Page 25

Calisto

Even as the flat filled with people—Griffin arriving first, closely followed by Cade, with John and Bellamy bringing up the rear—I was unclear whether an official meeting had been called, or everyone had just migrated here because it seemed like the right thing to do. I guess I’d know if and when Asher whipped an impossible agenda out of thin air. Impossible, because he’d spent the night coiled around me like a snake. The vision had shaken him enough that I’d known he’d needed to feel me next to him. Which was… Well, I hadn’t quite decided what it was yet, but it was something to ponder on when I got the opportunity.

Lacking access to his usual breakfast staples, Asher ordered in, selecting the best smoothie from what he called ‘an unsatisfactory menu.’ I’d gone for a McDonalds, my sausage and egg McMuffin going down just fine.

“Did you return home?” I asked Bellamy when I found myself alone with him in the kitchen, John busy antagonizing Asher in the living room.

He grimaced. “We were going to, and then Cade called and told us about the body, and we decided hotels weren’t that bad, after all, that a lot of what we’d been complaining about were very much first world problems. Neither of us fancied being the second body. Sorry,” he said when I winced.

“It’s fine. Well, obviously it’s not fine, but… you know.”

“Yeah…” He sighed. “I keep waiting for this nightmare to be over, and it never is. If only I hadn’t stolen that damn mask, then maybe all of this would be happening to someone else.”

“Do you think?”

He poured hot water into the mugs of drinks he was making for everybody, Bellamy having thought far enough ahead enough to bring the makings for tea and coffee with him. “If you think about it, if I hadn’t killed myself, there would have been no need for her to recruit the services of a necromancer. I brought her into our orbit and for that I couldn’t be sorrier.”

It seemed we were all determined to shoulder the responsibility for certain decisions. I thought about it some more while Bellamy tried to remember who wanted what and whether they took milk and sugar. “The Satanic Romeo murders would probably still have happened,” I pointed out. “And they would still have recruited Griffin for the investigating team.”

“Maybe,” Bellamy mused.

Griffin chose that moment to walk in, eyeing us both curiously when we fell silent. “Talking about me?”

“Sort of,” I said, the admission making Griffin’s eyebrows shoot up. “We’re imagining different scenarios and considering how this could have been prevented.”

Griffin considered my words for a long moment. “If Asher’s been having visions about it for years, then it was always going to happen whatever we did, right? Fate,” he added with a wry smile. “And we should all know a bit about that.”

“Asher’s visions aren’t always correct,” I said quickly, his latest one still at the forefront of my mind.

“No?” Griffin asked.

“No,” I repeated.

He shrugged. “I guess you’d know more about that than I would.” A glint appeared in his eye and I knew what was coming. I’d assumed with everyone in the same place, there wouldn’t be any escape from it. I just hadn’t known who’d be the first to bring it up. “You probably know about most things.”

“Not really,” I mumbled.

“What with your guide from beyond the veil—”

“I think it would be stretching it to call Baxter a guide.”

“Your guide from beyond the veil,” Griffin continued. “And your abilities to do far more than John or I are capable of.” He took the mug Bellamy held out to him. “It’s funny. I met a man during the Satanic Romeo case when Ben and I went to Manchester to talk about demons. A Professor Rafferty Hart, who specializes in parapsychology. As part of his general chit-chat, he talked about necromancers who could…” He thought hard for a moment. “How did he phrase it? Something about them straddling both worlds and being able to manipulate the power of the human soul. I laughed at the time, but I guess that’s you.”

I swallowed, the action suddenly difficult. “I’m not sure I’d go that far.”

“You brought a soul back permanently.” He threw a sidelong glance Bellamy’s way. “With no magical masks required. I’m not sure what else you would call it.”

“In the wrong body,” I pointed out. “Less manipulation and more blind panic.”

Griffin inclined his head in recognition of my statement. “You were a child, and it was the first time you’d done anything like that.”

“The first and the last,” I insisted. “Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.”

Griffin took a sip of his coffee, his gaze holding mine over the rim of the mug. “True. And I guess it’s risky going there, what with the demons.”

“Demons?” I queried.

Griffin frowned. “Rafe… the professor… theorized that the demon Flynn O’Reilly was trying to raise could be found in that space between worlds, that one in particular…” He placed his mug down and pulled his phone out of his pocket. “One minute… I’ve done my best to forget most of this stuff.”

He pressed a few buttons on his phone before raising his gaze to mine. “Gezgomar, that’s it.” He turned it round to show me the picture on the screen and I stared at something from a horror film, all spikes and teeth. “According to Rafe, he’s the demon of death and controls what happens to the dead there. Of course, it might all be bullshit, because you and I both know he’s not the guy we talk to when we bring souls back.”

Bellamy leaned forward to inspect the picture, the face he pulled making his thoughts on the matter clear. “Jesus!” he said. “I wouldn’t want to meet him on a dark night. Or any night, really.”

“There are no demons there,” I said. Except, even as I said it, doubt set in. Something had been following me when I’d been there looking for Baxter. There’d been that roar. And Baxter never had gotten round to telling me about the third category of ‘people’ who made up the last remaining percentage. I made a mental note to ask him when I next saw him.

Griffin’s phone trilled while it was still in his hand, his expression changing as he read the message. “It’s from Ben. They’re five minutes out from entering the address.” He retrieved his mug from the counter and headed for the living room. “I better let everyone know.”

The next hour went excruciatingly slowly, all of us doing our best to pretend we weren’t in wait mode and make small talk. Even John was quieter than usual. When Griffin’s phone finally rang and he announced it was Ben, a collective sigh of relief went round the group that we were at least going to find out something, even if it wasn’t good news.

