Demon Demon Burning Bright, Whisperings book four (2 page)

“He asked me if I would listen, and obey,
and I agreed. But my sight blurred, my heart thundered when he
instructed me.” Royal’s voice rose slightly on a note of anguish.
“What choice did I have? Obedience to the Burning Man is drummed
into our heads and hearts.

“After that day I struggled to maintain my
role, the otherworldy lover of a human woman. You cannot imagine
how difficult it was, to smile and laugh, and love, as if I had no
care in the world. As if we would go on forever. I cherished each
moment we were together for I knew the end approached. She would go
beyond me to where I could not follow. She would no longer want me.
Orcus told me this and he was never wrong. It was as if my heart
thrust through my ribs.

“My phone woke me in the middle of the
night. An encoded text from Lord Lawrence.” A slight, fond smile
replaced his agonized expression. “That boy will make a fine High
Lord one day.

“I watched Tiff as she slept and decided not
to wake her. I could not lie to her again, I could not tell her the
truth, so I left.” He fell silent for a moment, before continuing
with evident distaste. “Orcus, feared and revered throughout our
world. Had I known. . . .

“I could not let her fall into his clutches.
So I went to him.”

“As I know to my cost,” Chris said wryly. He
looked at Royal with slit eyes. “What
did
you hope to
accomplish?”

“I approached Lawrence first, but a monarch
is never alone. His valet sleeps in his suite at night; his guard
stands fast outside his door and accompanies him through the day
apart from when he is with his advisors. He looked alarmed when I
presented myself. I think he feared I would publicly ask him about
his text. I made a pretense of a social visit to the Court, and
texted him when I left to say I would ply my trade and investigate
Orcus. I thought if I could gain admittance to his lair. . . .”

CHAPTER ONE

“
Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all
the way
- ”

I punched another station.

“
We wish you a Merry Christmas! We wish
you a Merry Christmas. We wish you a Merry Christmas and
a
- ”

Good grief.
Couldn’t a single radio
station play anything but Christmas carols? I viciously clicked off
the radio.

I brought my green Nissan Xterra Pro-4X to a
slithering stop, hauled my butt out, slammed the door and trudged
through the snow to the front of the plant. Alone on the hill, the
hulking place loomed against the backdrop of the western desert.
The windows had blown out and flame-blackened bricks surrounded
gaping holes. Part of the roof had caved.

Artie beckoned me from inside the loading
bay, a shape made hazy by the pale afternoon sun. “Come on,
then!”

Fire Marshal Withers handed me a pink
hardhat. Pink? Grimacing, I settled it on my head. “Do I need
this?”

“No, but them’s the rules.” He indicated the
open bay doors. “Stay on the ground floor, don’t go poking around
and you’ll be fine.”

Officer Yales gave me a nod, but didn’t
suggest accompanying me. Clarion PD knew better.

I nodded and walked up the sloping ramp into
what remained of the plant and stood in the half-gloom, sinuses
assaulted by the unmistakable reek of burned timber, sodden ash and
melted plastic. Part of the second floor had collapsed. I looked up
at the jagged hole in the roof where the blackened bones of charred
rafters punctured the sky. Melted snow from the heavy fall last
night still dripped from the rafters and puddled on the floor. The
interior was a chaotic mess. I couldn’t identify anything except
the huge, fire-blackened furnaces.

Waiting for me, Star and Jerry stood with
Artie.

Her mother called her Star, her bright one,
her light in a dark night. Unfortunately, mom had a thing for
babies, but no patience when they grew older. She kicked Star out
the house when the girl was thirteen. Star died in the factory at
nineteen.

Jerry had five siblings and a divorced
mother who worked two jobs to provide for her children. He
graduated from Clarion High and hired on at the factory, proud to
contribute a meager wage to the family’s upkeep. He died in the
basement a month before his nineteenth birthday.

The site has an interesting if macabre
history. A sugar factory stood here until it burned down in 1889.
Walther and Sons built a smelting plant on the site in 1902.
According to the newspaper archives, one of Asher Walther’s
grandsons had a mental breakdown in 1951. The plant’s din covered
the noise he made as he chained and padlocked the back and front
exits. He tossed Molotov cocktails through four windows as the
night shift signed off. Most employees escaped through other
windows.

