Smoke, Mirrors and Demons (The Carnival Society Book 1)

by Kat Cotton

  I tried to signal to him with my eyes to let him know I had a plan. I wasn’t sure if he got me. He had all that secret eye language stuff going on with Duke and Lilly but I’d only just started working out how that worked.

  Finally, I got the damn bag open, just as the killer demon turned back to me. Nuno had provided the perfect distraction but it was time for me to act.

  I pretended to bolt, stumbling forward and tossing that powder at the demon boss. A puff of white dust floated through the air, seeming almost suspended in time.

  The demon boss reeled and coughed as the powder hit him.

  That was a good sign. Surely it was.

  I bit the inside of my mouth, waiting. I should be running. I had to get out of here. But I needed to see if that powder worked.

  The demon laughed, a dry and evil sounding chortle.

  That woman had tricked me. The powder had no effect on him.

  He lunged at me. I flinched, trying to get away. I couldn’t rely on that amulet again and I couldn’t rely on the powder. I could only rely on good, old-fashioned running. But his movements were slow and lurching. Nothing like his super speed of before. He slumped to the ground with a groan.

  It worked. It really worked.

  I stomped over to him, nudging him with my foot. He gave a feeble swipe. Nothing fiercer.

  With him powerless, I could drag him into the parking lot where my powers would work. This demon would be deader than a dodo in no time.

  Five to ten minutes the woman had said. I’d count on five. Still plenty of time to take him out.

  But, Nuno. The flunkies had him up against the bar, nicking cuts into his skin with their claws. Nuno’s eyes widened in pain. He didn’t scream this time. He seemed to be holding it in.

  One of the flunkies chuckled with glee as he slashed at Nuno again and again.

  Nuno or the demon. I had to make a choice. I could drag this bastard out of here and finish him off but those other bastards would kill Nuno while I did it. They had nothing to lose. They’d dragged him here to bait me.

  But, if I killed the boss demon now, he’d be dead and gone. The world would be safe.

  Nuno made a weird gurgling noise. He’d been the one to heal me. I couldn’t let him die.

  I had to make them stop. That noise cut to my soul. Nuno was in pain, no matter how much he tried to hide it.

  I rushed at them, the two demons so distracted with torturing Nuno didn’t even notice.

  I grabbed one around the neck and wrestled him to the floor. Without my power and without that magic powder, I had to use brute force on him. I straddled him and slammed my fist into his face but it seemed to do nothing, sinking into his flesh rather than pounding him.

  Shit, I needed to get us out of here.

  I glanced around to see Nuno struggling with the other demon, trying to free himself of its grip. I had to trust him because I had my hands full. I kept punching and fighting well aware that I had limited time. And limited strength. The demon boss crawled across the floor to get to us and that powder would wear off very shortly. I couldn’t keep punching. I was just tiring myself out and accomplishing nothing.

  “Get outside,” I yelled to Nuno.

  Nuno didn’t answer. I couldn’t see him but the thumps and thuds of his fight could be heard over the Bon Jovi. Next thing I knew, Nuno appeared beside me, helping me nail this demon to the ground.

  The weakened boss demon was almost on us. We had to get out.

  Nuno held something in his hand. I couldn’t see exactly what it was, hidden in his palm but he pressed it to the demon’s chest. With a strange sizzle, the demon yelped and then was gone.

  What had Nuno done? His face held no clue and I had no time to ask.

  We needed to get out of here. Now.

  I jumped up and grabbed Nuno’s hand. We ran from the bar, jumping into my car. It was only when we’d put a few miles between us and the bar that I stopped to think that Nuno might’ve had a car of his own. We could get that later.

  “The rehearsal space?” I asked Nuno, not sure where to take him.

  He nodded and then the two of us drove in silence.

  I’d planned on dropping him off and heading home. Not that I was sure of being safe in my home. I wasn’t safe anywhere and wouldn’t be until that demon was dead. He knew where to find me. He could lay in wait.

  No matter. I needed to sleep.

