“You think being some weird hybrid makes you better?” I stood there holding demon fire, like a huge hypocrite. That was what I was, in some ways: able to use demon magic and witch magic at the same time. But it didn’t make me better. More powerful, maybe, but also I was constantly doubting myself and woefully unprepared for situations where I couldn’t use the demon magic. “Seems to me it just means you can’t master either magic.”
I threw my fireball at her. She dodged it and tossed a spell at me in return. It exploded at my feet but it was just another firecracker. It flamed and zipped around the pavement for a moment before extinguishing itself.
“Cute trick,” I said, and gathered more blue flame. I was about to throw it at her chest when the air shifted and a body materialized in front of her.
Mace.
I swore.
Mace’s tall frame and broad shoulders completely blocked Jade from my view. He now wore leather armor over his cotton shirt and he held a broadsword. The sword’s blade was wide, double-edged, and looked sharp. No doubt it had magic to make it as sharp as my old sword. I swallowed, pulse quickening.
Mace had been intimidating before but now, looking for all the world like an avenging angel, he was legitimately frightening.
“If you continue to attack my lady, I will have no choice but to fight you,” Mace said. Something glittered in his eyes. Anger? Or maybe the desire to kick my ass. I didn’t know.
“Your lady has gotten people killed and cursed who knows how many others,” I said, furious Lord Barrel Chest couldn’t keep out of this. “She’s using witch magic against fellow witches. She needs to be brought to justice.”
“I’m afraid I cannot allow that to happen. She has my protection.” He lifted his sword.
I really, really wished I had my sword. But demon fire was pretty potent stuff. I gathered a large fireball, straining to pull energy from my bones and infuse it into the flames.
Mace swung his broadsword, aiming for my wrists. I managed to hold the fireball, keeping it balanced in my hands as I dodged the blow. I tossed the flames at him. It caught the leather of his armor vest and ignited. He swore and swung his sword wildly at me, the blade wooshing over my head as I ducked. It caught several strands of my hair, which floated to the ground like feathers.
The fire on his vest burned out, the spell now out of energy. It left his leather vest scorched and half gone on one side.
I conjured more fire, this time pulling in everything I had, and every ounce of energy I could gather from the air and rain and whatever I had left inside. He kept attacking, swinging his sword at my neck and wrists. I danced backward, working on my blue ball of demon fire. When it was the size of a basketball, I held it up.
“Don’t make me do this,” I told him. “I kind of like you. In an annoying faerie way.”
Mace did not look amused. His expression was hard, determined. The time for playful banter was, in his mind, over. I had threatened his charge and now I needed to be eliminated.
“I warned you, witch,” he called. “Now you pay the price for defiance.”
“I pay that price all the time,” I countered. “Why do you think I’m so broke?”
He raised his sword over his head, getting ready to strike again. I shot the fireball at his chest. It hit its mark, bursting into flame around him even as he started to bring the sword down on my head.
The fire roared around him. He dropped the sword without finishing his swing and conjured water, which poured out of him to no avail. Demon fire couldn’t be extinguished by water.
When that failed, Mace roared and then vanished into thin air. Maybe to the Summerlands. I didn’t know how demon fire would react in the faerie realms, and I hoped I’d never have to find out. Mace’s sword was gone, too, and I was sure he’d be fine. Which meant he could be back at any moment.
I blinked when I saw Jade standing there, frozen to the spot. Her eyes were wide and she looked scared. I was amazed she was still there, that she hadn’t run while Mace distracted me. I even felt a little bad for her. She had trusted in Mace to protect her and vanquish evil old me. She’d managed to get the cuff off, though, which was a pretty neat trick. It was now on the ground at her feet, glittering in the streetlight.
For a moment, we just stared at each other.
“Witches can’t do that fire trick. You’re not what you seem,” she finally said.
“Neither are you,” I replied.
She waved a hand, curling her fingers in the air as if conjuring magic.
