Unchained

Chapter 13

Demon slime was toxic, no two ways about it. Ashe thought about bringing a bucketful and dumping it over the lawyer’s head.

They’d had to crawl onto the slime-coated metal stairs and slither down as best they could without breaking their necks. The second- floor exit was too high to jump, and it wasn’t like they had time to pry open one of the other windows. They were all painted shut.

Which meant plenty of exposure to the toxic goo. They’d run straight to the corner gas station to get hosed off. That probably saved their lives, but not their clothes. Even sprayed clean, they smelled like rotten hamburger.

To add insult to injury, clouds had rolled in and it had started to pour by the time they’d gotten back to the SUV. The seats got soaked.

There was no time to change before making her appointment with Bannerman and her in-laws’ lawyer. Stinking like a pig carcass and high on adrenaline, Ashe wasn’t in the mood for high heels and pearls anyway. She was channeling Bruce Willis from Die Hard, and wanted someone to pound.

She made two phone calls en route. One was to Holly, telling her the bookstore was possessed. Without magical backup, Ashe was useless against a demon. Holly said she’d take care of getting an extermination team together right away. In the meantime, she’d send the hounds down to keep the public away from the store.

The other call was long-distance to a hacker Ashe employed from time to time, a guy somewhere in the South operating out of a mobile home. Getting into the land titles database and figuring out who had sold what to whom was a matter of minutes. He confirmed what she’d already guessed: Bannerman had handled the sale of the bookstore when old Mr. Cowan’s estate had been settled. If good old Tony and the demon were one and the same, Bannerman must have known. Sure, demons could pass for human for a while, but sooner or later their real nature came out. Why had he sent Ashe on a mission to search out the demon sliming his walls when he already knew who it was? Why not just ask her to kill it? None of this made sense.

When they parked in front of the lawyer’s office, they were, amazingly enough, only five minutes late. She slammed the Saturn’s door and stalked toward the front door of the skyscraper.

Reynard caught up to her in a few long strides. His face was grim, mouth a thin line of tension. “I know your times are different from mine, but I cannot see that they have changed so much.”

“Which means what?”

“Threats of violence won’t work.” His gray eyes held worry. “Lawyers have courts and judges they can use to fight back.”

Ashe tightened her jaw. “Who says I’m threatening? Threats are just warm-up exercises.” She burst through the door to the foyer, leaving a trail of water behind her. “I can’t believe I hired that goof.”

He grabbed her arm. “You made this appointment because you are fighting to keep your daughter.”

Ashe shrugged herself free. “Yeah, and there’s no way that jerk is going to represent my case for one second more. A lawyer is a weapon. I only use clean weapons.”

She saw the flash of understanding cross his face. “I’m not an idiot, Reynard.”

“You’re angry.”

“Anger is just another tool.”

She jabbed the elevator button. There was a sign on the door saying that Bannerman, Wishart, and Yee had moved offices to the sixth floor during renovations. Maybe Bannerman had actually listened to her advice about evacuating because of the demon slime.

Reynard did stop her from bursting through the office door with all the subtlety of a drug raid. The droid behind the reception desk managed a shocked, “Ms. Carver!” as they barged in, but by then Ashe had a long stake in one hand. The woman’s mouth snapped shut with a gulp.

There wasn’t anyone else in the waiting room, just dim lights and the soft, hypnotic rush of air-conditioning. She had no idea if there were people in the other offices in the suite. The place had that clinical, empty feel of a bad sci-fi movie set.

The receptionist dove for the phone. Ashe grabbed the cord and ripped it out of the wall.

“Cover her,” she ordered Reynard. “If she tries to push any buttons, tie her up.”

Reynard nodded. He was no cleaner than Ashe, his hair fallen loose in a wild mass of wet tendrils. His shirt was plastered to his skin, showing off the muscles beneath. He frowned down at the secretary. Her eyes went wide, but a little speculative. Maybe bondage was her thing. Underneath the scowl, Reynard looked like he was having way too much fun.

Good someone is.

Ashe slammed open Bannerman’s door. He was sitting at the little round conference table that filled one corner of the office. It had four chairs. The second was occupied by a man she assumed was her in- laws’ lawyer.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said brightly.

“Good God, Ms. Carver!” Bannerman exclaimed, falling back in his chair with a look of disgust mingled with fear. His eyes traveled up and down her body again and again, as if staring hard enough would make her disappear.

