by Lucy Auburn
I swallow it, force it down like I force down everything I feel. “I don’t remember telling you my name.”
“You’ve summoned us a few times in the past twenty-four hours, although we weren’t always corporeal like we are right now—at least, until her soul is gone from this plane.” He motions towards the dead blonde lady, whose blood is gonna leave a stain Sticky won’t bother to clean up. “Needless to say, we figured out your name. But that’s not the important part.”
I blink at him. “What is the important part, then?”
“Letting us go.” As he talks, Ezra fishes around in his leg and pulls the bullet out somehow, which is way less disgusting than ripping a guy’s junk off but still turns my stomach quite a bit. “When we were summoned last night, we had business to finish before we could return to our home.”
“Hell?”
“Of a sorts.”
Lynx chimes in, as he unwinds his rope from the dead body, “We like to call it the First Circle, after Dante’s Inferno.”
Poisoner—Sebastian is too soft a name for him—grunts. “You like to call it that, nerd. The rest of it just call it Purgatory.”
“Or Little Hell,” offers Mateo. “Y’know, like Little Italy or Little China.”
“Things that don’t matter, guys.” Ezra looks up towards the ceiling, like he’s praying the other three will choke and die just so he can get some uninterrupted time to speak. “What matters, Dani, is this: when you died last night and were reborn into your phoenix form, we were anchored to you, at least partially. Enough that our souls are tied to this plane, though our corporeal forms aren’t here unless they’re needed, like they were just now. We need you to do a special ceremony to release us.”
“At least that’s what we think,” Lynx adds. “We’re not really sure exactly how or why we’re tied to you, we just need you to let us go.”
“That’s not entirely true,” Mateo says. My eyes go to him, and I notice he’s picking his fingernails with the end of a switchblade that appeared out of nowhere. “We do know at least one thing, or we suspect it, which is—”
Out of nowhere, Poisoner hip-checks him and pushes him to the ground. “Shut up, idiot.”
I frown at them. “What? What do you know? If it can help me stop being haunted by all of you, tell me.”
Scowling, Mateo grabs Poisoner’s hand and pulls him down to the ground with him. Then, before my disbelieving eyes, they start wrestling like little boys.
“You didn’t have to do that Sebastian!”
“Yes I did, you idiot!”
Ezra glares at the two, and they calm down enough to stop wrestling. Then he answers my question. “We suspect that the answer to all our questions, and yours, are in a book called The Arcane Arts of the Living and the Dead.”
“I remember that mouthful! Richard had that book.”
“Yes, well, you need to get your own copy. Luckily for you there’s one at the top level library of the Phoenix Academy—which I can’t help but notice you seem to have dropped out of before even making it to your first class. Congratulations; I think that’s the shortest matriculation they’ve ever seen.”
I frown at him. “I didn’t belong there. They have phoenix fire classes.”
“Classes you’re going to need when people like this are hunting you.”
He nudges the dead woman’s body with the toe of his boot, but there’s little effect to his effort; the moonlight is already starting to stream through him. He’s going incorporeal.
“I don’t know why I’m being hunted,” I tell him. “I’m pretty sure it’s all your fault, though, so if stealing some more books from that place will help, I’ll do it.”
“We can’t steal those books. It wouldn’t be right. They belong in the library.” Lynx frowns at me, crossing his strong arms around his chest. It’s hard to accept that the nerd who defends books and quotes history is the same guy I saw strangle Jake to death with his bare hands. “Besides, we won’t be able to get in there—it’s warded, and we already tried it when you summoned us last night in your sleep.”
“I didn’t—” Sighing, I shake my head. There’s no use in arguing with them; whatever is going on, it’s clear that somehow I’m tied to them, maybe because I died and came back to life. “Fine, okay. How do we get into the library?”
“It’s simple,” Ezra says. “You show up to your damned classes, and admit to yourself that you’re a phoenix.” He glares over at Mateo for some reason as he emphasizes, “A phoenix whose death somehow tied you to us.”