“Stop,” I commanded.
But she didn’t stop. I conjured more demon fire but then I felt a small pop! in my shoulder, a sensation similar to eating Pop Rocks, but on my arm. My eyes widened. I let the fire I’d summoned go out.
“What did you do?” I demanded, shrugging off my coat to look at whatever new horror she’d put on me.
Black ink beaded up out of my skin and ran down my shoulder, streaking down my arm. I stared, mesmerized, as the tattoo bubbled away. A weight I hadn’t realized I’d been carrying lifted from my shoulders.
I turned back to Jade, stunned. “You lifted the curse.”
She shrugged. “It wasn’t fun anymore, anyway.”
“Not fun?” I really did not understand her. “Are you fucking kidding me? Was this some kind of game to you?”
She shrugged again. “More like an experiment, I guess.”
I wanted to strangle her but at the same time, she’d just undone the curse. She wasn’t all bad, clearly, even if she was easily the most irritating person I’d ever crossed paths with. I stepped forward, raising my hands as if I might make another fireball. “Undo Krissy’s curse.”
She sighed. “You’re no fun, you know that?”
“So I’m told.”
Jade lifted her hands again and did the same motions with her hands, muttering something under her breath. When she finished, she looked at me expectantly. “We square?”
No, we’re not square, I thought angrily. And I had no idea if she’d really lifted Krissy’s curse or if that was all for show. But there was no way to tell until I got word from Krissy. Hell, for all I knew she hadn’t lifted my curse and it was some illusion. If I hadn’t felt the magic spell break, I wouldn’t even give her the benefit of the doubt.
“You need to lift the curses from anyone else you inked,” I demanded.
She sighed and did more magic. I wondered just how many people she’d cursed.
“You can’t do it again,” I said when she finished.
“Atramancy is powerful with my fae magic to brew the ink,” she said, as if that made it okay. That was the faerie mentality speaking: magic was power and power was for using. Idle power was worthless.
“No more curses. People died.”
“I didn’t mean for that to happen,” she said sullenly. Suddenly, she looked very young. I wondered how old she really was. The fae didn’t age like normal humans, stopping around their early twenties. But if Jade really was, say, twenty, it explained a lot. “I was just testing my powers. It’s not like I had anyone to teach me. And then you came and tried to ruin it.”
“I was trying to save someone you hurt. Krissy’s life got turned upside down by your curse! You have no idea the damage you inflicted on people.” I’d only been cursed for a couple of days. It had taken only a week to ruin that poor dead guy’s life, and a few months to totally destroy Krissy’s. Who knew how many others hadn’t survived? “You got people killed.”
Jade bowed her head. I hoped she was really sorry, and not just acting. The fae weren’t known for their empathy, particularly toward mortals, whom they often saw as beneath them.
“I had to test my magic somehow,” she said. “I knew witches like you wouldn’t help me.”
“Why not?” I demanded.
“Because you don’t like people with different magic any more than the Fae do,” she said.
She wasn’t wrong about that. My fingers still tingled from using my own different, ill
egal magic. The Council would hate it because it was demonic, but more, they’d hate it because it was different and they’d want to snuff it out. Snuff me out.
Almost as if on cue, Conor came running around the corner. He was panting and covered in little scrapes and bruises, but he was otherwise unharmed.
“You,” he hissed at Jade, who startled. He barreled toward her.
“Wait,” I said, surprising even myself. Jade had done bad things. Unforgivable really, especially to the people whose loved ones had died from her curse’s bad luck. But she was young and fresh out of the Summerlands. She deserved some sort of punishment, just not the Watcher’s draconian variety.
Conor froze, shooting me a questioning look.
“She undid the curses,” I said.
Conor’s brow furrowed and he shook his head. “So? She can’t undo the death of that woman. Or that man. Or her receptionist.”
“Joel is dead?” Jade wailed, her voice going up an octave. Her face crumpled.
