Harmony Black (19 page)

“Well, now, hold on a second! Where’s Mabel? If my secretary’s in trouble, I need to be in on this. You can’t shut me out like—”

“Barry.”
I held up my hand. “Stay. Here. Mabel will be fine.”

I hoped I could back that up. As it was, we’d just handed our best lead’s name and location to Fontaine, and he had a hell of a head start. What he planned to do with Willie, and with Mabel once he was done hijacking her body, I had no idea.

We’d just have to make sure he didn’t get the chance.

THIRTY-ONE

S
utton’s was the only grocery store in town, a slope-roofed supermarket in pastel pink and green that looked like a relic of the ’50s. I swung the SUV around out front, leaving it in a standing lane by the double glass doors. Getting towed was the least of my worries.

We paused just inside the doors and took the lay of the land. Sutton’s had three checkstands, each with a line of shoppers, and carts and strollers crammed the narrow aisles. I scanned the crowd, looking for Mabel, but came up empty.

“How do you want to play this?” Jessie said, eyeing the baggers at the checkout line. I followed her gaze. Two were women, and the third had white hair and sixty years’ worth of wrinkles.

“Let’s find a manager,” I said. “See if he can call Willie to the stockroom or something. Fontaine could be anybody in this crowd. The sooner we get Willie alone, the safer he is.”

We found a likely candidate on aisle six—a pimply faced kid running a price gun along a wall of canned peaches. His assistant manager name tag read,
H
I
! I’
M
D
AVE
!

He saw us coming and flashed a can-do smile. “Good morning! Can I help you find something?”

I flashed my ID and said, “Yes. Willie Grandeen, please.”

Dave’s shoulders slumped. I guessed it wasn’t the first time members of law enforcement had come looking for him at work.

“Oh God,” he said. “What’d he do now?”

“Nothing, nothing at all, we just need to talk to him. Did he come to work today?”

“Yeah, he’s got the truck today. We have a lot of elderly and housebound customers, so we offer a home-delivery service.”

“We need to know his route,” Jessie said. “Every stop he’s supposed to make today. And do you have a phone number for him? It’s important we get in touch right away.”

Dave opened his hands, helpless. “Sure, for his landline at home, if it’s still connected. Dude doesn’t own a cell phone. Come on back to the office. I’ll pull up his log sheet.”

We followed him through a cluttered stockroom and into his office, a yellow-walled shoe box that might have been a washroom in a former life. He squeezed around the desk, sitting behind a bulky computer and an ancient dot-matrix printer, and gestured to a couple of mismatched plastic chairs.

“Just one second,” he said. “I’ll pull it right up for you.”

He angled the monitor so we could see, and deactivated his PC’s screen saver. Then he frantically scrambled to close the porn site that popped up on his web browser, flailing at random keys as he leaned across the desk in a failed attempt to block our view.

“Hot moms, huh?” Jessie said.

Dave grabbed his mouse and hammered the buttons until the window disappeared. He looked from us to the screen and back again while his cheeks turned beet red. We just sat down and tried not to laugh. I did better than Jessie did.

“One of the cashiers,” he said, “uses the computer on breaks. I’m . . . I’m
so
gonna write that guy up. I mean, was that pornography? On a business computer? I find that, uh, highly unacceptable.”

“He should probably be disciplined,” said a voice from the open doorway. Smoky, with a thick Russian accent.

Dave’s jaw dropped, and I could understand why. The woman in the doorway was a pale goddess with her golden-blonde hair woven into a single waist-length braid. From her motorcycle jacket to her boots, I didn’t think a single thing on her body wasn’t made of black leather—and from the dangerously low position of her jacket zipper, I wasn’t sure she was wearing anything underneath.

She held out an ID fold. “Svetlana Tkachenko, with the Sunlight Bail Bond Agency. Looking for William Grandeen.”

Her ID checked out, at least at a surface glance, so Jessie and I showed her ours.

“Special Agents Temple and Black,” I said. “FBI. Whatever you want him for, it’s going to have to wait.”

