elbows, guilty in the wake of all her destruction. “Hey, guys.”
A chorus of wary greetings met her.
She gestured at the trashed bar, the ruined bathtub. “I’m sorry about all of this… I’ll pay for it, really.” Anya had no idea how she was going to accomplish this without any income, but she supposed that selling the Dart might be a start.
Ciro wheeled up to her. “I won’t hear of it, child. That’s what insurance is for.”
“You’ve got insurance for Mimi’s tantrums?”
“I’ve got insurance for acts of God. It’ll cover acts of the Devil, too… just as long as I tell the adjuster that the damage was done by persons unknown.” Ciro shrugged. “It’s just stuff.”
Anya’s gaze flickered to a particularly bad cut on Max’s face and the way that Renee shied back a few steps when she came into the room. The physical damage was the least of her worries. Strange that she’d been so eager to drive DAGR away and how bad she felt now that she really had.
“Let me help you guys pick up.” Anya reached for a bucket to scoop the pennies and ruined porcelain.
“No.” Jules firmly set his hand on her shoulder. “We’ve gotta talk.”
The ghost-hunters righted bar stools and climbed up into them. Renee moved to melt into the floor.
“Renee, I’m really sorry,” Anya began.
Renee paused, looking over her shoulder. “Sweetie, it’s not your fault. I don’t take it personally. But… neither should you when I say that you’re scaring me right now. I know that you would never hurt me. But that thing inside you would.” Her kohl-rimmed eyes were wide with nervousness and she played with her beads. “So… I’m gonna keep a low profile for now, okay?”
Anya nodded, mouth dry. “I understand. It’s for the best.”
Renee gave her a sad smile and faded into the floor.
Sparky put his feet up on the bar stool, gazing up at Anya with limpid eyes. She leaned over, picked him up, and parked him in her lap. He wrapped himself around her shoulders like Miss America’s sash, his head buried inside her vest and his butt spilling off her lap. His tail curled around the legs of the bar stool. It was an awkwardly uncomfortable position from her perspective, but she knew that no one else could see it.
“Sparky’s spooked,” she explained. “He gets cuddly when he’s scared.”
“We’re all spooked,” Max confirmed.
Ciro folded his hands in his lap. “Though the exorcism failed, we did glean some useful information about your parasite.”
“Parasite? That’s an apt term.”
“The names it says it’s used are troubling me.” Ciro’s brow was knotted in concentration. “One of them was ‘Lilitu.’ That’s a Sumerian cognate for ‘Lilith.’”
“Wasn’t she Adam’s first wife?” Anya’s knowledge of Bible Apocrypha was limited. The Catholic church hadn’t been too fond of extra books beyond the Old and New Testaments.
“Depends on whose mythology you follow. According to the Sumerians, the Lilitu—there were more than one—were beautiful, succubilike creatures who fed on men’s erotic dreams.”
“That’s hot,” Max said.
Jules slapped him on the back of the head. “That is not hot.”
Ciro continued, ignoring the squabble. “The Babylonians mythologized her as the prostitute of the goddess Ishtar. Other traditions tie her to the serpent in the garden of Eden, to storm-goddesses, and to the bearer of Adam’s demon children. In the Kabbalah, Lilith is represented as a Qliphoth, a shell of impurity dealing with the temptations of seduction.”
Anya sat very still, thinking back to her dream of the priest. “It tracks with one of her memories that came up in a dream… she drove a priest to suicide through obsession with a woman.”
Ciro frowned and rubbed his beard. “She’s very powerful. And ancient. And she may be well beyond all our powers to drive her out.”
“Then what are we going to do?” Jules said. “We can’t just leave it in her.”
Ciro nodded. “We won’t. I need to do more research, see if there’s a specific weakness we can exploit. I have some friends to call for advice—a rabbi here in Detroit, and a voodoo priestess in New Orleans. Among the three of us, we should be able to come up with a solution. In the meantime, practical preparations need to be made.”
Anya leaned forward, cradling the salamander. “What preparations?”
“Rest assured, we will find a way to drive her out. But it may take some time. In the meantime, you should not be left alone. And… you should consider drawing up some legal documents to protect you, in the event that you manage to slip out of our capable supervision.”
“Like a durable power of attorney in case I wind up in the nut ward?” Anya was half kidding, but her voice stuck in her throat when Ciro nodded.
“I’ve seen what happens to people in psychiatric care without anyone to make decisions for them. I would not have that happen to you. Much as I like to think of you, of all of you, as family, there’s no legal standing for any of us to see that you get the spiritual treatment you need.”
Anya’s grip on Sparky whitened. As bad as it was, being under the spell of a demon, she still had some measure of control over her life. If she were to wind up in a mental institution, no part of her life would be hers. None of it. She’d be at the mercy of a psychiatric nurse feeding her Haldol three times a day. The prospect of not only being unable to protect others, but unable to look out for herself, frightened her more than the prospect of Mimi chewing away at her soul, whatever remained of it.
“I have no way of peering into the future,” Ciro told her. “And I hope I’m wrong. But please see to it, while you still can.”
