Made for Sin (19 page)

She didn't reply. Not a surprise. He tilted his head down so it rested on hers for a second. “You know, you don't have to come along. To the cemetery, I mean. I can handle it on my own.”

“No.” The resolute tone of her voice matched the emphatic shake of her head. “Thanks, but no.”

He nodded. “Okay, well. Laz just wants to hear from me after I find Dunhill. He wanted me to do that tonight but there's no set time, and I'd rather have the mirror before we go into any meeting about anything. For all we know, Dunhill is the one going after that, too.”

“Or he knows who
is
going after it,” she said. “So, what, do we go to the cemetery first?”

“Yes. We'll get the mirror, and hopefully that'll give us more information about what Dunhill and Fallerstein's plan is—the more we know, the better questions we can ask, and the more we get, the sooner I can go see Laz and tell him what's going on.”

“I assume I'm not invited to that.”

He hesitated. “Did your dad ever mention Laz? Do you know what happened between them?”

“He mentioned him once or twice,” she said. “Never did say what happened, or that anything had happened, it was just clear he didn't care for him. He thought he was kind of scummy, I guess.”

“Laz said they worked on something together, a long time ago, and it didn't go well. He said there was bad blood between them.”

“That sounds about right.” She shivered. “The water's starting to get cold.”

“We should probably get out anyway,” he said, and was surprised to note that he almost didn't want to. “We should figure out exactly what our plan is, too, because I'd rather not be here when it gets dark. If they know about you now, they might come here this time.”

“The people who are after you, you mean. You think they won't show up until it's dark?”

“Yeah. They're not human. I imagine the sun hurts their eyes, even if it doesn't injure the rest of them—which it probably does.”

“We should head to Mercer's place early, then,” she said. “Get a look at his files, see who hired him and what he knew. A lot of items passed through his hands over the years, and it should all be recorded one way or another.”

“And you can get us in there?”

She sat up straight, turning to give him a pointed look.

Right. “I know you can. I'm just confirming that that's the plan.”

“My dad would want to kick you out of this house if he knew you were insulting my skills.”

“Your dad,” he said, “would probably want to kick me out of this house for what I did to you a little while ago.”

She laughed. “He'd be more upset about you doubting my ability to get into a building. I don't think he'd be too bothered by the rest. He'd have liked you.”

He doubted that. Seriously.

Especially if the reaction of Mickey's good friend Nielsen could be taken as an indicator, which it probably could. Once again there was an odd little knock in his head, the feeling that something about that—about Nielsen, and Nielsen's reaction to him—wasn't quite right. “You know…” he started, but Ardeth had already moved on.

Or moved
up,
to be exact. She sighed and stood, water running off her body in glorious rivulets. Suddenly he had an idea of how they could spend some of the time before sunset, and it had nothing to do with Nielsen Pollard at all. The beast stirred again in the back of his head, reminding him to check his wall, to make sure it couldn't see. He could already feel its irritation, and he still couldn't quite bring himself to care. It was still worth it. Whatever it did to him. Whatever happened. It even would have been worth it, he thought, as she turned to smile at him, if the ridiculous bargain he'd thought of before were real, and someone was coming to cut off his limbs and his head like—holy shit.

Felix had been surprised they hadn't come after Speare first. “Doretti's favorite son.” Everyone thought that was true, didn't they?

And Fallerstein didn't give a shit if Doretti knew what he was up to. Maybe he even knew who Doretti would ask to help him out: somebody who could find anybody, who had access to addresses and personal information, who knew how to ask questions.

Somebody with a reputation, like Ardeth had said. Somebody known for being able to tell who was lying and who wasn't, who was known for figuring things out and for using his head.

“You okay?” Ardeth asked. Her hand was extended in front of him, waiting for him to take it, but he couldn't.

“No,” he heard himself say. He looked up at her, afraid of her reaction because he knew she would see it, too, and if she saw it he would know he was right. “I don't think I am. I think I know why they're after me. I think they want my head. It's my head they want.”

