Betty halted at an unadorned door painted white, and she turned, frowning at him. "Beat it, Sampson," she said roughly, and the cheerful little dog sat at my feet, his banner tail sweeping the tiled floor like mad.
With a last scowl, she opened the door, flicked on the light, and headed down. I looked at David, and he gestured for me to go first. I shook my head, not liking the bare boards and ugly walls after the open whiteness of the rooms upstairs, and sighing, he went first.
Betty was yammering about something, and I took a breath to steady myself. I didn't want to go down there, but that's what I was here for. Frowning, I looked at Sampson. "Everything okay down there, sport?" I asked him, and he stood, his entire backside waving as he ate up the attention.
"Stupid dog," I muttered as I started down. But maybe not so stupid, since he stayed at the top of the stairs in the sun while I followed Widow Betty into the electric-lit blackness underground. Two steps in, I opened my purse and checked the lethal-spell amulet. Nothing. But the heavy-magic charm was glowing brightly enough to read by.
"I don't know how long the wall has been leaking." Betty's voice came echoing up as she reached the bottom and opened up a second door. It was unusual, but they might have had the vamp door for resale value. "I only come down here when I have to store something," she said as she flicked on the lights and the scent of carpet cleaner came drifting up. "I noticed it was wet a few weeks ago, and I ran the extractor over the carpet and forgot about it, but earlier this week, the crack just sort of opened up, and it got a lot worse."
David stepped into the basement, and after a quick amulet check, I halted at the base of the stair. I wasn't ready yet to let that woman get between me and the door. It was really thick, and it had a conventional lock on the outside and a deadbolt on the inside. Nice. Bet it was soundproof. No one likes screams disturbing their Sunday dinner.
Seeing me there, David nodded almost imperceptibly and went to drop his briefcase on the long conference table set up in the middle of the large room. It smelled too clean for Betty to be coming down here only once in a while. Bleach, and maybe that spray that Ivy used on the blood circles this spring. The cinder-block wall under the front door had a crack I could put my pinky in running from floor to ceiling, thinner rays following the mortar lines.
Betty clustered close to David as the clicks of the locks on his briefcase made a tiny echo. He brought out some paperwork, and feeling safer, I meandered to the cracks. My skin crawled when the woman's gaze sharpened on me, even as she started signing papers. If this was water damage, then I was an elf.
There was a back room behind some fake pine paneling. The drop ceiling was low, and the brown indoor/outdoor carpet looked like dirt. No wonder Al liked my kitchen; this would be an ugly place to be summoned into. Past David and Betty at the far end under the high basement windows, an eight-inch-high platform took up the entire end of the room. I looked at the crack in the wall and smirked. Yeah. This had demon-summoning all over it. I'd seen the damage they could do. The water on the floor had probably come from trying to get the blood out of the carpet.
"Ma'am?" David said to get Betty's attention. "Just a couple more places to sign, and I'll take a few pictures. Then we'll get out of here and you can return to your day."
Betty signed where David was pointing, hardly taking her eyes off of me as I flicked a bit of mortar out of the crack to find it dry underneath. "What's she doing?" Betty asked, stiffening.
David took a breath to answer, but I interrupted with a pleasant, "I'm Mr. Hue's demon specialist." This woman wasn't the top person, and that was who I wanted to talk to.
David's lips twitched, and I beamed. Yes, he was irritated, but we had two agendas here, and mine wasn't being met.
"Demon?" Betty said faintly.
"It's state law," I lied. "When the structural integrity of a dwelling has been compromised, it must be inspected for demon damage." Well, it wasn't a law, but it should be.
"I...didn't know that," Betty said, turning a new shade of pale.
David frowned, and I surged ahead. "I'd say that by the looks of this, that you have a demon problem, Betty. And a really bad one. This wall is bowing out, not in, as is typical in water damage. And as you can see by the flakes," I said, picking another one out, "the concrete is dry under it. We'll have to run some tests, but I would guess that either someone ran a hose down here to wash out the blood, or a demon urinated all over the carpet. Either one is bad news. Demon urine is really hard to get out."
Betty was backing to the door, and my confidence grew. She wasn't going to do anything. She was scared.
"Rachel," David warned, telling me to back off.
But I couldn't resist. "David, be sure to get a picture of that window. Look, you can see the hose right outside."
"Excuse me," Betty said nervously. "I think I hear my phone ringing."
"And it smells down here, too," I added, wanting to make sure she called her friend the demon summoner and not the I.S. Pretending surprise, I brought out the high-magic charm. It was a bright red, and my fingers glowed from it. "Oh, yes, yes!" I exclaimed, looking at the crack and bobbing my head. "I will definitely have to report this to the demon manifestation department. Big magic within the last few days."
David had his head down and was rubbing his forehead as Betty stared at me with wide, frightened eyes, tense and ready to run. Almost enough. Just one more nail.
"Next time you're going to try to pass off demon damage as something else, Betty, you should wait until after the new moon for the accumulated smut they leave behind to be wiped off. Now you go toddle off and call your grand pooh-bah."
Hand to her mouth, Betty fled. I tensed, not surprised when she slammed the door shut. The sound of the lock was ominous and the patter of her heels on the stairs entirely expected.
"Rachel...," David complained.
"Hey!" I shouted when the lights went out. "Oh, nice," I said, fists on my hips and frowning at the ceiling.
"This wasn't the plan," David said, and I heard his briefcase snap shut. Being a Were, his eyes had probably already adjusted to the thin glow coming in the sparse windows, but his approaching shadow was ominous-looking and creepy.
"Yes it was," I said. "You wanted to know if the damage was demonic in origin, and I gave you my opinion."
"I didn't expect you to give it to me in front of her!" he exclaimed, then sighed, sitting back on the table with his case in front of him like a fig leaf.
"Sorry," I said, and I jumped when his hand hit my shoulder. "I know these kind of people, and the head guy won't show unless I call him out. She's phoning him right now. We'll have our chat, and we can all go home and enjoy trick-or-treats tonight."
"Or they'll keep us here until they summon your demon again."
I laughed. "They wouldn't dare. Jenks is outside, and I'm under Rynn Cormel's protection. He'd wipe them out." I hesitated. "Would you be more comfortable waiting aboveground?"
David moved to the window, a dark shadow that ghosted like a wisp of fog. "Yes. How do you plan on getting out of here? Blow the door off the hinges? My company won't pay for that."
"I've got Jenks," I said, surprised he hadn't shown up yet. If all else failed, David could boost me out a window. Betty was a boob if she thought we were going to stay here until they chose to deal with us.
I opened my purse to get my phone and call Ivy to tell her I might be a little late this afternoon, and the red light of the high-magic detection amulet blazed forth to make everything a nasty haze. "Four bars on my phone," I said, squinting.
"Someone's here already," David said, coming from the window and joining me at the table. "That dog is having a fit."