Roguish Demon Read online

  I nodded although any mention of taxation pretty much put me to sleep.

  “If you suddenly try to convert a heap of gold to cash, all sorts of government officials are going to ask questions. But you can’t buy a loaf of bread with gold. You can’t buy anything at all.”

  I understood what he meant. I might have the connections to change that gold into something more liquid, maybe literally, but it could be an inconvenience if you didn’t know how to do that.

  “Maybe I can help you out with that for a small fee.”

  “I’d still have to explain all the extra cash. The government knows everything.”

  That was true. Maybe in a peasant village in feudal Hungary, sudden pots of gold would cut it but it didn’t work in the modern world with computers and government surveillance and all that kind of thing.

  “So, what did you do with this gold?” I asked.

  He looked to the left and then to the right as though someone could be spying on us then crooked his finger for me to follow him. Wow, mysterious stuff. I guess you couldn’t be too careful about your gold hiding place. I followed him down the corridor of the house. The place had no decoration, no clutter, even. The Duffy’s obviously had no children, not even a pet.

  Wow, Percy would be totally alone if his wife got used up by a demon. I should’ve charged him more.

  He stopped at the back of the house in front of the linen press. He opened it up and lifted an old sheet. Holy shit, there was a ton of gold under that sheet.

  “That’s it? That’s the hiding place for your gold? It’d take a robber about five minutes to find that. You can’t just sit your gold bars under an old sheet.”

  “Who’s going to rob a house with a demon in it?” he asked. His mouth actually turned up as though it might smile. It was a scary sight.

  Before I could answer, I heard the front door. His wife was home.

  We walked back into the lounge room.

  She seemed a very unassuming woman, dressed in a navy suit and sensible shoes, with her hair pinned back in a bun. Not the sort of woman you’d think of as cavorting with a demon.

  I wondered where the demon was.

  When I looked at her more closely, I could see signs of her trouble. She looked wan, even though she tried to cover it with makeup. Her face had a slackness as though she’d lost weight recently. It made her look jowly and haggard. Even the suit hung loosely on her frame. Her movements were measured and lethargic too.

  “This is Clementine,” he said. “She works in pest removal.”

  I’d told him to say that. It helped with clients who were unsure about mentioning I was a demon fighter. And, technically, not untrue. She offered me a glass of wine and I accepted. I mean, who knocks back free wine?

  I wanted to ask about the demon but couldn’t say too much. He wasn’t in the house because I sensed nothing. I hoped he’d appear while I was there though, so I knew what I’d be fighting.

  She handed me the wine glass. It was a decent wine. Then I checked the house for pests. Which meant searching for evidence of demonic activity. Even though I knew what it was, I wanted to do all the preliminary tests. It put the client’s mind at ease.

  Before my tests were complete, I sensed someone else in the room. I turned around to see a man standing there. Neither of the other two seemed surprised to see him materialise in the middle of the room.

  Wow, if that’s what Mrs Duffy’s first husband looked like, he’d been a hunk. This guy dominated the room with his toned body and an air of confidence with an edge of arrogance. I’d joked about him being a chicken vampire but there was nothing poultry about him.

  He turned to me and his eyes flashed with fire. Literally, fire. I could see a deep burning in their depths. I’d have to be careful with this one or I’d end up getting burnt myself. Already, he did unnatural things to my body.

  4 Market

  THIS DEMON WAS GOING to be harder to defeat than I’d first thought. I’d done the incense and birch treatment while he sat in the armchair laughing at me. He knew exactly what was going on and he no intention of being banished or defeated. I guess the trapping him in the tree thing would be hard to do too. I figured for him to be here, he had to have been around for a long time, somehow making it across the water from Hungary. You don’t survive that long as a demon if you let yourself get trapped too easily in a tree. That meant I had to use the only other way to destroy him. I had to get Mrs Duffy to assign him an impossible task.

  She, however, seemed to have no desire to banish him. She looked at him with obvious adoration. I wasn’t sure how Mr Duffy put up with it. I guess you can’t accuse someone of cheating when it all happens in their sleep, without them being conscious of it. Although, if Mrs Duffy had her way, she’d be doing it awake too. Mr Duffy busied himself in the kitchen, well out of their way.

  “If you’ve finished checking the house for pests, we won’t keep you any longer,” Mrs Duffy told me.

  I had no other excuse to stick around. I did need to find out some things though.

  “So, how do you fit into the picture?” I asked. I smiled at him and he gave me a self-satisfied smile back.

  “I’m Mrs Duffy’s first husband.”

  “The dead first husband?” I couldn’t help but ask.

  Mrs Duffy stood up, glaring at me.

  “He’s obviously not dead. He wouldn’t be sitting here beside me if he were dead, would he? Now, you must excuse us. It might be best you leave.”

  Wow, she had it bad.

  THE NEXT STEP IN BANISHING this damn demon would be to get her to see him for who he really was. If she realised he wasn’t her dead husband then she’d be more likely to take action. But how to do that?

  I spent the day going through every book I had, as well as searching online. There were no specific liderc details. And, since succubi didn’t need to be revealed, that didn’t help either. I’d have to use magic.

