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Duke was on the phone when I walked out of the house. I had a suspicion that it was his boss on the other end, especially with the occasional yell that came through. I stood a bit away from him, giving him the illusion of privacy. A cop car pulled up. They loaded Young into it.
“I still have questions,” I said. “Like did the Chesterfield officer know he was delivering brimstone to Martha? How did Jesse Young get hold of Helia’s magic? How did he come by brimstone? Why were the last two killings so different?”
“We’ll ask him all those things and more,” Remiel told me.
“Sure,” I said. Uriel told a uniformed officer to be careful in the house when they searched it. It was possible there were silver shavings, iron filings, and brimstone dust inside. Any supernaturals would be at risk.
I felt drained, angry, and disappointed. As they were putting Jesse Young into the car, I ran over and touched him. I touched his shoulder. I felt nothing Stygian. I felt no deals made with demons. I felt nothing evil in him. I quickly scanned the last 24 hours of his life and saw him show up at my parents with nothing in his hands. He was responding to a text. The front door opened and Angel, already white and snarling, ran out the door and attacked him. What the fuck?!
“Okay, he’s not our killer,” I said to everyone.
“Yes, he is. When he realized who was at the door, I heard him thinking about the Alton couple,” Remiel told me.
“Well, that doesn’t fucking make sense. I checked. He responded to a text to go to my parents’ house. When he arrived, he walked up on the porch, the door opened, and Angel ran out, but she was already white when she attacked him. She was black this morning when I saw her. What the ever-loving fuck is going on??” I asked.
“I don’t know. He did the other killings, but didn’t attack your father?” Uriel asked.
“I guess,” I shrugged. “I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense. Maybe I don’t know how to use Lucifer’s gift correctly, and I’m not seeing what really happened.”
“That doesn’t make sense either,” Remiel said. “It’s an innate gift, like controlling the Stygian. There’s only two things you can do with it—use it or turn it off. It isn’t magic that can go awry.”
“Whatever,” I said and stomped to my SUV. There was something wrong, but I didn’t know what or how or why. I just knew it was wrong. It was infuriating.
“Are you sure you aren’t just disappointed that your first investigation didn’t end in a shootout with you calling a demon army?” Duke asked after I had pulled away from the curb.
“That would just be ridiculous. I don’t want to be shot; it hurts. I bled a lot the one time I was shot.”
“Okay,” Duke said, putting up his hands to indicate he wasn’t going to discuss whether the idea was ridiculous or not. I couldn’t blame him. I was angrier now than I had been on the way over. If brimstone had caused Angel to turn white, as we suspected, then she was exposed to it before Jesse Young got there. But that wasn’t possible, if Young really was the killer.
What the fuck? I just didn’t understand. I was obviously missing something. That something seemed really, really, really fucking important. I drove back to the hotel. The sun was starting to come up. It was my second day in a row of seeing the sunrise and I hated it; I’d been with Remiel for both of them. I focused my agitation on it. It was stupid to be mad at the sun and little by little the feeling in the car lifted. It seemed to me that if I was going to watch sunrises, I should do it with Jerome. He was my ray of sunshine.
I parked under the carport attached to the hotel. My head ached. I got out and walked into the lobby. It was empty. I looked around. Duke drew his gun.
“What?” I asked him.
“Have you ever seen a deserted lobby at this time of day?”
“No, but I don’t normally see the sunrise either.”
“Someone should be at the desk for super early check-outs. It’s still a weekday, business travelers sometimes check out before the sun rises. Someone should be brewing complimentary coffee at the coffee bar. Someone else should be preparing the free muffins they offered yesterday to serve before they start serving breakfast at six a.m. There’s a restaurant; staff should be coming and going from there, getting breakfast going.”
“It’s a Saturday,” I said.
“No, Soleil, it’s Friday morning,” Duke said, and I felt my gut tighten. Where was everybody? I hadn’t thought anything of it when we’d first walked in, but Duke was right, this time yesterday the lobby had been a busy place. Now it seemed deserted. My nostrils had begun to burn gently. I looked around as I walked to the elevator. I hit the button and the light came on, but the numbers above the elevator didn’t move. All the elevators were listed as being on my floor. I tapped Duke on the shoulder and pointed at the readout. It still hadn’t changed.
“Stairs,” Duke said. I dug out my cell phone but had no service. It wasn’t that it was low, my phone actually had a readout saying no signal found. I called magic to me, pulling it in. Then I thought about it, really hard. It was time to test just how good I was with magic and the lengths I could put between me and where I wanted it to happen. I called up demons and felt them enter the hotel.
“What did you just do?” Duke asked.
“One demon army, coming right up,” I said. “It will take us several minutes to get to my floor using the stairs. I’m going to fly up, but a few demons conjured on the floor will beat me there. I turned on my heels and walked back outside. Remiel and Uriel were long gone. I stretched my wings and looked at the building. I’d used them twice since I got them. Neither had including flying up the side of a building. I wanted an uncle to give me advice, but that wasn’t an option. I concentrated and felt my wings give a large, strong flap. I shot off the ground and up a whole floor of windows. I counted and flapped again. Another floor disappeared below me. I was between the third and fourth floor already. I flapped again and shot up two more floors. It was hard to hover and even harder not to over-flap or under-flap. I dropped about five feet as I prepared for another flap.
