I gave up. “Let me know when you’re done,” I sighed. “I can hardly wait to see what I’ll be able to do.” Neither of them responded.
“I have no idea what any of that means,” Olivia admitted. She was human once more, standing off to the side with an anxious look. I couldn’t blame her, frankly.
“It doesn’t matter,” I told her. “Melissa’s one of the best players in the game. She’ll figure out the best set of spells for me to use.” I hoped.
“And then what?”
“And then we sit tight and wait for Mrs. Kendricks and Agent Prescott to figure out how to stop Lilith.”
Olivia looked about as enthusiastic about that plan as I felt, namely not at all. Waiting for someone else to fix an urgent problem wasn’t particularly satisfying. “I don’t think they’re speaking to each other right now,” she pointed out.
“They’re just having a little disagreement, that’s all,” I insisted. “They’ll get over it.” I certainly hoped so, anyway. Without their guidance and expertise, we were pretty much hosed.
“But how are we supposed to find Lilith?” she persisted. “Isn’t she in Hell recruiting demons?”
“Dara thinks she was there when we fought that hellhound. She needs to be close by to grab the Philosopher’s Stone as soon as I’m dead. I doubt she trusts a demon lord to just hand it over to her out of gratitude.”
“So we have to wait until we’re attacked before we can stop her?” she asked doubtfully.
“Er, well, yes, I suppose.” I hoped Melissa and Daraxandriel didn’t leave off all my defensive spells. I had a sneaking suspicion I might need them at some point.
“But how is she supposed to find us if we’re hiding out here?”
“Well –” That was a darn good question, actually.
“Imps,” Susie said, sitting up on the bed.
“What?”
“She’s using imps to spy on us. We just need to let one of them see us and then we can spring the trap.”
“Which trap would that be?”
“The one where we let the demon jump you and then we get it from all sides. Fuge, fuge.” She attacked Melissa’s moving boxes.
“Is there another kind of trap that doesn’t involve using me as demon bait?” Susie waved off my objection as inconsequential. “And what if there aren’t any imps around?”
“Details. I’ll go find one.” She slid off the bed but I blocked her path to the door.
“Hold on there! What if one of them sees you?”
“That’s the idea, Peter,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“We’re not ready yet!” I directed her attention to Melissa and Daraxandriel, still huddled together at the computer muttering between themselves. “How about we let Olivia look for imps instead?”
“Me?” Olivia asked incredulously.
“As a ghost,” I explained. “They won’t be able to see you so you won’t alert Lilith.”
“But they can sense me,” she protested. “They keep hissing at me.”
“Just don’t get too close.” She grimaced doubtfully. “All you have to do is look around the property and see if there are any hanging around. Okay?”
“Okay,” she agreed reluctantly. She squeezed her eyes shut, concentrating, and a moment later she popped into intangibility. Her shift dropped to the floor and she gathered it up with a disgruntled expression, draping it over her arm as she headed for the door. She stopped and looked back when I cleared my throat delicately, pointing at the white pair of panties lying crumpled on the carpet. She gasped and snatched them up, scurrying out of the room with her shoulders hunched in embarrassment.
“Is everything okay over there?” Melissa asked, eyeing me over her shoulder with a suspicious glint.
“Everything’s fine,” I assured her. “Just a, ah, minor wardrobe mishap.” She looked unconvinced but she turned back to the monitors without further comment. “As for you,” I told Susie, “you need to stay out of the way the next time we fight a demon.”
“Why?”
“Because fugu isn’t going to do anything except piss him off!”
“Fugu’s a poisonous fish, Peter. Fuge makes things run away. Or explode,” she added as an afterthought.
“It doesn’t matter. I don’t want you getting hurt. How am I supposed to explain to Mom and Dad that you got eaten or torn to shreds or incinerated or whatever?”
“You wouldn’t have to,” she shrugged.
“Why not?”
“Because you’ll probably be dead too.”
