The Sixth Demon: Book One (EBOOK)

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ONE

THE MURDER VICTIM had already been removed from the gift shop restroom by the time Neveah Lane arrived on the scene. That was no real surprise—while she kept a sharp eye out for odd occurrences around Vallecito, with the help of a police scanner app dialed in to the area, it was still a solid hour’s drive to get here from her apartment in Stockton.

The Morning Watch website paid Neveah to write up interesting news content for them as a freelance reporter. While sticking her nose in where it wasn’t wanted had been her primary occupation for a solid couple of millennia now, receiving money in return for her snooping was a relatively new phenomenon.

She hoisted her camera bag into a slightly more comfortable position and pulled a notebook out of her pocket. “So, you didn’t see the victim come into the shop?” she asked the pale, acne-pocked teenager standing behind the sales counter as though it could act as a bulwark against the outside world.

He shook his head rapidly, pushing his black-rimmed glasses up his nose when they slipped. “No, no one did. It was really weird. Alice was watching the counter. I was outside getting the zip lines set up. But there was a pretty good-sized crowd wandering around—mostly outside, in the adventure park area.”

Neveah dutifully jotted this down, giving him a brisk nod. “Right. But you were the one that found the body?”

Another frantic head shake. “No—I mean, not exactly. The body was the women’s restroom. A customer found it and I came running when I heard the screaming. It was crazy, too. This beautiful woman—and I’m talking, like, supermodel gorgeous—dressed up like Tauriel from Lord of the Rings, with blood all down her front.”

Neveah raised an eyebrow, but covered the reaction quickly. “Do you know what killed her? Did the police say?”

“I don’t think they know for sure yet,” said the teenager. “Shot or stabbed, I guess, with all the blood. I’ll tell you what was the weirdest part, though. She looked… peaceful. Her eyes were open, staring up at the ceiling. But she had this strange little smile on her face. Like—er, what do they call it? A Mona Lisa smile. That’s it. Just like in the painting.”

“Hmm,” Neveah replied absently, already planning her next steps. “That’s interesting. Thank you so much for your help. One more thing—you mentioned a coworker who was inside the gift shop when the dead woman arrived. Alice?”

Worry clouded the kid’s face. “Alice Ramirez, yeah. She, uh… she disappeared. I think maybe she saw what happened in the bathroom and got upset. And then she, like, ran away, maybe? The police seemed really interested in talking to her, but no one knows where she is right now.”

Neveah didn’t doubt that the police were interested. She jotted the name down, and wrote ‘Suspect?’ next to it. “I see. I don’t suppose you know where Alice lives?”

“No, only that she’s got an apartment in Vallecito. She’s a college student at Columbia. I guess her parents are loaded, but they wanted her to work during the summers for the experience.” He fumbled behind the counter and came up with a cracked wooden clipboard. “Hang on, I’ve got her cell number here. I already gave it to the police. And I tried to call her earlier, too, but it just went to voicemail.”

After taking down the phone number, Neveah thanked him again and went to scope out the restroom in question. Unsurprisingly, the area around it was surrounded by crime scene tape and guarded by a stoic female police officer. The woman lifted a hand in warning as Neveah approached.

“No press allowed past the yellow tape,” the officer said. “This is an active crime scene; you’ll need to stay back.”

Neveah smiled at her, watching as the woman blinked rapidly in response, her lips parting slightly.

“I understand,” Neveah told her, letting her aura unfurl from its usual tight restraints. “And I really do hate to ask, but it would mean so much to me if you could let me have a little peek inside. It’ll just be for a moment, promise. I’ll wear the cute plastic booties and everything.”

The officer’s expression grew dazed, adoration shining in her eyes. “J-just for a minute, right?”

Neveah turned her most dazzling smile on the woman. “That’s right, dear—I just need a teensy peek. No one ever has to know I wasn’t simply another forensics photographer.”

With a furtive look around to make sure no one else was watching, the officer gave her a hesitant nod. “Okay. Just a quick look around, and don’t touch anything, please.”

“You’re a star,” Neveah told her. “Thank you, my dear. I’ll be right back out, don’t worry.”

With a final bright smile over her shoulder, Neveah snagged a pair of sterile booties from a folding table that had been set up outside the perimeter and ducked beneath the yellow tape. A couple of people looked up at her, but as generally seemed to be the case in circumstances such as this, they assumed that because she’d received permission from the officer on duty to enter, it meant she was supposed to be there.

The restroom door on the back wall of the rustic building had been propped open. The room inside wasn’t large, containing only a regular toilet stall and a handicapped-accessible stall across from the double sink and vanity. A hand dryer, a trashcan, and a diaper changing station completed the very standard setup.

A young man who been crouched on the dingy tile floor next to a faint bloodstain looked up when she poked her head in. His brow wrinkled in a frown as he took in the camera in her hands.

“They’ve already finished with the photos,” he said.
She snapped a couple shots of the room’s simple layout and sent him a sunny smile. “Not quite,” she replied. “All done now, though. Thanks!”

It hadn’t taken more than a second or two to detect the faint echo of magic lingering in the enclosed space. Not that it was truly a surprise. The likelihood that an apparent murder on the doorstep of the hidden passage connecting Earth to Hell was more than a simple human robbery gone wrong had been fairly high to start with.

The gateway to the demon realm had been quiet in the last several months, but things were still tense between the two powerful races. After all, they had only recently been at war with each other across dimensions. Earth might act as a sort of demilitarized zone between Hell and the Fae realm of Dhuinne—but these days, all it would take was one poorly timed diplomatic incident to start the whole repulsive business up again.

Unfortunately, a dead Fae lying at the literal gates of Hell definitely qualified as a diplomatic incident. Neveah couldn’t imagine what the Fae woman had been thinking by even coming here in the first place. Her race might have been the nominal winners after the most recent intra-realm conflict, but they steered well clear of this place in the normal course of things.

This had the potential to be explosive. Neveah slipped beneath the crime scene tape and shucked off her disposable booties, sending the police officer a distracted nod of thanks. The woman beamed at her in return.