The Devil You Know (17 page)

When I got back to the car I saw Josh was already in the passenger seat, slumped down. He had fallen asleep. Wow. I wished I could drop off that fast.

I got in the driver’s side and closed the door, trying not to disturb him. Josh didn’t move an inch. I slid the Pepsis into the cup holders and opened a package of Tastykakes. Tiger whined from the back seat. I turned in my seat as I gobbled a Kreepy Kake and regarded him carefully. “So how come you don’t like me?” I asked.

Tiger growled softly.

“I bought you a treat but you’re not going to get it if we can’t be friends.”

Tiger put his big head down on his big paws and glared at me. He would not bow to bribes.

“You’re supposed to be my buddy, like in the
Omen
movies.”

Tiger growled.

“I hate those movies too.” I finished another Kreepy Kake and took a long swig of Coke to wash it all down. I like to believe that my body metabolizes sugar into magic. It’s not likely, but it makes me feel better about loading up on all the cheap carbs all the time. “Especially that kid, Harvey Whatshisname. He wasn’t scary at all, and I
know
scary. But I liked Gregory Peck. And Lee Remick was hot.”

Tiger had finally lifted his head and was regarding me with something other than plain-faced hostility. That was something. I reached for the Beggin’ Strips and offered him one. He carefully sniffed my hand.

“There’s nothing I can do about the demon thing, buddy. Sorry.”

Tiger took the treat from me, swallowing it down in one gulp. Then he whined.

I gave him another treat, lit a Camel, and started the car. It was a start, at least.

Josh jerked awake five miles from Blackwater. Since he moaned and thrashed around in the seat until he was fully awake, I was willing to bet he was reacquainting himself with the day the bomb went off and changed his life forever. I liked him and I hated the people who had done this to him. I wondered how surprised they’d been when their homemade bomb had blown them not into Allah’s arms but into my dad’s court.

I waited until he’d settled down again. “You want a smoke?” I asked.

“Please.” He sounded hoarse and his face was coated in a sheen of sweat.

I gave him an unlit Camel, then wondered if I’d goofed. Maybe I should have lit it for him? But after a few seconds of fumbling he’d managed it with the Zippo in his jacket pocket. I probably would have set myself on fire. “Fuck,” he said, leaning back in his seat.

“My thoughts exactly.”

“Where are we?”

“Five miles outside Blackwater.”

“Can I see Vivian?”

“Visiting hours aren’t until ten in the morning in the county lockup.”

“What time is it now?”

“Six.”

“Fuck,” he said again.

“I’ll take you to see her later today.”

“I’d appreciate that.” He sat up in his seat and ran his hand over the dashboard. “This a Dodge?”

“Monaco. 1977.”

“The TJ Hooker car.”

“Yep.”

“Sweet. You’re a cop, aren’t you?”

I laughed at that. “I was a cop. I’m not anymore.” I crushed out my Camel and lit a new one. Another nice thing about the Monaco is it has a huge ashtray.

“So what do you do for a living? Other than chauffeur blind guys and their dogs around?”

“Are you worried about how I’ll support your sister?”

“No, just nosy.”

“I run an occult shop. I fleece tourists for a living.”

Josh nodded. “So you sell bullshit you don’t believe in, like politicians and televangelists.”

I laughed. “Oh, I believe in it.”

He raised his eyebrows at that but didn’t say anything. Maybe he figured one debate about God was enough for the night. He didn’t know me well enough for us to go at it again. “How’d you come by such a sweet car?” he asked instead.

“It’s not a sweet car. It’s a piece of shit.” I tapped the steering wheel. “I got hit four times in this little lady while working vice down in New York, but she came through for me every time. I totaled the last guy. I can’t part with her now.”

The greyest rim of morning was just beginning to halo the Lehigh Valley mountains by the time we arrived at the shop. I parked around back and led Josh and Tiger up the back stairs.

The Loft was empty. Morgana had left me a handwritten note on the kitchen table, fearful I wouldn’t check my cell for messages (which I hadn’t, incidentally). I read the note while Josh let Tiger lead him around and familiarize himself with the new surroundings. Morgana said in the note that she was staying the night at Anton’s, and that tomorrow—that is to say, today—she and Anton would be going over his friend’s book, trying to decipher the meaning behind the angel dolls. She said Anton was very interested in them. And in me. In return for translating the book, Anton hoped I would speak to his coven. About what, I had no idea. I only knew Dark Magic. She would contact me if and when they discovered anything useful.

Since I wasn’t opening the shop until noon, I had a few hours to catch up on some much-needed shuteye. I offered the bed to Josh but he insisted on crashing on the sofa instead. He said it was more luxurious than a lot of the places he’d been while touring Philly. Besides, he said, I sounded like I was tired and needed my bed. I thought about pointing out that I had every intention of sleeping in my bed with him, then didn’t. Morgana was right. I was probably a pervert.

I yawned for the
nth
time. All the sugar and caffeine in my system had been used up, and the places where I hadn’t been able to heal myself were starting to hurt big time. I took a very hot shower, downed six ibuprofens, and crashed hard, although it took me some time to find a comfortable position that didn’t aggravate my bruises, of which I had many. I thought about Vivian, which just made me more restless. And horny. She’d likely not find me very sexy now, I thought. From roughly the neck down I looked like the victim of a gangbanging.

Not that I was complaining. I’d taken on two Cherubim and lived. Go, me.

I woke to a teeth-rattling crash coming from the kitchen.
I was fully awake and out of bed with a gun in my hand in approximately 2.5 seconds. I would have moved faster, but I was still sore from the night before, and groggy from the painkillers.

