Chapter Fourteen – Luke

 

Roxanne’s offices on the twentieth floor of one of the few high-rise buildings in what counted as downtown Tucson were, on their face, completely normal. Modern, even, with spare furnishings and white walls. A middle-aged receptionist with ash-blonde hair and a pleasant enough smile offered me a seat. A brass nameplate on the edge of her desk told me she was called Jeanine.

Jeanine wasn’t human, I knew, but if I’d walked by her on the street out front, I’d never have been the wiser. It took my being in a confined space with her for the smell of grave dirt and rot to creep into my nose. I wasn’t sure what she was, but uncertainty about a species wasn’t necessarily grounds for hate or prejudice.

Rather than taking the offered seat, I took a walk around the room, looking over the art hanging from the walls. It was bland and non-offensive. Unframed fields and triangles and boxes of reds and oranges and greens, the paint piled up on the canvases.

“She’ll be right with you,” the receptionist assured my back from behind the desk. “Would you like coffee or tea while you wait, water, maybe?”

I turned and, jaw clenched, just shook my head. “Thank you, but no.”

“Blood?”

I narrowed my eyes. “No.”

She shrugged as if to say, “Suit yourself, weirdo,” before returning back to her computer monitor, her fingers practically flying as she worked over the keyboard in front of her.

Minutes later, a security guy in a dark suit came up to collect me. He was a short bruiser of a guy, but still had at least thirty pounds on me. He had the kind of face that made you wonder if smiling would even improve his glower. Resting thug face. Despite being in at least his early fifties, he moved with the easy, confident grace of a trained combatant. He’d probably been doing the security thing for longer than I’d been alive.

“Ms. Soot will see you.”

A smell I was familiar with came off him, too: shifter. The only question was, what kind?

We were both silent as we made our way down the hall, a woman’s voice with a southern fried accent doing more than enough talking for the both of us. She was going on and on about some business deal in English for one sentence, then switching to some Latin-inspired language for a long jag. Spanish, maybe Italian?

The big bruiser glanced back at me over his shoulder. “Gonna have to pat you down before you go in, you know.”

“Yeah. Don’t worry, I’d do the same.”

He grunted as we came to a stop in front of the heavy office door.

“That Roxanne in there?” I asked.

He didn’t reply. On the other side of the wooden door, she continued to conduct whatever business she was conducting.

“What’s she talking about?”

“Imports.” He gestured with both hands for me to lift my arms. “Exports.”

“Talkative, aren’t you?” I asked as I raised my hands over my head. “I’m armed, by the way.”

“Yeah, figured as much. Smelled the gun oil. The Spec-Ops, too.”

“You serve?”

“Not exactly, no,” he said as his hands traveled over my body, quickly finding my sidearm. He plucked it from my concealed carry holster, made sure the chamber was clear and the safety was on, and stuffed it away at the small of his back with one fluid gesture. “Got anything else?”

“Just my wit and charm.”

He straightened up with a tired sigh. “Yeah. Think you forgot to load that one this morning.” He turned to the office door and knocked on it. The stream of foreign language coming from the other side came to a stop.

“Show him in, Mike!”

As the steady litany of foreign words returned, he looked up at me from beneath one raised eyebrow. He let out another world-weary sigh and pushed the door open, leading me inside. He went off around to the side, and I stepped in behind him.

Roxanne’s office was bigger than the lobby out front. A large, featureless, false white wall stood on the far end, separating the front of the room from the rear. In front of the wall, a desk seemingly carved from the solid trunk of some exotic rainforest tree dominated, more than sat in, the middle of the space. It was the kind of thing you’d expect to see in the office of a banana republic’s dictator, not a small business suite in downtown Tucson. Roxanne Soot sat behind the desk, her chair turned away from me so only the top of her ebony hair was visible.

