I swallowed back bile. He wasn’t wrong. But at least I knew Jax was unlikely to have some weird faerie weapon to fight me with. Not that his magic and ability to render me unconscious wasn’t enough of a threat.
I thanked Lachlan and then headed to New Moon Tavern, a dive bar not far from my apartment, to regroup and google while I had a late lunch. New Moon opened at noon, though it was rarely crowded until after five.
Riley, the bartender, raised his eyebrows when he saw me and then mimed a beer. I nodded. He had the India Pale Ale in front of me before I’d gotten myself up on the bar stool. I took a sip of the hoppy, bitter beer and smiled.
“Long time, no see,” Riley said. “Been busy?”
“You could say that.” Busy and broke. Sadly, this past month burgers and beer hadn’t exactly been in my budget. But I figured I’d earned it. And besides, if I had to face down my own personal demon while his mage buddy stood by waiting to snap his fingers to make me black out, I at least didn’t have to do it on an empty stomach. “Can I get a cheeseburger and fries?”
“Always. And hey, that first beer’s on the house. Good to see you again.” Riley went over to his computer to put in my order.
I sat up straighter and smiled to myself. It was good to know that if Ashraith and Jax managed to kill me, at least I’d be missed at this watering hole. And Penelope and Silas would miss me. Silas would especially miss the rent checks.
While I waited for my food, I texted Conor to let him know where I was. Normally, I’d charge in to battle alone and try to defeat the bad guys without risking anyone else’s neck. But since I kept blacking out, that wasn’t an option.
And if I was honest with myself, I’d come to rely on Conor as a partner in solving crime. We’d been distant since he discovered my secret, but he was still there for me when it counted. If someone had told me I’d be relying on a Watcher to help me even after he knew I had demon magic six months ago, I’d have laughed in their face.
Now I was waiting for a Watcher so we could plan our attack together.
Life was weird.
Chapter 16
Conor arrived when I was halfway through my burger and fries. He gave me a once over with a worried look. I ate a fry and gestured to myself. “I’m fine. Really. I think my ribs are close to healed.”
“Close is not the same as completely,” he said
I shrugged. They still hurt but not as bad as before. Not that it mattered. I wasn’t waiting around for my body to heal while this mage and my demon were running rampant doing gods only knew what.
After Conor was done eyeing me dubiously, he turned his scowl on my plate. “What’s the plan?”
I pulled out the bar stool next to me. “Have a seat. Have a drink. We need to strategize.”
Conor sat reluctantly and ordered a soda water with lime. It was my turn to scowl. “We’re about to face a mage with demon backup and you don’t want a drink.”
“Clearer heads prevail,” he said, nodding his thanks to Riley, who’d put the drink in front of him.
I took a large swig of my beer. I was clear headed enough. And more importantly, determined to end this once and for all.
Unless it meant the end of my demon magic.
But there was no way to know if that would happen. At least not without asking an expert, and that meant revealing my secret.
It was a risk.
But so was losing my powers. The ability to conjure demon fire, to see demon shadows and manipulate them… these were powers that had saved my ass too many times. I relied on them. I wasn’t ready to give them up.
The bar door opened and a couple came in, waving at Riley as they headed for a booth. Riley followed them with menus. Conor scrutinized them for a moment.
“What’s the plan?” Conor asked.
I swallowed the bite of burger I’d been chewing. “My intel says he’s squatting in an abandoned house in South Everett.”
Conor’s eyes widened. “You know where he is and you stopped for dinner?”
“No. I know he’s in an abandoned house and the general geographical area. We need to narrow that down to find him.”
Conor’s shoulders relaxed but he didn’t look comfortable on the bar stool. Every time the bar’s door opened, he whipped around to see who it was. “Okay. Finish up and let’s get on it.”
I ran a fry through a gob of ketchup on the plate. “What has you so on edge?”
Conor met my eyes. He leaned in close. “I might have messed up.”