Tiger growled as I stepped naked into the kitchen, then fell silent. Josh stood at one of the open cupboards, a scattering of tins and cans on the floor surrounding him. “Sorry,” he said, running his hands over the counters. “I think your cupboard is booby trapped. I just opened it and everything fell out.”

“I wouldn’t know. I don’t go in there.”

“You don’t go in your own cupboards?”

I shrugged, then realized he couldn’t see me. “I just keep tea in the canister by the stove. Everything else I order out.”

“And you’re still alive?”

I grinned. “I’ll be right back.”

I checked out my bruises in the bathroom mirror while I dressed. All but the worst were yellowing. The magic and the ibuprofen were doing their job. I returned to the kitchen and started hunting for the coffee that Josh needed. Hey, we all have our vices. “Instant all right?” I asked. I couldn’t find anything but an old jar of Folgers Crystals.

Josh shivered. “That’ll do, I guess.”

“Tell you what. I’ll get some real coffee from the Dollar General across the street.”

“I don’t want you going out of your way.”

“Tiger needs food too, right?”

Josh shrugged.

“I’ll be right back. Stay put.”

I took the gun and my jacket to cover it up, even though it was still unseasonably warm for October. No reason to upset the natives. I didn’t think anyone, not even angels, would break into my place with a combination of security spells plus Tiger on the alert. In the Dollar General I bought coffee for Josh, a bag of Pedigree for Tiger, and some Honey Buns.

My cashier was talking to the woman in front of me about Vivian. “I hope they give her the chair,” she was saying, a hungry sneer on her overpainted face. “But I bet she gets out of it like Casey Anthony did. They’ll say there’s not enough evidence to convict her, even though there was blood on her when the police brought her in.”

“There was blood?”

The cashier nodded with authority. “She had it all over her clothes. She probably killed the little girl too. I wouldn’t doubt it.”

“You could be right about that,” said the woman in front of me as she took her receipt and picked up her purchases. She looked uncomfortable suddenly. “I can’t see how two murders could happen in this town and not be related.”

“I’m sure you’re right.”

I made certain to shortchange the cashier.

Josh was appalled when I got back with my purchases and spilled them out on the kitchen table. “You know drinking herbal teas does
not
counterbalance this much sugar in your diet,” he said, picking up a squishy Honey Bun. “How much do you weigh?”

“One hundred seventy on a good day,” I told him as I looked over the local paper. Behind me, Josh’s coffee perked away. The press hadn’t yet been let in on Vivian’s murder charge. The police were keeping things pretty hush-hush until the prosecuting attorney had a decent First Degree case to present. That wasn’t likely to keep tongues from wagging like crazy, though. Everyone in town already believed Vivian was guilty as hell.

“How do you do it? I’m twenty-six and just walking by an open package of Oreos makes me fat.”

“Clean living and a pure heart.”

Josh snorted. I sat down opposite him at the kitchen table while Tiger nosed into a bowl of dog kibble, scattering a great deal of it across the kitchen floor. Josh reached into his wallet and took out a photograph, sliding it across the table to me. “That’s me ten years ago. Sad, isn’t it?”

I took the picture and laid it on top of the newspaper.

“I don’t know why I keep it,” he said. “Sentimental, I guess.”

The picture showed three adolescents standing on a dock at the height of summer. Josh was the tall, bony teen in the middle. He was grinning hugely and had his arms around two girls. I immediately recognized the girl on his right. It was a leggy, coltish version of Vivian, her hair tied back. She was wearing a red and white polka-dot bikini. Even at such a young age there was sex in every inch of her. The girl on Josh’s left looked familiar too, though I didn’t immediately recognize her. She was chubby and looked chronically unhappy. I thought she might be local. “Who’s the girl in the white one-piece?” I asked.

“That’s Billie, Vivian’s best friend at the time.”

“Billie . . . ?”

Josh thought about that. “Billie Berger.”

I glared up at him. “Of the Blackwater Bergers?”

“I think so.”

“Rebecca and Thom Berger have an older girl?”

Josh looked at me funny. “Thom Berger does. But Billie’s mother’s name was Carrie. She died about five years ago in a car wreck, I remember Vivian saying.”

“So Rebecca Berger is Thom Berger’s second wife?”

“I didn’t know he remarried but I guess. Vivian doesn’t really talk about them much anymore. She lost touch with Billie a long time ago.” He picked at a Honey Bun. “We used to vacation up here when our parents were alive. I guess you can say Vivian and Billie did that whole summer sisters thing, you know?”

I thought about that. I asked Josh about Carrie Berger, but he couldn’t remember much, except Vivian trying to contact Billie after she’d learned about her mother’s death. But by then, Billie had moved away from Blackwater and left no forwarding number or address.

I pulled my phone out and Googled Carrie Berger. A local news article stated that she’d been sideswiped by a moving truck one morning on the way to work and wound up in a coma in ICU. It lasted five weeks. At the end of it she passed on. I then did something I should have done a long time ago and popped Thom Berger’s name into the search engine. I found a wedding announcement for Thom Berger and Rebecca Coledale, a nurse from Lehighton, dated only three months after Carrie Berger died of her injuries. Thom certainly hadn’t let any grass grow under his feet.

I looked at the wedding picture of Thom and Rebecca Berger but the LCD screen of the cell phone was too small to make out any good details. I flipped through the newspaper until I found a picture of Thom and Rebecca Berger in the back pages, the two of them apparently standing on their front porch and being interviewed by Shelley Preston when the photo had been snapped. Thom was grasping his wife’s hand in support and above the article was the headline: BLACKWATER COUPLE PLEADS FOR INFO ON MISSING DAUGHTER. Shelley had made certain the paper had printed a nice big photo with herself almost center frame. Good ol’ Shelley. I looked at Josh’s photo, then back at the newspaper caption, then Josh’s old photo again as something clicked. “Jesus.”