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As far as cells go, Fenwick PD kept a nice one. The mattress hadn’t yet developed that hard to classify funk of vomit and stale sweat. The vinyl-covered foam didn’t absorb much in the way of odor, mostly just off-gassed a chemical smell. But prisons and jails used them long enough to break down any protective barriers. Human filth was too persistent.
Demonic filth was even worse.
My stomach twisted in knots. I woke to a hoarseness which I only hoped had been caused by the mattress fumes. My back and shoulders ached and as I took in a breath. A coughing fit started, and I felt each deep, slobbering heave. Every exhale threatened a painful spasm.
I was dying. That boatman would finally get his fare. I sat up and gave a painful stretch which only freed more clumps of mucous. He’d be here soon and here I was, no breastplate, no medicine bag, even my Timbs had been taken and my clothes swapped for prison orange.
Death like this was to be stripped of all identity. No possessions, you became the possession. One of the sacrificial bodies buried alongside the pharaohs and the chiefs who had stopped being your people centuries ago and who promised no immortality only an ignominious death in their name.
My one phone call had been to Atofo. I couldn’t have reached anybody else on those Underworld lines. Other beings at that extension didn’t take kindly to collect calls from prison.
I heard the clang of the holding cell hallway door. A small taste of magic trickled over the open threshold from the offices beyond. Not enough to use, only enough to tease and tempt. Deputy Gardener strolled to my cell, keys in hand, and began to unlock the door.
“You’ve got a visitor,” he said, sliding the bars along their track.
I didn’t move at first. No way they allowed visitation. No way they wouldn’t demand to know why or how anybody even knew I’d been placed in lockup.
“Your preacher friend come to transfer me to the new cell?” I asked.
“Later. After the Sheriff comes back from the search at the manor to sign the transfer paperwork.”
It felt good to hear the Sheriff wasn’t here. I needed time to work on Gardener. Neither his boss nor his boss’ spiritual adviser was redeemable. Gardener seemed tough but honest.
“Next you’ll tell me I’m getting yard time.”
Gardener’s cheek twitched. He sounded clouded, uncertain. “Right now...” He paused, struggling with the words. “You have a visitor.”
I’ll be damned. Poor sucker. He’d been bewitched. Again.
I let him guide me toward the bullpen, not sure what to expect. Had Atofo crawled out of his grave Walking Dead style and hitchhiked his way here? Or maybe Kitterling had a tracker on Bubonic and this hadn’t been the result of my magic after all, just a guy worried about his company car.
I caught a glimpse outside the front doors and the gray light of dawn had only just taken hold. From my angle, I could only see Gardener’s cruiser and no black Escalade. He led me toward one of the side doors I’d originally thought to be just another office.
I nearly tripped over my own feet when I got inside the visitor’s room. On the other side of a pane of plexiglass sat Caleb decked out in his park guide outfit reserved for re-enactment days; a brown doublet patterned with gold and long poofy sleeves probably last fashionable on the Purple Rain tour.
Visitation booth phone already in hand, Caleb winked, furred, like he’d blazed through a kilo on the drive over. The Deputy didn’t seem to notice either his demeanor or the outlandish clothes.
“Five minutes,” he said.
Caleb’s brow furrowed at the suggestion. He struggled to return the phone to the hook because he held it upside down and the twisted cord made it awkward. He finally let it clatter to the small desk then pressed two hands against the glass, all ten fingers extended. Meek little Caleb snarled.
“Ten minutes, I mean,” Deputy Gardener corrected. “You’ve got ten.” He left the room.
I reached for the phone, trying to figure out Caleb. He had a slight bulge where the root had been placed against his gums. I’d never once told him about my shaman spells, my herbs and totems. Had he been spying on me the entire time? Maybe he’d seen more than I thought when I’d had to bewitch him.
“Okay,” Caleb said. I had to read his lips because he’d snatched the phone upside down again. This middle-aged dude had to know about phones with cords. I pointed at the way I held the phone and he gave it a disgruntled flip. “Okay,” he said, his hushed whisper blatantly conspiratorial. “Here’s the plan. When the constable returns, you tear out his throat. We’ll remove his limbs and hang them above the door to dissuade any of his colonials from following.”
“Atofo?”
Caleb’s eyes shot left then right. “Yes?”
I leaned back in the chair, staring at the ceiling and pressing the phone against my chest. He kept talking and I heard the muffled whispers grow more urgent. I should’ve expected this.
I interrupted his stream of curses.
“First, they’re recording everything you say.” His lips pursed and he squinted at the phone as though he held a live snake. “Second, what the hell?!?” I swallowed another coughing fit, gesturing wildly at Caleb’s body.
Atofo kept Caleb’s lips sealed tight and scanned the little booth, weighing each word. “We will not remove his limbs. Wild animals will.” He leaned closer to the glass and his brow darkened. “As a warning.”
“No,” I said emphatically. “How did you even, well, this?”
I struggled to process hapless Caleb being body-snatched by the angry spirit. Never once had I seen Atofo pull off this kind of stunt or even indicate it was possible. He seemed the type who would’ve done it long ago if he’d known how.
“I needed a vehicle.”
“If you need a vehicle, you borrow a car! Call up Hertz. You don’t boost a body!”
He gave me a look of measured patience. “Recording,” he sagely reminded me.
My turn to bite my lip. This conversation might be useful if the demon and his sheriff decided to send me away for life. Could be the basis of my insanity plea.
