Ink & Fire

by R. K. Ryals

  Eloise cries out.

  For once, Lucas doesn’t rush to help. He simply turns his chair, leans his elbows on his knees, and watches me.

  I’m trying to breathe, not because I can’t, but because I feel swollen, my body full of something extremely dark and terrifying. Like a doll stuffed with super-charged cotton.

  “He can’t do it,” Lucas says.

  Breathing through the panic crippling me, I look at him. “Can’t do what?”

  “Possess you.” He stares, amazed. “He keeps trying. I can feel it. He’s drawing on your energy, but he’s not entering you.”

  “I’d say that sounds like a dirty joke, but,” nausea slams into me, “this really hurts.”

  Lucas finally comes to me, kneels, and touches my chin. “You’re not going to throw up.”

  Bile rises in my throat, metallic and hot, and I swallow past it. “Those are pretty words—”

  “Fight it, Harper.” He drops his hand.

  I clutch my stomach and double over. “Fight it,” I repeat. You’re not going to throw up.

  Inside my head, I start to scream, loud and shrill. Over and over again. The sound chases back the nausea.

  My hands start to shake. Even pressed against my stomach, I can feel the tremors.

  I lift them.

  Aunt Eloise gasps. “Paper.”

  Rushing into her bedroom, she returns with pencils and a notepad. I shake my head, even as my chair slides back toward the table. Once again, all on its own.

  “I can’t do this,” I insist.

  Lucas joins me. “Yes, you can. Use your gifts. If a lesser demon tries to interfere, I’ve got you. There’s not a damn thing they can do if I’m here.”

  Pushing the food aside, Eloise places the notebook and pencils in front of me, the cover flipped open.

  “Aunt Eloise,” I beg.

  My hands are shaking so violently now, they hurt.

  “It’s okay,” she promises, even though I can tell by the waver in her voice, she’s not sure it is.

  As soon as I lift my hand, it flies to the pencils. Gripping one of them, my fingers jerk to the notebook, and I feel my eyes rolling up inside of my head.

  My world goes dark.

  When I come to, Lucas is leaning over the table, furrows marring his forehead.

  Beneath my fingers are the words, You can’t protect her, Luke. She’s mine. Power. Time to suffer.

  Dropping the pencil, my hands fly to my throat, but there’s no choking sensation like there was in Jeanine Turner’s office. “Luke?” I rasp.

  Lucas stares at the message. Small drops of blood are smeared over the ink. “Levi and I have known each other for a very, very long time.” It’s the only explanation he gives for the nickname.

  “You can’t protect her? She’s mine?” Eloise massages her forehead. “I don’t understand. This isn’t about Harper, is it?”

  Lucas touches the notebook. “We’re talking about an archdemon who has had a very long time to build a grudge and make plans. I’m sure he has multiple agendas.” Picking up one of the pencils, he taps it against the sheet. “Will you write for me again, Harper?”

  My blood runs cold. “Lucas . . .”

  Coming up behind me, he cages me in with his arms, the pencil in his fingers goading me. “Trust me. Write. Except this time, I want you to think about a name. Meri. She’s a demon of fate in the underworld and an old friend.”

  “An ex-lover?” I ask, immediately kicking myself for the question and the terse way it comes out.

  Lucas’s head lowers, his mouth near my ear. “Jealous?” He sounds amused.

  “No.”

  His breath whispers against my skin. “Not an ex-lover. I’ve dabbled with demons, but not this one. She’s too prickly.” He chuckles. “No one wants to tangle with a demon of fate.” Holding out the pencil, he offers it to me. “Meri. Think about her name and ask her about Lucas and Leviathan.”

  When I don’t move, he cups my shoulder with his hand. “Open yourself up, Harper. Take back control of your power.”

  My back stiffens.

  Out of everything he could have said, this is what pushes me forward. Because there’s nothing I want more than control over something I’ve been robbed of.

  “Are you sure about this?” Eloise asks. She sounds nervous, and that settles it.

  She’s been robbed, too.

  Meri’s name echoing through my head, I take the pencil. Leviathan, I think. Lucas.

