That was how, Trevor Stone said, he had found himself sitting alone in his company’s deserted office one afternoon—bankrupt and broke, under threat of lawsuits from his former partners and of divorce from his wife. He was just wondering if his life insurance had a suicide clause when a strange man appeared, and changed everything.
“I never heard him come in,” Stone said to Morris. “Which was kind of weird, because the place was so quiet you could have heard a mouse fart. But suddenly, there he was, standing in my office door.
“I looked at him and said, ‘Buddy, if you’re selling something, have you ever come to the wrong place.’ And he gave me this funny little smile and says “I suppose you might consider me a salesman of a sort, Mr. Stone. As to whether I am in the wrong place, why don’t we determine that later?’ ”
“What did he look like?” Morris asked.
“Little guy, couldn’t have been more than five foot five. Had a goatee on him, jet black. Can’t vouch for the rest of his hair, because he kept his hat on the whole time, one of those Homburg things, which I didn’t think anybody wore anymore. Nice suit, three-piece, with a bow tie—not a clip on, but one of those that you tie yourself.”
“Did he give you a name?”
“He said it was Dunjee. What’s that—Scottish?”
“Maybe.” Morris’s voice held no inflection at all. “Could me any number of things.” After a moment he continued, “So, what did he want with you?”
“Well, he was one of those guys who take forever to get to the point, but what it finally came down to was that he wanted me to play Let’s Make a Deal.”
Morris nodded. “And what was he offering?”
“A way out. A change in my luck. An end to my problems, and a return to the kind of life I’d had before.”
“I see. And your part of the bargain involved . . . ”
“Nothing much.” Another bitter laugh. “Just my soul.”
“Doesn’t sound like a very good deal to me,” Morris said gently.
“I thought it was just a joke, man!” Stone stood up and started pacing the room nervously. “I only listened to the guy because I had nothing else to do, and it gave me something to think about besides slitting my wrists.”
Morris nodded again. “I assume there were . . . terms.”
“Yeah, sure. Ten years of success. Ten years, back on top of the world, right where I liked it. Then, at the end of that time, Dunjee said, he’d be back. To collect.”
“And your ten years is up tonight, I gather.”
“At midnight, right. That’s actually a few hours over ten years, since it was the middle of the afternoon when I talked to him, that day. But he said he wanted to ‘preserve the traditions.’ So midnight it is.”
“Did he have you sign a contract?”
“Yeah.”
“Something on old parchment, maybe, smelling of brimstone?”
“No, nothing like that. He had the template on a disk in his pocket. He asked if he could use my PC to fill in the specifics, so I let him. Then he printed out a copy, and I signed it.”
“In blood?”
“No, he said I could use my pen. But then he pulled out one of those little syrettes they use in labs, still in the sterile wrapper, and everything. Dunjee said he would need three drops of blood from one of my fingers. I said okay, so he stuck me, and let the three drops fall onto the contract, just below my signature.”
“Then what happened?”
“He said he’d see me in ten years plus a few hours, and left. I told myself the whole thing was going to make a great story to tell my friends, assuming I had any friends left.”
“You felt it was all just an elaborate charade.”
“Of course I did. I wouldn’t have been surprised if one of my former partners had sent the little bastard, just to mess with my head. I mean, deals with the devil—come on!”
Morris leaned forward in his chair. “But now you feel differently.”
“Well . . . yeah. I do.”
“Why? What changed your mind?”
Stone flopped back in the chair he had left. “Because it worked, that’s why. My luck changed. Everything turned around. Everything. My partners dropped their lawsuits, some former clients who still owed me money decided to pay up, a guy from Microsoft called with an offer to buy a couple of my software patents, my wife and I got back together—six months later, it was like my life had done a complete one-eighty.”
“So you decided that your good fortune meant that your bargain with the Infernal must have been real, after all.”
“Yeah, eventually. It took me a long time to finally admit the possibility. Denial is not just a river in Egypt, you know what I mean?”
“I do, for sure.”
“But the bill comes due at midnight, and I’m scared, man. I have to admit now that I am really, big-time terrified. Can you help me? I mean, I can pay whatever you want. Money’s not a problem.”
“Well, I’m not sure what—”
“Look, you’re some kind of hotshot occult investigator, right? There’s a story about a bunch of vampires, supposed to have taken over some little Texas town. I heard you took care of that in four days flat. And, yesterday, I talked to a guy named Walter LaRue, he’s the one told me how to find you. He said you saved his family from some curse that was, like, three centuries old, but he wouldn’t tell me more. Christ, you must deal with this kind of stuff all the time. There’s got to be a way out of this box I’ve got myself in, and if anybody can find it, I figure it’s you. Please help me. Please.”
Morris looked at Trevor Stone for what seemed like a long time. Unlike his unexpected visitor, Morris was dressed casually, in a gray Princeton Tigers sweatshirt, blue jeans, and sandals. There were a few touches of gray in his closely trimmed beard, but none at all in the black hair above it. Finally, he said, “You’re probably pretty thirsty after all that talking—how about something to wet your whistle, before we talk some more?”
Stone asked for bourbon and water, and Morris went to a nearby sideboard to make it, along with a neat Scotch for himself. Although well into his forties, Morris moved easily, like someone who still likes to make hard use of his body from time to time.
Morris gave Stone his drink and sat down again. “You know, my profession, if you want to call it that, isn’t exactly well organized. There’s no union, no licensing committee, no code of ethics we’re all expected to follow. But my family has been in this business going back four generations, and we have our own set of ethical standards.”
Stone took a pull on his drink but said nothing. He was watching Morris with narrowed eyes.
“And it’s a good thing too,” Morris went on. “Because it would be the simplest thing in the world for me to go through a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, recite a few prayers over you in Latin, maybe splash a little holy water around. Then I could tell you that you were now safe from the forces of Hell, charge an outrageous amount of money, and send you on your way. You would be, too.”
Stone shook his head in confusion. “I would be—what?”
“Safe, Mr. Stone. You’d be safe, no matter what I did, because you were never in any danger to begin with.”
After a lengthy silence, Stone said, “You don’t believe I made a deal with the Devil.”
“No, I don’t. In fact I’m sure you didn’t.”
Hope and skepticism chased each other across Stone’s face. “Why?” he asked sharply. “What makes you so certain?”