Grunting, Sebastian says, “The academy may be a stuffy place full of know-it-alls, but they’ve got the best combat instructors around. They’ll teach you how to protect yourself.”
“And we know why you’re being hunted,” Lynx adds. “It’s because of what you are, and it won’t stop until you’re dead, or know how to hide and defend yourself.”
“I’m not a phoenix,” I mumble, though I’m not even sure I sound convincing; I don’t even completely believe myself.
“Yes you are,” Mateo says, sounding frustrated more than anything. “I don’t know why you’d want to pretend otherwise. Phoenix are badasses—they literally can summon fire. I need tinder or accelerant to do that. You can just do it with your hands.”
The memory of a bathtub full of water exploding in flames dances across my mind, and I swallow. I did do something with my hands earlier, and even stop time.
Maybe the demons—and I can’t believe I’m considering listening to them—are right. Maybe I really am a phoenix, and I need to stop running away just because it’s a habit of mine.
“Okay.” I cross my arms and face them, which is easier now that they’re all a little translucent and I know they can’t touch or hurt me. “So let’s say we go to this library, and I release you or whatever. Won’t you just keep doing what you do—slaughtering people? Why shouldn’t I burn you with fire or something? You’re evil after all.”
It’s Sebastian who answers me, an angry snarl in his voice. “We’re not the evil ones, you sanctimonious fool. It’s those who summon us, who use us, who are evil. They tie us to this plane without freedom of choice.”
He stalks towards me, and even though I know he can’t touch me, I have to fight the instinct to back away in fear.
“You think you know evil?” He sneers at me. “Evil is what Lynx sees in the souls of those we send to the afterlife. Evil is what we’re forced to do by the will of others. The worst evil of all is what was done to us to make us what we are, but even that is nothing compared to what your—”
“Enough.” Ezra’s voice cracks the air like a whip, and it makes Sebastian jerk, his hand brushing against my arm.
The shiver that goes through me is undeniable, and based on the way poisonous Sebastian’s blue eyes widen, I can tell he feels it too. That undeniable heat and sensation that goes through me when they touch me, when they’re joined with me—it’s enough to make me sick.
Mostly because I want to see what happens if he does it again.
But thankfully, Sebastian steps back from me, and I’m too wary to reach out and touch him just to see if I can get a little more of the way it feels when his incorporeal form brushes against me.
“Let’s go,” Ezra says. “There’s no reason to stick around here. The sooner we find that book, the sooner we can undo whatever happened the other night that stuck us all together.”
“Let me just grab my things,” I tell him.
As I do, I walk past Mateo—and he puts his hand out, just enough that it skims my thigh. Jerking around, I look over at him, and he smirks. He knows exactly what I feel when he touches me.
It feels like a little slice of what I can only imagine sex feels like.
Tearing my eyes away, I grab my stuff and do my best not to let any of them close to me again, thinking don’t touch, don’t touch over and over in my head. It seems to work, because I get down the stairs and out of Sticky’s house without another spine-tingling interacti
on with their non-corporeal selves.
The last thing I want to do is think about having sex with a ripped, gorgeous, murderous demon whose soul is somehow tied to me; or even worse, four of them.
As far as I know, demon sex is the last way you’re supposed to lose your virginity.
Chapter 10
Things don’t get any less weirdly sexually charged on the way back to the academy. It’s nighttime, so I don’t feel safe walking down the street by myself, which for some reason means that the demons have to follow me.
Really have to.
“Would you stop being all anxious and shit?” Sebastian mutters as I dart across a dark street, eyes on a guy walking alone three blocks away. “I don’t exactly like fading away into nothingness, but being yanked along behind you isn’t that much better.”
“I dunno, I like the view back here,” Mateo quips, and I feel the distinct sensation of eyes hungrily staring at my ass. “I’ll take this over nothingness any day.”
“Wait.” I stop at a cross walk, aware I must look crazy talking to four invisible demons, but equally unable to ignore them. “You guys turn into nothing when you’re not haunting me?”