Svetlana favored me with a faint condescending smile. “Sunlight invested a great deal of money in this man before he skipped out on his bail. They intend to have it back.”

“I’ll say this nice and clear,” Jessie told her. “
Federal investigation
. Back off.”

Svetlana stepped into the room. She rested one hand against the desk, her black-painted nails splayed on the wood, and she leaned in just far enough to give Dave a generous glimpse of cleavage.

“Even clearer,” she said, “is Michigan Code of Criminal Procedure 765.26, which establishes the legal right of a bail enforcement agent to detain and arrest. In fact, said agent is
entitled
to the assistance of a peace officer.”

“Ms. Tkachenko,” I told her, “no disrespect intended, but you really don’t want to be in the middle of this.”

Svetlana reached across the desk and stroked her fingernails along Dave’s cheek. From the enraptured look on the kid’s face, I figured he’d start drooling any minute now. From the vague look of disgust on Jessie’s, she had about as much respect for Svetlana’s brand of tactics as I did.

“You can help, no?” Svetlana asked him.

“Of—of course,” he said, fumbling with his keyboard.

“Of course you
can’t
,” Jessie corrected him. “Eyes over here, Dave. Look away from the Playboy bunny and toward the nice ladies with the badges and the guns.”

“Okay,” Dave said, wincing. “Okay, guys, help me out here. Who do I give this information to?”

“Us,”
all three of us said in unison.

My ears perked. Something had been bugging me about the way Svetlana spoke, but I chalked it up to her thick accent. Now I wondered.

“Ms. Tkachenko,” I said.

She looked my way, head tilted, curious.

“We could arrest
you
,” I said, stressing the word deliberately and hoping Jessie caught my meaning, “for interfering with a federal investigation. What do
you
think of that?”

Svetlana flashed a charming smile and strolled around to stand behind our chairs. She sank down into a crouch so she could whisper her answer into our ears.

“This one,” she breathed, “thinks little girls should go home and play with dolls, and leave a hunter’s work to a professional. This one also thinks . . . you’re out of salt.”

She thumped the side of her motorcycle boot against my chair.

It hadn’t occurred to me that Nyx might have a form other than the flaming chitinous beast we’d faced twice already. It should have. The incarnate demon I’d faced in Vegas had turned from a perfectly ordinary man into a monster before my eyes. I should have guessed that Nyx could do the same trick. We’d just met her monster side
first
.

“Salt?” Dave said, distracted as he typed, “That’s aisle four, with the baking goods.”

“Don’t suppose you’re going to be reasonable about this,” I murmured.

“This one is always
perfectly
reasonable.”

“Here we go,” Dave said. “Willie’s supposed to visit twelve houses this morning. I’ll run copies for you.”

The dot-matrix printer screeched to life, whining as its printing head slammed back and forth across a roll of cheap paper.

“Hey, Nyx,” Jessie said.

Nyx turned, her shoulders sinuous. “Yes, pup?”

“How fast are you?”

Jessie leaned forward in her chair, just a little, as the first copy of Willie’s delivery schedule finished printing.

“Very fast,” Nyx said. “But if the two of you were to snatch that page and run . . . well, this fine young man might prove to be quite
distracting
. Us together, all alone,
anything
might happen.”

Jessie leaned back in her chair.

Dave tore the top page off. “Who gets this?”

Jessie and I nodded toward Nyx. “She does.” I sighed.

“A head start,” Nyx said, stepping forward and taking the sheet. “How generous of you.”

Dave’s eyes slid downward as he watched her go. And stayed there. Jessie leaned in and snapped her fingers in his face.

“We’re really gonna need you to focus here, Dave,” she said. Then she smiled at me. “She fell for it.”

“Fell for what?”

“Head start, my ass—she has only half the information she needs. Dave, we’re gonna want something else to go with these addresses: we want to know what all these people
bought
.”

W
e kicked Dave out of his own office and commandeered his desk. Technically not an FBI privilege, but he didn’t know any better. I spread out the lists of names, addresses, and the groceries in Willie’s truck while Jessie got Kevin and April on speakerphone.

