6.11
“Kaz, Kaz, it’s for a case I’m on. It’s research. Yeah. Swear to God. No, I’m not going to summon a demon. Jesus, could you imagine?”
Walker catches Landis’s eye from across the room, and winks, cradling his cell phone up against his ear with one shoulder. He’s clearing furniture out as he talks, leaning against the sink and flicking his finger here and there like a conductor. The four kitchen chairs suddenly line up and snake towards the door like train cars on a track, and Landis is forced to jump as they blow past him into the hall.
“Uh huh,” Walker says into the phone, gesturing to the magnetic notepad and pen stuck to the front of the fridge. Landis moves to get it for him, but has to duck out of the way as the pad detaches itself from the fridge, flying straight into Walker’s hand. Walker leans it on the counter and starts scribbling away, not seeming to notice his near-decapitation of Landis.
“So when you say blood, you don’t mean exclusively human blood, right?” he asks the DPR agent on the other end of the phone - a lab technician, he explained to Landis, who specializes in occult rituals and sacred geometry. Walker frowns at the inaudible response, furrowing his eyebrows. “Well, I just mean, if an animal were to, like, up and die on one of these summoning circles - wouldn’t that - no, Kaz, I’m not going to kill an animal, that’s insane.” Walker rolls his eyes. “Yes, I promise.”
Walker scribbles something else on the notepad, and furrows his eyebrows at it. “Now, wait, wait, are you talking get out your compass class perfect circle because I don’t think I can - or, in general, that seems unreasonable.”
Kaz says something over the phone. Walker nods again and continues to write. Landis paces. He runs his hands through his hair, then pulls his hair until his scalp hurts. It’s maddening, waiting like this. He crosses the apartment and throws open the window, hanging his head outside and trying to breathe. When he turns back around, Walker has one leg extended up against the kitchen counter, stretching for some mysterious purpose. He winks at Landis again and keeps talking into the phone.
“And what brand of cleaning product, would, hypothetically, you recommend to an individual who wants to get his deposit back on his apartment after all this? Uhuh. Yeah. Yeah, it’s vinyl.”
Austin can’t come home soon enough, Landis thinks briefly, only to remember with a pang that Austin isn’t really on his way back to the apartment. He catches movement in the corner of his eye, and looks over to see Richard hovering in the hallway, just outside the kitchen, an unreadable expression on his face. He turns his back and drifts into the living room. Landis follows him.
“Are you mad?” he asks Richard quietly.
“Am I mad?” Richard repeats. He’s quiet for a moment, like he has to think about it. “…no. Not at you all, at least.”
“But you don’t like demons,” Landis says. He doesn’t exactly know the reason behind Richard’s distrust of demons, only that Austin’s mentioned it in the past, and that it has something to do with how Richard died. Landis has always felt like maybe it’s too personal of a thing to ask.
“I don’t.” Richard sighs. “Mostly I’m frustrated that all of this,” he waves his hands, indicating their general surroundings, “is going on in the first place, and that I couldn’t do anything to keep Austin from having to sign that contract.”
“What more could you have done?” Landis winces at the way the question sounds once it’s out in the open. “Sorry. I just mean - well, you’re a ghost. I know you can touch stuff and move it around, but I don’t know if you could have stopped a cave-in.”
“I’m his father,” Richard says. “I should have done something.”
“Sometimes…” Landis starts, and then stops, fishing for the right words to say. “Sometimes there’s nothing you can do, until after the disaster’s already happened.”
Richard shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I know you all mean well by this, but - I can’t condone it. I’m going out for some air.”
Before Landis can say anything else, Richard vanishes. Landis is only left standing helplessly in the living room, wondering what to do next, for a moment, because the phone in the kitchen begins to ring.
Who’s calling at this time of night? he thinks, rushing back into the kitchen, hovering his hand over the receiver. Not a telemarketer. Maybe Otter ran into a problem? Maybe Jacob - but who would have told him?
Landis takes a deep breath, like a diver about to plunge into the water, and holds the phone up to his ear. “Hello?”
“Hello? Who is this?” asks a voice he doesn’t recognize - though that isn’t saying much, considering how the phone lines distort even the voices of friends and family to be those of strangers.
“Who is this?” Landis asks.
“Sheriff Maxwell.”
Oh. Landis swallows hard, his mouth suddenly dry. “This is Landis Holliday. How can I help you, Sheriff?”
“Hello, Mr. Holliday. I was wondering if you’d seen Austin this evening,” the sheriff says. She barely sounds concerned, but as an officer of the law, she probably has to be better at hiding it. “He went off to the mines to do some investigation for a case, and hasn’t gotten in touch with me since before he left. Has he come home yet?”
Landis chews the inside of his cheek. She doesn’t know. She let him go off into a mine where a bunch of teenagers got attacked all on his own, and didn’t even think until now that something might have gone wrong. How much faith does she have in Austin, exactly?
I have to lie, he thinks, next, and feels his hand starting to become slick with sweat around the phone. She won’t believe me about what really happened, even if she does believe in monsters and ghosts. Even if she saw Otter being possessed for herself, she’s not going to believe that Austin made a contract with a demon and got dragged to Hell. That’s like something out of a fairy tale. And if she doesn’t believe me, then she’s going to come around here asking questions, just in time to see us doing a blood sacrifice on the kitchen floor.
“Austin’s fine,” he says into the receiver, his voice somehow coming out more smoothly than he could have ever imagined it. I guess I’ve lied about bigger things before. And no one was murdered, this time. “He got home a couple hours ago and fell right to sleep. I think he’s just exhausted, you know?”
“Oh,” the sheriff says. Unlike the worry, the relief in her voice is perfectly audible.
“Do you want me to wake him up?” Landis asks, and immediately grimaces, hoping she doesn’t call his bluff. Across the kitchen, Walker raises an eyebrow quizzically at him. Landis shakes his head - he’ll explain later, if he has to at all.
“No, no,” Sheriff Maxwell says hastily. “He probably needs the rest. Just tell him to call me when he wakes up tomorrow, will you? I’m interested to get a report on what he found in the mine shaft.”
“Will do,” Landis says.
An awkward silence ensues, the buzz of the phone line filling Landis’s ear. He wonders if Sheriff Maxwell hung up on him, but thinks he can hear her breathing. Neither one of them seems to want to say anything else.
“Make sure Austin calls me tomorrow,” the sheriff says.
“Right,” Landis says, and then hears the click that means she finally has hung up on him. Before he can even put the phone back in its cradle, the front door slams open, and Otter hustles through the living room, pet carrier in hand.
“Okay,” he says breathlessly, “got the bunny. Let’s do this before I chicken out.”