Harmony Black (22 page)

THIRTY-SEVEN

O
n our way out, in the freshly fallen dark, Jessie flashed her penlight across the Garners’ lawn. We found the third wicker ball down at the edge of the grass, sitting cold and still in the shadow of an oak tree.

“Bag it,” I said. “Then we need to run by the motel and grab the other two beacons.”

“You’re thinking about something,” Jessie told me. “I can hear the hamster wheel rattling.”

“Jeremiah Kite had the right idea: to take the basic idea behind the beacons and turn them into a door that works in both directions. He just wasn’t skilled enough to pull it off. Neither am I, but I think I’m a little more creative than he was. We’re going to need help from a contact of mine. Chicago is . . . what, an hour, hour and ten from here?”

I tossed her the keys to the SUV.

“How fast can
you
get us there?”

Jessie snatched the keys from the air. “We’ll be there and
back
in an hour.”

She wasn’t quite that fast, but we still made damn good time as we wound along the coast of Lake Michigan, carving down long and lonely stretches of highway.

“You’re holding your cards close to the vest,” Jessie said, leaning toward the steering wheel as she leaned on the gas. “How about a little hint?”

“Edwin learned to mark his servants, like a demon, right? But we don’t know how tight the bond between him and Willie really was. Willie said Edwin always contacted him in dreams, never while he was awake.”

“Okay, I’m with you so far.”

“There’s a good chance, at least until he tries to reach out to him again, that Edwin doesn’t know Willie is dead. He’ll figure it out pretty quick—maybe tonight, even—so we don’t have much time.”

“Sounds about right, but what can we do with that?”

“I’m thinking ‘Willie’ needs to summon the Bogeyman one last time,” I said. “And when he shows up, he’s going to have a nasty surprise waiting for him.”

As the highway curved north and the Chicago skyline rose up in the distance, traffic became a slow-moving sea of scarlet brake lights. We cruised along, weaving from lane to lane, until we hit the off-ramp for Lake Shore Drive. We hugged the coast—black waters on our right, and canyons of granite and steel on our left.

The city at night became a carnival of harsh white light. Spotlights, skyscraper lights, antennae topped with pinpricks the color of ice or frost blue. The electric power blotted out the stars, turning the sky black, but the night had to struggle for a foothold here. Chicago was too busy to sleep.

The Field Museum stood stony and proud, like a temple to the Greek gods in the heart of the American Midwest. Eighty-foot banners dangled from the eaves atop towering ionic pillars. We were far too late for a tour—the museum closed at five—but I knew at least one employee would be working late. As we looked for a parking spot, I gave her a call.

“Not the front doors,” she said. “Circle around the campus and you’ll find a side door for the research wing. Just knock. I’ll tell the guard to expect you.”

We were knocking on the glass for a while, standing next to a row of manicured bushes that shivered in the wind. Eventually a guard in a pressed blue uniform wandered by. He gave us a wave before he scurried over to unlock the door.

I showed him my ID. “We’re here to see Dr. Khoury. She’s expecting us.”

“Sure, sure,” he said, pointing. “Just go up the hall that way. Soon as you come to a security grate, take a left. She’s in the conservators’ workshop. Can’t miss it.”

There’s something magical about a museum at night. As we passed the steel grates barring us from the main hall and the shadowed exhibits beyond, I craned my neck to see everything I could.

“So where’d you meet this doctor?” Jessie asked. “She a friendly?”

“Not a registered friendly, per se,” I said.

She gave me a look.

“So what you’re saying is, you kept her out of your reports.”

I shrugged. “It was a prerequisite for getting her help on a smuggling investigation. Halima Khoury is kind of a private person. Her intel was flawless, though. She’s an expert in—”

“No, no,” Jessie said, “back it up. What you’re saying is, you lied in your field report. After you acted all shocked that
I
lie to Linder all the time.”

“It was a very tiny lie of omission, three and a half years ago. And I’ve done it only once. Ever. And I felt bad about it.”