“You broke the spirit seal, not me,” Atofo chided.
For real? A lecture now about spells? The teaching moment wasn’t lost though as I started to understand. If legends and folktales held any truth, and they often do, bodily possession was top page in a demon’s playbook. I’d piggybacked off said demon to contact Atofo directly through the Below. A Hail Mary, or maybe a reverse Hail Mary if we’re being technical, he’d gotten the knock on his front door and found it flung wide open to a world he’d only dreamed of returning to.
“Listen,” I said, the wheeze returning to my chest. “I don’t have much time.”
“You? I’ve got until sunup before I’m back in the fucking dirt. Those wild animals,” he said, air quoting like I’d seen Caleb do to emphasize bad jokes during his tours, “need to get here soon.”
“No, I mean me. Running out of time. Out of air,” I said, stabbing at my chest and accidentally freeing up a clump of phlegm. I turned my head and coughed. “If I don’t die before transport, I’m going to disappear into some corporate lockup. You need to get me out of here.”
Atofo raised Caleb’s hands in protest. “That’s what I’m trying to do!”
“Not that way. Call Kitterling. Tell him to get a lawyer down here to raise a stink. If you can do that before the Sheriff shows up for his shift today, Deputy Gardner might just release me.”
Confronted by an actual legal challenge, I had no doubt Gardener would do the right thing. He seemed too uncomfortable with the Sheriff’s actions and hadn’t wanted to talk about Mordecai’s presence. For him, being a cop meant something. I got that. I’d been there once before.
“Look at me!” Atofo whined. “I’m a piece of white meat stirred into a paella! I can’t access my full magic. How will I contact anybody?”
“You’re a living, breathing human being in 2020. You have a damn phone. Check your pocket.”
His face scrunched skeptically. He started at his chest and began patting down the questionably historic Spanish costume. Not until he’d lost his fingers in the folds of his thighs did his face light up.
“Let me give you the number,” I said.
He stabbed at the screen. Shook his head and pressed it against the glass. Locked.
“Put your thumb on the circle,” I said, hoping Caleb had activated biometrics instead of a password or a pin. I didn’t know how much of Caleb’s mind Atofo had access to, and I sure as hell didn’t want to encourage any rooting around. I was lucky once he figured out he could hijack a body he’d even bothered to drive all the way here.
He did as instructed and grinned childishly at the screen, making sure to show me it had unlocked.
“Okay, dial. Press the phone button, yeah, that one. His number is...”
Caleb’s face went blank. The phone fell limp in his hands. I tried to see out through the small window in the visitation room door to gauge the light outside and couldn’t tell if what I saw was solar or incandescent. Had his meter run out for the possession?
Watching Caleb through the glass was like watching somebody wake from a dream. The booth phone slipped from his ear and he made an errant grab to hold it beside his smartphone, weighing both to see if they offered any clue as to what he’d last been doing. He didn’t react as I said his name, over and over into the receiver. His face turned sour and his chin convulsed. He spit the root onto the floor, long strands of saliva stringing from his numb lip.
I banged on the glass. “Yo! Caleb!”
Half-awake, he regarded me with a slack jaw. I tapped at the phone in my hand and motioned with it toward my ear. Hazily, he picked up his end.
“Caleb! Are you okay?”
“What... I... Ace?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
He pulled the phone tight. “Wha...what’s going on?”
“I’m in jail, I need you to help get me out.”
“Jail?” He searched the countertop for answers. “I came to help. Right. Only, I couldn’t remember how to drive.”
I could see the gears turning. I was slowly losing him. “I need you to call somebody.”
“Araceli, she drove me.”
“Wait, what? Araceli’s here?”
That explained the trace of magic I’d felt when released from the holding cell. Why she’d agreed to come, I didn’t understand. Atofo couldn’t drive so he’d managed to talk her into giving Caleb a ride, all the way here. If he’d used magic on her, I’d have both heaven and hell to pay.
Caleb continued to drift. His head bobbed vacantly as he explained. “I was at work,” he said into the phone. “We had our opening day, you know, those days you hate because the park gets all crowded and all the kids and families are out. Cannons firing.” He made several explosion sounds and spread his hands imitating clouds of smoke.
He wasn’t quite with me yet. He’d set his smartphone down.
“Caleb, I need you to pull your shit together and make a phone call!”
“Okay.”
He searched the wall for buttons for the phone he held. Not finding any, his eyes lit up when he noticed his smartphone. He swept it off the table and as he did I heard a click and our connection went dead.
The door on my side of the glass opened. Deputy Gardener walked in, his face set into a frown. “Time’s up.”
I hammered the phone into place and glared through the glass. Gardener put a firm hand on my shoulder.
“LAWYER, CALEB!” I mouthed. “LAWYER!”
Gardener hauled me back to the cell in silence. He didn’t seem pissed this time coming out of the magical fog, mostly just confused about why he’d allowed a guy in a ren faire costume to override what had probably been isolation orders from the Sheriff. On a deeper level, I hoped he’d also been reminded of his sworn duty.
They couldn’t hold me more than 24 hours without a charge. Drop a murder suspicion on me in a public way and they could jail me longer, but the demon would lose his possible sword finding partner.
Shadowy video wasn’t enough to make a charge like that stick; Gardener knew as much. But with the small army of police combing the crime scene, they’d turn up evidence eventually. One slightly good cop, that’s what my fate rested on in the next twelve hours or so. Not a bet I’d normally take.