expression suddenly cold. There was no way to see what she was looking at, but it didn’t require much of a guess.
“Delacorte Pierce?” she said.
I nodded, feeling a stone drop into my gut.
“Could you wait one moment. The manager would like to speak with you about the bill.”
It was not a request.
The clerk went to the doorway and leaned in past the other clerks. The wall behind the desk strobed with colored light. I looked over my shoulder, the movement hurting, and froze. Outside, a police car had pulled into the entranceway, lights flashing. A second squad car pulled in behind it, then an ambulance. The lobby pulsed with blues and reds.
“Del?” Amra put her warm hand to my damp neck. Sweat had broken out down my back. I finally put a name to the emotion that had been growing in me since I’d woken up in the drunk tank: dread. Something bad had happened last night.
“Dr. Ram,” I said, almost whispering it.
“What?”
Two paramedics came through the door with a wheeled stretcher between them, escorted by four police officers. Everyone in the lobby stepped out of the way and froze, the pedestrian version of pulling onto the shoulder.
A few yards from me, the wall opened—a door disguised as paneling—and a short white man with precisely cut white hair strode out, followed by two other uniformed clerks. They intercepted the paramedics and police in the middle of the lobby. The white-haired man, some kind of manager, exchanged a few words with the paramedics, then led the group to the elevators. I suddenly recognized a face among the onlookers: Mother Mariette, the bald priest I’d seen talking with Dr. Ram yesterday. She wore a gray smocklike thing with baggy sleeves, black leggings, heavy boots. No clerical collar. She pressed back against a column until the cops and paramedics passed. She watched them for a second, then strode toward me and the exit, pulling a wheeled suitcase behind her. Her eyes were fixed on the exit, her expression determined. I fought the urge to duck behind Amra. But I had to know.
“Amra, just try to get my bag. Please.”
I walked away quickly—as quickly as I could, with the muscles of my back seized tight—until I was in the priest’s path.
“Mother Mariette,” I said.
Her eyes flicked toward me, but she kept moving, angling to step around me.
She didn’t recognize me, and I wasn’t surprised. She’d barely glanced at me when she spoke to Valis on the way into the hotel, and she hadn’t even seen me in the bar.
I stepped directly into her way, forcing her to stop. She looked me in the face for the first time. She was not tall, just past my shoulder. From anything farther than ten feet, her narrow face and long neck
made her seem much taller. Her lips were set in a hard line, her eyes rimmed in red. She’d been crying.
“Mother Mariette, is it Dr. Ram?”
Her lips parted; her eyes widened. Red and blue lights played over her pale skin.
“Is he dead?”
Just as quickly her expression changed. Flat, controlled rage slammed down like a welder’s mask. “Step away,” she hissed. She pushed past me, not quite running.
I glanced back at Amra. She was staring at me, frowning in confusion. I started after the priest, running a few steps before the pain forced me into a walk. Mother Mariette reached the door as another car pulled into the entranceway, this one an unmarked vehicle with a blue light on the dash.
By the time I got outside she was ten yards down the sidewalk, the gray smock rippling in the wind, the wheels of the suitcase rumbling over the cement. Lew was in the car, the cell phone pressed to his ear, his eyes on the police cars. He hadn’t seen me. I hurried after Mother Mariette, making small, involuntary grunting noises as I went. I forced myself to catch up to her, and when I was a few feet away I put out an arm and touched her shoulder. She spun away from me, throwing out a straight arm that struck my bandaged hand, knocking my arm aside, and I yelped in pain.
“What is it you want?” she said.
I cradled my hand, blinking away tears. “Jesus, you didn’t have to—”
“Out with it. Who are ye?”
“You don’t know me. I was—”
“Speak your name,” she commanded.
She was so angry, and I was still distracted by the throb in my hand, but that Irish voice was knocking me out. “Speak” and “name” were near rhymes, stuffed with extra vowels.
“Del,” I said. I sucked air, coughed. “Del Pierce.”
She stared at me, large eyes set wide in that finely shaped skull. Thirty seconds of silence.
“You’ve been possessed,” she said finally. “Recently, too.”
She sensed it in me, sensed the Hellion. She misunderstood it, thought it was something else—a residue, a taint—but she saw it. I’d never met anyone who could do that.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“You’re one of those goat boys.” She righted her bag, gripped the handle firmly. “Wanting a bit of cosplay, scaring yourself with pentagrams and incantations, praying to some god that you don’t wake up as yourself in the morning. Only now it’s happened, and you don’t know what kind of shite you’ve gotten into.”
I wanted to rub my hand, but it would only hurt more. “I don’t understand half of what you’re saying.”
“Sure you do. You wanted Dr. Ram to tell you you were special. And then what happened? Got a little angry? Maybe you’re going to tell the police that you blacked out. You just woke up with the gun in your hand.”
“Dr. Ram was shot?”
Another emergency vehicle, this one a white-and-red van, rolled past us. Mother Mariette turned her back to me and started walking, away from the hotel. I hurried after, but keeping an arm’s length between us.
“Please tell me,” I said. “How did he die? Was it a demon? Which one?”
“The one that uses forty-five automatics,” she said.
“Oh shit,” I said. My father’s gun was a .45. I had no memory of getting out the pistol. I’d left the party, tried to find my room . . . and then nothing. But the demon would have had no trouble finding it.
“Only rumor, of course,” she said. “Perhaps it wasn’t the Truth. I’m sure you’ll read the definitive account in the papers.” We reached the light at Lake Street, at a confluence of silver skyscrapers. A park of some kind lay off to our right.
She gestured at the window behind me. “Get me a coffee to take
away, Mr. Pierce.” The corner of the ground floor was taken up by a cafe.
“What?”
“Black, two sugars.”
She stood there, waiting to see if I’d move. No, waiting until I moved.
Maybe it was the Priest thing, maybe the Woman thing. Maybe it was the Woman Priest thing. I obeyed.
The line at the counter stretched almost to the door, and I suddenly remembered that for thousands of people—millions of people—
nothing unusual had happened last night. They’d woken up in the same bed they’d gone to sleep in, next to the same people they’d slept with for years. Now it was just another coffee break, another venti latte
and lemon honey seed muffin, then back to the cubicle to delete an hour’s worth of spam. Poor deluded
