A flick of my wrist and I have a thin shield raised between us. The guy’s knuckles hit the invisible barrier with a CRUNCH of fracturing bones. He howls as he falls back, clutching his bloodied knuckles. I drink that in too, his pain and the energy rising from his blood like steam only I can see, and I draw it into my hands as the three other hired thugs arrive at the scene.
I conjure another shard, holding it so that it protrudes from the bottom of my fist like a reverse-gripped dagger. Two of the approaching men falter at the sight. The third keeps coming, and he’s just a few feet away when I see the glint of metal in his own hand. I push off the bar counter—too slow to keep the knife from slicing through my shirt sleeve and carving a long, clean gash from my bicep to my elbow. The wound drips warm and wet and red; I suck in a breath at the lightning-white sting, clutching my arm and stumbling backward. I drop my shard so that it dissolves without even hitting the floor.
Samael grins at that, still relaxing at the bar. He knocks back his martini as his goons advance on me, then nods at the bartender for another glass. The hired thugs advance on me, five in total, one limping, one with a broken fist, one with a bloodied knife.
As I back away, my hip bumps into the edge of a round table. The bottle of vodka and an empty glass rattle in response. I grab the bottle with my uninjured arm, intending to use it as a weapon—but the heavy sloshing inside gives me pause.
As Samael’s thugs approach, I take a small swig of the vodka, choke on the burn, and pour it out onto the bloody wound on my arm.
I scream through clenched teeth. The thugs falter in their advance. The searing pain nearly buckles my knees, the bulk of it coursing through me in a second—which means I have exactly a second to pull this off.
I throw out the tendrils of my magic, just barely making the distance, and grasp the muscles along the left side of the knife-thug’s body: lats, deltoid, bicep, abdominal obliques. I clench my fist; the muscles echo my movement, cramping instantly so that his head swings in a violent arc and smashes into the bar counter.
The rest of the thugs are… considerably disturbed by that. My arm still stings like a motherfucker. I resist the urge to cradle it, choosing instead to hold it plainly at my side so they can see the pinkened blood dripping down my wrist and hand. Now I smash the bottle against the edge of the table and hold the jagged edges up toward them.
“Anyone else?” I pant, trying not to shake too visibly.
They run. Or at least, two of them run. One of them hobbles, and the barely-conscious knife-wielder is dragged by his companions.
“Impressive,” Samael chuckles from the bar. “I didn’t think you were still capable of flashy displays like that.”
I make my way over, clutching my arm as a comfort object. “Barely capable. But I can still do it.”
“Pity, though, that you chose to chase them off instead of fighting to the last man.”
I grunt as I pull myself onto a barstool. “I don’t have to beat every mook you send at me, just survive them. Your own rules, remember? For the record, I still think it’s stupid that you do this with all your potential clients. You’re literally killing business, dude.”
“Maybe next time I’ll give it a go myself.”
“Yeah, sure, you do that.” I’m not even looking at him, too busy tearing a strip off the hem of my shirt to wrap around my wounded arm. The bar is quiet now, just the sound of alcohol dripping onto the floor somewhere, soft footfalls as the bartender drifts past me with a bucket and a mop.
“So. My information,” I say, tying off the makeshift bandage. “Someone got a spell, most likely from a demon, that overfilled its victims with blood. Tore them up from the inside out. It’s fueled by the sacrifice of virgin blood in the most old-fashioned sense, no drugs or artificial abnormalities. The spell was used four days ago—”
“Castitae.”
I blink. “Pardon?”
Samael’s face is impassive. “The spell was provided by a demon named Castitae, who deals in knowledge of blood magic and is obsessed with purity in numbers.”
“…Oh. Okay. Wow, that was even faster than usual.”
Samael shrugs, swirling his martini. “It’s because the people who executed that spell got it from me.”
My head snaps up. “What?”
“About a month ago, a fine European specimen came to me. Gorgeous fighter, took out every man I had without a lick of magic to his name. I don’t normally deal with non-mages, but he charmed me into making an exception. He wanted a spell that could tear through even the strongest defenses. Council-level defenses. And he was perfectly willing to get me what I wanted in return.”
