by Kat Simons
And it was old. Even without touching it, Angie could tell it was old. It had the feel of something that had existed for centuries.
It crossed her mind to wonder if Laura could read the lantern’s aura. She could read objects almost as well as she could read people, when she tried. The lantern was just the type of thing Laura should be able to look at and understand.
But Angie didn’t want to bring her colleague and friend into this mess. Any more than she’d already been brought into it when the demon had tried to get information from her. No, better to keep this thing as far away from Dana’s Cauldron as possible. She’d risked the lives and safety of her friends enough already just by getting involved with the hunters again.
With Sebastian again.
She shook off the thought to refocus on their current problem. “You can pick it up without it affecting you?” Angie asked him. “Are you risking a link with the Molder demon, giving it a way to move into you?”
He pressed his lips together. Neither of them had looked away from the lantern for very long. He continued to stare at it as he considered. “The demon would have to have a stronger will than mine to use me that way, even if I’m holding the lantern. But… For safety’s sake, we’d better find another way to carry it. A box to put it.”
She snorted. The idea of sticking the lantern into a shoe box flashed across her mind and she chuffed out a laugh. Somehow that seemed weirdly appropriate.
“I don’t have a box,” she said, motioning to her purse, “or the kitchen sink. But I do have a spare shopping bag in here.” She pulled out the folded, reinforced clothe bag she used for her groceries so she wouldn’t have to use as much plastic. “Will this do?”
“It’ll do for now. The less physical contact made with the lantern, the better.”
“But that doesn’t solve the problem of what to do with it.”
He carefully spread the pale, clothe bag open on the ground next to the lantern. With careful precision, he lifted only the lantern’s handle and put it into the center of the bag. Angie finally took a full, deep breath when Sebastian pulled the long handles up over the lantern, blocking it from view. The picture of a fruit and vegetable cart on the outside of the bag looked wholly incongruous with what the bag actually contained.
“Now it’s out of sight,” Angie said, still staring at the bag, “where do we take it? How do we keep the Molder demon and Carmen from using it again?” How had Carmen even found such a thing? Or had she been given it?
She’d wanted to train Mara to this work, to take over where Carmen left off, using the demon to mete out revenge against those Carmen felt deserved it. Did that mean she’d intended to pass the lantern down to Mara? And if so, did that mean the lantern had been passed to Carmen?
If that were the case, who had given Carmen the lantern? Why?
And were they still around? Or dead?
Sebastian considered the bag, his frown deep.
“What?” she asked. His look didn’t actually tell her much of what he was thinking, only that he was thinking hard.
“We need to keep it. To stop the demon getting out again.”
“I’m not putting that thing anywhere near people I love.”
He looked up. “What about the witch who knows how to store artifacts?”
“I was bluffing. I don’t know anyone who stores things like this.”
“I do.” He sighed. “But I’d rather not go to them yet.”
“Them?” She narrowed her eyes. This was the first she’d heard of a “them” that could store dangerous artifacts. “The Bookstore?”
The magical store did contain specialized and dangerous books. There were spells—or something—on the store that kept those books in check and from harming readers. But as far as Angie knew, the owner didn’t take in random artifacts, only books.
“Not for something like this,” Sebastian said, confirming her own thoughts. “But… Well, at any rate, I’ll have the people I know store this after we stop the demon.”
“Wouldn’t getting that thing as far away from Carmen and Mara as possible be a good way to stop the demon?”
“It can still come when summoned. Removing the lantern from the equation will only make its ability to move into a host body impossible.”
“That sounds like a good thing to me,” Angie said, with a lot of emphasis on the “good” part of that sentence.
“Except that losing that option means it will be more inclined to just kill the human summoning it and escape into our realm,” he pointed out reasonably. “It’s on the verge of escaping anyway. That’s why I keep getting called to it. We remove the lantern, it has no motivation to remain in its realm.”
She wanted to ask what had motivated it to stay in its realm for this long anyway. What was its deal with Carmen? What did she get out of it? But Angie wasn’t likely to get those answers from Sebastian, or anyone else for the moment. The demon might boast about its plan. While Carmen didn’t want to bad-guy-monologue, demons loved to talk about all the horrible things they intended—those descriptions magnified the terror in their victims and they ate that fear as much as they ate souls, flesh, and blood.
But she had no intention of summoning the Molder demon to ask what its nefarious plan was.
She glanced at the bag Sebastian held. She should absolutely not, under any circumstances touch that lantern. Curiosity or not. Touching the lamp, for someone like her, could be disastrous.
There were answers there, though. She knew there were. If she opened herself to the thing, she’d understand what was happening, maybe learn how to stop it.
“No,” Sebastian said, breaking into her thoughts.
“No, what?” she asked, her gaze still on the bag.
“No touching the dangerous lantern,” he said. “No risking your life or worse for information.”
She snorted. “What do you think I’ve been doing for the last two days?” She met his gaze and the slight flare of red in the depths. “You brought me in to uncover information. I’m here specifically to use my non-demon-related talents to help you. One of those primary talents is my touch.”
