Page 84 of Want Me, Take Me, Haunt Me, Make Me

Think, speak, you have to saysomething. Silence means assent, assent means guilt, guilt means—you know what guilt means.

Memories of watching Perthrux’s other punishments jolted his tongue out of immobility. “I don’t know what you mean, my lord,” he said, and even managed to sound convincing to his own ears. “I’ve carried out all of your orders to the best of my ability.”

The servants stopped just before Perthrux’s throne and shoved Maxwell down in front of it, bruising his hands and knees. He didn’t dare to lift his eyes to the demon, but he saw its spindly legs as it stood, and off to the side he saw a form he recognized as his vision cleared further.

Chapman stood there with his arms folded over his chest and his feet apart, the perfect picture of stern, if undead, law enforcement—except for the smirk he didn’t bother hiding.

Chapter 44

Perthrux grabbed a handful of Maxwell’s hair and yanked his head upward, forcing him to stare into the pallid eyes above the double set of mouths. The upper one opened to snarl at him. “Did Iorderyou to speak with the medium? Tobefriendher?”

The chill that had settled around Maxwell’s heart worked for him in that moment, slowing the world down so that he could think of an answer. Denial wouldn’t work—what information Chapman had obtained had apparently been convincing. The only thing to do was step inside the blow. “You ordered me to watch her, my lord, and to find out what she knows. Is there a better source than the woman herself?”

It might have just been his perception keeping the room still in the seconds after he stopped speaking, but all he could hear was his own heart. He counted every beat.

Then Perthrux’s grip relaxed slightly, still hard but no longer deliberately brutal. The smirk left Chapman’s face. “You didn’t tell me,” the demon said, small gray threads wriggling in its eyes.

“I didn’t think it worth troubling you with the details, my lord. You never cared for them before. Besides, you’ve been occupied.”

The demon didn’t respond. Maxwell waited, careful neither to shift his weight nor let his head fall. Any motion that struck Perthruxas resistance would likely set its temper off again. “I don’t know how you came by this information,” he went on, “but if your…sources…had come to me, I would have been perfectly willing to explain it.”

“Would you?” The mouth curled at one end. Perthrux suspected a lie.

Maxwell gave it half of an admission. “Perhaps not perfectly. I would have found the question presumptuous from one who hasn’t served you for half the time I have, and I would question where he gothisknowledge, since I haven’t sensed his presence of late.”

Without relaxing its hold of Maxwell’s hair, Perthrux swiveled its long, headless body to face Chapman. “A ghost, you said.”

“Yes,” said Chapman, stepping forward for the first time. “And—”

“A young man? A reporter?” Maxwell asked. “I talked to that one. Found him tiresome. Told him to be gone, or I’d take action. I’m sure whatever he said about me is likely colored by that.”

Chapman scowled. “I’msureyou’re sure. You have no experience questioning witnesses.”

“Isthathow you describe your practices?” Maxwell shot back. He couldn’t forget Perthrux’s anger or his own dire situation, but he couldn’t resist the response either. “Your strutting and posing may have worked on the poor sods you abused when you were pretending to uphold the law, Sheriff, but they hold very little weight in this world.”

Perthrux swiveled its raw red face back to Maxwell. It was smiling now, for good or ill. “A rivalry, is it? Should I be flattered?”

“You should—” Chapman began, and then jerked upright, the remnants of his eyes widening. A knucklebone popped through the skin as his hands clenched.

“A problem?” Maxwell asked him.

“Trespassers. The witch.”

Perthrux hissed with its lower mouth. “Go,” it ordered with the upper. “This is between me and Ligat now.”

* * *

NowChapman’s house looked haunted.

Construction crews had cleared away the rubble, propped up the few remaining walls with scaffolding, and boarded up the hole leading to the basement, leaving a hatch to let in the crime scene team. The police had left it padlocked when they were done and given the key to Lee Chapman, whose wife had given it to Hazel at a McDonald’s that morning. As Hazel kneeled to unlock the hatch, the afternoon sun shone hot on the back of her neck, and she could hear a lawnmower a block or two away, but her skin rose in goose bumps anyhow. Theclunkof the lock opening made her flinch.

She didn’t stop, though, and she didn’t hesitate after she shoved the hatch open to show a safety ladder leading down into the darkness. A quick pass with a flashlight showed that the basement floor was still solid, so she tucked it back into her backpack and started down.

’Twere well it were done quickly, and all that jazz.

Hazel descended into the smell of earth and concrete, into darkness that meant she had to feel with her feet and hands for each step on the ladder. Chapman’s basement hadn’t really been very far below ground, but in his day he’d walked down a set of stairs to store his hideous trophies, not groped around to get a decent footing on a shallow metal rung. The concrete floor had looked hard. If she judged badly, if she slipped—

It took her almost ten minutes to reach the bottom.