  The response is immediate.

  My hand swerves onto the notebook, the lines that appear surprisingly flowery and feminine.

  Well, if it isn’t the golden boy himself. Hello, honey.

  As crazy as it sounds, joy races through me, the feeling replacing the horrible fatigue I felt when Levi forced my hand. This is what I’m supposed to do. This is what Eloise does for others, channeling spirits and the deceased for her customers. I may be channeling a demon, but I feel in control. Me. In control. I hope, anyway, and if I’m not, I don’t want to know, because this feels good.

  Lucas snorts. “Give me the rundown, Meri,” he demands aloud.

  My hand scribbles. No sweet nothings? No, “It’s been a long time and I miss you, Meri?”

  “I want answers,” Lucas replies.

  The pencil pauses, and then, You imprison an archdemon with little more than a symbol of water and you expect that to hold?

  Lucas’s hand fists on the table. “That was before my fall. I’ve learned a lot about your world since then. Firsthand. Even so, the symbol was strong enough.”

  I swear I hear Meri laugh in my head. You are so cute, angel. The symbol has crumbled. The only thing keeping him there now is weakness. It only takes two things for a demon like him to rise.

  “Blood and energy,” Lucas murmurs.

  If you know, why contact me?

  “Don’t play games with me, Meri. He has secrets, and you’re in a position to know that. You owe me. Remember those souls you let escape into—”

  My elbow shoots out, catching Lucas just under the ribs. He grins.

  The pencil scratches. I’m disappointed in you. Why bring up old wounds?

  “The information, Meri,” Lucas prompts.

  Look to your psychic. Levi has been planning this since her birth. He has allies. Do you not feel the woman? Curses. Black magic. Blood. Power. Now, our debt is repaid. Leave me.

  I lose my grip on the pencil, and it falls onto the table, bouncing off of the notebook before rolling onto the floor. My body sags in the chair.

  Eloise slides a steaming cup of tea in front of me. “Green tea with ginseng.” She’d been busy while I was transcribing. “For energy. Sessions take a lot out of the messenger. I’m proud of you, Harper.”

  Tears threaten to choke me.

  Lucas tugs the notebook toward him. “Tell me about your parents again,” he says.

  Eloise answers for me. “There isn’t much to know. A psychic and a mortal fell in love, fought for years to have a baby together, and then went to a black arts practitioner for help when the Court refused to do dark magic to save the child. Surely, you don’t need it said aloud when you can hear it in our thoughts.”

  He glances at me. “I can’t hear it in hers. There is nothing except silence in Harper’s head.”

  Eloise looks at me. I sip the tea.

  “I think we need to try this again,” Lucas suggests.

  Eloise recoils. “What? Do you know what channeling does to a person?”

  “Unless I’m missing my guess, it just gave your niece a second wind.”

  He’s right. Unlike the times I’d been controlled in the past and unlike the times Levi had used me, this felt different. Empowering. I sag in the chair not because I’m tired, but because I’m relieved.

  Is it because I called on the demon rather than the demon calling on me?

  “Harper?” Aunt Eloise asks.

  “He’s right,” I admit. “I feel stronger.”

  Confusi
on eats at Eloise’s face, leaving gnawed lines of concentration. “You should feel weaker.”

  Lucas leans toward me, completely focused on my face. “I think you need to try channeling your mother.”

  I don’t know if the whimper that echoes through the room is mine or Eloise’s.

  Chapter 10

  “You can’t be serious,” Eloise cries. “No. Absolutely not.”

  I’m frozen.

  I never knew my mother. She is a myth, this idea I’ve built up like a wall inside of my head.

  She is memories I created for myself from nothing. She is warm arms that never actually held me. She is brave words I never got a chance to hear. She is loud, angry lectures I never got the chance to endure.

  Memories built out of imagination.

  Okay, I tell myself. Because giving myself permission first somehow makes it easier to say it out loud.

  “Why would you even ask this of her?” Eloise cries. Her question opens into a long string of rants, protests, and objections, and even though I hear what she’s saying, it’s like white noise behind louder thoughts. I’m focused on only one word.

