“Do you fancy yourself a creature of God?” she asked, and he caught a hint of disdain in her tone.
“Aren’t we all?” Remy asked.
The woman laughed, a high-pitched sound that very easily could have been tinged with madness. Serving angels certainly took its toll.
“What’s your name?” Remy asked her.
She considered the question for a moment before answering.
“Marley,” she said, almost in a whisper. “And you’re Mr. Chandler.”
“Remy,” he told her. “Call me Remy.”
Marley smiled again. “All right.”
“Why do you think that something bad has happened to your master, Marley?”
“It was inevitable,” she answered matter-of-factly. “Even the divine will fall when surrounded by so much . . . sin.”
“I don’t understand,” Remy admitted. “What was Aszrus surrounded with?”
Marley remained silent, picking at the wall again.
“Marley, what was your master doing that was so bad?”
Her face twisted up in disgust. “He was no better than the vermin that walk the streets,” she snarled. “He let himself be tempted. And it changed him.”
“Tempted by what?”
“Things, Remy,” she replied. “Are you tempted by things?”
“I don’t really understand what—”
“I’ll show you,” Marley interrupted, reaching out for his hand. She led him down the corridor, abruptly stopping just before the kitchen. She turned toward the wall and pushed on a wooden panel. “Secrets,” she muttered, as part of the wall slid inward with a click.
She led Remy through the tiny opening, closing it behind them and plunging the small hallway into total darkness. Remy altered the configuration of his eyes so that he could see where they were.
A stairway stood directly in front of them. Marley, still holding tightly to his hand, led him up the steps.
“Where are we going, Marley?” Remy asked.
She giggled. “Where the sins are, where he hid them.”
There was another door at the top of the stairs, and Marley paused briefly. She let go of his hand long enough to reach into the pocket of her maid’s uniform to extract a key. Feeling for the lock, she inserted the key and turned it, opening the creaking door.
“I was the only one he allowed inside,” Marley said. “The only one that he would let tidy up.”
She reached for Remy’s hand again, and drew him inside.
“This is where he would come,” she told him. “Where he would spend hours upon hours surrounded by his vices.”
Though he could see perfectly fine, Remy reached out to a table lamp to bring some light into the gloom. The light came on, and to say he was taken aback by what he saw there in the room was an understatement.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said, taking it all in.
Marley stifled a laugh and crossed her arms defiantly in front of her chest.
“These were his prizes,” she said with disdain. “His most cherished possessions.”
The room looked as though it might have belonged to a teenage boy, or maybe a first-year college student. Video game systems sat on the shelves of an elaborate entertainment center; empty plastic cases littered the floor. Aszrus appeared to have been a fan of first-person-shooter games. There were stacks of magazines just about everywhere: magazines about cars, about food, and porn—more porn than anything else, which complemented the plethora of pornographic DVDs stacked haphazardly beside a high-backed leather easy chair in front of a sixty-inch television monitor.
Remy slowly turned in the center of the den, taking it all in. There was a wheeled bar cart not far off, loaded with liquor—all top shelf. A tiny refrigerator hummed beside it.
On the table that held the lamp beside the easy chair, there was an ornate box, and he could only imagine what he would find inside. Remy reached out, carefully removing the carved lid. The inside of the case was compartmentalized: loose pot on one side, with rolling papers in another section beside it. In another section was what looked to be cocaine, and beside that what he guessed to be heroin. There was a hypodermic in its own thin section beside it.
From what he could see, every human vice was represented in some degree here. Remy had heard of angels becoming obsessed with the ways of the Earth; hell, even he had been accused of it, but he would never imagine an angel of Aszrus’ stature falling so hard.
“He loved this . . . stuff more than those who would give their lives for him,” Marley said. Lurching suddenly to one side, toward the small table beside the chair, she shoved the box of illicit drugs and the lamp to the floor. The room was again plunged into darkness. “And then not even this would do; he had to go even farther from us, outside the home to find whatever it was he was searching for.”
“Where outside the house?” Remy asked, taking advantage of a potential opportunity.
She was breathing heavily now, the fear of repercussions for her actions weighing upon her. It looked as though she was thinking that perhaps she’d gone too far.
“What was he doing outside the house?” Remy pressed.
Marley carefully squatted down, attempting to clean up after herself, her fingers carefully picking up the pieces of the shattered lamp.
“It got to be that he barely acknowledged our existence,” she said, quietly. “It was like we weren’t even there anymore, our presence invisible as the car pulled up in front of the house, and he left for the evening, not returning until the early morning hours.”
“He used a car?”
Marley slowly stood, broken lamp pieces carefully held in her hand. “It was another of his vices. . . . He loved cars and has an entire underground garage filled with them.”
“But you said a car came for him.”
“Yes, it would beep its horn once to let him know it had arrived.”
“So he had a driver,” Remy prodded.
“Yes,” Marley agreed.
“Does this driver live here with the other staff members?”
Marley shook her head, a broken piece of the lamp in her hand falling to the floor from the movement.
“No,” she said. “Normally he would drive his own cars.”
“But in some instances he chose not to drive himself to wherever it was he was going.”
Marley was quiet, her blind eyes staring into the darkness around them.
“Elite Limousine,” she said.
“That was the name of the service he used?”
“Yes,” she answered him. “I heard him through his office door once . . . and he asked for Neal to drive him.”
Now they were getting someplace.
“You’ve been very helpful, Marley,” Remy said gently. “Thank you.”
He went for the door, turning toward the young woman.
“Are you coming?” Remy asked her.
She shook her head. “I’d like to clean up.”
So he left here there, standing perfectly still in the darkness of the room, a darkness she had grown accustomed to.
Beleeze quickly left his master’s presence so as not to incur his wrath.
His master had the most unpredictable of natures, and sometimes, when things did not go as planned, he would display a vicious temper.
Images that had branded themselves in the demon’s mind flashed before his eyes, images of those that had brought their master news that he deemed . . . disappointing.
Beleeze still found disconcerting the memory of one of his kind being turned inside out, and yet still living.
