Blue Diablo cs-1 Read online

  Dolores arrived within fifteen minutes and came in without knocking.

  “Buenas noches!” I expected a big woman, based on Chuch’s joke, but she looked like she had a tapeworm, all bones, angles, and jutting nose. She wore ten pounds in bangles and scarves, another ten in jewelry. I’d never seen a woman sporting twelve rings before and tried not to stare.

  She made the rounds, kissing all the men soundly. I thought she spent entirely too long hugging Chance, who gave me a half smile over her thin shoulders. Then she smushed Chuch’s face between her palms and called him her primo gordito.

  “It’s muscle.” Chuch pushed her away and tugged his shirt down over his belly.

  “Right, Sancho.” His cousin exchanged a glance with Eva and laughed, flashing crooked white teeth. “So we’re all set? Let’s do this. I haven’t been to one of these since we summoned Tio Juan to ask if he meant to leave all his money to that floozy he married.”

  “Did he?” Sometimes I just had to ask.

  “Sí.” Dolores sighed. “She was a good floozy.”

  All business, Eva switched off the overhead light. It was full dark outside, so shadows danced on the far wall and six tiny twin flames flickered on the tabletop, giving it an oddly ethereal air.

  Seeing we were ready, I sat on Chuch’s left. Chance took a seat on my other side, and Eva dropped down next to him. Jesse and Dolores sat so that we alternated the man-woman pattern.

  “According to this”—I squinted at the notes I’d made—“we need to join hands. Who’s leading this thing?”

  “You.” Chuch grinned at me. “You have the instructions.”

  “Okay, but...” I hesitated. “Madame Claudine also said never to have more than one sensitive present. Things can easily get out of hand if the spirits have too much power to feed from. I’m a handler—does that count?”

  “I’m an empath,” Saldana added.

  He gained points for trusting my friends with the information, but maybe he’d done it for exactly that reason? Act like you have nothing to hide—

  I snipped that thought before I could reveal my agitation to the cop sitting across from me. Nobody seemed to know whether those combined gifts would overload Maris and turn her into a banshee, however. I didn’t want to delay the process by waiting for another message from Madame Claudine.

  Finally Dolores said, “Let’s just get on with it. Eva said we’re having ice cream after we do this.”

  What the hell.

  “Jesse, do you have the focus?”

  With a nod, he dug into his pocket and reached across Dolores to drop something in Chuch’s hand. “Here you go.”

  The mechanic peered at it and then flipped it away from him. It hit the table, bounced, and nearly went into the sacred soup. “Are you kidding me, primo? I’m not touching that.”

  “Why, what is it?” I leaned for a closer look and saw everyone else do the same. “Her diaphragm? You brought her diaphragm to a séance?”

  In the dark it was hard to tell who snickered loudest.

  Saldana glared at me. “That’s what she left at my place, okay? Do you want my help or not?”

  “Fine.” A look at Chuch confirmed he did not intend to pick up the latex cap for love or money. “Maybe just having it here will be enough. Jesse, you knew her best, so try to form a mental picture of her. Let’s join hands.” When we formed the circle, I murmured, “Now that six are one, let none falter until all is said and done. Dear Maris, we offer you gifts from life into death. Commune with us, Maris, and move among us.”

  The candles flickered the first time I said her name. A cool wind poured through the open kitchen window, and I motioned for them to repeat the chant with me. We spoke it softly seven times and then Chuch twitched violently to the right. His hand almost pulled from mine, but I held on. Madame Claudine had been vehement on that point. The circle must not be broken until the séance ended.

  Or it would get ugly.

  He opened his mouth and a soft, pretty soprano voice spilled forth. “That’s not mine! You bastard!” Chuch glared at Jesse, looked as if he might claw his eyes out. The sight of such purely feminine outrage on the mechanic’s rough features sent a chill coursing through me.

  “Maris?” Saldana seemed astonished that this had worked. I was too, actually. “What’s not yours?”

  “That!” The diaphragm did bounce off the table and into the soup then. And then the whole bowl upended into Jesse’s lap. “I never used one of those. I was on the pill, you pig! You called me here with something that belonged to one of your other whores?”

