TWENTY-FOUR

Jean looked awful when she opened the door, with her skin all sallow and her hair dry and frizzy. She let them in, though, even if her eyes were swollen and red, and she made coffee while they told her about Doherty and the demon-infested factory. By the time Rosie had finished talking, some color had come back into Jean's cheeks, like the whole mess really did give her something else to think about. "So you want us three to go take on a demon hive? Hive," she added, almost under her breath, and shivered with enjoyment. "I like that. It's creepier than nest."

"The three of us can't," Hank said flatly. "Our only chance is to take out—"

"The demon king," Rosie said, when he couldn't. "Harrison Vaughn."

Hank shook his head, but he didn't contradict her. Jean poured everyone coffee and sat down with them. "Well, it shouldn't be too hard to draw him out, right? Hank just says, ‘Hey, Dad, come here for a minute,' and Rosie does her magic. I want to see it this time. I was too scared last time to really see." Her voice held a vindictive note that Rosie wished Hank didn't have to hear, but he only shook his head again.

"If it is Dad, there's no way he's going to let himself be drawn into any situation where he's at all vulnerable. The demons know there's a Redeemer in Detroit. They probably even know it's Rosie. Dad didn't get to the top of the heap doing business by not playing it smart."

"He wasn't afraid of me yesterday," Rosie said suddenly. "He asked when I wanted to start boxing lessons. He wouldn't have done that if he thought I was going to hurt him."

"But he might have done it to arrange a time when he could get you alone and kill you. Did you agree to anything?" Hank sounded both grim and hopeful, as if she might be providing a necessary answer to a terrible situation.

"No. Your mom couldn't believe he was offering, and I guess we got off track. I'm supposed to call him, though. About a job, either for me or Pearl."

"You want Pearl to go work for my father when you think he's Detroit's daemon rex? Why don't you just put her out for the crows to pick over?"

"Well, if he is, at least it's an excuse to talk to him!"

"Hank doesn't need an excuse," Jean said again. "Harrison Vaughn is just dear old Dad. Maybe you could just find an artist and sneak into his room and imprison him while he's sleeping, Hank."

Rosie sat back, sloshing her coffee. "That's a really good idea."

"Yeah, and what happens to my mother if Dad wakes up during that?" Hank shook his head again. "I'd rather separate him. Talk to him."

"And say what? ‘Excuse me, Dad, but are you an immortal soul-eating demon? Is it your fault Ruby and half a dozen other girls are dead? Did you turn your own mistress into a monster?'" Contempt dripped from Jean's questions.

Hank paled under the onslaught, but Rosie lifted her hands, silencing them both before he could retaliate. "Doherty said they don't step out of line, the demons. They do what they're told and work together or somebody called an ‘Enforcer' comes after them. Is an Enforcer the same as the king, Hank? Is that how they work? Because Doherty said the Enforcer had been out of town, and your dad's been here, right? Maybe that means—"

He shook his head again before she finished. "Enforcers are just that. Muscle to keep the rank and file in line so the daemon rex doesn't have to bother with those kinds of details. Almost all the high-level demons have some kind of Enforcer, sometimes several. With a hive this size, I don't know why there wouldn't be one on hand to take care of problems like Goode."

Hairs stood up on Rosie's arms as she thought about the Lincoln Continental they'd seen at the factory. "What if … I mean, Enforcers must be pretty tough, right? Maybe kind of high-ranking themselves?" At Hank's nod, she went on. "What if there was somewhere else it was more useful to have your Enforcer? Somewhere they could be useful to you, but could still be called back when you needed them? We thought it was your dad at the factory, Hank, but I know at least one other person has been driven around in a car like that this week."

Hank's jaw went slack. "Senator Haas. You think a US Senator is Detroit's Enforcer?"

Rosie smiled weakly. "It's kind of hard to tell, isn't it? Since I killed Goode, who might have been the reason Haas was called back. When did he get in?"

"Friday afternoon. He had meetings with Dad and—" Hank broke off, shaking his head. "I've known him for years. I never …"

"Got the sense he was a demon? But we know your empathy's not working right, and probably the closer you are to your dad, the worse it works."

