Margarete held the syringe between two fingers like a cigar. “Nighty night,” she said.
The demon stumbled, and Frederick caught her before her head struck the ground.
“Oh my goodness,” Dr. Randolph said. “She was going to kill us. Kill us all.”
Frederick made a face. “She wasn’t going to go after you.” He looked at Dr. Wolff. “But you, Doctor. I didn’t like the way she was talking. If she comes for you—”
“Summoned or not, the god will be there,” Dr. Wolff said. “Now, before she wakes up, Margarete?”
“Already on it,” Margarete said, and snipped the air with a pair of scissors. She kneeled beside the unconscious girl, lifted up one of the long, springy curls, and clipped it off near the base of the skull.
“Is that necessary?” Dr. Randolph asked.
Margarete smiled up at him. “The Little Angel has a thing about hair. Won’t go anywhere without it.”
“Ah,” Dr. Randolph said, though he wasn’t sure he understood. “What’s going to happen to her?”
“First we try to find her parents,” Dr. Wolff said. “And then the hard work begins.”
11
I woke to darkness and thumping bass and synthesized strings: an eighties funk power ballad. The male falsetto had to be Prince—
nothing compares to Prince—but I didn’t recognize the song. The woman’s voice singing along with the recording was breathy and keening at the same time, threatening at any moment to veer off key. The thing in my head was quiet. Still there, though: it breathed warily, an animal crouched in the corner of a dark room. I lay there inhaling the powdery, foreign scents of an unknown bed. I had no idea how long I’d slept. It’d been almost 2 a.m. before I’d gotten out of the hospital—the nurses hadn’t wanted to let me check out, but O’Connell was formidable. I’d fallen asleep only minutes after getting into her truck, and had woken up briefly to navigate through a series of small rooms. She’d insisted I sleep here, rather than on the couch, and I hadn’t argued.
There was a window above me on the curved wall to my right, but it was dark on the other side—which meant that the window looked out on another room, or that it was still night, or worse, night again—
and the deep ache in my arms and legs told me I’d been sleeping too long in one position.
Holy shit. Mom had to be freaking out.
The song ended, and in the break, I yelled out, “Hel-lo!” The next song started—another eighties number, but U2 this time. A minute later the door opened and O’Connell leaned in. She was in rock-chick mode again: black T- shirt, black jeans. Despite the singing a moment ago, she didn’t look happy.
I wasn’t in the bed so much as on it: I lay on top of the covers, with several blankets thrown over me. I lifted one arm a few inches, as far as it would go.
“You can untie me now,” I said.
She stepped back and closed the door, leaving me alone in the dark again.
Ooookay.
Sometime last night, after I’d babbled and cried for a couple hours and finally fallen asleep, O’Connell had tied me spread-eagled to the bed frame with the combination locks tucked out of sight and out of reach, an arrangement impossible for me to set up on my own—and one I didn’t much like now. The situation put me in mind of more than one Stephen King novel, and I’d had enough of horror stories. Bono was emoting through the second verse when she came back into the room carrying a vinyl-padded kitchen chair in one hand and my blue duffel bag in the other. She set the chair near the foot of the bed and dropped the duffel onto the bed between my spread legs. She made no move toward the chains.
“I really need to pee,” I said.
“Let’s talk first,” she said.
“About what?”
“Oh, I hardly know where to start.” She sounded peeved. “The county sheriff stopped by for a talk this morning. Not about the Shug, about Dr. Ram. They found the killer.”
“What? That’s great!”
“Some DemoniCon fanboy named Eliot Kasparian. He claims he was possessed, woke up wearing a trench coat and holding a pair of guns. He’s in custody.”
“So was he possessed by the Truth, or is he faking?”
“I hope for his sake that he’s not lying,” she said. Good point, I thought. The Truth didn’t like fakers. But if he really was possessed, then it was Dr. Ram who’d been the liar. O’Connell said, “We’re not completely off the hook, boyo. The sheriff says that the police still want to talk to all the hotel guests who were there that night, especially the ones that checked out that morning. Especially the ones that might be showing up on security camera tapes.”
“You told him I was here?”
“Her. I didn’t have to—she’s smart enough to figure out where you went when you checked yourself out of the hospital. Plus, you were snoring.”
“She didn’t think it odd that I was chained up in your bedroom?”
“I didn’t open the door. Officially, she doesn’t know where you are.”
“Why would—why would she go along with that?” And why would O’Connell stick her neck out for me?
“She’s a friend. And she lives here. The ladies of the lake watch out for each other.”
I didn’t know what she meant by that. Were there any male residents of Harmonia Lake? I hadn’t met any. Maybe only women stayed, because they weren’t candidates to be the next Shug.
“This is a huge relief, though,” I said. “So you want to unlock me?”
“We’re not quite finished with our conversation,” O’Connell said, and unzipped the duffel. I tried to sit up, but the chains kept me from raising more than my head. “Hey, that’s my stuff!”
She ignored me. And then I realized that of course she’d already been into the duffel—she’d gotten the chains and locks. Shit.
“I have rules, Del.” She pulled something else out of the duffel, a rectangle of cloth. Ah. The oil rag that had been wrapped around the pistol. “One of them is, I will not have guns in my house.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Oh, I’ve already taken care of it.”
“What’d you do with it? That was my dad’s army pistol!”
“It was also a forty-five automatic, the same model the Truth uses. The same model that killed Dr. Ram.”
“But that’s over now—you know it wasn’t me!” I tried to sit up, but all I could do was lift my head in a forceful manner.
“You still can’t go around carrying ready-made props—especially ones that put holes in people. The demons can possess anyone—
whoever they want, whenever they want. They’re especially attracted to those who’ve been possessed before, even by another demon. You’re already marked, Del. So, let’s not make it so easy on them, eh?”
“What did you do with the gun?” I said.
“I heaved it into the lake.”
I blinked at her. I didn’t know whether to be angry or relieved.
“Next,” she said. She pulled out the black nylon bag I’d gotten at the ICOP conference. She withdrew from it a sheaf of stapled papers and started slowly turning the pages. “Now these are interesting souvenirs,” she said. “Out of all the academic crap at the conference, this is what you take with you. What did you think you’d do with these, apply a little guilt, a little leverage to get me to take your case?”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” I said. She spun the packet at me. The pages landed on my