Jessie punched my arm. “You’re a
rebel
, Harmony Black.”

“Stop it.”

“Mmm-hmm. You are one badass rebel.”

A rubber wedge propped open the door to the conservators’ workshop. I slowed my step, hearing voices drift out from inside. Not happy voices.

“—why you’d think that I, of all the people in this city, would be harboring that
creature
,” Halima snapped.

The man who answered her was slick, cultured, his words edged with a breezy British accent. “I don’t think that. The fact remains, Doctor, that you’ve known Damien Ecko longer than anyone. You can understand why I’d want to speak with you.”

Damien Ecko.
I remembered hearing Emmanuel Hirsch drop that name when I’d eavesdropped on his phone call back in Detroit. Whoever this Ecko was, he got around.

“Interrogate me, you mean. I am not subject to your laws, Royce, nor do I go seeking conflict with your people. This is my tiny corner of the city. My little dominion. All I ask is to be left to my work in peace.”

“Right, right, you have to be around when your girlfriend finally decides to wake up.”

“How
dare
you!” Halima shouted, her voice punctuated by the crash of breaking glass.

I didn’t have to say a word to Jessie. We moved as one, sweeping around the corner and into the workshop. It could have passed for a college science lab, the long room bathed in stark white light and lined with tables and cabinets. A clutter of projects in midcompletion filled every open surface, from tiny stone relics under glass to Tupperware beds of dirt and sand. Old hardcovers filled a rolling library cart, each one with a colored slip of paper sticking up from inside the front cover.

Halima looked exactly like I remembered her: almond skin and a long, narrow face, her body draped in a floor-length dress and a powder-blue headscarf. The man standing on the other side of a study table with his hands on his hips, I didn’t know. He could have passed for a retired model pushing the edge of forty, with an aquiline nose and pale green eyes. He wore a tailored gray suit, and the tail of a tattoo—a black, thorny rose vine, it looked like—snaked up from under the collar of his crisp dress shirt to end just beneath his left ear.

The man—Royce, she’d called him—slowly turned to look at a shattered pile of glass on the floor just behind him.

“Really?” he said, giving her a cocky smile. “Now we’re throwing things? Please, Doctor, everyone says you’re the voice of
reason
in this city. Do grow up.”

Halima’s fingernails dug into her palms.

“The museum is closed,” she told him. “You need to leave now.”

“As you wish. Just remember: there are rewards for cooperation. Find Ecko’s whereabouts for me, and I’ll gladly make a generous donation to, er”—he waved a hand, taking in the room—“whatever it is you people do here. It’s very cute, with the antiques and the placards and the learning about things. Not sure it beats television for sheer commercial appeal, but—”

“Leave!”

Royce gave her a wave and turned on his heel. As he strolled past us, his gaze slid right over me and looked Jessie up and down.

“Hello, ladies.”

“Good-bye, douche,” Jessie muttered in his wake, nudging out the plastic wedge and shutting the workshop door.

“I’m sorry,” I told Halima. “Is this a bad time?”

She chuckled, sounding tired. “No, far from it. You probably saved me from murdering more innocent test tubes. We’ve had an . . . exciting few weeks here. Local politics, nothing you need be concerned over.”

Jessie jerked her thumb back over her shoulder. “So who was he?”

Halima’s eyes twinkled. “That’s not what you came to see me about.”

It wasn’t the most graceful attempt at dodging a question, but I let her get away with it. I shook her hand. Her grip was firm, desert dry, with a texture almost like cheesecloth.

“Doctor, this is Jessie Temple, my new partner. Thank you for seeing us.”

“Of course,” she said, shaking Jessie’s hand. “It sounded like you two had an interesting conundrum for me. I’m always up for a good puzzle.”

Five minutes later, we stood behind her while she perched on a stool, studying one of the wicker balls under an oversize magnifying glass. The other two beacons sat to her left, next to Jeremiah Kite’s journals. She turned the ball in her hand, slowly, occasionally reaching over to adjust the magnifying glass’s boom arm.