"I didn't get any demon-sense off the car, Rosie. If it was Haas, Dad was with him. Or … or maybe it was just too far away, with this damn blockage."

"Does it matter?" Jean demanded. "Whether you saw Haas today or not, does it change having to get to Harrison Vaughn?"

"It gives us one more face to our enemy, and somebody else to go through," Hank said. "We can only take them on one at a time. There's just not enough of us to risk two of them, much less a whole hive."

"But you've done what the library men want you to, haven't you?" Rosie asked. "You've found the nest. The hive. Can't you call in reinforcements now? We don't have to move now, do we?"

"Ruby's funeral is tomorrow," Jean half-wailed, half-snarled. "I want this done by then."

"Jean …"

Hank stopped with her name, looking unhappy, and for the second time, Rosie said what he didn't want to. "It was never likely we were going to get it all taken care of by then, Jean."

"Then what am I supposed to tell her parents? Her Nan? That I'm real sorry she's dead and someday all the people responsible will pay for it? What kind of comfort is that? How can I look them in the eye and say that?"

"You can't." Hank's voice deepened with implacable sympathy. "For all they know, Jean, the man responsible is already dead. Rosie killed him in self-defense late Friday night. That you and I and she know more about the whole situation is no reason to take what comfort Ruby's family can get from that away from them. I'm sorry we can't offer you the same comfort as quickly, or maybe ever. There aren't many total victories in this line of business, Jean. If you don't like that, if you can't handle it, then you need to get out now, while you still can."

Jean moved her hand violently, knocking her coffee cup aside. Steaming liquid sprayed across the table and floor, the cup breaking into thick shards when it bounced off the cupboard and landed sharply on the tile. Rosie's hand flew to her mouth, but Hank didn't so much as flinch. Jean stared at the mess, then leapt up and ran from the room, a bedroom door slamming a few seconds later.

For a moment neither Hank nor Rosie spoke. Then Rosie stood to pick up the broken pieces of coffee cup before finding a sponge and a mop to clean up the rest of the mess. Hank watched with disgust-tinged neutrality. "Why are you cleaning up her mess?"

Rosie, leaning on the mop, paused in disbelief to look over her shoulder at him. "How come you don't know this, mister empathic library man? I'm doing it because her best friend died and there's nothing she can do except get overwhelmed with feelings sometimes. Because I'm not a jerk, and I hope somebody would try helping me out if my whole life fell apart like that."

"Hasn't it?"

"No. Not like that. Not as bad as what she's going through." Rosie turned back to mopping, lifting the mop head to wring it out over the sink. "And even so, you are kind of a jerk, but you've been trying to help me anyways. So I'm cleaning up because she's having a hard-enough time without having to come back in here and see the stinky, sticky mess she made when she got reminded just how bad her heart is broken and how little she can do about it."

Hank turned his attention out the window. "You're a good person, aren't you, Rosie Ransom?"

Rosie shrugged. "I don't know. I try. Don't you?"

"Maybe not hard enough." Hank got up stiffly and came to stand beside Rosie, opening his hands. "What can I do?"

She handed him the dustpan full of cup shards. "Empty that and rinse the dishcloth before you wipe the cupboard doors down."

Hank did as he was told, the only sounds a clink of ceramic and the running tap water, while Rosie finished cleaning the floor and put the mop away. As she dried her hands, he said, "I keep it locked down as hard as I can."

"What?"

"You asked how come I didn't know why you were cleaning up. I keep the power locked down as hard as I can. Being bombarded by everybody's emotions is exhausting, and a whole lot of the time, people get really upset if you seem to notice they're in turmoil. Once in a while, somebody wants to talk but more often, they're trying to be stiff upper lip about it, and noticing something's wrong doesn't go over well. So if I'm out hunting, or if it's something like trying to get Detective Johnson to let Pearl Daly go, yeah, I've got it turned up, but if I'm just hanging out, like here? I keep it under wraps as much as possible."

