The Demons of Montmartre

By Laurence Raphael Brothers

Private Investigator Nora Simeon and her partner Eyre work for the Commission, the secret organization that regulates the summoning of demons in the financial industry. It's the Commission's job to suppress all public knowledge of sorcery. So when a mysterious letter from a person who calls themselves l'Invocateur threatens to expose the secret

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mirror World Publishing
• Release date: Sep 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781987976977

Laurence Raphael Brothers

Laurence Raphael Brothers is a writer and a technologist with five patents and a background in AI and Internet R&D. He has published over 40 short stories in such magazines as Nature, PodCastle, and Galaxy's Edge. His noir urban fantasy novellas The Demons of Wall Street, The Demons of the Square Mile, and The Demons of Chiyoda are available from Mirror World Publishing.To learn more about the works and world of Laurence Raphael Brothers, you can follow him on Twitter at @lbrothers or visit his website, laurencebrothers.com.

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The Demons of Montmartre

Nora Simeon Investigations #4

Laurence Raphael Brothers

E-BOOK EDITION

The Demons of Montmartre (Nora Simeon Investigations #4) © 2023 by Mirror World Publishing and Laurence Raphael Brothers

Edited by: Robert Dowsett

Cover Design by: Justine Dowsett

Published by Mirror World Publishing in September 2023.

All Rights Reserved.

*This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual locales, events or persons is entirely coincidental.

Mirror World Publishing

Windsor, Ontario

www.mirrorworldpublishing.com

[e-mail]

ISBN: 978-1-987976-97-7

Note: The de Marignys in this book are not intended to reflect the persons or characters of any living members of the noble house of Marigny. The last French de Marigny of note was a general in Napoleon’s army, but there is also a branch extant in the Americas.

CHAPTER 1

Eyre and I stood on the taxiway in front of the hangar alongside the instructor, a tall black woman in her fifties wearing the school’s flight jacket. We’d made it to the little Republic Airport on Long Island just in time for Martha’s first solo flight. All three of us were craning our necks as we gazed up at the Cessna buzzing in the clear blue sky above our heads. Having performed a few circuits of the airfield, the small white propeller plane descended for its landing.

Here she comes, said the instructor.

The plane touched down on all three wheels simultaneously without even the faintest screech of tires, and after rolling a hundred yards turned off the runway to come to a stop on the tarmac.

Exquisite, she continued. As expected. She’ll be done with the post-landing checklist soon.

The plane resumed taxiing moments later, and after another minute cruised slowly past us into the hangar.

We followed the instructor inside where Martha was already getting out of the cockpit. My ward was dashing today in a black windbreaker over a button-up shirt with snug black faux-leather pants and elegant calf-high boots that looked like they might have been worn by Star Trek crew members. The jet-black hair she’d developed recently was styled in a pixie cut, and perhaps as a gesture to her original rat-person appearance she’d given herself just the slightest hint of an underbite jaw. She plucked off a pair of gold-tinted aviators and beamed at us for a moment before turning back to the plane.

The instructor stood back, holding us back too, while Martha clamped the plane down and checked the exterior for problems. When she was done, the instructor approached her with one hand extended and the other holding a set of shears. Smiling broadly, Martha shook hands, and then turned her back to reveal that the white dress shirt she was wearing had two tails dangling over her trousers; one was the end of the shirt, the other was a long, curling rat tail drawn on it with a sharpie below her name, Martha Villiers, the date, and the plane’s registration number. The instructor cut the length of cloth off with her shears, draped the cloth over one arm, and thrust the shears back into her belt, then waited for Martha to turn back around.

Congratulations on soloing! I know how much this means to you, said the instructor. Next time, you’ll find your tail up on the wall beside the school’s other soloists. Just for the record, the whole flight was absolutely perfect, and your landing was superb.

Thank you, said Martha, a bit unsteadily; I think she wanted to say something more, but her voice was so full of emotion she had to clamp down to avoid embarrassment. She handed over her logbook to be signed, and the instructor murmured a few words in her ear before departing, giving us a cheerful salute on her way out.

Martha was almost vibrating as she approached Eyre and me, as wired and happy as I’ve ever seen anyone in my whole life. I almost teared up to see it, but there was a certain shininess to her eyes that suggested that Martha might be feeling the same way. So instead of saying anything sappy and embarrassing us both, I just hugged her as tightly as I could for a long moment before passing her onto Eyre for the same treatment.