When she found her voice again, it tasted hollow. “I’ll contact someone in the morning to get the papers drawn up.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THERE WAS ONE PERSON WHO she knew could get rid of Mimi.
And she knew that he would be glad to see her.
Anya waited until the house was asleep. Jules and Max had left hours ago. She listened to Ciro snoring like a freight train in his bedroom. The old man worried her; he would snore vigorously for about ten minutes, then snort and stop. When she was on the verge of leaping out of the guest bed to resuscitate him, he would begin again. This pattern had continued for hours. Anya didn’t know how Max had been able to stand it.
Katie slept beside Anya in the guest bed. At least, Anya assumed that she slept by the steady rise and fall of her chest. The witch had wrapped a pillow around her head with both fists, and had wadded most of the comforter edge around her ears to block out the sound.
Stealthily, Anya slipped out of bed and gathered her clothes from the floor. In bare feet, she crept down the staircase. She tried to keep at the edges of the stairs, where squeaks would be less likely, but it sounded like she was murdering mice under high-heeled shoes. She heard no interruption in Ciro’s snoring, no creak in the bed upstairs to suggest that Katie had been disturbed enough by her absence or the creaking to even turn over.
She dressed in the ruins of the bar in Katie’s clothes, then pulled her coat and purse from the cloakroom. Holding her shoes in her hand and feeling like a teenager creeping out of her parents’ house, she padded to the front door of the bar.
“Where are you going?”
The whisper caught her off guard. Anya looked back to see Renee sitting on the edge of the bar, swinging her bare feet into darkness.
“I’m going to try to find someone who can help me. Another Lantern,” she said. That much was the truth. She hoped she wouldn’t have to elaborate, that Renee wouldn’t wake Katie and Ciro.
Renee fixed her with a knowing look. She’d seen decades of this same old story playing out within these walls. “Be careful, sweetie. Any man that can devour that demon can ruin you, too… as easily as crushing out a cigarette.”
“I will, Renee. Thanks.” Anya let herself out of the bar, car keys in hand.
As much as the thought boiled her conflicting emotions, as much as it stung her pride and mangled her ethics, she’d have to do it.
She would have to ask Drake Ferrer to take Mimi off her hands.
Drake had built himself a nice little fortress of solitude in Oakland County, northwest of the city. According to real estate records, it sat on Lake Angelus, a rich area where the few hundred residents jealously guarded their privacy. Unlike the McMansions in most of Detroit’s suburbs, the people in Lake Angelus didn’t park huge houses on tiny lots. Most of the Angelus houses were built on substantial acreage, hidden from prying eyes. The wealthy here had nothing to prove to their neighbors. Drake Ferrer’s house was no exception to local habit.
Anya cruised down the winding lane to the lake, headlights shut off. Under the waxing moon, Lake Angelus shone like a flat obsidian mirror. This far out, away from the glowing light of Detroit on the horizon, Anya could see stars. Every so often, she would crane her head under the windshield to see them. She’d met little other traffic on the way here and most of the distant house lights she passed were doused. Everything was still and asleep.
Anya hoped the fact that Drake’s house was out of DPD’s jurisdiction would work in her favor. Vross and his men couldn’t cross into Oakland County and do surveillance on Drake without an order from a judge. Given that remote possibility, the best that they’d be able to accomplish would be to ask the Lake Angelus Police Department to keep an eye on Drake for them. Given the high price people here paid for their privacy, Anya hoped that the cooperation they displayed would be lip service.
And she was not to be disappointed. The Dart passed a Lake Angelus patrol car pulled off by the side of the road. Inside the car, the patrolman dozed, a newspaper on his chest disturbed by his breath. Anya drove on, counting the number of drives until she found Drake’s.
She didn’t blame him for moving from the city. After what he’d experienced, she could well understand the need to be insulated from the violence, the desire to withdraw to someplace safe. Someplace that could be controlled. But she found it odd for a man who had ducked out of public life to remain living at its fringes. The behavior reminded her of that of a voyeur… watching from afar, but not touching.
The property was tastefully overgrown. A wall of trees and shrubs obscured an iron gate. Beyond the gate, she could see nothing but acres of foliage, enough leaves still remaining to obscure the view. Anya pulled into the drive beside the intercom mounted on a gatepost. Above it, she could see the red eye of a video camera. She rolled down the window, reached out to press the buzzer, then hesitated. It was nearly three in the morning. What would she say that would make sense at this hour? Mr. Ferrer, I have a favor to ask you, before I lock you up for the rest of your natural life.
She blew out her breath and punched the button. There was a pause of nearly thirty seconds and Anya considered both pressing it again and driving away. She heard a small whir from the video camera above, and she glanced up at her reflection in its black lens as it turned toward her.
Without comment, the iron gates reeled back with the clink of automated chain. Anya pulled the Dart through them and they slid shut behind her with the same clunk that she’d heard in similar gates at the county jail. She felt a bump as she drove over a strip of tire shredders.
Getting in had been easy. Getting out might be a great deal harder.
A gravel lane wound before her, disappearing into the wooded lot. Anya proceeded slowly, hearing the gravel thunk and pop against the inside of the car’s wheel wells. This place must have been beautiful by day, she thought, but in the colorless stillness of night, the shape of the trees against the sky was all she could make out.