  I cringed. Maris wasn’t in any mood to answer our questions to say the least. Knives on the kitchen counter rattled ominously. Shit. I needed to shut this thing down before she killed him. Leaning forward, I tried to make out my notes. Why didn’t I memorize this?

  “Are you sure?” Only a cop would argue with a deranged and vengeful spirit.

  “Of course I’m sure, you ass. Oh, you’re going to pay for this. Every one of you is going to pay. They ripped me apart!” Chuch’s face contorted as if in memory of the pain.

  “Who did?” Chance asked quietly. If anyone could salvage this mess, he could, so I held my tongue for a moment, ready to start the banishment process if things got worse.

  “Shadows,” Maris said in a little girl voice. “Shadows with teeth and claws that burned like fire. I’m so cold.” Chuch tried to put his hand over the candles and I moved with him, but I didn’t let go.

  “Do you know who sent them?” I hadn’t expected Dolores to contribute anything of note, so I raised my estimate of her a notch.

  “Yes, I—” And then Chuch went rigid, screaming like a woman. His back arched and he almost flipped his chair, writhing in unspeakable agony.

  “Do something,” Eva pleaded. “It looks like she’s killing him.”

  Terror chilled me and I almost couldn’t remember the words. If anything happened to him, Eva would murder me.

  “Our time is done, we break our bonds, six no longer one. We bid you go in peace,” I said quickly. “Go in peace, Maris.”

  The moment we let go of each other, a geyser of black sludge erupted from the kitchen sink.

  Straight on till Morning

  The goop rained down on us like black gold, Texas tea.

  I swiped it out of my eyes and hurried to see if Chuch was all right. “Should we call an ambulance? Does anyone know CPR?”

  “I’m certified.” Saldana knelt beside Eva. “Does he need resuscitation?”

  As if in answer, Chuch fell out of his chair and hit the floor with a thump, but Eva shooed us away as she felt for a pulse. “I think he’s okay. He’s just out. What the hell happened?”

  “An excellent question.” I raised a brow at Jesse. He was either unspeakably clever for sabotaging things this way or a careless idiot in this instance. “You brought someone else’s diaphragm? How many do you have lying around?”

  ”Just the one! I really thought it was hers.”

  Eva glared. “Never mind that. Can you two help me get him in the shower?”

  I assumed she was talking to Chance and Saldana, so I got out of the way. Dolores sighed, looking around the filthy kitchen. “No ice cream, huh? I’m going home to take a shower. This was not the most fun I ever had.”

  “It was nice meeting you.” That sounded lame, even to me.

  Dolores rinsed her hands and then snagged the carton of Cookies ’n’ Cream as she headed out. I didn’t blame her. If I wasn’t covered head to toe in this gunk, I could use some ice cream therapy myself.

  The two guys grunted as they carted Chuch down the hall to the bathroom and dropped him in the tub fully clothed. He came to a few minutes later with the water beating down on him. “What the fuck...?” The mechanic tried to scramble up, slid back against the shower wall. “Shit, that hurt worse than the time the Chevy fell on me.”

  “Shhh.” Eva brushed the wet hair away from his face. “I’m so sorry, mi vida. I didn’t kno
w it would be like that.”

  “Something’s very wrong,” Chance said. “They were still able to hurt her after death, and through her, you.”

  “It has to be a warlock with a flair for necromancy. Who else could work a sending, summon shadows like Maris described, and torture her spirit after death?” Saldana’s mouth compressed, and he looked at me. “They did something to her so she couldn’t talk, and if we don’t free her, she’ll go mad. Look, I know you’re searching for his mother”—he glanced at me, inclining his head toward Chance—“but I’d consider it a personal favor if you’d help me with Maris along the way. We can’t leave her like that.”

  I agreed, but I hoped it wouldn’t come to a choice between sparing a dead woman from an eternity of torment and freeing Min. We had limited time and manpower. Maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t him. Maybe Saldana was being straight with us.

  Or maybe he’d been ordered to get inside. I wished I didn’t like him so much.