She sank back into the tub, her eyes wide, and that was all the answer he needed. Fuck.

It was just past eight when Ardeth worked her magic on the front door of Frank Mercer's place, on the third floor of an open-air apartment complex west of the Strip. Not a bad place, actually. Especially the interior, which showed Frank Mercer was a man who took the careful exactitude of his profession seriously and made it the mainstay of his life.

“Like a museum in here,” Speare said, crossing the threshold and pulling the door shut behind him.

Ardeth smiled. “He kept things organized, didn't he?”

“Organized” was an understatement. Speare wouldn't have been surprised to see that Mercer drew Julia-Child's-kitchen-style outlines of every item in the house on the walls or desks or whatever, so everything always got put back in the exact same place. At least, that was what Laz said Julia Child's kitchen had looked like, when he'd been eagerly planning to do the same thing only to be overruled by his second wife.

But Speare had never seen a place so obsessively tidy, so devoid of any…well, any life, as Mercer's. Almost every surface was bare and gleaming with polish or cleanser; the floors were spotless, the carpet bore vacuum lines still, the air carried the faint hint of lemon cleanser and bleach.

And something in there made the beast growl. A faint growl, one that didn't feel nervous, but a growl just the same. There was magic in the air, too, the whisper of occult items nearby.

Ardeth disappeared down the short hall. Her voice drifted out to him as he examined the sparkling stovetop. “Speare, come on.”

The files. He followed her voice, passing a bathroom whose floor he could probably eat off if he wanted—not that he would ever want to—to find her in a small bedroom-cum-office, digging through the top drawer of a file cabinet. As he watched, she pulled a file out and tucked it into the large, empty bag she carried.

At least, it had been empty. It now obviously held a few things besides the file. “Is that the file we want?”

“It's a file I want,” she said.

“Ardeth…” He couldn't believe he had to say it, but apparently he did. “You're not stealing from a dead man, are you?”

“Of course I am.” Another file went into her bag. “I'm surprised I'm the first one. I guess nobody else wanted to get in here while it was still light out—I mean, I guess someone else could have been here already, but I don't know why they would have left some of this stuff. Look, he has a Stone of Acantha.”

She pulled the item in question out of her bag and showed it to him. “Can you believe it?”

“You can't just take that.” He shouldn't be amused. He knew he shouldn't be amused. But her blithe assumption that he would be just fine with her stripping Mercer's house bare of valuable items before Mercer was even cold—no, before the man was buried, he'd been cold the night before—seemed so typical of her that he couldn't help it.

“Sure I can,” she said. “See? It's already in my bag.”

“I mean, you—”

“He doesn't have any family.” She went back to flipping through the files. “No one to leave his belongings to. When somebody dies without heirs, everybody goes for their stuff. It's like tradition.”

He guessed that made some kind of sense, although it still bothered him.

“Trust me,” she said. “In another hour or so, somebody else will show up. It'll go on all night and maybe into tomorrow, depending. Have a look around—maybe you can find something to steal, yourself.”

Her raised eyebrows told him what she was thinking. And she was right. The beast was feeling quite satisfied at the moment—several sins and a nap tended to have that effect—but it wasn't a bad idea to do some stockpiling for the long night ahead.

The beast liked the idea, too. It was eager to look around. Whispers hid in Frank Mercer's place, secretive little mutters of power that might be interesting, and the beast wanted to find them and see. And Speare could use the distraction to get it to stop trying to pry at his memories. He needed all the energy he could get for what was bound to be a difficult night ahead.

Ardeth gasped. “A Teriad Ring. Holy shit, I didn't know he had one of these. Look, you put it on and it makes you impervious to arrows.”

“Arrows?”

“Well, that was advanced weaponry at the time this thing was made.” She grinned, and tossed the ring into her bag. “I'm pretty sure it works for any sort of sharp-edged weapon, really.”