I blinked. Conor Ramsey, demon hunter of the Watchers, loyal to the Magic Council, did not mess up. It wasn’t in his DNA. “How so?”
He glanced uneasily around the bar. New Moon Tavern may sound like a supernatural haunt but it was a dive bar owned and mostly patronized by mundane humans. Lack of supernatural clientele was its biggest draw for me, other than proximity to my apartment.
Conor bent his head close to mine again and spoke in a low whisper. “I was asking about demon traps. How complex they were, how often they were used. Unfortunately, I think I asked the wrong folks, because Lana sat me down and gave me a lecture about how demon traps are no longer a problem given that it’s illegal to summon demons. She asked a lot of questions and seemed pretty suspicious about my interest.”
I let out a breath. That wasn’t good. Lana was Conor’s superior, one of the heads of the Watchers. If she was concerned Conor was up to something nefarious, she’d be keeping close tabs on him. That would make it a lot harder for us to face down Jax Varta and Ashratih. Not that fighting evil mages and demons was illegal. That was Conor’s job. But we weren’t exactly doing things by the book. Plus, if anyone from the Council was keeping tabs, they might see me using illegal magic. And that would get me arrested, and maybe Conor, too.
“That’s not all,” Conor said. “She gave me a citation.”
“You? What the hell for?” My voice went up and Conor immediately scanned the room again. He was really wigged out.
“For not keeping proper logs,” Conor said grimly. “I’m supposed to keep records of what I’m doing out on patrol. Normally I’d make them regardless of what I’ve been doing. I know how to keep it vague to avoid any problems. But this past week has been…” He trailed off. He didn’t say it had been awful but that seemed to hang in the air. “And after we…” He gestured toward me, but didn’t allow himself to say “tried to summon a demon” “I kept trying to write my logs and freezing.”
“And not doing your logs is pretty unlike you,” I guessed.
Conor nodded. “It’s made her more suspicious. I have a pretty good poker face but when she was asking why I needed to know about demon traps…well, let’s just say I have no doubt she’s put a tail on me.”
A lump formed in my throat. Conor would never have been within a mile of a demon summoning if not for me. If he got caught and punished, it would be one hundred percent my fault.
I took a moment to scan the bar for anyone who might be tailing us. I recognized about half the other patrons as regulars and no one else stood out. Witches had a faint blue glow around their auras and no one here had that. But there were spells to disguise oneself. They were complex spells that never lasted long, but not out of reach to the most advanced members of the Watchers.
“Okay. So we proceed with caution,” I said.
It was a setback, no denying that. Having a huge spotlight on me and my demon magic was a risk to both of our freedoms. The Council wouldn’t care how or why I had demon magic, nor that I used it for good. They’d just lock me up for it, and Conor would be locked up for not turning me in. Or worse, he’d be accused of supporting my illegal actions. The former might lose him his job and get him a few years in the Dungeon. The latter… he might end up on the gallows next to me.
The French fries turned to ash in my mouth. I swallowed and washed it down with the rest of my beer. I left cash on the bar.
Outside, Conor headed for his SUV. I got in and then told him to drive to my building.
That was my favorite thing about Conor. Act first, ask questions later.
I got of the car as he idled. I glanced around to make sure the narrow street was empty—for whatever that mattered—and typed the code into the key box for the garage under my building. It wasn’t a large garage and most of the spaces were filled with Silas’ extra cars. Only one worked, or at least he only ever drove one. I’d tried to get him to sell me one of his spares in the past and he’d refused.
Penelope’s car was the only one that didn’t belong to my vampire landlord.
Conor pulled into one of the two empty spaces and the garage door clanged shut.
I went over to Silas’ gold-colored sedan and checked the door. It opened and the keys were in the glovebox.
Bingo.
