The Devil Dances, page 3
part #2 of Nick Englebrecht Series
She gave me her innocent little-girl eyes, that look that could melt the iceberg of my heart. “Do you mean all that, Nick? Would you really almost marry me, if you could? You’re not playing me?” Suddenly, there were tears in her eyes.
“Vivian,” I said, cupping her face in my hand like a precious jewel and rubbing the pad of my thumb over her full cherry lips, “I would be honored to almost marry you.”
We had it arranged so Morgana and I each worked half a day during the week, she from six to noon, and I from noon to midnight. But we still managed one full day off work on the weekends. Unless something unexpected came up, I took Saturdays off, and she Sundays. Sunday was pretty rough. I worked from six in the morning to closing, with an hour at noon and another in the evening as a break. Not enough time to run down a lead. So looking into the death of my young friend wasn’t an option until the following Monday rolled around.
I got up with the birds—and with Morgana, who was, disgustingly, the most perky morning person I had ever known. While she went to sit out on the balcony and do her early-morning stretching exercises and sun worship, I stumbled around the kitchen, dressed only in the ragged navy robe I’d bought at Wal-Mart three years ago, making morning tea.
A half hour later, she stepped through the sliding glass door and wrinkled her brow at me. I was standing at the counter, drinking Earl Grey, smoking my third cigarette of the day, and nibbling on an Oreo cookie while I scanned the morning newspaper for any news of my dead friend. “Any particular reason you’re up at the crack of dawn, Scratch?”
“I’m trying to change my demonic ways,” I said around a mouthful of cookie. “I want to embrace the light.”
“Now I know why they call you the Prince of Lies,” she said drolly as she reached for the V8 in the fridge.
She, too, wore a robe, just a much nicer one—a silken kimono with ideograms all over it. She didn’t have a wrinkle, mole or spot of acne in her whole face, her hair was a perfectly tame set of soft platinum curls around her face, her crystal blue eyes were bright, and her expression bushy-tail. Another person would have said it was the results of her clean living, strict observation of her vegetarian ways, plenty of exercise, and maybe a dash of plastic surgery. But I knew better. Morgana was just naturally spotless. Even when she worked in her herbal garden out back behind the shop, not one flake of dirt seemed willing to adhere itself to her. Morgana sported a magickal barrier between herself and the rest of the world.
I, on the other hand, looked like something the cat had dragged in and thrown up on. I knew because I’d scared myself when I’d looked in the bathroom mirror this morning. My blond hair was tousled—not in that sexy, sleepy way you hear about in romance novels, but like I’d been tossing and turning all night—and there were dark, unhealthy crescents under my storm grey eyes. I looked like some nasty James Bond villain. Before I was going anywhere today, I needed a shower, shave, and my monthly haircut. I wondered idly if Freddie, down at the barber shop on the corner, had an opening in his schedule this morning.
With V8 in hand, Morgana came around and slapped me on the ass before picking up her reading glasses and glancing over the newspaper I’d pulled apart on the counter. “Rough night?”
“I didn’t get much sleep.”
“You were talking in your sleep.” She would know, seeing how we shared a bed.
“Was I? What was I saying?”
“I don’t know, Nick. It wasn’t English.”
“Spanish?” That was the only other language I knew fluently from working my beat down in New York. I’d covered a lot of Spanish Harlem back in the day.
She shook her head. “It wasn’t a human language.”
That gave me a start. “Not Divine?” That was the language of the angels.
“I can’t say. I don’t think I’ve ever heard Divine spoken. What does it sound like?”
“Nails on a chalkboard, mostly.”
“Yeah, okay. You were speaking Divine.”
I set my mug of tea down with a clunk on the counter. “Well, that’s just fucking great.”
Morgana waited patiently for me to elaborate, but I wasn’t feeling much into explanations this morning. Speaking Divine, a language I’d never been trained to use, but was using anyway, wasn’t exactly a problem so much as a symptom, one my father had warned me about some time ago. He’d said that the closer I came to learning what my cardinal sin was—the sin that defined me as the Man of Sin, and the Inheritor of my father’s place in Hell—the stronger my power would become. The stronger my power was, the closer I was to Ascension. You can see where this is going.