My nostrils no longer burned. I was at the windows of the sixth floor. Just one more good flap and I’d be at our floor. Unfortunately, I had no idea which room was ours. The windows on this floor were different. And I hadn’t looked out the windows into the parking lot since we arrived. I flapped gently, trying to mostly hover. I moved my arms like I was swimming and got nowhere. I gave a flap while leaning to one side and hit the window. I had to give a quick flap to keep from falling to the ground. A woman came to the window. I didn’t know her. She looked drugged. I knocked.
“I’m trying to get to my room, can you let me in?” I asked her. She nodded and fumbled with the window.
“Why not use the elevator, dear?” she asked as the window slid open. Now how the fuck was I going to get in there? I grabbed the window casing and tried to use my wings to put my butt on the windowsill.
“They seem to be broken and something is wrong in the hotel. Do you have cell service or will the phone in here call out?” I asked as I fell with a little thump onto her windowsill. I tried to pull my wings in and found that to be just as difficult as landing had been.
“Who is it, Lisa?” I heard a man ask.
“An angel is coming into our room, she says she’s a guest and she needs to get to her room, but there’s something wrong with the electronics in the hotel. I’m guessing the security doors on the stairwell didn’t open.” I hadn’t even thought of that and wondered if Duke had made it into the stairs. Was he on his way up? I didn’t know. I finally got my wings to pull in and I fell onto the carpeted floor of their hotel room.
“Are you okay?” the man asked.
“Yeah,” I said, standing up.
“Lisa, she must be a fairy, angels don’t have red wings,” the man said.
“They are feathered wings; she has to be an angel!” Lisa protested.
“Soleil Burns,” I told them walking to the door. “If you can call out, I need you to call my Uncle Remiel and my Uncle Michael. And the police.” Then I gave them my cell phone open to Remiel’s number. I opened their door and exited. There were two demons in the hallway. Kabal wasn’t there, though. Neither were the two other guys that had come up with my mom.
The elevator doors were stuck open. I walked toward them. There was something wedged in the bottom of the first door, and the elevator was dinging like crazy. There was also a dead guy in it. I removed the piece of metal that had been holding open the door. It gave a final, loud ding, closed, and headed downstairs.
In the next elevator, I saw one of the guys that had come up with my mom. There was no blood in the elevator with him, but I was positive he was dead too. Had Kabal attacked his coworkers and taken my family hostage for some reason? I pulled another piece of metal out of this door and it dinged and headed downstairs.
The final elevator held Kabal. He was breathing heavily in a rasping way. I stepped into the elevator.
“Injected with silver,” he hissed at me. “One guy and two women. Wanted your hotel room.”
“What the fuck!” I shouted. “I’m sending you to the lobby.” I went back out, found the little bit of metal wedged in that door and sent it to the lobby too.
A door opened and Tabitha’s husband peeked out of their room.
“Soleil, there’s something wrong with Tabitha and the baby, but I can’t get a landline and my cell phone says no signal.” My nasal passages were burning again. I concentrated and summoned another demon. Dantalian appeared in the hallway with a small pop.
“This is a first,” the demon purred at me. “I heard you’d gone rogue but didn’t believe it.”
“Knock it off, you’re here to help me,” I told him.
“Why would I help you?”
“Because I command you to help me,” I said. His face fell.
“Damn,” he sighed. “I’m not going to enjoy this.”
“Neither am I.” I agreed. “Follow me.”
“No, I can’t clean the brimstone from the air, there’s too much of it.” Dantalian said after a few steps. Brimstone in the air. Probably silver shavings too. I blinked at him.
“Well that really doesn’t fucking make sense,” I said to the demon.
“That is not my fault,” he responded.
“What the fuck?” I said, more to myself than him. The elevator dinged. Duke stepped out; gun drawn.
“That’s Dandelion,” Duke said, shock and surprise in his voice.
“Yes, it is,” I nodded. “According to Kabal, there’s a man and two women in my room.”
“So, you summoned a demon?”
“I summoned an incubus.” I corrected.
“Oh, well I might like this after all,” Dantalian smirked.
“You may only possess someone when I tell you to,” I told him.
“Well, maybe not,” Dantalian said. We were standing outside my room. There was crying coming from inside. Not a lot, but a little. There was also a lot of magic on the other side of the door.
“Duke, we need paramedics, police, more magic, think you can take care of that? Something is wrong with Tabitha and the baby, Walter’s probably unconscious too. Dantalian says there’s brimstone in the air.”
“There’s probably silver and iron too, then,” Duke said, catching on. He charged back toward the elevator. “Do you want a gun?” he yelled back.
“I have demons, I’m good,” I replied. Dantalian suddenly created a sword. He handed it to me. It didn’t hurt to take it, but I could tell it was silver and lead. I looked at it.
“Just in case,” Dantalian said.
“Just in case?” I asked.
“Whatever’s on the other side of that door is not a demon and it’s evil!” Dantalian said. “I don’t exactly like you or your family, but you’re better than whatever that is.” Now my stomach clenched. What was on the other side of the door?
“Is it a monster?” I asked.
“Yes, but not the kind you mean,” Dantalian replied. “It’s not Stygian. P.S.: I love the wings. They are so you.” I nodded and swiped my card. The door gave a small thunk as it unlocked. It swung open, and I was looking at Nick Johnson.