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I managed to not make a single comment about prices or totals in the electronics store. I wanted a gold star for that, but didn’t figure anyone would give me one, no matter how proud I was. We’d gotten two brand new laptops, two new tablets, Jerome had gotten a handheld gaming system, and we’d both gotten gift certificates to download some video games. I also had new wireless hard drives for backup storage, and my father had insisted on buying a complete home surveillance camera system to install on the new house, should it ever get built. It was going to take a while to get my laptop set up with all the programs I needed, but that was okay, I’d have time while I waited for the house to be built. I’d take it to work one day and do the loading from there.
Jerome noticed I didn’t say anything about the computers and things. When we got in the car with our three new bags of electronics, he gave me a smirk that spoke volumes. The kid really did know me well. My parents dropped Jerome off at the hotel with Duke and Walter, because you know he had new video games and the hotel would go get him anything he wanted. My parents put me in my new SUV and sent me to Remiel’s office.
“A bit flashy for you,” Remiel said as I parked in the lot. He, Azrael, and a detective were waiting for me.
“My wings fit in it. I now get why all of you have giant SUVs. My mom vetoed the idea of a Suburban, because it’s too obviously an undercover police vehicle. My dad already drives an Escalade, so I got a Hummer and then they bought Helia one in red.”
“I prefer the pewter grey,” Remiel nodded. “We’re headed to the police station. We’ll take your car.” I unlocked the doors, and everyone climbed in. As I drove, I learned there was a witness to the attack on Martha’s family. A neighbor had seen a police car arrive after ten the night of the attack. The neighbor originally thought that something had happened to the daughter or son, since both were teens and a little wild. However, when they’d been asked if they’d seen anything, they admitted to seeing the police car and thought they could identify the cop that got out. He’d been carrying a big tote bag with pink flamingos on it. I was going because I could see Stygian magic better than most.
The car had been a Chesterfield PD car. I was instructed to drive there. The witness was currently there looking at mugshots as cover for looking at all the police officers going in and out. She hadn’t thought to get the number or license plate off the car. Not that I blamed her, Martha worked for Remiel and I didn’t think it was a secret there could be any number of reasons for a police officer to come to her house, especially one in uniform.
Remiel and I were given a tour and introduced to every patrol person in the building. Shift had changed and they were trying to get them all called back in, but it could take a while. I was focusing on not seeing people’s pasts while shaking hands with all of them. Most beings, my uncles included, could feel Stygian magic. They couldn’t see it though, unlike me. Stygian magic isn’t black, and it isn’t evil, despite thoughts that it should be. It’s an orange color. When someone has been summoning demons, I see orange streaks in their auras, swirling with the silver and green of their deeds. This lasts long after the spell is done. It takes months and sometimes years to go away. Very few people will ever deal with Stygian magic, and even fewer will use it. I use that orange stain to track back from people that have been possessed to the source of the possession, if it’s not voluntary or accidentally self-inflicted.
One patrol officer had some of the orange in his aura, but oddly his aura was mostly silver. I shook hands with him and let my new magic work on him. I found he’d been possessed as a child. Twenty years later, he still had the stain of the experience on him. His possession had been the result of an abusive father. His own father had cursed him into becoming possessed because he was a strong-willed teen who refused to work and turn over his entire paycheck for his father to spend on beer. I said nothing to him about these things, just smiled politely as we made chitchat. The entire encounter lasted less than a minute. He wasn’t our killer.
Out of the 30 or so officers, only one had been touched by Stygian magic, as far as I could tell. I wondered if his bargain hid the Stygian from me. I hadn’t noticed it at the house, but he’d definitely been there.
I asked Remiel about it quietly and was given a shrug. They didn’t think it could be hidden if I touched the person. A watch commander came up to us and told us they’d called a mandatory emergency meeting, since Chesterfield was the only place the killer had struck twice. Remiel didn’t tell him he thought it was because Bill and Camilla’s family hadn’t been killed. It was a good cover story, no reason to ruin it.
It was standing room only in the room they had the meeting in. The watch commander and a captain explained everything Remiel had been saying since the beginning of the case. We all now suspected our killer was a cop, and possibly a supernatural that was possessed by a demon. Remiel and I stood toward the back. We didn’t contradict this piece of information, even though he wasn’t possessed by a demon. I knew why Remiel had added it. It was jarring enough to be looking at a fellow police officer for a string of brutal family murders. If they thought he wasn’t responsible because of demonic possession, they’d be more willing to admit that, “Hey, Jim’s been acting weird since the murders started.” They also included the bit of information Lucifer had given us—he’d been sure something had happened to change the bargain and therefore change the person who’d made it.
Remiel tapped me and I followed him into another room.
“Do you know a Sheriff’s deputy named Nick Johnson?”
“Yes, he’s a bit odd,” I told him.
“Nearly everyone here thought of him when the profile was given. What do you know about him?”