"Hank." Rosie pressed her knuckles against her lips, watching him finish up his chores. "Maybe keeping it locked down is part of why you haven't been able to tell there are demons in Detroit. Maybe you're stunting yourself."

He smiled thinly. "I like the other idea better. The one where I'm being blocked. Because I don't think I could live, open to everybody's emotions all the time."

Rosie sighed. "I guess I can see that. Look, I'm going to go check on Jean-Marie. You think about whether we want to go for Senator Haas first, or whether we can figure out some way to just make sure he's not around your dad when we confront him."

"Yes, General." Hank waved a salute and went back to his coffee cup as Rosie left the kitchen to go knock on Jean's door. It stood a couple inches open, so although Jean didn't answer, Rosie pushed it open farther, saying, "Jeannie?" quietly.

"He's a real piece of work, your new beau." Jean sat in the corner on the far side of the bed, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around a pillow, and her voice muffled in it.

Rosie sighed, said, "He's not my beau," more for form's sake than anything else, and sat on the edge of the bed. Jean had a beautiful built-in wardrobe opposite the bed, oak with detailed flower molding. A vanity had been carved out of its center, and lipsticks and kerchiefs and jewelry lay on the surface and were hung on scattered hooks and knobs on its walls. From the colors, at least two of the lipsticks had been Ruby's, and Rosie recognized several of the kerchiefs as Ruby's too. It seemed like she would be right back, like she'd only stepped out for a minute, with all those things still in place, and Rosie's chest ached. "He's right, though. There isn't any point in telling her family all those things."

"You think I would've gotten so mad if I didn't know that?" Jean's voice remained muffled. "What'm I going to do, Rosie? What are we going to do?"

"We're going to clear the demons out of here as fast as we can. We're going to do everything we can do. And you're going to keep putting one foot in front of the other no matter how hard it is, because the only way out is through."

Jean laughed, sharp even through the pillow. "Aren't you supposed to tell me we can't do anything and everything happens for a reason? That God tests us but doesn't give us anything we can't handle?"

Rosie's reflection in the vanity mirror turned harder. "I used to think that was true, but I'm not sure anymore. I mean, when we were little, we never even dreamed that we could go work in factories like the men, right? And look at us. We can. So we can do something. Maybe whatever it is we're facing, we can always do something. And right now, we can fight. Maybe it's not enough, but it's something. And I guess if everything happens for a reason, then sometimes that reason is just life isn't fair and bad things can't always be stopped. And if God tests people like this, then he's just a son of a bitch. I don't think that's very comforting."

Jean lowered the pillow, just a movement in the edge of the mirror. "That's blasphemy."

"I guess it is. I think it's true, though." Rosie twisted on the bed to face Jean. "So do you still want to help?"

"You know I do."

"Yeah." Rosie got up and went to offer Jean her hands, pulling her to her feet. "I know running off to hide is the only way to get through it sometimes, too."

"As long as I don't do it when we're facing down demons." In the kitchen, the phone began to ring. Jean sighed from the bottom of her soul, and Rosie hugged her quickly.

"I'll get it. Are you home?"

"I'm sleeping."

Rosie nodded and hurried from the room, catching the phone on the fifth or sixth ring. Irene said, "Jean? Is Rosie there?" and Rosie said, "No, it's me," then shook herself. "I mean, this is Rosie, not Jean. Rene? Aren't you at work?" She looked for a kitchen clock and didn't find one. "What time is it?"

"Four thirty. The supe is trying to get hold of you and called me off the line." Irene sounded strained. "He wants to talk to you, Rosie. Will you talk to him?"

"Yeah, sure." Rosie shook her head as she spoke, though, wishing Irene could see her. "Rene, are you all right? You sound funny."

"Rich is here, Rosie. The supe called me off the line, and when I got to his office, Rich was here. He said the supe called him in to talk about what Rich had said yesterday and … that's not why, though, Rosie. That's not what the supe wanted. He … we're …"

"Rich? Rich is there? What did the supe wa …" Rosie's knuckles whitened around the phone as suspicion rose in her. "Put Doherty on the phone, Irene. I'll talk to him."