I narrow my eyes. “Jax. His name was Jax.”
“Yes.” The word has an edge of insidious delight to it.
I palm a shard the size of a razor blade in my hand. Samael’s eyes flicker toward the slight movement, but again, he doesn’t move. “I know what you’re thinking right now. You want to interrogate me, find out who ended up with the spell. But I honestly don’t know. The man I met was obviously a pawn, and an untraceable one at that. But I can give you the information I gave him, and you can work your way up from there.”
I consider it, then let the shard dissolve away. “Good. That’s exactly what I came here for.”
Samael glances behind me, then shakes his head. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the bartender lower his mop, the handle of which he was just getting ready to jab into my spine. I ignore him. “How do I get ahold of this ‘Castitae?’”
Samael picks the cherry out of his martini and rolls it around in his fingers. “You can summon him. There’s a very specific ritual. I can tell you about it…for a price. If you’re not a cheapskate, of course.”
I roll my eyes. “Calm the fuck down, I only haggled with you once. And I wasn’t sketchy about it, I told you straight-up that was a payment I couldn’t afford.”
Samael’s eyes darken. “You could afford it. You can still afford it. You just lack the commitment.”
My right hand spasms against the countertop. I glance down at it, perfectly visualizing the scar that never was, the clean stab between my third and fourth metacarpals where Samael disagreed with my last attempt to change his price. “For the last time, asshole, I’m not giving you dirt on my sister. She’s not a cow to be milked for Council secrets.”
Samael tilts his head, keeping his eyes trained on mine. He squeezes the maraschino cherry between two fingers, and it squelches into a pink, pulpy mess in his hand. “Then you’ll never know his name.”
A hot flash runs across the scar on my neck. I ignore it. “And I don’t need to know his name. Not anymore. Now back off and give me your real price for the information I’m actually here for.”
Samael is quiet, something brewing in his eyes. If it’s anger, it’s very, very controlled. But I don’t think he’s mad. It’s more like he’s… thinking. The look fades out, replaced by a colorless smile. He points with a bony finger. “I want to know what that is.”
I follow the direction he’s indicating and find myself staring down at my own stomach, where my torn shirt is revealing my midriff and a bit of the pink scar tissue Lilith left on me. I’m more than a little incredulous. “The scar? You want me to tell you about that?”
“Why not? Information for information, it’s the purest exchange.”
My hand itches to cover the strip of skin, but I keep it relaxed at my side. “How do you even know the scar is magic? Could be from a surgery.”
“I can smell it.”
Now I cover myself. “You can what it?”
“The magic.” He lifts his chin, and his narrow, angular nostrils flare. He moves his hand like he’s gathering smoke toward him. “It smells like… something floral, and freshly plucked.”
My throat muscles convulse like I’m going to puke. “You are so fucking gross.”
Despite the creep factor, I give him a brief rundown of the first time I met Lilith, the bet we made, and the way it was sea
led. The whole time, Samael squishes and rolls the leftover cherry goop between butter-yellow fingers.
“It glows sometimes too, if someone’s trying to kill me. ‘S neat.”
“So she’s your guardian demon now?”
I snort. “I wish. I made that assumption too, and just to cure me of it she let me get shot to Hell in a parking lot. I’m not making that mistake again.”
Samael chews the remains of his cherry as he nods. “Hmm, alright. Your part of the deal has been fulfilled. Here is mine.”
He holds out his hand, and the bartender tosses him a gray dishrag. He wipes his pink-stained fingers on it, then takes a grimy notebook out of his jacket and tears out a page. He begins filling it out with quick, neat handwriting, starting from random places on the page; it’s like he’s forging a memorized painting rather than writing down a sequence of words. He hands the paper to me.
“You’ll need blood. Lots of blood,” he advises. I look at the numbers on the page. Shit, that is a lot of blood. I gulp as I read the rest of the words.
