Chapter Three
Hell House Client Brief: We still have a milkman. Don't ask. Don't drink the milk.
Shepherd woke up from a sound sleep to a slow chill that crawled through his chest and the faint, unmistakable smell of rotting meat. He yawned wide enough to crack his jaw and scrubbed the sleep out of his eyes as he glanced over at the nightstand.
“Shit!” he blurted out in surprise. The old-fashioned clock radio looked back at him: nearly nine o’clock. “Fuck, I’m late.”
He threw the sheets back and scrambled out of bed.
The morning air was cold on his skin as he pulled his clothes on.
At least it didn’t take him long to pick them out.
If nothing else, the cult had taught him the utility of uniformity.
He owned three pairs of cargo shorts and a week’s worth of T-shirts, but anyone without his wardrobe actually in their hands would be hard-pressed to prove it.
As he combed his fingers through his hair, he glanced over at the bed. Shithead wasn’t in her usual position on the pillows. Shepherd paused for a second in surprise and then remembered the muffled thud that had accompanied the flap of bedclothes being thrown about.
He checked through the bed and then got down on his hands and knees to look under it. Shithead couldn’t look back at him—her eyelids were weighted to close automatically—but he could feel the seething malice.
“Look,” he said as he reached under to grab her by the head.
“I’m sorry, but you know an oppressive, unfriendly presence that observes me while I’m helpless is very soothing.
If you want to watch me sleep, you need to let me know so I can set an alarm.
Otherwise my night terrors don’t wake me up, and now we’re both going to be off-schedule all day. ”
He plunked Shithead down on the nightstand. Her eyes clicked open. Age had bleached most of the color out of the glass orbs, leaving them milky-blind with a pinprick dot of a pupil. Her disgust with that suggestion was palpable.
Shepherd shrugged.
“Look, keep it up if you want,” he said. “God loves a trier. Maybe not you, but in theory.”
The smell of sour meat had warmed. Shepherd could taste it in the back of his throat. He gave Shithead a pat on the head, the dry stubble of wheat-blonde curls rough against his palm.
“Tell you what,” he said. “You stay out of trouble until I’ve got the books calmed down, and I’ll let you have coffee with breakfast. Even though you aren’t meant to. Deal?”
Shepherd waited.
Shithead gave him nothing.
He squinted at her for a beat and then shrugged.
Whatever. She’d play along. She loved coffee. Besides, there was only so much trouble she could get into as long as he kept her 500 feet away from a church, school, or pickleball tournament.
“Coffee, with cream,” he tossed over his shoulder as he headed for the door. “Final offer.”
The books on Dio Madden’s shelves whispered to Shepherd as he worked. They whispered of power and influence and dark delights that he could not— yet—even imagine in paper-dry murmurs.
“Yeah,” Shepherd said as he plucked the Sour Taste of Honey from a Dead Man off the shelf.
The binding was warm and velvety as he flipped it over to wipe the bloody sweat that accumulated in the Witching Hour off the pages.
“Don’t get me wrong, I would. Definitely. I am technically married, though.”
The books tittered at him.
He stopped mid-wipe and gave them a disapproving look.
“OK, so I’m not book-hot. But if you were incarnate supernatural things?
You’d be all over me. This?” He waved his hand from shoulder to mid-thigh to indicate the wares.
Most supernatural creatures didn’t care about anything below the knee or above the jaw unless it was being BBQ’d.
“This is gentrification in motion. I am prime meat real estate.”
He flicked the last of the red sweat from the spine of the book and turned it upside down to give it a quick shake. A lightly chewed mouse tail fell out and thumped on the floor. He looked at it. He looked at the book.
“I hope that was a snack and not a bookmark,” he said, as he slid Sour Taste back into its spot. It was hard to explain how a book could shrug, but it managed it.
The smell of rancid meat had faded. It smelled less like a slaughterhouse about to be condemned and more like a mouse had died under the floorboards (or, in a book). Shepherd had just started to dust the edges of a sickly compendium with dried blood when he heard a distant, tinny ding-dong.
He stopped mid-sprinkle and cocked his head to the side, mentally running through the checklist of ‘aberrations to be aware of’ that had been in the service packet.
For one of these jobs, it was relatively short.
The Hell House was an easy keeper; as long as everything was kept fed and teenager-free, it was fine.
The ding-dong echoed through the house again.
Shepherd gave the books a baffled look. Then he swore under his breath as the penny dropped.
