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Chapter 15

Glibspet loved Mondays. In the old days, he could get more souls on a Monday than the rest of the week combined. That wasn't his main job anymore, but just being out among the crowds of traumatized, post-weekend humans never failed to put a spring in his step and a gleam in his eye. And the Monday traffic jams! They were the closest thing to being back home he'd ever found. That was one reason he usually drove to work rather than porting in; he wanted to savor the whole experience. He'd done a study once, actually checked the records, and found that he could win more souls for Hell with a few illegal lane changes and some really bad exhaust fumes than with a whole week of enticements to adultery. Not that that wasn't fun too.

All good things have to end sometime though, and his exit was coming up. Glibspet sighed, and doffed the old fedora he'd been wearing. He sat up to his normal height and gunned the Lincoln Town Car up from thirty-five to eighty, leaving the far left lane and cutting across four lanes of hostile traffic towards the Roxboro Road exit. He took the barrage of horns and squealing brakes in stride as an accolade for a job well done. As he left the interstate, he thought he heard the sweet sound of metal on metal.

He turned right onto Holloway, drove past the gas company and pulled the Lincoln into the lot by his office. Before locking up, he grabbed the rubber doughnut hemorrhoid cushion off the driver's seat and squeezed it experimentally; it was a little flat. No wonder he was sore. He'd worked all weekend on getting rid of his tail again. He'd gotten it back down to a three-inch stub, but that was almost worse than having the whole thing.

His outer office door was nondescript, just a stenciled g.i. below a mesh glass window. There was no external keyhole—all the locks were on the other side. He'd have to get a locksmith in to fix that first thing. Otherwise he was going to blow the cover he needed for the next phase of his work. Glibspet reached through and turned the bolt, cursing as the hemorrhoid doughnut rode up his arm until it looked like a water wing.

He pushed it down and stepped inside. The office didn't look too bad; he had a janitorial service in on Wednesdays. It wasn't spotless, but it wouldn't scare anyone away, and he expected a lot of visitors today. He'd placed an ad in the Durham Morning News on Friday for a research assistant and gopher—the payoff on this Averial case was just going to be too sweet for him to plod along on it. He threw the cushion back into his office and walked into the bathroom.

Glibspet studied his face in the mirror. He liked it—it had lots of character. His grin bared lovely strong canines and the fine, almost invisible red scales gave him a dignified, glossy look. Unfortunately, it wasn't a face that could pass for human, and it was a lot easier to hire people if they thought you were human. Customers, now, that was different. Being a demon was a draw for customers, and his Yellow Pages ad made no bones about it, but for this case he already had his customers. And if he were going to get an assistant, he was going to have to pass for human for quite a while.

He stepped out of his clothes and joined his hands over his head. He concentrated hard on his fingertips, and gradually they began to glow. It wasn't the steady radiance one of the Fallen could have managed—it was more like the fitful guttering of a fire banked down to embers than the glorious blaze created by the higher-ups—and it was painful for Glibspet to evoke this new manifestation, but his little powers did what he needed them to do. He drew his hands apart, and a fat red spark arced between them like a crimson Jacob's ladder. Very slowly, he traced a Glibspet-sized ellipse in the air before him, drawing the spark out thinner and thinner until it seemed that it must break up. When it was no more than a red filament, his hands met and touched on the floor. Blue fire traced back around the completed ellipse, and the faint smell of brimstone filled the room. Within the boundary he had drawn, the air shimmered and gradually took on the shape of a naked human male. When he was satisfied the image was complete, Glibspet stepped through the oval, and the image clung to him like a soap film drawn across a hoop. It bulged as he walked forward and it tightened, trying to push him back. He kept going, and suddenly it snapped free of the frame and wrapped around him like a bubble, then collapsed in on him. The ellipse flared white hot and vanished; the glow left Glibspet's fingers.

Glibspet swore and turned on the faucet, thrusting his hands underneath the water. There was a puff of steam, then cool relief. He'd learned that one the hard way—after one of his initial disguise attempts, the first thing he'd tried to do was use the bathroom. The experience had been . . . educational.

When the steam stopped, he turned back to the mirror again. Not bad. The idealized figure had stretched to fit over him. It wasn't handsome by a long shot, but the face that stared back at him from the silvered glass was unquestionably human—except for the eyes, of course—and he felt confident he could hold the seeming as long as he needed to.

The seeming couldn't do anything about the three-inch stub of tail behind him. That he'd have to hide with baggy pants and jackets until he could finish demanifesting it. He'd decided not to do anything about the ten inches in front of him—there were some sacrifices he wasn't willing to make. The eyes weren't as much of a problem as they sometimes seemed—shades and cosmetic contact lenses effectively disguised the square pupils.

