| |
THIS DEMON WAS GOING to be harder to defeat than I’d first thought. I’d done the incense and birch treatment while he sat in the armchair laughing at me. He knew exactly what was going on and he no intention of being banished or defeated. I guess the trapping him in the tree thing would be hard to do too. I figured for him to be here, he had to have been around for a long time, somehow making it across the water from Hungary. You don’t survive that long as a demon if you let yourself get trapped too easily in a tree. That meant I had to use the only other way to destroy him. I had to get Mrs Duffy to assign him an impossible task.
She, however, seemed to have no desire to banish him. She looked at him with obvious adoration. I wasn’t sure how Mr Duffy put up with it. I guess you can’t accuse someone of cheating when it all happens in their sleep, without them being conscious of it. Although, if Mrs Duffy had her way, she’d be doing it awake too. Mr Duffy busied himself in the kitchen, well out of their way.
“If you’ve finished checking the house for pests, we won’t keep you any longer,” Mrs Duffy told me.
I had no other excuse to stick around. I did need to find out some things though.
“So, how do you fit into the picture?” I asked. I smiled at him and he gave me a self-satisfied smile back.
“I’m Mrs Duffy’s first husband.”
“The dead first husband?” I couldn’t help but ask.
Mrs Duffy stood up, glaring at me.
“He’s obviously not dead. He wouldn’t be sitting here beside me if he were dead, would he? Now, you must excuse us. It might be best you leave.”
Wow, she had it bad.
***
THE NEXT STEP IN BANISHING this damn demon would be to get her to see him for who he really was. If she realised he wasn’t her dead husband then she’d be more likely to take action. But how to do that?
I spent the day going through every book I had, as well as searching online. There were no specific liderc details. And, since succubi didn’t need to be revealed, that didn’t help either. I’d have to use magic.
There was only one person I could think of to help with that and I sure as hell didn’t want to approach him.
My phone rang. It was Duffy. He wanted a progress update on the case.
I tried to jolly him up.
“That’s all well and good but I need that thing gone. There’s this other bloke, Harry McConchie who contacted me. He said he could do it. I’ll give you until the end of the week then I’m going to have to go with him instead.”
“You don’t want to do that. He’s a fraud. He’ll tell you a bunch of lies but won’t get the job done.”
“And what exactly have you done?”
Oops, I couldn’t answer that.
“Okay, end of the week.”
I needed to contact the man I’d been avoiding. All I wanted was some easy money and food in my belly. I didn’t want to have to do all this work for it. It looked like I’d need to find Timon.
I swung the car around and headed for the dodgy side of town. Not the dodgy side where my office was and not the dodgy side with the abandoned warehouses but the other dodgy side.
When I got to the market, it looked at near full capacity. People crushed into the spaces. I pushed my way through them. One aggressive old lady rammed me with her shopping jeep because she thought I was going to obstruct her.
“Hey, watch it, Nanna,” I yelled.
She’d disappeared into the crowd though. I hoped those $1.99 bananas had been worth it.
“One dollar, one dollar, one dollar,” a man screamed. “One dollar.”
I had no idea what he was selling for one dollar but he sure sold it loud.
The floor was a mess of squished vegetables, with their rotten smell filling the air. A small forklift zoomed amongst it all, sliming up the floor even more. I wasn’t in the market for vegetables though. I wasn’t even in the market for one of those donuts that smelt so tempting.
I turned down the aisle that sold dubious DVDs and things got quieter. Who even buys DVDs nowadays? I’m pretty sure they were a front for drug operations or maybe money laundering or something dodgy, but whatever. Then I turned to the right, where few people went, to the dark corners that got no outside light, just a few dingy fluorescents dangling from the ceiling. The yells of the fruit merchants faded into background noise here and from one of the stalls came the sound of a sitar. Brightly coloured rugs hung on the walls and wafts of incense almost masked the rotten fruit stench.
I kept going to the far back where I had to duck and weave through the low hanging canvas slung across the walkway. Random extension cords ran from stall to stall, threatening to garrotte me if I didn’t pay attention. Nobody came to this part of the market unless they needed to.
Timon’s stall was the dirtiest and dingiest of these. A canvas flap hung down to cover the insides and a rank smell of dangerous spices wafted out. I had a feeling Timon lived in this stall. And that he only left to shower. Dusty birdcages hung from the ceiling and racks of books covered the walls. He’d pretty much ensured that few customers would ever venture in.
I lifted the flap and walked into the darkness. Before my eyes could fully adjust, a dart flew at my head. I ducked but it whizzed past my ear, just grazing it.
“What the hell?” I yelled. I pulled the dart out of the paperback on the rack behind me.
I could make out a scurrying bundle in the corner and pounced on it, pummelling it with my fists.
“Why the hell are you throwing darts at me?” I shouted between punches. “You could’ve hurt me.”
“I wanted to hurt you. I wanted you to go away.” The voice came out of a pile of rags. “You are nothing but trouble.”
“I just need a little favour. That’s all. It won’t take long.”
“That’s what you always say and then I end up getting hurt or attacked. You’re bad news. Just go.”
He sat up so that his head emerged from the pile and glared at me.
“Hey, how was I to know? I thought your eyebrows would grow back.”
“Well, they didn’t. And now I have to walk around like this. It isn’t much fun for me, you know.”
He stood up and dusted himself off. Timon standing up only came to my shoulder height and I was a total short-arse. He’d have been even shorter if he didn’t have a crazy head of hair sticking out in all directions. But, now he’d calmed down, he opened the tiny, secret door and took me into his chamber. The shelves on the walls were filled with jars of steaming purple potions and green bubbling goo.
“What do you want? And make something easy and possible.”
“Well, there’s a liderc—”
“NO!” He thumped his hands down on the carved wooden counter. “We do not start sentences like that here. You can say you are in love and need a potion or maybe you have some weird growth issue. I can cope with that kind of thing but no monsters and ghouls and crazy demonic critters. I don’t want to play with that kind of thing.”
I tried my cheesiest smile, hoping that would win him over but he folded his arms and turned away. Seriously, the guy lived in a tent cave at the back of a market. He never socialised. He never partied. Why did he even need eyebrows?
“I’ll be your best friend,” I said. “I’ll buy you ice-cream.”
He turned slightly and sneered.
“I don’t even like ice-cream.”
“What about gold?” I asked, thinking about all those gold bars in Duffy’s laundry. “Would you like gold?”
He turned fully around and smiled at me now.
“And where would you get gold? You never have any money so don’t tell me you can make gold magically appear.”
“I can’t but the liderc can. And I’m sure I could get my hands on some if only you gave me a little spell. It will be easy for you. I want something that will make the liderc show his true form. I bet you could do that in no time. You have the skills.”
Timon put his head to one side, deep in thought.
“I’ve never actually met a liderc before and I’m not sure if the spell will work but I can only do what I can. Either way, I get the gold.”
I shook his hand. Now all I needed to do was broker this deal.