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We split up after that, as Martha had a social outing with some of her fellow flight-school students at a nearby restaurant. Eyre and I took the LIRR back to Manhattan from the airfield, with the idea of doing some accounting and paying off our monthly business bills. Just as we got in the elevator on the way up to our dingy little 16th story office, my phone rang.

The ringtone was ominous chords from Night on Bald Mountain. Which meant my mother. We’d only spoken once in the last year, and that suited me just fine. Unfortunately, I had to take the call. If I tried to bounce her to voicemail, she’d probably do something magically horrible to my phone. Also, much as I hated to admit it, I owed her just now. If this was a chance to pay off the obligation, I’d be happy (well, happy in a teeth-clenching way) to take it.

Mother?

Nora, dear. Would you be so kind as to meet me for dinner tonight? Le Bernardin, 8:00 PM.

I— what is this about?

I prefer to tell you in person, she said. It’s rather sensitive.

Okay.

And just like that she hung up.

Back in our office, Eyre nodded as I recounted my mother’s side of the call.

She said it was sensitive? Eyre asked. I think I’d better bow out, then.

Oh. I was dismayed, because I’d been counting on his presence at the meal, not just for emotional support but because if he was there I imagined my mother would be less obnoxious than usual. For whatever reason: his gender, his...species, I guess, or just by dint of him not being me.

Unless you think I should come?

No, I said. I’ll be fine. And on consideration, maybe it would be best at that. Because if it really was something just for my ears, my mother was perfectly capable of telling Eyre he wasn’t wanted, which would mean I’d have to leave with him and never talk to her again. And pleasing as that was in prospect, it wouldn’t lead to me paying off that debt.

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CHAPTER 2

My mother put her demitasse of espresso down on its saucer with a precise click. She was wearing Armani tonight, a slinky black jacquard jacket that gave the impression she had nothing on underneath, above dark red trousers. The sad thing was she had the youthful figure to pull it off, looking as usual as if she’d just stepped off a runway. The way I had it figured she beat me out in all respects; prettier, smarter, richer, and even more of an asshole.

We were sitting down at a corner table at the Michelin three-star Le Bernardin on 51st Street, our meal now a memory. The first course featured sautéed langoustine with a fennel-carrot mousseline, the second, poached skate in a brown butter sauce with capers and peppers over rice, and dessert was a mont blanc with chestnut cremeux and rum-chestnut ice cream. This restaurant was only a quarter mile from my apartment, but if I ate here every night my bank account (fatter than usual on account of a bonus for last year’s job in Japan) would be zeroed in three months. When not stuffing my face, I’d spent the meal studying my mother, trying to figure out where she was coming from. She seemed strangely uncomfortable and reticent, not saying much until the meal was cleared away.

Finally, over espresso with accompanying shot-glasses of near-frozen anisette, she spoke her first meaningful words of the evening. Not the reason she’d called me here, but a reminder of the debt I owed. Typical.

I assume Martha soloed successfully, she said.

Yes. A perfect landing.

The tone of my voice must have made it clear I was surprised she cared.

Why Nora, said my mother, I have the highest regard for your ward. We had a nice chat during our one real meeting. And I was after all responsible for obtaining her papers. Birth certificate, social security, passport...you know these things aren’t easy to secure these days.

They are if you’re an ultra-wealthy sorcerer in the Commission, I didn’t say. I wouldn’t have asked her for a favor for myself, but she was my last resort after running into a brick wall trying to establish a legal identity for Martha on my own. I’d been surprised at how readily my mother had acceded to the request, with hardly any snark at all. Of course I’d clenched my teeth when the papers arrived for Martha under the name Villiers, my mother’s last name, the name I’d rejected for myself. It was at the same time a surprising gesture for my mother to offer her name to someone she hardly knew and a blatant rebuke directed at me. But what the hell. If Martha ever got in trouble with the occult authorities, not inconceivable given her demonic origin, it wouldn’t hurt to have my mother’s name to fall back on.

Is she still considering an application to the academy? I’d been silent long enough my mother filled in the gap.