  When I pulled up outside the warehouse, though, I realized it wasn’t going to be so easy. Duke and Lilly waited outside and Duke walked over to my window.

  “We need to talk,” he said.

  Chapter 29

  THE FOUR OF US WENT into the warehouse. Lilly and I sat on the sofa while Nuno settled on the floor. Nuno had taken his top off and Lilly applied some cream to his cuts. Apparently Nuno couldn’t heal himself.

  Duke paced the floor.

  “What happened tonight?” he asked.

  With his hands folded behind his back and the stern expression on his face, he seemed like a headmaster about to lecture a misbehaving student. How did he even know anything had happened? Did he have psychic powers?

  Nope. Nuno had been on his phone in the car. He must’ve texted Duke. I flashed a look at Nuno. He could’ve kept quiet about this.

  “I went to a bar and got into some trouble,” I said, not wanting to go into details.

  Nuno waved his arms about, an obvious signal that I was downplaying things. I sighed.

  “There were some demons...” I added.

  No point avoiding it. I figured by now that the troupe knew that much.

  “And?” Duke asked.

  “One of them wants to drain my blood to open the gates of hell.” Even saying that out loud sounded ridiculous. I thought the others would laugh. Well, except for Nuno because he’d been there and heard it all.

  Duke and Lilly exchanged looks.

  “I knew she was the one,” Lilly said. “I told you so.”

  “And I told you having her in the show would only invite trouble.”

  He wasn’t wrong. I had invited trouble. Although, the trouble had started before I even arrived.

  “We need to work out how to keep Jayne safe for the performance,” Duke said.

  “Nope. We need her out of the show altogether,” Lilly said. “We can’t risk it. It’s not safe for us, it’s not safe for her and if this demon succeeds, it’s not safe for the entire world.”

  I closed my eyes. I could understand her thinking that was way more trouble than it’d be worth but that seemed extreme.

  “In fact,” Lilly continued, “We should cancel the show. Call Jason first thing in the morning and tell him that.”

  Duke paced while Lilly folded her arms and glared at him.

  Could they do that? Could they just cancel? Duke had been the one who kept insisting this show decided the future of the troupe.

  “You can’t cancel the show,” I said. “You could rearrange things without me.”

  Duke stopped pacing. He stood in front of me.

  “We’ll do the show and we’ll do it with you. We just need to protect you.”

  “Duke!” Lilly’s glare intensified.

  I thought of something. “What did Nuno use on those demons tonight? He had something in his hand.”

  Lilly and Nuno did that silent conversation thing.

  “It’s better you don’t know,” Duke said. “It doesn’t work that easily on all demons. Anyway, we can only banish these guys. You can kill them.”

  He knew that? He’d worked it out from when I’d fought the demon, I guess, but I wasn’t sure how you could tell the difference.

  I knew I wouldn’t get an answer out of Duke if he didn’t want to tell me but I’d find out. Maybe not tonight but I’d get it out of them.

  “It’s not so simple,” Lilly said. “She needs to go into hiding. If this demon gets hold of her, all hell will literally break loose. The best way to stop that is for him to never find her.”

  Lil
ly had a point even if she talked about me like I wasn’t there.

  “He needs my blood. Surely there are a zillion options for him though. My blood isn’t so rare.”

  The others stared at me.

  “It is rare?” I asked.

  “So rare,” Lilly said. She rubbed my arm. “There are maybe half a dozen people who share it. Less now since Gretchen and that other girl are dead.”

  Everyone seemed to think so. I’d been walking around my whole life with this blood in my body without even knowing. I’d never wanted to be anything special. Plain Jayne, that’s who I wanted to be.

  “We need to do this,” Duke said. “You know we do. The quota...”

  I hated that they seemed to know so much about me but then talked in riddles. I was the investigator here. I should be the one with all the information.

  “We decided to push ahead with Gretchen even though we knew he was after her,” Lilly said. “Look how that ended.”

  I rested my head against the back of the sofa. Sure, my life, and the world, was in danger but I just wanted to sleep. It’d been a long, long day.

