by Kim Harrison
Trent set me gently into the cushions. It felt different from this morning, and I pulled my knees to my chin, making room for him as he pointed the remote and turned on the TV.
A sitcom blared out, the laugh track sounding trite. Trent began flipping through the channels. My tension wound tighter, fear growing as I put distance between myself and both the attack and the outcry from the demon collective. I couldn’t have been the only one who’d felt it.
Trent paused at a news station. The woman was professionally charming, and the man flirted harmlessly as they discussed the new school format being implemented. “Nothing on ICTV,” he said, arm extended to change the channel.
“Try the weather channel,” I said, eyes fixed on the screen.
“Are you serious?”
I nodded. “They don’t have to check the validity of their stories like the national news.”
Frowning, Trent looked at the back of the remote where Takata had taped a mini guide. “Okay. The weather channel.” Arm pointed, he clicked again.
“. . . strange phenomena in the sky observed over the Atlantic Ocean tonight,” an uncomfortable-looking woman on the beach was saying, the wind shifting her jacket even as her eyes kept darting to the surf. “Experts at the local marine study outpost are trying to link it to the sudden crab migration you see about me.”
She jerked, kicking at something outside of the camera’s lens. “The beaches are covered with the rarely seen but not uncommon tomato crab. Most mass migrations are tied to full moons and high or low tides, and it has local and international animal behaviorists stumped.”
And the woman standing there with them creeped out, I thought.
Trent’s arm lowered. “That’s . . . odd.”
My lip curled. Revenge and thoughts of punishment had searched my soul, tried to take me. There was usually a reason for the myths and symbols that dogged some animal species like flies, snakes, and . . . crabs. Crabs were the worst.
“The crabs are steadily moving inland,” the woman was saying, making an awkward jump as she almost stepped on something. “Apparently it’s happening up and down the coast as far north as Maine and as far south as lower Georgia.”
“Not Florida?” I wondered, stifling a shiver as Trent sat beside me.
“No one’s lived in Florida since the Turn. They probably haven’t checked yet.”
The newscaster handed it off to the station, which had somehow gotten an interview with a local marine biologist. “See what Inderland Entertainment Tonight is saying,” I asked, knowing their programming wouldn’t have to be cleared or verified either.
Trent turned the remote over to find the channel number. “IET isn’t on until six.”
“It’s six in Cincinnati,” I said, and he grunted, hesitated in thought, frowned, and clicked the right number. Yeah, I didn’t like that the sun was down on the East Coast either. Whatever was happening there would probably hit us in three hours.
“Inderland Entertainment Tonight,” he said, eyes fixed forward. “What do you think they will know that CNN doesn’t?”
“CNN is an hour late in breaking anything new,” I said, listening to the trendy, size 1 woman in six-inch zebra heels interviewing a beatnik college kid with wide eyes and too many friends in the background trying to get on TV. “Ghosts?” I said, turning to Trent. “Are they talking about ghosts?”
“I think we should try CNN,” he suggested.
“No, wait!” I said, grabbing for the remote, but he was too fast, jerking it away. “Go back!” I demanded, breathless until he did.
“He like came right at me!” the kid was saying. “Creepy as shit and ragged. I thought it was a joke until it grabbed me. I tried to get it off me, but I sort of went through it a little. My friends pulled it off me, and we got the hell out of there. I’ve never seen anything like it. It wasn’t even real except where it grabbed me!”
“It was a surface demon,” I said, pulse quickening.
Trent’s wandering attention snapped back. “No.”
But the skinny woman was talking, a still shot of an underground train platform behind her. “Reports of similar incidents have been coming in from all over Manhattan,” she said, and I wondered if she was going to change to more sinister makeup before the night was over. Maybe put a bat in her hair. “The first indications that this is a belowground-only assault seem untrue as the wraiths are beginning to venture above on the streets, causing havoc.”
“Yeah, it’s kind of hard to grasp the concept of polite society when you’ve been out of it for a hundred years,” I said, grimacing as a blurry, shaky shot clearly taken from a phone showed a surface demon hissing at a car before diving behind the stone wall at Central Park.