“That wasn’t technically her fault,” I pointed out. Two of the victims had died by arrows from a faerie assassin who was trying to kill Jade. The red cap wasn’t working with her. Then again, at least one had fallen victim to the bad luck of her curse, and who knew if others had died the same way.
Still, the more I thought about it, the more putting a half-faerie in the hands of the Council sounded like a bad idea. Not only for Jade, but for everyone: both faerie courts wanted her. That was enough to spark a war between the witches and the fae, and that wasn’t a war I thought the witches would win.
“She put your client in harm’s way by placing a curse on her head, and she cursed you,” Conor said. “Besides, having fae magic with witch magic is new. She needs to be evaluated by the Council so they can decide what to do.”
I frowned. That was exactly what I wanted to avoid.
Jade deserved to be punished for what she’d done. Her victims deserved justice. But no one deserved to be left to the Council’s devices, especially not someone they’d see as an anomaly. They were likely to hide her away in some dark hole to prevent other witches from getting any ideas about the fae, same as the Unseelie court wanted Jade dead. But the Council might also perform cruel and horrible experiments on Jade to learn the extent of her power and see what a half-fae, half-witch could do.
I shuddered at the thought.
“She’s still part fae,” I said. “Maybe we should send her back to them.”
Conor looked at me as if I’d grown a second head.
“I can’t go back,” Jade said. “They won’t have me in the Summerlands anymore. Said witches aren’t welcome.”
“I need to arrest her,” he said, his voice low. “It’s my job. You have to let me do my job.”
I put my hands up, palms flat to tell him I wasn’t going to fight him. “I know. I’m just saying, maybe there’s a better answer.”
“Better how?” Conor asked, out of patience.
He would never understand. He saw the Council at the pinnacle of justice and righteousness. He wouldn’t even begin to consider that what they might do to this young woman wouldn’t be right or fair.
I shook my head. I didn’t know how to make him see that.
He marched over to Jade, who didn’t run. Maybe she was tired of running. Or maybe she just figured Mace would reappear and get her out of it.
I saw movement in my periphery. At first, I thought it was exactly that: Mace coming to the rescue. I doubted my demon fire had done more than burn his clothes and piss him off and I was expecting his return.
But then I saw the hood. It was the red cap, the Unseelie assassin. He peeled out of the shadows, aiming his bow and arrow at Jade.
No, at Conor.
Well, at Jade, but Conor was in the way.
Everything happened in slow motion.
I shouted. Conor turned to me, curious. I gestured behind him, yelling at him to move. Conor frowned at me.
The red cap loosed his arrow.
For less than a second, I watched it fly toward Conor’s back, my pulse racing. It was just an arrow. Unless it was poisoned, it would only kill him if it hit a vital organ.
It might hit a vital organ.
And it was probably poisoned. The other arrows had been.
I screamed but the arrow was fast, hurdling through the air at Conor’s back.
Jade’s head turned sideways in time to see the arrow, her eyes going wide. She screamed, too, and Conor finally started to turn.
I didn’t have my sword. I didn’t have precision aim with the dagger.
But I had demon fire. It could stop the arrow, burn it to ash in a millisecond with blazing hot flame.
The decision was made before I even finished the thought, the demon fire already in my hand. I didn’t look at Conor’s face as I raised the blue demonic fireball and threw it at the arrow.
The fireball caught the arrow only feet from Conor, knocking it off course and incinerating it to ash at the same time. The ashes rained down on the pavement. Conor finished turning and stared at the debris, still trying to make sense of what had just happened.
Since I’d just totally screwed myself, I decided to go for broke and rounded on the red cap.
He was already firing another arrow. I shot fire at it, stopping it before it left the bow. The bow went up in flames. The red cap dropped it as the fire spread to the parts he was holding and he stomped on his burning weapon as if that might put it out.
