Thomas Sniegoski - Where Angels Fear to Tread

Poole gasped, his breath catching in his throat.

“Control, Mr. Poole,” Delilah barked.

Her commanding words seemed to have an effect as his eyes rolled forward, and he seemed to be trying to focus on the smooth, concave surface inside the vessel.

He reached out a shaking hand, but quickly pulled it back, as if afraid he might be burned. “I–I can’t,” he sobbed pathetically, a trail of mucus running from his nose. “Please, I just want to. .”

Delilah was growing impatient. She wanted her answers now.

“You will, Mr. Poole,” she snarled, reaching out to grab hold of his wrist, forcing his hand down into the open body of the vessel.

The Hound immediately began to scream and scream. .

And Delilah wasn’t sure if he was ever going to stop.

Remy knew it was going to be one of those days.

“It’s hot as Hell in there,” the man from McNulty Heating and Cooling warned as he held open the front door to Remy’s office building.

He was short and a little fat. The front of his light blue shirt was stained with grease, his dark navy work pants powdered with dust.

“Let me guess,” Remy said, passing through the foyer. “The air-conditioning is broken.”

The repairman laughed. “You must be the detective.” He pointed at the building registry hanging on the wall in the lobby.

“Bingo! Any idea when it’ll be fixed?” Remy asked, more out of curiosity than anything. He really wasn’t affected by temperature, be it hot or cold.

The McNulty guy smiled, shaking his head. “Haven’t a clue. We’re gonna have to order some parts—could take a few days.”

Another McNulty employee, a disgruntled look on his face, came up from the building’s basement.

“What’s the verdict?” the first asked.

“Put a fuckin’ bullet in it,” he grunted. “Gonna need a whole new unit.” He kept right on walking through the doorway and out to a van parked in front of the building.

“There you have it,” Remy’s new friend said with a shrug.

“Guess so.” Remy turned toward the stairs.

“What, you’re still going up?” the repairman asked from the doorway.

“Yeah, probably push some papers around and take an early lunch.”

“Better you than me,” the man said, letting the door close as he left to join his partner. “It’s gonna be hot as Hell up there.”

Remy continued up the stairs to his office, letting the man’s words bounce around inside his skull. He was tempted to explain that Hell was actually a place of extremes—of both intense heat and numbing cold—but he doubted the repairman would have really much cared, and then of course, he would want to know how Remy knew so much about the infernal realm.

Why, I was just there on business , he imagined saying.

He chuckled out loud and unlocked his office door. But still he couldn’t help wondering what was happening in Hell. After usurping Heaven’s power there, the Son of the Morning had begun to reshape the realm. What had once been prison to those who had followed him in his rebellion against Heaven was slowly becoming Lucifer’s twisted version of the Eternal Realm. And how exactly did Heaven plan on dealing with that?

Remy shook his head. Those were matters of the damned and the divine, with humanity caught square in the middle.

He stepped into his office and realized the air-conditioning repairman had been right. It was stifling in the room. He closed the door and went directly to the window, opening it wide in the hope of catching a breeze to air out the stale, musty smell.

Then he checked his phone for messages and, finding none, decided to spend the morning working on invoices and paying some bills. But first there was a mighty need for coffee.

He had just filled the machine and set the carafe to collect the elixir of life, when there came a knock at the door and a woman cautiously entered the office.

“Hi,” Remy said cheerfully, moving toward her in greeting. “May I help you?”

The woman was wearing a dungaree jacket and skirt, and a bright red T-shirt. She was about five foot six, with bleached blond hair, and looked at first to be in her late thirties, although as Remy drew closer, he realized her eyes didn’t seem as old as she appeared.

The woman closed the door behind her, nervously moving her bag from one shoulder to the other.

“Umm,” she said, uncertainty in her tone. “You’re Remy Chandler, right? The private investigator?”

“Yes, I am,” Remy said, smiling kindly. The woman looked about to snap. “Is there something I can do for you, Ms. . ?”

“York,” the woman replied, her sandaled feet scuffing across the hardwood floor as she stepped farther into the room and extended her hand toward him. “Deryn York.”

Remy shook the woman’s warm and clammy hand.

“Why don’t you have a seat, Ms. York.” He directed her toward the chair in front of his desk, then headed back for the coffeepot.

“Coffee?” he asked her. “I’ve just made it.”

“Yes, thank you,” she said, pulling at the front of her skirt so it just about touched her knees.

Remy realized he had only one clean mug, the other one being sort of dusty.

“Let me just rinse this out,” he said, going to the tiny bathroom across the room. “It’s really warm out there today,” he said, raising his voice over the water in the sink.

“Yeah,” she answered, “hot as Hell.”

Y’know, Hell is a place of extremes. .

“It certainly is,” he replied instead as he left the bathroom. “How do you like your coffee?”

“Oh, just sugar, please.”

“How many?” he asked, pouring her a cup, and placing it on the edge of the desk in front of her. He went around his desk and opened the center drawer where he’d recently seen a few packets.

“Do you have six?” she asked.

“Six?”

She smiled self-consciously and shrugged. “I like it really sweet.”

Remy counted the packets in his drawer. “I only have five,” he told her.

“That’s fine,” she said. “Five should be good.”

He set down the sugar packets. “Here you go,” he said.

“Thank you.” She immediately ripped open the packets one after another, pouring their contents into the dark brown liquid.

“So, Ms. York,” Remy said, sitting down in his chair and taking a sip from his mug with the picture of a black Labrador retriever, “what can I do for you?”

She sipped her own coffee and made a face. Obviously it wasn’t sweet enough.

“I called your home last night,” she said, setting the mug carefully down on the edge of his desk, “but I didn’t leave a name. . or much of a message really.” She laughed nervously.

“I thought that might have been you,” Remy said.

“Yeah, I’m sorry. I really didn’t know what to say, and I had no intention of even coming here, but. .”

“But here you are,” Remy finished for her.

“Exactly,” she responded. “You’re all I have left. . my last resort.”

“Okay then.” Remy grabbed a pad of paper and a pen. “What’s brought you here, Deryn York?”

She took another sip of coffee, perhaps to fortify herself, before starting to speak.

“My daughter,” she said, her eyes becoming misty. “My daughter, Zoe.”

“All right,” Remy encouraged her. “Take your time and tell me what happened.” He was trying to make her feel comfortable; the tension was spilling off her in waves. “Are you from this area?”

Deryn shook her head. “Originally I’m from South Carolina, but we moved to Florida about five years ago.”

“You and your daughter?” he probed.

“And my husband,” she added, reaching for the coffee again. “We’ve since separated, but I can’t seem to get rid of him. He insisted on coming here with Zoe and me, even though I didn’t want him to.”