  “We need to draw him out of hiding,” I said. It’s the only chance to kill him. “If we don’t kill him he’ll just keep trying.”

  Duke folded his hands behind his back again. “That’s right.”

  “Yes. If he’s not after me then he’s going to go for someone else. There are others even if it’s rare. This guy needs to be completely annihilated.”

  Lilly shook her head. “The risks are so great. Not just to you. Do you understand the “opening the gates of hell” part of this? That’s nothing to be unconcerned about. You can’t play hero and give him that chance.”

  She had a point. A very good point. I closed my eyes, trying to think this over. Maybe I was doing the stupidest thing possible but I couldn’t let this demon keep trying, and the inkling of an idea was forming in my head.

  “Do you think you can defeat him?” Duke asked. “You did with the other demon.”

  I shrugged. “I’m not totally sure. This demon is much stronger and my powers are weak at the moment. It’s going to take a lot more to defeat him. He was able to block my power at the bar tonight but I’m not sure if he can do that in a space he doesn’t control.”

  The old woman had said I couldn’t defeat him and Buzz told me I couldn’t have my power at full strength until I had done all that emotional purging. I couldn’t go through that now. Being weaker before I got stronger made sense but I didn’t have time for it. But maybe the combination of my power and the magic powder the old woman gave me would be enough. I could’ve finished him at the bar. I knew it.

  “You aren’t seriously thinking of letting her do it?” Lilly asked. “That would be a suicide mission. Not to mention that you’d be putting the entire audience at risk. The whole world. We can’t protect them all.”

  That was the thing. The audience. There’d be innocent people watching. A whole load of them.

  “If he appears, I can bait him, get him outside the tent. He went for Gretchen in the change room not in public. He’ll probably try the same thing.”

  “We can’t count on that,” Lilly said. “We can’t count on any of it. And he’s not going to kill you like he did Gretchen. That would be just plain stupid. He’ll have a whole new way of killing you.”

  “He may not even attack at the performance,” I said. “We’re just assuming that.”

  Duke glared at me. “It’s a pretty safe assumption. He knows where you’ll be. He knows that you’ll be vulnerable. It’ll draw him out.”

  “I vote for hiding,” Lilly said.

  “Is there anywhere I can hide where I’ll be safe?” I asked. “It’s not like this demon is going to give up that easily. I’m pretty sure that even if I go into hiding, if I change my name and dye my hair, he’ll still be able to track me down. He probably has special demon tracking powers so even if I went to some remote village in the Himalayas he’d find me. And I really don’t want to go to any remote village. I want to stay here.”

  “There are ways of cloaking yourself,” Lilly said. “It’d take him a long time to find you.”

  “Yeah well he’s a demon and immortal. A long time is nothing to him and I’d have to be on constant alert. All the time waiting for the moment he did find me. That’s no kind of life. Plus, I’d probably have to slaughter my own goats for food and it’d be really cold and I’d hate it.”

  My voice started to get a hysterical edge as it does when the realization hits that you’re going to be the starring attraction in a demon ritual. But hiding did no good. I’d spent most of my life hiding and I was damn sick of it. I needed to fight back. Otherwise, I’d be running and hiding forever.

  Chapter 30

  NUNO CAME BACK FROM the kitchen with cups of tea. I hadn’t even seen him get up but he seemed to know that was exactly what I needed. I wrapped my hands around the warm cup and it grounded me. Then I took a sip. Way too sweet for my normal tastes but that was what I needed right now. Nuno seemed to have a sixth sense for that kind of thing. Pity he didn’t have a sixth sense for not falling into demon traps.

  He did that weird eye thing with Duke. Duke nodded and scrunched his face up in concentration.

  “How did he get your blood?” Duke asked.

  “Huh? He doesn’t have my blood. Isn’t that the whole issue here?”

  “He needed to sample it. To know that you were the one. Has anyone done anything strange lately?”

  I screwed up my face. Of course I knew how he got it. It all made sense.