“So far I can confirm your suspicions. Definitely Sumerian. Dimensional mathematics. Magics.” She snapped her finger. “Mathemagics.”

“Head,” Jessie groaned, “already hurting.”

I gestured to the other two balls. “Each of these beacons was keyed to a place. Willie, the person placing them, was no magician; he just did what he was told. So I figure they’re pretty much fire and forget. Plant ’em in the ground and they guide the Bogeyman to the closest house.”

“Where it arrives in a closet,” Halima said, “and leaves from the same place, yes? Or at least tries to?”

I thought back to the nanny cam video of the Gunderson house, where the recording ended with the same creaking closet door. I nodded.

“Odds are, this creature isn’t teleporting. It’s opening a very short-term gateway between worlds. Closets are just a convenient place to manifest it.”

“What difference does it make?” Jessie asked.

“Difference being, if it teleports, only
it
—and the victims in direct skin contact—make the trip. A gateway, though . . . well, theoretically
anyone
could jump through as long as it was still open.”

I rapped my fingernails on the stack of journals. “Jeremiah was wrong. He didn’t need to reverse-engineer the spell or come up with something
new
. He just needed to be there when the Bogeyman showed up.”

“And cross over before the gate sealed up again,” Halima said. “Correct.”

I looked to Jessie, the implications loud and clear.

“I thought if we could make a new beacon, we could at least lure out the Bogeyman and take him down. If we can be there when the gate opens, though? We can go after his master, too. This is our shot at Edwin Kite.”

“Hell, I’m game.” She looked to Halima. “What do you think, Doc? Can you re-create a working beacon?”

Halima thought about it. Her eyes narrowed as she studied the wound wicker strip, and she reached up to stroke her chin.

“Can I?” she finally said. “Most likely, yes.
Will
I?”

She shook her head.

“I am sorry, but no.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

“
I’m sorry,” I told Halima. “Did you just say that you could help us, but you won’t?”

She swiveled on her stool, turning to face us.

“I’m afraid that’s correct. You are very brave young women, but I won’t be responsible for your deaths.”

“We’re brave young women with guns,” Jessie said flatly.

Halima chuckled. “And that is why I know you aren’t ready. Pitting gunpowder against the machinery of the universe. Tell me, what do you even know of this place, this House of Closets?”

“Just what I told you on the phone,” I said. “Edwin Kite conned a demon into building it for him, and he turned it into some kind of energy siphon. He can’t be forced out; he can only leave under his own power—and he won’t do that because the second he sets foot back on Earth, Adramelech is waiting to turn him into a charcoal briquette.”

“Which doesn’t stop us from walking into his house and sanctioning his ass right there on his living room rug,” Jessie said. “
We
don’t need him alive. In fact, it works out best for everybody involved if we permanently revoke his breathing license.”

“You assume he needs to breathe,” Halima said. “You assume far too much.”

“Then clarify it for us,” I told her.

Her stool scraped against the tile floor as she pushed it back, standing up. She talked as she walked, clasping her hands behind her back and pacing the aisle between tables.

“I once entertained a brief fascination with these . . . otherspaces. Worlds abutting our own—some entire universes unto themselves, others no bigger than this room. Hell is the best-known example, regrettably enough. The small ones, the pocket worlds crafted by deliberate magic, rather than forming naturally—they are defined by their creators. You are imagining a literal house. A place of wood and concrete, glass and nails. A dangerous mistake.”

Jessie put her hands on her hips. “So what is it, then?”

“An extension of Edwin Kite’s mind and soul. If he’s truly mastered his little kingdom, it will respond to his every thought and desire. Everything you take for granted in this world, even the very laws of physics, will be subject to his whimsy. How will you fight that, hmm? How will your little guns help when he turns your blood to gasoline, or the air in your lungs to concrete?”