“He’s a bit crude. Jerome and Dad used the word smarmy to describe him. He dated Helia for a week or two when she was 23.” I said. “I thought he was smarmy then.”
“Okay,” Remiel said. “I’ll find out where he works out of.”
“But he’s a detective,” I said. “I saw him this weekend; he wasn’t orange.”
“Did you touch him?”
“I don’t think so,” I admitted. “But he dated Helia 15 years ago; if she has magic that feels happy, he can’t possibly still be holding on to it. And every archangel has one special talent that is unequaled in anyone else. If Helia’s is that she has magic that feels happy, then there isn’t another that has it, not even someone who’s dead.”
“Perhaps before we go track down the detective so you can shake his hand, we should have your sister perform some magic around Janet and see if it feels the same to her.”
“For the record, I feel stupid that it took us half a day to think of that,” I told him.
“Me too,” Remiel smiled and found the detective that had been at his office when I arrived. He made an excuse for us to leave, and I called Janet, then Helia to meet us at my office. I guess he didn’t want to admit he’d been listening to everyone’s thoughts during the meeting. It did seem like a major invasion of privacy.
“Do you ever just sit and read my thoughts?” I asked as I drove.
“No, you have weird thoughts,” Remiel said. “Besides, I try not to do it very often anyway. You learn a lot about people that you’re better off not knowing if you read their thoughts.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Like you swear a lot and you are even more sarcastic when you aren’t talking out loud. Although, it is kind of funny when you do accidentally talk out loud and didn’t mean to.”
“I bet,” I said.
“Mostly, I stay out of people’s heads. Contrary to popular opinion, they really don’t think about sex every couple of minutes. Most people go all day without thinking about it once. But when they do....” Remiel shrugged.
“They don’t hide their freak flags in their own thoughts,” I said.
“Correct,” Remiel nodded.
Helia and Janet both showed up after Remiel and I arrived. We explained the situation to Helia, and she nodded. Then she nodded again, and I realized I might not be the only one in my family that swears or has conversations in my head.
“Yes, she swears in her head, but not as much as you,” Remiel told me. Helia gave him the finger and I couldn’t help but giggle.
“After your mom washes your mouth out with soap six or seven times, you learn to not let the swear words cross your lips,” Helia told him.
“Abso-fucking-lutely,” I agreed, remembering the time when I was 20 and my tiny mother managed to pin me to the ground and squirt Dawn up my nose when I didn’t open my mouth. It was horrid and I’d finally gotten the message. I worked really hard not to use the f-word in front of my mom after that. Even though I was 40, I was sure she’d still do it if every time I swore the words were out loud. Especially in front of Jerome and the nieces.
I’d been around Helia enough that her strong magic was just background noise for me. Like the hum of static on a radio, but less annoying. If it felt like the magic was happy, I didn’t notice it, but I was pretty unobservant about magic. Helia did something, and I suddenly felt like I didn’t have a care in the world. Everything that had happened in the past three or four days would work itself out. I wasn’t even sad about the ceremony tomorrow when Valerie’s remains would be added to Zadkiel’s mausoleum. I wasn’t worried about screwing up with the final years of raising Jerome or about my business or my lack of housing or the fact that my parents had spent an obscene amount of money on us recently. I could get used to this feeling. No matter how much I tried to convince myself I should be grumpy, I found myself smiling at my sister. Then I realized I’d never had her magic turned on full force with me in the room. This was well beyond the happy pheromones that leaked from us.
“Yes, it feels like that,” Janet said after a moment. “But I don’t know that it matters all that much.” I expected her to say they died happy and was horrified by the thought.
“Helia, do you have any new friends or are you spending time with Nick Johnson?” Remiel asked her quickly.
“No,” Helia answered, and the magic turned off. “I haven’t seen Nick in more than a decade, and there’s no one new in my life. I have two little girls; I don’t have time to meet people.”
“Do you know how someone would get hold of your magic? Like a witch?” I asked her.
“Jerome can use it,” she said. “But he’s Jerome.”
“Yeah, someone not Jerome is my thought. I can vouch that the kid I’m raising isn’t killing people. The killer somehow has some of your magic,” I told her. She gasped, and all the happy feelings in the room died. The world was a cold, barren wasteland not worth caring about. Everybody sucked, all the time, and there was nothing good left anywhere.
“You realize most angels can’t project their feelings, right?” Remiel asked.
“Yes, yes,” I said. “But we both can.”
“I know, this is worse than reading people’s minds,” Remiel told us. He was both wrong and right. Nearly all angels projected their feelings to some degree when they were experiencing strong emotions. However, Helia and I could do it with enough force that it felt like it was going through amplifiers. We both controlled it pretty well, unless there was something wrong with us. Helia sat down. She looked like she was in shock. Her mouth opened and then closed, then opened again and closed again.
“H- holy fuck” she finally stammered.