Morgana put a hand on my shoulder and rubbed it with her customary concern. “You all right, Nick?”
I straightened up and gave her my cheekiest smile. “Right as rain.” I even took her hand and kissed the knuckles in a courtly way.
She didn’t look convinced, but at least she didn’t ask me why I’d gotten up with the birds this morning when I wasn’t due to take the shop until noon, or why I was leaving the apartment in such a sour mood.
Mary Jo Pearl lived down in what Blackwater old-timers called “Old Town,” which was at the end of town directly opposite the newer developments. Originally chock full of old, Victorian homes with decorative ginger breading, front porch swings, and old coach houses, a particularly vicious fire in the late 1950’s had wiped out many of the buildings. Those homes were replaced by more modern (and generically ugly) saltboxes sporting shaker shingles and now out-of-date aluminum siding, but there was still plenty of charm to the old place.
I drove down snaky Willow Drive, which ran right through the heart of Old Town, glancing over the disjointed mix of architecture, the banners across the street announcing fairs or parades—Old Town was huge on Norman Rockwell-style parades in the summer—and front yards full of sugared-up kids and hyperactive dogs protectively tucked behind chain link fences.
The middle class lived here, with a smattering of lower class to make it just a little less shiny, so the streets weren’t as clean or oft-repaired as they were in the developments, and the Dodge seemed to find every pothole. Scattered across lawns were screened trampolines, small summer bouncy houses, and those ugly plastic playhouses that turned grungy in the elements. It was August, so there were kids everywhere, riding over the cracked sidewalks on bikes and bouncing basketballs haphazardly into the streets.
It was twenty miles an hour in the ‘burbs, but the guy in the big blue Escalade in front of me kept revving his motor like he wished he was on the Pocono Raceway forty miles to the east of us. I recognized the driver as Bradley King, Blackwater’s own beer-guzzling, shit-talking resident redneck extraordinaire. He owned the biggest construction company in Blackwater and just figured he owned the town along with it.
After he revved his truck for the fifth time, deliberately squashed a baby squirrel racing across the road, and tossed an empty can of Red Bull out the window, I’d had enough. I narrowed my eyes and gave his monster truck a little push. Immediately, steam started to pour out of the radiator as the beast overheated and died in the middle of the road. Bradley swore violently over the country western music pouring from his speakers and open windows, and I swerved the Dodge around his now dead-in-the-water truck just in time to catch his put-upon expression.
“Having car trouble, Brad?” I said as I slowed and came abreast of him.
He flipped me off and banged his fist against his steering wheel at the same time. It was impressive; I wasn’t aware he could do two things at once. “Fuck you, Englebrecht. Go suck my cock.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Faggot!”
“Have a great day, Brad.” I hit the gas.
I reached Mary Jo’s house five minutes later. It was in a secluded cul de sac at the end of the lane, a grand dame of a house that had remained eerily untouched by both that long ago fire and by time, it seemed. It was a huge, white colonial with fine, black wooden shutters, window boxes full of summer petunias, and an honest-to-god wartime swing hanging from the front porch. It had a birdfeeder out front, wind chimes in the weeping willow that dominated the front yard, and tucked just behind the building were the usual bouncy house, trampoline, and swings for when Mary Jo’s grandchildren visited, as well as a vast garden of dwarf fruit trees, organic vegetables, and various flowers, including orchids. Mary Jo’s big passion in life was her garden.
It was the height of summer, and I knew Mary Jo wouldn’t be inside, so I didn’t bother going up the rosebush-lined stone path to the front door. I went around back, past the giant, flowering rhododendron bushes and Virgin Mary garden statue, and, sure enough, spotted Mary Jo in a good-size summer tent where she was carefully clipping and doctoring her various exotic orchids.