“I know some magic, too,” I said, trying to sound braver than I felt. Facing down monsters was one thing. Traveling to another dimension, though? That was outside my skill set.

“Not in his realm, you won’t. You might as well try to tear down a skyscraper with your bare hands. From the inside.”

“You’d be amazed,” Jessie said, “how much damage I can do with my bare hands.”

Halima spun in midstride, stopping still, fixing her gaze upon Jessie’s turquoise eyes.

“No. I wouldn’t. I can see right through you, Agent Temple, down to the
thing
slumbering in your heart. Do you think it’ll help you there? Edwin Kite’s house represents his own evil, animal hungers made manifest. When your beast awakens, smelling blood, do you think it will fight against him . . . or
for
him?”

Jessie didn’t have an answer for that. Not a verbal one. She just locked eyes with Halima, glaring.

“Halima,” I said, “two children have been kidnapped. A third’s been marked with Edwin Kite’s brand, and the last person who suffered
that
fate just blew his brains out right in front of us. If we don’t do this, if we don’t take this chance, Kite will get away with it. And he’ll do it again and again, and he won’t ever stop because men like him never do. He thinks he’s untouchable. Help us to prove him wrong.”

I approached her, standing almost toe to toe, searching in her deep hazel eyes.

“If you won’t help us, we’ll keep searching until we find someone who will. The one thing we
won’t
do is let this go. And right now, with every hour that slips by, our chances of getting those two kids back alive gets smaller and smaller. We know the risks. It doesn’t matter. This is our
job
.”

She studied me, silent, for a moment. Then she let out a sigh and walked back to her stool.

“No promises,” she said, “but let’s see what I can do. Check that cupboard—should be a few bricks of modeling clay. I don’t work in wicker.”

W
e paced, and waited, and watched the clock while Halima crafted her beacon. She rolled a cylinder of stiff gray modeling clay, first recruiting Jessie to knead it until it was malleable, and flattened the ends. With Jeremiah Kite’s journals opened at her side and all three wicker balls lined up in a neat row under her magnifying glass, Halima slowly worked at the clay cylinder with a stainless-steel dental pick.

“The spell,” she said with thinly veiled distaste, “is overcomplicated. What we’re building, at its core, is a transmitter. A simple device to send a simple message, bursting across the veil of worlds.”

She gestured toward the wicker balls. “The shared sequences on each beacon, the formulas that don’t change? That’s where Edwin Kite is. The variant numbers pinpoint the beacon’s location on this side. Where are you going to trigger it?”

Good question. One I should have considered earlier.

“Can’t use any of the houses he’s already hit,” Jessie said. “Kite or the Bogeyman might figure out something’s up.”

“Has to be a house in Talbot Cove, and it has to be empty.” I snapped my fingers. “I know who can find us one.”

I called Ellen Garner.

“Thank God,” she said. “Tell me you have good news. The dog’s been barking his head off all night, and Jacob keeps thinking he sees . . . things outside, in the dark.”

“We’re working on it. I wouldn’t worry: Nyx is a little too busy hunting Edwin to be stalking you right now. Just sit tight. Listen, I need a favor. Your husband works for the bank, right?”

“Yes, he’s the manager, but what does—”

“So he has access to loan records?”

“Of course.”

“I need a property listing,” I told her. “A foreclosure, in Talbot Cove. Needs to be a freestanding house, no current occupants. And it needs at least one closet.”

“Hold on,” she said, and pulled the phone away from her mouth as she called out. “Honey? Are you on the computer?”

She put Jacob on the line, and I walked him through it. It didn’t take long at all: he found a little single-family home, empty for almost a year, on the south edge of town. Perfect. Within minutes we not only had an address, but the house’s exact latitude and longitude. Bent over her magnifying glass, scribing intricate glyphs into the clay cylinder, Halima paused just long enough to give me a thumbs-up before getting back to work.

“So you really think you can stop this guy?” Jacob asked, sounding like he almost dared to hope.

