Page 9 of Devils and the Dead
He shook his head. “Could have been anyone. Place was absolute chaos, sir. There was a party with music and tables full of food. People racing around and screaming. Bunch of demons running around a cornfield trying to locate and catch squirrels. All I knew was I needed to defend my farm and my family from the demons, so that’s what I did. When the demons were gone, we went back to our graves, and I was suddenly in hell again, swimming in the endless lake of lava.”
This had to have been the weirdest story I’d ever heard. Demons didn’t just run amok attacking groups of humans anymore. The 1632 treaty of Erebus forbade anything besides one-on-one demonic attacks, except for during certain astrological events. Why would a bunch of demons attack humans having a party? Or be looking for squirrels in a cornfield?
“Does anyone else have additional information?” I’d hoped one of these Hoffman souls would be able to point me straight to the necromancer who’d summoned them so I could retrieve heaven’s missing soul and get back to my real job. Those new Cliffs of Despair weren’t going to build themselves.
A short, stout woman raised her hand.
“Yes?” I prodded.
“There were zombie animals there fighting the demons along with live animals,” she informed me. “I almost stepped on an undead rat. I don’t like rats. I don’t like them alive, and I don’t like them dead.”
Okay. Perhaps the demons were targeting the necromancer for some reason, and he needed to pull out all the stops to defend himself. It didn’t explain why he’d kept one of the souls, or why the demons were after squirrels, but it was a lead I could possibly follow up on.Someonein hell must know about a rogue band of demons who went joyriding to the human world two weeks ago to attack a necromancer and chase squirrels.
“We had to protect the farm,” another man spoke up. “And our family. We might be condemned to hell, but we still got standards. If the family calls us to fight demons on the farm, we’re gonna be there.”
I frowned, wondering about that for a second. Souls just couldn’t leave their afterlife to answer the call of their families unless there was magic involved. Was this man implying that a member of his family was the necromancer? If so, then perhaps a quick trip to the human world and the Hoffman family farm would lead me to the missing soul.
The rest of the souls had nothing new to offer, so I dismissed them, giving them the afternoon off from their punishments in thanks for their cooperation. Steve’s very thorough report had the address for the Hoffman farm, so I popped down there, hoping that through some miracle, I’d find Maude Hoffman standing by the barn, waiting to be returned to heaven.
Sadly, the only thing I found by the barn was an old tractor and a calico cat who eyed me before sauntering off into the fields.
It was a nice farm. The layout was aesthetically pleasing and practical. I felt the placement of the barn over the previous milk shed and the transformation of the pasture into a cornfield were good choices. The wood-sided farmhouse was weathered, but had a much-loved charm. This was a home—and it had been a home for many, many generations.
I made my way over to the cemetery, keeping one eye on the house in case a resident noticed my trespass and came out to confront me. The family graveyard was surrounded by a short iron fence. Weeds were getting a little out of hand around some of the stones, but it was clear that someone took care of this place. The grass had been trimmed in the last week, and a few of the markers had flowers next to them. I walked up to the one for Mary Ann “Maude” Hoffman and knelt down to straighten the spray of fall mums by the granite stone.
She’d been born in the early part of the twentieth century and died in 1984. Beloved wife and mother. Blue ribbon winner for her peach crumble. Wow, that peach crumble must truly be amazing if it had earned mention on the woman’s tombstone.
I stood and walked around the cemetery, noting that none of the graves appeared disturbed—even Maude’s. I couldn’t feel any residual magic from the spell, but that was no surprise. After two weeks, even the most sensitive individual probably couldn’t pick anything up. What was more interesting was that I couldn’t feel any current of magic at all in the area of the cemetery or the farm. If there were a necromancer living here, I would have expected them to have worked some magic in the last few weeks that I could find traces of. That meant the person who’d raised all those dead didn’t live here. It was either a family member who resided elsewhere, or someone unconnected with the family.
But why would someone unconnected with the family be here that particular night during a party? And care enough about what was going on to exert the incredible amount of magical power it took to raise over a dozen bodies from the grave?
It would be weird to knock on the farmhouse door and ask the residents if anyone in their family or among their friends was a necromancer, and I didn’t want to take the risk of lingering long enough to be seen, so I went back to my office in hell and called for Steve to come in. Within seconds of the summons, he was walking through my door.
“What’s up boss?” Steve plopped down in a chair and put his feet up on the coffee table.
I glared at him until he removed his feet. “I seem to have been saddled with a project involving those souls who briefly went missing a few weeks back.”
He sat up, practically bouncing with excitement. “So my report was useful? I did good?”
“Yes, you did good.” The guy was like an eager puppy, but the report had actually come in handy in this instance. “And I need you to do some further digging into the matter. Get me a list of all necromancers currently in hell and where they reside. Then please check with your friend in Purgatory and ask if their two missing souls were able to shed any light on who summoned them. I also want you to ask around and find out who the demons were that attacked the Hoffman farm two weeks ago—it was at the same moment the souls went missing, so it shouldn’t be too hard to discover who was out of hell at the time.”
Steve’s eyes widened. “They’re connected? Ooo, Lucifer is not going to like this one bit.”
“He probably won’t, but no one is going to tell him about it until our investigation is complete and we have a report finalized. Understand?”
Steve nodded, then dashed off to get to work while I got out the designs for the new Cliffs of Despair. I had some suspicions about this whole summoning thing, but I didn’t want to divulge anything right now. Call it a gut instinct, but something told me I would be better off keeping all of this quiet for now. Or possibly keeping it quiet forever.
Chapter 6
Babylon
Crossing the mountain range into Accident always sent a wave of homesickness over me. My house was only half an hour away from home, and I loved living in the human world, but there was a part of me that would always miss this place.
I pulled into town, waving at a group of fairies standing by the front door of the diner as I drove by. Brandy and Ricky were sitting outside the firehouse. Mr. Broadlegs was sweeping the sidewalk in front of his shop. As much as I wanted to swing by and chat with everyone, I had a lot to do today. I needed to go up to Savior Mountain and check out the ghost situation with Clinton and his pack. Then I needed to stop by the law firm to see Cassie and finally confess what I’d done two weeks ago.
But first I was going to get breakfast, and visit the one being in Accident whose former job had to do with the dead and their souls. Nash was a short-order cook in the diner, and he was my sister Ophelia’s main squeeze. But before he’d met her and fallen in love, he used to be a reaper.
I pulled around the back of the block and down an alley that led to a parking lot right behind the diner. A narrow walkway led between two buildings and around to the front. There were still quite a few people inside, even though the breakfast crowd was starting to thin out a bit.
