by S. M. Reine
“Try not to take it personally,” she said. “I have special circumstances. You’re more advanced than me in other ways, I’m sure.”
“Show me what you’re doing now. Those hand gestures over the tiger’s eye—”
“I’m sorry, but I shouldn’t be too forthcoming. It’s a matter of safety.” She shifted her body so that he couldn’t see her hands anymore.
James indulged in a moment of frustration. To be so excluded from a child’s magical workings…
No. We all protect our secrets .
He let out a long breath, and Sophie soon turned around to bring him back into the ritual’s setup. “You can handle this part, if you’d like,” she said. “We’ll need these runes transferred in a scale of one centimeter to one meter, using this chalk here. I’ve already drawn grid lines on the floor so that you can easily recreate the drawing on the paper, and…”
James .
Elise’s voice pulsed inside of him, drowning out reality. His gaze dropped from Sophie’s. He was dizzy, momentarily weightless.
James. We have to talk .
“Are you all right, Mr. Faulkner?” Sophie asked. Her concerned face swam in and out of focus.
James pressed a hand to his head. “I think Elise is trying to communicate. Excuse me.”
He left the rooftop for the relative quiet inside Yatam’s condominium. There was no wind here, and the smell of brimstone wasn’t as strong. He sat on the edge of the statue’s basin and closed his eyes.
Elise was in a cramped bathroom, leaning toward a cracked mirror with her gloved hands braced on a rusted sink. She was staring intently at her reflection. With a jolt, James realized that she was looking at him . The bond made it feel as though they were face-to-face.
“There you are,” he said. “Did you learn what we need?”
Her emotions flowed over the bond, but they were too jumbled for him to make sense of them. It made no sense that Elise could look so calm when she was feeling so much. “We can’t get to the doorway where He’s likely to come for me. It’s in the Warrens, miles below the city. We’re going to take this from another angle. Everything here’s being orchestrated by his herald, Yatai. It won’t happen if we can cut Yatai out. She wants to murder Lincoln, so we’re going to bait a trap with him.”
“And then what?” James asked.
“Lincoln thinks we can’t kill her, but he’s got an idea of where he could imprison her safely. We’ll need a spell to freeze Yatai for transport. He says to ask Sophie if it’s okay to use the farm, and for a spell ‘like the one Ofelia used on Dullahan.’ He says it’ll make sense to her.”
“I don’t like the idea of trapping the Mother of All Demons.”
“We’ll try to kill her first,” Elise said. “We can pin her down for Yatam.”
“We can’t allow greater demons to fight in the middle of an urban center!”
“That’s why we’ll have to set the trap in Eloquent Blood, under Craven’s. It’s at the mouth of the Warrens and basically a bomb shelter. Sophie can lock it down with wards too.”
“You want to send Sophie into the middle of a battle zone,” James said. “Need I remind you that she’s a pregnant teenager?”
“She can handle it,” Elise said. “Talk to Yatam and Sophie. We’re sending Junior back to play escort.”
She turned from the mirror.
James opened his eyes, massaging his forehead as his version of reality sank into him. He’d never opened an active bond with Elise in quiet times like this, when they were not actively battling an enemy or casting an important spell. The focus had made their exchange so vivid it felt like they’d been in the same room.
He was startled when he turned to see his companions waiting for him: Sophie, Betty, and even Yatam, who lurked by the door.
“So, was that a magical Skype?” Betty asked.
James gave a wry, embarrassed laugh. He didn’t know what the conversation had looked like from an outsider’s perspective. Surely it had been awkward. “Elise wants us to prepare a trap for Yatai. Also, Sophie, Lincoln has a request. He wants you ready to freeze Yatai the way that Ofelia froze Dullahan. He also hopes that you can permanently secure her in the farm.”
“Nothing but tall orders from Mr. Marshall, of course,” Sophie said. “I’ll have to be physically present in Eloquent Blood to lay such a trap.”
“Yes,” he said, “I know.”
