Demon in the Machine

by Lise MacTague

  “What’s the problem, dearest Holcroft?” Beruth sneered at him. “This is not working as advertised.”

  “The magic is sound,” he said in protest. “I know it is! Someone must be shielding the grimoire.” The vellum had shifted; the magic had worked. It was primed, but it couldn’t latch on to its target.

  “A convenient excuse.”

  “It is no excuse. As long as the grimoire is shielded, I won’t be able to find it. They can’t shield it forever.” He bent back over the table, his chin on his hands. As long as it takes, he told himself.

  “Bah, this is as useless as you are.” Beruth swept away, the imps rising like a cloud around her. “My children shall track it down.”

  “Best of luck. If it’s shielded from me, they won’t find it either.”

  “If it is shielded by anything other than your incompetence, you mean.” If Beruth could have slammed the door to the bed chamber, he was sure she would have.

  He refused to be distracted by her harsh words. He knew this would work, eventually. And when the thief let down his guard, he would strike.

  Chapter Twenty

  The grimoire was fascinating. From what Briar could read, it represented at least four generations of magicians, spanning twenty-five to thirty years. Each one picked up where the previous magician left off. Indeed, there were notations in many of the margins and notes in different hands adjusting the inscriptions of various spells. Some of the notes even made the spells more effective, though many did next to nothing.

  Briar ran her fingers over each page as she read the inscriptions and accompanying annotations. She’d donned her gloves after about three pages. There were too many emotions involved in the creation of the book’s contents. The lust, ugly and raw, was as difficult to deal with as the alternating pain and exultation. She might have learned more without the barrier between the grimoire and her skin, but she would have been in quite a state of discomfort.

  It wasn’t unusual to see so many magicians in one grimoire, nor was it unusual to see them over such a relatively short period of time. The lifespan for practitioners of the infernal arts tended to be brief. If their apprentices didn’t turn on their masters, something would go wrong with an inscription. Perhaps they’d attempt to summon a demon; more alarmingly, they might succeed.

  It was not always possible to tell which fate had befallen each magician, save the second to last one. The last spell in his—or possibly her—hand, was one of summoning. The magician in question had neglected to specify which order of demon they wanted to bring to this plane. Chances were good they’d bitten off more than they could chew and that a demon had come through that was stronger than the runes of protection included in this particular summoning inscription. His apprentice must not have been around or the next set of handwriting wouldn’t have been there.

  There was another set of handwriting, in addition to that of the apprentice. This one had excellent grasp of the infernal tongue. If Briar hadn’t known better, she would have assumed the words belonged to a demon. It was too glib, too facile with the language, and the annotations demonstrated a grasp of grammar not usually seen in someone who hadn’t been raised in the tongue. However, demons didn’t stick around to help magicians, not unless compelled. Few magicians realized how poor their grasp of the language was. Arrogance was a prevailing quality among them, and she didn’t envision a demon being summoned for the purpose of teaching its language. Summoned to pay back slights—whether real or imagined—or to deliver power and riches, yes. Summoned for tutoring, most unlikely.

  As she delved deeper into the most recent additions to the grimoire, she became more and more alarmed. There were some rather unorthodox ideas here. The apprentice had some mechanical aptitude, that was clear. Holcroft, at least she assumed it was him, had taken the spells he learned from his master in a much different direction than she had seen before. He seemed to be attempting to apply properties from the human realm to infernal magic. She couldn’t fault his reasoning, more often than not, nor his results. Most magicians, if they dealt with mechanical workings at all, did what LaFarge tried to. They applied infernal magic to human constructions. To do it the other way around was quite unheard of, and yet Holcroft’s ideas were plausible, for the most part.

  Briar turned to the last of the written pages. He’d included plans for something he called a demoniac battery. It might store energy, but to her eyes, it had more in common with alchemical treatises from decades previous. Was he deliberately including alchemy along with engineering into some unholy amalgam of technology-driven magic? Or was that mere coincidence? It was impossible to tell without talking to the inventor or at the very least reading more of his notebooks. There had to be something else. The grimoire contained ideas that were close to fully formed. Where was he working out the details of his contraptions?

  Not far away, Isabella started humming a tuneless ditty. She had many good qualities, Briar granted, but musicianship did not seem to be one of them. Not only could Briar not identify the song, but she was reasonably certain most of the notes were flat. She cringed. Still, it was nice to work in proximity with her. She rarely worked where anyone could observe her. Usually it was to protect knowledge of her abilities from being revealed to the wrong person or indeed anyone. Isabella already knew the worst of her secrets and didn’t seem to care.

  It’ll be fine, Briar told herself. This is nice. We’re working together on the same project. Her jaw muscles flexed at a particularly flat note and she made herself stop grinding her teeth. Normal people work together all the time.

  Isabella stopped humming and started ratcheting on something. Briar tried not to let it distract her. She forced herself to pay attention to the page in front of her.