  “The gym. That guy at the gym.” I told him about the boxing class and how the guy ended up being the festival director.

  “Jason?” Duke asked.

  “Is he the meathead guy? The one who’s a bit of a douchebag?”

  “You could say that,” Duke said.

  “You could totally say that,” Lilly said. “I knew that guy was evil from the start.”

  “I’d bled on one of the boxing gloves and he stole it. I wondered at the time why anyone would want a manky old boxing glove with layers of other people’s sweat on it. Why do people even use the gym gloves? That’s just gross.” Duke glared at me as if to say to get back on the subject. “Come to think of it, how did I cut myself? There’s nothing sharp on a pair of boxing gloves. That’d be totally unsafe.”

  “But Jason isn’t a demon,” Duke said. “I’d have known.”

  “Would you?”

  Duke just raised his eyebrows as though there were no question about that.

  “He could work for the demon. He doesn’t have to be a demon himself. He could even be the one summoning the demon.”

  Duke screwed up his face. “What would be in it for him?”

  Lilly rolled his eyes. “Maybe he’s more than a festival director? People do things for all kinds of fucked up reasons. Maybe he thinks opening the gates of hell would get him laid. Guys have done worse things to get laid.”

  They had?

  “We have no evidence Jason is the one,” Duke said.

  “You think that because you lurve Jason,” Lilly said. “He’s your bro and all that shit but he’s evil. His eyes are too close together. And think about it, if he wants to get to the society, being a festival director is the right way to do it.”

  Huh? Maybe I was overtired but I could make no sense out of what Lilly said. The society?

  Duke glared at her and Lilly clamped her hand over her mouth.

  “He took the glove with your blood on it,” Duke said, returning to the subject. “That’s worrying.”

  “But he didn’t know then that I would be joining the troupe. I didn’t even know myself.”

  Larry hadn’t been able to find out more either. The only person who had enough knowledge to leak was his boss and that seemed unlikely. The only possibility was the one I’d suggested. That the festival director had watched me go to the audition.

  “It has nothing to do with you joining us,” Duke said
. “The demon wants you and he’d have been after you no matter what you did. You were just lucky you ended up with us.”

  “Why did you audition?” Lilly said. The way she appraised me was scary. “If you weren’t that sure you wanted the job. It’s not like you’d done any performance work before that.”

  What could I say? That I loved to perform? That I’d done it on a whim? Enough had been revealed tonight. I didn’t need these guys knowing I was an undercover cop on top of everything else.

  “I needed the money.” That seemed like the safest answer. People do things for money. Stupid things, dangerous things. “I’ve got a ton of bills to pay and it seemed the fastest way to get some cash.”

  Lilly looked at me like she didn’t believe me.

  “There are a lot of ways to make money,” she said. “You don’t just wake up one day and decide you want to perform. You had next to no experience on your resume.”

  “Ah, um, I’d been injured so I couldn’t perform for a long time. I needed time to recover. Anyway, that’s beside the point. The point is, I think we should go ahead as planned. We can do this. I’m sure of it. I have an idea.”

  I actually did have an idea. While we’d been talking, the idea had brewed in my head. I couldn’t defeat the demon on my own but with a bit of help it was possible.

  “I hope that idea is running and hiding,” Lilly said.

  “Quiet, Lilly, I want to hear this. We need to trust in Jayne.”

  “I can get ahold of this stuff, powder that reduces the demon’s strength. If we get a ton of that stuff, we can neutralize him for long enough to destroy him.”

  “And how are we going to do that?” Lilly asked. “There’ll be way too many people at that show for us to get to him.”

  I gave a nod then got up and walked to the props room. Wheeling out the glitter cannon, I smiled at the three of them.

  “This is how we’ll get him,” I said.

  Duke’s eyes sparkled. “You may well be right,” he said. “The show will go on.”

  Chapter 31

  LILLY DID MY MAKEUP before she did her own so I had a bit of time to kill. I looked amazing. You’d hardly recognize me. I bet it wasn’t disguise enough to fool the demon though.