It was the doorbell.
He gave himself the mental equivalent of a slap to the forehead.
It hadn’t even occurred to him. He’d been doing this job too long.
The whole concept of a ‘doorbell’ had apparently completely slipped his mind.
An eerie, slow rap at the door, even at this unexpectedly seemly hour?
Sure. But the tinny, electronic chime had triggered no associations for him.
He capped the blood powder—didn’t want the healthy books getting into that and over-indulging—and shoved the ailing tome back onto the shelf. As he turned to go, the few untended books rustled threats at him.
“Don’t start with me,” Shepherd warned them as he peeled the apron off over his head. “I’ll be back when I’ve dealt with this, but if you play up…you know where you go.”
He pointed to the naughty shelf.
It was a row of entirely mundane paperbacks, dog-eared and well-thumbed, that he’d picked up at various thrift stores and charity shops over the years.
Danielle Steel, Enid Blyton, and a handful of old Point Horrors.
A particularly intractable tome of foul knowledge had been shelved right in the middle of them two days ago. It looked embarrassed by the company.
The shelved books audibly clamped their covers tighter at the threat.
Shepherd left them to think about it as he loped down the stairs. He passed Shithead perched on a side table in the hall, propped up against an antique banker’s lamp. She looked accusing.
“I said with breakfast,” Shepherd told her on the way past. She glared with implacable malice. “Chores come first. You know that.”
Cults were, perhaps surprisingly, a good place to pick up a solid work ethic.
Shepherd paused on the doormat, straightened his shoulders, and put on his best ‘nothing to see here, Federal Officer/Tax Man/CPS’ bland smile. He opened the door, mouth open to refuse cookies or services, and was flustered into silence by a strange, hot man grinning at him and grabbing his hand.
“Hey, you must be Dio’s house-sitter,” the tall, auburn-haired man said, as he shook Shepherd’s hand enthusiastically.
For no particular reason, Shepherd wondered idly if he was as ‘all-in’ when it came to his approach to cocks.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to get here. You must be wanting to hit the road?”
He said it with confidence…and from inside the house.
Shepherd gawped at the empty space where his intruder had been, his hand still limply extended like…OK, mind out of the gutter. He took his hand back and turned around.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Who are you and what are you talking about?”
The man looked even taller inside. It was disconcerting.
He had his hands in his pockets as he leaned forward to look at the signature of one of the paintings in the hall.
The writhing, naked horrors depicted in thick, spiky oil paint didn’t seem to bother him.
He ‘hemmed' absently in answer to Shepherd’s question, then pulled himself together as he turned to look at him.
His expression started confused and then twisted into apologetic.
“Sorry,” he said. “I thought someone would have told you already. Um…I’m not sure I should, but…Dio Madden’s missing. Presumed ganked.”
“He’s on holiday.”
“Afraid not.”
“He’s on a cruise.” Under normal circumstances, that would be a convenient lie, but in Dio’s case it was apparently true.
Just because the necromancer had looked like he was in his early twenties didn’t mean he didn’t have the tastes of a septuagenarian—right down to the deck shoes and buffet shrimp.
The man crossed his arms and turned his mouth down in a regretful grimace.
“Does not look like it,” he said. “So, under the circumstances, I’m afraid your services aren’t going to be needed.”
Shepherd stared at him. “Uh-huh,” he said. “And how exactly are you involved?”
That got a snap of fingers and that too-easy, too-bright smile he pulled up like a conjurer's trick.
“Oh, of course,” he said. “Sorry. It’s just been a bit of a whirlwind trying to get on top of everything. We weren’t close, the opposite really, but it’s still awful. I’m Ezekiel Laker, but you can call me Kel.”
He waited.
So did Shepherd.
After a brief pause, Kel tried again.
“Dio Madden was my uncle,” he said. “In the absence of any other relative…I’m his next of kin. That makes me executor of his estate.”
It didn’t. And he wasn’t. Kel Laker was the sort of man who lied fast and lied easily, but not well. Which explained why Shepherd found him so attractive, but left a lot of other questions open.
“I’m going to make some calls,” he said. “Don’t touch anything.”
Kel shifted his weight onto his left leg and discreetly stretched the other. “Funny enough,” he said, “I was going to say the same thing.”
Shepherd snorted and turned to head for the kitchen. He remembered three steps across the living room and backtracked to stick his head back through the door.