  This one wasn’t a battery, as the previous pages had outlined. It was the engine that powered the Mirabilia carriages, its inscriptions laid out for her to read with ease. She read the description of the intended effects with mounting horror. This didn’t harness energy or store it as many of the other spells were designed to do. This inscription seemed designed to hold two different locations at the same place. She knew of no way to do such a thing in the mortal realm, nor in the infernal realm. This plan borrowed from both places. It created a pocket of overlap between the planes. The next page described a transfer of energy spell. In itself, that was no big thing; it was the basis of much infernal magic, after all. What made this incantation so insidious was that it described not the transfer of energy from the infernal to the mortal plane, but from an infernal being to the mortal plane. Each version of the spell would have to be different and include the signature of that demon.

  “Dear me,” she said, staring at the inscription.

  “What? What is it?” Isabella pivoted to look at her.

  “He’s done the impossible or next to.” Briar looked over at the exposed engine they had removed from the earl’s carriage days ago. “He’s figured out how to power spells with demons themselves instead of the energy from their realm.”

  “Isn’t that already being done?”

  “Not at all. Magicians create small tears between this world and that of my mother’s. Energy leaks through the tear. Its potency is in the transfer from one plane to the next. In turn, mortal energy leaks through to the demon world. It’s a small, more or less stable tear that seals itself over time. Certain inscriptions can extend that time and make them near enough to permanent, but usually the effect fades after a while.”

  “Which is why I have to get LaFarge to redo the enchantments on my equipment from time to time.”

  “Exactly. He’s made himself a shortcut by engraving the runes into your equipment, and all he has to do is fill them with the appropriate fluid and they’ll be reactivated. That’s what is in the supposed fuel cylinders. They’re filled with blood that reactivates the inscription and keeps it active. They don’t fuel the horseless so much as they fuel the spell. What our inventor has done by powering his inventions with demons instead of th
eir energy is create a tear that grows over time. It’s much more potent, and the fabric between our plane and that of the demons is worn thin. Eventually, the demon will be able to influence what is going on in our world. At some point, he will be able to enter our world.”

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “You see my concern then? The atmosphere here is quite inimical to demon-kind. The opposite holds true as well. I dare say that if you were to spend time upon the plane of my birth, you would be very uncomfortable and would end up sickly and weak. You might even die, though you seem of sturdy enough health for that to be unlikely. Demons summoned here, especially those of the lower orders, have the same problem. They must be protected within the circle of summoning or banished soon after or they’ll die. The imps who chased us last night were suffering from exposure to your world, which is why they were so easy to defeat. As a hybrid, I am able to survive on either plane, which isn’t always the advantage you might think it is.”

  “That’s not so bad.” Isabella exhaled. “I thought we were in some real trouble.”

  “We still are. Imagine a demon that has been taking in energy from our realm. This is what is used to power magic on the infernal plane. He is full of as much energy as he can possibly hold, and then he comes over. It will be much longer before he starts to suffer the effects of this world, if at all. Mortal energy may well inure him completely to the deleterious effects of the human world.”

  “Why would somebody do such a thing? It makes no sense.”

  “Who knows. Our mysterious inventor could be insane. It certainly isn’t unheard of among practitioners of the dark arts. Or he could be working with a demon who is trying to gain an advantage in the infernal realm. This has the potential to transfer a great deal of mortal energy to the other world. I’d have a better idea of which of the realm’s princes would stand to benefit if I knew which demons the spell targeted. The imps by themselves aren’t a good indicator. They are used as fodder by many of the rest of the infernal races.”

  The lift at the other end of the workshop groaned to life again. Isabella’s head snapped up. “We need to hide the grimoire.”

  “Very well.” A large piece of canvas drop cloth seemed like it would do the job. Briar folded it in half and settled it carefully over the book, careful not to disturb any of the runes.

  “That won’t work.” Isabella whisked the cloth back off it. “That can only be LaFarge. If he gets hold of this book, nothing good will come of it.”

  With an irritated twitch of her wrist, Briar settled the canvas back over the tome. “It will have to work. If we move the book out of the circle, it will be exposed.”

  Isabella glanced over her shoulder. The lift was far enough down to see a pair of shoes, but it still had a long way to go. “The man is an odious plodder with no real power. This could give him what he’s always wanted. Do you really want it falling into his hands?”

  “Of course I don’t!” At Isabella’s shushing motion, Briar lowered her voice to an insistent hiss. “Of course I don’t, but there is a very real possibility that somebody is waiting for the grimoire to be revealed. If that happens…I don’t know what will happen.”

  The finish was somewhat less convincing than she’d hoping for. She sighed. Not knowing was the worst of it. How could she plan if she didn’t know what would transpire? She didn’t even know who the players were, beyond some hazy suppositions.

  Isabella threw off the canvas shroud and closed the book. She flung out her hand toward a large cabinet on the far side of the workshop. “Open that up and clear off a shelf. Don’t worry about breaking anything. You can make a new spell in there. I’ll bring the book over when you’re done. If we’re lucky, Holcroft won’t be watching.”

  Briar hesitated and looked back at the slowly descending elevator. It was almost halfway down. If she hurried, she might have the time.

  The cabinet was quite deep, and Briar thought it might be possible to make a circle big enough for the grimoire. She seized the doors and heaved back on them. They didn’t move. Desperately, she jiggled the handles and they opened quite easily, throwing her off balance. Inside, all manner of tools littered the shelves. A portion of her mind tutted disapprovingly at the disarray before she reached out and cleared the middle shelf with one swipe of her arm.

