by A. J. Aalto
The last quarter of book glowed like a hot fireplace poker; that would be the part to avoid. I plucked a pen out of my pencil holder and used the tip of it to open the grimoire, keeping a lot of space between the pages of white magic and the demon-influenced black magic near the end. Mindful of getting too much ink on the already messy pages I was finally laying my eye-tracks on, I moved it to one side and set my personal grimoire full of kitchen witchery and white magic beside it. Using the pen to turn pages in Ruby’s and my left hand to flip to a blank page in my own book, I started searching for help.
What I found instead left me baffled, and I'd have scratched my head if I'd had a free hand.
“These are… unhelpful,” I said to the empty room, blinking rapidly.
Each delicate page, yellowed by age, contained a small spell scribbled in the same unsteady hand. I felt my mouth work around my disbelief, and finally, I was able to read aloud. “Dominate florist? That seems like a very narrow target range.” I turned a page. “Astral Rite of Stunt Doubles.” While it would be fantastic if I had a stunt double, I didn’t see that happening in the next hour or so. “Summon Milkmaid? Cure Flatulence in Groupies. Dammit, I don’t have any gassy groupies!” I flipped pages frantically now, dismayed at the lack of help. “Tickle the Clown? Is that a clown’s name or is it code for something dirty?” The spells became weirder and more useless the further I got into the grimoire; Unbelievable Ray of Cramps, Unholy Tinsel Storm, Dread Ceremony of the Cabbage Golem, A Rousing Game of Hide and Go Fuck Yourself.
I realized that the words were squirming around on the page subtly as I turned them, the ink sliding and bouncing into different configurations seconds before I could catch a glimpse of what they actually said. I whipped back a page to see if I could make out the real spell there before it changed to something silly. “It’s an enchantment. I can’t see the real spells because this isn’t my book. Ruby, you shifty bitch.” Not only that, but the enchantment was reading my personality, no doubt about it; it was showing me ridiculous things because it sensed that I was ridiculous. It was the first time I’d ever been insulted by an inanimate object. “You cheeky fucker,” I told it defensively. “I wouldn’t cast a fart spell!”
Would the fake spells work, even if I couldn’t see the real ones? What would happen if I cast Dread Ceremony of the Cabbage Golem? Probably, I couldn’t use up the resulting coleslaw before it went bad. I turned to the front of the book to see if there was a code or a key or a clue. The first spell, dated 1896, was called Invoke Back Pain in Haberdasher. The one on the opposite page was Cure Halitosis in Cobbler. “Jiminy jugs, how old do these fake spells think I am?” I didn’t have time to peruse them, though passing Flame Sphere of Warts made me wary about having any of them backfire; I certainly couldn’t say I had nothing to lose. Just before I closed the grimoire, I peered at it again through Elyse’s orb. Nothing changed on the white magic pages. The one I landed on read Release Angry Hippos.
“I should have opened this sooner!” I cried out to whoever wanted to listen. The glow tempted me to investigate the back of the book, but even my woefully underdeveloped sense of self-preservation knew enough to wall that off behind the same shit that sailors put at the edges of their maps where they didn't know what the fuck was out there: Here There Be Serpents.
I heard Umayma’s footsteps tapping back up the stairs and called out, “If you check the lock on the back door, I can get the front. We should make a battle plan, here.” Taking a quick chance before she came back in, I peeked at a random page in the back, and saw it was called Banish Impolite Demon. It glowed quite a bit. Ignoring the danger and fairly certain this spell was real, I grabbed the page and tore it out, stuffing it in the pocket of my jeans. It throbbed in my pocket like a toothache.
Umayma rattled the extra chain lock on the back door, and I slapped the grimoire closed. “I’ll check the front,” I reiterated, and got up to do so.
The office door banged open. Beau’s porkpie hat flew off in his efforts to free his flapping hand from his pocket, and when he did so, a gun pointed wildly at me.
I had time to wonder if there was another page in there for Banish Impolite Dipshit.
Chapter 32
I spared a moment to consider where Umayma could be, as long as Beau didn’t see her. Had she ducked into my bedroom or was she crouching in the mudroom? I hoped she didn’t come investigate.
Beau yelled, “Not another step.”
