The Demon Abraxas (17 page)

She was running on three hours of sleep when she left for the university that morning and after her classes she wanted to fall into bed and crash. It wasn’t only the sleep deprivation, she could shoulder that for days running and still function, but trying to do magic outside her expertise drained her. Leaving her class she was starving and nauseous, light-headed and heavy-limbed.

She pushed open the doors of the building and stepped into the open air. It was another heavy, foggy day when the temperature didn’t crack sixty-five and she felt clammy under her light jacket. A familiar figure with short white-gold hair sat on a bench along the main walk. She felt a surge of happiness and a counterbalancing wave of caution. As glad as she was to see Ana, she wasn’t eager to repeat Sunday night’s closeness followed by sudden distance.

“Hey,” Ana said and stood up. “They said you’d be out of class soon.”

“Are you stalking me?” Sabel asked with a smile.

Ana held up a bunch of flowers wrapped in green paper, a mix of alstroemeria, carnations and some baby’s breath—the kind bought on impulse from a stand on the street—and it was beautiful. Exhausted and aching from the inside out, she wrapped her fingers around the bouquet and blinked hard.

“I’m sorry about Sunday night,” Ana said. “I really didn’t want you to go. There was just so much going on.”

Sabel didn’t know what to say and what ended up coming out of her mouth was, “I still have your pants.”

Ana grinned. “Good. Do you have other work stuff you need to do?”

“I need to eat,” Sabel said. “And I’m falling-down tired. There’s a decent sandwich place next to the parking garage.”

“Lead on,” Ana said.

Sabel walked across the quad to the little shop where she often got lunch. They settled into a booth near the back with sandwiches, hot tea for Sabel, and a bottled juice for Ana.

“I haven’t been to my office yet,” Ana said and her tone still held a hint of apology. “But I think tomorrow I will.”

“No one else came to your door or tried to contact you?”

“All clear. I’ve just been poking around online and talking to Andi at the paper, but she doesn’t have any good leads yet.” She paused and reached across the table to touch the back of Sabel’s hand. “Trouble sleeping?”

Sabel shook her head and finished the bite of sandwich before answering. “Trying to find the summoners.”

Ana looked confused.

“With magic,” Sabel added.

“And it wipes you out like that?”

“I look that bad?”

Ana laughed. “You look stunning,” she said. “You always do. But your eyes are dark and you were swaying on your feet a little back there.”

Sabel took Ana’s hand in both of hers. She turned it palm up and brushed her thumbs across the broad, calloused surface. She was so relieved to have Ana there with her that she couldn’t put it into words. It made everything feel easier. Now she knew that she would go home and take a nap and then tell Josefene she would take the leash and the information she needed. It seemed so simple in the plain light of Ana’s smile. They would find the summoners and figure out how to turn them over to the police and then they could have as many lunches and dinners and kisses as they wanted.

“It’s not a kind of magic that I’m any good at,” Sabel said. “There are witches who can look across distances, through walls, even through time to find information, but I seem to only be able to do it in very limited circumstances and this isn’t one.”

“Are there different kinds of magic or is every person different?” Ana asked.

Sabel remembered Ana’s accusation from Sunday, that she was only telling her the barest information about magic, and she tried to be forthcoming. She wasn’t used to having a regular person in her life that she could talk to seriously about magic. Most of her former girlfriends saw it as more of a religious practice, like Wicca, without real-world impact. That wasn’t exactly being fair since many of the practices of Wicca did have real-world impact, it was just too slow and subtle for most people to see. But the fact remained that most people she knew, if they knew she practiced magic at all, saw it as something unreal and fanciful.

“Magic is like most kinds of human endeavor,” Sabel told Ana. “You can be gifted in music or dance or sports and then if you practice you get really great at it. And two people can be great soccer players or dancers and still have different strengths inside their field.”

“So information just isn’t your thing?”

“Specific kinds of information aren’t my thing,” Sabel said. “The Hecatine witches deal mainly in information, and time, and to some degree in transformations, but those are really big fields.” She paused and looked at the confusion in Ana’s face. “Let’s just say my time magic is a lot better.”