  She tugged the glove off her left hand and looked around. A small knife sat among the tools now on the floor. Briar snatched it up and ruthlessly dragged it across the tips of her index and middle fingers. Blood flowed freely and she bent feverishly to the task of scribbling down runes in the proper order and arrangement to create another barrier against the locator spell in the grimoire.

  A loud clang rang out through the workshop. The gears overhead ceased their turning, and silence fell only to be broken moments later by a male voice’s “Bonjour!”

  Isabella snatched the grimoire off the bench and dashed over to where Briar still inscribed her spell.

  “I’m not ready yet,” she called. There was still a third of the inscription left to complete.

  “Finish it up!” was Isabella’s unhelpful response. “Hurry, hurry.” She managed to keep her voice down, but while still having it reach Briar’s ears without losing any intensity, a feat Briar would have found quite impressive had she not been standing with her head in a cabinet, trying to draw out a spell in a hurry with fingers that dripped blood a little too freely.

  “I. Am. Trying.” Briar forced the words out between gritted teeth. She had less than a quarter of the way to go.

  Isabella reached out and tried to deposit the book before Briar had checked her work. She held out her arm to slow Isabella down.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I need to make sure it’s right.”

  “Of course it’s right; you did it.” Isabella brushed her arm aside and dropped the book on the shelf, one corner a little too close to the edge of the circle for Briar’s liking. It wasn’t touching, so it would have to do.

  Briar drew in the key-rune and sagged a bit with relief when the runes ceased their fitful glowing and kindled into flame. She’d completed the spell. She closed the doors. How long had the grimoire been unprotected? Surely not long enough for someone to notice.

  They turned around and Briar suddenly found herself almost nose-to-nose with Jean-Pierre LaFarge. He smiled hugely, revealing large white teeth

  “Bonjour, petites. What ’ave we ’ere?”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Monsieur LaFarge,” Isabella said, taking him by the arm and drawing him away. He resisted at first, then allowed her to lead him to a nearby workbench, not the one where they’d recently been working. Leaving Briar’s vicinity was to his advantage. Isabella hadn’t missed the way she’d subtly recoiled when she turned around to find him right there.

  “Beautiful Isabella.” He grinned widely, mischief crinkling the corners of his eyes. “What are you two up to? There are signs of magic here.”

  “A simple experiment, that’s all.”

  “Ridicule. You do not do ze magic, so it must have been the wonderful Mademoiselle Riley, non?”

  Isabella glanced back at Briar, who had casually wandered over to the bench where they’d been at work. She pulled the canvas cover back over the blood-sketched runes.

  “Zis is zo exciting! A woman ’oo does magic? It is like a trained dog.” The idiot made no attempt to keep his voice down.

  Briar’s back stiffened and she turned on her heel, then stalked across the floor toward them. The effect should have been ruined somewhat by her lack of shoes, but somehow the sound of her bare feet slapping on stone was as intimidating as the clack of heels would have been.

  “You dare to call me a trained dog?” She stuck her finger straight against LaFarge’s breastbone with enough force to make him grunt. A smear of blood marred his pristine white shirt. “You, who know nothing of the grammar of the language? Who barely knows the most basic words?” LaFarge backed away, trying to put some room betw
een them, but Briar followed him step for step. “It’s a wonder you haven’t pulled yourself straight into hell as you seem determined to do. Your runes are so deformed half of them are nonsense and the other half mean the opposite of what you think.”

  By the end of her diatribe, Briar’s face was so close to LaFarge’s that they must have been breathing the same air. Isabella did not envy the man at all, but she would have been lying had she said she wasn’t also somewhat aroused. This side of Briar was one that never ceased to excite her, the side she’d been coaxing forward ever since she’d started tormenting her at balls. Briar’s eyes snapped with righteous fury. Though Isabella had already seen her lose control of herself in passion, Briar’s rage was equally as exhilarating. She was glad someone else was on the receiving end.

  “M-m-my apologies, mademoiselle.” The words dropped from quivering lips. LaFarge had backed into a thick support pillar. His eyes shifted as he looked for an easy escape. The piled equipment and components around him made that impossible.

  “Not good enough, monsieur.” Briar stared down her nose at him. “You will stay out of my way from here on out, or I shall be much more unpleasant to you.” She leaned forward, touching her nose almost to the tip of his. “Do we understand each other?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He swallowed hard, sending his Adam’s apple to bobbing in his throat.

  “Maybe you should let him past,” Isabella said. While it was exhilarating to see LaFarge put in his place and so forcefully, they still had work to do. She started at the glare Briar shot her way.

  “Very well.” Briar stepped back giving LaFarge barely enough room to squeeze past her.

  A sharp ping resounded from the other side of the workshop. Briar turned and craned her neck to see what was going on. The earl’s horseless was back there.

  “Briar?” Isabella said. “Was that you?” She turned and looked also. There was no one with the carriage, nothing should have made that noise, as far as she knew. Concern crawled prickling up her spine.