“Apparently.” Mateo shrugs. “It’s not super pleasant.”
Lynx, it seems, is the nerdiest of the bunch. “Nothingness isn’t the right word for it. We still exist, and we’re still aware of the mortal plane, but we can’t interact with it or even really fully observe it. Actually, the sensation reminds me of the feeling I get when we travel between planes to return to Purgatory, except its prolonged and uncomfortable.”
“Yeah man!” Mateo snaps. “It’s totally like hitching a ride together back to Little Hell.”
I decide I might as well cross the street, even though the light isn’t green; maybe getting hit by a car and dying a second time will get these four off of me.
As I cross, Mateo somehow jumps in front of me, nearly giving me a heart attack. Affronted, I try to step around him—and he steps with me, blocking my way.
Ezra observes this with irritation in his eyes. “You can just walk through him, you know.”
“Yeah Dani. Walk right through me.” Mateo smirks, and I loathe the way I feel, like I’m in high school getting teased by the hottest guy in class, my heart thumping and leaping stupidly.
But there’s a car down the road, and I don’t have the light, so I force myself to keep walking. As I pass through Mateo—really pass through him, not just brush against him—I get this electric tingle in my spine. It starts at my lower back and rushes through to my fingertips and toes, a sensation that I can only imagine drugs would come close to, one that feels like it’s setting me on fire just a little.
I have to bite my lower lip to keep from making a noise, because I have no idea what would come out of my mouth right now—a whimper, maybe, or a moan.
“No big deal.” I jump the last step to the sidewalk, ignoring the smirk Mateo is aiming at my back. “Just walking through demons after midnight.”
I’m definitely not going to mention the sex-and-drugs sensation; I won’t give Mateo the satisfaction. I like to think I hid it well, but based on the way Ezra is observing me he knows something is up.
“It’s strange,” Lynx says, walking alongside me, his gaze unnerving. “I still can’t see into your soul. I thought I would be able to by now, but for some reason I just... can’t. I wonder if there’s a book about it in the academy library.”
Sebastian groans. “Don’t tell me we’re going to have to put up with you going full nerd while we try to get her to banish us back to Purgatory. It’ll take forever.”
I bristle at his insult. “Hey! I’ll have you know that I graduated high school without even trying. I’m sure I can figure out how to do whatever this spell thing is. After all, Richard did it, and he was kind of an idiot.”
Rest in peace, and all that.
“Oh, right.” Sebastian grins, a very strange expression on his normally dark and brooding face. “I almost forgot how fun that was. Man, he squealed like a stuck pig when I tore that thing off of him. Makes me wish I could do it over and over again.”
I’m glad I’ve only eaten dinner rolls recently, because the way he’s waxing poetic about Richard’s severed dick has me feeling nauseous. “I can’t believe you did that. It was so gross. And kind of cruel.”
Lynx speaks up. “You know what was really gross? What he did to his thirteen-year-old neighbor, who he used to babysit.” I get quiet at his words, steps faltering a little, even though I’ve got the way to where we’re going memorized. “I see into human souls—well, most of them, at least. That guy got what he deserved and then some.”
“Okay, but what about the others?” It feels weird sticking up for the Fern Valley assholes, but if I’m going to be stuck with these guys haunting me I have to sate my curiosity. “Sure, Leila stole a few girls’ boyfriends, and Taylor couldn’t shut up about being rich. But they weren’t that bad.”
“Leila purposefully got a friend hooked on opiates because she was mad they wore the same dress to prom.” Lynx holds up a finger, like he’s ticking them off one by one. “During his internship at his parents’ non-profit charity, Taylor stole so much money from the petty cash that they fired a secretary for it. She now lives on the street and has a record.” Another finger.
“Amanda spread so many rumors at school that a girl tried to kill herself, and over the summer she posed as her online girlfriend and encouraged her to cut ‘up the stream this time’ when they broke up. That girl is now in a coma.” Three fingers. I’m starting to feel like I might really be sick. “And Jake? He wasn’t a rapist like Richard, but he did manipulate underage girls into having condomless sex during his spring break in Cabo, even though he knew he was an HIV risk. You don’t even want to know what happened to those girls.”
