Devil's Own (4 page)

Niall admitted to himself he was relieved upon hearing that. “I see.”

“I can put you in touch with a few people I know in those circles. I can’t guarantee they will speak with you, but I can ask.”

Niall shook his head. “I’m grateful for the offer, Juliette, but I don’t want to put you in the middle of this.”

“It’s just a phone call—”

“Just like my first talk with Gus was mere flirting, right?” Niall gave her a mocking glance, and she had the good grace to blush. A tentative fact-finding mission between Niall and Gus had led to flirting, emotions—and life-threatening situations. Not again.

Juliette chuckled. “Well, not everyone is like Gus, thankfully. He’s enthusiastic and hungry for knowledge, but he has good instincts. Even you must admit that.”

Carefully, Niall acknowledged this with a nod. “He’s got a good head on his shoulders, it’s true. But for once I’d like to make sure it stays there.” Despite his concerns, however, Niall wasn’t in a position to turn down leads. “One phone call, one person. That’s all. No further interference. I need you to promise, Ms. Hayes.”

Juliette rolled her eyes. “I’ve had enough excitement lately, thank you very much. I’ll make some inquiries and call you if and when I find out anything of any importance.”

“It would be helpful if this person you choose is someone who knows the satanic circles in town very well. You know, who practices what where, that sort of thing.”

Juliette smiled. “It’s a deal. Niall.” She winked at him flirtatiously, and shaking his head, Niall joined in on the fun with a smile. It was good to have friends.

D
ESPITE
HIS
reservations about the whole case, Niall decided to check out the Talbot mansion in Medina by the waterfront. The whole district was riddled with luxury estates with parks and their own harbors. The evening was waning, and the gray skies held a rosy tint at the horizon where the sun was slowly setting.

But those vibrant colors were nothing against the bright flashing red and blue lights of police cars and an ambulance parked on the estate’s driveway. Immediately on his guard, Niall pulled up to the curb on the other side of the street and slowly sauntered toward the news vans and the curious spectators behind the yellow police tape.

“What’s happened?” Niall asked a woman clutching a tiny dog in her stout arms.

“Someone’s been murdered!” she hissed excitedly.

Niall’s blood ran cold. This was very bad news.

Then he spotted a grim-looking detective friend of his walking up to an approaching black unmarked car. From the high-class style, the vehicle obviously belonged to someone higher up in the ranks. Niall quickly made his way closer and watched as Virgil Hughes bent to the window to talk to someone and then straightened up, looking dismayed.

“Hey, Hughes!” Niall called out.

Hughes looked up. When he saw Niall, he looked puzzled at first, but the expression fell away fast. He made his way to Niall, who still stood behind the yellow crime-scene tape. “Well, well, well. With you here, Valentine, I know to expect the worst.”

“Don’t give me any shit tonight, Virg.” Niall nodded toward the house. “What’s going on?”

Hughes shrugged, grasping at his pocket for smokes but then yanking his hands off as if they were on fire. His wife must have lectured him about smoking—again. “Homicide.”

“Who’s the stiff?”

“The owner of the estate, one Florian Talbot.” Behind his disinterested mask, Niall was shaken to the core. “Bashed in the head with a lamp. But here’s the really weird part: he was found in the bedroom—behind a door locked from the inside!”

Niall frowned. Some things obviously didn’t add up, especially the locked room.

He thought about his client’s account of the night’s events. Angelina Talbot had admitted to smashing a lamp over her husband’s head in order to escape. She hadn’t said he’d been killed.
And
, there was the nagging fact that the cops had come to investigate after she had pressed charges and they had spoken with Florian. That meant someone else had whacked the apparently insane Florian Talbot—in a manner that implicated Angelina.

Niall sighed inwardly. He knew he had to come clean about his own investigation regarding Florian Talbot to Virgil and the police or risk charges of obstruction of justice or hindering prosecution. And there were the years of friendship to think about.

“Virg, we need to talk.”

Hughes grunted sarcastically, unsurprised. “Be still my beating heart.”

“W
ELL
,
AT
least it wasn’t your client who got murdered.” Gus went for the sympathy vote, but judging from Niall’s sullen look, he wasn’t very successful.