  There was only one person I could think of to help with that and I sure as hell didn’t want to approach him.

  My phone rang. It was Duffy. He wanted a progress update on the case.

  I tried to jolly him up.

  “That’s all well and good but I need that thing gone. There’s this other bloke, Harry McConchie who contacted me. He said he could do it. I’ll give you until the end of the week then I’m going to have to go with him instead.”

  “You don’t want to do that. He’s a fraud. He’ll tell you a bunch of lies but won’t get the job done.”

  “And what exactly have you done?”

  Oops, I couldn’t answer that.

  “Okay, end of the week.”

  I needed to contact the man I’d been avoiding. All I wanted was some easy money and food in my belly. I didn’t want to have to do all this work for it. It looked like I’d need to find Timon.

  I swung the car around and headed for the dodgy side of town. Not the dodgy side where my office was and not the dodgy side with the abandoned warehouses but the other dodgy side.

  When I got to the market, it looked at near full capacity. People crushed into the spaces. I pushed my way through them. One aggressive old lady rammed me with her shopping jeep because she thought I was going to obstruct her.

  “Hey, watch it, Nanna,” I yelled.

  She’d disappeared into the crowd though. I hoped those $1.99 bananas had been worth it.

  “One dollar, one dollar, one dollar,” a man screamed. “One dollar.”

  I had no idea what he was selling for one dollar but he sure sold it loud.

  The floor was a mess of squished vegetables, with their rotten smell filling the air. A small forklift zoomed amongst it all, sliming up the floor even more. I wasn’t in the market for vegetables though. I wasn’t even in the market for one of those donuts that smelt so tempting.

  I turned down the aisle that sold dubious DVDs and things got quieter. Who even buys DVDs nowadays? I’m pretty sure they were a front for drug operations or maybe money laundering or
something dodgy, but whatever. Then I turned to the right, where few people went, to the dark corners that got no outside light, just a few dingy fluorescents dangling from the ceiling. The yells of the fruit merchants faded into background noise here and from one of the stalls came the sound of a sitar. Brightly coloured rugs hung on the walls and wafts of incense almost masked the rotten fruit stench.

  I kept going to the far back where I had to duck and weave through the low hanging canvas slung across the walkway. Random extension cords ran from stall to stall, threatening to garrotte me if I didn’t pay attention. Nobody came to this part of the market unless they needed to.

  Timon’s stall was the dirtiest and dingiest of these. A canvas flap hung down to cover the insides and a rank smell of dangerous spices wafted out. I had a feeling Timon lived in this stall. And that he only left to shower. Dusty birdcages hung from the ceiling and racks of books covered the walls. He’d pretty much ensured that few customers would ever venture in.

  I lifted the flap and walked into the darkness. Before my eyes could fully adjust, a dart flew at my head. I ducked but it whizzed past my ear, just grazing it.

  “What the hell?” I yelled. I pulled the dart out of the paperback on the rack behind me.

  I could make out a scurrying bundle in the corner and pounced on it, pummelling it with my fists.

  “Why the hell are you throwing darts at me?” I shouted between punches. “You could’ve hurt me.”

  “I wanted to hurt you. I wanted you to go away.” The voice came out of a pile of rags. “You are nothing but trouble.”

  “I just need a little favour. That’s all. It won’t take long.”

  “That’s what you always say and then I end up getting hurt or attacked. You’re bad news. Just go.”

  He sat up so that his head emerged from the pile and glared at me.

  “Hey, how was I to know? I thought your eyebrows would grow back.”

  “Well, they didn’t. And now I have to walk around like this. It isn’t much fun for me, you know.”

  He stood up and dusted himself off. Timon standing up only came to my shoulder height and I was a total short-arse. He’d have been even shorter if he didn’t have a crazy head of hair sticking out in all directions. But, now he’d calmed down, he opened the tiny, secret door and took me into his chamber. The shelves on the walls were filled with jars of steaming purple potions and green bubbling goo.

  “What do you want? And make something easy and possible.”

  “Well, there’s a liderc—”

  “NO!” He thumped his hands down on the carved wooden counter. “We do not start sentences like that here. You can say you are in love and need a potion or maybe you have some weird growth issue. I can cope with that kind of thing but no monsters and ghouls and crazy demonic critters. I don’t want to play with that kind of thing.”

  I tried my cheesiest smile, hoping that would win him over but he folded his arms and turned away. Seriously, the guy lived in a tent cave at the back of a market. He never socialised. He never partied. Why did he even need eyebrows?

  “I’ll be your best friend,” I said. “I’ll buy you ice-cream.”

  He turned slightly and sneered.

  “I don’t even like ice-cream.”

  “What about gold?” I asked, thinking about all those gold bars in Duffy’s laundry. “Would you like gold?”

  He turned fully around and smiled at me now.

  “And where would you get gold? You never have any money so don’t tell me you can make gold magically appear.”

  “I can’t but the liderc can. And I’m sure I could get my hands on some if only you gave me a little spell. It will be easy for you. I want something that will make the liderc show his true form. I bet you could do that in no time. You have the skills.”

  Timon put his head to one side, deep in thought.