I’m quiet for a moment, and I can feel the ease of the guys around me. They’re perfectly fine discussing the sins of dead people they brutally murdered. It’s a reminder that each of them, no matter how normal they look on the outside, is a vengeful demon psychopath.
“The things you described are bad,” I admit to Lynx, as we turn the corner and the glowing sign of the Indian grocery store is visible up ahead: Patel’s Grocery, in all its glory. “I didn’t know they all did that. To be honest, they weren’t really my friends.”
Sebastian wryly mutters, “You don’t say? And here I thought all friends tried to remove each other’s entrails to cast a demonic summoning spell.”
“That’s the thing!” I get to the heart of what’s been bothering me this whole time. “You said they summoned you, right? Or tried to—whatever spell they did, whatever book Richard had, it brought you here and tied you to me. So why kill them? What happened?”
Ezra is the one who explains. “When we’re summoned to the mortal plane, one of two things happens: either we’re enslaved to our summoner and forced to complete a task, or a spell goes awry, the summoner is too weak to control us, and we have to weigh their souls and give them consequences.”
“Usually we just curse them and take away their memories,” Mateo explains, picking up his pace to walk alongside me—a little too close for comfort. “This time, though, Lynx looked into their souls and saw nothing but shit.”
Lynx continues, “What were we supposed to do, let them summon us a second time, enslave us, and be forced do their bidding?” His mouth tightens into a thin line. “They were willing to drug you and tear your entrails out while you were still alive just to take our power and control us. If they tried a second time, they very well could have succeeded. And we wouldn’t have had a choice except to do whatever they forced us to do.”
“Oh.” I stop on the sidewalk in front of the grocery store, mind whirling. Suddenly it all makes sense, and I find myself understanding their point of view, which either makes them less demonic or me a little messed up in the head. Maybe both. “You killed them to keep them from doing something worse.”
“Exactly,”
Ezra says, sounding weary. “When we make the choice to leave a mortal alive with knowledge of how to summon us, we’re giving them impossible power. We have to kill those who would use it for evil.”
“Also,” Sebastian adds with a smirk, “murder is really, really fun. At least when you get creative with it.”
He’s clearly the one of the four with the sadistic streak.
I’m about to ask another question, my mind stuck on a moment that’s been replaying in my head, something that happened when I was about three. It’s my earliest memory, as far as I know. But before I can ask them, I spot someone through the glass of the front door of the grocer’s, and a chill goes through me.
It’s Headmaster Lana Towers herself, in the flesh.
And something about the look in her eyes tells me I’m in trouble.
I force myself to walk through the door to the grocery store, which is empty of everyone save the headmaster, and ignore the snickering that follows me as each of the demons phases through the glass.
“Someone’s in trouble,” Mateo murmurs. “Watch out, she might burn you alive.”
Sebastian calls out in a singsong voice, “Do you think she’ll really punish you, Dani?”
Even Ezra says, “Based on the look on her face, you might not be allowed to fail at those classes you skipped out on.”
It’s Lynx who saves me. “Shut up already. She’s about to talk—I’ve always wanted to study a Red Phoenix up close.”
Red Phoenix? I don’t have time to figure out if that was something the headmaster covered in her lecture that I forgot, or if it’s new information. Lynx is right; she’s talking.
“...very disappointed in you. Do you know how many people we have combing the city for you? Far too many for one student. And since trying to pick up your phoenix trail is risky, because it could help the Grims find you, they’re doing it the old fashioned way. Not to mention the numerous objects I found missing from the hallway outside your room. What do you have to say for yourself?”
“Ah, right.” I reach into my smiley face bag and pull out a couple of the rare books—then, after seeing her I-will-murder-you expression intensify, fish all of them out. “I kind of, uh, took these. Because they looked interesting.”