“You don’t need to point that gun at me,” I said loudly to warn Maim. I was less than a foot from the gun safe under my desk, where my Beretta Cougar was, but I couldn’t open it and get my gun out without him blowing a hole in my skull, even as jittery as his aim was. The thought must have showed on my face.
“You freeze in your flats, missy,” he warned. “Don’t you twitch an eyelash.”
My stomach dropped. To my despair, the Blue Sense reported that the only one in the cabin who was calm was Maim. She’d had plenty of experience at not angering a psychopath; her revenant, Jeremiah Prost, had been unstable evil incarnate. She knew how to play it cool and give the impression of obedience. Deeper in the house, her initial stress softened reflexively to zero defiance. It must have worked on Prost, considering how long she managed to survive as his DaySitter; I tried to match it myself, and it worked now on Beau. His jitters eased, though his determination did not. He was all-in, and I realized that I might not live to see the true Big Bad if his trigger finger got twitchy again.
“Want some peanut butter?” I offered, thinking of the steep stairs in the pantry leading to the cold cement floor outside Harry’s bedchamber door. Maybe I could push him? “I think I have some in the pantry if you wanna—”
“Let’s go,” he snarled at me, motioning with the gun to get outside. “No tricks.”
“Right. Sure. Maybe later, huh? Murder probably makes you hungry. Sure makes me hungry.” I moved obediently toward Beau and my office door. Suspecting I wouldn’t get a proper Villain’s Soliloquy, I asked anyway. “Soooo, is this your first murder, or did you snuff those other folks, post-boffing? You're a little, uh, dude-like to be a black widow or praying mantis. At least one of your victims was human, you know, so you’re going back to jail.”
“So what’s one more life sentence tacked on, right?” he said.
Erp. I sidled carefully but obediently out of my office at his prodding, my heart in my throat. “Sure, sure. Solid logic. Where we goin’?” I had to get Beau inside the salt circle.
He jammed the muzzle against the side of my head, which was rude and distracting. It was also hard, cold, and fucking up my hair. We marched down the hall toward the front door, Beau muttering a non-stop litany of curse words under his breath, me doing so inwardly and being fairly impressed by his repertoire. He had very specific ideas about what he was going to do to me, what he was going to do to Elyse after I helped him find her, and what he’d do if the centaur chariot driver refused him again. None of his ideas sounded particularly well thought out or pleasant, and all of them involved either his dick or his gun, and, in one surprising permutation, a snapping turtle. I wasn’t sure which I’d enjoy least.
His car was in the driveway. I hoped Umayma was texting for help or finding a weapon. For our entire walk through the yard, Beau bragged about all the non-humans he’d “bagged,” and I assumed he meant bagged with his dick. He bragged about his fans for his podcast, and how I wasn’t even half as famous as he was, though I was unclear about what metric he was using to measure said fame. He promised he’d have no trouble making me blow every centaur in the big top, and he’d get it all on film; this would be his revenge. It didn’t make any sense to me, but he was rambling, out of his mind with rage, and I didn’t think it was wise to question his methods. I had a moment of sympathy for Harry, and Hood, and, well, everybody who put up with my being a petulant, hostile pain in the ass, but at least I wasn't being a crinkle-dicked, gun-waving spankbadger about it.
After the third variation on the th
eme of my being a party favor for a centaur gang-bang, I tuned him out and started skimming mentally through spells and possible materials. I had nothing on me except what I was wearing and the pilfered page from Ruby’s grimoire crammed like a squirming leaf in my pants. I cast a grimace at Beau and wondered how I’d never smelled the sulfur on him until now. Probably the damned peanut butter stink.
My heart hammered in my chest as we approached his car, just steps away from the salt circle. The driver’s seat looked empty; I wasn't sure if I expected to see the incubus driving the car wearing a jaunty little chauffeur’s cap or what. Even more disturbingly, I saw a shadow-woman leaning against a tree with one foot braced on the bark. She was well formed, now that she’d peeled off. Her hood cast all but her chin in deep shade. Dark hair spilled out the front of it and over her chest and waved in the wind. From her cupped hands, dark shapes spilled up into the air, formless at first but narrowing as they spiraled forth into fat black birds with bluish heads; grackles. The shadow birds didn’t stay with her. They found a place on the wires above. The Fetch, I thought. My half-shadow. What does she want, and why does her timing suck so heinously?