“Thirty-three minutes, no more, no less. Wow, that’s… awfully specific.”
“Purity of numbers. He’s very nitpicky, even for his kind. Good luck with him, he’s going to be a handful.”
I hop off my barstool, folding the paper up so I can stuff it into my coat pocket. At the last second, I turn around.
“One last thing. What did Jax give you in exchange for Castitae’s digits?”
Samael’s eyes flicker. “You’d have to pay another price to know that.”
My nose wrinkles. “Ugh, let me guess. My sister.”
He stares at me like a parent coaxing a child to stop making a scene in the cereal aisle. But I shake my head.
“Forget it. This transaction is over.”
“Pity for you.” He turns his back to me and speaks no further.
The bartender holds out my coat as I leave the premises. I take it, dig through the pockets, and flip him a quarter. He catches it without even looking, then stares up at me quizzically.
“A coin for the ferryman. You know, for your passage to Hades.”
He narrows his eyes, his mouth a stern, straight line.
“The name of the bar? The River Styx in Greek mythology? No?”
Stubborn silence. I wave my hand. “Oh, whatever, it was a stupid joke. But you are damned, aren’t you? You really think that asshole by the bar is going to bail you out of Hell just because you’re useful to him?”
His mouth twists. “Get out,” he growls. He shoves me through the door, then slams it so hard that I hear the sabotaged bell clackclackclack back to life.
“Hey, your bell’s fixed!”
He storms away without acknowledging my call. I think I hear Samael ordering another martini, a dark chuckle in his tone.
***
I fall asleep while patching up the wound on my arm. I don’t even realize it until I wake up on my living room floor tangled in sticky gauze, two faces with shadows for eyes peering down at me. Hang on. That’s Sunglasses, and that’s the hooded Enforcer.
“Is this just an everyday thing for you?” the hooded Enforcer asks, her lip twisted into a judgmental curve.
“Don’t answer that. It’ll only be depressing,” Sunglasses snarks back.
I rub my crusty eyes as I try to sit up. “Fuck you,” I mutter. There’s a bloody piece of gauze stuck to my forehead; I rip it off with too much force.
The hooded Enforcer shakes her head. “No need to be hostile. We came to bring you food, but you wouldn’t answer when we knocked. Our colleague said she’d spoken to you just a minute ago, so we were worried.”
I glance past the two of them to my doorway, where the Enforcer in the baseball cap is casually leaning. Her cap sports the image of a stylized, cartoonish banana peel.
“I…slipped,” I say. “In my kitchen. While holding a knife.”
The two Enforcers glance at each other, then back at me. They both turn to the Enforcer in the doorway; she shrugs.
“…Sure,” Sunglasses deadpans. “Whatever you say.”
“We’ve done some first-aid magic on you,” the hooded Enforcer says. “The scab should come off in about five hours. Don’t mess with it until then, or you’ll scar. Oh, and we got you some ramen.”
The Enforcer in the leather jacket holds up an enormous plastic shopping bag. I scratch at the long, raised scab along my right arm as I squint at it. “Top Ramen? Or the good stuff?”
“Korean and Japanese brands,” he says. “King-sized bowls, too.”
“Sweet. You guys are good for something after all.”
The hooded Enforcer wrinkles her nose—at least I think she does, it’s hard to tell under that hood—but Sunglasses doesn’t seem to take offense. The two of them get up, all business-like, and sweep out the door like they were never here in the first place. The Enforcer in the baseball cap peers out into the hallway, then gives me a thumbs-up when her coworkers are gone.
“Why were they acting so fucking weird?” I complain, picking myself up off the floor. There’s gauze all over my pants; I have to bend over to rip it off. There’s a pair of scissors stuck to my knee too.
“They think you hurt yourself.”
“Yes, I know that.” I snip the ruined gauze off the roll, then toss the remainder at the couch. “I literally told them I slipped in the kitchen.”
“No, they think you cut yourself. On purpose.”
I pause, scissors still in hand. “Why?”
