Alexandra Sokoloff - Book of Shadows

Garrett stared at her. “You know a lot about it for someone who has no interest in demons.”

She stared back into his eyes, and hers were like onyx. “I didn’t say I had no interest. I don’t work with them, myself. But any student of magic knows Crowley. He casts a long shadow.”

Garrett backed down, glanced at his pad. “So—Choronzon.”

“Choronzon is a demon from Enochian magic—a system supposedly dictated by angels to Renaissance occultists John Dee and Edward Kelley. Dee and Kelley called Choronzon ‘that mighty devil,’ and ‘the deadliest of all the powers of evil’; they equated him with the serpent in the Garden of Eden.”

She turned the pages of another book to reveal illustrations that chilled Garrett’s blood: spiny, bestial, deformed, reptilian creatures, with split tongues and lizard hands, eyes like black holes and jagged rows of spikes for teeth. Garrett had to suppress a shudder of revulsion; they were creatures from the hell grimly detailed by the nuns who had taught him, in stories that had given him screaming nightmares as a child. Superstitious crap, he told himself, but the thought was hollow.

He glanced again at the twisted things in the illustrations. “You said demons have no corporeal form.”

Cabarrus nodded to him, impressed. “Very good, Detective. This is merely how we see them. A projection of evil and bestiality. Choronzon in particular is said to cause madness, chaos, and decay, by his very presence. He is variously described as the Lord of Hallucinations, the Dweller at the Threshold, the Demon of the Abyss, the Demon of Dispersion, ‘He who causes mental chaos,’ ‘He who blasts the flowers of the field.’ ”

Garrett sat up at this. “The flowers.” Tanith looked startled, and he realized he’d nearly shouted. “I’m sorry. Tell me about the flowers.”

She answered slowly, studying him. “It’s a quality associated with the demon—that it scorches the flowers where it walks.”

Garrett sat still and didn’t like the swirl of sensations he was feeling. “What else?” he asked tightly.

She gave him a strange look, but resumed. “The story is that in his later years Crowley, along with Victor Neuberg, a male initiate who was also Crowley’s lover, tried to summon and bind Choronzon in a magical triangle during a ritual in the Sahara Desert. The demon manifested in the triangle but was more powerful than Crowley anticipated and it took control of his body. It’s unclear what happened, but contemporaries said Crowley’s mind was never whole after the attempt. He became a slave to drugs and died in disgrace. And Choronzon… developed a taste for humans.”

Garrett sat back with his mind reeling. “That’s—quite a story.” It was a more coherent narrative than what he had read on his own, but no less disturbing. He sat in silence for a moment, then something occurred to him. “Do the numbers 333 mean anything to you?”

She stared at him. “It’s another sigil for Choronzon. Three-three-three is the number of the demon. What does Choronzon have to do with this investigation, Detective?” she asked tensely.

“I’m not at liberty to say—”

Tanith put her hand out and pointed at the page where Garrett had drawn the triangles. “Was this sigil what was carved into that girl’s body?”

Garrett looked at her with a jolt—and knew he had betrayed what he was thinking.

Tanith stood in agitation, smoothing her hands on her skirt. “So whoever killed her is trying to summon Choronzon. You don’t want that to happen, Detective Garrett.”

He stood as well. “I don’t want any of this to happen. It’s my job to prevent it from happening, and I’m good at my job, Ms. Cabarrus.”

Her dark eyes flashed. “I have no doubt. But in this case the killer is playing to your weakness, because you’re going to ignore evidence that you don’t want to believe.” Her words struck Garrett with a cold shock of truth.

“You’re right, I don’t believe in demons,” he answered her. “I think that’s a bullshit way of excusing the evil that people do all on their own, all the time. We have free will. We always have the choice.”

“I agree,” she said instantly, surprising him. “Demons may well be no more than concentrated and projected human desires.”

He looked across at her, trying to understand. “So you don’t think they’re real?”

“ Real isn’t the question. Demons are, Detective Garrett.”

Her eyes went to the tabletop, to the page with the three triangles, and she began to pace the room. The candlelight gleamed off her silver and crystal jewelry. “If the killer carved that sigil into Erin Carmody’s body, he is using human sacrifice to summon the demon. For your purposes, it doesn’t matter if the demon comes or not. What you need to know is that the killer believes it, and he won’t stop killing until he gets what he wants.”

“We have a suspect in custody—”

She whirled on him, her eyes blazing. “You know a boy didn’t kill those three people—”

“I don’t know there are three, either,” he lashed back. But even as he said it, he was remembering his initial certainty that Erin’s murder could not be a first killing.

“Because you haven’t looked.”

“Are you sure you’re not covering for Jason Moncrief?” Garrett demanded.

She made a scornful noise in her throat. “Why would I do that?”

“You haven’t been straight with me, Ms. Cabarrus. Moncrief had numerous books by Crowley on his shelf. He got those books from your shop.”

She stared at him in what looked like genuine bewilderment. “That’s not true.”

“The stickers are on the back,” Garrett said.

“Then he shoplifted them. Crowley’s books are expensive, and they tend to walk away on their own. A certain kind of teenage boy…” She trailed off, staring at him. “Do you think I’m involved in this, somehow?” Her face was so incredulous he faltered.

“I think you’re a pretty staunch defender of someone you don’t even know,” he said flatly, and stood his ground.

“I don’t know him. I know what happened,” she flung back at him. “I understand what happened,” she amended, and there was a tremor in her voice.

“What happened?” Garrett demanded.

“He opened a door,” Tanith said. Her eyes were bleak. “And something reached through.”

Garrett stared at her. She must have realized she’d lost him, because her next words were deliberate and rational. “He’s a teenager who dabbled in something he doesn’t understand. But he didn’t kill her—”

“What are you saying, then, a demon did?” Garrett scoffed.

“Maybe,” she said seriously. “Or someone under its power.”

Garrett had an unwelcome flash of Jason’s coal-black eyes, that stretched-taut face. “Everything you’re saying about this ‘demon’ still points to Jason Moncrief. He had the books, he wrote songs about it, he had all the ritual items in his room—”

“Items any magician might have—”

Garrett’s eyes fell again on the book open on the table between them, the reptilian forms, and suddenly understood what he’d been trying not to think about.

“I saw it,” he said violently.

She stopped, stared at him, into him. His heart was pounding as if he had run a mile. “What did you see?” she asked softly.

He struggled with himself. “Something,” he said, with effort. “I saw… something.” In the mirror in Jason’s room … “I heard something…”

She moved a step closer, searching his face. “Tell me.”

“Voices. Layered on top of each other. On our interview tape.” The words were out of his mouth before he realized he was saying them. Across from him, her eyes were dark and still. “What does it mean?” he demanded.