by Chloe Garner
“I will punch you in the chest,” she said. He smiled and let go of her.
“I need to give you something that will protect you from getting possessed,” she said. “I worry when you go to bed. I don’t like having you open for that many hours in a row.”
“Like what Abby has?” he asked. She nodded, pulling her backpack off a chair and rooting through it carefully. “This doesn’t work?” he asked, going to his dresser and pulling the chain out that he used for protection when they fought creatures with innate magic.
“For low level stuff and sorcerers, some,” she said. “Stuff that’s bullet-proof, like Abby’s pendant, there are only a few of them. I’d have to kill someone to get one.”
He waited. She continued pulling things out of her backpack, the pile growing on the bed next to her.
“I assume there’s a ‘but’,” he said, “given you seem to be planning something.”
She looked up and grinned, pulling a silver chain out of the bag and holding it up. He took it.
“Where did you get it?” he asked.
“Flea market,” she said. “Day before yesterday.”
“When did you go to a flea market?” he asked. He frowned as she grinned and opened her mouth. “Other than ‘day before yesterday’.”
She laughed.
“You two were fighting about… what was it… Yogi bear verses Smoky the Bear in a fight. Clearly, neither of you were factoring in Boo-Boo. Anyway. I went shopping. I don’t think Jason even missed his keys.”
“You went shopping and we didn’t notice?” Sam asked. “Oh yeah. I thought you were going grocery shopping.”
She nodded exaggeratedly.
“Yes, the food comes from someplace, too,” she said. She nodded toward the necklace in his hand.
“Do you like it?”
It was a heavy, elaborate pewter cross, most of three inches tall. The surface was entirely constructed of elegant knotwork, reminiscent of Celtic knots. He nodded.
“I do. It does something special?”
“Not yet,” she said. “It’s old, and that helps, but I’m going to power it myself. I wouldn’t be able to do that for anyone else, but it should work for you.”
She held out her hand and he gave it back to her. She took a sheet of paper out and opened a notebook, putting the loose page over the open one, then handed him a pin.
“Pick,” she said.
“What?”
“There’s a diagram under the paper. You’re picking, blind. Just choose a spot,” she said. He stabbed the page at random, and she slid the loose sheet along the pin, revealing a simple outline of a human body. She laughed.
“That figures.”
The pin was pointed at the left wrist.
“What are you doing?” he asked. She pulled the ring she had used to draw blood from her wrist in her bonding ritual so long ago and cleaned it.
“If you had told me, at twenty, that I would be using this much blood magic, I’d have slapped you,” she said.
“You don’t have to,” Sam said. She shook her head.
“Not that big a deal. Blood freely given and used as part of a light spell isn’t something that I worry about. There just isn’t that much blood magic that is light.” She put a pewter bowl in her lap, then lifted her head as Jason called up the stairs.
“Pack up for tomorrow morning,” he yelled. “We’ve got an arson in Flagstaff.”
She looked down at the bowl and thought for a minute, then put it aside and went to the door, sticking her head out.
“You should probably come up here for this,” she answered. Sam raised an eyebrow at her. He couldn’t remember her ever inviting Jason to join for something like this. She sat back down cross-legged on the bed and waited.
And waited.
Sam snorted.
“He hasn’t recovered from the beating this afternoon,” he said. She grinned.
“I should have played nicer.”
“He’d have hated you for pulling punches,” Sam said.
“Good thing he can’t tell, then, huh?”
Sam snorted again. The door swung open and Jason walked in.
“What’s going on?”
“I’m creating a pendant for Sam. Thought you should see what it is,” she said. She handed him the cross, then closed her right hand around her left wrist, using the ring to puncture her wrist at the base of her thumb, then holding the wound over the bowl so that it dripped across her wrist then off the point of the bone on the other side. Jason tried to hand her the necklace back, but she didn’t reach for it.
“What the hell?” he asked, noticing. She didn’t look up.
“I didn’t invite you up here to freak out at me,” she said. “I know what I’m doing.”
Sam looked at him and nodded. She was completely unconcerned. The bowl took a long time to fill, then she wrapped her wrist and carefully carried the bowl over to the desk and sat it down, going back for the pile of little glass vials she had left on the bed. She pinched and dripped and measured the various powders and fluids and grains from the vials into the bowl of blood, then turned to Sam.
“One more. Go through the rest of the vials. Open them, smell them, feel them. You can taste them, unless I tell you otherwise. Pick the one that stands out.”
There were more than a hundred vials in the plastic stands, and he pulled them out one at a time, not having a clue what he was doing. Samantha was patient and confident, so he just went with it, opening one, smelling another. He didn’t taste anything. His mother would have had a fit at the idea of him tasting random substances intended for potions. She would have had the same fit at the idea of him drinking potions, but that was already done.
He pulled a vial with a faintly yellow powder in it and didn’t need to open it. He handed it to Samantha. She shook it, then grinned and nodded.
“Perfect,” she said.
“What is it?” Jason asked.