“Okay, campers,” Jessie said, “two hostile entities are zeroing in on our target as we speak, and they’ve got all the powers of hell at their command. Know what we’ve got?
Brains.
”

I scooted my chair forward and leaned toward the phone. “According to the assistant manager, Willie drives a late-model Ford pickup and keeps groceries in a couple of insulated coolers in the back bed. Insulated, but not refrigerated. So we know—unless there’s a quick stop on his way—he’s going to deliver to any customers who have frozen foods on their list first, and save the ones with nonperishables for last.”

“Hit me with his home address.” Kevin’s voice crackled. “I’ll run a secretary-of-state search and get his plate number.”

“Good thinking,” Jessie said. “Auntie April, you got a street map of Talbot Cove?”

“Don’t call me Auntie while we’re working, and yes.”

Jessie tugged over one of the pages, swiveling it on the desk so we could both read it.

“Harmony and I are going to number this list in order from the customers with the most frozen items to the least. Then we’re gonna hit you with the addresses. I need you to pinpoint them on the street map and come up with the most logical route Willie would take. He’s lived here his entire life, so he’s gotta know these streets by heart.”

“Understood. Ready for the addresses.”

“He gets a lunch break, too,” I said, “but he might eat on the go. Look for cheap places, fast-food joints, around the midpoint of his route.”

“Dave says this is an average order, and he’s usually back here around four o’clock,” Jessie told me. “Does Willie sound like a diligent worker bee to you?”

I rapped my fingernails against the paper, thinking. “Not even a little. I guarantee he finishes his route by two and just knocks off somewhere for a few hours. By the time we get rolling, figure he’s halfway done.”

We ordered the list and April broke it down, working her street map with the precision of a calculus professor. Kevin jumped in to help after snagging Willie’s plate number with a quick records search.

“Head for 282 Fairmont,” April said. “Kevin and I will call each person on the list to find out if they’ve gotten their delivery, and if so, exactly what time Willie left. As new information comes in, I’ll adjust your route to accommodate.”

Jessie gave me a wolfish grin and shoved her chair back.

“C’mon, Mayberry. Let’s go piss off a couple of demons.”

THIRTY-TWO

I
cornered the SUV hard, tires screeching around a corner as Jessie clutched her phone.

“Now a left on—wait,” April said. “Kevin just contacted number seven, and Willie left that house fifteen minutes ago, but he hasn’t been to address number six yet. I’m redrawing your route.”

At least they don’t have their claws on him yet,
I thought. Sure, Fontaine could jump inside Willie’s body and wear him like a cheap suit, but I doubted he’d finish his delivery route for him.

“Soon would be good,” Jessie said, eyes riveted on the intersection up ahead.

“I’ve got it,” April said quickly. “He’s headed to address eleven. It’s directly en route to the next house with frozen goods, so he can make a quick stop without going out of his way. Go straight through the next light, then take a left on Angleton.”

I laid the pedal down and we blazed through the green light, swerving hard to dodge a mail truck. Autumn trees whipped by on both sides of the road, brown-and-red blurs, as our tires rumbled over a rough patch of road.

“We gotta slow down,” I said as the road narrowed and the trees gave way to rows of parked cars and suburban bungalows. I eased off on the gas. “This is all residential. Could be kids out playing, bike riders—can’t risk speeding without a siren and lights.”

“Just keep it steady,” Jessie said. “He’s gotta slow down, too. We’ll catch up.”

“Update,” April said. “He just left the house on Angleton less than five minutes ago. He’s on his way to 1021 Elk Ridge.”

Jessie craned her neck, looking out the window and scanning for house numbers.

“We literally just passed the Angleton address,” Jessie said. “He’s got to be up ahead.”

I wanted to stomp my foot on the gas. Wanted to pour on the speed, close the gap, and save this guy before Fontaine or Nyx got to him. We’d flipped an hourglass the second Barry spoke Willie’s name, and I imagined the last few grains of sand sliding toward the abyss. I squeezed the wheel hard enough to turn my knuckles white.

“Steady,” Jessie told me. “We’ll get him.”