I believe so. I wasn’t sure how I felt about Martha wanting to join the Air Force. I mean, the US government wasn’t exactly a shining beacon of virtue. But we’d discussed the matter. Martha said that she’d refuse deployment and resign her commission if she was ever called on to do anything vile, and I believed her, too. She honestly wanted to pay back a debt to her assumed country, even though I thought the balance of obligation was skewed the other way. And, yeah, of course she didn’t have to say how much she wanted to fly a fighter. Flying was her thing, and I wanted her to have every bit of it she could get. Her very first week in our world, magically disguised as a dog of all things, she rode on board a jet across the Atlantic and decided she wanted to be a pilot.

Then what mother was asking sank in. But she wouldn’t want you to sleaze her way in with either sorcery or bribery.

Oh, no, she said in that unctuous way she had, I wouldn’t dream of it. It’s just that a High School Equivalency diploma won’t make it easy, no matter how well she scores on her exams. But a vice-presidential nomination...that wouldn’t guarantee anything, it would just balance out the negatives, if you see what I mean.

"Wait, what, the vice president? Of the United States? You can make her do what you want?"

I knew of course that the Commission had enormous influence over the government, but I didn’t realize they outright owned our top politicians.

Nora, please! It’s part of the VP’s job. It’s not graft, it’s her duty. She has one or two nominations every year that she hands out to qualified applicants. Just...with the ordinary application process, it would be easy for someone like Martha to be overlooked. She has no obvious connections, and they care about such things at the academies. I’ll be evening the odds for her, is all.

I see. I guess I was naïve. I didn’t realize you had that kind of pull.

Oh, Nora.... A pitying tone of voice. I gritted my teeth. Listen, this is how the world works. I haven’t bought the vice president. In fact, we’ve never met. But she knows I represent real money and real power. She knows I’m not an active supporter of the other party. So if I make the request, it will penetrate the various layers of secretaries and assistants that make it hard for ordinary people to get through to her. It’s pure privilege, but that’s all it is. This isn’t a big favor, and I’m confident it will be granted.

Martha hadn’t mentioned the need for a nomination to the Air Force Academy to me. She certainly knew about them because she researched everything she cared about so diligently, but knowing her she’d have decided it wasn’t something she should even ask me to help with.

You know what I’d say if this was for me, right? I asked.

I wouldn’t even make the offer, dear. But your ward impressed me. And you know my practice with respect to deserving infernals. I’d do the same for any of my people.

I sighed. But I had to bite the bullet.

Mother. On Martha’s behalf, I’m in your debt for this. I accept it, okay? So what is it you want me to do that I wouldn’t have done otherwise?

My mother played with her little espresso cup for a few moments, rocking it around on the saucer before pulling her hand away. I couldn’t think of another time I’d seen her nervous before, or hesitant.

There’s a demon I want you to find, she said at last.

Well yeah, I thought, that’s my job, pretty much. I waited. The one thing I’d learned about dealing with her is sometimes it was best to just shut up and hold my tongue along with my temper.

His name is Simeon.

That took about a second and a half to sink in, and when it did something red and dangerous exploded behind my eyes. I just stopped tracking, and when I came back to myself I was standing up with both hands on the table and my chair knocked over backwards.

I was aware I’d just shouted, "His name is fucking what?" at the top of my lungs. My heart was racing and my muscles were set, like I was about to do something violent.

A flaming thing like a winged serpent materialized between us, coiled as if to strike, but not at me, at my mother. I’d unconsciously summoned my pet fire elemental Spark, and they had picked up on my emotions. It was all I could do to hold the elemental back, but after a moment’s internal struggle Spark subsided and coiled themself around my wrist, a bracelet of living flames.

I was appalled how close I’d come to setting my mother on fire, something I’d dreamed of doing a million times as a teenager. For her own part my mother sat back, looking at me and Spark not with the confidence of a master sorcerer, but with flat, dull acceptance, like she was just waiting to be attacked and wouldn’t do anything to defend herself.

I got a better grip on myself and on Spark, sent the little elemental a pulse of gratitude for their service, and with a mental gesture returned them to their earthenware pot across town.

It occurred to me then that I was in the middle of a fancy dining room full of fancy diners, and I looked around, but no one was paying me any attention at all. It wasn’t horror, politeness, or New York-style ignore-it-and-it-won’t-happen-to-us chill, either. My mother had evidently secured our conversation with a sophisticated aversion ward. It didn’t stop our waiter and sommelier from delivering a thousand dollars’ worth of attentive service, nor the head chef from dropping by between courses to discuss the fish, but as far as everyone else in the room was concerned it must have been like we weren’t there at all. Which was just as well, because having seen a fire elemental appearing out of nowhere they’d all have to have their memories wiped, and that wouldn’t be a good outcome for any of us.

