Demon Song by Cat Adams Page B

Finally it let out a confirming beep and the reassuring clunk of the lock that I’d been told could be heard everywhere in the building. I opened the door. Everything looked just as I’d left it, which made me feel better.
    I’d stowed my now-unreliable tools and was just finishing putting replacement charms in the vest pockets when there was a light tap at the door. Minnie and I looked up at the same moment and her questioning mew coincided with my, “Yes?”
    It was both creepy and endearingly cute.
    “You okay in there?” Dawna poked in her head with Dottie right at her heels in an odd contrast of personalities and visuals. “We heard the safe open.”
    Dawna is our receptionist. She’s my age, Vietnamese American, and was the epitome of high fashion in a cherry red skirt and blazer and sleek patent-leather heels. Dottie, on the other hand, is elderly, with a delightful lack of self-consciousness, a white-bread, walker-using American in vivid red velour sweats. Two halves of a whole or maybe just a vision of all of our futures. Dottie is our backup receptionist—brought on when Dawna suffered a mental collapse that put her in the mental ward for a little while. As far as I knew, she wasn’t doing inpatient therapy anymore. Emma still was.
    “I’m moving slow, but I’m moving. What time is it?” I was guessing it was around ten o’clock given the position of the sunbeam on the floor, but I could be wrong. “Hopefully I know what day it is. Anyone know when I got here?”
    Dawna shrugged, but Dottie said, “According to the security log, three men and one woman entered at seven fifteen this morning.”
    I wondered immediately which three. Then I noticed that Dawna looked as startled as I felt. “We have a security log?” I asked.
    “That shows the sex of the person who entered?” said Dawna.
    When she nodded, my eyes met Dawna’s and we nodded. “Sweet.” It came out of our mouths at the same time, which made all three of us chuckle. I’d have to see what else the log showed.
    “Oh, and it’s ten twenty,” Dawna added. “You have someone on the phone and someone in the waiting room. Should I tell them both to get lost or do you want one or the other?”
    Did I want to see anyone? Actually I didn’t feel all that bad. I should be hungry, but I wasn’t. I briefly wondered what that meant—had Gaetano or Jones gotten some nutrition into me? I felt sore, but not to the point of turning down work. “Depends. Who’s who?”
    “Your old therapist, Gwen, is on the phone. She says it’s important. Detective Alexander is downstairs. She’s been waiting nearly an hour and says she’ll wait all day if she has to.”
    Crap. Well, there could be worse people waiting I suppose. Like my mother, for example. But she was in jail. One of the many reasons I had a therapist.
    “I told her you’d had a long night. Was it a successful night? I haven’t been able to reach Emma.” Dawna was being deliberately coy with Dottie right there. I understood, but it wasn’t really necessary. Like Emma, Dottie was a clairvoyant. I seem to know a lot of them. Vicki had been, as well. I was betting Dottie already had seen what had happened. She’d told me that once she met me she started getting multiple images of my future—mostly of future dangers. Naturally. The death curse put on me as a child saw to that.
    I nodded. “We got Kevin out and he was fine last time I saw him. I don’t know more than that. But I’ll bet you can’t reach Emma because she’s back in Birchwoods.”
    “Okay. Gwen first and then I’ll see Alex. Everything else okay? Is there a reason you’re both in the office today?”
    Dottie beamed at me, total excitement in her eyes. “Dawna’s teaching me how to do billing.” Awesome! I’d worried that Dawna would take Dottie’s hiring as a condemnation of her mental state. Looking at her now, I didn’t think the smile on Dawna’s face was fake, but I wouldn’t know for sure until I