She nodded. “Very well. I’ve activated the wards on this condominium—you’ll be safe here through the worst of the apocalypse, even if the tenth plague descends. Tell me, Mr. Faulkner, are you a firstborn son?”
“I’m my parents’ only son, but I’m not an infant.”
“There’s no telling how the plague will manifest,” Sophie said. “You can’t come help me at Eloquent Blood. I’m sorry.” It was absurd for Sophie to suggest he couldn’t go with her. This wasn’t even her fight. It was James’s mistake, Elise’s enemy, a war upon them both.
“I won’t stay here while my kopis fights the Mother of All Demons,” James said.
“The wards will be strongest with one of us here to maintain them,” Sophie said. “If both you and Betty can, all the better. It will give us a safe place to run back to if my trap fails to remove the white queen from the chessboard, so to speak.”
“Assuming she needs to be removed. You don’t have much confidence in my ability to kill my sister, I see,” Yatam said.
“Should I be confident?” she asked.
“To grow, a demon must feed aggressively. My sister devours everything she touches with our mother’s curse. She is more powerful than legions of demons. I have slumbered for millennia, and I feed on dozens compared to her thousands.” Yatam gave an elegant shrug. “You’re right. On a level playing field, I stand no chance.”
“Trapping her within my wards while you attack is far from a level playing field, and you’ll find none of us judge you for it,” Sophie said.
“My girl!” Betty chucked her in the shoulder. “Listen to this smart bitch. Don’t play things level at all. We’ll hold her down, and you punch.”
“I’ll need something before I do this,” Yatam said. He visually appraised Sophie and then nodded with seeming satisfaction. “Prepare a Ptolomean hex to trap her. Such a thing will be necessary to contain an entity as powerful as Yatai.”
“A Ptolomean hex…yes. You’re right.” Sophie nodded. “That would be ideal, wouldn’t it?”
“You refer to Ptolomy, the Governor of Jericho?” James asked.
Yatam vanished without replying.
Sophie edged away from the place he disappeared, tugging her sweater around her. “One of the regions in the frozen wastelands of Coccytus is named for him. A Ptolomean hex is, therefore, an ancient infernal hex which essentially entombs its target in non-melting, unbreakable ice.”
James had never heard of it. He had studied as much about infernal magic as he could, but information was limited. It had been outlawed for too long. “Can you cast it?”
“With minor adaptations into a gaean spell, absolutely. I’m more troubled by the idea of attempting to ward Eloquent Blood. The magic I brought from the farm barely took here.”
“If you can’t do it then—”
“I’ll figure it out,” Sophie said. “I’m not one to invent new magical systems, but I am smart and quick to adapt. Please, Mr. Faulkner, worry only about holding the fort here. You can trust me to have this in hand.”
He couldn’t help but laugh at her confidence. He was an adult man trained in dance, who had spent most of his life told he was special, a prince among witches. His confidence was absurd at times. Yet this diminutive teen mother was easily twice as confident—and she made him believe it was earned. “I trust that you do. It’s been a pleasure working with you today, Sophie.” He held out a hand. They shook, and she rewarded him with a broad smile.
“Now I should prepare my ritual supplies for transport,” she said.
He watched her leaving,
hands in his pockets, and felt the smile wither on his face. He’d been entirely serious when he said Sophie was a pleasure. She was brilliant. But with the admiration came something much like loathing, and it wasn’t aimed at the girl.
“Gris-gris for your thoughts,” Betty said. She was still hanging out, scuffing her heels in the dust of the empty condo.
“When I retired, I considered it a safety measure,” James said. “I didn’t think about how it would make me complacent. To once hold high status in witch society and decline is dangerous. It makes me vulnerable to challengers, like an aging lion confronted by another pride’s son.”
“Oh, come on, you’re not an aging lion.”
“That girl is fourteen and she knows impossible things.”
“And I have to get my seven-year-old cousin’s help to figure out my iPod. So what? Kids know crazy things, but they don’t know everything. You’ve got a lot of other skills she doesn’t have. Besides, are you disappointed in yourself for not inventing impossible magic? Really?”
“When you put it like that, it sounds ridiculous,” he admitted.