"I'm sorry, Ro." Irene's strained breathing went away from the phone to be replaced by Superintendent Doherty's smug "Miss Ransom."

"I'm going to Redeem you," Rosie whispered. "What do you want, Doherty?"

"Oh, you're not going to do anything to me, Miss Ransom. You're going to meet me at the Pennicott premises in an hour. I know an Enforcer who would like to meet you."

Surprise pulled a laugh from Rosie's throat. "Why would I do that?"

Doherty sighed happily. "Because your friends here just look so delicious, Miss Ransom. Especially the girl, a real beauty. I'd say I'd hate it if anything happened to her, but that just wouldn't be true." His voice darkened. "An hour, Redeemer. After that, I'm having your friends for dinner." He hung up, and Rosie let the handset fall from numb fingers. It cracked against the table and fell to the floor, a plastic corner chipped off.

"What is it?" Hank stood in the kitchen door, Jean half-hidden behind him, her fingers wrapped around his biceps hard enough that her knuckles were white.

"Doherty has Irene and Rich." Rosie said the second name incredulously. "He called Rich to—he said to talk to him about—Rich went in yesterday to plead my case," she said with a hard little laugh. "The supe called him in, said he wanted to talk about what Rich had said. He called him after lunch, Hank. We shouldn't have let him go."

Hank muttered, "Too late now. He's got them?"

"He's got them both, and he's taking them down to the factory. The old Pennicott factory, Hank. He says the Enforcer wants to see me."

Jean let go of Hank's arm, stepping around him. "Well, you can't go. It's a trap."

"I know it's a trap. Of course it's a trap. But what else can I do? If I don't, they're going to kill Rich and Irene."

"Stop for weapons." Hank's voice sounded thick. "If we leave right now, we can get to the library and pick up some primed Artifacts before we have to go to the factory."

"‘Primed'?"

"Simple art," Hank said. "Line drawings, almost finished. If you can press one against a demon and draw the last line, it'll capture it, if the demon isn't too strong. Doherty, at least, if not the Enforcer. Him …"

"Him, I'm going to have to get my hands on." Rosie reached up to tighten the kerchief around her hair, as if that little thing made her ready for a fight. "Do you think your dad will be there?"

Hank gave a short, hard shake of his head. "It sounds like the Enforcer is trying to clean up the mess, maybe before Da—before the daemon rex hears about it, or knows how bad it is. Of course, if it's Haas …"

"If it's Haas. If it's your dad. If if if," Rosie said. "Let's just assume if, okay, Hank? Because that's pretty much as bad as it can get, right? If it's Haas, if it's your dad, then they know everything already. They know I'm a Redeemer, they know you're helping me, they kno—"

"They don't know about me." Jean met both their gazes, her eyes bright with greed. "They don't know about me, Rosie. They know about you and Hank, maybe they even know about Hank's empathy, but they don't know that I'm helping you. You gotta give me as many of those things as you've got, Hank. The architects?"

"Artifacts."

"Those, yeah." Eager color built in Jean's cheeks. "They'll be looking for you two, not me. I can take out some of the weaker ones, at the very least. I might even be able to get a knife or a—"

"Piece of rebar," Rosie said with a faint smile.

Jean nodded. "Rebar. A sword. A bullet, something, into some of them. Earn Rosie enough time to do her thing. I could help, Hank. I could be your ace in the hole."

Hank lifted his hands. "Into the car. We'll talk about it on the way."

✪ ✪ ✪

The burned-out factory's gates stood open just enough to admit a car, like an invitation. Rosie and Hank parked on the street, though, figuring the gates could be closed and trap the vehicle inside, but that there were places they could squeeze out if they remained on foot. Besides, even open, the tilted, scraped-up bars managed to look less inviting than the broken section of fence Rosie and Hank had crawled through earlier. The factory beyond loomed forbiddingly, burn shadows multiplied and much deeper. It cut a rough skyline against the failing light, with no hint of activity or life inside. Rosie shifted her shoulders, feeling the totally unaccustomed weight of a sword strapped across her back, and wondered why her hands itched with the impulse to hold a weapon she hardly knew how to use.

