Deadtown

“Around eleven. Why?”

“I need to know when the Harpies are likely to show up.”

“Oh. I guess that makes sense.”

“Bedroom on the top floor?”

“Yeah. In the front.”

“Which direction does it face?”

He had to think about that for a minute. “East, I guess. Yeah, east. The bedroom overlooks the harbor. It’s got a balcony and a big picture window.”

“Is that where the Harpies enter?”

He closed his eyes, his face pale. The scar stood out in a scarlet slash. “Yeah. When I moved in, I loved that window. Loved the balcony even more. Great view. Now I can’t stand to look at it. I’ve thought about bricking it up.”

“That wouldn’t stop the demons.”

“Yeah, I figured that out. Every night they smash through the glass. But in the morning it ain’t broken.”

For a moment, the scar made him appear pathetic—defeated—instead of brutal. He looked so exhausted and afraid that I felt a little sorry for him. Well, almost.

I handed him a copy of my standard instruction sheet for Harpy exterminations. “Tonight, you need to do exactly what this sheet says.”

He nodded and looked it over. “Wait a minute. It says I gotta take a sleeping pill. I don’t do pills.”

“Tonight you do.” It was one of my hard-and-fast rules. “This one,” I added, holding out a bottle with a single pill rattling around inside. I had a special license that allowed me to dispense them to my clients.

He didn’t take it. “But I want to see you kill those bastards.”

“Clients often do. I don’t blame you, but it’s a bad idea. You’d get in my way, for one thing. But the battle can be traumatizing. You could get hurt.”

“I can handle it.”

“Maybe you can. But we play by my rules, or I don’t take the job.” I rattled the pill at him.

Lucado’s dead eye stared at me like a marble statue. He ran a finger along the scar, from just under his eye to the corner of his mouth. Up and down, up and down. When I didn’t blink, he shrugged.

“Okay,” he said, taking the bottle. “You win. But I want to see the carcasses when you come back in the morning. I want to see those damn things dead.”

“I can do that.” I headed for the elevator. But then I stopped and turned around. “I always win, Mr. Lucado. Whether it’s demons or clients, I always win.”

He laughed and nodded. “I bet you do.”

9

I HEADED HOME THROUGH THE NEW COMBAT ZONE, which was deserted in the afternoon. Things never got hopping here until well after midnight. I walked past storefronts with cracked, dusty windows. A sheet of newspaper somersaulted down the street, then wrapped itself around a lamppost. Now and then I had to step around the prone form of a vampire junkie sprawled across the sidewalk. Vampire saliva is both narcotic and mildly hallucinogenic to humans. Combine that with a vampire who gets carried away and sucks out more than the legally allowed pint of blood, or with a junkie who goes around offering dinner to several vampires all in the same night, and you’ve got zonked-out humans sleeping it off wherever they happen to fall. When closing time rolls around, bartenders in the Zone simply drag ’em out by the feet and dump ’em on the sidewalk. And when the bars open again after dark, the junkies are back on their bar stools, hitting on the vampires for another fix.

Nobody bothered about the junkies because nobody patrolled the New Combat Zone—nobody besides the Goon Squad, and they didn’t care. I stepped over a junkie who lay on his back, snoring. At least the guy had a smile on his face.

As I walked, I clenched and unclenched my fist, trying to diminish the tingling in my arm. The demon mark wouldn’t leave me alone; it itched and burned. Okay, so Difethwr was in Massachusetts. The Hellion’s proximity would probably make the mark flare up. But at least I was safe in Boston, safe inside the shield.

But it wasn’t mysafety I was worried about. Since the Destroyer had reappeared in my life, I’d nearly lost control twice. Over nothing. In the Goon Squad interview room, one minute I’d felt upset and crowded; the next minute those feelings had ballooned into a murderous rage. And all Lucado had wanted was a pissing contest. So the jerk thought he could squeeze the little girl’s hand until she said “Ouchie.” That was no reason to kill him—and I’d come way too close.

I seriously needed to work on my anger management, at least until the Destroyer found some other place to play. The mark amplified rage; it brought the anger too close to the surface. What if, losing control, I shifted? This close to the full moon, I couldn’t count on my human personality to keep an enraged predator—a tiger or grizzly or something like that—under control.

I’d have to be careful. Whatever happened, I was not going to let the Destroyer make me into its instrument of destruction.

AT HOME, JULIET WAS STILL IN HER ROOM WITH THE DOOR closed. I went into my bedroom and stood in front of the bookcase that held my demonology library. It was puny compared to Aunt Mab’s, and it certainly held no mystical books bound in human skin. But these were the books that had built my foundation in demon slaying, and I liked having them around. I ran a finger along the spines, feeling the smooth leather of the bindings, until I found the book I was looking for: Russom’s Demonology. Or, more precisely, Russom’s Demoniacal Taxonomy. I pulled it from its place, inhaling its pleasantly musty, old-book smell.

This book had been the starting point for my training. It was a classic; my copy had been published in 1924, and that was the twelfth edition. Russom’s classified all known demons and described their characteristics. It was comprehensive, but dry as old toast. At first, I could usually get through about half a page before I fell asleep. But thanks to Aunt Mab’s relentless quizzes—at lesson times, at meals, even when we passed in the hallway—I learned its contents. I could still hear her crisp, accented tones: “To what phylum do Drudes belong?” “Name three demons of the order Terrificus.” I thought I’d never get it. But once I finally did learn the stuff, I never forgot it.

Now I’d be putting Tina through the same drill. I still had misgivings about teaching her, especially with the Destroyer around, but I had a feeling her lessons wouldn’t last long. Tina, I suspected, was a lot more interested in the latest celebrity gossip than in memorizing the nocturnal habits of wraith demons.

Shaking my head, I tucked Russom’s in my bag and headed out. I nodded to Clyde as I passed through the lobby and thanked him for getting my front door fixed so fast. He touched his cap, looking pleased. Or at least the death grimace that stretched his lips tight across his pitted, greenish face sort of resembled a smile. At any rate, I was glad I’d acknowledged his effort. People didn’t say “thank you” to zombies very often.

I dropped off Russom’s at the group home where Tina lived. She wasn’t up yet, so I left it with the house mother, along with a note to read the first twenty-five pages. I checked my watch; it was a little after three. Lucado and I had agreed I’d get to his place around ten to set up. I wanted to get there early, to make sure the guy would actually take the sleeping pill I’d given him. I’d learned the hard way that it was a bad idea to have a client awake and watching while I did my job. I still visited that client in the psych ward every year around Christmas.

So I had seven hours, give or take a few minutes. Plenty of time to zip out to the suburbs to visit my sister, Gwen, as long as I took a tub of coffee along for the ride. Gwen had made Halloween costumes for her kids and wanted to show them to me before, as she put it, “the little brutes trash them.” A quick phone call, and she said now would be perfect.

I didn’t want to drive the Jag, not with that whiny noise. Going by commuter rail out to Needham and back, I could return to Boston by nine, pick up my supplies, and get over to Frank’s condo in the North End before ten. I was overdue for a visit to my sister’s. So I’d chat with Gwen, oohand ahh over the kids, and let her talk me into staying for supper. Gwen was a terrific cook. My own efforts in the kitchen tended toward the frozen-dinner-and-microwave approach.