I drew a simple circle on the floor and stepped in. I hadn’t even bothered with this formality last time, and he’d come. This time was no different. I let his name fall from my mind, through the layers of magick around me, the crackling ambient energy that made me a were, the higher-than-usual magick in the room because of Sunny’s ghostly presence, and the ripples in the atmosphere that I could feel sometimes, when my Path ability reached out from the beastly part of my mind.
Asmodeus.
A drop in temperature, a breath of ice on my face, told me that he’d come, just like a faithful dog.
“You called, Insoli?”
I opened my eyes and looked at his face, that human face with the serpent eyes descending to a lion’s body. The gold light that ringed Asmodeus gave him an angelic appearance, something that couldn’t be further from the truth. There were benevolent daemons, and mischievous daemons, and evil daemons. I was pretty sure Asmodeus was the third.
“You marked me,” I said.
His eyes danced with firelight. “Who has told you this?”
“Cerberus,” I said, jutting out my chin.
“Yes, the dog who begs for scraps and feeds on carnality. I am sure he is a fine source of information, Insoli.”
I didn’t know that daemons grasped the concept of sarcasm, but Asmodeus’s lips curled upward in definite amusement.
“It doesn’t matter who the tip comes from,” I said. “It matters that I think it’s true.” Good advice for daemons as well as confidential informants.
Asmodeus let out a sigh and the curtains in the room rippled. I could almost see through him, like looking through a glass filled with amber liquid. Everything around him twisted and distorted as his presence worried the ambient magick in the room.
“I aided you, Insoli, and this insolence is how you repay me? I thought you wished never to speak with me again.”
“You helped me,” I said. “You saved my life. And I also recall that you said I owed you something for that, when you agreed to it.”
Asmodeus tilted his head. “So I did.” He wasn’t smiling anymore.
“Then why don’t you remember that it was a straight-up deal between us, helping me protect myself from Seamus O’Halloran, before you get all high-and-mighty?” O’Halloran, the witch who had attempted to break down the barriers between blood magick and casting, was in the ground and I was alive.
But that didn’t mean I owned the daemon a damn thing.
“Very well,” Asmodeus said. “What is it you wish of me?”
“Cerberus said you marked me,” I said. “What does that mean? What did you do to me when you saved me from O’Halloran?”
“Those afflicted with certain maladies never quit of them,” he said. “They carry the strain in their blood until their dying day. You can see it in them, the poison, the corruption. Those who touch daemons do the same. You made your bargain, Insoli, and you did not ask me for the particulars. This is one.”
“You son of a bitch,” I whispered, feeling involuntary tears start on my cheeks. “You’re in me now? You’re part of me?”
“Indeed,” he whispered, drifting closer as if the wind pushed him. I held up my hand, shaking and hating myself for the display of weakness.
“You stay the fuck away from me.”
“Insoli.” For the first time, the insult sounded like an endearment rather than his condescension toward me, the small and frail living thing. “Those who are touched by my kind are not corrupted, not anywhere except in the minds of those who are small and shortsighted. You and I have unfinished business. This is my reminder. That is all.”
“What do you want from me?” I whispered. “Let me pay you back and get rid of you. I don’t want to see any more daemons. I just want my world to be normal, even for five seconds.”
“What I will take from you is not ripe, not ready. Not yet. I can give you this wisdom, however: cease your dealings with the whores of Thelema. They bring nothing but sorrow.”
I glared at him. “No. You may hold our bargain over me, but you do not tell me how to live my life.”
His face hardened. “Have a care, Insoli, about how you speak to me. I am still the debt holder in this pairing.”
“I don’t want your mark,” I said again. “I’ll do what I have to in order to get rid of it.”
Asmodeus let out a chuckle, which managed to be both obscene and terrifying. “I know that you will. And in time, you and I will speak again.” He rolled his shoulders, his lion tail switching back and forth. “Now I grow weary of this place. Good night, Insoli.”
In a burst of char and a pop of air, Asmodeus was gone.
