She went to the kitchen and stood by the phone. Call who? The police? The hospital? What would they say when she told them she had been home almost five minutes and couldn’t find her husband? They would tell her to wait. They wouldn’t understand that Effrom had to be here. He couldn’t be anywhere else.
She would call her granddaughter. Jenny would know what to do. She would understand.
Amanda took a deep breath and dialed the number. A machine answered the phone. She stood there waiting for the beep. When it came, she tried to keep her voice controlled, “Jenny, honey, this is Grandma, call me. I can’t find your grandfather.” Then she hung up and began sobbing.
The phone rang and Amanda jumped back. She picked it up before the second ring.
“Hello?”
“Oh, good, you’re home.” It was a woman’s voice. “Mrs. Elliot, you’ve probably seen the bullet hole in your bedroom door. Don’t be frightened. If you listen carefully and follow my instructions, everything will be fine.”
26
TRAVIS’S STORY
Augustus Brine sat in one of the big leather chairs in front of his fireplace, drinking red wine from a balloon goblet and puffing away on his meerschaum. He had promised himself that he would have only one glass of wine, just to take the edge off the adrenaline and caffeine jangle he had worked himself into during the kidnapping. Now he was on his third glass and the wine had infused him with a warm, oozy feeling; he let his mind drift in a dreamy vertigo before attacking the task at hand: interrogating the demonkeeper.
The fellow looked harmless enough, propped up and tied to the other wing chair. But if Gian Hen Gian was to be believed, this dark young man was the most dangerous human on Earth.
Brine considered washing up before waking the demonkeeper. He had caught a glimpse of himself in the bathroom mirror — his beard and clothing covered with flour and soot, his skin caked with sweat-streaked goo — and decided that he would make a more intimidating impression in his current condition. He had found the smelling salts in the medicine cabinet and sent Gian Hen Gian to the bathroom to bathe while he rested. Actually he wanted the Djinn out of the room while he questioned the demonkeeper. The Djinn’s curses and ravings would only complicate an already difficult task.
Brine set his wineglass and his pipe on the end table and picked up a cotton-wrapped smelling-salt capsule. He leaned over to the demonkeeper and snapped the capsule under his nose. For a moment nothing happened, and Brine feared that he had hit him too hard, then the demonkeeper started coughing, looked at Brine, and screamed.
“Calm down — you’re all right,” Brine said.
“Catch, help me!” The demonkeeper struggled against his bonds. Brine picked up his pipe and lit it, affecting a bored nonchalance. After a moment the demonkeeper settled down.
Brine blew a thin stream of smoke into the air between them. “Catch isn’t here. You’re on your own.”
Travis seemed to forget that he had been beaten, kidnapped, and tied up. His concentration was focused on Brine’s last statement. “What do you mean, Catch isn’t here? You know about Catch?”
Brine considered giving him the I’m-asking-the-questions-here line that he had heard so many times in detective movies, but upon reflection, it seemed silly. He wasn’t a hardass; why play the role? “Yes, I know about the demon. I know that he eats people, and I know you are his master.”
“How do you know all that?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Brine said. “I also know that you’ve lost control of Catch.”
“I have?” Travis seemed genuinely shaken by this. “Look, I don’t know who you are, but you can’t keep me here. If Catch is out of control again, I’m the only one that can stop him. I’m really close to ending all this; you can’t stop me now.”
“Why should you care?”
“What do you mean, why should I care? You might know about Catch, but you can’t imagine what he’s like when he’s out of control.”
“What I mean,” Brine said, “is why should you care about the damage he causes? You called him up, didn’t you? You send him out to kill, don’t you?”
Travis shook his head violently. “You don’t understand. I’m not what you think. I never wanted this, and now I have a chance to stop it. Let me go. I can end it.”
“Why should I trust you? You’re a murderer.”
“No. Catch is.”
“What’s the difference? If I do let you go, it will be because you will have told me what I want to know, and how I can use that information. Now I’ll listen and you’ll talk.”
“I can’t tell you anything. And you don’t want to know anyway, I promise you.”
“I want to know where the Seal of Solomon is. And I want to know the incantation that sends Catch back. Until I know, you’re not going anywhere.”
“Seal of Solomon? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Look — what is your name, anyway?”
“Travis.”
“Look, Travis,” Brine said, “my associate wants to use torture. I don’t like the idea, but if you jerk me around, torture might be the only way to go.”
“Don’t you have to have two guys to play good cop, bad cop?”
“My associate is taking a bath. I wanted to see if I could reason with you before I let him near you. I really don’t know what he’s capable of… I’m not even sure what he is. So if we could get on with this, it would be better for the both of us.”
“Where’s Jenny?” Travis asked.
“She’s fine. She’s at work.”
“You won’t hurt her?”
“I’m not some kind of terrorist, Travis. I didn’t ask to be involved in this, but I am. I don’t want to hurt you, and I would never hurt Jenny. She’s a friend of mine.”
“So if I tell you what I know, you’ll let me go?”
“That’s the deal. But I’ll have to make sure that what you tell me is true.” Brine relaxed. This young man didn’t seem to have any of the qualities of a mass murderer. If anything, he seemed a little naive.
“Okay, I’ll tell you everything I know about Catch and the incantations, but I swear to you, I don’t know anything about any Seal of Solomon. It’s a pretty strange story.”
“I guessed that,” Brine said. “Shoot.” He poured himself a glass of wine, relit his pipe, and sat back, propping his feet up on the hearth.
“Like I said, it’s a pretty strange story.”
“Strange is my middle name,” Brine said.
“That must have been difficult for you as a child,” Travis said.
“Would you get on with it.”
“You asked for it.” Travis took a deep breath. “I was born in Clarion, Pennsylvania, in the year nineteen hundred.”
“Bullshit,” Brine interrupted. “You’re not a day over twenty-five.”
“This is going to take a lot more time if I have to keep stopping. Just listen — it’ll all fall into place.”
Brine grumbled and nodded for Travis to continue.
“I was born on a farm. My parents were Irish immigrants, black Irish. I was the oldest of six children, two boys and four girls. My parents were staunch Catholics. My mother wanted me to be a priest. She pushed me to study so I could get into seminary. She was working on the local diocese to recommend me while I was still in the womb. When World War I broke out, she begged the bishop to get me into seminary early. Everybody knew it was just a matter of time before America entered the war. My mother wanted me in seminary before the Army could draft me. Boys from secular colleges were already in Europe, driving ambulances, and some of them had been killed. My mother wasn’t going to lose her chance to have a son become a priest to something as insignificant as a world war. You see, my little brother was a bit slow — mentally, I mean. I was my mother’s only chance.”
“So you went to seminary,” Brine interjected. He was becoming impatient with the progress of the story.
“I went in at sixteen, which made me at least four years younger than the other boys. My mother packed me some sandwiches, and I packed myself into a threadbare black suit that was three sizes too small for me and I was on the train to Illinois.
“You have to understand, I didn’t want any part of this stuff with the demon; I really wanted to be a priest. Of all the people I had known as a child, the priest seemed like the only one who had any control over things. The crops could fail, banks could close, people could get sick and die, but the priest and the church were always there, calm and steadfast. And all that mysticism was pretty nifty, too.”
“What about women?” Brine asked. He had resolved himself to hearing an epic, and it seemed as if Travis needed to tell it. Brine found he liked the strange young man, in spite of himself.
“You don’t miss what you’ve never known. I mean I had these urges, but they were sinful, right? I just had to say, ‘Get thee behind me Satan’, and get on with it.”
“That’s the most incredible thing you’ve told me so far,” Brine said. “When I was sixteen, sex seemed like the only reason to go on living.”