“It’s true that I don’t advertise, in the usual sense,” Quincey Morris told him. “But people who want my services usually manage to get in touch, sooner or later — as you have, your own self.” Although there was a Southwestern twang to Morris’s speech, it was muted — the inflection of a native Texan who has spent much of his time outside the Lone Star State.
“I would really have preferred sooner,” Stone said tightly. “As it is, I’m almost … almost out of time.”
Morris looked at the man sitting on his sofa more closely. Trevor Stone appeared to be in his mid-thirties. He was blond, clean-shaven, and wearing a suit that looked custom made. There was a sheen of perspiration on the man’s thin face, although the air conditioning in Morris’s living room kept the place comfortably cool — anyone spending a summer in Austin, Texas without air conditioning is either desperately poor or incurably insane.
Morris thought the man’s sweat might be due to either illness or fear. Time to find out which. “Pardon me for asking, but are you unwell?”
Stone gave a bark of unpleasant laughter. “Oh, no, I’m fine. The picture of health, and likely to remain so for another” — he glanced at the gold Patek Philippe on his wrist — “two hours and twenty-eight minutes.”
Fear, then.
Morris kept his face expressionless as he said, “That would bring us to midnight. What happens then?”
Stone was silent for a few seconds. “You ever play Monopoly, Mister Morris?”
“When I was a kid, sure.”
“So, imagine a nightmare where you land on Community Chest, and draw the worst Monopoly card of all time — Go to Hell. Go directly to Hell. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.”
It was Morris’s turn for silence. He finally broke it by saying, “Tell me. All of it.”
The first part of Trevor Stone’s story was unexceptional. A software engineer by training, he had gone to work in Silicon Valley after graduation from Cal Tech. Soon, he had made enough money out of the Internet boom to start up his own dot-com company with a couple of college buddies. They all made out like bandits — until the bottom fell out in the late nineties, taking most of the dot-commers with it.
That was how, Trevor Stone said, he had found himself sitting alone in one of his company’s deserted offices that afternoon — bankrupt and broke, under threat of lawsuits from his former partners and of divorce from his wife. He was just wondering if his life insurance had a suicide clause when a strange man appeared, and changed everything.
“I never heard him come in,” Stone said to Morris. “Which was kind of weird, because the place was so quiet, I swear you could have heard a mouse fart. But suddenly, there he is, standing in my office door.
“I look at him and I say, ‘Buddy, if you’re selling something, have you ever come to the wrong fucking place.’ And he gives me this funny little smile and says something like, ‘I suppose you might consider me a salesman of a sort, Mister Stone. As to whether I am in the wrong place, why don’t we determine that later?’”
“What did he look like?” Morris asked.
“Little guy, couldn’t have been more than five foot five. Had a goatee on him, jet black. Can’t vouch for the rest of his hair, because he kept his hat on the whole time, one of those Homburg things, which I didn’t think anybody wore anymore. Nice suit, three-piece, with a bow tie — not a clip-on, but one of those that you tie yourself.”
“Did he give you a name?”
“He said it was Dunjee. What’s that — Scottish?”
“Maybe.” Morris’s voice held no inflection at all. “Could be any number of things.” After a moment he said, “So, what did this little man want with you?”
“Well, this is one of those guys who take forever to get to the point, but what it finally came down to is that he wants me to play ‘Let’s Make a Deal.’”
Morris nodded. “And what was he offering?”
“A way out. A change in my luck. An end to my problems, and a return to the kind of life I’d had before.”
“I see. And your part of the bargain involved…”
“Nothing much.” Another bitter laugh. “Just my soul.”
“Doesn’t sound like a very good deal to me,” Morris said gently.
“I thought it was just a joke, man!” Stone stood up and started pacing the room nervously. “I was only listening to the guy because I had nothing else to do, and it gave me something to think about besides slitting my wrists.”
Morris nodded again. “I assume there were … terms.”
“Yeah, sure. Ten years of success. Ten years, back on top of the world, right where I liked it. Then, at the end of that time, Dunjee says, he’ll be back. To collect.”
“And your ten years is up tonight, I gather.”
“At midnight, right. That’s actually a few hours over ten years, since it’s the middle of the afternoon when I talk to him, that day. But he says he wants to ‘preserve the traditions.’ So, midnight it is.”
“Did he have you sign a contract?”
“Yeah.”
“Something on old parchment, maybe, smelling of brimstone?”
“No, nothing like that. He says he’s got the template on a disk in his pocket. We were all still using disks, back then. He asks to use my PC to fill in the specifics, so I let him. Then he prints out a copy, and I sign it.”
“In blood?”
“Nah, he says I can use my pen. But then, once I’ve signed, he comes up with one of those little syrettes they use in labs, still in the sterile wrapper, and everything. Dunjee says he needs three drops of blood from one of my fingers. What the fuck, I’ve played along this far, so I say okay, and he sticks my left index finger, and lets three drops fall onto the contract, right over my signature.”
“Then what happened?”
“He says he’ll see me in ten years plus a few hours, and walks out. I tell myself the whole thing’s gonna make a great story to tell my friends, assuming I have any friends left.”
“You felt it was all just an elaborate charade.”
“Of course I did. I wouldn’t have been surprised if one of my former partners had sent the little bastard, just to mess with my head. I mean, deals with the devil — come on!”
Morris leaned forward in his chair. “But now you feel differently.”
“Well … yeah. Yeah, I do.”
“Why? What changed your mind?”
Stone flopped back onto the sofa. “Because it fucking worked, that’s why. My luck changed. Everything turned around. Everything. My partners dropped their lawsuits, some former clients who still owed me money decided to pay up, a guy from Microsoft called with an offer to buy a couple of my software patents, my wife and I got back together — six months later, it was like my life had done a complete one-eighty.”
“So you decided that your good fortune meant that your bargain with the Infernal must have been real, after all.”
“Yeah, eventually. It took me a long, long time to finally admit the possibility. Denial is not just a river in Egypt, you know what I mean?”
“I do, for sure.”
“But the bill comes due at midnight, and I’m scared, man. I have to admit now that I am really, big-time terrified. Can you help me, Mister Morris? I mean, I can pay whatever you want. Money’s not a problem.” Stone snorted in disgust. “Money’s the least of my problems.”
“Well, I’m not sure what—”
“Look, you’re some kind of hotshot occult investigator, right? There’s a story about a bunch of vampires, supposed to have taken over some little Texas town.” Stone stopped, and sat studying the palm of one hand for several seconds. “Vampires. Jesus.” He shook his head a couple of times, slowly. “I didn’t use to believe in vampires — but then, I didn’t use to believe in demons, either. The dude who told me about that Texas business, a guy I’ve known and trusted for years, said you took care of it in, like, four days flat.”