Her smile turned sly. “You really are disappointed that you didn’t invent impossible magic.”
“My aunt did it once,” James said.
“Okay, you’re right, you’re useless. Go die under a herd of wildebeest, you old lion.” Betty got up to leave.
James caught her wrist and pulled her back. She plopped on the edge of the basin next to him. Their thighs came in full contact, and James was struck by how much space she occupied—not because she was a large woman, but because she was a large personality, and somehow James had been drawn into her gravity.
She was a large woman in many ways, though. Large breasts and hips. A large laugh that filled entire rooms. A large heart, in which she’d found room for every passing misfit.
“Thank you, Betty,” James said.
“For what?” she asked.
“Your help,” he said. “Your presence.”
She dragged her bottom lip between her teeth, gazing up at him more intently than he’d ever seen. If she’d given magic as much of her attention, she might have actually learned something in her time with the coven. “You’re very welcome, James.”
Hail pounded against the window, but not so loudly that James missed Betty’s sudden intake of breath when he brought his fingertips to her throat.
Betty leaned into his hand. She tipped her head.
He wasn’t certain who began the kiss, but neither hesitated, despite a thousand reasons to stop and think.
Perhaps the most prominent reason was that Elise was still in James’s head.
While he was navigating the lines of Betty’s jaw with his thumb, she was attempting to navigate the streets of Reno without being struck by fireballs. He was aware of her movements the way he’d have been aware of a TV playing in the same room. He could hear everything happening in the background—every thud of fireball against building, every footstep against gravel, every gargoyle bellow. She would hear everything he did too. If she closed her eyes, she might even see it.
James didn’t want to sever the bond while she was in danger, nor did he want to stop tracing his tongue against Betty’s, seeking unspoken boundaries. When he was this close to Betty’s overwhelming affirmation, he could almost feel her convictions as strongly as he felt his frustrations. His inferior mortal magicks, for one. Lincoln’s existence, for another. And those were only his complaints because he wasn’t letting himself despair about what was about to happen to Elise at God’s hands.
Betty slid into James’s lap, and her thighs pressed against his sides. She was a warm weight, with pleasant curves, and he allowed himself to feel the way they fit into his palms.
In downtown Reno, Elise lurched into a gas station for protection, and James could feel the collapse coming before Elise bent to press her hands to her knees. It was like she couldn’t breathe. He felt no injury from her. There was no pain anywhere—not where his hands skimmed Betty’s feverish thigh, and not in Elise’s physical form.
Elise hurt so deeply.
James almost shut down the bond right there. A quick measure to shove his kopis from his mind, for her sake and for his.
“Are you okay?” Lincoln’s voice was as clear as though he were speaking beside James.
Elise looked up at him, and she said, “Sorry. I’m still getting information through the bond.”
“Did something happen to James?” Lincoln asked. “Is everything okay at the condo? Where’s Sophie?”
James wasn’t sure which of them felt more annoyed by Lincoln’s questions. Elise said, “It’s fine.” She wasn’t shutting down the bond, either. It felt like Elise was staring straight at him, calling his bluff. Daring him to continue nuzzling Betty’s collarbone and nipping at her skin like this was going to actually happen.
“Problem?” Betty asked when James stopped moving. Her fingers stroked a line down his neck. She was grinning at him from above, her hair falling around them, her face in shadow.
“This is a bad idea,” James said, gripping her hips to lift her off of him. “Elise…”
Betty peeled her pants off and sat again. She wore bright-red panties. “It’s not like she’s your girlfriend. She’s your kopis. There are no rules banning aspises or whatever from hooking up with a kopis’s friends. Right?” Her fingernails kept circling.
Anger surged hot in Elise. “What’s that you said about James being untrustworthy?” she asked in the convenience store lit by the burning city.
Lincoln raked a hand through his hair. “You really wanna chat about this now? We oughta get out of the gas station before a fireball hits those pumps. It’s still a few blocks until we’re at Craven’s and—”
“I want to hear this right now,” Elise said, gripping Lincoln’s lapels. They were both still matching, dressed by Neuma, and leather creaked against leather.