The lane widened after a quarter mile, spilling out in a turnaround before an English cottage—though “cottage” seemed too small a word for the structure. The façade was gray stone, pierced with dark windows that reflected the light of the moon in dips and warbles of leaded glass. A slate roof capped the two-story structure. Not a single light burned inside.
Anya shut off the ignition, listening to the engine plink as it cooled. With all the courage she could muster, she pulled open the door. She’d no sooner stepped out into the gravel than two dark shapes hurtled toward her, snarling.
Dogs. She scurried back into the Dart and slammed the door. The dogs lunged against the heavy door, their claws scraping against the Dart’s paint.
She felt Sparky unfurl from her neck, fling himself against the glass. His toes and mouth spread wide, displaying the sharpness of his back teeth. His hissing breath condensed on the glass, and his tongue scraped fog away as he snarled.
The dogs must have been able to see him. They yelped and scrambled back, barking at the creature making faces behind the glass.
“Cerberus, Orthrus. Down, boys.”
The dogs slid obediently to the ground, sitting upright with their tails slapping the gravel. They were gray and black speckled, with ears of foxes; Anya guessed that they were mutts. They would have been cute if they hadn’t been trying to tear her face off moments before.
Drake Ferrer stood before her car. He was dressed in jeans and a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, walking barefoot on the gravel. “You can come out now.”
Anya screwed up her courage then popped open the door. Sparky flowed out before her and waddled over to the dogs. His gill-fronds were flared in an impressive display, and he hissed.
“Sparky,” Anya snapped.
The dogs bristled, and the two dogs and salamander circled each other. Anya braced herself for all-out war, but the display merely degenerated to an embarrassing round of butt-sniffing.
Anya looked at Drake. “Sorry about that… and for waking you.”
Drake shrugged. Up close, she could see that his clothes were spattered with something. Paint. His hands at his sides were shaded in colors of charcoal and white. “I wasn’t asleep.”
He didn’t ask her what she was doing here. It was as if he already knew, or wanted her to think he knew. He inclined his head. “C’mon back to the studio. I have to finish up a couple of things before the gesso sets.”
And he walked behind the house, as casually as if he was well accustomed to nighttime visitors, and her being here was the most natural thing in the world. That bothered her.
She followed, and Sparky and the dogs fell into line behind her. He led her to what must have been stables in an earlier era, now converted to a garage. A light shone in the upper floor. Drake climbed the stairs to the light and motioned for her to follow him inside.
This must have been the hayloft in an earlier time. Now it had been entirely gutted and covered with spotty, unfinished plaster. Pine boards creaked underfoot, stained and damaged by years of paint and careless use of tools. Drake’s work perched on easels set up throughout the space and tacked to the walls. His tools, paints, pencils, and brushes were scattered on a decrepit farmhouse table. The drop cloths wadded into corners smelled like turpentine. The light came from a system of shop lights strung overhead, casting a broad-spectrum glow with a bluish cast.
As chaotic as the space was, his work was breathtaking. Anya saw none of the precisely lettered blueprints she’d seen at the gallery. These works were abstracts and still lifes, paint sprawling large across canvas, in colors not permitted under the strict rules of architecture. The majority of the abstract works glowed in shades of orange and red, exhalations from corners of darkness. She saw curves of land that suggested deserts with the glisten of glass and sand mixed into the paint.
“These are gorgeous,” she said.
“Thanks. I’m experimenting with adding minerals to the paint for texture.” He crossed to the half-finished canvas he was working on, a broad sweep of reds and pinks. It reminded Anya of a bloody sunset she’d seen on a newsreel after Chernobyl. He dipped a broad brush into a paper cup, and curled a black line across the bottom perimeter. Using his forearm, he smudged the black into the red. The black carbon feathered into the substrate he’d applied to the canvas. “I’m using carbon tonight. It tends to melt right into the medium, so it has to be used up fast.”
Anya examined a piece of watercolor paper at his table. A frosty pattern laced across the page, incredibly intricate and organic, as it laced into the green. “What did you use for this? It’s amazing.”
“That was salt. The salt drives out the color and purifies the tint. Each thing I use has its own chemistry, its own magic.”
“Why didn’t you display any of these?”
Drake didn’t answer for a moment. When he did, he said, “These are personal. Without being able to see in three dimensions, this is all I can do… and I just don’t feel like putting that out to the world for critique by some jackass writing columns for the arts section.”
“These are for you.”
“Entirely. And… well, now that you’ve seen them, they’re for you, too.”
She paused before a smaller piece of canvas, stretched on a complicated-looking cantilevered frame. It was a one-quarter profile of a woman, only the pale edge of her face visible. Her back was presented to the viewer, dressed in a laced corset, ribbons dripping off into space. Her hair was pinned up, and the luminously pale curve of her neck contrasted sharply with the glow of black behind it. On close inspection, the black was slightly crazed, like the alligator skin effect that Anya had seen on charred wood in fires. When viewed from the right angle, she detected the blush of smoke on the woman’s cheek. The contrast between the seen and unseen was striking.