Glibspet picked some appropriate clothes from his wardrobe and dressed quickly. He went through several boxes of business cards, finally settling on Dominic Glib. That one had a nice ring to it, and he hadn't used it for a while. He grabbed a couple dozen cards and stuffed them in his pocket.

It was still early; he had specified nine thirty in his ad, so he had a little time yet. Glibspet retired to his office to consider his strategy. He put the doughnut on his chair and started to think. Since Averial was trying to stay hidden (and he dearly wanted to know how she'd managed that), she would be drawing as few Hellawatts as possible. Hell could trace Hellawatt usage. Probably she had taken on a human manifestation pretty close to her natural shape so that she wouldn't have to do much in the way of maintenance. A picture of her as Averial, humanized (a more Hellish version of Ted Turner's colorization) should give him photos that would make useful identification tools.

As for how she'd hidden herself . . . well, without the use of Hellish power, she was going to have to rely on human methods of dropping out of sight. He'd gotten good at working his way around those.

The easiest way to hide was to take someone else's identity. It was a lot simpler to amend an existing set of papers than create them all from scratch. Unfortunately, taking the identity of someone who was still alive tended to get both parties in trouble, and except in Chicago during November, it was hard to get much use out of identities whose owner had been pronounced dead. There was, however, a gray area. People living in North Carolina for less than nine months weren't citizens, so if they died, the responsibility for canceling all their records went to their home states, which left all their North Carolina records without an official status and easy to appropriate. If Averial was in North Carolina, she had probably started as a dead out-of-stater.

He was going to have to pull lots of obituaries—or rather his gopher was.

The buzzer sounded as his outer door opened. Glibspet looked at the clock: nine twenty-five—right on time. He stepped into the reception room and looked at his first prospect. She was probably about seventy, well dressed, and a little plump with silver hair. She looked a lot like Barbara Bush—a perfect grandmother type. Glibspet hated grandmother types. They tended to be bad influences on people—keeping them out of Hell. And their bodies! Glibspet was convinced that after about the age of forty, gravity gained complete mastery over human women. He had absolutely no desire to see naked a woman whose navel was granted honorary nipple status because of the company it kept.

"May I help you?" Glibspet said pleasantly as he walked over to the woman. She had a black patent leather purse under one arm, and a copy of the Durham paper under the other.

"Yes, thank you," she said. "My name is Helen Norton, and when I saw your ad for a research assistant, I knew I was just the person you were looking for. I recently retired as a research associate at the Library of Congress, and before that I worked in the State Bureau of Records and in the investigation department library at State Farm. I've been kind of at loose ends since I retired. All my friends want me to come down to Florida and play shuffleboard, but I'm still raring to go do something useful."

"Research assistant?" Glibspet asked.

"Ah, your ad in the Durham Morning News," Norton clarified, a little hesitation creeping into her voice. "Established, innovative detective agency seeks part-time research assistant."

"I'm afraid I haven't a clue what you're talking about, ma'am," Glibspet told her. He leaned close as she held the folded paper up to him. He took the opportunity to ease his hand through her purse and draw out her car keys. Working carefully, so they wouldn't click, he placed them on the shelf behind her. He stole a quick glance. The key fob was a plastic rectangle with a child's drawing laminated into it. The art was completely unclassifiable, but the signature read Love, Teressa.

"Right here," Norton said, "I circled it."

"May I?" Glibspet asked. He took the paper. "Hmm," he said, running his finger over the words. He thought fast for a moment, then angled the paper out of her sight and traced the ad with his finger again. Had the lights been out, Norton might have noticed a slight glow around the digit. Glibspet handed the paper back to her. "I'm sorry, Miss Norton," he said gently. "This is an ad for the Decorator Arbor and they want a retail accountant, not a research assistant, and it's on Hollow Oak Drive, not Holloway Street."

"What?" She took the paper back and looked at it incredulously. Her face fell. "I'm so sorry," she said. "I've never made a mistake like that before. It's not like me at all. I certainly didn't mean to waste your time."

"No problem, ma'am," Glibspet said kindly. "You've given society so many useful years; it's the least we can do to help you out when—ah, that is . . ." He stopped as if realizing there was no polite way to finish the sentence.

Norton hung her head. "I won't take any more of your time," she said, and turned to go.

"Miss Norton," Glibspet said, "you look like you could use some cheering up. You've got the day off, why don't you go see your granddaughter Teressa; I know she'd be glad to see you."

She turned back. "How did you know I had a granddaughter Teressa?" she asked.

Glibspet feigned surprise. "Why, you just finished telling me all about her."

"Oh," she said in a small voice. She opened the door and walked out, slowly and hesitantly.

Glibspet waited expectantly. Several minutes later, the door opened again. "Have you seen my keys?" she whispered.

"I believe you left them on that shelf, ma'am."