The other guy just looked confused. “This is your client?”

Ashe advanced on Bannerman like a Valkyrie coming in for the kill. “You know, if you’re going to hide from a demon, it’s going to take more than changing floors in the same building.”

“What are you talking about?” Bannerman cried, looking wildly around.

“You’re up to your ’nads in doo-doo, dude. I went in on a ghostbusting job and, lo and behold, I ended up giving your demon a migraine. The spell wasn’t powerful enough to send it packing, but it got real pissed off.”

“My demon?” Bannerman scoffed.

Okay, so he was going to deny the whole biz in front his colleague. Idiot.

Ashe planted herself on the other side of the table, leaning across it to get in Bannerman’s face. “Yeah, whatcha do, sell it a haunted bookshop? Old Mr. Cowan’s place? Demons really hate ghosts, by the way, one of the few types of entities they can’t control, even if they are a thousand times more powerful. Like mice and elephants. Ghosts make them crazy. Ghostbusting gives them a headache. I bet old Tony didn’t know that when he called for someone to despook his new store. My guess is that he’s not that old, as demons go.”

Bannerman said nothing, but his expression went from shocked to calculating.

Ashe leaned in another inch. “He’s our bad guy, isn’t he? Demons always look so nice when they’re playing human. They’re almost impossible to detect at first.”

“I don’t do business with demons.”

“Of course not,” said the other lawyer. “That would be illegal.”

Ashe detected a note of irony in the other man’s voice. He was young and modishly dressed, with the latest in tech toys arranged before him. “Brent Hashimoto,” he said. “I’m here representing the de Larrochas. Excuse me if I don’t shake. You—um—stink.”

“ ’S okay. I got up close and personal with hellspawn. It’s a smelly business.”

Ashe inched yet closer to Bannerman, who bellowed, “Miss McCormick, call security!”

“She’s tied up,” Ashe said grimly. “Or else she’s begging for it by now.”

Hashimoto sniggered, reaching for his camera phone. Ashe raised the stake, and watched him back off with a shrug.

“Good decision.” She smiled.

She turned back to Bannerman. “Now. You promised me that my custody case would get top-drawer treatment if I got rid of your demon.”

She heard Hashimoto inhale. Good. “I said I’d do my best, but demons aren’t easy to find and they’re very, very hard to kill. Normally they kill you first. But hey, I was willing to at least check it out and see what could be done, for the sake of my daughter.”

She rested the tip of the stake against Bannerman’s chest, making him gasp. “But you, Chuckles, already knew who it was and where it was. All it took was a rummage in the database of the land titles office. It wasn’t hard from there to find out who handled the sale of the estate for Mr. Cowan’s heirs: Bannerman, Wishart, and Yee, Barristers and Solicitors. The place was sold to one Anthony Yarndice. Tony.”

“So?”

Pushing a little on the stake, she leaned over. “Did you think a demon wouldn’t care about a little spook action? Figured he wouldn’t complain, because demons can’t legally hold property to begin with? Figured he’d take the crap property and be grateful?”

Bannerman’s eyelids fluttered, and then he broke as easily as the yoke of a half-cooked egg. “He—it—wanted a store. He got one.”

Hashimoto’s eyebrows shot up. “Seriously? You cut a deal with a demon? I didn’t even know you did real estate.”

Bannerman twitched. “Just a bit of a sideline from wills, divorce settlements, that sort of thing.”

Ashe gave the stake a shove, just enough to dent his skin. “Why, Mr. Bannerman, did you put me needlessly at risk?”

“Risk? Everyone knows how powerful a hunter you are. Your sister killed a demon queen, after all. You have everyone afraid.”

“Who is everyone?”

Bannerman didn’t answer.

Impatient, Ashe tried again. “Why not ask me to simply go exorcise the bookstore owner at Fort and Main?”

Her prey was sweating, rivulets running down his temples. “I couldn’t. I wanted to. I want him gone. I just . . . couldn’t.”

“Easygoing Tony has you running scared, eh?”

“He—it—made it so that I can’t say more.”

“It put you under a compulsion?”

“Yes!”

Ashe swore. Probably the moment Bannerman had started to deal with the demon, old Tony had made the lawyer his unwilling flunky.

Hashimoto looked fascinated. “Did you sell it any other properties?”

Bannerman was turning red. “I can’t say!”

Which meant he had. A negative answer would have been straightforward.

“Where?” Ashe demanded.

