You weren’t supposed to touch the Little Angel, Dr. Randolph thought. That was the first rule.
“Frederick!” Dr. Wolff said. “Get Margarete out of there!”
The demon threw off Margarete and sent her crashing against the far bed. Her strength, for a child, was enormous. Dr. Randolph ducked back out of sight.
“Meg!” Frederick said.
Dr. Wolff took the purse from her lap and tossed it at Dr. Randolph.
“Doctor, get the syringe.”
Dr. Randolph stared at her.
“Twenty cc’s should do it,” Dr Wolff said. “Enough to slow her down without killing the girl.”
Dr. Randolph opened the purse and withdrew a syringe. “What’s in this?” He withdrew the plastic cap from the needle.
“She’s u-up,” Frederick said quietly.
“You,” Dr. Randolph heard the girl say. “You were mean to me last time.”
“Sorry about that,” Frederick said. He raised his arms and stood in front of Dr. Wolff. Dr. Randolph pressed his back against the wall, out of sight of the girl. He gripped the syringe tightly in his damp hands. The girl walked forward. “You’re young,” she said. “Not sick at all.”
“That’s right. Fit as a fiddle.”
“But you’re mean.”
The girl walked out of the room. Dr. Randolph held the syringe at his
side, unable to move. She was only two feet away from him, her back to him, and still he couldn’t move.
He must have made a noise. The little girl glanced at him over her shoulder. She frowned. The syringe slipped from his fingers and clattered away.
The girl turned her attention back to Frederick and Dr. Wolff. “I just want to help her,” the girl said. She reached out her hand. “But mean people are always stopping me.”
Suddenly the girl squealed in pain. She wheeled around, turned again, as if the needle were still stuck in her behind. “What did you do?” the girl said.
Margarete held the syringe between two fingers like a cigar. “Nighty night,” she said.
The demon stumbled, and Frederick caught her before her head struck the ground.
“Oh my goodness,” Dr. Randolph said. “She was going to kill us. Kill us all.”
Frederick made a face. “She wasn’t going to go after you.” He looked at Dr. Wolff. “But you, Doctor. I didn’t like the way she was talking. If she comes for you—”
“Summoned or not, the god will be there,” Dr. Wolff said. “Now, before she wakes up, Margarete?”
“Already on it,” Margarete said, and snipped the air with a pair of scissors. She kneeled beside the unconscious girl, lifted up one of the long, springy curls, and clipped it off near the base of the skull.
“Is that necessary?” Dr. Randolph asked.
Margarete smiled up at him. “The Little Angel has a thing about hair. Won’t go anywhere without it.”
“Ah,” Dr. Randolph said, though he wasn’t sure he understood. “What’s going to happen to her?”
“First we try to find her parents,” Dr. Wolff said. “And then the hard work begins.”
11
I woke to darkness and thumping bass and synthesized strings: an eighties funk power ballad. The male falsetto had to be Prince—
nothing compares to Prince—but I didn’t recognize the song. The woman’s voice singing along with the recording was breathy and keening at the same time, threatening at any moment to veer off key. The thing in my head was quiet. Still there, though: it breathed warily, an animal crouched in the corner of a dark room. I lay there inhaling the powdery, foreign scents of an unknown bed. I had no idea how long I’d slept. It’d been almost 2 a.m. before I’d gotten out of the hospital—the nurses hadn’t wanted to let me check out, but O’Connell was formidable. I’d fallen asleep only minutes after getting into her truck, and had woken up briefly to navigate through a series of small rooms. She’d insisted I sleep here, rather than on the couch, and I hadn’t argued.
There was a window above me on the curved wall to my right, but it was dark on the other side—which meant that the window looked out on another room, or that it was still night, or worse, night again—
and the deep ache in my arms and legs told me I’d been sleeping too long in one position.
Holy shit. Mom had to be freaking out.
The song ended, and in the break, I yelled out, “Hel-lo!” The next song started—another eighties number, but U2 this time. A minute later the door opened and O’Connell leaned in. She was in rock-chick mode again: black T-shirt, black jeans. Despite the singing a moment ago, she didn’t look happy.
I wasn’t in the bed so much as on it: I lay on top of the covers, with several blankets thrown over me. I lifted one arm a few inches, as far as it would go.
“You can untie me now,” I said.
She stepped back and closed the door, leaving me alone in the dark again.
Ooookay.
Sometime last night, after I’d babbled and cried for a couple hours and finally fallen asleep, O’Connell had tied me spread-eagled to the bed frame with the combination locks tucked out of sight and out of reach, an arrangement impossible for me to set up on my own—and one I didn’t much like now. The situation put me in mind of more than one Stephen King novel, and I’d had enough of horror stories. Bono was emoting through the second verse when she came back into the room carrying a vinyl-padded kitchen chair in one hand and my blue duffel bag in the other. She set the chair near the foot of the bed and dropped the duffel onto the bed between my spread legs. She made no move toward the chains.
“I really need to pee,” I said.
“Let’s talk first,” she said.
“About what?”
“Oh, I hardly know where to start.” She sounded peeved. “The county sheriff stopped by for a talk this morning. Not about the Shug, about Dr. Ram. They found the killer.”
“What? That’s great!”
“Some DemoniCon fanboy named Eliot Kasparian. He claims he was possessed, woke up wearing a trench coat and holding a pair of guns. He’s in custody.”
“So was he possessed by the Truth, or is he faking?”
“I hope for his sake that he’s not lying,” she said. Good point, I thought. The Truth didn’t like fakers. But if he really was possessed, then it was Dr. Ram who’d been the liar. O’Connell said, “We’re not completely off the hook, boyo. The sheriff says that the police still want to talk to all the hotel guests who were there that night, especially the ones that checked out that morning. Especially the ones that might be showing up on security camera tapes.”
“You told him I was here?”
“Her. I didn’t have to—she’s smart enough to figure out where you went when you checked yourself out of the hospital. Plus, you were snoring.”
“She didn’t think it odd that I was chained up in your bedroom?”
“I didn’t open the door. Officially, she doesn’t know where you are.”
“Why would—why would she go along with that?” And why would O’Connell stick her neck out for me?
“She’s a friend. And she lives here. The ladies of the lake watch out for each other.”
I didn’t know what she meant by that. Were there any male residents of Harmonia Lake? I hadn’t met any. Maybe only women stayed, because they weren’t candidates to be the next Shug.
“This is a huge relief, though,” I said. “So you want to unlock me?”
“We’re not quite finished with our conversation,” O’Connell said, and unzipped the duffel. I tried to sit up, but the chains kept me from raising more than my head. “Hey, that’s my stuff!”