Yes, he was definitely right about age and gravity, Glibspet reflected as she walked out the front door. He was pretty sure she had been about a foot taller when she came in.

It was nine thirty-five. More prospects were bound to start showing up and Glibspet didn't want to start anything complicated. Pork rinds, he decided. Not complicated at all. There was a pound bag in his desk drawer, beside the Twinkies and on top of the Little Debbie oatmeal cakes (which were a blatant case of false advertising. There wasn't any of Little Debbie in them at all, and he hadn't had one since finding that out). The how of pork rinds escaped Glibspet, he figured it was probably the same way they made rice into Rice Krispies—Snap, Krackle, Oink!—but he was enchanted with the idea of a food with no positive nutritive value whatsoever. They were almost as good as inflight meals. He'd finished the entire bag, except for one blackened, twisted, mutant rind, when the buzzer rang again. Damn! He'd been saving that one. He licked his fingers and went out to check the next prospect.

This one was quite a change. She was young, as young as Norton had been old, and gravity hadn't had its way with her at all. Her breasts sat high and firm and her nipples made we're-happy-to-be-here points against the thin fabric of her blouse. The blouse itself left most of her midriff bare, failing to meet by a good three inches the tight jeans that hugged her perfect ass and legs. And she was a blonde. False blonde. Glibspet loved fake blondes; they were easy to manipulate. Probably the peroxide damage to their brains. This applicant looked eminently qualified.

"Hello," she said, "I'm Muffy Springer, and I am so totally stoked on this job." She held out her hand, and Glibspet shook it.

"Stoked," he said.

"Totally. It's like I told my roommate, Cindy, when she tried to get me a work-study job in the cafeteria. I am so sure, Cindy, I mean, that's like my sole goal in life, that's why I transferred from Southern Cal, so I could pick trays up off of tables. She's such a bagger sometimes. So, it's like, when I saw your ad, I'm like 'well I can do that,' I've watched all the Magnum P.I.s, and I know all about detective stuff like that. It's so, you know, self-empowering."

She took a breath, and Glibspet held up his hand to forestall any more information. It didn't work. "So, I can, like be an excellent detective, and I can work afternoons and evenings, except like this Friday when there's this really bitchin' concert in Greensboro or I have to get my hair done, or maybe when my boyfriend wants to frob and we have like an event . . ."

Glibspet had been in pits of Hell with less effective torments. If it weren't for that body . . . He decided to probe one more time for traces of sentience. "Muffy," he said.

"And sometimes if maybe the Chi Alphas throw a kegger or—"

"Muffy."

"And I can drive, so I can do, like, car chases . . . Uh, huh?"

"I'm looking for someone to help with research, Muffy. Can you read?"

"Books are like, the tongues of Western Imperialism, you know? It's like if you see something in a book, and, like, that's not how you are, you don't actualize, and your self-esteem is like, detached. I think we should all be more holistic and like, in tune with each other. Why should we, you know, oppress each other with white male words when we can empower each other just by being an organic unit. Wouldn't that be bitchin'?"

"Absolutely," Glibspet said. "Thank you, Muffy, I'll be in touch."

"So like, when do I start?"

"I can't tell you, Muffy. I think the room may be bugged," Glibspet said.

"Gnarly! Who by?"

"It's the capitalists, Muffy—the European white male capitalists."

"So, I'll call, then."

"No," Glibspet said quickly. "My, uh, phone might be tapped. In fact, it's probably not a good idea for you to even drive too close by here again. You've seen Mission Impossible?"

"For sure."

"Well, I'll be in touch. Go now, hurry—they're probably watching the building."

She turned to go, and Glibspet watched the cheeks of that wondrous ass rise and fall. What a waste. "Muffy," he asked as she reached the door, "what's your major?"

"Multicultural gender neutral childhood education."

"Ah. I thought so. Hurry now!"

The door closed behind her, and Glibspet leaned against the wall. He felt so useless sometimes. How could Hell do any worse to these people than they did to themselves? Then he remembered Helen Norton and cheered back up.

Glibspet heard the door handle click this time before the buzzer sounded. The door swung open slowly and revealed a dark-haired young man in his late twenties. He was staring back over his shoulder at something. He stood that way a second, then shrugged and walked across the threshold. "Oh, hello," he said as he looked ahead and saw Glibspet. "Do you know what that was all about? I just ran into a girl in the parking lot and she seemed terrified of me. Called me an imperialist male pig, and drove off like someone was after her."

"I don't have any idea," Glibspet said. "We get a lot of strange types around here. And you are?"

"Oh, sorry. I'm Craig Mindenhall. I'm here about your research assistant position. I would have been here sooner, but there was some sort of terrible pile-up out on I-85, and I was stuck for forty-five minutes."

