Still, better than nothing, so he insisted. “You can’t help with this. There are forces at work here that are angrier, and more powerful, than you can imagine. Your presence will only make them angrier. If I have to worry about the rest of you, I may get distracted and screw up the whole thing.” The thought made his blood run a little cold, a truth he’d rather not share. “Take care of your family. Be ready to run.”
“Katey is our family.” Sanchez would have fought him on it, but Matt Shields said, “She’s my family too. I won’t let anything hurt her.”
Which appeased Carlos Sanchez, even if it wasn’t true.
Nothing left but to get out of there, so he clapped Matt Shields on the arm and said, “Rest if you can. Wear white if you’ve got it.” White for purity. With Katey in the mix, they had a shot at the protection of innocence. “I expect we’ll have a wild ride, but we’ll have you home and free by midnight. The witching hour.” He tried to make a joke of the hour, thought there might be something to it. His father didn’t look happy, that was sure, and he hadn’t seen Lily at all.
Matt walked them to the door like he belonged there, said, “I’ll be ready. Thanks.” Then somehow the door was closed behind him and he was alone with his father and the damned forest.
Chapter 72
“IS THAT YOUR CAR?” Brad raised an eyebrow at the rental sagging on the edge of a drainage ditch in the gravel driveway of the Sanchez house. Distraction. Wouldn’t work for long. Evan had that look on his face, like the only thing that had stopped the questions so far was the gridlock between his brain and his mouth.
Evan gave the comment its due—“It doesn’t call attention to itself. Not like the new BMW you’ve got stashed in the garage”—then went on the attack. “Where’s Lily?”
Brad shrugged. “Not here. Were you expecting her?” This was Evan’s part of the job—neither of them had planned to show up. He still wasn’t sure why he’d come.
“Not really.” Evan stared out into the woods, toward the sound of rushing water. Adding things up and coming to conclusions. “But I didn’t expect you either, and here you are.”
It never took him long to clear the traffic jam. Smart boy. Brad hoped he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut.
“So I have to figure something went wrong. Are you going to tell me what it is, or do we play guess-the-catastrophe until I hit it?”
So much for hope. The question pulled at his gut, an old, familiar knot. He didn’t immediately figure where it had come from this time, until he tried to dismiss the question. “I’m . . .” He knew the answer he needed to give—“Nothing wrong, nothing to tell, move along”—but couldn’t force it past his closing throat.
“Nothing I can fix,” he finally said, too much truth hanging out there with nothing useful in it. He’d lied to Evan before, kept secrets from him without even thinking about it. Couldn’t now, no matter how much he wanted to, and it hurt to try, tore him into fragments of blue flame and Evan took a step back, hands up in front of him.
“Whoa, whoa,” he said, “I take it back. What’s the matter?”
Brad couldn’t answer that one either—all his explanations led back to a geas placed on him by all the Princes, not to speak of Paimon’s deadline. Evan freed Matt Shields and the daemon lord in the strongbox by midnight, or Paimon owned him, would torture him to death without even realizing he’d exceeded the capacity of a human body to absorb the damage until it was too late. The box would still hold its prisoners, and the Princes would have nothing but his son’s dead body to show for it. And one little girl as dead as Evan, or as crazy as he used to be, if she got caught up in the struggle. Except that Paimon wouldn’t let the crazy happen. Wouldn’t let her live that long.
He didn’t count out that Evan might free Paimon’s lords in time, winning a host-debt for his own Prince. In typical Evan style, he was calling it suicidally close on his own schedule, but Brad could not warn him about Paimon’s deadline or the consequences of not meeting it.
“I don’t know what I’ve done, but whatever it is, I take it back.” Evan had gotten close, right inside his defenses, with a hand on a shoulder that kept trying to flicker out of existence.
“God. Father, what’s the matter?” He had his head lowered so he could look up at Brad, studying his face for a sign. Nonthreatening, except that every word tore Brad apart. “I can’t do anything about it if you don’t tell me—”
The contract. Stupid, stupid. A walk-away, supposed to be harmless, but he’d seen what it did to Matt Shields when it came into conflict with Grayson Donne’s binding spell. Once he had it figured, the answer was simple.