Star and Jerry were in the basement locker
rooms, primping for Friday night fun, readying to join their
friends and cruise the ‘Vard, then hang together at Fuzzie’s Drive
Thru. Artie worked as night custodian. He went to the basement to
chivvy Star and Jerry so he could lock up the building. Fire
engulfed the perimeter of the ground floor, smoke choked the air
when they came up. They might have stood a chance had they gone
back down to the basement and sealed the door. They died of smoke
inhalation.

Arthur Winegar is in his sixties, a
pale-skinned, bald old geezer in threadbare gray dungarees and a
cloth cap. He feels responsible, so tries to mother the youngsters,
but you cannot tell a dead person to wrap up in cold weather or
remember to wash behind their ears. He was born into another era,
so his mothering consists of gruffly telling them to respect their
elders, mind their manners and watch their tongues. He means well,
but Star and Jerry laugh at him.

I get a kick out of seeing Star and Jerry in
their fifties finery. Star wears a tight, white pencil skirt, pink
sweater worn backward so the buttons fasten down her spine, black
ballet slippers and dainty white socks. Her shining black hair has
a pronounced pouf where it meets her shoulders and brows above
dark-blue eyes are delicately filled in with black pencil. Jerry
looks smart in tailored tan slacks, a cream sweater vest and brown
suede shoes. His bright auburn hair stands up in a lacquered wave,
freckles spatter his nose and cheeks and he habitually fingers the
ends of his sparse sideburns.

I wondered how Artie, Jerry and Star would
take to having the fire-blackened ruins razed and replaced with a
brand spanking new manufacturing plant when the Humphries family
built it three years ago. They were delighted. They were every
employee’s unseen family, relishing their triumphs and pleasures,
mourning their failures and losses, delighting in the gossip.

Unlike Artie, Jerry and Star are not stuck
in the Fifties. They wholeheartedly embraced the twenty-first
century and enthusiastically discuss what they hear about sex, TV
and movie stars. Artie mourns the days of his youth when men were
men and youngsters called you sir. He threatens to wash their
mouths out with soap and water, which of course sends them into
gales of laughter.

Now it was gone. Three fires destroyed three
factories.

My friends will not have to wait long till
they pass over. Peter Walther pleaded temporary insanity so escaped
the death penalty, but his family declared him incapable of caring
for himself and admitted him to an expensive, discrete sanatorium
in Colorado. He’s ninety-eight now; he won’t last much longer. When
he goes on his way, so do my spectral buddies.

But they were going to moan like the devil
now they’d lost their “friends,” the plant’s eighty-two
ex-employees.

Artie jabbed his hand at me. “You took your
time.”

“Told you she’d come, though, didn’t I,”
said Jerry.

I peered into the depths again. “Where are
they?”

Artie cocked his thumb at the west wall. I
spotted them in the gloom, a nude man and two nude women sitting on
the floor of what was once an office.

Clarion PD neglected to tell me the victims
were naked.

The fire was arson and killed young Will
Humphries and two employees. Clarion PD asked me if I could
discover who lit the fire and killed Selene Humphries’ son. I told
them I possibly could.

Will, Janice Stacey and Velma Torrence
should not have been in the plant. Definitely not in their birthday
suits. The fire did not touch them; in the manner of my old
friends, they died of smoke inhalation. Smut faintly filmed their
skin and hair. They lay face down on the floor as they drew in
their last breath of air.

I picked my way over a collapsed girder and
a mess of unidentifiable debris between me and the office. They
stood when they noticed me, their postures awkward and Will
fidgeted his hands, then dropped them to cover his groin.

A scrawny little dude with spindly limbs and
rounded shoulders, Will stood shorter than the girls. He turned his
head away and stuck his nose in the air. A little on the heavy side
and in her late thirties, Velma kept trying to drag her long,
straight, red-brown hair down to cover breasts which were already
beginning to sag. Her green eyes would not meet mine. Janice wore
her ash-blond hair shoulder-length and curled, but her eyebrows
were brown, as were her eyes. She had a pouting mouth and cheeks
round as apples. Mascara ran down her cheeks. She wept as she
died.

