Eve of Chaos (13 page)

“Already done.”

Fred reached out
to the tengu. The little beast hissed at her, but she seemed unconcerned. “I’ll
take him.”

Alec handed him
over. The demon snapped at Fred with his teeth. She snarled and bared deadly
canines.

“My teeth are
bigger,” she growled.

The tengu
whimpered and curled into a ball.

“Does it bother
anyone else,” Eve asked, “that the demons are so far ahead of us in regards to
experiments and genetic mutations? The correct word is ‘genetic,’ right? Or is
there something else I should call it?”

“Infernals don’t
lack research subjects,” Hank explained. “Marks, on the other hand, are trained
to kill. They rarely capture for torture or experimentation.”

She looked at
Alec. “We should work on that.”

“We are.”

No elaboration,
but she was getting used to that.

“Hank,” Alec
went on. “Do you still have that punch bowl I brought you? The one the Nix gave
to Eve?”

“Yes.”

“Did you ever get
anything from it?”

Hank frowned.
“Nothing definitive. And once the Nix was dead, I put it away.”

“I need you to
dig it out. He’s back.”

“Back? Like
Montevista? And Grimshaw’s kid?”

“Exactly.” Alec
caught Eve’s elbow. “We’ve got an appointment upstairs.”

 
“I’ll holler when I find something.” Hank
waved his hand along Eve’s length and she suddenly felt cleaner.

Glancing down,
she found her clothes in pristine condition. “You rock.”

“Of course.”

Eve yelled into
the darkness where Fred had disappeared, “It was nice meeting you, Fred.”

The lili shouted
back from a seemingly great distance, “Bye, Eve. Bye, Cain.”

Not for the
first time, Eve, wondered how big Hank’s office was. She was about to ask Alec
when she found herself standing in the reception area of her office.

“I hate when you
do that,” she complained, blinking past her disorientation.

“Don’t want to
be late.”

Candace, the
Mark who was her secretary, stood with a smile. “Good afternoon, Ms. Hollis.
Cain. I took coffee in to the detectives, as you requested.”

He nodded and
pulled Eve toward her frosted glass office door. She took a deep breath while
he turned the knob. He was cool and calm while she was neither. She’d only
spoken with Jones and Ingram briefly a few months ago, but it had been enough
to tell her that they were good men. Men who were fighting the good fight with
only mortal skills. And she had to look them in the eyes and lie to them. The
mark on her arm burned with the sin, which didn’t make sense to her at all.
It’s not like she could tell them the truth.

Detective Jones
pushed to his feet when she entered. He was a nondescript man clad in a dated
suit dyed a shade of curry that hadn’t been used for clothing in the last
thirty years. His partner, Detective Ingram, stood at the window looking at the
city below. His taste in garments was better, but the handlebar mustache he
sported set him back a few decades, too.

“Nice view,”
Ingram said, eyeing her carefully. “But I was hoping to get a bird’s-eye view
of Disneyland.”

She smiled.
“There’s a 2.2-square-mile zone around the amusement park that is designated as
a resort district. When you’re inside the park, there aren’t any tall buildings
to ruin the visitors’ sight lines. They don’t want to ruin the fantasy.”

“Ah, well,” Jones
said. “Some of us have to live in the real world.”

Eve moved to her
desk and sank into her slim leather chair. “What can I do for you, Detectives?”

Jones glanced at
Alec, who stood like a sentinel by the door with his wide-legged stance and
crossed arms. The detective seemed prepared to protest Alec’s presence, then he
shrugged and sat. The way he moved caught Eve’s attention. His stocky frame
didn’t show the stiffness of an older man, like his taller partner’s did. With
narrowed eyes she studied him and came to the conclusion that he was far
younger than he appeared. She suspected the misconception was by design and she
grew even more wary. Jones was a hunter, too, and the information she held was
his prey.

He went straight
to the point. “Do you have any further information regarding the death of your
neighbor, Ms. Hollis?”

Eve shook her
head. “If I had anything to share, I would call you. I still have your card.”

“Do you know an
Anthony Wynn? He graduated from your high school the year before you. Chinese
American. About five foot—”

“Yes. I know
him. We attended the same elementary and junior high, too.”

“He’s dead.”

She froze. They
had been no more than acquaintances, but she’d partied with him occasionally
and thought fondly of him. “When? How?”

“Drowning. Same
as the others,” Jones said. “When was the last time you saw him?”

It took her a
moment to reply. “A-a few years back. I passed him in a grocery store aisle.”

“So you haven’t
kept in touch?”

“No. We weren’t close.
The only things I can say about him are that he was quiet at parties and drew
really great pictures on napkins.”

Ingram stepped
up to her desk, taking one of her business cards from its beveled crystal
holder. “You’ve only been with Gadara Enterprises for a short time, is that
right?”

“A few months.”

“You were hired
just prior to the murder of your neighbor, Mrs. Basso”

“That’s right.”
She resisted the urge to look at Alec.
Where is this leading?

Not sure yet.

Ingram shoved
her card into his pocket, then reached down for a briefcase resting against the
leg of Jones’s chair. He pulled out a photo and set it on her desk. It was a
picture of one of her business cards surrounded by an L-square ruler. It had
the wrinided look that paper took on after it had been soaked with liquid, then
air-dried.