Silas let me borrow it sometimes, occasionally for a fee. That depended on what kind of mood he was in. Since the sun was still up (barely), I doubted he’d care, but then again, who knew when we’d be back. I tossed the keys to Conor, who was carrying my sword and the obsidian blade.
“Gonna run upstairs and leave Silas a note,” I said. A note might keep him from trying to charge me for the car’s use.
Ten minutes later, we were in the sedan, ready to hit a list of abandoned houses I was still compiling on my phone. I put the first address into Conor’s GPS and then we rolled out of the garage. It turned out that finding abandoned houses wasn’t exactly a Google-friendly activity. Most results returned listings for land that was for sale and happened to contain a dilapidated or abandoned structure, and most weren’t in the Everett area.
Still, I managed to find a few that were worth a look.
The car pulled out of the garage and I searched the street for signs of any Watchers sent to trail Conor. No cars pulled out behind us and no one seemed particularly interested in us at all as we made our way to the freeway.
“What’s the plan of attack?” Conor asked.
Cold crept over me and goosebumps erupted on my arms. I shook my head. “Fight Jax and the demon. Win.”
“We need a better plan than that,” Conor said, giving me a side-eye. “This guy was trying to kidnap you. Us showing up on his doorstep is akin to handing you over gift-wrapped unless we do better than that.”
“We have the element of surprise,” I suggested, giving up on my phone. “That’s an advantage.”
“Not much of one,” Conor said grimly.
He was right, so I didn’t argue.
The first house was completely empty so we moved on to the next one. Houses number two and three were home to squatters but none of them knew of Jax. Number four was infested with rats but otherwise empty, with no sign any person had been inside for months.
By the time we got to house number five, I was losing hope that Lachlan’s intel was correct. He passed along what he heard, and he couldn’t lie, but that didn’t mean people couldn’t lie to him or that he didn’t get things wrong.
This last house sat between a new luxury apartment complex and a recently repainted and probably remodeled home that had a big for sale sign in front. The abandoned place had once been a cute square house with a small porch and a stone walkway leading to it. Now the paint was peeling and the glass in one of the windows had been broken out. All windows and the door were covered in boards and “No Trespassing” signs were pasted on top of them. Oddly, though, this one wasn’t for sale.
I blinked into my shadow sight to check for demon shadows. Demon shadows were like a weird, spiritual residue left behind from demonic energy. And this house was crawling with them.
I started to tell Conor when I heard a strange sound, like a tree cracking and falling. The top board flew off on the front door. I ducked automatically. It landed a few feet in front of me. One board remained over the open door space and the house inside was pitch black despite it being late afternoon.
“What the hell?” I bent down to pick up the board. It glowed red as my hand made contact and I pulled back. The board ignited into flames and burned to ash. I stared at it, confused. And then I looked around for some reassurance I wasn’t seeing things.
Conor stood only feet away, staring slack-jawed, baffled as I was. “Poltergeist?” he suggested.
That didn’t make sense. What were the odds we’d randomly come across a house with a violent poltergeist while we were in pursuit of a demon?
Before either of us could hash it out, the other board that had been over the door tore out of the nails holding it in place and came flying at my face. I dropped down again. This time the board flew over my head and landed in the street.
A neighbor across the street watched through a crack in the curtains. I swore. The last thing we needed was a good Samaritan calling the police.
I picked up the board, ignoring it as it heated up and started to burn my skin. I dropped it on the stone walk, out of the street. I wiped the dirt and debris from my hands and stepped up beside Conor, who was staring into the dark house.
“This isn’t right,” he said, keeping his volume near a whisper.
“Was it the first board flying at us that tipped you off or…?”
Conor shot me a dark look.
I put my hands up. Sarcasm was my best and first defense. Conor winced when he saw the burn on my palm. “What happened?”
“The board got hot. It’s powerful magic.”
He huffed out a breath and turned back to the house, gesturing to the doorway. “It’s like looking into a void.”
