“No,” the officer whined, “but they do get sick days. And Director White took one. I’ll put you through to his voice mail.”
“No, that’s not—” But he’d already hit the transfer button. Like I said, assholes all. “. . necessary,” I finished, hanging up the phone. This was a shitty time for Adam to go AWOL. He was probably at home, just ignoring the phone. I so didn’t want to go there in person looking for him. If he and Dom were in the Dreaded Black Room, they probably wouldn’t even hear the bell.
However, I didn’t have any better ideas, and I was all too conscious that the clock was ticking. I didn’t know what the chances were that the kidnappers were ever planning to let those kids go, but I figured that as with all missing persons cases, our best hopes of finding them were in the first forty-eight hours.
“Road trip,” I said to Brian, and he followed me without question.
When we got to my car, I found I had a flat tire—a nuisance I so didn’t need right now. I didn’t feel like taking the time to change the tire, so we took a cab to Adam’s place. It was past rush hour, so it didn’t take long to snag one, and since the cabbie drove at somewhere around the speed of light, we were at Adam’s practically before we left my apartment. A peek at the small parking lot across the street showed me that both Adam’s and Dom’s cars were in residence.
Ever the gentleman, Brian paid the cabbie—which was probably a good thing, since I didn’t think I had any cash on me—and together we climbed the steps up to Adam’s door. I pressed the doorbell, but I didn’t hear any sound. I pressed again, harder. Still nothing. Great! A broken doorbell reduced the chances of anyone hearing me from about twenty percent to about zero.
I grabbed the knocker and gave it a few heavy thumps. The sound was gratifyingly loud, but after a good sixty seconds of waiting, no one came to the door. I tried again, with the same result.
“I guess no one’s home,” Brian said.
“Their cars are in the lot.”
He shrugged. “It is actually possible to get places in this city without driving.”
“Remember, I’m the smart-ass. You’re the nice guy.”
He grinned. “Oh yeah. Sorry, forgot about that.” I rolled my eyes at him, then backed down the steps and craned my head upward. There didn’t appear to be any lights on in the house, but then it was the middle of the day.
“You don’t happen to know how to pick locks, do you?” I asked. Brian just gave me a look that said I was crazy. It was my turn to shrug. “Never hurts to ask.”
Any moment now, Brian was going to decide it was time to give up on Adam, and I felt sure his next suggestion would be a call to 911. I couldn’t let that happen.
If you let me in, I can break the door, Lugh whispered in my head.
I hesitated. The fact that I could hear him at all meant my defenses were already weak. Weak enough for me to voluntarily let Lugh take over? A shiver crawled down my spine then back up again. I grabbed Brian’s arm and dragged him around the corner. I didn’t want too many people watching us as we cased the place. The last thing I needed was some Good Samaritan calling us in as suspicious loiterers.
“Let’s go sit down for a moment,” I said, jerking my chin toward a bus stop half a block down. A bus was just pulling away, so the bench was empty when we got there.
“Okay,” Brian said slowly, watching me suspiciously. But he didn’t press until we’d both sat down. “What’s up?”
I took a deep breath and ordered myself not to panic. “I’m going to try to let Lugh take over so he can break the door down.”
Brian’s eyebrows shot up in almost comical surprise. “That’s ridiculous! They’re almost certainly not home, and I doubt Adam would appreciate having you vandalize his house.”
“Not me, Lugh. And I’m pretty sure they’re home.”
“They can’t be. You knocked loud enough to raise the dead.”
Brian had been in Adam’s house once before. He’d even been on the second floor, but I didn’t know if the door to the black room had been open at the time.
I cleared my throat. “When you were in Adam’s house, did you see his, uh. .” I didn’t know what to call it. I supposed “dungeon” was the proper term, but I couldn’t make myself say it. I cleared my throat again. “Did you see the black room?”
“Black room?” Brian asked in a voice that told me the answer was no.
I stared at the pavement, trying not to remember too much about that damn room. “Yeah. At the head of the stairs. It’s where Adam keeps his, uh, S&M stuff.” I’d never told Brian about what Adam had done to me in that room, what I’d let him do to me. I didn’t want him to feel guilty about the hell I’d gone through to get Adam to help me rescue him.
“What about it?” Brian asked softly.
“I think they’re in there now. And I think I could shoot a cannon through the front door and they wouldn’t bother to come check it out.”
“Oh,” Brian said. Thankfully, he left it at that.
“Wish me luck,” I mumbled, then let out a deep sigh and tried to relax. I closed my eyes and visualized opening the doors of my mind. The wail of a siren broke my concentration, and my eyes popped open in time to see a police car zoom down a cross street.
I closed my eyes again and ordered myself to focus. Which lasted about ten seconds. Then a pimpmobile cruised by with its stereo blasting rap loud enough to make the sidewalk vibrate. After that, I was distracted by the roar and stink of a bus traveling in the opposite direction.
All typical city sounds. Sounds that I ignore with ease every day of the week. But each was an excuse to let my mind shy away from what I asked it to do. Just this once, I cursed the strength of my subconscious defenses. I tried reminding myself that the lives of two innocent children might lie in the balance, but although stress had helped erode the barriers of my mind before, it wasn’t working now.
Sorry, Lugh, I thought. I just don’t know how to let go. He didn’t answer me, which was just as well.
Regretfully, I opened my eyes. “No dice,” I told Brian. He probably gave me a reproachful look, but since I was staring off into space, I didn’t see it.
“So what’s plan C?” he asked.
I was about to admit that I didn’t have a plan C, but then I realized that I did.
The only reason I’d tried to let Lugh take control was because I needed a demon’s strength to break Adam’s door. There was nothing to say it had to be my demon’s strength.
“I guess I call in the cavalry,” I said, though in my case the cavalry wore very black hats. Trying not to clench my teeth too hard, I fished out my phone and called Raphael.
“Morgan or Lugh?” he asked as soon as he answered.
I was severely tempted to say it was Lugh, thinking perhaps Raphael would be more willing to help if he thought he was getting orders from his king. I managed to resist the temptation, though, not sure if I could pull it off.
“It’s Morgan,” I said. “I need your help.”
“Where are you? Are you in trouble?”
The alarm in his voice might have been gratifying if I thought it had anything to do with concern for me. “No more trouble than usual,” I assured him. “But I need your help just the same. How fast can you make it to the corner of Twenty-Second and Walnut?” His apartment building was only about five blocks away, so I figured it would be pretty fast.
“I’m on my way now,” he said, and I could hear his hurried footsteps. “I’ll be there in ten minutes, tops.”
He hung up before I had a chance to say thank you. Not that I’d been going to thank him anyway, not until after he’d actually helped me. I figured he might be a bit peeved when he got here and found out what I wanted him to do. And why. Somehow I doubted he’d be anxious to play the white knight and rescue those little girls. In fact, he’d probably blow a gasket when he found out what I’d been up to.
For all his many faults, I didn’t think Raphael would like the idea of any harm coming to those children. His moral compass was severely bent, but I didn’t believe it was completely broken. However, he would consider protecting Lugh a higher priority, and making any attempt to rescue the children was bound to put Lugh in some kind of danger. I just had to get him to break that door down before he knew why I wanted him to.