“The contract,” he said, got Evan’s attention off the rage and pain he couldn’t hide and onto what he was saying. “I’m walking away.”
Evan pulled his hand away like Brad had burned him. Reached out, but didn’t quite make contact. “What did I do?” he asked.
Shock always made his son’s voice husky—Brad remembered that, just weeks ago, in a hospital. Evan’s bruises were almost gone, but they served as a reminder now that he wasn’t torn by the conflicting demands of the Princes and a contract he never should have signed.
“Not a thing.” A lie, but it didn’t hurt with the contract broken. He couldn’t help the grin that followed. The truth would only throw Evan off his game anyway. His son had survived the Princes before. He’d survived Alfredo Da’Costa and the kind of madness that had driven the Simpson’s half- human monster to suicide at the very moment of his rescue. This time he had Matt Shields on his side, which broke every rule between Princes but for some reason didn’t seem to matter. Evan would succeed. He always did. But just once it would be nice if he didn’t wait until the very last minute.
“You didn’t do anything.”
Brad wasn’t welcome in the second celestial sphere, but he hadn’t been banished so completely that he couldn’t pass through on his way back to Spruce Street. So he left Evan to his rental car and his bargain with Princes. Maybe he’d be back to watch. Or, maybe he wouldn’t.
Chapter 73
ALMOST MIDNIGHT. THE MOON HAD RISEN, nearly full, but none of that light made it through the dense pack of pine branches to the forest floor. Not a good place for a midnight stroll—they hadn’t met anyone since they’d plunged into the woods behind the Sanchez shore house. It didn’t help their own movement, though, and Evan figured he was going to need stitches on that elbow—he’d smacked it twice already—but couldn’t pull his arms in, had the strongbox by its handles with three short, fat candles balanced on top.
In front of him, Shields recited Frost in a sing-song voice—“The woods are lovely, dark and deep” —bouncing Katey in his arms in time to the meter of the poem. They both wore white as Evan had told them, and Marina had sent a woman’s summery white dress because Grey Donne had promised clothing to the daemon in the box. Shields carried the dress over his arm, wrapping Katey in a cascade of white ruffles. Evan figured the bouncing was going to make her sick all over it, but Katey cocked an ear, listening to the poem while she pointed the flashlight ahead of them. She couldn’t carry all of the weight of it, but balanced it on the crook of Matt Shields’ elbow. The beam of light bounced with her, keeping time to the poem while she peered through the darkness, serious, full of the responsibility for lighting their path.
“Whose idea was this anyway?” Evan muttered. He’d never cared which of the many interpretations his teachers had put on Frost’s “promises to keep.” He figured anybody who used “woods” and “lovely” in the same sentence had nothing to say to him.
“Yours.” Matt Shields could be dry as old bones when he wanted.
He hadn’t come up with a better option, not unless they wanted an audience. But the woods offered no clear line of sight. Attack could come from anywhere and he had both hands full of an iron-and-oak strongbox. Not that he expected attack. Figured he’d have to invoke it, which was never a good idea.
And, okay, maybe he should have stoppe
d for a burger and fries while he waited for the sun to go down, but in the grimoires he’d read the magicians always fasted. He didn’t usually bother with a lot of ritual at home, not with family. But Paimon was not his Prince. He figured it couldn’t hurt to go through the motions, so he hadn’t eaten, and he’d worn white too, more or less—a white dress shirt and khaki pants, which he figured was close enough. Fresh running water would help—another symbol of purity—so they were sticking to the stream.
Katey came a little too close to the innocent child the old guys used to invoke daemons for his comfort. The books never said what happened to the child afterward, but Grayson Donne had drawn his own conclusions, filling his graveyard with his innocents. Not this time, though. Not this child. He had Matt Shields beside him, and Kady in the box, so he figured he had something to bargain with.