They finished eating and left the small shop. Outside, the sky was lighter, it might even clear completely in time for the sunset. Sabel had enough time to get home and sleep for a few hours and then try to contact Josefene.

“Are you in this garage?” she asked Ana.

Ana nodded and they started walking in that direction.

“Do you want to…do something else?” Ana asked. She paused outside the door to the parking garage and Sabel stopped with her.

“I do,” Sabel said with a smile. “But I need to go home and try another avenue on this search.”

“More magic?”

“Yes.”

Ana paused and a look of caution flickered across her face. Sabel hoped she was wondering if it was okay to kiss her on campus and not something more bothersome. She wanted to kiss Ana fiercely, but not now—not when she felt half-dead on her feet still and muzzy-headed from all the failed magic.

She held up the bunch of flowers. “Do these mean that next time you kiss me you won’t stop?”

Ana grinned. “Yes,” she said.

“Then let’s get this summoner situation handled so we can do that.”

She turned away and headed for her car before she could override her own better sense. Let them put the damned leash on her. Maybe her reward for getting a list of the summoners’ names could be a return to Ana’s living room and to that kiss that should never have ended so abruptly.

* * *

Seeing Sabel on Tuesday put her in a good mood for the rest of the day, but the next morning as she drove to the office, anger came over her again and she steered her car through traffic like a missile. She parked in one of the two-hour visitor spaces right in front of the building entrance. Let someone try to ticket her car, Detlefsen would take care of it. Standing in front of the ten-story building, she squinted up at the glass windows that sparkled like shiny diamonds in the bright light of early morning. She set her shoulders and pushed into the lobby.

When the elevator reached her floor, she used her keycard in the side door and ducked around to the back hallway between the outside wall of the building and the last row of cubicles. No one had spotted her. The women of the MarComm department could be terrible gossips and she felt sure they’d already discussed Helen’s death and her abduction for hours over the past few days. They would discover her soon enough, but she wanted to settle in before that happened.

Her cubicle was one row in from the outside wall and just off a hallway between the MarComm cubicles and the analysts. A man stood at her desk with his back to her. He had short brown hair, cut neatly, and an expensive, chestnut-colored suit jacket with a stylish, casual cut to it. She walked closer. The office sounds of the big room covered the tread of her steps, but he turned anyway and looked right at her.

Square glasses almost balanced out the roundness of his face, but they did nothing to cover the malice in his eyes. In his hand he was holding a photograph from her desk—the one of her and Gunnar and his wife standing at the wharf in front of a sunset. He smiled, like a vulture, and set the photo very carefully back in its place.

“Ana,” he said. “I came to apologize.”

“What?” Her disbelief came through in her voice.

“Yes, let me introduce myself to you. I am Simon Drake. I’ve come to remedy my brother’s mistakes.” He held out his hand. She looked at it. What was the relationship between him and Nathan?

From the look in his eye, she thought that they must have been in close communication, that Nathan had told his brother all about his plans. Maybe Simon was in town now to clean up after his brother and take out the people who’d set up his death, unless he’d set up his own death. Lily said that as a demon he could survive the death of his body and would find a new one. Was Simon here to make sure that happened or was Simon the new body?

Ana shook his hand. His skin was dry and feverishly hot. She held her palm against his and asked Abraxas,
Is he the demon
? He didn’t answer in words, but a soft sense of agreement rose inside of her.

“You seem
very
familiar,” she said.

“There is a strong family resemblance,” he said.

He had Nathan’s strong cheekbones, though they were muted by his rounder face. Both men had the same shape to their eyes and the same long lashes.

“Yes, it’s uncanny.”

“You have a brother too, I see. Are you close?”

He was threatening the part of her family she actually cared about. She brushed her fingers over the tops of the pens that sat in a mug to one side of her cubicle and pulled out a heavy fountain pen she rarely used. Slowly she unscrewed the top and looked at the delicate point of the pen. She wondered how much force it would take to ram it through his eye and into his brain.