Alec approached.
He looked at the picture, then at Ingram. “You found this at the crime scene?”

Jones settled
back into his chair, his forearms resting casually atop the leather armrests.
“Do you have any idea why we would find your business card on the corpse of a
man you haven’t seen in years, Ms. Hollis?”

Eve stared at
him, dismayed. The Nix was taunting her. “I have no idea.”

Ingram reached
into the briefcase again and pulled out an item just as familiar as the last—a
photocopy of a sketch artist’s uncanny rendering of the Nix. The detectives had
shown the image to her before. A florist had described the customer who
frequented her shop to purchase water lilies.

“We want you to
look at this again,” Ingram said, holding the image directly in front of her
face.

She looked away,
disgusted. “I’ve never seen him.”

The mark heated
at the lie.

Jones heaved out
a frustrated breath. “Look harder, Ms. Hollis.
Think
harder. He has a
German accent. He got his hands on your business card at some point. Did he
come here to see you? Did you run into him somewhere?”

“I don’t
remember him.” She rubbed at her burning arm. “I sent out letters that included
my new business cards to all of my former associates, clients, college
classmates, and friends. I mailed at least a thousand announcements about my
move to Gadara Enterprises. I also frequently drop them into those fishbowls on
restaurant counters, since you never know when you might get a lead.”

“Was Wynn on
that mailing list?” Ingram asked. “No. I don’t know where he lives. I told you,
I don’t know him that well.”

“He lived on
Beacon Street.”

Fear formed a
knot in Eve’s gut.
That’s next to my parents’ house..

Alec mentally
transmitted orders to subordinates with such velocity, she was dizzied by it.
Her fingers lifted to her brow and rubbed.

Jones
straightened. “Can we get a copy of that list?”

“Of course.” Eve
reached for her phone.

“This could be
personal.”

The detective’s
low-voiced statement stopped her with her arm extended toward the handset. Her
gaze met his. “You think this is about me?”

The detective
glanced at Alec, then back at her. “This guy stuck around Anaheim for the last
nine months. He stepped out of his comfort zone only once that we know of—”

“Mrs. Basso.”

“Your
neighbor. Then his next victim is an old acquaintance
of yours and your business card is found floating in the punch bowl with the
lily. Things like that are rarely coincidences.”

Eve pushed back from
her desk and stood, feeling too restless to sit. Jones rose when she did, then
resumed his seat.

“What about the
other victims?” She looked back and forth between the two detectives. “Did I
know them, too? Were they connected to me in some way?”

Was it possible
that the Nix had been circling her since
before
she was marked?

This time it was
Jones who reached into the bag of horrors and withdrew a typewritten list of
names, birthdates, addresses. She looked the column of information over
carefully, wracking her brain.

“None of these
names look familiar.”

“We can’t find a
connection either,” Ingram said. “Maybe you caught his eye just recently. It
could have been something as simple as you cutting him off in traffic. Whatever
the reason, we think he’s stepping things up a notch by terrorizing both the
victims he kills and you.”

Eve looked at
Alec.
I want him dead.

He met her gaze.
Me, too.

She crossed her
arms. “Were all the victims found in their homes?”

“Yes.”

“Then don’t
worry about me. Nothing unusual has happened in my life recently. Nothing that
concerns me or gives me pause. Since Mrs. Basso’s death, our homeowners’
association authorized the hiring of an extra security guard in the building,
so now we have two. One roaming, and one at the elevator on the lobby level.
You just concentrate on finding this guy before he gets to someone else.”

“It’s our job to
worry about you, Ms. Hollis.”

“No, it isn’t.”
The last thing she needed was to dodge the police while trying to bounce some
bounty hunting demons back to Hell.

“Yes, it is,”
Ingram said dryly. “You see, Ms. Hollis. For the present, you’re our strongest
lead.”

Jones stood with
briefcase in hand. “In other words, get used to seeing us around.”

The
detectives have left the building.

“Somehow,” Eve
said with a wry curve to her lips, “that doesn’t have the same ring as Elvis’s
sign- off.”

Alec sent a
brief mental acknowledgment to the Marks monitoring the security feeds, then
turned his attention to Eve. He knew she wasn’t going to like what he had to
say, but he hoped she wouldn’t get overly pissy about it. He had too much shit
on his plate, in addition to a simmering temper and a pressing need for a long,
hard screw.

Being in Gadara
Tower only made things worse. He’d always gained strength and power from other
Marks, always relished the rush he felt when he entered a firm. But now the
Mark in him wasn’t the only thing that recharged. The dark place inside him
responded similarly; it had even absorbed power from the infernals loitering
around Olivet Place. That the resulting explosion had nearly injured Eve
terrified him.

“You have to let
me handle this,” he said grimly. “You need to stay home with Montevista and
Sydney until we figure out what the hell is going on.”

She gave him the
“you’re-smoking-crack” look. “You’re funny.”

“Don’t cross me
on this,” he warned, his voice sharper than he intended. He knew a clusterfuck
when he saw one and this one had Eve right in the center. As usual.