I picked up my chair and brought it back to the table, sat down, retrieved my demitasse from the floor where I’d knocked it over, and put it back on its saucer.

I’m sorry, I said at last. I shouldn’t have let that happen. It’s just.... I couldn’t find the words to continue.

I wanted to tell you about him many times, said my mother. But at the time I should have done so, when you were in your teens...I’d already made you hate me. And you hated demons back then, as well. The knowledge would have done great harm to you.

And later on? When I was working for the Commission? After you knew full well that I’d learned that demons can be good and bad, just like humans?

My mother bowed her head for a moment. She took a deep breath before looking back at me, but then she met my eyes as usual. "Well, yes...then...that was cowardice. Cowardice and shame. I’m afraid relations between us aren’t such that an apology can restore amity. But I am sorry, and I do apologize."

I sat back for a moment, processing. My pulse was still racing from my almost-explosion, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to understand what I was really feeling for a while. Maybe not for a very long time. But I had a million questions to ask, and it took me a moment to order them in a sensible way in my head. The first was on the tip of my tongue when my phone rang. Peter Gunn theme, and that meant a Commission call. I’d have just let it go, but it was 10:00 PM on a Friday night and I wasn’t on a case. For my supervisor to break away from banker’s hours was literally unprecedented. Which meant it probably wasn’t a call from him, anyway, but from—

I took out the phone, nodded to my mother, confirmed that yeah, instead of a calling number or name there was just a flashing N on the screen. I swiped to take the call, which was definitely secured with cryptography and probably with sorcery to boot.

Simeon here, I said, and when I spoke my own name I felt a surge of an intense but nameless feeling that almost knocked me over.

Mx. Simeon, said Nguyen, the only person in the Commission with more power and authority than my mother, I’m sorry to trouble you at this hour. But I’m afraid we have an emergency on our hands. A public breach has been threatened and I need you in person at my office, immediately.

I’m dining with the other auditing director. Thus letting her know who it was who I’d interrupted this fraught moment for.

Oh, are you? Nguyen gave his dry chuckle. Please give her my regards. I’m sure she understands that only the direst emergency would cause me to call you away from her table. A précis will be on her desk tomorrow morning, but for the moment I’m confining need-to-know within my external security ambit.

He said goodbye and hung up.

Don’t tell me Nguyen wants you, now of all times? My mother asked. She sounded as exasperated as I felt.

Got it in one. Seems to be an emergency. But I have time for a few answers, at least. So, uh, you’re telling me my father’s a demon? And you want me to find him? Where did— when— Oh, fuck. I can’t even— this is awful. Please, tell me something!

She gave me that half-smile again. I summoned him originally...for pleasure. But it turned into something more. Something unexpected, in more ways than one. I hadn’t thought it was possible for me to become pregnant. And when I did— no, this will take too long to explain. Let me just say the last I saw of him was twenty-eight years ago. He disagreed with me about your upbringing, but we shared the common goal of wanting to...to rectify the demons’ situation both in their world and in ours. Using certain techniques, I’ve been tracking...not his wellbeing, not as such, but his prospective wellbeing, let’s say. And this morning I received an extremely dire indication. He’s still alive, I know that much, but I believe he’s in grave danger. And so I need you to find him and— and save him if you can.

The information she’d just delivered staggered me. It was too much to comprehend all at once, even though it was only a tiny piece of what I wanted to know. I had enough presence of mind to ask, Why me? You’re one of the masters of the Commission. You have all the money in the world and half the power. It’s not that I’m not interested. It’s just—

I want to go after him, she said. More than you can know. But my movements are monitored. If I do anything overt myself, there are too many people who will assume I’m trying to accomplish something different. Too many interests converge on my person. If I went, I’d increase the danger.

I see. I sort of did, too. There were dozens of executives in the Commission banks who knew that her scrutiny could make or break their careers, ruin their lives, or even end them. Her untimely movements could arouse fears in powerful people who had reason to be afraid.

My mother grasped my hand. For the first time ever she seemed to be pleading with me. I’d never heard that tone from her before, never even imagined hearing it. You’ll do it? You’ll look for him?