“We have a chance,” I said. “We’re going to do everything we can, I promise.”

He fell silent.

“The dog,” he said, sounding quizzical.

“Dog?”

“He stopped barking.”

I heard a window shatter, glass exploding, and Ellen’s high-pitched scream. The phone rattled as Jacob threw it to the carpet. There were pounding footfalls and a vicious
crack
that sounded like breaking wood.

“Suitcases by the door?” I heard Nyx hiss. “Boxes of memories? This one thinks you were trying to escape without paying your due.”

“We don’t owe you
anything
!” Ellen shrieked at her. “Not until you—”

A short, sharp slap silenced her, followed by the sound of a body hitting the floor. I heard slow, heavy footfalls, and the sound of the phone lifting from the floor. Nyx’s rasping breath flooded my eardrum.

“Is this the wolf pup,” she asked, “or the frightened little witch?”

“This is Special Agent Harmony Black of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” I told her, “and if you’ve hurt either of those people—”

“Hurt them? Yes. Kill them? No. They are more valuable alive. To you, at least, no?”

I squeezed my free hand into a fist. Jessie came over, leaning close to listen in.

“What do you want, Nyx?”

“This one has been watching. Saw you meet the Garners, saw you leave town. Has been here, in the dark, listening close.”

“Shouldn’t you be hunting Edwin Kite?”

Nyx laughed.

“That is exactly what this one is doing. Cannot figure out how to remove Kite from his demesne. Believes
you
have, though.”

“We have an idea, that’s all. No guarantees.”

“It is sufficient. You wish to protect the innocent, yes? Then you will capture Edwin Kite and make a gift of him. Once this one has her target in custody, this one will release the Garners, unharmed. A trade: two lives, for a single damned soul. This one is generous, no?”

“You want us to do your work for you?” I asked, incredulous. “You’re
cheating
.”

“Losers complain of cheating and unfairness. Winners win. And Nyx always wins.”

I pulled the phone away from my ear and cupped my hand over the receiver, looking to Jessie.

“We don’t have time to pull off a rescue. The longer we wait on the beacon, the more likely Edwin is to find out Willie’s dead.”

“Why a rescue anyway?” Jessie asked. “Nyx is gonna drag Edwin straight down to hell, which is exactly where
we
want to send him. So we grab him and we trade him for the Garners. Everybody wins.”

“Remember what Ellen told us about Nyx’s price? She takes her target
and
the human who called her. You really think she’s gonna change her mind and play nice if we give her what she wants? We can’t risk that.”

Jessie pressed her fist to her forehead, eyes squeezed shut.

“Shit,” she said. “Okay, just . . . stall her. We’ll deal with this after we deal with Edwin, assuming we live that long.”

I took my hand off the receiver.

“I assume you heard my conversation with Jacob,” I said to Nyx.

“This one has exquisite hearing.”

“That address he gave me. Be there, on the street outside, at dawn. And bring the Garners with you. If either one of them is injured or dead, all deals are off.”

“This one will treat them like kittens . . . and not drown them in a sack, unless forced to. Attempt any betrayal and they will be the ones punished for it. This one knows ways of keeping a human alive, flayed and screaming, for
weeks
. And would be happy to demonstrate.”

“Be there,” I snapped, “at dawn, with the Garners.”

I hung up on her. There wasn’t anything else to say. My lip curled in disgust.

“Because the stakes weren’t high enough already,” Jessie said. “Okay, so how do we hand over Edwin and get the Garners away from her at the same time?”

“That’s plan D.”

“Plan D?”

“Yeah,” I said, “we figure it out while we’re driving. Dr. Khoury? I don’t know how much of that conversation you caught, but—”

“Almost done,” she said, focused on the cylinder like a laser beam. The steel pick turned in her hand, scooping back tiny rows of clay and leaving intricate Sumerian glyphs in its wake.

I hoped she was right. We were burning moonlight.