“Will,” I said. “Janice. Velma.”

They didn’t ask the usual questions:
what
happened, why am I here?
Artie already told them what they
needed to know about their situation, and about me.

Knowing they were alive when ash filled the
air gave me a sick feeling. They were terrified, trapped back here
by the smoke and flames.

“Did you see who did this?”

Velma took a step toward me. “It was - ”

Will’s head whipped up and he snapped, “Be
quiet!”

Velma flinched.

They knew who killed them, but Will wanted
to keep it quiet? Hm. I don’t welcome visions of a shade’s last
moment, but one would be handy right about now.

Ignoring Will, I spoke to the girls. “You
can tell me and he can’t do one damned thing about it.”

“I can make their lives miserable,” said
Will.

My eyes dropped to his shriveled genitalia.
“Yeah, I see how the scenery could get on their nerves. But you’re
gonna be stuck here together for a good long time even if your
killer gets the death sentence. You know how the justice system
works. It’ll be easier if you get along. Be nice to each
other.”

“Yeah, him and Jerry can compare freckles.”
Star came to stand beside me. “I’ll tell you.”

“You shut up, bitch,” Will yelled across the
intervening space, except the yell came out a hoarse whisper.

“Yeah? And what you gonna do if I don’t,
darlin’?”

“I’ll . . . I’ll. . . .” Will
spluttered.

Star folded her arms. “You think your whores
would want anything to do with you if you weren’t the owner’s
son?”

“I’m not a whore,” Velma wailed.

“Shut up, tramp.”

“Keep a civil tongue in your head, young
lady,” from Artie.

“That’s what they called her sort in my
days,” Star retorted.

Aha. Now I knew how Will and the girls came
to be here late at night after the plant closed.

“You’re nothing but a pathetic weed,” Star
told Will coolly.

I didn’t think Will’s personality attracted
the two factory girls and he was not much in the way of looks. Star
had him nailed - stick him in a lawn with the other dandelions and
he’d be hard to spot. Either they sucked up to the boss’ son, or
Will browbeat them into their little after-hours romp.

“Star, if you know who did this, why am I in
here talking to them?” I waved at the naked threesome. “You could
have told me when I arrived.”

She shrugged. “That’d be no fun. You’d be in
and out like a shot.”

I could be on my way home instead of faced
with Will’s bony body and limp member. But I understood. Star,
Jerry and Artie lost their link to the outside world when the plant
burned and subsequently closed. I was all they had for now and they
would keep me here as long as possible.

“I am mortified,” Velma said, sounding so as
she stared at Artie, Star and Jerry. “They watched us and they’ll
never let us forget.” She waved one hand at Star. “I know
she
won’t.”

“Dead to rights, you little tart,” Star
said.

Artie threw his hands in the air.

“Stop it,” Janice said. She turned to Will.
“Why are you defending him? He killed you.”

“He didn’t know I was here!”

“He knows now. If he’s suffering over your
death, it’s not enough for me. I want him to pay.” She nodded at
the front of the plant. “He parked out front. I thought Will was
gonna shit a brick. But his dad stayed outside.”

Officer Yales didn’t ask me to make a
statement down at the PD. I inwardly chuckled at the notion. A
woman who sees ghosts is told by one that the owner’s husband
started the fire which burned their plant and unknowingly killed
his son? Oh yeah, that would look good on paper.

Was Selene involved? If you rule out
mischief, revenge and plain stupidity, the motive for arson is
usually money. Maybe the Humphries were in financial difficulties
and wanted the insurance payout.

Now they’d lost the one thing which really
mattered to them.

Clarion PD would pursue my “lead.” And they
would nab Harmon Humphries. He claimed to be out of the country
when the plant burned and proving he was not should be easy
enough.

Walking away from the plant, I smiled. I
couldn’t be at Clarion PD’s beck and call now, I had my own cases
to pursue, but I enjoyed involvement in an official police case now
and then, just like the old days. And I silently gloated when they
came to me for help because a case stymied them.