That’s when I saw it, just around the next bend: a battered white F-150, trundling down the street about a block ahead of us. As we got closer, close enough to read the license plate, we knew we had our man.

“Come up on his left,” Jessie said. “I’ll yell for him to pull over.”

I caught up and matched speeds, the two of us running side by side and dangerously close on the narrow suburban backstreet.

“Uh, got a problem here,” Jessie said.

Mabel was driving.

Well, Fontaine in the old woman’s body, anyway. She looked over at us, grinned, and hit the gas. My stomach clenched as the pickup rocketed ahead of us, swerving hard to dodge a parked car. As the pickup swayed, a figure in the back bed struggled to sit up: a stringy-haired man with wild, terrified eyes and a strip of duct tape over his mouth, his arms bound tight to his sides with a coil of rope. The pickup swerved around a hard right turn, and he fell back down again, thumping against the truck bed.

Jessie pulled her gun, then holstered it again, swearing under her breath. “I can’t shoot at his tires. Too many houses, too damn close together. If I miss or the bullet skips—”

“Somebody could get hurt. And Fontaine knows it.”

Another sharp turn, the pickup’s tires squealing, and the street only got narrower. Parked cars on both sides of the road whistled past us, inches from our side mirrors. Fontaine sped up.

“Either he’s going to run somebody over,” I said, “or he’s going to wreck that thing and kill Mabel and Willie. We’ve got to shut this down.
Now.
”

Jessie looked my way. “Any ideas?”

“Yeah. Buckle your seat belt.”

The yellow sign up ahead read
S
CHOOL
Z
ONE
, and the road began to widen. We were a hundred feet and closing from the big yellow brick facade of Talbot Cove Elementary. The kids were all in class, and the bus lane lay wide open and empty. That was the extra space I needed.

I swerved left and sped up, closing in on the pickup’s back bumper. Once we’d passed the bumper by about two feet, I gently eased the steering wheel right, hearing metal
clank
as our vehicles made contact.

Then I spun the wheel, hard, and plowed right into him.

The pickup skidded sideways, back tires losing traction, and spun out. We pushed him forward, our vehicles locked in a T-bone collision, tires screaming on the black asphalt. I fought the instinctive urge to stomp the gas pedal.
Smooth and steady,
I told myself,
just like they taught you. Smooth and steady.

The pickup came to a juddering halt. Jessie was out of the SUV before I was, leaping from her seat with her pistol drawn.

“Check on Willie!” I shouted, tearing my seat belt away. “I’ll take Fontaine!”

Mabel staggered out of the pickup, looking so shaken I thought Fontaine might have vacated the premises. Then she saw me coming, squared her shoulders like a boxer, and smirked.

“You wouldn’t hurt a little old lady, would you?”

Fontaine had a point. We could do this the hard way, but it wasn’t
his
body I’d be injuring. Then he drove the point home with a blur of a right cross. Mabel’s wrinkled fist smashed into my eye and left me seeing stars. He came at me again, pressing the advantage, but this time I was ready. As another punch whistled toward my nose, I sidestepped, got inside Mabel’s reach, and caught her wrist. I let her body’s momentum carry her around, off balance, and swept her leg out from under her.

We went down to the asphalt together. I landed first, my kneecap slamming against the street and sending a jolt of pain up my leg, while I tried to cushion Mabel’s fall as best I could. Still gripping her wrist, I yanked it behind her back and pinned her body flat.

“Twelve years of aikido classes,” I snarled, clamping my other hand on the back of her neck. “I can take someone down
without
hurting them.”

Mabel’s skin flared with heat, and every muscle in my hands went rigid. Then my arms, then my shoulders, an electric wave coursing through my body. Thousands of nerve endings, one after the other, flickering and going numb. I felt a serpent under my skin, coiling around the base of my spine and slithering its way upward, straight toward my brain.

“Five hundred and seventy-four years of riding humans like ponies,” Fontaine’s syrupy voice drawled in my inner ear.
“So can I.”

Don’t panic,
I thought.
If you panic, you’re dead. Stay in control.

I’m already in control, sugar,
I thought in response. But it wasn’t me doing the thinking.