“Thanks a bunch,” I said to the empty room. “That was a big fucking help.”
Twenty-Two
I found a sweat suit in Sunny’s closet and changed into it. It was too short for me at the wrists and ankles, but it beat the hooker getup by a mile. Lucas stood up when I came downstairs, looking me over appreciatively.
“Stop that,” I said, when his gaze lingered too long.
“Sorry,” he said. “Can’t help it. You look like you again. It’s sort of a relief.”
“You’re a strange one,” I said. Lucas gave me a crooked smile.
“Same to you. Maybe we’re more right for each other than you think.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You’re really hitting on me. Here, now. In my grandmother’s house.”
Rhoda snorted softly on the sofa. I ignored her and looked Lucas in the eye. He shrugged.
“Seizing the moment.” He stepped closer and leaned in, and I backed up, almost mowing Sunny over.
“Luna … are those my clothes?”
“Definitely,” I said. “I don’t own things that are baby-blue velour.”
She glared at me, but I pointed at the codex, tucked under her arm. “What did you find?”
“Not much,” she said. “This book is maybe a hundred and twenty years old at the most, amateurish, without any sort of indexing system, and, aside from the names, pretty much utterly worthless.” She shoved it back at me. “It also smells funny.”
I looked at the dog-eared pages, the smeared ink, and the tattered clothbound cover. “You didn’t find anything?” It was something of a letdown … I was used to imminent disaster when I got my hands on magickal artifacts.
“Only a few interesting workings, nothing that’s going to blow up zee vurld,” Sunny said. “Here.” She took the book back gingerly and settled on the sofa next to Rhoda. I took the far cushion, and my grandmother and I traded the requisite dirty looks before Lucas perched on the arm of the sofa and looked over my shoulder.
“Do you have to be so close?” I muttered.
“Yes,” he said. “Because you get a cute little blush when you’re uncomfortable.”
“You’re an ass,” I said, loudly.
Sunny thwapped me on the shoulder. “Could the two of you either make out or grow up? It’s really no fun for the rest of us.”
“Sunflower!” my grandmother snapped.
Sunny shrugged. “What? It’s true.”
“Could you please just tell us what you found?” I said. “Please?” Before Lucas decided that my entire family belonged in a zoo.
Crap. It was bad that I cared what he thought. I only cared with people I liked. And Lucas was so wrong for me it wasn’t even worth mentioning.
“Well, I did find reference to the things that attacked you,” said Sunny. “The selkies, as well as the basilisks and a bunch of other daemon-born monsters. Harpies, trollkin, wyrms. All things that humanity hasn’t seen in, well, centuries. Ever since casting overtook Thelema and the hedge disciplines. Made it safer.”
“Harpies,” I said, tapping the drawing. A bare-breasted woman, winged and with the talons of a bird. “Milton Manners was hacked up with something that looks a lot like those claws.”
“Well, I hate to tell you this, but I doubt these are what killed him,” said Sunny. “To allow these creatures from the daemon re
alm into ours is almost impossible …”
“But not completely,” Rhoda spoke up. Everyone stared at her. She stood up with difficulty, and stalked over to the window. “Sunflower, what was the first thing I taught you when you came to me as an apprentice?”
Sunny stared at her hands, stricken. “Never bring food into the working circle?”
“That nothing is impossible in magick, Sunflower. That’s what I taught you.” She folded her arms. “Somewhere in that book you’ll find a working designed to open a devil’s doorway.”
“And that would be?” I said, as heat crept up Sunny’s face. I knew all too well the bite my grandmother’s words could have. They were usually directed at me, while Sunny was immune. There had been a time I resented Sunny for that, but it wasn’t now.
“Sunflower, can you at least explain the devil’s doorway?”
She flinched, and I got to my feet, grabbing the codex. “No. You do it, since apparently you’re today’s fount of wisdom. Explain it all to us, Grandma. Thrill us with your superior knowledge and make us feel three feet tall, just like you always do.”