“And your touch could get you sucked into the demon realm.” He raised the bag. “This isn’t a thing to mess with.”
“I know. I have no intention of ‘messing’ with it. I was just…reconsidering my earlier objections to touching it.”
“Your earlier instincts were spot on, and I’ll not have you risking any more than you already have. Do I make myself clear?”
She raised her brows at his tone. Held his gaze until he looked away and pulled a face.
“Sure, professor,” she said, teasing and sarcastic at once.
“This is for your own good,” he said, not rising to her bait. “I will hand this over to the council before I let you touch it.”
“The council? Who the hell are the council?”
He cursed under his breath, and a muscle in his jaw jumped. “No one,” he said.
“Why are you lying to me? You’ve never done that before.”
Or had he?
She’d assumed he’d kept some things to himself. The kinds of things someone in his job didn’t like to remember. But this seemed like a bigger omission than not telling her about every demon he’d fought. His reaction made clear he’d slipped and revealed something he shouldn’t have.
“We’ll talk about it later,” he said finally. She opened her mouth to ask more, but he cut her off with a gesture. “I’m taking you home. I’ll deal with the lantern. We’re done for the night.”
“I don’t think so.”
“No more demon danger for now,” he said. “The rest… Later. We can sort it all later.”
She wanted to argue but he stalked off, back toward the road she could now hear clearly just the other side of the copse of trees. Not giving her any choice but to follow him or linger in the darkness, surrounded by trees and potential disaster.
Annoyed and grumbling, she followed him, but not graciou
sly.
She carefully kept her gaze on the ground, though, until she’d left the small clump of trees behind.
Chapter Twenty-Four
She’d assumed he’d head straight for the street and a taxi. Instead, he angled around the trees and back into the apartment complex, stalking through the open central area to the basement door of Ellen and Mara’s building.
“You’re going up there now?” Angie asked, jogging to keep up with his long strides. She didn’t normally have to do that with other people. She had long legs and a rapid gate when motivated. Sebastian still covered the ground twice as fast, reaching the door before she could fully catch up.
Again, the lock wasn’t an issue—a trick she sometimes did envy the hunters, especially when she left her keys behind in her apartment—and they entered the building quietly. There wasn’t the same sense of dread this time, however. No anxiety that a fight was coming. No sense that a demon waited just around the corner. In fact, the sounds of the laundry machines whirling, the stronger scent of soap and dryer sheets wafting from the laundry room, gave proof ordinary life was underway here. The overhead motion sensor lighting turned on this time as well, blaring brightly after the outside darkness.
Angie blinked hard a few times to adapt to the brightness. The basement looked a lot less daunting, a lot more ordinary, even cheerful with all this light.
They passed the laundry room and Sebastian waved to the older woman sitting at the folding table, reading a book. She smiled and nodded back before returning to her book, as if she was greeting a neighbor she saw every night.
The elevators were more active tonight as well, one moving up, the other already on its way down when they pressed the button. Though Angie looked closely, there was no sign of the flame circle that had been there the night before. Not even any smudged ash. The floor was glossy and clean, its dark blue color unmarred.
Either the maintenance and cleaning staff of the building were geniuses—who might also be used to cleaning up after demon summonings given the building—or the buildings themselves allowed the evidence of their demonic focus to seamlessly fade back into the architecture, unnoticed to those with no interest in demons.
The rent in this place had to be really good, Angie thought as the elevator dinged open. A man in running shorts and a loose, pull over sweatshirt stepped out, putting earbuds into his ears.
He nodded absently at them. “Hey. Have a good night.”
“You too,” Sebastian said, holding the elevator door for Angie.
She shook her head as the doors closed. “You have real knack for blending.” Which, of course he did. Still. Going from the confrontation with Carmen, the demon, accidentally opening a doorway between realms, and the information about the bone lantern, Angie was feeling off kilter and awkward around normal people.
Sebastian showed no signs of feeling similarly. He fit himself into his surroundings, walking through them like he belonged.
One of the reasons demon hunters were so good at what they did. No one ever noticed them, unless they wanted to be noticed. A demon hunter could walk through the world and be absolutely anyone at all, as innocuous as needed, as invisible as necessary. A neighbor you’re sure you’ve seen before, even if you can’t remember which floor he lives on.
Ellen and Mara’s floor was quiet but for the occasional noise of activity behind the closed doors. The lights were bright again here, and the space felt very lived in and ordinary. The singe of the otherworldly didn’t seem to reach up this high.
It only occurred to Angie as Sebastian knocked on Ellen’s door, that although they were supposedly on the fourteenth floor, that was only because the building didn’t have a thirteenth. In actuality, this was the thirteenth floor. She raised her brows. If she were superstitious, she’d worry about that. But—maybe oddly for a witch—she didn’t go in for superstitions much. And she actually liked the number thirteen. It was one of those power numbers she often used in her magic work.
Ellen poked her head out the door and frowned at them. “What now? Grant’s found us?”
“No,” Sebastian said. “But we need to warn you about Carmen.”
Ellen’s eyes widened. “Carmen? What about her?”