  “I’ve never actually met a liderc before and I’m not sure if the spell will work but I can only do what I can. Either way, I get the gold.”

  I shook his hand. Now all I needed to do was broker this deal.

  5 All That Glitters

  “BUT YOU AREN’T DOING anything with that gold. It’s just sitting in your laundry closet, piling up.”

  Duffy shook his head.

  “That gold came from somewhere and someone will be looking for it. When they come knocking on my door, I don’t want to tell them that there are four bars missing. That could end up with pain and disfigurement for me.”

  “Listen, mate, it’s the gold or nothing. My source needs it for his charm. We’ll have this problem fixed in no time once you get a bit of that charm into the demon.” I smiled to reassure him. “What’s the point of holding onto all of that gold when the one you love will be long gone? Gold can’t buy you love.”

  Duffy still seemed reluctant but he got up and headed for the laundry.

  “That’s four bars of gold,” I told him. Timon only needed two but I figured I needed to get some commission out of this. After all, I had to do the hard yards and I’d always wanted some shiny gold bars. Who knew when that would come in handy?

  “So, how are things going?” I asked.

  “Not good. She’s getting weaker and that man is still hanging around. Are you sure this will work?”

  “All we need to do is get him to take the potion and his true form will be revealed. Once she sees that, she’ll know the truth. You might want to be prepared for some post-trauma. I mean, it’s not going to be pretty. She may need some extra pampering and looking after. The main thing is, though, that she sees his true face and realises what he is. Then she’ll willingly set him an impossible task and bingo! No more demon lover.”

  Before he could hand me the gold bars, the doorbell rang. He set the gold bars on the kitchen counter while he went to answer it. I couldn’t resist touching them. They were so pretty. I stroked the top one then picked it up. Man, gold is not light. I held in my hand and started doing some bicep curls. Oh yeah, working out with solid gold, that’s the way to do it.

  Duffy returned with a parcel. I quickly sat the bar down with the others and tried to not look at its lovely yellow surface.

  “I have no idea why that guy keeps coming here. All this stuff we never even ordered then we have to lug it to the post office to return it.”

  He sat the box down in the corner.

  “Maybe it’s the liderc? He’s discovered the internet and wants to send your wife nice gifts.”

  Duffy left before I could find out more about these deliveries. If they were good shit, I’d offer to return them to the post office for him.

  Instead, I bundled up the gold and put it in my bag. With all four bars in there, I could barely lift it.

  I HAD A NEW CLIENT. Just a simple food demon. I could drop the gold off to Timon then dust the demon and go back for the potion. Doubly sweet, since I’d be paid twice for the one trip.

  I jumped in the car and took off with the mission in mind. I had to lug the gold through the market in my sports bag. As I tried to push through the crowds, the gold bars clunked against my legs, bashing my ankles. People annoyed me. They annoyed me so much.

  Timon’s eyes widened when he saw the gold. He tried to bite the corner of the bars.

  “It’s real. It’s real gold. I never thought you’d do it. Where did you get this stuff from?”

  I held my finger to my lips and shushed him. I would never tell him.

  He stashed the gold away under the counter.

  “How long will take?” I asked.

  “Four days,” he replied.

  “You’re kidding me. I don’t have four days. This is a matter of life and death. I’ll give you two hours then I’ll be back here to collect it.”

  Timon shook his head. “You don’t understand the finer points of potion making. I can’t just throw a few things in the blender like I’m making a smoothie. It’s a very complex and meticulous art. It takes finesse. I can’t do it in two hours.”

  “I’
ll pay you a bonus,” I said. Definitely not my lovely gold though.

  We reached an agreement and went off to tackle the food demon. First, I stopped by the bakery stall to get some delicious-looking cakes to tempt him out. I also made sure I got a tasty little cake for myself.

  When I got to the house, it only took minutes to banish that food demon. He was so lured by the cakes that he appeared right away. A few words of Latin to get rid of him and I had time to kill before I got back to Timon.

  I figured I could go check out Mrs Duffy at work. The more information I had on her, the better. Maybe I’d get the chance to talk to her and find out her feelings.

  She worked in an office and the reception wouldn’t let me in to see her but luckily, I caught her on her way out for coffee. She had on a long black coat and makeup but you could see she looked even paler and thinner than the last time. She walked with a lethargic step. I walked beside her, hoping to get her talking.

  “You again? What could you possibly want? You got rid of the roaches, didn’t you?”

  “I tried but they are harder to shake off than I thought. Have you noticed anything strange around the house? Unusual activity?”

  “No, nothing.”

  We got to the coffee shop and she gave her order. I gave mine and waited beside her, although she pretended not to see me.

  When she went to the counter to pick up her order, the cup slid through her hands as though she barely had the strength to hold it. The coffee splattered all over the floor and splashed up her legs. I rushed forward to help her but she waved me away. I wasn’t sure what to do but I needed to gain her trust. I grabbed some napkins from the counter and handed them to her. Her hand shook as she took them from me.

  The woman was a mess. A total mess. Did she have any idea how this enthrallment to the liderc was affecting her?

  Before I could say anything, her phone rang and she turned from me. I wasn’t going to find out anything from her.