“I have the Philosopher’s Stone,” I pointed out, patting my chest.
“And I don’t. The demons aren’t after me.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to let you get hurt.”
“You don’t have a choice. You’re going to need all of us to beat Lilith. I’m the one who blew Blarglargle into the dumpster, remember?” She smirked to herself. “That was so cool.”
“Susie –”
“The waif has the right of it, Peter Simon Collins,” Daraxandriel interjected. “The powers of thy Coronox are potent but limited. All must join in the coming battle, lest all be lost.”
“But you’re not strong enough to beat a demon lord!”
“Thy Stone augments those close to thee, an thou wills it so. Together, we are more than a match for any demon. Up to level eight, prayhap,” she amended thoughtfully, tapping the side of her hand against her forehead like she was saluting me.
“Told you,” Susie said, in a tone that was usually accompanied by the sight of her tongue.
I wasn’t ready to surrender to their logic but my phone chose that moment to ring. I yanked it out of my pocket, glared at the unknown number, and jabbed the reject button. I had no patience for spam calls right now.
“I hear what you’re saying, guys –” I said.
“I hear a but coming,” Susie observed dryly.
“But we don’t really know what we’re doing. We got lucky with Bella-whatever and that hellhound. We’re not going to be so lucky next time.” My phone gave a two-note alert indicating I had voicemail. I pulled it out again and tapped the notification to listen to the message before I deleted it, just in case. “We just need to stay out of sight until Mrs. Kendricks and –” My voice faded out as I lowered my phone and stared disbelievingly at it.
“Peter?” Melissa asked uneasily. “What’s wrong?”
I silently turned on speaker mode and played the message again. It was only a few seconds long but it still sent a chill down my spine.
“Greetings, Peter Simon Collins,” Lilixandriel said in the recording. She sounded exactly like Daraxandriel except for the current of amused malice running underneath her words. “’Twould be to thy great advantage to return my call forthwith. I have a proposition for thee.”
“Oh my God,” Melissa whispered, rising to her feet. “How does she know your number?”
“She lived with us,” Susie reminded her. “Call her back,” she urged me. “Maybe she wants to surrender.”
“Do not heed her,” Daraxandriel warned me ominously. “Lilixandriel shall twist thy thoughts around her finger. The only advantage she will offer is to herself.”
“We have to find out what she’s up to,” I said. I didn’t for a moment believe Lilixandriel was about to give up but maybe we could get some clues about her plans. It took a deliberate effort to tap the call button, though. Everyone gathered around and listened anxiously to the ringing. She picked up on the third ring.
“Peter Simon Collins,” she greeted me unctuously. “To what do I owe this honor?”
“What do you want, Lilith?” I demanded.
“Such is why the modern world is so fraught with rancor,” she sighed dramatically. “In times past, even sworn enemies could converse in a civilized manner to resolve their differences, and I am not thine enemy.”
“I’m pretty sure you are.”
She tsked at me. “I perceive thy thoughts are set steadfast against me,
so let us proceed to my purpose. I wish thee to surrender the soulstone to me, Peter Simon Collins.”
“I’m sure you do,” I said flatly, “but why should I?”
“To preserve the lives of those about you.”
Another shiver swept through me as I glanced at the others listening in. “What do you mean?”
“Thou didst dispatch my hellhound most expeditiously,” she said, “though I cannot but wonder who did the actual deed, given thine own artless nature. Nonetheless, the next champion I send after thee will not be so easily bested. There will be casualties.”
“We’re not afraid of you.” That would have sounded a lot better if my voice didn’t choose that exact moment to wobble.
“Then thou art more foolish than I thought possible. Do not cast aside the lives of those you care for so callously. Surrender the Stone and I shall trouble thee and thine no more.”
“Except you need to kill me to be able to use it,” I said tersely. “What’s my incentive?”