“Those are surface demons!” Trent blurted out, sounding almost betrayed.
Great. Just great. Depressed, I unkinked my hands from around my knees and put my feet on the floor. “Damn it, Trent,” I complained. “I never would have played dead if I had thought they could actually do it!”
“But they can’t!” Trent’s gaze was fixed on the TV, his shock obvious.
Tired, I rubbed my forehead. “Maybe that’s what I felt. What we both felt,” I added, even though he hadn’t said anything about an elf-born curse ripping through his soul.
He jerked straight, and I could almost see the thoughts aligning. “I didn’t feel an attack. I felt a call to arms.” Hand rubbing over his face, he leaned back into the cushions, his brow lowering and his expression getting darker.
Subdued, I took the remote and set it on the table before it fell between the cushions. Elven magic had attacked me. It had passed over him and struck me—even if it hadn’t found what it needed to fully invoke. I had a bad feeling that whatever it had been, it had been aimed at the demons, not just the surface demons.
“You’re a demon,” Trent said softly, and I nodded, taking his hand in mine. “You’re in the collective.”
I’d felt an outcry, one so violent and explosive it had reached me even without a scrying mirror, knocking me flat on my ass. Depressed, I watched a group of people on a bus try to catch a surface demon only to have to beat it off a woman when it turned the tables on them.
“How did they manage it?” Trent said, distraught. “It can’t be done.”
But they did it. “Try the regular news now,” I said, and Trent let go of my hand to stretch for the remote.
“. . . new phenomena of what spellogists are calling a spontaneous release of surface demons from the ever-after. Elven Sa’hans are telling us these are actually the material manifestation of the souls of the undead and to leave them alone as they search for their bodies.”
Trent grimaced. “They are not Sa’hans. They’re frauds.”
Frauds or not, they’d managed to get the surface demons into reality. I was starting to think again, and my shoulders scrunched up almost to my ears. Something had happened in the ever-after, something bad. Uneasy, I looked over my shoulder to my mom’s unseen spelling room. I’d been through most of the cupboards, and there’d been no scrying mirror. I could probably summon Al without it, but he was pissed at me.
Unless he’s trapped somewhere. He won’t kill me if I rescue him, will he?
“The ghostly, frightening images with half substance are showing up in most major East Coast cities,” the newscaster was saying, “the vampiric souls appearing in a steady progression west with the setting sun.”
Trent crossed one ankle over his knee. I’d never seen him look so confused. “I don’t get it,” he said, gesturing. “There isn’t a way to move them to reality.”
I glanced at the clock on the cable box. It was very close to sunset in Cincinnati. Stretching, I took the remote and clicked over to CNN. Sure enough, an excited, somewhat nervous man was standing at Fountain Square, the sky still holding the pink from the sun. I had figured they’d be either there or in Detroit. It was too early for Chicago. Behind the reporter were clusters of living vampires. The atmosphere was one of breathle
ss anxiety.
“Sunset . . . ,” Trent whispered, and the newscaster spun, voice rising as he described the sudden appearance of nearly twenty surface demons. My expression twisted as the cameras zoomed in on them, their ragged auras and gaunt limbs standing out against the sunset-red sky, making it look like the ever-after. People squealed, and most of the surface demons ran for the street, looking for somewhere to hide.
Two, though, hesitated, hunched and furtive as they hissed at the vampires coaxing them closer. Trent said nothing, and I clicked back to New York. The undead there had probably figured it out and were likely in the streets looking for their souls.
“Mmmm,” Trent grunted, easing closer to the TV as a news reporter tried to stay in the limited streetlight as she nervously explained what was going on behind her. The sun had been down for a while. It was dark enough for the undead.
My lips parted as the camera swung and steadied to show a surface demon melting into a rapturous vampire. He wasn’t a master vampire. He was hardly a vampire at all, actually, one of New York’s homeless vamps living under the streets and existing on addicts until someone bigger took him out. But he’d found his soul—and it was trying to bind to him.