But then she’d be arrested for murder and he’d just find another body. She had to ask Lily how they got rid of him for good.

“Not particularly,” she said.

“Family relations can be so complicated, can’t they? I am truly sorry for my brother’s actions.”

Ana had no idea how to respond to that. She stared at him for much longer than was socially acceptable and he didn’t seem to mind. He held her gaze, blinking calmly, as if they were having the most natural conversation in the world.

“Ah there you are,” a voice called from one row over. Charles Johnson, the VP of Sales, was coming toward them with Detlefsen on his heels.

“Ana, welcome back!” Detlefsen bellowed. “How do you feel?”

“Bruised, but pretty good, all things considered.”

“I heard you had quite a knock on the head. Are you sure you’re all right to be working?” Johnson asked. “I know Steve gave you as much time off as you need.” His light brown eyes searched her face and Ana thought that he might actually be worried about her. Plus it couldn’t help his department that she’d been kidnapped; the sales guys would have trouble getting prospects to actually talk about the product.

In his early forties, Johnson still had boyish cheeks, but any resemblance to the child he had once been ended there. His silk shirt accentuated the hard lines and angles of his chest and the thick muscles in his upper arms. He made Ana uncomfortable because he seemed so disciplined and at the same time his gaze always followed her through a room at company events as if he couldn’t help himself.

“The doctor said it was a mild concussion,” she told him. “I’m not dizzy or anything, I actually feel pretty good, and I’ll go nuts if I have to stay home all week.”

“Perhaps you’ll join us for lunch,” Drake said. “I know it wouldn’t make up for what my brother put you through, but I must start somewhere.”

“Thank you but I’d rather stay here,” Ana said. “I have a lot to catch up on and I’m trying to stay available to help the police as much as I can.”

“Some other time, then.” He turned to Johnson. “Do you know where my next meeting is?”

“Follow me,” he said.

Johnson and Drake walked away through the cubicles and Ana watched until they were out of sight.

“Bad shit,” Detlefsen muttered loudly. “When you’re settled, come see me.”

Ana looked around the familiar cubicle. The stack of papers she’d been working on beside her computer was now on top of the magazines a foot away. Considering the care with which Drake replaced the photograph, the fact that he’d moved other parts of her desk around meant that he was trying to unsettle her.

She sat and stared at the changed landscape of her desk. How had Helen first connected with these men? If she could figure that out, maybe she could trace the path all the way to their identities.

She moved the picture of Gunnar, refusing to leave it where Drake put it, and picked up the phone.

“Yeah?” Gunnar said.

“You working?” she asked.

“Yep.”

“Can you do me a favor later this week? It’s…well, I need to get into an apartment and look around a bit.”

“Friend?” he asked.

“Yes, and my boss, or she was. I mean, someone killed her.”

“Ana?”

“I’m okay but it’s not something I can explain, I just think she has some information I need. Will you do this?”

“Friday morning.”

“That would be perfect. I’ll text you the address.”

She hung up before he could ask her anything else. She’d have to find a way to explain some of this to him without the part about demons but with the part where he had to be extra careful with himself. Maybe Lily or Sabel could help her come up with a cover story that would convince Gunnar he had to watch out. If anything happened to him, she couldn’t bear it. She’d already fucked up his life enough when they were kids and instead of siding with him, she’d lumped him in with Mack and attacked them both.

Ana decided to go the long way around the floor to Detlefsen’s office so the rest of MarComm wouldn’t all descend on her. She stuck close to the outer wall, cut through the customer service bullpen and then past shipping, which brought her to his office from the back. His door was open and he sat back in his chair glowering at the pages spread out on his desk.

Of all the people in her office, he was definitely the safest to be around. He couldn’t possibly be one of the demon summoners. His body was too distinctive to have hidden under any of those dark robes and, despite his gruff manners, Ana pegged him as a person who could be trusted. His yelling and swearing were a smokescreen so the people who worked under him wouldn’t see how much he cared about them. Ana had seen enough kinds of yelling to recognize that under his bluster he was solid.