“Big fucking whoop,” Niall muttered, chopping the carrots for the stew with far too much force to create anything but mush. Gus watched, concerned, out of the corner of his eye, not wanting to hover or crowd his companion.

“Angelina’s innocent, right? That’s good, right?” Gus was keen to hear all the dirt he had missed, especially now that there could be a sinister satanic cult involved, and a dead body had already appeared on the scene.

Niall let out a long breath, his shoulders sagging. “She’s not in the clear yet. After she was interviewed by the police, it was damned obvious to them she had a pretty strong motive, and she admitted to using the lamp. To many, this is an open-and-shut case.”

“Hughes doesn’t think that, surely?”

“Not that I know of. Virg told me what had happened and let me see the crime-scene photos but wouldn’t let me anywhere near the actual murder scene. And then there’s that accursed locked door the family had to break down! Damn,” Niall cursed, chopping some more until there was only orange mush in his hands. “Shit, I’m not helping with dinner, am I?”

Gus smiled, gracefully removing the knife from his boyfriend’s clutches. “Why don’t you go to the couch, lift up your feet, have a beer, and I’ll holler when dinner’s ready, okay?”

“Yeah, that sounds good right about now.” With a heavy sigh, Niall wandered off to the living room and crashed unceremoniously on the couch with his beer. Before he could get comfortable, though, he was already prattling on, mostly to himself. “There are only two possibilities as far as I can see. Either Florian Talbot wasn’t killed by his wife’s blow and was murdered by someone else after the visit from the police, or… my client struck her husband more forcefully than she thought, accidentally killing him, and then someone posed as Florian Talbot for the benefit of the police. The thing is—” Niall rubbed his jaw, looking pensive. “—I don’t understand the motive of pretending Talbot was still alive. I mean, with Angelina they had their perfect culprit.”

“Wouldn’t that suggest there really was something hinky going on, and the family closed ranks to make sure their deep dark secret—whatever it is—wouldn’t get discovered?” Gus hollered from the open kitchen, still in sight of his boyfriend.

Niall chuckled loudly from the couch. “Hinky? Wow, I suddenly got a total Tommy Lee Jones flashback.”

Gus huffed, only partially indignant. Yes, he admitted he’d learned the word from
The Fugitive
, but still…. His boyfriend could have shown more subtlety. “You ass.”

“Anytime, anywhere, babe.” Niall laughed again, and Gus ignored him.

“Hinky vocabulary aside, my suggestion has merit.”

Niall conceded to that. “Yeah, it does. Is it possible that this satanic, um, group did actually harm a person, and that blood was human in origin? Fuck, that’s a matter for the police.”

“You told Hughes about that, surely?” Gus was worried Niall might keep things from the cops. That could land his boyfriend in serious legal trouble.

“Yeah, I did.” Niall took a gulp of his beer. “I had little choice. They were going to take Angelina in for questioning. I told them the story as best I could, and apparently the uniformed officers confirmed the story about meeting Talbot alive—
after
Angelina had left the house.”

Gus came into the living room and handed Niall a platter of hot cheese-filled bread he had made himself. “If the patrol identified the deceased as the guy they met—”

“Then it couldn’t have been an impostor,” Niall finished the thought before popping a piece of bread in his mouth. Then he closed his eyes, made
yum-yum
noises, and chewed slowly, obviously relishing the experience.

“That means Angelina is definitely in the clear.”

“I don’t know yet if the uniformed officers did meet the real Talbot. We’ll see.”

Gus returned to the kitchen to work on the stew. “Did you really think someone could have pretended to be Florian Talbot?”

Niall sighed audibly. “Angelina described the people of the Talbot inner circle. She said the man from the satanic coven, Titus, reminded her of Florian, especially around the eyes. If they looked alike….” He shrugged.

Gus didn’t know what to think. Real-life murder mysteries weren’t like those in the stories, where every loose end could be tied up in a neat little bow, resolved. Real murders were messy, bloody, and usually involved money, power, sex, or revenge. But when you added the occult in the mix…. He shuddered at the thought.

“Babe? I know you believe in the Goddess. Do you think someone, like these Talbots, could believe in, well, Satan so deeply that they might actually kill someone? A human sacrifice? Is that even remotely possible?”

