Cht 3
Crowley spent the better part of a week squaring his minions away and getting his affairs in order. He put Guthrie in charge as regent with instructions that if he was not heard from in a few weeks, to send a guard of troops. Crowley highly doubted this would be necessary, but he did not underestimate the bloody Winchester trait of screwing up royally enough to get things right. Luck always strayed their way.
He transported himself back to Jim's flat and spent an entire afternoon fielding phone calls and answering emails using information he drudged up from the man's sub-conscious. People were concerned; questions from superiors at work needed to be answered; and he obliged all this, lying expansively about a job he had undertaken that called him away last minute.
Frustrated, Sterling paced in the confines of his own mind. Crowley allowed him houseroom in a chamber he recognized as the demon's own bedroom. He walked back and forth at length, tried the door, which would not budge, laid on the bed, rummaged through the wardrobe. He found the box again, and this time without Crowley aware of what was going on, he performed the same little ritual Crowley had and when it opened, rifled through the information contained therein. He learned about Canton, by reading a similar card; this one he was sure was written in Crowley's hand. Before Canton, there had been a literary agent, and judging by the yellowing of the card stock, that was some time ago.
What Sterling realized he was seeing was a progression of the men whose lives the demon had assumed as his own. He laid down on the bed with the box, raising up the card he had found under the literary agent's so he could read the faded print better. He wondered what they all looked like and what their stories were. It was Sterling's nature to want to know about things, and he felt strongly that there must be some underlying similarity between the men whose stories this demon had known. He had to find out what it was. Things would drift to his mind that he knew were from Crowley's sub-conscious. Surely there was a way to tap into that and bring things to the surface on purpose⦠Sterling had to find out how.
He dropped the card back in the box-one for an Irish shipping merchant around the turn of the century-and stood up to pace the room again. He took the box to return it to the wardrobe, and as he did, he glanced in the mirror on the inside of the door. He studied the lines of his own face, the three days of scruff that were flecked with gray. What was Crowley doing now, he wondered. As he did so, the face shifted into a smug grin. Sterling looked down and realized that his suit had changed to a sharp black one with a deep crimson striped silk tie. The demon, it seemed, had raided his wardrobe and pulled out a suit he had not worn since his wife died.
He watched, bemused as Crowley trailed through Sterling's apartment, cell phone to his ear, and talked amiably to whoever was on the line.
"Who is he talking to?" Sterling hissed grimly. He started trying to read Crowley's lips, but stopped when a name floated into his mind. Nate Ford. "Oh bloody Christ," Sterling moaned. Just what he didn't need. That would be an unholy union.
"Why can't I hear what the snaky bugger is saying?!" he said, fisting his hands. Like magic, their voices echoed in his head.
We could meet, sure.
Brilliant. Name the time, name the place, we could perhaps discuss a deal.
When he focused, it seemed, on what Crowley was doing, Sterling could tune right in to the demon's actions and what was going on around him. Good, this was good, he thought. Except for the bit about hearing Nate say they could meet. And now what deal would Crowley be wanting to make with him? The very thought left him greatly unsettled, and Sterling turned from the mirror, closing the door behind him. He plopped back down on the bed, piecing together the things he had learned thus far about the demon Crowley, clenching and unclenching his jaw as he pondered. One class A demon, the one in charge of them all, in fact, and Nate Ford. Doing business together.
"This is, none of it, good," Sterling mused. He lay for hours trying to hypothesize what could be going on under his very nose, before finally giving in to an exhausted sleep.