“My God, Landon did it . . . ,” Trent breathed, but I wasn’t so sure this was going to have a happy ending. You couldn’t see an aura through a TV, but it still didn’t look like a repeat of what had happened up in Luke and Marsha’s apartment, even if the vampire was sobbing, holding on to the corner of the building as the guilt and shame of his soulless existence crashed down upon him.
Spontaneous joining? I wasn’t buying it. “What’s to keep it from spontaneously leaving?” I asked. We’d had to burn the gateway through which Felix’s soul had entered him to keep it from simply going back out.
Someone had stopped to help the vampire, now weeping inconsolably. The newscaster looked uncomfortable as she told people to stay off the streets and out of the way as the vampires found their souls.
“I guess they think we’re dead,” I said, not feeling at all good. I wanted to call Ivy and see how Felix was doing. “The surface demons will be showing up here in about three hours,” I said as I looked at the bright golden light.
His eyes on the TV, Trent got to his feet. “They seem to be staying in the main population centers.”
So far, I thought glumly. “You really think they’re free? For good?” If they were, then that soul bottle I’d made was going to be more than useless.
Trent hesitated, watching the TV as if it might have the answers. “I’ve no idea. Maybe their release was what you felt on the stairs.”
Or the attack in my mom’s spell room, I mused, an ugly thought trickling through me. If it had almost taken me, then maybe it had hit the demons, too.
I jumped as he spun, almost running to the stairs. “Where are you going?”
“To get Bis!” he shouted.
Fidgety, I looked out the big windows at the bright sun. “Trent? He won’t be awake,” I called, then gestured as if to say “I told you so” when Trent came back with Bis perched on his arm like a huge sleeping owl. My bag was over his other arm, looking funny against him.
“We have to get to the ever-after. Find out what happened.” Trent stumbled into the living room. He thrust my bag at me as he sat down on the edge of the couch. Motions tense, he tickled Bis’s ear. “Bis, wake up.”
The little guy scrunched up his eyes and pushed at him with one leathery wing. One red eye opened, saw me, and squinted closed in the sun. “It’s kind of hard when he’s in the sun like that,” I said as I shifted to put him in my shadow. “Bis!” I shouted, pinching his wing.
That sort of worked as Bis flung his wings out to smack Trent in the face. “Bis, wake up!” I shouted again. Kind and gentle wouldn’t work. We’d be lucky to get even an eye open again. “Bis, we need to get to the ever-after. Bis? Bis!”
But he didn’t even stir.
Trent stared at me, and my teeth clenched. “I’ve got an idea. Trust me?” I said.
“Uhhh,” Trent stammered, and I tugged my shoulder bag onto my lap and grabbed his arm.
“Bis!” I shouted, touching that awful ley line and shifting all our auras into it.
“Rachel!” Trent exclaimed, but I wasn’t sure if it had reached my ears or was only in my head as we suddenly were in the line, broken and tasting of earth and sky all at the same time.
With a mental gasp, Bis was awake, startled as he suddenly found himself floundering.
Dalliance, I thought, and with a curious flip of awareness that I had yet to master, Bis tuned our auras. If I could get any answers at all, it would be at Dalliance.
Chapter 14
What is wrong with you!” the little gargoyle shouted, red eyes glaring, his voice echoing in the empty space as we materialized. “I was sleeping! I could’ve dropped you!” His voice came back again, all the louder. But then he turned, wings drooping as he saw where we were.
Dalliance was currently an Asian eatery, the low tables holding bowls of steaming rice and pots of tea, overlooking a courtyard complete with a koi-stocked pond, raked pads of sand and gravel, and tiny trees. A jukebox, out of place and time, stood as the only indication that everything was a solid illusion. Several cups of tea had spilled, and the place was empty.
“Where is everyone?” Trent said, his tension evolving into a cautious investigation as he lifted a lid and breathed in the steam. There was no damage, no evidence of threat apart from the spilled tea. They simply were not here. Anyone. Not even the staff.
