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I could have used the money, but I didn t feel right charging her when Adam was
going to do all the work.  No need for that. If I end up performing a legal exorcism for
you, you can pay me then. Meanwhile, can I have your assurance that you and your
husband won t try anything illegal while I m looking into this for you?
She hesitated, then agreed with a nod.  All right. I appreciate your help, and I m sorry
I asked you to risk yourself like that.
No, she wasn t, but I couldn t entirely blame her, so I accepted the apology.
While I debated how to approach Adam, I distracted myself by getting on the Internet
and seeing what information I could scrape up on the Brewster family.
I wasn t expecting to find anything particularly interesting, or even particularly
relevant. But I found a lot more than I bargained for.
Claudia Brewster was exactly what she looked like an extremely successful career
woman. She d gotten an MBA from Harvard and had eventually brokered that into a
position as vice president of a management consultant firm here in the city. Her husband,
Devon Brewster III, was old money, and I could see no evidence that he d ever worked
for a living.
But that wasn t what caught my interest. It turned out there was a hell of a lot about
Tommy Brewster that Claudia had failed to mention. Starting with the fact that he wasn t
her biological son.
It appeared no one knew for sure who Tommy Brewster really was. When he was three
years old, he was found at a horrific crime scene, where a rampaging demon had killed
four people. A cop had heard the screams and come running. The demon had grabbed
Tommy and was about to smash his head against a wall when the cop reached them. The
cop had shot the demon in the head, killing its host and saving Tommy s life.
The story got stranger from there. The police were unable to identify any of the four
people who d been slaughtered, though blood tests proved that two of them were
Tommy s parents. Tommy was too traumatized to tell the police anything, not even his
name. He d gone into the foster-care system and had eventually ended up with the
Brewsters, who d adopted him when he was ten after he d lived with them for several
years.
The police weren t idiots. They knew the demon who d killed Tommy s parents wasn t
dead the only way to kill a demon is to burn its host alive with the demon still in it
and they knew it was possible it would return to the Mortal Plain to finish the job it had
started. When Tommy had gone into foster care, social services had been very careful to
cover their tracks and make it impossible for the demon to locate him.
So, how did I learn all this information about him if it was such a secret? Because
Tommy had posted the whole sordid story on his MySpace page, along with enough anti-
demon invective to get his profile deleted if anyone bothered to complain about it.
It was possible the story was a load of shit. I d looked up the stories about the
slaughter, and there was no denying it had occurred and that a small child had been found
at the scene. That didn t mean Tommy was that child. Still, if it was true, that would
explain Tommy s devotion to God s Wrath. It wouldn t explain why the hell he d posted
so much information on the Internet.
Unless he was trying to attract the attention of the demon who d killed his parents.
Perhaps he was looking for revenge? It seemed a little far-fetched. After all, he d been
only three when it happened. Chances were he barely remembered anything. At least not
consciously. However, I d seen how powerful the subconscious could be.
I knew Adam could find out for sure if Tommy Brewster was who he said he was. And
if his story turned out to be true, then his case became even more suspicious.
Who was the demon who d slaughtered those four people and would have slaughtered
Tommy if not for a policeman s timely rescue? Why had the demon gone on such a
rampage? And could it possibly be a coincidence that shortly after Tommy Brewster
turned twenty-one the age at which he could legally register to host a demon he
turned up possessed?
The demons had shown far too much interest in this kid s life. My gut instinct said it
would behoove me to find out why. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]