And he was angry already, with his father, which helped when he went up against the Princes. if he was feeling sensible, he might not do it at all. Now all they had to do was follow the stream, far enough away from the house to give the Sanchez family a running start if the Princes were feeling less than cooperative.
“Where’s Brad?” Shields asked, and Evan had to remind himself that the daemon lord couldn’t read his mind.
“He didn’t say.”
“Do we have a problem?” The question shouldn’t have surprised him. It didn’t take much insight to hear the anger in his voice. Shields glanced over, not daring to ask for more. They were both conscious of the child craning around his shoulder to watch them with amber sparks in her eyes.
Evan shook his head. “He just broke his contract and left. He’s still got a stake in this, but not for the agency.” Ariton had Paimon’s host-debt coming out of the bargain. He didn’t understand why his father had walked away from everything they’d built in the past four years, but they were still on the same side. At least on this one. There wasn’t much to say after that, so Shields turned back to the girl, substituting Doctor Seuss for Robert Frost. Evan liked The Cat in the Hat better anyway.
Chapter 74
COPPERHEADS AND RATTLESNAKES. Deer ticks with Lyme disease. Mosquitoes with West Nile. Evan had made a litany of the dangers he couldn’t see, but the surface roots snaking over the forest floor finally got him. He hopped a step to catch his balance and realized first that the box had overbalanced him, and second that he didn’t have to be there for the fall. Quick as the thought he moved sideways through the second celestial sphere.
The Princes were waiting to rip him to pieces, friends and enemies of Ariton both—he was not a popular guy with anyone right now. He figured he was damned lucky to make it out again on the other side. Gathering up the thick white candles and the strongbox where it had fallen among the damp pine needles, he wished the flashlight would point at the ground and stop bouncing light off the branches, because he wasn’t doing that again until this was over, not if he fell over the side of a cliff. Which seemed his only unlikely fate on this walk, given that the Jersey Pine Barrens were flat as a pancake, but still—
“Does this place have a name?” Sanchez had said it was a state park.
Shields said nothing.
He’d figured from the start this might be a setup to kill him or turn him over to the cabal. Hoped not, but planned for contingencies.
But Shields finally heaved a put- upon sigh. “Double Trouble Park,” he said, and Evan could tell he was waiting for the blow to fall.
“You have to be kidding me.” Wasn’t what he meant to say, but Katey was watching him. Somebody else could enlighten her on the many and varied uses of the term “shit,” but not today.
Shields laughed, and Evan could see him shake his head, just a shadow backlit by the beam of the flashlight.
“Trouble!” Katey said, and giggled.
Yeah. Trouble, all right. But they had come to a widening in the stream, and Matt Shields raised a questioning eyebrow, stopped when he set the strongbox down.
Evan dropped on top of the box and looked out over the moonlight cutting a path across the stream. He couldn’t see the stars under the low canopy of the pines, but above the clearing the sky was thick and clotted with light like spattered paint. It reminded him, for a moment, of the infinite cold of the second celestial sphere, and he remembered the energy of stars passing through him, wide as the universe. For just a moment, it felt almost like home.
Shields set Katey down, almost hidden in the ferns that crowded the base of an old cedar, and Evan let the low rumble of his voice ground him in this reality. “Don’t move from this spot, and try not to talk until Mr. Evan or I tell you it’s okay.”
Then he turned to Evan. “What now?”
“We call Paimon,” Evan managed to sound confident in spite of how he felt—a little light-headed from hunger and the adrenaline from the fight, or whatever it had been. His father had disappeared before they got to the fight part, which probably explained why frustrated arguments still buzzed in his bloodstream.
He couldn’t let his father screw with his head. Couldn’t let worry about Lily cloud his focus. He’d patch his own relations later—right now he had a job to do, and Matt Shields’ eyes had gone as wide as Katey’s.
“You’re going to what?”
“This’ll work. Promise.” A burst of air knocked the back of his head—hard. Not the wind. His father. Okay. O . . . kay. Got no sense of Lily’s presence, but he’d sort that out later. Right now it was time to rock.