First things first. I’d have to shove Beau several feet to the side to get him into the circle, and wasn’t sure how I could manage that without him pulling the trigger. I pretended to twist my right ankle, jostling him to that side, and played up a limp on that leg, dropping my hip, clenching my butt, widening the curve of my path. He scowled, and added “one-legged fucktramp” to the litany of crude nonsense that was spilling out of his face-hole.
“Why are you walking like that?” he demanded.
“Not enough fiber in my diet,” I said.
He spotted it just before I had him inside, and clubbed me with the gun. I stumbled and fell to my hands and knees, ear ringing. A trickle of blood dribbled hotly down the side of my face from my hairline.
“You wanna play games? We can play games,” he assured me, bending over at the waist to yell directly into my stunned ear. The muzzle of the gun pressed into my temple where he'd smacked me, and I blitzed through all Hood’s training to decide how to handle this; panic was stealing my lessons. Beau shouted, “We can play some games right here if you want to.”
I grimaced and squinted up at the sky; still bright, at least two hours before dusk. Harry and Wes were no use, in deep VK-Delta and vexed by the sun besides. I wondered if Umayma was trying to figure out the combination on my desk safe to get my gun. Maybe she'd given up on that and was digging through my kitchen utensils for a butcher knife or cleaver or my really big stainless-steel spatula. At this point, I'd be happy if she brained him with a cast-iron skillet.
“Hear me!” Beau cried out, and not to me. “Before you, I bring a living altar upon which to lay your hands. I beseech you, Lord of Lust, accept the sacrifice of this liar, whose tongue drops filth and deception, whose tongue is yours—”
I crawled woozily toward the salt circle and Beau grabbed me by the hair, yanking my head back, a yelp of protest escaping my throat.
“Where are you going?” he asked, ripping at my hair as he dragged me to my feet. I wavered in my socks, dancing nimbly this way and that as he shook me, so I could avoid kicking the salt and opening a hole in the circle. He continued his incantation, “Whose tongue drops filth and deception, whose tongue is yours, Lord of Lust—” He shook me again and Ruby’s spell page wriggled out of my pants and fluttered into the grass.
He looked down at it. A second’s distraction. Taking my chance, I hip-checked him out of the way and dove for the paper. He piled on top of me, but he was barely bigger than I was, and weak from his black magic Blight; I was down half a shadow from my dabbling, but I hadn’t made myself sick. I clutched the page and bucked him off, rolling to my feet when freed of his weight. He aimed the gun at me from the ground and I turned sideways to make a small target then stomped on his knee. Beau howled and sat bolt upright with pain. He fired anyway, the bullet digging a harmless furrow in the grass.
I kicked his hand and the gun went flying. I had him now. Snarling, he tried to get to his feet. Dropping Ruby’s paper, I moved swiftly into a low takedown, controlling his arm and twisting it behind him to put him on his belly in the grass, perfectly centered inside the salt circle.
“Maim!” I shouted as loudly as I could. “Handcuffs! Bedroom! Night table!”
Beau struggled, but he was nowhere near as strong as the men I usually sparred with. I pulled up on his arm and he squealed. His butt came off the ground and I set my knee in the small of his back, grinding. “Stay on the ground, you scrawny little fuck. Maim! A little help here!”
Beau frothed and yelled, and I dug my knee in more fiercely, growling and shouting for Umayma. The sound that came from the car window shut us both up abruptly.
“This soul has been at fast,” the shade said. “It stinks of embertides and abstinence.”
Crap. My eyes snuck sideways to the tiny crack in the tinted, driver’s side window. I didn’t know what embertides and abstinence had to do with anything, or whether my brief sexytimes with Harry didn’t count as indulging, or even what embertides were, but I knew that the stink of sulfur and the feeling of my skin crawling meant demon.
Suddenly, my mind was full of visions, pushed there against my will: a furious horde blowing through with the stinking breath of hell, an enormous three-horned black goat on two legs, and he spoke, and announced himself as He Who Does Not Like Light. Apparently, I was supposed to know him and had lived long enough to meet him, like it was a great honor.