"It happens," Glibspet said. "I'm Dominic Glib."

"Pleased to meet you," said Mindenhall, shaking his hand. "I was reading your ad, and I think I might be a good match for you."

"Do you have any research experience?" Glibspet asked.

"Yes," Mindenhall said. "I know it's not exactly detective work, but I used to do trademark searches at an ad agency, to make sure we didn't name a product something that already existed, like calling a new car 'The Timex.' I also worked at a newspaper, and I had to verify all the facts in the consumer reports."

"Hmm, not bad," Glibspet said. "Can you give any references?"

"I can for those two jobs," Mindenhall said, "and for my time at Clemson, but I can't give you anything recent, because I've been working for myself as a freelance designer the last several years. I plan to keep doing that, but I need some more cash coming in to keep up the house payments because I just split up with my housemate. No, wait a minute—" Mindenhall stood up straighter and looked Glibspet in the eyes. "I told myself I wasn't going to weasel. Because I just broke up with my boyfriend. Is that a problem?"

Well, that put an interesting spin on things, Glibspet thought. He generally sought out women, but he wasn't averse to a little equal-opportunity work—and the guy was attractive. Setting him up might be a worthwhile project. Especially if he could help Glibspet find Averial during the process. "No," he said, "in fact, I'm gay myself."

"A gay P.I.?" Mindenhall said.

Glibspet shrugged, "Hey, we're everywhere. You know that."

"Yeah, somehow I just hadn't thought about P.I.s before."

"Believe it," Glibspet said. He crossed his arms over his chest and stared down at his shoes for a minute, trying hard to appear deep in thought. When he looked back up again, he sighed and smiled. "Okay. I've decided. I'm going to offer you the job."

Mindenhall blinked in surprise. "Just like that?" he asked.

"Just like that."

"But, my references, my school record . . ."

"Anyone can get references," Glibspet said, "And fake out a professor. I go on my instincts, and they say you're my guy."

Mindenhall frowned. "You're not offering me the position just because I'm gay, are you, Mr. Glib? I don't like quotas, even reverse ones."

"Not at all," Glibspet said. "I won't lie to you, Craig. Your being gay is a minor plus, but I run a business here, and I'm going to pick whoever can help me do it best. Come into my office and we'll talk about salaries and job descriptions, and you can decide whether you want the position." He opened the office door, glanced in, and turned back to his new hire. "By the way, you'd better wheel one of those chairs over there in—the one I've got in the office right now isn't very good. Oh, and call me Dom."

It didn't take very long to come to terms with Mindenhall on salary. Glibspet was determined to have him, and was willing to go to the far side of generous to get him. Job duties took a little longer.

"I understand all that, Dom," Mindenhall said, "but do we really have to lie about what we're doing?"

"Sometimes, yes, absolutely," Glibspet said. "There are a lot of people who will spill their guts to anyone—except a detective. Can you handle that?"

Mindenhall looked troubled. "I guess so," he said finally. "I try to be a good Catholic, and I think lying is wrong. But as long as we aren't working to hurt someone, I think I can do it."

A good Catholic—better and better. "I only take on the best causes, Craig," Glibspet assured him. "Finding runaway children for their parents, locating missing wives or husbands for spouses who need to know what has happened to the people they love. You're going to be doing public service work." He pressed his fingers together and gave Mindenhall his best sincere smile. "Sometimes it's a mission."

The young man took that in, mulled it around for a moment, and smiled at last. "Then we have a deal, Dom."

"Marvelous! I don't suppose you'd care to seal it over dinner this evening?"

Mindenhall looked surprised, then conflicted. "No. I'd . . . rather not," he said. "It's just too soon after Frank and I split. I need some time by myself."

Glibspet took Mindenhall's hands and held them between his. "It's all right, Craig," he said. "I understand about loss. I lost Mike several years ago, and there hasn't been anyone for me since then. If you ever need a shoulder to cry on, just let me know."

With a thoughtful expression, Mindenhall said, "It's . . . difficult to lose someone. I appreciate your concern." He stood up. "I've got some things I have to take care of. You'll call when you need me?"

"Count on it."

Mindenhall stopped halfway out the door. "The Yellow Pages' ad for Glibspet Investigations made it look like the boss was a demon."

"Devil," Glibspet corrected. "Is that a problem?"

Mindenhall frowned. "You tell me."

"Frankly, he rarely comes in. He's tired of the place and looking to sell. If he makes the right offer, I'm looking to buy. Otherwise—nah, he's no problem."

Mindenhall nodded thoughtfully. "Okay, then. I admit I still worry about those guys." He shrugged and walked out, closing the door behind him.

Glibspet waited until he heard the outer door close, too. Then he smiled. "You should," he whispered. He started humming "Time is on My Side." This was going to be fun.

 

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