Yes, I said. Of course I will— I just need to know a lot more.

Certainly, she said, regaining some of her poise. Do what you need to do for Nguyen, then come to me. Tomorrow, if you can.

CHAPTER 3

I called Eyre to tell him I’d be home late, but we didn’t have the kind of secure connection that Nguyen had used with me, so I had to be circumspect. I made sure he knew something was up. Then it was time to beard the lion in his den once again, by which I meant I walked the half mile from Le Bernardin through a chilly April night in midtown Manhattan to prepare mentally for the experience. To the extent I could prepare while still reeling from my mother’s blockbuster.

Up to the 60th floor in that slender black-glass spire of an office tower on 57th Street, past not one but two layers of well-dressed and well-armed security. Into the office of my immediate supervisor, Adrian Konev.

The Commission’s Director of Security was in his early thirties, a mild-looking man who wore his long brown hair tied back like a creative in an ad agency. He bought his clothes off the rack. Konev was soft-spoken to the point of seeming diffident and even stupid at times, but if you engaged with him you could sometimes catch the light of a sharp intelligence shining through the cracks of his facade. I happened to know from a case we’d worked on earlier in the year that he could be as hard and focused as anyone under pressure. He graduated summa cum laude in math from Princeton with a PhD three years later, and the Fields Medal for something incomprehensible having to do with asymmetric groups two years after that. I thought it odd that such a man would choose to work for the Commission instead of staying in academia or working for one of the member firms as a sorcerer. The Commission employed mathematician-sorcerers, but with the exception of my mother and possibly Nguyen as well, the best of them were in top positions in the member banks because of the obscene salaries they paid. And the Fields Medal would guarantee instant tenure at most any university worldwide if that’s what he wanted. Still, I had no reason to question his loyalty or even his ethics.

Thanks for coming so quickly, Konev told me. The boss will be happy to see you, but he’s pretty well engaged right now, so I’m going to brief you first so as not to waste his time.

I nodded.

Here, he said. I apologize for the inconvenience, but if you’d put this on for a moment? He handed me a gold band, like a wedding ring made of several braided wires but with a strange geometry to it, interlocking möbius strips each inscribed with a tiny pattern of runic letters too small for me to make out. It was nothing I recognized, presumably some kind of sorcerous security measure. I could have complained, and he would have apologized some more before making me put it on anyway. This was what I had to deal with working for the Commission, and I was into the occult world far too deeply to ever back out. So I just put the damn thing on. Nothing happened. Nothing obvious, anyway.

You can take it off now, said Konev. But you’ll want to keep it for your colleague’s use.

Eyre’s special status and unusual qualities weren’t officially recognized by the Commission, but both Konev and Nguyen knew who and what he was, probably because my mother had explained it all and given him her imprimatur as someone to be trusted. Konev had never officiously tried to manage my relationship with my assistant, and I thought that was another point in his favor.

What does it do? I asked.

He produced a thin manila file folder with a complicated sigil printed on it in layers of metallic ink. 3D-printed sorcery, what will they think of next, right?

Read what’s in here. The contents and anything connected with them can’t be communicated to anyone except people authorized by the enchantment of one of these rings. Right now, that’s Mx. Nguyen and me. And by tomorrow, Madame Villiers.

Trusting me with that ring was another sign of favor. I mean, in theory I could have given it to anyone. Breaking the dirty secrets of magic and demon-summoning to the public would probably be signing my own death sentence, however, even with such a mild and pleasant boss as Konev making the decision.

The dossier ran just three pages. The first was a formal letter on some fancy heavy paper with the two folds that suggested it had been fit into a conventional envelope. It was set in an elegant cursive type instead of being handwritten or printed in the usual way by laser or inkjet.

Monsieur le directeur Yves Nguyễn, it opened. Huh, I thought. His first name is Yves. Who knew? Evidently whoever wrote the letter. Right off the bat, that stood out. Someone from outside the Commission knowing Nguyen’s position and full name was shocking just by itself. I’d been acquainted with the billionaire sorcerer for two years without learning his given name.

I scanned quickly to the end because the body of the letter was solid French I couldn’t read, a recent year of extremely casual Duolingo study having only enabled me to describe animals eating unlikely things. La baleine mange des pâtes. L’araignée mange une pizza. Le chat— Well,