I felt like a passenger on a doomed submarine, racing from bulkhead to bulkhead, doors slamming shut as the cold ocean water flooded in from all directions.

Water.
I seized the image and dived mind-first into the depths of my own heart. I tapped the elemental river, conjuring my spirit armor—not wearing it on my skin, but summoning it from the inside out. Pure water surged through my veins, cascaded over my bones, pushing Fontaine’s corrupt spirit out of my body through the sheer force of the tide. I felt him falling, tumbling back. His disjointed essence streamed from under my fingernails, out through my eyes and nose, billowing out into the open air like a living heat mirage.

I watched the air ripple as it darted left and right, all but invisible, searching desperately for a new host. From what I understood about demonic hijackers, they could get a foothold in our world for only a short time without a body to live in: without that, they’d plummet back into hell where they belonged.

A chubby gray squirrel darted across the school lawn, not ten feet away. The heat mirage streaked toward it. Before I could do anything, the squirrel keeled over, kicked one frantic leg in the air, then went still.

I heard Jessie’s footsteps running up behind me. She put her hand on my shoulder. “You okay? Where is he?”

I nodded toward the squirrel. It hopped to its feet, chittered at us, and waved one of its tiny hands before dropping to all fours and running.

Jessie brought her gun up. “Whoa!” I shouted, tugging her arm down and pointing. Tiny, wide-eyed faces crammed the school windows, jostling to watch the excitement, along with more than a few dour-looking teachers.

“Jessie? As far as these kids know, I just used the martial arts on an unarmed, elderly woman. Let’s not compound that with gunning down a squirrel on their schoolhouse lawn.”

“It’s an
evil
squirrel,” she said.

“We can’t prove that.”

Mabel opened her eyes, groaning. “Where . . . ?”

I helped her to sit up. “It’s all right. You’ve been in a car accident, but you’re going to be all right.”

Jessie leaned in and murmured, “Willie’s just shaken up, a few bumps and bruises. I’ll go untie him and call an ambulance for Mabel.”

Mabel rubbed her head, squinting. “I . . . I don’t remember anything. I was at the station, and this salesman walked in and I was trying to send him away nicely, and . . . and that’s
not
my car.”

“You’ve had a light concussion,” I told her. “Short-term memory loss is a common side effect. We’re calling an ambulance to pick you up. Just relax, okay? Stress is the worst thing for you right now. Your memory will probably come back in a day or two, and everything will be just fine.”

We don’t have any exotic drugs or enchantments to blank a witness’s mind, but we generally don’t need any. When presented with the impossible—like losing a few hours of time, only to find out you’ve had an accident in a total stranger’s car—people are generally happy to grab at whatever explanation just makes the upsetting stuff go away. Mabel sat there, nodding slowly, telling herself a story about her concussion.

Jessie led a shaken and confused-looking Willie over to the SUV, bundling him into the backseat. My tactical maneuver left us with a crumpled front bumper and deep paint gouges on the passenger side, but other than that, it was still perfectly drivable.

I was feeling good about that until I remembered the SUV was a rental. I hoped April paid for the extra insurance.

The ambulance showed up five minutes later. I flagged it down, flashed my ID at the paramedics, laid some fast bureaucracy babble on them, and left Mabel in their capable hands.

“We have to get him off the street,” Jessie said as I jumped into the SUV’s driver’s seat.

“My thoughts exactly. If Nyx is working her way down the list one house at a time, she’ll be coming this way any minute.”

Sitting in the backseat, unshaven and dressed in a food-stained teal smock with a
H
I
! I’
M
W
ILLIE
!
name tag, our new suspect gave us a hangdog look. His breath stank like a sewer. A sewer filled with cheap beer, anyway.

“An old lady just tied me up and threw me in the back of my own truck like I weighed less than a sack of groceries,” he said, his voice slurring. “Then you hit my truck, beat her up, and almost shot a squirrel. And the squirrel waved at you. I think I’d like to go home now, please.”

Jessie pulled on her seat belt and muttered, “Welcome to
my
life.”