  “Go see if Booke’s still awake.” Chuch sounded hoarse from all the screaming.

  We filed out of the bathroom, letting Eva take care of her husband. Jesse caught my arm. “I’m heading home. Need anything else tonight, sugar?”

  “No,” I said first. And then I thought of something. “Could you do me a favor?”

  Saldana raised a brow, and I sensed more than saw the sharpening of Chance’s attention. “Probably. Maybe,” he amended, having some experience now with my requests.

  “Run Kel Ferguson and Clayton Mann for me? They’re a couple of assholes with a score to settle. I’m not sure they’re smart enough to do it through a third party like Min, but make sure they’re still in jail, okay? I want to rule out their involvement in this mess.”

  “Sure.” Jesse nodded. “That I can do. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “All right. Thanks.”

  Once Saldana left, Chance murmured, “Good use of him.”

  After I got a towel from the linen closet, I went to the computer. I found the IM icon without too much trouble and managed to say Hi to Booke in the little window. He answered right away, even though it had to be close to two a.m. there, if not later.

  Hello, Chuch. How are you? he replied.

  It’s not Chuch. This is Corine. Can we talk? I don’t type very fast. That was an understatement, as it took me about five minutes to get that written.

  Absolutely. I’ll call. Just click the accept button.

  I could handle that, I hoped. As Booke said, it was just that simple. His voice came out of the speakers sitting to either side of the monitor. “Hello, can you hear me? Is everything all right?”

  “No, not really.” I outlined the evening’s events for him as succinctly as I could. “Chuch thought you might be able to help.”

  “I miss everything,” Booke said, sounding disgruntled. “This is what I get for living in Stoke. All we have is pottery.”

  My geography sucked. I couldn’t even imagine where in Great Britain that was, not that it mattered. “Anyway, what’re your thoughts?”

  “Well, your friend is right.” I heard pages rustling. “There’s a spell known to practitioners as spirit wrack. It’s quite dangerous as it bonds the life force of the warlock to his undead minions. Very few will risk it, as a sudden termination of the link may result in an excruciating death for the practitioner. It offers control over them, however, even in the afterlife. In this way, the departed can be bound to objects, forced to serve as oracles or—”

  I interjected, “Could it be used to torture spirits? Prevent them from telling someone what they know?”

  “Yes, I expect it could.”

  “How do we stop something like that? Assuming we can find the one responsible.”

  More noise, as he rummaged for answers. I imagined an old-fashioned library spilling over with musty tomes. “He’ll have charms to represent each spirit under his control. Sometimes they use figurines, sometimes gems. I’ve encountered a few who wear them on their person for peace of mind. If they’ve bound many servants to feed their power, this results in a shocking display of personal adornment.”

  So we might be looking for a pimped-out warlock.

  “Smashing the figurines or gems would do the trick?”

  “Yes, if they’re breakable. You might have to melt them down if he’s used iron or steel for durability.”

  I sighed. “Great. So to free poor Maris, all we need to do is track down a warlock, steal his charms, and destroy them. Somehow. How do you know all this anyway?”

  “I blame my father,” he said with a low laugh. “Isn’t that cliché? But he specialized in the work of Aleister Crowley, the Golden Dawn, and that sort of thing. He wrote more than one scholarly treatise on the subject. After he died, I took his studies in a more... arcane direction.”

  “Ah, well, thanks for your help. It’s been invaluable.”

  Booke spoke in a warning tone. “This is a serious player we’re talking about, Corine. You’ll have to get through wards, possibly guardians, and the warlock himself. It’ll likely mean killing someone. Are you prepared for that?”

  “I am.” Chance had come into the office in his bare feet. Maybe it was a strange thing to notice, but he had beautiful feet, perfectly arched and elegant.

  “Oh, hello. Chance?” Booke sounded almost disappointed that our tête-à-tête had been interrupted.

  I was a sucker for voices, so his rich, smooth accent provided me an awful lot of fantasy material. In real life he was probably sixty-seven, had bad teeth and no ass, but not in my head, dammit. In my head he was the suave, sensitive Englishman from black-and-white movies who, for reasons inexplicable to me, lost the girl to Humphrey Bogart.