I followed his gaze to the door opening. There was no door on the hinges. Inside, it looked as dark and empty as a blackhole. It was an impenetrable darkness, just solid black. For a moment, I worried I’d blacked out again and blinked it away. But I could still see, just not inside the house.
I glanced over my shoulder and the neighbor’s curtain was still pulled to the side. I sighed and pressed close to Conor to block their view. Then, using my right arm that was between us, I conjured demon fire in hopes its light might penetrate the preternatural darkness.
Conor gasped at the blue flames that ignited in my palm. He was still taken aback by my ability, which was fair. It wasn’t normal for a witch to just summon fire like that.
Maybe I should have been, too, but instead, it was practically a reflex now. Years of having this magic had made it second nature to me.
I held the demon fire up to the doorway, hoping the blue flames might illuminate the void. No luck. I took a deep breath and pressed the fire into the void.
There was a loud crack! in the air. The house rumbled beneath us. It felt like an earthquake. I dropped my demon fire, the flame extinguishing into a puff of acrid smoke.
The porch boards shook and creaked under our feet. Conor and I exchanged a quick look and then both of us bolted. My sneakers hit the sidewalk as the shaking increased. I heard wood creak and crack. I turned in time to see the roof caving in on itself. The walls swayed inward and then fell. Cracks and pops of wood and screws and nails and metal coming apart created a cacophony of destruction.
And just like that, the house was a pile of rubble.
Plumes of dust and dirt filled the air like smoke as the remains of the house settled on the ground. When the dust cleared, all that was left was a pile of scrap wood and debris. A porcelain sink lay half-buried in the mess, white and gleaming in the daylight.
“What the hell was that?” I wasn’t asking Conor, just the universe at large. I’d seen a lot of weird shit in my job, everything from zombie goblins to vanishing faeries. But a house seemingly possessed by demon energy self-destructing? This was a new one on me.
Conor shook his head. He didn’t know, either.
I blinked back into my shadow sight. Demon shadows crawled atop the wreckage. And then suddenly they stopped moving. In unison, they all turned to look at me. I gasped. They didn’t have eyes but I could feel their stares, hot and angry.
Conor put a hand on my shoulder and I shook out o
f my shadow sight.
Sirens blared in the distance. I guessed our onlooker finally called in the authorities. Couldn’t say I blamed them: it was one thing to be nosy but tolerant of strangers on your neighbor’s property. But a house totally caving in on itself was the sort of thing 9-1-1 was invented for.
Conor and I both got into the sedan without a word. Neither of us wanted to hang around to answer questions we didn’t have answers to. We sped off and I hoped the neighbor hadn’t gotten a good look at the license plate.
Chapter 17
“That had to be another trap,” Conor said.
I opened the fridge and searched my bare shelves for something to drink. Alcohol wasn’t a good idea, Conor was right, but there was nothing left but beer. I closed the fridge and made a mental note to stock up on cola. Or some of those energy drinks with massive amounts of caffeine.
“A trap, or something else,” I said.
“Like what?” Conor asked. He sounded exasperated. But then, we were dealing with all kinds of weird crap lately, stuff that previously seemed impossible, including my demon magic. It took a toll on a person learning the world was not what you’d once believed it to be.
I shook my head. “Not sure. But it seems like a pretty roundabout trap, having a house magically rigged to implode when magic touched it. Or whatever the hell happened.”
I’d replayed the house’s collapse over and over in my mind. The demon fire touching the darkness appeared to be what set the collapse in motion but I wasn’t entirely sure. It might have been a timing thing, triggered when we stepped onto the porch.
Or worse, the house had decided to attack us.
I pushed that thought away. The house was an inanimate object. It hadn’t decided to do anything.
“Can buildings be possessed by demons?” I asked, sitting across from Conor at my small dining table.
He was silent for a long moment. “A demon can possess anything in theory, but inanimate objects are usually undesirable to them as they lack any range of motion.”
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