Madisonville Murder, Part 8
Looks Can Be Deceiving
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“Chris Murphy?” asked an unfamiliar voice. Since I’d been looking out the window at what I hoped was an imaginary hellscape, I jumped at the sound. But at least the question gave me a reason to tear my eyes away from the vision on the other side of the glass.
Standing next to our table was a woman who might have been only a little older than I was. She was one of those people whose age was hard to estimate. Had she been an actress, she could have played a high school student, a college student, or even a young businesswoman—a range of ten or even fifteen years. Her skin was pale like mine, but unmarked by freckles. Her hair was dark and long enough to flow over her shoulders. A loose-fitting, light blue dress that hung more like a robe on her made it difficult to tell what her figure was like.
“Do I know you?” I asked, already certain that I didn’t. I found myself bracing for another demonic attack, though she didn’t look particularly threatening. If there was one thing I’d learned over the last couple of years, it was that looks could be deceiving.
“I’m Virginia Scott,” she said, offering me a hand which I shook reluctantly. It was cool to the touch and far steadier than my own at the moment. “Alma Gomez told me that you might need a little help.”
Actually, I needed a lot of help, but I wasn’t enthusiastic about accepting assistance from strangers.
“Please sit down,” said Gavin, cutting off what might have become an awkward pause. “Does that mean Alma won’t be joining us?”
Virginia sat down. “Alma will come if you need her. But apparently, your problem is no longer in her…area of expertise. She felt her time might be better spent with Mrs. Jenkins.”
All of that made sense. A medium couldn’t help us reach Cynthia’s spirit if the path was blocked by Satan—but why hadn’t Alma called to tell us she’d found someone else to help?
“What is your area of expertise?” I asked slowly.
Virginia looked around to verify no one was sitting close enough to overhear a quiet conversation. “Demonology. Over the years, I’ve learned a great deal about demons that might prove useful.”
“I’ve done quite a bit of study myself,” I said. “Right now, we need more than just book knowledge of demons.”
Virginia leaned closer to me. “How about a little magical help? Could you use that?”
She had positioned herself in such a way that she was facing Gavin and me, with her back to everyone else. When she raised her hand a little and let her fingertips glow red, nobody else would have been able to see what she was doing.
Gavin, not usually surprised by such things, gasped even though he’d seen magic before—much more impressive magic, in fact. Virginia hadn’t really done more than a parlor trick, but to be fair, she couldn’t have cast some major spell in the diner without attracting unneeded attention.
“What…uh, what kind of magic can you perform?” I asked.
“Call it anti-demon,” she replied. “I can cast protective spells, and I’ve had some luck driving demons out of people. Like Alma, I don’t advertise, and I don’t perform my services for money. I help those who need it. Now, why don’t you brief me on your specific problem. Alma wasn’t very detailed in her explanation.”
I wanted to press her for more background. I’d mostly studied the nature of demons and herbal defenses against them. However, I knew enough about magic to know that most people had little or no magical ability. Those who did typically had an unusual background. They might have inherited their magic from previous lives. They might have some nonhuman ancestry, a little touch of faerie blood or something else, maybe.
Or they might have made a deal with a powerful supernatural being—like Satan, for example.
Nothing about Virginia screamed demonic pact, though the red glow was suggestive. But even if her magic did have an infernal origin, she would still be human, and my herbal tests for demonic activity might not work on her, especially if she weren’t actively using magic at the time. And if I asked her about the origin of her magic, she wouldn’t give me an honest answer if her power came from Satan.
Considering the situation, I decided it wouldn’t hurt to brief her. An agent of Satan would already know most of what I could tell her, anyway.
It didn’t take long to give a basic idea of what we were trying to do. The gradual rise of her left eyebrow told me she was skeptical about my goals.
“Do you really think it’s possible to save someone who’s already dead?”
Given Amanda’s situation, I had to believe it was possible, but I couldn’t very well say that.
“If we can’t do that, at least we can find out what exactly Satan is trying to hide from us, maybe out an agent of his if that’s the big secret he’s trying to protect.”
Virginia nodded. “That’s much more likely to be successful. But first, we need to do something about your hallucinations. Are you still seeing a hellscape outside?”
I took a quick glance at the window, and a fiery image of Satan frowned back at me.
“Yeah,” I admitted.
“Well, you’re no good to anybody that way,” said Virginia. “Take my hand.”
I did as she asked. This time, her hand was much warmer, and I felt power pass from her into me like a quick jolt of static electricity that made me jump again. For a second, everything looked bright red, but then, my vision went back to normal.
“How about now?” asked Virginia.
I looked out the window and saw only the well-worn asphalt of the diner parking lot and a few parked cars. Not a single spark or puff of smoke remained from my earlier vision.
“Thanks,” I said. “You seem to have cured the problem.”
“Now, show me the video you were watching right before you started hallucinating.”
Gavin slid the laptop across the table to her. She looked at it for a moment, her eyelids twitching a little as she did so. Then she slammed the laptop closed with such force that I thought she might have cracked the screen.
“Don’t look at that again!” she said in a commanding tone. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s hard to get magic to flow through the internet like that, but evidently, Satan has now mastered that trick.”
“Which suggests that Dr. Curtis is somehow involved with Satan,” said Gavin.
“Or his web designer is. A quick check of his office should enable us to tell more. We want to be as inconspicuous as possible, so I’ll drive. One car parking near the office is easier to miss than three.”
