“It’s alright. You have to walk up some blind alleys before you find where you’re going. I’ve got an idea—why don’t you go in my room and watch some TV? Maybe something on the local channels will jog your memory. Michael, would you turn it on for him?”
“Sure.” He followed the boy back to my bedroom. I drummed my fingertips on the tabletop, trying to figure out another angle to look at this case. The newspaper stands were closed by now, but I could still check the obituaries online. They wouldn’t be up to date just yet, but most of the names present would be recent. I connected to the local website and searched again. I found a couple of Jacobs, but they weren’t children. Well, no one ever said this job was easy.
“Hey.” I tilted my head back to find Michael smiling down at me. “Any luck?”
“Nope. Shame, though. Cute kid.”
“Yeah,” he said with a regretful smile.
I straightened up and closed the laptop, sliding in my seat so I could look at him. “Why did you seem so agitated when you came in? Is there something you’re not telling me?”
The smile disappeared, replaced with a neutral expression, and he didn’t answer. Not a good sign.
I pressed on. “Is there something you’re not supposed to tell me?”
Michael ran a hand through his hair, brows furrowing. “Not exactly. I’m just…worried. Jacob isn’t dangerous, but I don’t like that he came into your apartment instead of finding you on the street like the other ghosts. It bothers me.”
“Why? You know Gabriel blessed this apartment. If he were a threat, he wouldn’t be able to get in, remember?”
He plopped down in the chair next to mine. “I know. I guess this whole thing with Belial made me paranoid. And it doesn’t help that there’s a rumor of another major player in town.”
“Agreed,” I admitted. “But as long as I’m in here, we can relax a little.”
He smiled. I cocked my head to the side. “What?”
“I think that’s the first time you’ve said ‘we’.”
My eyes widened a bit. How the hell did he notice stuff like that? He just kept catching me off-guard.
“Lighten up, Jordan. You don’t have to be dark and tormented all the time.”
I squirmed in my seat, avoiding eye contact. “I’m not very good at being anything other than grumpy.”
He rose from his seat. “That’s what I’m here for. Maybe some of my traits will rub off on you.”
“…I’m going to ignore the sexual connotations of that sentence just so my brain won’t explode.”
“How deep in the gutter does your mind have to be to think that sounded perverted?”
“…I refuse to answer that question.”
“Just help me clean up the kitchen, will you?”
“I don’t know. Will anything ‘rub off on me’?…don’t you dare throw that dishrag at me.”
Afterwards, we went to my room to check on Jacob. To my surprise, he was floating cross-legged over the bed, turning those large eyes on us as we entered. Most young ghosts couldn’t figure out how to do that.
“Did anything come back to you?” I asked. He shook his head.
“Well, Michael and I need to go somewhere so why don’t you stick around until we come back?”
“Okay.”
I swiped my leather jacket from the closet and shut the bedroom door behind us. “Alright. Let’s go hunt us some demons.”
Chapter 12
I didn’t know much about the Albany criminal underbelly, but I had assumed deals went down in dive bars and smoke-filled billiard halls. The notorious Julius Fenton did not reside in either of these places. Instead, he was a manager at the Build-A-Bear workshop in Crossgates Mall. I wish I was joking.
Michael circled the inside of the mall as my back up. Fenton would be able to sense him, but we had heard that he worked both the angel and the demon circuit, so for the right price he would sell us the information. It wasn’t exactly against the rules for demons to be stoolies, after all. Sin was sin. Didn’t matter who they betrayed.
The mall closed in an hour, so I straightened my shoulders and walked into the shop, keeping an eye for anything suspicious. Cute little girls and boys tugged their mothers and fathers by the hand, their new best friends ready to be stuffed and clothed. It felt too weird for words.
An Asian boy in his teens smiled at me as I walked up to the register. “Hi. How can I help you?”
“I was wondering if your manager, Mr. Fenton, was in?”
“Sure, he’s in the back getting ready to close up. I’ll grab him for you.”
“See,” Michael said from the link in my ear. “Was that so hard?”
“Your sarcasm is really not helping me,” I muttered, tapping my fingers on the counter as I waited. We had borrowed the miniature microphone and ear bud from one of Michael’s cop friends. It made me feel like I was in an action flick, waiting for Arnold Schwarzenegger to burst in and beat up the bad guy. I watched way too many movies.