I stuffed my hands in my pockets, looking around at the art hanging from the walls. I didn’t know the artists, but something about them just reeked of money. I saw one hanging over to the right, though, that I did recognize. Fields of orange and yellow seemingly floating in a sea of reddish-pink, the center boxes of color practically coming disembodied from the canvas as they swam in your vision. I whistled low as I stepped up to it.

“Like my Rothko?” Roxanne asked as she climbed up from her chair, her southern accent heavy and drawling.

I glanced in her direction, blinking confusedly at the woman already coming towards me, her hips moving seductively with every step. She was Japanese, but taller than average, and her features almost gave me mental vertigo. This was the woman who sounded like she had a lifetime membership with the Daughters of the Confederacy? Between her features, her lean build, and her blouse and short pencil skirt, she was a strutting example of cognitive dissonance.

Her eyes traveled up and down my body, and for a moment I knew exactly what a steak at the butcher’s felt like. And, if I wasn’t careful, I might just end up reverse seared by the time this meeting was done.

“Bought it from the artist himself about sixty years ago, give or take,” she said as she came to stand next to me, her eyes following mine to the painting on the wall. “You a fan, Mr. Oldham?”

“Not exactly a student of his work, or anything, Roxanne, but I’m familiar.” I glanced over at her, trying to keep my eyes from bugging out at the mention of how old she must be. “Sixty years?”

“Roxy, please. And I was a different woman back then, Mr. Oldham. That was six, maybe seven, bodies ago?” She turned back to Mike. “How many hosts was it?”

“Seven.”

“Seven hosts ago. You familiar with succubi, Luke?”

“Mr. Oldham is fine, thanks.” I paused as a frown crossed her lips for a moment, before they rebounded to that cocky half-smile of hers. “And, no, not all the particulars. Only bother learning about most species when I’m hunting them.”

She grinned. “Well, I suppose it’s a good thing you’re not more knowledgeable about me then, ain’t it? We borrow people, you understand, or at least their bodies,” she said, turning and walking back behind her desk.

I furrowed my brow. Possession was never good. Creatures from other worlds coming in, taking over human bodies as hosts. Doing with them what they will.

She glanced back, must have noticed the look on my face. “Oh, I’m nothing like with those other demons, Mr. Oldham. Promise. My case, it’s nothing more than a simple lease agreement, if you wanna look at it that way. I’m about due for a new one, actually. Two years left on Miss Watanabe, here, before I pay off my contract and move onto the next one. Two centuries in America, and I just can’t get enough of this place. Last thing I want is to break an agreement and get sent back down, so I always play things on the level best as I can.”

A patriotic demon who respected the rule of law. Never thought I’d see the day.

“Consensual possession, then?” I asked as I followed behind her, coming to a stop in front of her massive desk.

“Of course,” she said, stopping and bending over to fit a key into one of her desk drawers, giving me a clear view down the front of her shirt. I’d have been amazed if she hadn’t been doing it intentionally. Her type weren’t exactly known for their prudish ways. She glanced up at me as she pulled the drawer open. “After all, sugar, what woman in their right mind wouldn’t give up their body for a few years to make a couple million dollars?”

“Takes all kinds, I guess.”

She pulled a set of stones from the drawer and set them in front of her on the desk, followed by a long, twisted stick stripped of all its bark and adorned with eagle and hawk feathers. “I reckon so, but I’ve never met one. Course, my sample size might be a little skewed. Most of the women I meet are looking to make a deal, if you catch my drift.” She smiled briefly as she stood up, flattening the front of her outfit. “Now, on to business.”

“Right.”

“My old associate Tabitha tells me we’ve got a zmeu problem in town, and you’re here as exterminator.”

“That about sums it up.”

“Then, let’s go.” She turned on her heel and headed off behind the false wall. She stopped and glanced back at me over her shoulder, one eyebrow arched almost delicately. “Unless, of course, you’re chicken.”

“Chicken?” I asked. I jerked a thumb back over my shoulder, in Mike’s general direction. “Only of meeting that guy in a dark alley.”