The Enforcer shrugs, but there’s tension in the gesture. “You’ve been on our watchlist for over a year. The demon blood, remember? Higher-ups told us you were were a menace, completely off the hook, but we stopped believing that when you turned into a pathetic alcoholic sex addict. Now most of us just feel bad for you.”
I cringe. “I’m not like that anymore. I got better.”
“You sure? You got dragged into a Council courtroom with two black eyes, smelling like dead people and looking like you’d raided your nan’s closet, hollering about another witch no one cared about.”
I’m glad I can’t see her eyes, because they might contain a little more truth than I’m willing to confront right now. “Alright, alright, I see your point. What time is it?”
“4 a.m.”
I thank her for the help and get into the shower, where I take a quick rinse in cold water. Then I make a bowl of ramen and sit at my desk to do some math. Aw man, I hate math. If there are eight pints in a gallon…I think I’ve got my long division right. I dial a number on my cell phone, and a voice with a thick Italian accent answers, “Garlic Romance, how can I help you?”
“Hey, Messalina. It’s me, Harry.”
“Harry!” There’s a high-pitched squeal and the sound of a metal pot bouncing around in a kitchen sink. “My favorite sinner! How are you?”
“Not… great. But that isn’t important right now. Messy, hey, I’ve got a weird question—how much blood do you guys have stocked?”
“Right now? Eh, I don’t know, thirty gallons or so?”
“Holy shit, that’s a lot. Actually, that’s great. How much do I have to pay you to get some of that? Maybe like… twenty gallons?”
“Really? Oh, wow, I’m not so sure… Maybe about four thousand? It’s quite a lot, and I didn’t get it cheap—it’s ethically sourced, you know. Council-stamped and everything.”
“Four thou—” I have to put my head down for that. Oh boy. Goodbye to this month’s rent. And a good chunk of next month’s. Fuck. “Alright, four thousand. You’re a lifesaver, Messy.”
“Is this for some kind of kinky sex?”
“What? Messy, no.”
“Aww, that would have been fun to hear about. Alright, I’ll send Felix and Tommaso with the stuff. Bye-bye, sweetie!”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Rubber Ducky, You're So Fine
I busy myself while I wait for the delivery, drawing the required symbols onto my apartment floor with chalk, setting up candles, disabli
ng the demon wards around the door and windows. After that it turns out it’s still 5 a.m., and I have a whole two hours left. I sit around a little uselessly.
A pencil rolls off my desk with no preamble. The temperature drops, even though my windows aren’t open.
“Junhyun?” I call out.
Junhyun walks out in front of me. Well, sort of. He’s standing on the ceiling, upside-down, but his hair and clothing aren’t following the pull of gravity the way they should. He tilts his featureless face and waves, the motion of his hand becoming a pretty, swirling mist.
“Careful, there’s a Council spook outside my door. She’s mostly chill, but she’ll still exorcise you on sight. What are you doing here?”
There’s a note of complaint in his not-voice as he crosses his arms and says, Strange people in home.
“Yeah, I know, I’m sorry. There’s a lot going on right now.”
He uses his hands to mime bull horns coming out of his head, except his fingers elongate, curve, and fade out into the air. Lion-footed woman? A demon?
“Yep. Very much a demon.”
Is very pretty.
“She is, isn’t she?”
Don’t like. Dangerous for mom.
“Fair and reasonable. Actually, that reminds me—I’m trying to make a ward that keeps her out. I’ll work on that now, yeah?”
Okay.
He salutes and walks away, still upside-down, losing shape until he phases through the wall as hazy blur.
I put my chin on my hands as I think. Lilith doesn’t give a damn about the no-harming-humans rule, but what about the respect-all-contracts rule? I have a receipt for the last bet we made: my brown paper napkin covered in sigil doodles, which she handed back to me as a signifier of our transaction. Destroying the napkin won’t actually affect the contract in any way, just like destroying a store receipt doesn’t make your purchases invalid, but it might give Lilith pause. It’s a far reach, but hey, half the stuff I do on a regular basis is a far reach.
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