Then the red cap sneered at me, pulling out a knife. I threw a fireball where it would hurt most—at the precious hood of his sweatshirt, the one soaked in the blood of all his kills. The sweatshirt burst into flame and the red cap roared in anger, turning tail and running away even as his sweatshirt burned. I doubted the fire would hurt him. It might singe him but he’d take the sweatshirt off before it did any real damage.
My heart hammered so hard in my chest I thought it was going to explode.
I turned and saw Conor staring at me. My stomach roiled. His expression was unreadable again, his eyes wide, jaw clenched.
Behind him, Jade nodded at me in some kind of twisted solidarity and then quickly took off, seizing the opportunity to escape.
Conor didn’t notice, or if he did, he didn’t care.
I’d just rocked his world, and not in the way I’d hoped.
Chapter 19
Conor’s stare was so intense that it set my nerves on fire. My hair stood on end and bile traveled up my throat. He wasn’t saying anything and that was worse, somehow.
I’d just given away my secret. He knew I could wield demon fire. There was no denying it now, because he’d seen it with his own eyes. I’d done it to save his life. That assassin had killed at least two people with poisoned arrows and he would have killed Conor if I hadn’t stepped in.
And now Conor was going to try to arrest me and drag me off to the dungeon, where the Magic Council would get to decide my fate.
I knew what they’d decide. I was a witch using demon magic. That was illegal. It didn’t matter that I had it because I’d been possessed by a demon who’d somehow left the power behind when I fought him out. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t wanted demon magic, nor that I used it for good. The Magic Council didn’t care about mitigating factors. They only cared about their laws.
The tension was palpable. Conor’s inscrutable expression hardened, as if his face were turning to stone. His blue eyes were ice cold.
When the silence finally got to be too much, I said, “What, you’re not going to thank me for saving your ass?” My voice shook a little even as I tried to sound flippant. Like this was normal. Except I’d just decimated the chances of anything between Conor and I ever being normal again.
Conor narrowed his eyes further. He looked back at the small pile of ash on the pavement, and then to where the red cap had stood, as if trying to puzzle things out, like he still couldn’t work out what had happened. Maybe he just didn’t want to believe it.
Finally, h
e turned back to me.
“That was demon fire,” he said. It came out as an accusation, but there was a hint of a question there, too, like he wanted me to deny it and tell him he was wrong.
Maybe I should have. But there wasn’t much point. He’d known I was hiding something. Now he knew what.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s kind of a long story, actually, but I can wield demon fire.”
His expression didn’t soften. If anything, his eyes grew colder. A chill iced my veins. My tongue felt dry. He kept staring like he was trying to make me disappear with his mind.
Awkward silence stretched between us and I could feel the distance grow. Despite myself, I’d started thinking of Conor as a friend. Sure, he was handsome and hot, but he also had a strong work ethic, he wasn’t afraid to do what was necessary, and he didn’t question me when I gave him directions. We’d built up some trust between us and I’d just shattered it.
“It’s not what you think,” I said after another moment. “I didn’t ask for this power. But I have it and so I use it when I need to. I use it to save lives.”
“Demon magic is an abomination,” he spat. Actually spat, like the words themselves disgusted him.
I recoiled. Ice trickled down my spine, freezing my bones. “Demon magic saved you from getting a poisoned faerie arrow through the heart.”
He glared at me, so angry it nearly made him vibrate. He shook his head, running a hand through his inky black hair. He looked like he wanted to say something else. And then he turned and started walking away, in the direction of the Doghouse where he’d left his SUV.
“Conor,” I called.
He didn’t turn back to look at me. He kept walking. I watched him go until he was out of sight.
Then I stood there alone, frozen with a cold that had nothing to do with the frigid night air.
* * *
I shoved my stuff into office boxes, dumping the entire contents of drawers into the cardboard containers. I’d made a minimal effort to sleep but a sickness kept sloshing around my stomach and I’d given up by six in the morning. So now I was in my office, packing it up.
Demon Rogue: Brimstone Magic - Book 3 Page 14