The plan was held together with metaphoric Scotch Tape and a prayer, and there were more places it could derail than not, but Malik had given me an impossible timeframe and I needed to find whoever was behind the purple magic.
The walk to the rental car from the airport terminal in Orlando was short but with the humidity here, it was like walking through a swamp in scuba gear. I was sticky by the time we reached the Corolla. Once we cleared the rental lot, we pried off the stickers on the rearview mirror and windows that the company used to track the cars in and out of the lot. Driving up in an obvious rental would have given us away.
We didn’t see much from the highway beyond some strip malls, lots of entrances to gated communities, and even more palm trees, though it was a lot greener than I’d expected.
When the security guard at the gate took the identification into the booth, I tensed. We’d doctored them up yesterday with Photoshop and a laminate machine. All she did was check it against something on her computer, hand them back, and give us directions to the rabbi’s house before lifting the gate.
Billboards on an undeveloped area of the grounds advertised homes starting at $300,000, which wouldn’t buy you a shoebox condo in Vancouver proper, but got you a pretty swank place here. Like Rabbi Paskow’s: a yellow villa-style home set back a couple of blocks from the golf course that was a decent size for two people but not enormous. A spectacular pink bougainvillea dominated the front yard.
Workers milled about outside. Rohan and I approached the one woman in business casual who was supervising, correctly guessing she was from the management company. We introduced ourselves, presenting business cards with fake names from the area’s largest restoration company. She was a bit flustered that the rabbi had called someone in before she’d had a chance, but we brazened it out and someone else soon claimed her attention.
Other than the fact that she could later describe a brown-skinned man and white-skinned woman, any other details would be wrong. Rohan and I had both put in brown contacts after we’d disembarked. He’d styled his hair into the most boring cubicle drone look to go with his khakis and plaid shirt and I wore a wig of short, straight, light brown hair.
We didn’t bother taking down the Rasha ward around the house. Theft and tampering was bad enough, we didn’t want the rabbi left open to an actual demon attack.
My blouse was sticking to me by the time we snapped on latex gloves, grabbed all necessary supplies and got inside into the air conditioning. Framed prints of grapes and Province pastoral scenes hung on pale yellow walls, with sandstone tile and floral print-furniture rounding out the decor. Fresh flowers sat in brightly colored hand-blown glass vases on fussy side tables, making the place smell like a hothouse.
The damage in the laundry room was minimal. One small corner had flooded, so we cleaned it up and lugged the industrial fan we’d rented inside to dry it out. The sanitation engineers hadn’t had to open the concrete floor inside, which was good because we were alone in the house.
We didn’t have to snoop for long. There was only one original painting in the place, which hung in the rabbi’s cluttered study on a shadowed wall away from any damaging sunlight. I turned on the small spotlight to see it better. A small plaque mounted next to the painting read “The Birth of Our Prince.”
Upon first glance, it was the unlikely subject matter of the birth of Jesus. A raven-haired woman, her coarse features twisted, gave birth in a manger, the night sky twinkling with stars beyond the open manger door. Except she had black wings with edges like razors, so unless Mary had had a few additions that no one else had seen fit to document, this wasn’t her.
A man wearing a crown kneeled beside her, his face etched with grief. The baby he held in his blood-soaked hands, still connected to the woman by a thick, purple umbilical cord glistening with fluid, was a monstrosity. It had three heads: an ogre, a ram, and a bull.
“Rohan!”
He came running at my screech, bringing the cardboard box and a small pouch with the pliers and screwdriver. “What?” All I could do was point at the painting. “Asmodeus?” Rohan dropped the stuff onto the rabbi’s desk, but didn’t tear his eyes off the artwork. “Does Malik know you killed Asmodeus? Is this some kind of message?”
“It didn’t come up in conversation but Malik makes it his business to know things and Ari is a topic near and dear to him these days. It’s possible he knows what happened.”
Malik hadn’t lied about painting this because his signature was legible in the corner. But of all the paintings in all the world, why have me get this one?
“Who are Asmodeus’ parents?” I said. “Who would come after me for killing their son?”
Rohan didn’t know either, but there was someone who might. It was worth the long distance charges on my burner. “Rabbi Abrams?” he said. “Nava and I need your help.” He described the painting to the rabbi, providing specific details at the rabbi’s prompting. Rohan’s expression grew grimmer and grimmer. “Yes, Rabbi. Thank you.”
“Holy Hell.” He rubbed his fist against his temple and I tugged on his sleeve. “Malik intended for us to know this. It’s going to open a Pandora’s box.”
“Why?” I was vibrating.
“The raven-haired woman is the demon Mahlat. See this?” He pointed to a genie’s lamp tossed on a bale of hay to one side. “According to certain Kabbalistic legends, Mahlat was put into a vessel like this and locked in these cliffs on the Dead Sea by King Solomon.”
“So that’s Solomon?”
Rohan shook his head and touched what looked like a tiny baby’s hat with very long strings, woven from rope.
“I don’t understand.”
Rohan traced his finger along the protective glass to point out a rock that had rolled slightly away from a larger pile. “It’s a slingshot.”
“That’s King David?!” I twisted my gold ring, with its engraved hamsa that marked me as Rasha, as if it could ward off this information. “No. He can’t be Asmodeus’ father. He formed the Brotherhood to stop demons, not birth them.”
Rohan pried the painting off the wall, and flipped it over, removing the glass. He held out his hand, and like an operating room nurse, I placed the screwdriver in it. He made short work of the staples then carefully pried the canvas away from the large outside frame.
As it slid free, an orange flame-shape slithered from between the frame and the canvas. No heat emanated from it and no sparks cracked as it wound itself around Rohan’s chest. He slashed at it with his finger blades, but as I’d learned from Ari’s shadow magic, that wasn’t a thing.
The painting thudded to the thick area rug at my feet.