“Thine own demise is inevitable,” Lilixandriel agreed, sounding almost regretful, “yet through thy sacrifice, none else needs must suffer thy fate. These are the weights upon thy balance, Peter Simon Collins: thy death and the deaths of all those dear to thee, or thy death alone. Surely thy choice is clear.”
“Don’t do it, Peter!” Melissa whispered, grabbing my arm in a painful grip.
“Is that Melissa at thy side?” she asked with a chuckle. “Hast thou yet taken thy pleasure of her? If no, thou shouldst proceed posthaste, for thy remaining hours are few in number.” Melissa’s ears flared bright pink and neither of us could meet the other’s eyes. “Dare I presume my protégée accompanies thee as well? And my dear clutch-mate, of course.”
“Susie’s not your protégée!” I insisted. “She’s nothing like you!”
Lilixandriel laughed. “She is only human,” she agreed, “yet our thoughts are more akin than thou knowst. I have so much more to teach thee, Susie,” she offered smoothly. “Seek me out, an thou dost survive the coming fray.”
“Don’t you dare!” I told Susie, aghast.
“But if you’re dead –” she said thoughtfully.
“No deal, Lilith!” I said sharply. “We’re all in this together!”
“The die is cast, then,” Lilixandriel replied calmly. “Look for my next champion soon, Peter Simon Collins. Yet when the moment comes that thy heart quails at the toll, call upon this number and we shall speak again of the terms of thy surrender.”
The call disconnected and I just stared at my phone with my heart in my stomach. There was no way I was just going to turn myself over to her and let her kill me for the Stone, except she was right. The only way to save everyone I cared for was to die.
10
Survival of the fittest. You immediately thought of Charles Darwin, the father of modern evolutionary science, didn’t you? Well, you’re wrong. That particular phrase was actually coined by a contemporary of Darwin’s, a philosopher named Herbert Spencer, although Darwin adopted it later.
Regardless, it’s important to remember that Darwin’s principles on evolution don’t mean that the next generation of a particular species is somehow better than the previous one, only that its members have characteristics that the previous generation found useful for continued reproduction. In other words, if some aspect of a particular living thing gets it laid more often, there will be more offspring with that same aspect as a result.
This then brings up the question of why human beings exhibit certain characteristics that have no discernable value in reproduction. Take embarrassment, for example. Why do people get embarrassed? It doesn’t improve their chances for advancement in today’s society; quite the opposite, in fact. Boys aren’t vying for the attention of that shrinking violet hiding in the corner. A salesman who’s afraid to speak up at the bargaining table isn’t going to close the deal. A student who doesn’t dare ask the teacher to explain a difficult concept is going to do poorly on the final exam.
You’d think that natural selection would have naturally unselected people who are easily embarrassed ages ago, and yet blushing abounds to this day. It’s like the appendix of emotional responses: it serves no obvious purpose but it occasionally causes a lot of problems.
Mr. Andrews’ bedroom was the size of a small apartment all by itself, filled with heavy oaken furnishings and decorated with oil paintings of sailing ships. I suspected the freshly-crowned Mrs. Andrews was going to want a hefty remodeling allowance once the two of them returned from Tahoe.
I sat propped up in the massive four-poster bed, studying the spell bars hovering in the darkness in front of me. Melissa and Daraxandriel had swapped out about a quarter of my normal set and rearranged everything else, making it hard to remember what was where. I usually placed my most powerful spells on the left of each row where they were easier to reach on the keyboard, but these were all scrambled up.
“Flame Lance, Immobilize, Mind Shock, Crush, Frost Lance, Hinder, Blood Darts, Earth Bind, Lightning Strike, Bewilder, Pitchfire, Dark Nova,” I murmured as I ran my finger along the row. These were set up as casting chains, sequences of spells that could be set off one after the other without having to worry about cooldown timers, as long as I had enough magical energy to power them. Anything that survived this barrage was either insanely strong or incredibly lucky.