Hank had a gun. Two, in fact, but when Rosie had asked for one, he'd asked if she had any experience with them. She hadn't, so he handed her a sword, pointing out it would be almost impossible to accidentally kill him with it as long as he stayed more than five feet away. Rosie hated his logic but couldn't argue with it. She murmured, "At least this time we're coming in the front gates," as if she could reassure herself somehow.

Hank chuckled. "Most of us."

"Is two enough for a ‘most'?"

"It's going to have to be. We have about three minutes to get in there. Are you ready?"

Rosie nodded, lower lip caught in her teeth. "As ready as I can be. Are you going to be able to do this, Hank?"

"I'm not going to have any choice." His mouth thinned. "I can't feel many of them in there, Rosie. Not like this afternoon, when they felt like a pit, once I knew they were there. Either most of them have cleared out or I'm being blocked even more strongly than before."

"Why would they clear out?"

"The Enforcer might want to make sure he's the only one who looks good." Hank took a breath. "There's also a chance they're afraid."

Rosie brightened. "Really?"

"Redeemers are the monsters under the bed to the monsters under the bed," Hank murmured. "If you can defeat the Enforcer, that's going to cause a lot of chaos. Not enough to bring a hive down, but if the rex falls, then everything that's holding the hive together goes to pieces. They might turn on each other. Clearing them out, separating them early, before things get really bad, might leave enough pieces in place for a successor to step in."

"You mean they might be scared enough to lay in a contingency plan?" A smile pressed its way through Rosie's teeth. "I'd like that. I'd like to not be the only one scared spitless here."

"Are you?" Hank glanced at her. "You do a good job of hiding it."

"It wouldn't do much good for me to be sitting in a corner wailing, would it? It'd just invite them to come after us." She straightened her shoulders, feeling the sword's weight again, and nodded. "Let's go."

They passed through the gates and a door that stood mostly off its hinges, the metal twisted from heat. Rosie had never even held a sword before a few days earlier, but she reached up and checked it in its scabbard, making sure she would be able to pull it easily, and felt comforted. Dips and pits in the floor, worse for Hank than Rosie, were still more treacherous than they'd been in daylight, and they crept in, testing each step. They hesitated at every door, Hank stepping through to make sure the next room, fire-torn as it might be, was clear before Rosie followed him. They'd argued about that on the way over. Rosie figured she'd be safer going through first, since her touch could be deadly to a demon, but Hank figured a ranged attack could take her down and then they'd have no chance against the Enforcer.

He lifted his hand suddenly, stopping her creeping pace, and over the silence of her held breath she heard men's voices, taunting echoes in the darkness. Hank gestured with his chin, indicating a door in a mostly intact wall across what seemed like an impossibly vast stretch of junk-littered floor. "They're in there." His voice was hardly even a whisper, more just shaped words in what little moonlight filtered through filthy windows and open roofs.

"They're gonna ambush us," Rosie whispered back, with a nod at the empty space ahead of them. Hank shrugged one shoulder, as if to say What can we do? and Rosie pulled her sword free of its sheath. Hank's eyes went very blue, even in the faint light, and a smile crooked one corner of his mouth. He didn't move otherwise, though, just gazed down at her. Rosie's own smile of anticipation fell away into a heart-thudding awareness of his presence and the likelihood that they were both about to die. He lowered his head, just as he'd done earlier in the day at the library, and this time, Rosie began to lift her own.

A bone-ringing clang echoed from beyond the far wall. Rosie took a sharp breath, looking across the big room. Rich might be on the other side of that door. Rich and Irene both. Rosie breathed, "Let's go," but Hank had already moved, a gun she hadn't seen him draw held ready in his left hand.