  “Okay.” My voice isn’t loud when I say it, but it has the power to quiet the room.

  After a long moment of silence, Eloise reaches for me, aghast. “Harper, you don’t have to do this. It’s not the same, channeling family. It’s,” she closes her eyes, and then opens them again, “It’s just not the same. You have no idea.”

  The thing is, I’ve already given myself permission to be okay with this. Because, in the grander scheme of things, my feelings are small compared to the knowledge we need.

  My head rises, my eyes finding the angel looming above me. “Okay.”

  Lucas smiles. “Okay,” he replies. He touches my face, and I’m prepared for him to back away, my mind and body primed to turn to the table and face my fears, when he suddenly slides his hand into my hair, startling me. His eyes darken, his fingers tangling with the strands. Lifting my face, he lowers his head, takes a moment to search my gaze, and then kisses me. Deeply. Briefly.

  He tastes like spring feels.

  “For being brave,” he says when he pulls back.

  The kiss stuns my aunt into silence. In truth, it does the same for me, not because I don’t know what it’s like to kiss Lucas, but because I sense something in the way he kissed me. Understanding, maybe?

  Something feels different when I turn back to the table.

  Flipping to a new page in the notebook, I reach for another pencil, mentally steeling myself against the destruction of something momentous. My mother is a fairy tale I created.

  Memories built out of imagination. A house of cards dangerously close to toppling.

  I inhale through my nose, the breath deep and fortifying. Mom, I call, and when I get no immediate response, I add, Karen Sinclair.

  The house of cards crumbles.

  The pencil slides across the page. Harpists harp harping. My Harper.

  The words are everything I hoped for and everything I feared. Tears cloud my vision, and even though I want to walk away from this, I maintain my grip on the pencil. Unlike Lucas with the demon of fate, I don’t talk to my mother out loud. I do it in my head. I’m not brave enough to share everything. Not yet.

  Why did you do it? I ask Mom.

  The pencil leaves loops and elegant word slopes on the page. A handwriting as beautiful on paper as she is in my head.

  My dear child. My hopes. My dreams, she replies.

  I am her everything.

  Words I’ve thought a million times over the years, but never had the courage to say, flow out into the spirit realm, slow and unsure. I shouldn’t have been born, Mom.

  Meant to be, she protests. You were meant to be.

  She’s wrong. I was made to be.

  Mom! I cry in my head, the wail loud and full of frustration. I’m not even sure why I say it. Maybe it’s because I haven’t had the opportunity to do it before, to wail with annoying repetition the way I know I would have done had she lived. Mom. Mom. Mom.

  My pencil suddenly races over the paper, frenzied and all over the place. She’s coming, Mom says. She will come. He owns her. She will come, and you will destroy her. You will break your curse. A curse that was never a curse. A moment that was never bad. A childhood that was robbed too soon.

  She’s not making any sense.

  My curse? I ask.

  Harpists harp harping. Angels airily dancing. On clouds, casting glances. Their eyes glowing brightly. Guarding. Guiding. And that’s how you got your name. So says me.

  She’s a madwoman, even in death. I quit fighting the tears, and they slip unchecked down my cheeks. Quiet and deadly. I killed you, Mother.

  There, I admitted it. Long before I was even born, I destroyed her mentally. Her need to have me was much stronger than her mind.

  The pencil stiffens, as if angry, before scratching out, No, you gave me purpose. She killed me, but she gave you what you needed to live. She’s coming. Written in the stars.

  I can’t make sense of anything she’s saying, but I can feel my connection with her growing weaker, and out of desperation, I say the one thing I’ve been waiting a long time to tell her. “I’m sorry.”

  This time, I say it out loud.

  Harpists harp harping. Angels airily dancing. On clouds, casting glances. Their eyes glowing brightly. Guarding. Guiding. And that’s how you got your name. So says me. The pencil falls.

  My eyes fall shut with it, closing out the world, my imagination trying desperately to rebuild the house of cards I had held onto so tightly all of these years.