Mary Jo was a svelte, well-preserved, Southern-born lady in her early seventies. Today, she wore a richly detailed lilac summer dress, complete with a flowered hat and white gloves. She was trimming a white orchid with a pair of delicate rose clippers while one of her boys stood nearby, holding a silver try with a number of pruning implements on it. Her boy was Hispanic, bare-chested and baked to a chestnut color by one of the more talented local tanning salons, his dark hair cut just so (obviously not done at Barber Freddie’s, where I got my cuts), and his eyes were divinely big and dark—worldly, but with a hint of sadness. I estimated his age around sixteen.
“Nicky, as I live and breathe! It’s been ages since you visited old Mary Jo!” she cried jovially, showing me a set of gleaming veneer teeth that looked too perfect to be anything real. “How are you, child?” She extended her hand in the Southern way—not out to be shaken, but cocked downward slightly at the wrist to be delicately kissed by a greeting gentleman.
I put my hands in the pockets of my old Dick Tracy coat and didn’t touch the bitch. Tell others I’m not a gentleman. I don’t really care. I’d rather kiss a snake. I tried on a smile that threatened to pop off my face. “You look busy this morning.”
“I am! What you see here are my latest batch of hybrid orchids. Nicky, can you imagine? I’m creating whole new strains by cross-pollination.” She examined an orchid bud carefully before deeming to cut it loose. “It’s quite a difficult process, you see, as the hybrids cannot pollinate themselves. Thus, I have become their harbinger of love.” She smiled and took up a long tube from off the silver tray her boy held and deftly inserted it into the stamen of one of the open flowers.
“I bet you are,” I quipped.
“Nicky, I don’t think I like your tone much, child. You youngins really do need to learn to respect your elders and betters. I blame the Internet and all those terrible cell phones. There’s no gentlemanly hospitality anywhere anymore.”
I cut to the chase. “A boy died two nights ago in my arms. I’m pretty sure he was one of yours.”
To her credit, Mary Jo never so much as flinched. She did say, “Marcus, will you please go inside and check on supper for old Mary Jo?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered with a nod and headed back to the house, carrying his tray.
“Thank you, child.” When he was out of earshot, Mary Jo’s tone changed dramatically, growing deeper and hoarser, though she didn’t stop working over her beloved orchid. “What makes you think he was mine, Englebrecht?”
“He’d been used, sexually. A lot, according to the coroner who did the autopsy. I immediately thought of you. Imagine that.”
Mary Jo looked up at me with dark, mechanical shark eyes. I looked for a soul in those eyes and saw none. I only saw myself looking back. Slowly, Mary Jo raked them up and down my body, assessing me much the same way you assess a nice piece of furniture before you buy it.
If I’d had my way, I would have shut her down years ago, but Mary Jo’s boys serviced the baser needs of some of the most powerful men in Blackwater. I knew that no accusation I flung at her would stick. She’d come through smelling like a rose… or an orchid, at the very least.
“You know, it’s a goddamn shame, Englebrecht. You have the face and body of an angel. I reckon I could get ten a night on you, maybe more. You could retire in a year if you worked for me. But that mouth always gives you away. You sound like what you are—a trash-talking, New York punk who’s just slunk out of the gutter.”
“I’d rather slink back into the gutter if it means not being in your company… ma’am.” I drew out her accent, made a mockery of it.
Mary Jo smiled, not offended, her teeth gleaming like her ten-thousand-dollar pearl necklace. “I don’t think you’ve come so far, child. You can take the boy out of the ghetto, but you’ll never get the ghetto out of the boy.”
I knew she wouldn’t go much further than that with her insults. For all her power, all her money and influence, Mary Jo was essentially terrified of me. I was one of the few people in this city that really scared the shit out of her. Maybe because she knew in her heart of hearts that one day she’d be under my jurisdiction. I pulled out a scrap of notebook paper where I’d drawn a picture of the dead boy to the best of my memory—without his syphilis scars.
Mary Jo took one glance at it and said, “Caleb.”
