“What’s up?” J.B. asked after a few minutes.
“Wait until we get home,” I said, and he didn’t press me.
We landed on the lawn. Everything looked normal. There were no monsters waiting to attack, no effigies burning on the front walk. The lights were on in Samiel’s apartment. I could see the flickering blue light of the television set through the front picture window of the upper floor. It looked like every lamp had been turned on as well.
“Beezle should know better,” I said. “He’s going to kill my electricity bill.”
Curiously, I could also see lights on in the basement, and the shadow of someone moving around behind the curtain.
I pushed open the foyer door and unlocked the door to my apartment. J.B. followed me upstairs.
“Hello?” I called as I entered, expecting a chorus of greetings in reply. But no one answered.
“Hello?” I repeated, dropping my coat on the table as I went toward the back of the house.
No one was in the kitchen, and the back door was open. I went to the top of the stairs and heard Nathaniel’s, Jude’s and Beezle’s voices.
“Where did it go?” Nathaniel shouted.
“That way, that way, you idiot!” Jude roared.
“What’s going on?” J.B. asked, standing behind me.
“Search me,” I said, starting down the steps.
“Watch out!” Beezle said. “It almost got into the pipes again.”
“Why don’t you help instead of telling us things we already know?” Jude said.
“I am helping. I’m watching—there it goes! Toward the washing machine!” Beezle said.
“Sounds like there’s a mouse in the house,” J.B. said.
“Yeah, but why would they be freaking out over a mouse?” I said as we entered the basement.
My basement is not the cleanest part of my house. It’s just one big room, and I’ve got a lot of junk stacked in boxes all over the place. There was an old pullout sofa at the far end. An ancient washer and dryer stood a few feet from the bottom steps.
Nathaniel had pushed the washer away from the wall and was on his hands and knees, reaching with a tennis racket. Jude crouched on the other side of the washing machine, his hands cupped and close to the ground. They both looked sweaty and harassed. Beezle fluttered over to J.B. and me.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Trying to catch the rat-demon that got in the house,” Beezle said.
“Gah,” I said with a shudder. I’d seen the internal organs of many a monster without blinking, but the thought of rats in the house gave me the heebie-jeebies. “Where’s Samiel?”
“Waiting upstairs at an entry point in case the thing escapes through the wall,” Beezle said. “There’s a big hole in his apartment near the heater.”
“Yeah, I keep meaning to fix that,” I said. “Why don’t you just blast the thing and be done with it?”
“Because,” Nathaniel said, as he swatted at the squeaking thing with the tennis racket. “It is immune to magic. That is how it managed to get in the house in the first place. It found an opening in the outside wall and was able to construe that as an invitation.”
“What are you going to do with it once you catch it?” I asked.
“Question it,” Jude said grimly. “It’s a spy.”
“I didn’t know either of you spoke rat,” I said, and Jude spared me a dirty look.
There was an increase in the pitch and frequency of the demon’s squeaks. I shuddered again. There’s just something about rats that makes even the most easygoing person cringe.
“Ha!” Nathaniel said as he swung the racket one last time. Jude gave a satisfied grunt and stood up. The creature squealed, and Nathaniel pulled the handle of the racket along the floor as the little demon made horrible noises.
When the head of the racket emerged from behind the washing machine, I saw why the monster was howling so. Nathaniel had basically squashed it to the ground under the netting, so the rat-demon was imprisoned between the wire of the racket and the floor. It was pressed so flat I was surprised it wasn’t dead already.
“We need a jar or something to keep it in,” J.B. said as the demon tried to wriggle out of the cage Nathaniel had made.
“There’s that empty plastic container from Costco that had all those cheese puffs in it,” Beezle said. “I don’t think it went out to the recycle bin yet.”
“You ate all those cheese puffs already?” I shouted after him as he went upstairs to get it.
“Where do rat-demons come from?” I asked Nathaniel.
“They don’t ally themselves with any particular creature or particular court. They’re mercenaries, willing to work for whomever will feed the nest,” he said.
I crouched down and looked in the thing’s beady black eyes. Up close it appeared less ratlike and more like a demon. What I had thought was fur was actually tiny scales. It stared at me with such malice that I felt goose bumps break out. “So how do we talk to it? Don’t we need a translator or something?”
“No,” Nathaniel said. “It can understand every word we say. And the squeaking is for effect. It can speak English, and just about any other language you can think of.”
I suppressed my revulsion and leaned a little closer. “Who sent you?”
14
THE VOICE THAT CAME FROM THE CREATURE’S MOUTH was high-pitched and eerie. “A horror that you cannot imagine, Madeline Black.”
“Yeah, like I’ve never heard that before,” I said, sitting back on my heels.
Nathaniel pressed down harder on the netting and the demon squealed even louder. “Answer the question.”
“You’re going to squash it,” Jude said mildly, but he didn’t sound like that would be particularly upsetting.
Beezle returned with Samiel in tow. My brother-in-law carried the cheese puff container. A few tiny holes had been punched in the red lid so the monster wouldn’t suffocate.
Samiel opened the top of the jar and kneeled on the floor next to Nathaniel.
Quick as lightning, Nathaniel lifted the racket, grabbed the rat-demon’s tail and dropped it inside the jar. Samiel screwed the top closed while the thing was still scrabbling around inside.
“Who sent you?” I repeated.
The rat-demon ignored me. It bared its teeth and started scraping at the plastic.
“Can it chew its way out?” I asked the room in general.
“Probably,” Beezle said. “A regular Chicago alley rat can chew through concrete.”
“That is disgusting,” J.B. said.
“Yeah, and you’d better wash your hands,” I said to Nathaniel. “The gods know where that thing has been.”
Nathaniel scowled. “I’ll be right back.”
“We really can’t use magic on this thing?” I said.
“It would be pointless,” Beezle said. “It’s too small to be affected.”
“Well, that’s annoying,” I said. “You’re the one who told me that most things don’t like…”
I trailed off, and Beezle’s eyes gleamed.
“Yeah,” he said. “That ought to do it.”
“What?” Jude asked.
“Bring that thing upstairs,” I said to Samiel, and led the parade up to my apartment. Nathaniel joined the crowd in my kitchen a few moments later.
I rummaged through my pantry until I found an old saute pan that I wouldn’t mind throwing away afterward. Then I put it on my gas stove and turned the flame underneath very high.