  “You shouldn’t have asked her to do that,” Eloise says shortly to Lucas.

  She’s wrong.

  Despite losing the innocent childhood fairy tale I’d conjured up for myself, I am glad I connected with my mother. It let me face the grief I haven’t been able to let go of until now.

  I feel more confident. Strong.

  My eyes reopen. Mom’s words glare up at me from the notebook, and I just know. Flipping from Meri’s words to my mother’s, my mind pieces together what was left unsaid. “The woman who cursed our family is a demon. Not a witch. A demon.”

  Aunt Eloise places a hand on the table, bracing herself, and the temptation to go to her is strong. This isn’t any easier on her than it is on me.

  “Harper.” Tugging me out of the chair, Lucas pulls me into his embrace, and I know by the way he hugs me that he senses my need to hug my aunt.

  He’s giving me what I can’t give her right now.

  “The woman is a demon,” I repeat.

  Lucas’s arms tighten around me. “It makes sense. Meri’s information. Your mother’s words. The other demon I’ve been feeling . . . she’s the sorceress your parents sought out. Meri’s right. Levi has had this planned for a long time.” Pulling back, he looks down into my face. “The demoness your parents went to must have felt your father’s psychic powers and your psychic potential. If Levi had already reached out to her, she would have been looking for a way to help him break free. Your family would have been a breath of fresh air for her.”

  “Why?” Eloise asks, her voice rough with emotion. “Why would she help an archdemon?”

  Lucas glances at her. “Because, while there are good demons in this world—somewhat—there are others who prefer the evil they were born from. In the underworld, there is no greater position than becoming an archdemon. To achieve it, you fight your way to the top, you make alliances with more powerful demons, and if you are a lesser demon, you find a way into an archdemon’s good graces.”

  It all makes sense. The message Levi sent. His need to leave the Infernum. His vendetta against Lucas. My issues with writing.

  The theory Lucas had earlier about Levi using me as a sacrificial altar rears its ugly head, and I gasp when a horrible thought suddenly occurs to me.

  If the demoness used me as a way to open a connection with Levi, then . . . “No!”

  My e
yes widen in horror. “The man I gave the message to when I was a child . . .” The words trail off because they are too terrible to say out loud.

  My aunt inhales, and I know she’s thinking it, too, which means Lucas must know. He would see it in her thoughts.

  Blood and energy.

  No!

  Fisting my hands in Lucas’s shirt, I peer up at him, desperate. “Please tell me I didn’t sacrifice him to Levi. Please. You know these kinds of things, right? You know how they work. Please, please tell me I didn’t.”

  The angel can’t meet my gaze. “You wouldn’t have known. You were a child, Harper.”

  I back away from him, horrified. “No, please tell me he wouldn’t.” My words break on horrible sobs. “He wouldn’t use a child for something like that, would he?”

  “He’s an archdemon desperate to escape a prison. A sacrifice made in his name would weaken the gateway. The fact that you went so long avoiding your gift afterward held him in check. Until now.”

  Hope flares, and I grasp at it. “But I did write. In school. At first.”

  Lucas frowns. “He would have been weaker then, and you had the Court’s help. You didn’t write completely exposed without any protection again until recently.”

  “Oh, my God!” I stumble across the room until the living room wall stops me. My body slides down it. “No!” I say the word over and over again, and still it’s not enough. It’s unforgiveable.

  My gaze, clouded by grief and horror, finds Lucas. “How? How did Levi kill him?”

  “Ask your aunt.”

  I can’t breathe. My eyes fly to Aunt Eloise’s grief-stricken face. Her expression says more than words ever could, and still I ask, “What? How?”

  She steps toward me, her hand out, placating. “Harper, we didn’t tell you because we thought it was best. We—”

  “Tell me what?”

  Her eyes fall shut, the lids squeezing a tear down her cheek. “The man . . . they ruled it a suicide, but they found the message you gave him stuffed inside of his mouth. He—”

  “Stop,” I sob. I don’t want to know any more. I can’t breathe. It’s completely impossible to breathe. I am not a coward for not wanting to know. I am not a coward.