“I've had The Overlord show up at my house dressed as a door-to-door salesman, and I'm supposed to be impressed by you?” I asked, incredulous. “You're an uppity, stinky little fucker for a guy whose nickname sounds like 'I sunburn easily,' sweetcheeks.”
There was a fairly impressive roar of indignation from inside the car, and Beau whimpered, but whether that was from fear or pain, I didn't bother Feeling for the difference.
Umayma whipped open the front door holding my handcuffs, and Bob the Cat shot out through the crack, making a beeline for the honeysuckle at the far gate, where he loved chasing the spriggans. He darted toward me suddenly, the little bell on his collar tinkling madly.
I glanced up to see the Fetch hunched over Ruby’s spell page; her shadow-hand reached for it. Bob pounced, hissing. The Fetch reeled, floating backward like a torn plastic bag caught by the wind. Bob stopped to flick one ear and let out a high-pitched yowl, sitting on Ruby’s paper imperiously like it was a freshly-washed sweater, tail swishing in warning.
“Good kitty!” I said, managing a madly wriggling Beau beneath me. “Maim, cuffs!”
The car door opened behind us; my eyes cut between my misbehaving Fetch and the faint blur in the air that was the only indication of an incorporeal incubus leaking from Beau’s car. The Fetch was sidling closer again as if she were trying to judge the danger of Bob, which I would find ridiculous when I had the leisure to do so. I tried to maintain my hold on the squirming pervert beneath me.
Frustrated, I yelled, “Could you guys maybe gang up on me next time, ‘cuz I’m makin’ this look easy, motherfuckers!”
The Fetch advanced on the cat, her hands crooked like scythes. Bob’s back arched and he hissed, backing away sideways. Umayma hurried toward me with the handcuffs and snatched Ruby’s paper up, dropping the cuffs near me. I didn’t know why my wayward half-shadow wanted the spell, but it couldn’t be a good thing; besides, if my rogue Fetch thought she was putting her filthy hands on my cat, she was one mistaken shred of shadow. I swung my leg over Beau to straddle his arms, clamping down around his upper body with my thighs. I aimed poorly, and my left knee landed nearer his shoulder.
His face darted around to bite my inner thigh through my jeans. I rage-screamed and punched him in the back of the neck, letting go of him long enough to grab for the cuffs.
Umayma found Beau’s gun in the grass and aimed it at us, face set to deadly serious.
“Maim
, if this blubber-monkey moves, shoot him in the ass.” I wrestled Beau into the handcuffs, tightening them more than I had to until he shouted an objection; his hurck! was deeply satisfying. I scanned the yard for where the demon had slunk off to. The sun was starting to go down; Harry and Wes’s VK-Delta rest would begin to lighten soon. “The incubus is here. I need the spell page, Maim.”
Umayma’s dark eyes darted around, not seeing the incubus. Meanwhile, Bob had flattened, butt wiggling, eager to pounce at the Fetch again. My half-shadow did not like the looks of that one bit. She retreated again, sprouting crow-black wings that flapped, and I couldn’t help but think of Wilhelm Dreppenstedt, known at court as the Raven of Night. How fitting that the dark side of my shadow would reflect my Cold Company’s maker. Fuckin' duh, Toots, a familiar voice chided at the back of my mind.
Maim couldn’t recite the spell aloud for me; I’d have to do that bit and hope like hell it worked. She hesitated before handing it to me, and I knew she suspected its source. Keeping the gun trained on Beau, who had weakened to a whining, sobbing mess in the cold grass, she stepped closer until she was just inside the salt circle. Not safe, per se, but safer.
I was worried that my demon-ridding spell had come from the dark side of Ruby Valli’s grimoire, but what choice did I have? I had once released the demon Berith from the ghoul of Danika Sherlock by speaking his names and titles, witnessing him, and inviting him to fuck off. This wouldn’t be quite so easy, I suspected; the weight of the goon helping Beau was far greater than I remembered Berith being.
Bob finally made his move, bounding toward the Fetch, waffling between caution, playfulness, and hunting instinct. He stopped when the Fetch also switched to attack mode. Bob bolted to the porch with a speed to match Harry’s eye-blurring swiftness. The Fetch turned her grey, misty version of my face, a mere outline, toward me and the paper clutched in my hand. She did not cross the salt line.