“You’re on speaker,” Griffin told his husband after an initial greeting. “Everyone’s here.”

“Hello,” Ben said, his tone every inch DCI Weaver rather than the man I’d had round to my flat for dinner frequently.

“What did you find?” Cade asked, getting straight to the point.

“Well, we found the head,” Ben said. “It was in the fridge. I’ll spare you the grisly details. The carpet fibers found on his body look to be a match for the carpet in the living room. That room’s bloodstains prove he died there. There’s still a lot of the scene to process and unfortunately, forensic tests, as you well know, take time, so there’s not a lot else I can tell you.”

“Any link to O’Reilly?” I asked, the possibility of the second body she’d threatened looming large in my mind. Maybe if she felt people were getting too close and had something to pin on her, she’d go to ground.

“Not yet. But we’ll keep looking. We’ve got technicians dusting the entire house for fingerprints.”

Ben said more, but most of it was so mired in technical jargon that I doubted anyone else understood much more of it than I did. When the conversation reached a natural end, Griffin took it off speaker and retreated to the corner of the room with the phone still in his hand, his voice dropping to a more intimate timbre.

“Well,” John said. “I guess we couldn’t expect much more than that. It wasn’t like O’Reilly was going to write ‘ I was here and I did a bad thing’ on the wall and sign her name.”

At least that got a laugh. It went some way to lessening the tension in the room.

“It would have been nice if she had,” Bellamy said. “Either that or a signed affidavit confessing to all her crimes and announcing that she was ready to hand herself in.”

“That’d take more than one side of A4,” I said.

“More like a scroll,” John offered, miming pulling open something absurdly long. Even Asher smiled at that one, having been his usual quiet and observant self throughout proceedings.

“Ben?” It was the urgency in Griffin’s voice that cut through our chatter, all of us turning to stare at him. “BEN?”

“Everything okay?” Cade asked.

Griffin shook his head. “We were talking and then he just stopped responding. The call is still connected.” He turned the phone round so we could see it, as if he thought we might not believe him, before bringing it back to his ear. “Ben?” he repeated. “Can you hear me? What’s going on?”

“Did you hear anything before he stopped responding?” Cade asked, concern creeping into his voice. “A bang? A car? A shout?”

“Nothing,” Griffin said.

Something clicked into place in my head, and from Asher’s expression, I knew we’d reached the same conclusion. I let him say it, the situation needing a calmness I’d struggle to muster, but that he displayed time and time again.

“The whole thing was a trap,” Asher said. “O’Reilly wanted us to go there, wanted Ben there. You said it yesterday,” he said with a look to me. “Why not chop the hands off if she wanted to make identification difficult? And the answer is, she didn’t, that it was a simple way of putting Ben where she wanted him to be. They arranged everything to make that happen. She couldn’t get to Calisto directly, so she went for Ben instead.”

His gaze skipped to John and Bellamy, the two of them having moved closer together, as if gaining strength from the other. “You were out of her reach, as well. So she figured what’s easier than setting a detective a little mystery? She knew he’d take the case, and she knew he’d want to be there when they went to the address.”

“What are you saying?” Griffin asked, his voice cracking under the strain. “You better not be telling me that bitch has Ben.”

Asher grimaced. “Unfortunately, that’s the obvious conclusion.”

Cade was already on the phone, spitting out words like they were going out of fashion. “No one can get him on the radio either,” he said. “The last they saw of him was when he stepped out to make a call.” He listened for a moment. “Right, thank you. Yeah, do that.” He ran a hand through his hair. “They found his phone, but there’s no sign of him. I’m sorry, Griff. I don’t know what other conclusion we can come to. I guess we thought Ben was safe because he’s a detective, but we underestimated the lengths she’ll go to.”

“We need to get him back,” Griffin said, his face contorting into a mixture of anger and grief. “I can’t… this is Ben we’re talking about. We’ve only been married a couple of months.” Realizing he was still holding the phone, he shoved it in his pocket. “Why can’t I feel anything? I should be able to feel what he’s feeling.”

“Perhaps they knocked him unconscious,” Asher offered. “It would explain why you heard nothing. Or they could have used chloroform. That would be quick and efficient and produce minimum fuss.”

It was the wrong thing to say, or perhaps it was the wrong person to have said it, Griffin turning on Asher and stalking toward him with a face of fury. Asher backed off, but wasn’t quick enough, Griffin grabbing hold of him and slamming him against the wall. “You need to fix this,” he growled into his face. “And I don’t mean by making a list or filing something really well. Have a fucking vision. Do something useful for once.”

“I saved him,” Asher pointed out as he tried to wriggle free from Griffin’s grip with zero success. “Have you forgotten that? If it wasn’t for me, Flynn would have killed him.”

“Yeah,” Griffin said in a voice that said in his fury, he had forgotten. “Well, now I need you to do it again, so hurry up and have a vision. Tell us what we need to do to get him back.”

I was already moving toward them, everyone else including Cade, who should have known more than any of us how to handle Griffin in a temper, stunned into silence and only able to gawp at the spectacle of Asher being manhandled. When I reached them, I covered Griffin’s fingers with my own, attempting to separate them from Asher’s shirt. “It doesn’t work like that,” I said, aiming for soothing but authoritative. “Precognition isn’t like necromancy or being psychic. He can’t do it on demand. Tell him, Asher.”

“I can’t do it on demand,” Asher agreed. “If I could, I would, but it’s more complex than that.”

Something got through to Griffin, his fingers relaxing enough that I could peel them away. “I need to get Ben back,” he said miserably, letting me pull him far enough away that Asher could squeeze out of the gap.

“I know… and we will,” I said.

“How?” He directed the question to the entire room, everyone’s silence speaking volumes.