Milan had tea again, and also cookies. They shook Rachel’s hand, glancing between us. “Nice to meet you. Do you help him a lot?”
“He’d be lost without me. Right, Tom?” She patted my arm.
“Completely helpless. Rachel is psychic. I’m just a gumshoe.”
“He’s more than that,” Rachel said. “But yeah, I pitch in where I can.”
“Cool,” Milan said.
We sat down. Milan poured tea. Rachel looked at all the books around the room.
The tea smelled of lavender. Not too sweet this time. “You said you found something that might help?”
A stack of books sat on the coffee table between the teapot and the cookie plate. First Milan gave Rachel the book she’d shown me. Rachel’s eyebrows rose, and she squirmed on the sofa, as if she could feel the demon emerging from the page.
“Nasty.” Rachel looked at me. “You sure you want to go after something like this?”
“We could let it come out,” I said. “Watch it wreak havoc on TV and hope the National Guard can handle it. Like in a Godzilla movie. That usually works out well.”
Rachel shrugged. “I’d watch that show, at least.”
“Okay, what have you got?” I asked Milan. “An epic quest for a magic amulet? A magical sword? Darts?”
“It’s in here. I read the whole thing last night. It’s got lots of stuff on beings like Rhahar and others. There are footnotes. And one of the footnotes talks about another book—” They pulled a slim volume from the bottom of the stack.
Kings of Darkness. No author. A slip of paper marked a page in the middle. Milan opened it.
The ancient gods, the old ones, condemned to the pit, living in darkness—they crave worship, power, blood sacrifice—proof that their disciples love them and fear them. They have slept for millennia—some in restless slumber, many of them—Jamith, Orcasus, Rhahar, Zath—in a deep, dark dreamless void. Forgotten by men, they have forgotten they ever lived.
Milan looked up. “Do you get it?”
“Get what?” I looked at Rachel.
“Yeah, I think so.” Rachel leaned forward to look at the page. “This guy doesn’t want to wake up. He’s like you that Sunday morning after you binged both of the Enola Holmes movies.”
I ignored her criticism of my viewing habits. “So all we have to stop Hartwell from waking him up? That just gets us back to arson or assassination. His next meeting is this Tuesday.”
“No.” Milan turned the page. “We need to put him back to bed.” She pointed to a page filled with what looked like a poem, but the words weren’t in any language I recognized.
“What is this? A lullaby?”
Milan snorted. “Not exactly. But it should convince Rhahar to go back to sleep.”
I’d been worried about having to fight the thing. Putting it down for a nice long nap seemed less dramatic, but also maybe safer. I looked at Rachel. “What do you think?”
Rachel shrugged. “I don’t know. I can tell that you’re not misleading us,” she told Milan, “and I can feel some sort of power coming from the words on the page. Whatever they say. Can you translate them? Or at least tell us how to pronounce it correctly?”
“Wait, Hartwell’s got something like 20 people reading his book.” I sat back. “Are we going to be enough? Are you even doing this? There’s only you and me. And you?” I looked at Rachel.
Rachel sighed. “Let me check my schedule. I may have yoga that night.”
“I have some friends I can call,” Milan said. “Not 20, but maybe enough.”
“Friends who are willing to confront a demon?” I can barely get five people for a poker night.
“You’d be surprised at what some people think is fun.” They grinned.
On Monday morning Pam called me. “She’s home. They released her yesterday. She’s okay, just tired. Had some bad dreams last night—she kept saying that word, ‘Rhahar.’ What does it mean?”
I hesitated. “I really should discuss it with her.”
Pam sighed. “All right, I’ll have her call you. If she wants to.”
“Sounds good.” We hung up.
Rachel was working at her office. We’d spent the weekend going over the text Milan had given us from her book, making sure we had the pronunciation right. Oh, we watched movies and did laundry and other stuff, but the prospect of confronting an ancient god was hard to put out of our minds.
So this morning I was trying to do other work to distract me, but Pam’s call pulled me right back into it. I was almost back on track when Jayne called me an hour later. “What the hell’s happening?” she demanded. “What does this Rhahar stuff mean?”
I told her what I knew. She listened quietly, with the occasional “okay” or “what?” or “shit.” When I finished she said, “Okay, I want to be there. With you, and the rest of them. To see this thing.”
I swallowed. “I don’t know how safe it will be.”
“I don’t care. That—that thing is still inside my head. It killed my husband. I want to—I don’t know.” Her voice trembled. “I’m scared. But I can’t live this way. I have to see it for myself.”
I was scared too, but I could understand where she was coming from. Plus, I couldn’t really stop her from being there. “I’ll email you the location. We’ve got a sort of text ready, to fight the thing if it actually rises. I’ll send that too. You should practice it a few times to get the words right. That’s apparently very important.”
“All—all right.” Now that I’d agreed without any argument, she sounded nervous and uncertain. I figured she could pull out if she changed her mind, and if she came, more people pitching in would be better.
After that I got some work done, ate lunch, and went out to meet another client for a few hours. When I checked my phone for messages after the meeting, I found one for Rachel reminding me to buy groceries, and another one. From Laurie, Sam Hartwell’s assistant.
“Mr. Jurgen?” She sounded like she was whispering. “It’s Laurie Sanders. I work for Sam Hartwell. Could you call me? But not until six o’clock or so. Thank you.”
So she didn’t want Hartwell to know she was calling me. Interesting.
At 6:30 Rachel was in the kitchen making dinner—ravioli—and I called Laurie Sanders. She picked up on the third buzz. “Hello?”
“Laurie? This is Tom Jurgen, returning your call.”
“Oh, right. Just a second, I’m driving.” Three seconds later: “Okay. Uh, here’s the thing. Sam told me to call you tomorrow and ask you to come out to his book group thing. But I’m going to call in sick tomorrow.”
“What’s going on?”
“He’s digging a pit in the back yard. He says it’s for a barbecue, but it doesn’t look like that. He wants everyone sitting in a circle around it, with these torches, and no one’s allowed on the property tomorrow except him. And me, I guess. No meetings, no phone calls. It just sounds kind of weird.”
I knew what she meant. “Did he say anything else?”
“He got a box of books delivered yesterday that he didn’t let me open. He just took them into his office. He seemed excited about it. And today he said there are going to be some big changes around the place soon. That’s why I’m not going in tomorrow. I’m going to look for a new job. Sam’s nice and all, but this place is starting to give me a bad feeling.”
Changes? Great. “Well, you never know. But thanks for calling me.”
“Yeah. I don’t know what’s going on. Just—be careful, I guess.”
“I try.” We hung up.
Over dinner I told Rachel about the call. “Is she cute?” Rachel asked.
I enjoy it when she gets territorial. “I’m not answering that.”
She kicked me. “Are you still going to go?”
“I suppose.” I didn’t want to, but I was sort of committed. And, yeah, I was curious about seeing Rhahar in the flesh. “You can stay home if—"
“No way. For better or worse, remember? I’m going with you.” Her face was set in the kind of determination I knew all too well.
“Well, this is probably going into the ‘for worse’ column,” I said. “But it’ll be nice to have some company before the monster eats me.”
“He has to get through me first.” Rachel lifted a serving spoon. “More ravioli?”
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