“Jasmine,” she said. Sam looked at Jason, but his brother didn’t seem to have any better idea why she was so pleased with it than he did. She poured the powder into her palm and slowly sifted it into the bowl, then looked at Jason.
“That’s the placebo I gave him the night he triggered, to help him sleep,” she said. “We fought in the bathroom for thirty minutes over whether you were going to let me give him jasmine in water.”
“You were a cloud-crazy stranger,” Jason said, then glanced at the bowl. “Some days I think you still are.”
She went and picked up the cross off the bed and held it over the bowl. She took a breath and her face stilled as she focused, dipping the cross slowly and carefully in the blood, then lifting it back out and hanging it from the hutch on the back of the desk and moving the bowl so that the pendant could drip back into the bowl.
“That’s it?” Jason asked. She nodded.
“We shouldn’t go anywhere tonight,” she said. “I can’t clean the bowl out until the pendant dries completely, and the right demon could do a world of damage with that.”
“What’s it for?”
“It’s going to make him immune to possession,” she said. “Beyond that, I’ll figure it out once I get it working.”
Sam hunched over to look at the cross as it slowly spun over the bowl. He wanted to reach out and take it, though he couldn’t tell if the urge was simple childishness or something more significant. Samantha put her hands on her hips.
“Tell me more about Flagstaff.”
<><><>
They sat across the street from the gutted house, watching the warning tape flicker in the breeze. The pendant hung heavy against Sam’s skin, foreign. Samantha had told him not to wash it off, and years of Ranger training to mistrust blood magic were making him uncomfortable. She could tell it bothered him, but had kept gracefully silent about it. A couple of techs were wandering the remains of the building, picking things up and putting them down, occasionally calling to each other to inspect something.
“Come back to
night?” Jason asked. Sam nodded.
“Too many details to miss at a fire scene in the dark,” Samantha said, resting her chin on her fist. Sam looked back at her. She was boiling angry, looking at the house, but you’d never have known from her face. “What I wouldn’t give for a clipboard.”
“What?” Jason asked. She nodded decisively.
“Find me an office supply store. I need a clipboard.”
Jason looked at Sam, but he wasn’t any help.
“We can just come back tonight,” Jason said. “We’re not bad at this.”
“If this is a fire demon on the loose, he could burn two more houses by then,” Samantha said. “We’re going now.”
She sat back in her seat and crossed her arms. Sam nearly laughed out loud at the steely resolve she felt. It was worse than he could have guessed. Jason started to argue, but Sam shook his head. No point. Jason started to argue with him, then sighed and gave up, pulling away from the curb and driving into the city. She left them in the car for about fifteen minutes, taking her backpack into the store with her.
“They’re going to think she’s the unabomber with that thing,” Jason said. Sam was following Samantha’s motion inside the store, still enjoying the novelty of it.
She came back out of the store with a bag, wearing the black dress she had worn to sneak into a police station in Texas. It emphasized her waist and the motion of her hips as she walked.
“Shut up,” she said as she got back into the car.
“What? I didn’t say anything,” Jason said.
“He was thinking it,” Samantha said.
“Is it just me, or are the two of you more messed up than I remember?” Jason asked.
“If he would just keep his mind to himself,” Samantha muttered.
“Not my fault,” Sam said. He realized that she was pleased. He had kissed her twice, now, and both times had been unlike anything else he had ever done. Like being underwater in a rapids. Completely undirected and out of control. He thought of her dancing with Kara in Nevada the previous fall, and he wanted her.
“Stop it,” she said. He looked over his shoulder at her, half guilty, half amused, to see her blushing as she looked out the window. She screwed her eyes shut hard, and he felt the rush of chemicals as she echoed his desire. He jerked to look straight forward. No secrets. Hunger, shame, curiosity, humor bounced back and forth over the bond in a flurry. He thought of his hands on her hips the night before and she grunted.
“Stop it.”
“Will you two cut it out?” Jason said. “Seriously.”
“I’m not doing anything,” Sam said.
“Liar,” Samantha replied.
“Like a pair of two year olds. ‘He’s touching me’…” Jason said. They got back to the house and Samantha got out of the car. Sam particularly enjoyed watching her walk away.
“Dead people,” Jason said. “You two can flirt later.”
Sam pulled his mouth to one side.
“Sorry.”
Samantha ducked under the police tape, carrying her clipboard against her chest and the two men waved at her. She waved back and made her way into the house.
“I have got to get me one of those black dresses,” Jason said.
They sat and waited for maybe thirty minutes. Samantha was visible for periods of time, then hidden again by a standing wall. She came back out of the house, pulling gloves off, and waved at the men again, making her way back to the vehicle and getting in.
“Definitely a demon,” she said, shoving her backpack to where she could get into it and pulling out a glass bowl. She emptied a vial of what looked like water into it and held it forward.
“Hold this,” she said to Sam. “If it starts to bubble, dump it out the window. She looked at Jason. “Drive.”
“Just like that. You know it’s a demon,” he said. She pulled another vial out with an eyedropper and dripped it into the bowl slowly.
“Should I be worried?” Sam asked. She frowned, then shook her head.
