“What does this have to do with anything?” I asked. “I already knew Tommy was into the kinky stuff, and I really don’t give a shit.”
“I told you I was his matchmaker,” Shae said. Once more she tapped a nail against the screen, three times, once for each girl. “I handpicked these for him.”
I shook my head. “Why does he need you to pick his girls?”
“Those girls are all regulars here. Real groupies. They’d do just about anything a demon wants them to do.”
I hate to imagine what kind of face I must have been making. “I still don’t see why this is relevant.”
“As you may have noticed, I’m in the information business. Among other things.”
I gave her a keep talking motion.
“So let’s just say I know a lot about my regulars. Things that they wouldn’t usually share with their one-night stands.”
“Like what?” I asked, still making absolutely no sense out of what she was saying.
“Like, for instance, their family medical history. Tommy’s particularly interested in girls who have a family history of cancer. And he also likes those who put a little too much faith in condoms.”
“What the hell. .?” I muttered. “Why?” I asked out loud.
“Which of these screens turns you on the most?” Shae asked with a sweeping gesture to indicate the bank of monitors that showed the sickening “playrooms” from Hell. “And don’t tell me none of them, because I’ll know that’s a lie.”
I was about to voice an indignant objection, until my brain caught up and realized this was her quid pro quo question. I also realized that I didn’t need her to tell me why Tommy was targeting these particular girls. I bet I could come up with a perfectly good guess myself.
For reasons I yet had no clue about, Tommy was continuing the Houston breeding project. Only he was taking his genes out into the general human population.
I shook my head yet again. I didn’t know exactly what he was up to. I didn’t know what would happen to these chicks if they happened to get pregnant. I didn’t know what would happen to their children. What I did know was that none of this could possibly be good for the human race.
Tearing my eyes away from the monitors, I gave Shae my best sneer. “If I weren’t worried that too many people had seen me come in here, I swear I’d shoot you full of juice and exorcize you so fast. .”
“Sticks and stones, sugar. Now, I think we’ve concluded our business here, don’t you?”
I couldn’t have agreed more.
CHAPTER 20
It was late when I got home, and my body and mind were both complaining that I hadn’t recovered from my sleep deprivation yet. Working almost on autopilot, I checked my answering machine, wondering why I hadn’t heard from Adam yet. Had he chickened out about approaching Dom? Or had he gotten an answer he didn’t like? Right now, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but there was no way I could go to sleep with three unplayed messages on my machine under the circumstances.
The first call was an immediate hang-up. The second call was from a reporter, of all things. He wanted me to call back and talk with him about this afternoon’s exorcism. I couldn’t imagine why he’d be interested. It had been a long time since exorcism had been considered newsworthy. He left a number for me to call, but I just laughed. Like I needed the press in my life!
I thought surely the third call would be from Adam. I really wish I’d been right.
The caller ID told me it was from an unknown number, and at first I thought it was going to be another hang-up. My finger was halfway to the Delete button before a voice started talking. A chill ran down my spine from the first digitally-altered word.
“You’d better pray Jordan Maguire lives,” the message said, the voice so garbled I couldn’t tell if it was male or female. “If he dies, you die, too. This is your only warning.”
I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. Once upon a time, a threat like this would have had me. . well, not exactly in a panic, but at the very least in a state of high alarm. Tonight. . it scared me a little, but after all I’d been through since Lugh came into my life, it seemed almost more of an annoyance than a cause for serious concern. Oh, for the days when a death threat on my answering machine was the worst problem in my life!
The “right” thing to do at the moment was call the police. Usually, when I’m reading a book or watching a movie where the heroine fails to call the police when she’s threatened, I berate her as an idiot. But my life had been far too eventful lately, and I’d had too many brushes with the law. Adam had extricated me from my most awkward moments, but I had to be setting off police warning bells everywhere. If I called them now, it might remind certain people to dig out the files about my arrest for illegal exorcism, or about Brian’s kidnapping, or about my father’s death in the “car accident,” or about the break-in and subsequent attack at my parents’ home while I just happened to be there.
Maybe if I thought the police could actually help me, I’d have made the call anyway. But I seriously doubted someone who was thinking ahead enough to digitally alter their voice would make a call the police could trace, so what would the police do? Except make me wait up for them a few hours and subject me to suspicious looks and leading questions.
I gnawed on my lip. What was the deal with this Jordan Maguire guy, anyway? Who felt strongly enough about him to threaten me, and why had a reporter called? Since I’d been hired by the state, not his family, the only details I had about him were those directly pertaining to his conviction. Perhaps I should have inquired about his background before taking the case, but that wasn’t part of my routine.
I really wanted to just fall into bed and forget all about it, but I supposed that wasn’t one of my options. So instead I did an Internet search on Maguire. I didn’t find out much about the guy I’d exorcized, but I did find out that Jordan Maguire Sr. was rich enough to endow his son’s high school with a new multimillion dollar athletic facility, start up a mega-grant program for underprivileged artists in his daughter’s name, and fund a new wing of Pennsylvania Hospital. That made Jordan Jr. somewhat of a local celebrity—hence, the call from the reporter—and Jordan Sr. a potentially powerful enemy.
I cursed loud and long. I didn’t need any more enemies! I’d had no idea Jordan Maguire was anything out of the ordinary when I’d agreed to do the exorcism. I’d known when he’d come out the other side brain-dead that his family wouldn’t be happy, and it wouldn’t shock me to find out they were blaming the exorcist. There was a small, but vocal, minority who thought hosts who came out of an exorcism braindead—as opposed to “merely” brain damaged—were the victims of incompetent or malicious exorcists. I guess it’s always nice to have someone to blame.
There’d been a few lawsuits that had made the news, but since there was no way to prove that the exorcist did anything wrong, so far none had been successful. Of course, in a country where McDonald’s can be successfully sued for serving hot coffee, I guess it’s not surprising that lawyers with dollar signs in their eyes still hoped to find a way to hold exorcists responsible.
With a sigh of resignation, I turned off the computer and told myself that Maguire was no longer my problem. Whoever had left the death threat had probably gotten the vitriol out of their system and things would calm down in the days and weeks to come.
But I did a lousy job of persuading myself. I made sure to take my Taser to bed with me that night. I’d already seen how porous my building’s security was.
Despite the anxiety that rattled my brain like a set of maracas, I managed to fall asleep. I probably would have slept until noon if the phone hadn’t rung at eight in the morning. It was the reporter again, asking me if I had any comment about the Maguire family’s decision to pull the plug this afternoon. I had some comments for him all right, but they weren’t about the exorcism or Jordan Maguire.