The teapot clinked as Trent set the lid back in place. An elven spell had attacked me. I’d barely fought it off. But I wasn’t a cursed demon. Al . . .
“Bis, take us to the mall,” I said, scared. I could probably find someone at the mall who’d talk to me without charging me for it.
Subdued, the little gargoyle nodded. Trent stepped to us, and with hardly a breath of displaced air, the varnished wood and rice paper screens melted into loud eighties music and a steamy warmth.
My mouth dropped open. People were everywhere, howling, dancing, swinging from the banners the demons had hung to try to dampen the echo. Shocked, I fell back against the fountain. Foam spilled up behind me, and I jerked forward. There was a bubble charm in it, and blue-and-pink froth spilled over and onto the floor.
“What happened?” Trent gripped my elbow and pulled me off the jump-in circle.
Speechless, I shook my head as I tried to take it all in. People were everywhere. They were ecstatic, even the familiars in charge of the shops had left them to get slushies and ices from the abandoned pushcarts. It was as hot as always, but goose bumps rose when I realized that there were no demons here. None.
“Bis, take me to Al,” I said, and both Bis and Trent turned to me, aghast. “Take me to Al!” I demanded, hiking my shoulder bag up higher. “The demons are gone! That’s what I felt! Something attacked them!”
“How?” Trent whispered, but I was already pulling him back onto the jump-in circle.
The demons were gone. Every last one of them. Something had tried to kill me. Al had to be alive. He was stronger than I was.
But as Bis’s field enveloped us, I realized what had happened. I was a witch-born demon, free of the original elven curse. Al wasn’t. That’s what the elven spell had been looking for to invoke on—and Al had it.
My heart pounded as the heat and noise of the mall vanished, echoing in my thoughts as the scent of woodsmoke filled my lungs and the stone floor of Al’s spelling kitchen formed under my feet. If not for the accompanying glow from a nearly dead fire and the subliminal whisper of voices from that creepy tapestry, I’d never know we’d arrived. Bis was getting good at these short hops, and I touched his wide-spaced claws on my shoulder as I looked to the small hearth and then the shadowed ceiling. It was dark, but I could tell that Al wasn’t here.
That doesn’t mean he’s dead, I thought, my shoulders nearly to my ears as I handed my bag to Trent and went to st
ir up some light from the fire. There was a stack of actual wood logs instead of Al’s usual peat-moss chunks that reeked of burnt amber, and I put the smallest on the coals. Orange sparks flew when I dropped it on, and I wiped my fingers free of the greasy bark, turning to take in the room as it brightened.
Mr. Fish sat on the bottom of his glass, gills pumping, and I frowned at the tall glass-fronted cabinets, all open and the books and ley line equipment gone. The small table between the two hearths was clean, not a notation or hint of script remaining. Anything smaller than a bread box was missing.
“Where’s his stuff?” Trent said, and a muffled, surprised grunt came from the bedroom.
I spun to the archway as the thick wooden door engraved with spells and embedded with metallic symbols swung inward. Light spilled out, and I squinted at Al’s trim silhouette, his gloved hands holding a mundane oil lamp. I backed up in relief, both happy to see him and unsure how he might react. He was okay, but that didn’t translate into his being glad to see me.
“Newt?” he said cautiously, low voice utterly devoid of his usual British lord accent.
“It’s me,” I said. “Thank God you’re all right. Wha—”
I gasped, backpedaling. My back hit the slate table, and then Al was on me, his hand across my neck. “Al!” I cried out, and then my voice gagged to nothing. I smacked his arm, digging at his fingers, and he let up enough for me to breathe.
“I said I’d kill you if you ever showed up in my rooms again!”
“Stop!” I cried out as Trent grabbed Al, and my air choked off again.
“Detrudo!” Al snarled.
I heard Trent and Bis slam into one of the cabinets, glass and wood shattering.
“I had to know if you were okay!” I said, and then his fist tightened again, choking off my air. Reaching up, I pinched his nose, and he jumped, fingers easing enough to let me breathe.
My air came in quick, thin pants as he lowered his face until inches separated us. “You came to steal my things!”