“Just red cabbage juice,” she said.
“You say that stuff like it’s supposed to mean something to us,” Jason complained.
“It’s used to measure the acidity of baseness of a liquid,” Samantha said. “Simple high school chemistry.”
“Oh.”
She took out a sheet of paper with a spectrum of colors on it and held them behind the bowl.
“Potassium,” she said.
“All right, Nancy Drew. You going to explain yourself?” Jason asked. “How do you know it’s a demon?”
“People don’t normally think of using a metal as a detonator,” Samantha said. “It’s second nature to demons. Potassium, sodium, rubidium, when they can get it, magnesium. They like to burn metals. People burn fluids. Organic ones, usually. There are no organics in hell, and there aren’t many fluids.” She motioned to the bowl Sam held. “They take a particular twisted pleasure in using water to make things burn. Alkali metals in water blow up and suck hydrogen out of the water to burn in air, afterward. Here is fine.”
“What?”
“You can pull over here. I’m going to change and we’re walking back.”
“Will you make up your mind?” Jason asked. Samantha glared at Sam and he turned to look forward while she pulled her jeans on.
“Rearview up,” she said. Jason reached over and pointed it at the ceiling. There was a scuffling noise as she wrestled out of the dress and put a shirt on, then she opened her door.
“Let’s go,” she said.
Sam and Jason got out and followed her back down the block.
“What are we doing now?”
“They like to watch. I want to see if he left a clue about who he is, where he watched.”
Sam glanced at Jason. They didn’t have a very good track record with arsonists. They were hard to catch. By the time another building was burning down, they were in the wind again. They had chased a few, over the years, and only caught one, and then only by dumb luck. Samantha stood in front of the house with her hands on her hips, then pointed to a tree down the block.
“There,” she said.
“Why there?” Jason asked. “Why not one of the houses, or from the crowd, up close?”
“It’s private. People never look up,” Samantha said. “Well-known fact. Stay out of line of sight, they’ll never look up to see you.”
They reached the three, a massive oak, and she put her hands on the trunk.
“Leg up,” she said to Sam. He cupped his hands for her and she stood on them, grabbing hold of the lowest limb and pulling herself up. She whistled.
“What?”
“Phone,” she said, laying across the limb to reach down. Sam pulled his cell out of his pocket and handed it up to her. There was a shutter noise, then she handed it back down. The shot was of the trunk of the tree, and a black, hand-shaped scar.
“Still has the ashes in it,” she said. “It’s from yesterday, during the fire. He was pleased with himself.”
She spent another minute in the tree, then swung down. Sam caught her and lowered her to the ground. She glared at him.
“I heard Janice say specifically no falling,” he said.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“So what now, Ms. Drew?” Jason asked. She brushed bark off her hands and started back down the sidewalk.
“Nothing up there,” she said. “So we look for the source of the potassium. It has to be stored in mineral oil to keep it from oxidizing. It isn’t simple to get. Well, okay, it is. You just order it online, but you have to have a name and a credit card and a mailing address, and most arsonist fire demons aren’t that patient. They just go buy it from the nearest easy source, and those… Those I know how to find.”
“So…” Jason asked.
“To the nearest university,” she said. “Physics department.”
<><><>
While Jason drove, Samantha looked up professor reviews on Sam’s cell. A faculty was a good place for them t
o blend in, but if you knew what you were looking for, there were patterns to just how they mistreated their students…
Physics was a guess. She had a fledgling theory about the populations of demons taking roles as professors at colleges, and that theory speculated that there were more of them in physics than chemistry, but they more often than not shared a building.
<><><>
Samantha knocked on the office door and let herself in. He looked up.
“Can I help you?” he asked. Jason and Sam followed her in and she sat.
“What are you called?” she asked. He told her. She shook her head. “Not the name on the door. What are you called?” He gave her the same answer. “Sleft’na pall.”
He made an ugly, angry face, then sucked his lips back down and put his features back in order.
“If you’re here to pick a fight with me, you’ll find me more difficult to provoke than that,” he said.
“What are you called?” she asked.
“Legion,” he said. She glared and he leaned back in his chair. “Lasloe.”
“I’m a strict interpretationist,” Samantha said. “I don’t believe in guilt by association. You’re a demon. You associate with demons I plan to kill. Fact of life. If you are uncooperative, though…” She glanced at Sam and Jason. Jason folded his arms menacingly. Sam missed a beat, then did the same. She groaned inwardly. They were going to have to work on that.
“Yes, yes, you’re very frightening. Dust of the galaxy. What do you want?”
“I suspect you sold a block of potassium to a fire demon recently,” she said. His face was inscrutable. “Tell me who he is and how to find him, we walk out the door.”
“Class two fire demons see a block of metal and they start drooling,” he said. “Don’t pay attention to their contract at all.”
Samantha waited.
“Kid’s name is Bennie. I sold him half a dozen blocks in mineral oil. I expect you’ll find him watching the next house burn.”
“Blocks of what?” Samantha asked. His mouth curled. She didn’t blink.