“Can we come in?”
“Oh, yes, sorry.” Ellen stepped aside, widening the door for them.
Mara was sitting on the couch, looking over the back of it at them. The TV was tuned into a cooking show. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Is Carmen okay?”
Sebastian waited until Ellen had closed and bolted the door before speaking. “Has she been in touch?”
“Of course not,” Ellen said. “She doesn’t know where Mara is. Unless you told her. And if you did, Grant will get it out of her.” Ellen’s scowl clearly promising repercussions if they’d told Grant where Mara was.
“We haven’t spoken to Grant since finding Mara,” Sebastian said.
“He hasn’t been bugging you about whether or not you’ve found her?” Ellen asked. “That’s not like him.”
Sebastian shrugged, smiling a little. “He’s no way to get in touch. I don’t carry a cellphone.”
Which wasn’t exactly true. He had one. He just didn’t give the number to people who summoned demons and tried to sacrifice babies to those demons.
“So…” Mara rose up onto her knees, leaning against the couch back now. “He doesn’t know I’m alive still?”
“No,” Sebastian said. “But I’m not sure that matters.” He held Mara’s gaze, frowning slightly. “How much time do you spend with Carmen?”
Mara shrugged. “A lot I guess. She’s more like family than staff. At least with me. She’s been the one taking care of me all these years. My… Bart—” she smirked at her mother’s name for Grant, “—wasn’t interested in being a real father, so he pawned off most stuff to Carmen. She was like my aunt.”
“You didn’t think of her as a mother?” Angie asked. Given her circumstances, and given Mara had thought her mother dead most of her life, it was a little surprising she hadn’t put Carmen into the roll of surrogate mother, even in her own mind.
Mara shrugged. “I guess not. Not sure why. I just always thought of her like an aunt. A relative, but not a parent.”
Angie wondered if that was down to the way Carmen treated her, or an instinct on Mara’s part to keep some psychological distance between herself and Carmen. But she didn’t suppose a twelve-year-old would have considered the idea all that deeply.
And now, here they were, about to tell this poor child that the one person in her life she’d thought she could trust, the one person who actually had taken her in and raised her and showed her familial love, had actually been working toward some sort of nefarious plan the whole time. No different from her father at the base of it. Oh, Carmen didn’t want to see Mara killed—Angie was inclined to believe Carmen about that—but she’d still intended to sacrifice Mara all the same, offering her up to the Molder demon as yet another disciple.
“Has Carmen been in touch?” Sebastian asked quietly.
Mara frowned. “How could she? She doesn’t know where I am. Unless you told her.”
“She helped you run,” Angie said. Carmen had told them as much.
Mara’s expression flickered, a hint of guilt in her light eyes. “I don’t want her to get into trouble.”
“You think we’d do that?” Angie asked. “Given what your father had planned?”
Mara winced at Angie calling Grant that, and Angie kicked herself for the slip. Her usual good sense and ability to deal appropriately with people was not on display tonight.
She gentled her tone. “You think we’d cause Carmen trouble for helping you escape?”
Mara’s shoulders relaxed a little. “Sorry. Carmen… Carmen was like family, but she was still working for my…for Bart, and he could do awful things to her if he found out she helped me. Worse than just firing her. I don’t want him to know she helped me.”
So, there was a sense of loyalty there
as well as affection.
None of that boded well for how Mara would take the news they had.
Angie decided to momentarily change tack, delaying the inevitable, but something had just occurred to her and she couldn’t resist asking. “Do you know any of Grant’s associates?”
Mara shrugged. “I guess. I see some of them at the house. Why?”
“What’s all this about?” Ellen asked. “Why are we discussing Carmen, and why have you changed subjects?”
“Carmen, I’ll explain in one moment. I just want to check something first. It’ll clarify a hanging thread.” To Mara she said, “If I describe someone, do you think you’d recognize them?”
Mara shrugged so Angie described the man who’d walked into Dana’s Cauldron looking for her.
“Sounds like someone I’ve seen at the house,” Mara said, frowning and wrinkling her nose. “I don’t know who he is, but he kind of stands out with how pale he is and not having eyebrows. Makes his face look weird with his dark hair. He’s never spoken to me.”
“Does that answer your question?” Ellen asked.
“Enough,” Angie said, not sure that it helped much. Knowing he was an associate of Grant’s meant the man was a human who’d been inhabited by the demon when he’d gone to Dana’s. Likely Carmen had somehow manipulated him—
“He’s not a friend of Bart’s though,” Mara said, bringing Angie’s thoughts to a screeching halt. “He comes to see Carmen.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Wait, the man I described came over to see Carmen?” Angie asked. Her heartbeat sped up, although she wasn’t sure why. Except that it felt like more of the pieces were falling into place.
“He comes over to visit her,” Mara said, glancing at her mother before looking back at Angie. “She’s never introduced him to me. They usually meet when Bart is out, or when he’s on the phone or something in his office. I thought once he might be her boyfriend, but they don’t act like that.”
Angie glanced briefly at Sebastian. “What do you mean?”