Personal Demon

LUCAS: 9

“I CANNOT BELIEVE I FORGOT-” I strode into my father’s bedroom. “It’s accessed through the bedroom. Where, I don’t know. But surely it’s equipped with a method of communicating with the outside world. He should have been able to call for help.”

I walked around the walls, lifting paintings, mirrors, anything that could conceal a panel. Or would it be as small as a latch? I crouched at the dressing table and began examining the underside.

“Um, the door can’t be in here,” Paige said.

I turned sharply, irritated in spite of myself. “It is. He said it was accessed through the bedroom.”

“The bedroom? Or the bedroom suite? Because there’s no way there’s a hidden room behind any of these walls, Lucas.”

Two sides were exterior walls, the third ran the length of the adjoining bath and the fourth was the length of Troy’s sleeping quarters. Not enough space for a panic closet, much less a room.

I cursed. Thinking before I acted. That had never been a problem before.

Paige was already in the bathroom, mentally taking measurements. She pulled open the door to the walk-in closet. A flick of the light and “Yes! Here, the east wall. Behind it is the kitchen, but there’s plenty of room-”

She stopped, looking down. A sharp inhalation, then she disappeared into the closet, moving fast. I hurried to the doorway.

The closet was in disarray. Someone had haphazardly yanked clothing off hangers, dumped shoes on the floor.

I remembered what Hope had said. A voice, asking how to get into “the room.” The panic room.

Paige was pushing aside hangers, frantically hunting for the door. A stifled gasp. She lifted fingers smeared with blood. There, on the sleeve of a gray suit coat, was a bloody handprint. And at Paige’s feet, a stain on the carpet. More blood smears crossed to the door and likely continued outside, where the dark wood in the bedroom and black marble in the bath had hidden the traces.

Finally, I found the trigger-several buttons recessed into the rear of the lower clothing rod. Those buttons would need to be pressed in sequence. An access code. Perfectly logical-why have a panic room if anyone can get in-but how would I get in? My father was inside, too injured to call for help, and I was stuck out here, pressing the damned buttons-

Call the Cabal.

I was lifting my phone when the rack moved with a hydraulic whoosh. Paige stumbled back out of the way. Before I could get around the door to see within, I heard my father’s voice, starting a spell.

“Papá!”

I swung around the door and pulled up short. He stood there, his shirt front covered with blood. His lips moved, but I could hear nothing, could only see the blood.

Damn it, move! Help him! He needs first aid, an ambulance…

I couldn’t budge, brain insisting this was impossible. Paige rushed past me and past my father. I opened my mouth to call her back, then saw a body lying in a pool of blood. Troy.

As she dropped beside him, I strode to my father, finding my voice at last.

“Are you okay? There’s blood-”

“It’s Troy’s. I’m fine.”

I saw my cell phone still in my hand and lifted it. “Have you called-?”

He took it from me, fingers flying over the keypad. I knelt beside Paige. Troy had been shot in the chest and was unconscious. Blood soaked his shirt. There were more bloodied clothes on the floor, where my father must have tried to stanch the flow.

Paige was ripping off Troy’s shirt. I leaned in to help.

I could see the shot now, an exit wound just below his heart. There was so much blood…

My father bent beside Paige. “What can I do?”

She asked him to bring cold cloths.

A minute later, he returned with wet towels. “The ambulance should be here in five minutes. This damned room…”

“Built before the cellular age,” I murmured as I cleaned the blood from Troy’s chest, looking for other injuries. “And never tested for reception later, because it had a land line. But a land line can be cut.”

He nodded. “When the guards didn’t call the office for their hourly check-in, the security office would have been alerted. It always seemed that would be fast enough…”

Unless you had a man dying on the floor, and the gunman possibly right outside the door.

My father mopped Troy’s brow, then looked at Paige. “Is he as bad as-?”

He stopped and shook his head, realizing he didn’t want an answer. Troy was too pale. His breathing was too shallow. As skilled as Paige and I were at first aid, this was beyond us.

“He was talking to someone,” my father said after a moment. “I was in my room. I couldn’t make out who he was talking to, but nothing seemed to be wrong, and I thought it was you, that I’d misunderstood and you were already on your way when you phoned. I was heading to the door when Troy walked in. That startled me-he didn’t knock first. I think he knew something was wrong and was trying to warn me, but as he walked through that door-”

My father blinked. No outward sign of emotion, but that blink told me everything, as did the slight catch in his voice. “They shot him in the back. He tried to tell me something, but he passed out before he hit the floor. I managed to get the door closed and cast a barrier spell. I should have looked first, seen who-” He shook his head. “All I could think about was getting him into this room and calling for help. Then, too late, I realized I couldn’t.” A pause, then he looked up sharply. “The ambulance. It’ll be here any minute. You should-”

“I’ll open the gates,” I said as I got to my feet.

“Hope and Karl,” Paige called after me. “They’ll be-”

“I’ll call them.”

KARL WAS AT the front door, trying to find a way in after discovering that the outside guards were dead. Had he attempted to break a window, he or Hope could have been seriously injured by the protection spell. I should have warned him about that. Another unacceptable oversight.

Who had been on duty tonight? I almost certainly knew them, had talked to them, inquired after their families, who would be expecting them home in a few hours…

I shook it off and told Karl and Hope about my father, pointing them to the panic room, then opened the gates. I was partway up the drive when the ambulance arrived. I climbed in and updated them on the situation.

As the paramedics and I got close to the panic room, I heard Karl and my father arguing, and broke into a run.