  “Yes. And I know it’s going to get rough. It already is, in fact. That’s why I want Corine out of here,” he added pointedly.

  I laughed at the idea of him enlisting a virtual stranger to his cause. My respect for Booke went up a notch when he answered, “She strikes me as a smart, capable woman.”

  Maybe he had nothing to base it on, but that was nice to hear. I mean, damn, I drove from Shreveport to Mexico City all by myself and managed to get myself a shop on a shoestring budget. So yeah, I felt like I could take care of myself, but I understood Chance’s concern. This wasn’t a typical situation.

  That didn’t mean I intended to abandon him to it.

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said to Booke. “I may be in over my head, but I’ll swim.”

  “Or drown,” Chance muttered.

  I ignored that because I heard the frustrated concern lacing his words. He carried a lot of guilt about the Mann incident, and I’d made it worse.

  “Thanks,” I said. “How come you’re up at this time of night anyway?”

  “Insomnia. Hope I helped a bit. Let me know how it turns out, and... thanks for keeping me company a little while.” The software chimed as Booke disconnected.

  After easing to my feet, I stretched. “We should go clean up the kitchen.”

  Chance sighed but he didn’t argue. “That’s the least we can do.”

  “Agreed.”

  When I faced him fully, I tried not to laugh. I’d seldom seen him looking less than pristine, and there he stood, spattered in black slime. He swiped a hand across his cheek in a boyish gesture and succeeded in smearing the stuff down his jaw. My expression must have given me away.

  “I know, I know. Come on, you.” He started for the kitchen.

  “Shit.”

  Chance stopped in the doorway, offering an impatient glance over his shoulder. “What’s the matter now?”

  “We ruined Chuch’s new rug after all.”

  I hadn’t heard him laugh like that in so long.

  Before I followed him into the kitchen, I went back to the computer. The idea that Min had ties to Boys Town had been working on me quietly ever since we found the link in Saldana’s office. So I hesitated, hands on the keyboard. Did I really want to do this? Yesterday I’d wondered whether she’d been a
working girl. Would learning that change how Chance felt about her, about the mystique surrounding his conception?

  He wouldn’t pursue this angle. I knew that. With a sigh, I typed, “Asian prostitutes Nuevo Laredo Boys Town” into the search field. Google rewarded me with close to two thousand hits, foremost a mention of the infamous donkey shows. But the third hit offered me a picture of an Asian themed brothel that resembled a red pagoda.

  I stared for a moment in silence, wondering about the link. Where did the women come from who worked there? How did Min get out of Korea?

  Well, if we knew that, we might have the answers we needed to find her.

  So I simplified my search criteria to “Korean prostitutes in Mexico,” hoping for a wider result. That time I got nearly 87,000 hits. My stomach twisted in knots as I read the headlines of various articles:

  PROSTITUTION RINGS ON RISE

  THIRTEEN CHARGED IN GANG IMPORTING PROSTITUTES

  HUMAN TRAFFICKING & MODERN-DAY SLAVERY

  I clicked a link on a news Web site and read on:

  The Republic of Korea (R.O.K.) is primarily a source country for the trafficking of women and girls internally and to the United States (often through Canada and Mexico), Japan, Hong Kong, Guam, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Western Europe for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation.

  By the time I finished, I felt sick. What did this have to do with Min? I fervently hoped she hadn’t suffered as I was beginning to fear. Perhaps she’d run from her past only to have to catch it up with her years later.

  Her expression as she went with those men reflected no surprise, only resignation. She’d known it was coming; it had just been a question of when.

  Now the question was whether we could reach her in time.

  Boys Town

  First, though, we had a kitchen to clean.

  By the time we hauled out the last bag and emptied the bucket of dirty water into the laundry tub in the garage, I wanted to collapse. The garbage disposal had blown itself up and would need to be replaced. Chuch and Eva had gone to bed an hour before, and the fact that she didn’t protest told me just how freaked she must be. Chance looked even worse than I felt. His back must be killing him.