“Hide her eyes,” he said, jutting his chin at Katey by her tree. “Protect her as much as you can until I get things settled with the Princes. Then, we’ll sort this out together.”
“Princes? Plural?” Matt Shields looked shaken. “You’re crazier than Grayson Donne.”
“Yeah, Probably,” he agreed.
Shields wasn’t happy, but he had only two choices—Evan was one, and the other one ended in an iron- bound box. So he sat with his back against the cedar and held Katey tight among the ferns. “Don’t look,” he said, “I won’t let anything hurt you.” Which was as much a lie from a daemon lord of Paimon as it was from Evan, but they both meant it anyway.
Chapter 75
TIME TO GET THIS PARTY STARTED. Evan had never summoned a Prince before, but he’d called his own relations and got a Prince instead on one memorable occasion. So he figured the invocation would work. A pentagram would have offered some protection, but he couldn’t rely on one here, where a falling branch or a scuttling mouse might break the circle. He counted on the child and the running water to keep him alive long enough to consummate the deal.
Didn’t expect it to be enough, but there were all kinds of sacred shapes and all kinds of ways to make them real. For this, Evan chose the shape that fit the tools at hand. Katey, with Matt Shields, anchoring that point in the white of purity, sat by an old cedar about six feet from the water’s edge. Evan moved the strongbox so that it formed the second point of a triangle, draped it in the ruffled white dress that Marina Sanchez had sent, and put a candle on top of that. Lit it with a snap of his fingers, something he’d learned early in his father’s training. Handed the next one to Shields, who lit that one and turned off the flashlight. He took for himself the third point, at the edge of the stream, in his own less than perfect white. Noticed as he set flame to wick that the last candle had a smudge on it from the fall. Fitting. He was the least pure in his motives, but he hoped the running water made up for his lack.
Across from him the child represented innocence, and the box stood for the deal. A pyramid, if he thought of the second celestial sphere as the fourth orientation point of a three-dimensional space. So he did—stood next to the running stream opposite the daemon lords that held down each of the other points. With his arms outstretched and his palms up in supplication he called the Princes of the heavens.
“With a tranquil heart, and trusting in the Living and Only God, omnipotent and all-powerful, all-seeing and all-knowing, I conjure you, Paimon, Prince of the West, the whisperer of secrets,
and you, Ariton, Prince of the North, who reveals all things hidden, to appear before me. You are summoned by the Honor and Glory of God, by my Honor that I shall cause you to do no harm or injury to others, to honor the bargain you have made for the freedom of your servant lords, Parmatus and Kadylon of the host of Paimon. Appear before me now, for the greater glory of all creation both in the physical sphere and in the second celestial sphere.”
The wind picked up twigs and bits of bark, spun them in eddies that skirted Evan’s pyramid and came too close to the child who made the second point. He had to trust Shields to protect her, didn’t dare move from his anchor point. Not if he wanted any of them alive at the end of the night.
He waited, but not too long.
“This is not multiple choice. You are summoned in accordance with contracts freely given. Appear before me to answer for your contracts! Paimon, who knows all secrets—to free your servants, the lords Parmatus and Kaydalon, appear before me! Ariton, Prince of all things hidden—to claim host-debt, appear to witness the consummation of your contract!”
Thunder rattled in the distance—a storm was coming. Of course. I called the damned thing. Evan shuddered and set aside the thought as clouds boiled across the sky, eating the stars and replacing their steady light with flashes of blue and green, amber and gold. More than he’d called by name, then. Evan clapped his hands over his ears, closed his eyes against the sound and light of the Princes of the spheres storming one small planet to answer his command.
Lightning struck just outside his pyramid, and again, and he flinched, felt his heart stutter while he braced himself with his eyes pinched shut. Didn’t realize he’d been deafened until he heard Katey’s screams. Her voice, muffled by Shields’ shoulder and his own shocked ears, sounded raw, like she’d been at it a while.
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