The shadows stayed shadows, no monsters breaking free from them, until Rosie began to feel silly for creeping around with a sword in one hand. Other sounds, more than just voices, were audible from beyond the door: fists hitting flesh, grunts and curses, the sounds of men fighting. Rosie's heart beat harder, worry for Rich clouding her thoughts until she forgot to be cautious and broke into a run. Hank hissed, "Rosie!" after her, too late.

She didn't even see it, the thing flowing from the shadows, not until she'd stepped in it. Claws grabbed her ankle and oil surged up her leg, coating her in cool slippery nastiness. Terror flooded her, leaving her unable to even take a breath as the stuff pulled her to her knees. A face appeared in the slick surface, but she couldn't tell if it was her own or someone else's. She didn't exactly drop the sword, because her hand landed on its hilt when it clattered to the floor, but she couldn't pretend she'd set it down on purpose, either. A squeak of fear pushed out of her lungs, and without the magic, she knew she would be dead.

The power responded like it had at the factory, though, with Goode. It rose instinctively, spilling out of her to separate a demon's staining influence from the human soul it worked to devour. Pools of light shuddered to life under her hands, sizzling through the oil she knelt in. It seemed like everything burned this time, fire cleansing away corruption, because nothing else remained. A thin scream bubbled from the oil, and even in flames, it tried crawling up her arms, looking for a way into her. The fire didn't hurt her at all, although she could feel its heat licking the fine hairs on her arms. It burned only the demon, without rot rising in a mist and separating from the rest. It felt like it lasted forever and only a few seconds, all at the same time, and when the power winked out, Hank had only just reached Rosie's side. She stared up at him, wide-eyed with shock. "What was that?"

"A dying demon. It had used up the body it had and needed a new one. Too bad for it that it tried taking on yours."

"It was … there wasn't anything left," Rosie whispered. "No human soul left to save. Just the corruption to burn. How long does that take?"

"Depends on how tough the host is and how strong the demon is. Remember, I told you the really powerful ones can keep a body living for decades. And probably wouldn't chance a Redeemer even as a last-ditch hope for survival. Can you get up?" He curled his hand around her arm, encouraging her to her feet. He'd been doing that the whole time he'd been talking, Rosie realized. That, more than his efforts, got her up, her sword in hand, though she ended up staring at her shoes and dungarees, looking for signs of the oil that had just burned away. There were none.

"I thought they had … the ochim was a singer, you said. Or a composer. And the empathy comes from music too. I thought that was how they attacked, with …" Rosie started moving, mostly because Hank pulled her along, but then he answered and she stayed with him of her own volition, wanting to hear.

"With their muses? Again, the powerful ones can do that. Helen Montgomery just threw herself at you—"

"Screaming," Rosie pointed out.

"People seem to yell a lot when they're on the attack," Hank said, almost under his breath, before continuing in a more normal tone, since they didn't seem to have snuck in unnoticed after all. "Most of them are faster, stronger, and—" He flexed his right hand around his cane, like a cat putting claws out.

Rosie volunteered, "Pointier?" and he cast her a brief smile. "I was thinking claw-ier, but pointier probably works better. And pointier than humans. They're dangerous, but most of them can't attack with magic. They just are magic."

"Which makes them almost impossible to kill." Rosie stopped moving forward just long enough to press her eyelids together hard and recollect herself. "That's probably something I should have known before, Hank. The not-attacking-with-magic part."

"I'll put it in my notes for next time."

Rosie barked a quiet laugh and shrugged his hand off her arm. "Where'd you put your gun?"

"Away." Hank took it out again as they reached the door at the far side of the broken-down room. Rosie looked back at where they'd come and whispered, "Why was there only one of them waiting for us?"

Hank shook his head. "I don't know. I think the one left didn't have any choice."

"You mean the Enforcer told it to stay?"

"I mean I don't think it had enough body left to move out even if it wanted to. I've never seen one that far gone before. Another few days or weeks and it would have eaten even what was left of that body, and died."

"You keep telling me they can't die and then mentioning another way they do," Rosie muttered.

"I keep telling you humans can't kill them, which is different," Hank muttered back, and Rosie, instead of arguing about it, kicked open the door and swept in to meet their enemy.