“Why wouldn't you just wear it all the time?”

“Oh, it has side effects. I think it turns your skin green if you wear it too long. Like, verdigris green, not Hulk green.”

“I don't think Hulk green would be any better,” he said.

“No, but at least people would think it was a costume or something, instead of some kind of moldy skin disease.” She turned back to the files.

“I'm going to check the rest of the place,” he said. “Maybe he's got some notes or something in his bedroom.”

“See if his safe is in there. That's where the really good stuff will be.”

He headed across the hall, into the neurotically tidy bedroom. The bed was made, of course; on the bedside stand was a book, with a bookmark still in place. God. It occurred to him that when Mercer placed that bookmark two nights before, he hadn't had any idea that he'd never get to finish. He'd had no idea what was waiting for him.

But then, who did? Certainly not him.

And standing there thinking morbid thoughts—and trying not to think about just what the hell he was doing with Ardeth—wasn't getting them anywhere. This was important. If he could find some clue about who Mercer's client really was, he could get Doretti off his back and focus on his plan. And maybe save his life.

Mercer's drawers were full of neatly folded clothing, color-coded and arranged according to style—short-sleeved T-shirts in one drawer, long-sleeved in another. Speare methodically went through all of it, feeling seams, checking pockets, inspecting the drawers themselves for false bottoms. Nothing.

The bedside table yielded a notepad with several sheets torn off the top. Good. There might be some impressions on the lower pages. Even Mercer's bedside stand was obsessively organized; aside from the book—a thriller about a serial murderer, how uncomfortably appropriate—he had a couple of nudie magazines and some lube, the usual things.

The safe was in the closet, concealed inside a cabinet that also held a velvet-lined pullout shelf full of cuff links and other pieces of jewelry. It was the same kind of safe Speare himself had, although his wasn't hidden in what looked like a custom-built cabinet. And his didn't make the beast quiver with interest like it was doing now. “I found the safe,” he called.

“Be there in a minute,” she called back.

While he waited he kept searching, bunching every item of clothing in his hands to feel for anything unusual, looking inside each pair of shoes neatly fitted into a wooden shelving unit. Nothing. Especially not the combination to the safe, which sucked. Ardeth could probably break into it, but it would be a lot faster if he could just unlock it.

He was running his fingertips along the bottom of the jewelry shelf, checking to see if anything had been taped under there, when Ardeth's voice broke the silence. “Speare!”

Instantly he drew his gun and dropped into a half crouch, ready. Ardeth hadn't sounded panicked, necessarily, but whatever the reason she was calling his name, it wasn't good. There was a tone in her voice, a particular tone that felt like a hand pulling at the hairs on the back of his neck. He didn't like that tone, and he especially didn't like the idea that she felt scared or threatened. Which didn't bode well for him, but there was nothing he could do about it just then.

He ducked his head through the doorway, scanning to see if anyone lurked in the hallway. No one. No one in the bathroom, either, when he quickly peeked in there as he crossed the hall to the office.

And no one in the office except Ardeth, sitting at the desk with a file open in front of her and a face even paler than usual. Her eyes were very large in her face as she spoke. “It's a process.”

He blinked. “Going through the files, or—”

“No,” she said. “G—that word. The name of the mirror. It's the name of a process, the process of bringing a demon into this world.”

Which was basically what Nielsen had told him, or at least Nielsen told him what the mirror did. He opened his mouth to say as much; luckily she continued speaking before he could, since he hadn't mentioned that to her yet.

“It summons a demon,” she said. “Any demon who's near it on the other side, you know, in—in hell. But that's not all it does. It doesn't bring the demon into our world to live independently. It puts it into a vessel. Into a body. They can't survive in their own natural form here, so they need to live in a human body.”

The beast. He knew she was thinking it; of course she was. So was he. She was probably also coming to the same realization he was—she definitely was coming to the same realization, if the horror in her eyes and the queasiness of her expression were any indication.