Gus heard Niall’s tone, hesitant and wavering. Niall wasn’t a religious or spiritual man, so for him to ask this meant he was thinking about aberrant psychology, people who went gaga over religion. “It’s a crazy world out there.” He mixed the stew slowly, puzzling over it. “I find it really hard to believe, though. I mean, unless the person is certifiably insane.”

“Sane people commit murder too,” Niall reminded Gus fastidiously, and he happened to be annoyingly accurate in his assessment.

Gus didn’t get a chance to speak because the doorbell rang. He quickly rinsed his hands, wiped them on a towel, and rushed to the door. He assumed it would be Hughes, to check up on things or to get more of the story from Niall.

But, it wasn’t Hughes.

The petite young man was of Asian descent, with silky black hair and brown, almond-shaped soulful eyes that caught Gus in their hold right from the start. He wore black jeans so tight it was a miracle he could walk at all—the limited amount of available space couldn’t have been comfy for his package—and his tight black shirt looked equally unbearable. Though he had metal chains on his wide belt and around his wrists, he also wore a black feather boa around his neck. To Gus, the newcomer appeared to be a kind of Goth twink.

The boy gave Gus a slow once-over. “Hello. I’m Autumnsong.”

“Um, hi.” Gus wondered if the guy had come to the wrong place at the wrong time. “Eh, if it’s the shop you want to take a peek in, I’m afraid we’re closed for the night. I open at—”

“Valentine?” the boy interrupted, one eyebrow rising almost condescendingly.

“No. I’m Valentine.” Gus didn’t need to hear Niall’s voice to sense the man behind his back. His tone was curt, unwelcoming. “And you are?”

The boy scoffed, rolling his eyes. “Like I said….” He paused for emphasis, apparently for the benefit of those he perceived to be complete idiots. “I’m Autumnsong.” When neither Gus nor Niall reacted, he added, “Juliette sent me.”

“Oh.” Niall didn’t release his wariness, but his voice took on a more amiable tone. “The occult expert. Come on in.” Since Niall had invited him into Gus’s house, Gus had little choice but to step aside and let the kid in. Or was he a kid? His age was hard to determine. For him to be an expert anything, he couldn’t have been a teenager.

Autumnsong strutted in flamboyantly, seemingly without a care in the world, looked around with barely disguised curiosity, and then plopped down on the couch. Immediately, he took note of the bread platter and snatched one of the appetizers into his mouth. “Nice. Make this yourself?”

“Yes. I did.” Gus walked over, took the plate from the coffee table, and carried it toward the kitchen.

The kid chuckled. “And here I thought all witches were supposed to be hospitable.”

“Not after nine in the evening to uninvited guests in my own home,” Gus replied, looking back over his shoulder. For the sake of Niall’s case, he shouldn’t have been so off-putting, but the guy rubbed him the wrong way. With or without his soulful eyes. He glanced at Niall and mouthed, “
Sorry
.”

Niall gave Gus the lopsided grin reserved just for him. Gus would have beamed if they hadn’t had a guest in the house. He proceeded to the kitchen but found an angle where he could see into the living room without being noticed. He watched as Niall sat down in one of the armchairs opposite the couch and leaned on his knees.

“So. What have you got for me?”

The Asian fellow smirked. “About what? You’re gonna have to be more specific.”

“Florian Talbot.” Niall said nothing more, and in the kitchen Gus suppressed a smirk of his own. Two could play at that irritating game, and Niall was a master.

“Oh, him.” Autumnsong rolled his eyes and leaned back on the couch. “You mean his so-called coven?”

“What can you tell me about that?”

Autumnsong laughed without genuine mirth. “He’s a dabbler, an amateur in the field of religion. He and his laughably called coven are insignificant.”

“What do they do?”

“During their ridiculous rituals?” The kid sighed exaggeratedly. “Silly mumbo-jumbo invocations they don’t really understand, dance naked under the moonlight, drink wine, eat like pigs in a sty, engage in wild orgies, and maybe butcher a chicken or two. Nothing worth writing home about.”

Niall took a copy of Florian’s note out of his jeans pocket and unceremoniously handed it to Autumnsong. “What do you make of this?”

The tiny guy studied the note with his brow wrinkled, and then he burst into hapless giggles. “What the hell is this garbage? This is rubbish. Nothing.” He handed the paper back to Niall, still chuckling. “You’ve been duped.”