Page 24 of Heart and Soul
“It’s all yours.”
A high-pitched squeak whistles through Ruby’s lips.
“With the understanding that the debt is now paid. You no longer have any claim on Shayne Davies or Detective Brenner. All is even between the two of you, and if I ever hear otherwise, it’s bye-bye, Bugatti. Square?”
Ruby, still unable to peel his eyes away from his new lover, makes a shooing motion with his fingers.
Satisfied, Hillerman nods at Brenner and throws the door open. “Now, we talk.”
Two empty beer bottles siton the coffee table in front of Special Agent Hillerman. The first, she drank entirely in one breath as soon as we stepped into her usual hotel room at the Marriott downtown. The second, she guzzled as Brenner recounted his memory of the revenant with the black chin.
“They have to be related,” he says. “This revenant and the demon summoner you’re looking for.”
Now that it’s her turn to share, Hillerman pops the top on a third beer. Her black shades still cover her eyes, despite the gray darkness of the room, with only a single lamp on by the bed. For a long moment, she stares at her feet propped on the coffee table. The beer in her hand seems forgotten. She lets a long breath hiss from deep in her lungs. When she talks, her voice is thick with the beginnings of a buzz. I can tell she would be a sad drunk.
“When I was seventeen, I was abducted by a demon named Boca. He’d taken other girls. Tortured them, broken them. They hadn’t ever fought back.” She considers the beer in her hands, but doesn’t drink. “I did. Back at his place, I grabbed a knife. He had…” She gestures to her chin. “He had a messy chin. Years before, he’d been burned with acid down his chin and neck.”
Brenner trades looks with me. This is it. We’re about to get answers.
“I rammed that knife up through the bottom of his chin. The news called it poetic justice. I sure didn’t mean it that way. I had nightmares for weeks of that chin, that throat opening up, gushing blood and spilling out his tongue. Until…” She turns the bottle in her fingers. “Until they weren’t nightmares anymore. He was there, and he was real. His spirit clung to me from the Deep world, because I was the one who killed him.”
“He haunted you?” I ask, fighting to control a shiver up my spine.
“Wherever I went. We were connected. Killing is an act of creation, same as giving birth. It creates bonds. Boca was never going to leave me alone until I joined him in the Deep. Back then, I didn’t have anyone. My parents were divorced. I couldn’t go back to school. I had to hide from news reporters. There was only one person I could…” Her voice catches, which scares me more than any gruesome detail of her story. “He was the only person I knew I could trust. I knew he’d believe me.” She wipes at her eyes beneath the shades. “Of course he did.”
After a long pause, it’s evident that she won’t—or can’t—say his name, so I do it for her. “Matthew Hillerman.” I remember his photo from the news articles I found. Tall, ripped guy, tattooed with all the same morbid designs Hillerman now sports along both arms and shoulders. Spiders and skulls and angels of death. He’s the reason why she listens to heavy metal bands.
She thumbs the wedding band on her ring finger. “Matt helped me. We found out Boca had a daughter. She was trying to bring him back, but she needed a body for him to inhabit.”
I take a wild guess. “Matt’s body?”
Hillerman nods. “They took him. By the time I tracked them down, it was too late. Matt wasn’t mine anymore.” Her voice becomes firm, as though she is hardening herself against the rest of the story. She sounds oddly detached. “Back then, I only knew of one way to exorcise a demon.”
This part of the story I already know. Brenner’s heard it, too. “You killed him.” I remember her exact words from before:It looked like Matt, and it talked like Matt, but it wasn’t Matt, so I shot him six times in the face.
“That’s right. So then, without Matt’s body, and my resistance too strong, Boca’s spirit had only one other choice for a vessel.”
“His daughter,” Brenner says.
Sitting up suddenly, Hillerman takes a long pull from the beer, then slams it down on the coffee table. “Her name is Tabitha Durran.”
“She’s the demon summoner you’re looking for?”
Hillerman nods. “She disappeared. It’s been a decade. I’ve gone to every FUA in the country. Tracked hundreds of demons. Exorcised them, provoked them, lured them out. Anything to keep my finger on the pulse of the Deep world, because eventually it will lead me back to Tabitha Durran, and when I find her…” She closes her fist around the neck of the beer bottle and squeezes. “Shayne, you once asked why I do this job. Now you know.”
I fold my arms across my chest. “Maybe I do, maybe I don’t.”
“You got something to say?”
“No, I wantyouto say it. Tell me what you are.”
“What I am?”
“Your necklace explains the underworld current I feel from you, but it doesn’t explain your powers. You can see the Deep. You can hear demons.”
“Maybe those aren’t powers. Maybe those are a curse.”
“Or maybe they’re signs ofpossession. Maybe you’re a vessel for demons. Like Ruby said, it takes one to know one.” When she doesn’t respond, I say, “Take the sunglasses off.”