Bannerman made a sound between a choke and a quack.

“That’s too obvious,” Hashimoto said, coming out of his seat and around the table. “The demon would have thought of where.” He rubbed his nose, a nervous gesture, but his eyes were alight with an almost gleeful interest. Ashe could picture him in the courtroom, winding up to question a witness.

Hashimoto leaned over Bannerman, his face inches from Ashe’s. “What kind of places did the demon want?”

Bannerman’s eyes flicked from face to face, fear rolling off him like a fog. “A place for its collections.”

Ashe fell back a step, jolted by his words. “Collections?”

Hashimoto looked up. “That mean something to you?”

“Yeah.” The lawyer’s demon, Holly’s client, and the thief who took Reynard’s urn were all the same creature. Reynard was right. Everything was connected, but they were only starting to see the big picture.

Another thought lit up like a neon sign: Hadn’t Holly said collector demons were hoarders? That would explain the congested mess the bookshop had been in.

She fell back another step. But if the demon has more than one property, where’s the urn?

Sound burst from the front office, including the shrill complaint of the receptionist. The door slammed open, Reynard’s shoulders filling the doorway. “Mr. Bannerman’s associates have questions. I thought you would prefer that I didn’t actually maim them.”

The moment Ashe looked away from Bannerman, he launched himself from the chair, knocking Hashimoto aside. He wasn’t a fighter, but he was heavy. Distracted, Ashe didn’t see the tackle until he grabbed her. She dropped the stake to avoid driving it into his gut. After all, she hadn’t really meant to kill him.

But he bowled her over until her head smacked on the edge of the desk. She went down, ears ringing. Then, for a split second, everything went black.

Damn!

Bannerman’s weight shifted away and she heard Reynard ordering people around. He had that tone that made people pay attention. After a struggle, Ashe blinked her eyes open, feeling queasy. Bannerman’s voice drifted from the front office, full of anger, but she couldn’t focus on the words.

She sat up carefully. She wondered how much time had passed, because now she was alone in the office except for Hashimoto. He held out a paper cup, the type that came from a watercooler. His dark eyes looked worried. “Drink this.”

What does hitting your head have to do with being thirsty? She drank the water anyway and gave him back the cup. Gripping the edge of the desk, she got to her feet.

Reynard came back in and closed the office door to shut out the noise. He put a hand on her arm. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah. Thanks for dealing with the natives.”

He looked satisfied with himself, and the smile he gave her was pure deviltry. “The senior partner assures me there will be no legal action against you for assaulting their colleague. Bannerman’s poor judgment in clientele is enough of an embarrassment to the firm for them to keep this altercation quiet.”

“That’s the best news I’ve heard so far today.” She took his hand, squeezing it and wishing they were alone so she could kiss him. “Guess I need a new lawyer, though.”

“Not necessarily,” said Hashimoto. “Custody settlements can be mediated.”

Ashe squinted at him. For a moment she’d forgotten he was there. “What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “If both parties agree, a mediator can help them come to an arrangement without going to court. It takes conflict off the table and focuses on a plan everyone can live with.”

Ashe opened her mouth to speak, but Hashimoto held up a hand. “I know this isn’t the time to talk, but let me say this much. The de Larrochas don’t like your lifestyle, but they’re more upset about not getting to see their granddaughter because she’s not in Spain anymore. If you cut them a deal on visitation, I think they’d back off on the unfit-mother routine.”

A ping of surprise made her frown. “I never said they couldn’t see Eden. I just want her living with me.”

Hashimoto handed Ashe his card. “I can’t see how an adversarial court case is going to help either of you. As for you, Ms. Carver, you’ve got too many strikes against you as far as a traditional judge is concerned.”

Ain’t that the truth. I nearly staked my attorney.

He bobbed the card in the air, urging her to take it. “Call me if you want to talk about alternatives. Mediation isn’t necessarily a walk in the park, but it’s your best option.”

Ashe took it. “Aren’t you doing yourself out of a job?”

“I’ve mediated for clients before, and I’d rather have a reputation as a problem solver than a shark. Plus, I’ve wanted to kick Bannerman’s ass for years.” He gave a toothy smile that made him look a lot less sophisticated. “I’d have paid to see that.”

Ashe put his number in her pocket. “Thanks.”

“Nah,” he said, packing up his slim attaché case, “the pleasure was entirely mine.”

Hashimoto gave a casual salute and left the office.