Virginia got up and walked to the door so rapidly that I felt rushed to pay. She seemed to think she was in charge now. I would have objected, but if she was telling the truth about the video, she could obviously see or sense magic, which neither Gavin nor I could do.
Luckily, the psychiatrist’s office was close to the diner. Of course, Madisonville wasn’t that big of a place, anyway, but it was nice to be able to get where we were going in five minutes.
The office was a small white building on the edge of a residential area. With it’s parking lot behind and not easy to notice from the street, it’s lack of signage, and its landscaping designed to match the neighborhood, the office could almost have passed for a house. I supposed the look could have been comforting for some of Dr. Curtis’s patients—the ones he wasn’t pushing to make a deal with Satan, anyway.
“I don’t see any obvious tells from here,” said Virginia. “I’ll need to get a little closer. You two stay here.”
She got out of the car and closed the door so fast that I couldn’t get a response out before she was gone.
“She’s a little…abrupt,” said Gavin.
“Well, it’s easier to miss a woman checking her cellphone than it would be three people,” I said. Much as I hated to admit it, Virginia might be bossy, but she did have good strategic sense. All of us getting out would have been far too conspicuous.
Virginia appeared to be focused on her cellphone as she stood on the sidewalk in front of the office. She glanced at the building, but only for a second or two each time. A passerby would have assumed she was looking for an address or something, not checking the building for demonic energy.
After about three minutes, she turned, walked back to the car, and got in.
“Even from a distance, I can tell there is demonic energy there,” she said. “But I can’t tell exactly what purpose it serves. We need to come back tonight, after the office closes. I have some magic that should make a break-in easy enough.”
“A break-in?” I asked. She didn’t respond.
I could see the reason for needing to get in while no one was there, but an actual break-in raised the risk factor considerably.
But who was I to complain about risk factors? I’d been putting myself at risk virtually every day for months.
Virginia offered to go in alone, but neither Gavin nor I felt comfortable letting her do that. The fact that Gavin had a baseball bat up his sleeve spoke volumes—and it wasn’t as if he was thinking of using it on humans. He was worried we’d find something much darker inside.
By a strange non-coincidence, the streetlights closest to the office weren’t working. Nor was the light on the office’s front entrance. I didn’t see any light coming from the back parking lot, either.
Virginia hadn’t said anything about using magic to shroud the immediate area in darkness—but she wasn’t surprised the darkness was there, either. I had the uncomfortable feeling that she knew far more than she was telling us and probably had more versatile magic than she’d revealed. The question was, why would she hold back information like that?
Once we were out of the car, she motioned for us to follow her up the driveway that led to the parking lot and presumably the back entrance. There wasn’t much moonlight, and with the nearby street lights out, I stumbled a couple of times because I couldn’t see what my feet were doing. However, Virginia glided along as if she were walking to broad daylight. Maybe she was using magic to enhance her senses, but that was yet another detail she hadn’t mentioned when summarizing what kind of magic she practiced.
As soon as we were in the parking lot, she headed immediately to the back door. She jiggled the knob, verifying that the door was locked. Then she rubbed her hands together and touched the doorknob again. I saw a momentary red flash, and then the door swung open.
“Stay close,” Virginia whispered to us. “As long as you’re near me, you won’t set off any magical alarms.”
“What about regular alarms?” asked Gavin.
“Burned out,” she replied. Perhaps she’d used the same technique by which she disabled the street, parking lot, and porch lights.
As we entered the building, I noticed I could suddenly see clearly, even though there were no lights on, and none of us had flashlights. More magic, no doubt. Virginia worked most of it so subtly that I didn’t even notice until it was already active. As with other things she’d done, this kind of spell didn’t fit the anti-demon label that she’d attacked to her magic. I couldn’t help wondering what else she might be able to do—and why she felt the need to be so secretive about it.
The office building was one-story and relatively small, not a surprise given that it only housed one psychiatric practice. At the back of the building were two restrooms and a room that, judging by the coffee maker, supplies, and a refrigerator, was a staff break room. Walking down the hallway toward the front of the building brought us into a large room furnished with lots of comfortable chairs and tables with magazines spread across their surfaces—a waiting room, for sure. At the far end was a receptionist’s window, now closed and locked, and a locked door that presumably led into our objective, Dr. Curtis’s office.
Needless to say, the lock posed no obstacle to Virginia, who opened the door in less than thirty seconds. She led us into an office with a comfortable couch and chair. Off to one side was an imposing desk, flanked by filing cabinets on one side and built-in bookcases on the other. It was sitting at that desk with his chair angled to show the bookcases behind him that Dr. Curtis had made his demonic video.
It took me a second to notice that someone—or something—was sitting in that chair now. The body looked as if it were made from shadow, but the eyes glowed a fiery red—a common way for demons to manifest.
Gavin let his baseball bat drop out of his sleeve and gripped it in preparation to strike. I clutched the bottle of agrimony and tried to get the cap off, but my fingers were too shaky to succeed right away.
“Sister, what have you done?” asked the demon in a voice like water hitting hot rocks and becoming steam.
Sister?
I looked at Virginia, who looked back with a pained expression on her face. Her eyes glowed red.
Madisonville Murder is related to the Soul Salvager trilogy. (The action falls between the prologue and chapter one of the first book.)
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