“What’s his last name?”
“He never said.”
I believed her. Most boys wouldn’t tell her that—or anyone, really, not after working for Mary Jo. “When did he start working for you?”
“About a year ago, I reckon. Such a polite boy. Had some unusual habits.”
“Such as?”
“Only bathed when I made him. Prayed a lot.”
“I imagine that wasn’t good for business.”
“Such sarcasm, Englebrecht.”
I rattled the paper, getting angry now. “He was nineteen fucking years old. He’s dead now. He died in agony of advanced syphilis.”
Mary Jo looked appalled. “That boy did not have syphilis, Englebrecht. I would know. All my boys are tested on a monthly basis.”
I crumpled the picture of Caleb back into my pocket and leaned forward. I was now looming over Mary Jo and she was drawing back as if sensing danger. “What else can you tell me? Where did he come from?”
“The street. That’s where they all come from.”
“Oh, please.”
“I never ask, Englebrecht!”
“I’m sure. No concern of yours, just as long as they’re good lays and turn you a profit, right?” Mary Jo looked more terrified than ever, like I might rip her throat out. I thought how satisfying that would be, but worked on calming my temper before I said or did something I regretted. “How did he speak?”
“What?”
“How. Did. He. Speak?” I repeated my question.
“Slowly. He talked slowly.” Mary Jo gradually drew herself back to her full five-foot-even height. She narrowed her eyes and spit her next words like a viper. “If you come after me, I’ll have this town run you out on a rail, Englebrecht. I’ll make you regret you were ever born. You’re still an outsider here. Keep that in mind!”
Another of her bare-chested toy boys was headed toward us. He looked alarmed by our spat. He also didn’t look a day over fifteen. I snatched Mary Jo’s gloved hand and leaned down to kiss it. I squeezed her withered fingers. Hard. I looked deep into her empty, soulless black eyes. “Orchids are parasites, just so you know,” I told her.
“I’m aware of that, Englebrecht.” She trembled slightly, and her glove was wet with sweat.
“Enjoy the sunshine and flowers,” I told her before I started walking back to my car. I didn’t add that one day she would be mine, but in her heart, Mary Jo probably knew it was just a matter of time.
hy Lancaster?’ Vivian asked me the following day.
She sat in a lotus position on the floor of her living room, her hands resting on her knees. She was working on her breathing exercises the way I had asked her to. She breathed in to take in air and purity, and out to enforce her will and magick. It was a technique that Morgana had taught me when I was still a novice in the Craft.
For most young witches, it was a case of summoning the magick using various tools of the trade—crystals, herbs, religious symbols, an athame, almost any significant item would do. But being daemons, our kind were natural magick-wielders. It just stuck to us—a little like gum to the bottom of your shoe—though there were times when I questioned whether we wielded the magick or the magick just had its way with us. In the case of Vivian and me, the magick usually simmered just under our subconscious mind and it was more a matter of releasing a giant mental fist and letting it go in a fairly responsible way than anything else.
I stood over her, holding a leather tawse in front of her face. Yes, it was our tawse. We kept it in Vivian’s bedroom in a toy chest, along with a flogger, handcuffs, and nipple clamps. No, I’m not going to tell you anymore than that. Jesus, a man has to have a few private thrills in his life. Vivian’s goal was to move the tawse without using her hands. Simple enough, if she could do it. So far, she had not.
“I think Caleb was Amish. I have a better chance of finding out what happened to him if I figure out where he came from.”
Vivian cocked her head to one side. She had braided her hair in pigtails to keep it tame while she worked on her lesson, and that, combined with the blue gingham, spaghetti strap, halter top she wore made her look a little like a grown-up version of Wendy, from the popular fast food chain. She kept her eyes shut the way I’d asked her to but I could tell from the concentrated scowl on her face that she was having a hard time focusing. “How do you know he was Amish?”
“Mary Jo said he didn’t bathe very often and he prayed a lot. And he spoke slowly.”
“Those first two are bad stereotypes, you know.”