I closed my hand with a sigh, letting the spells fade from sight. The only light in the room came from the pale slice of moonlight leaking through a gap in the curtains and the alarm clock telling me it was just past midnight. I wasn’t sleepy at all, although I couldn’t be sure if that was the Philosopher’s Stone keeping me charged up or the memory of Lilixandriel’s wicked laughter echoing around my skull.
I am so screwed, I told myself gloomily. I wondered if the courts would accept a last will and testament typed out on a cellphone.
A tentative tap on the door broke the silence blanketing the house, followed a moment later by the shush of the door sweeping across the thick carpet as it eased open. “Peter?” Melissa whispered. “Are you awake?”
Uh-oh. I toyed with the idea of pretending to be asleep but she’d figure that out as soon as her eyes adjusted to the dark. “I’m awake,” I told her softly. “Is something wrong?” I was reasonably certain there’d be a lot more screaming going on if another demon lord had found us.
“No.” She quietly closed the door and carefully made her way around to my side of the bed. Whatever she was wearing threatened to slip off her shoulder and only reached down to mid-thigh, exposing a fair bit of pale skin that almost glowed in the darkness, as if she was another ghost. “I just wanted to talk.”
“What about?” I shifted over to make room as she sat beside me on the edge of the bed.
“About what Lilith said. About –” she cleared her throat, “– about us.”
“Us? As in all of us?” I sensed more than saw her shake her head. “As in you and me?” She nodded. Now it was my turn to clear my throat. “What about us?”
She drew in a breath to say something, hesitated, and then tried again. “I think I know why you don’t want to have sex with me.”
Oh God. “It’s not that I don’t want to –” I hedged.
“It’s like when we were talking to Justin,” she forged on heedlessly. “You’re an alpha male and you want everything to be on your terms but you’re too much of a gentleman to tell me to slow down.”
No one had ever accused me of being an alpha anything before. “I don’t think that’s quite –”
“So when I try to push you into it, you just push back and we get nowhere.”
“Okay, that’s kind of true –”
“So I have a proposal for you.”
“You mean a suggestion, right?” I asked, just to make sure. “Not a marriage proposal?”
“No, don’t be silly.” She slapped my leg to express her annoyance, although the comforter absorbed most of the impact. “There’s no rush for that. No, I t
hink we just need to start over again and not hurry into anything until we’re both ready.”
“Okay,” I said carefully. This sounded exactly like what I wanted, so there had to be a catch.
“So we’re agreed then?” She sounded a little too eager about it. “We’ll start at first base and go from there.”
“First base? You mean kissing?” That wasn’t exactly the starting point I had in mind.
“Exactly.” She twisted around until she was kneeling on the bed right beside me. “Ready?”
“You mean right now? Here?”
“Of course.” She pulled me forward by my shoulders and my hands automatically went around her waist to keep us from toppling over. Her nightie slid under my fingers like silk. “Kiss me, Peter.” Her head tilted to present the proper angle of approach for me. After a second, she made little fishy noises with her lips. “I’m waiting.”
Kiss her! Little Peter insisted as he registered his approval of current events. First base doesn’t mean anything. It’ll make her happy and she’ll stop bothering you for a while. He had a good point, no pun intended, so I carefully leaned forward until our lips made contact.
Melissa’s hair no longer smelled like Mom’s, thankfully. Instead, a faint floral perfume wafted around us, mixing with the cherry scent of her lip gloss. We stayed that way for what seemed like forever, until her mouth curved into a smile and she pulled away a fraction of an inch.
“There,” she said with satisfaction. “Wasn’t that much better?”
“Yes, actually.” This may have been the first stress-free kiss I’d ever had with her. It was really nice.
“I’m glad. Okay, once more.”
“More?”
“Just for practice,” she assured me. This time she leaned into me and her lips parted to let the tip of her tongue tease mine, sending a shiver through my entire body. I was grateful for the thick covers as Little Peter sat up and took notice. She disconnected and then pressed her lips to my forehead. “Thank you, Peter.”
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