Her thin lips curled. “Well. Quite the outburst, Luna. Have you been practicing in front of the mirror, telling me what a horrible person I am?”
“You,” I said, “are a shriveled, bitter old woman who can’t accept that I made something good out of my life, and even when you have Sunny, who is ten times the person I will ever be, you can’t be happy because I am. But you know what, right now? I don’t give a shit. Tell me what you know, Grandma, and do it now, because as of this moment I no longer have time for your bullshit.”
We stood, staring at each other, for a long time. Neither of us would turn away; that much I knew. I get my intractability from my grandmother, and she was as cold as they came.
Sunny made a small noise on the sofa. It may have been, “Oh, Hex me.”
Lucas just watched us, his face composed into serious lines. I knew him well enough to know that he wouldn’t get in between Rhoda and me like Dmitri would have. Lucas believed in fighting your own battles.
“Fine,” said my grandmother tightly. “You’ve made your opinion clear.”
“Better late than never,” I said, under my breath.
“A devil’s doorway is a gap between the daemon realm and this one that is open for a short time through an enormous effort of will. It could allow something free, such as these harpies and the basilisks which Sunflower told me about.” She passed her hand over her forehead. Her practical iron-gray hair ruffled like we were standing in a wind. “The Thelemites must have released these creatures. Who understands a mad mind?” She glared at me, and I got the feeling we were no longer speaking about the Thelemites.
“See, was that so hard?” I said.
“I don’t see what good it will do you,” said my grandmother. “You have a worthless codex, a fathomless series of events, and nothing to connect them. You are no better than when you started.” She left me standing there and went into the kitchen.
“Always has to get the last word,” Sunny said.
“I’m done,” I said, spreading my hands. “I’m done with the case and I’m done with my career. I can’t close this, and that’s all the excuse the commission needs to shut us down.”
“Stop it,” said Sunny. “You have the codex and you have the heartstone. You have all the aces the Thelemites did.”
And no Hexed clue how to use them to my advantage. I was in a library full of all the world’s knowledge, and I couldn’t read a damn word. The only person who might be able to shed some light was the SCS rat, and to entrap them … “The heartstone,” I said, sitting up.
Sunny looked at me in alarm. “What about it?”
“We have it,” I said. “And I bet the Thelemites want it back.”
“I am totally lost,” Sunny said.
I grabbed my purse, digging out my BlackBerry. I called Bryson at home and gave him a simple, “Get over here,” and Sunny’s address. Then I called Fagin.
“Just about to walk out of the office for the day,” he said, crisp and dry as a glacier. “What can I help you with?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, deciding to take the direct route. Maybe if I said the two words I hated more than any others in my native tongue, that would be sufficient karmic payback.
“You are?”
“You don’t have to sound so surprised.” I turned my back on Sunny and Lucas. “Look, I need your help with something.”
Fagin sounded suspicious. “What? Is it a felony?”
“Not unless you want it to be. Meet me at my cousin’s place, okay?”
I gave him the address and Fagin sighed. “I’m not coming unless you tell me what this is about.”
“I figured out how we can catch the informant in the SCS,” I told him, and hung up.
Lucas stood. “If they’re coming, I better be going. I’ll see you around, Luna.”
Before I could stop him, he kissed me on the cheek and then in a swirl of mist, he was gone.
Bryson showed up in under fifteen minutes, disheveled and still in his workshirt stained with chili from his lunch. “Don’t judge me,” he said. “I can’t keep lying to everyone about where you are and not stress-eat.”
“It’s fine, David,” I said absently, watching Fagin’s Mustang nose into the driveway.
“Oh, great,” Bryson said. “It’s Agent Douche Bag.”
“Mature,” I said, giving him a thumbs-up. “Be nice, David. He’s here to help us.”
Fagin knocked on the door and I let Sunny invite him in. He did all of the right things, smiling and shaking hands, but his eyes locked onto me and they were cold, angry.