“You don’t.” Lincoln’s hands folded over Elise’s, and James felt the brush of the calluses over his knuckles. It was hard to tell who Lincoln was actually touching. “You shouldn’t hear it from me. You should ask James to tell you everything.”
“What if he lies to me?” she asked.
What had Lincoln told her?
James pulled Betty’s shirt aside, and he tasted the flesh that had been indented by her bra strap. She wore pretty, expensive things made of lace. She smelled like the color pink, somehow, and tasted like cherry soda. Betty was rocking against him and helping him get his hands where she liked them on her ass, and James deeply regretted that they needed to stop.
Except that Elise had pulled Lincoln back into a corner, by the cash register. She pulled so hard that he had to brace an arm against the wall by her head to keep steady. “Elise,” Lincoln said in a low, husky voice, “you’re not helping me with my self-control any.”
She grabbed him by the neck—a lot like Betty was holding James by the neck. Elise pressed her face to his, nose against nose, forehead to forehead. “Tell me if you’re in love with me.”
His hands glided up her back, holding her close.
Tell me you’re in love with me .
James mouthed the words along Betty’s pulse.
I’m in love with you .
“Jesus, Elise,” Lincoln said. “You don’t have a clue how long I’ve been in love with you.”
She crushed her mouth against his before he could get the last word out. She bit at him, dragging hard on his lapels, making sure he couldn’t move.
Lincoln didn’t seem to want to move away. They were fitted so tightly against the cashier’s counter that the edge dug into Elise’s spine, and she didn’t mind at all. She liked the pain. It was sharp and bright, like fireballs against pavement.
James wasn’t paying enough attention to his reality. He yanked Betty’s bra off and snapped it. “Hey,” she protested. “That cost a lot.”
“I’ll replace it if the world doesn’t end.”
God, but Betty had marvelo
us breasts. They were both large and natural—not a surprise to James. She’d washed her cousin’s Jeep multiple times in the parking lot at Motion and Dance and always wore a very small bikini. James had simply never considered the marvel of her breasts in this context where he could press his face between them and suck the nipples into his mouth and nibble every inch.
A crashing sound drew James’s attention back to Elise. She’d shoved Lincoln into a shelf—and he only responded by slamming her back into the door of a refrigerated cooler.
The fact that Elise made love the way she battled was never something James should have seen. And the fact that she surrendered readily once Lincoln shoved her into a corner, pinning her fists above her head with one hand, should not have made James unravel so quickly.
Lincoln sank his teeth into Elise’s shoulder hard enough that her groan came out of James’s lips, and Betty groaned in echo of it. She had opened James’s pants while he was distracted. She was stroking his erection, surveying it as if trying to decide what she wanted to do with it, and the heat in her eyes suggested she had preferences. Her lips brushed his ear when she asked, “Are you clean? Normally I’d insist on condoms but…apocalypse.”
“I’m clean,” James said. “But you—”
“IUD. Good with you?”
“Good,” he said, and Betty pulled her panties aside to sink onto him. She was so wet and tight, and James couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt anything like this. He wasn’t sure that he had. The word escaped him again, more growling. “Good .”
“Oh, fuck,” Betty sighed. She sought his lips and a rhythm with her hips. She was rolling, slow, feeling it out. James had to sink his fingers into her spine or else he thought he might fall apart.
Lincoln was too forceful with Elise. They had no rhythm. He turned her, pinned her standing against the refrigerator, and bit her again. Elise liked that. There was bitter pleasure radiating from her side of the bond—a sort of vengeful satisfaction that only made James angrier. She knew what she was doing to James. And she didn’t stop.
With a few moments of fumbling leather and buckles, Lincoln’s fingers searched between Elise’s legs. She was wet, too. As wet as Betty. James wondered with a sick shiver if Elise had been like that just from evading brimstone hailing from the sky or if she really did like Lincoln gripping her with bruising strength, sinking his teeth into her neck, pressing his erection into Elise with her legs together so tightly that he barely fit.