“Let’s sit down,” I said. I put the codex on the coffee table, in front of all of us. Bryson wrinkled his nose. “That thing smells like a hobo’s armpit.”
“I know how to get to the informant,” I said. I told them about the Center, the Thelemite women, Cerberus, all of it. By the end, Bryson looked as if he’d just heard a scary story and Fagin looked distinctly unimpressed. “Why haven’t the Thelemites just stormed your evidence locker and taken the heartstone back?”
Bryson snorted. “Because they’d have to march through a building full of cops and show Luna and the rest of us who they really are? No one risks that unless they’re bat-shit insane, and these people are smart, even if they are a little wacked in the head.”
“How do you plan to find out how the information is being passed?” Fagin asked. “Either everyone who knows is beyond sanity or we can’t get to them.”
I tapped my finger against my chin, and gave Bryson a thin, wicked smile. “Talon spent an awful lot of time with Grace Hartley. She’s still in custody. What say we go have a chat?”
Walking out, I spotted Lucas standing under a tree at the edge of the yard. He raised a hand to me, and then faded back into the shadows.
I turned away, feeling the familiar clench of stress in my gut. How much longer could I keep this up? Lucas was a wanted fugitive—if Bryson and Will found out I’d been with him, my job would be the least of my worries, once I got out of jail for harboring a felon.
“Everything okay?” Fagin put his hand on my shoulder.
I gave him a wide, guilty smile. “Peachy. You?”
“Better,” he said. “For some reason, fighting with you didn’t agree with me, at all.”
“Me, either,” I blurted, and then flushed.
“That’s strange,” said Fagin. “Because usually combative conversations are my version of foreplay.”
I was thankful to all the gods with names that it was dark in my grandmother’s driveway. “You need to learn some new foreplay,” I told Fagin.
He reached out and squeezed my hand. “I’ve got you to teach me, haven’t I?”
“Yeah. Don’t bank on it, Agent.”
Bryson rolled his eyes at me when I slipped into the backseat of the Mustang.
“What?” I hissed at him.
“You,” he whi
spered back. “All moony-eyed over Agent Douche—”
I clapped my hand across Bryson’s mouth. “Knock it off, okay?”
Fagin slid in and started the car. “You two having a private conversation? Should I turn on my iPod?”
“It’s over now,” I said, glaring at Bryson. He glared back and pantomimed a ridiculous kissy face that made him look like a smallmouth bass.
The jail was locked down for the night, and the guard regarded the three of us with an expression that clearly said he wasn’t getting paid enough for this shit. Bryson slipped me my badge and ID. “You left this in your room,” he explained. “Figured you might need it.”
“Going through my underwear again?” I asked him.
“Would, if it didn’t feel like going through a bin at the Salvation Army,” he shot back without missing a beat.
I gave him a crooked grin. “Good one.” I wondered when I’d started to look at Bryson as a friend rather than one of my detectives with slightly obnoxious personal habits.
Probably when I realized he was the only person I could trust in my squad. He might be abrasive, twenty years behind the times, and stare at my ass whenever he thought he could get away with it, but you knew where you stood with Bryson, and that was something I wasn’t getting a lot of lately.
“Go on down,” said the guard, when we showed our various IDs. He yelled, “Open on Seven,” even though there was no one around.
Talon was lying on the bed, her arms behind her head, looking as polished as she had the first time I’d seen her. How dare she look that good after she’d been in jail for two days? Her long burgundy hair was still styled, for Hex’s sake. It was patently unfair.
The cell door rolled closed behind me, Will in the cell with me, and Bryson staying outside, hand on the butt of his gun. He didn’t like weres, in the same way that I didn’t like witches: They made us nervous, in some primal and instinctual way that didn’t quite jibe with our civilized forebrain.
“Nice threads,” Talon said, sitting up and crossing her arms so that her chest pushed up under her gray DOC jumpsuit. Gray for women, orange for men. If Talon was incarcerated and transferred to a real prison, she’d get pale green.
Witch Craft Page 20