by Nina Harper
I shrugged. “He is impervious to women, even succubi,” I admitted. “But I will give you all you need for full access, and you rarely have the opportunity to deliver a man, I think. I am sure Satan would appreciate it.”
“How will I know that you tell the truth and that you will be bound to the bargain?” he asked. “And what do you ask in return?”
“The little demon you hold. Give her to us, as it was she we summoned. Let her go, let her remain in the triangle as you depart. Give me your name and sigil and I will deliver everything you need to you within three days.”
The incubus considered, long enough for me to get worried. “How do I know you will honor your word?” he asked finally.
“Mephistopheles is here, he will stand witness,” I said, pointing, just in case Mr. Idunno had missed the second most powerful demon in Hell standing right beside me. “You know what Mephistopheles will do to me if I do not honor my bargain. I swear on his name, and on the name of Our Prince Satan.”
I sensed a shift in the room but I was too intent on the incubus and the bargaining to pay attention. Every atom of my being was focused on making the incubus believe that I meant what I said. Which I did. A millionfold.
“I will bear witness,” Mephistopheles said, and his voice vibrated with all the power of Hell behind him.
Still the silly incubus pondered.
We waited.
“I will give you three days. If I do not have all that I need, or if the soul of this mortal is not as desirable as you have claimed, then I shall claim the right of revenge upon the magician.”
“Fair enough,” I agreed solemnly. “It is agreed, and sealed with this magician’s blood, which you have received in sacrifice. Now withdraw and leave the demon he has called to his bidding.”
The incubus nodded his agreement. His Harlequin-cover hair fell over his shoulders and his warm eyes sparkled with desire. For a mortal soul.
He withdrew, slowly, fading into shades of gray that became less substantial until the etheric matter drifted apart.
We heaved a collective sigh.
Marten waited until there was silence. Slowly Raven sat up. She looked a mess, the bruises standing out purple against her paper-white skin.
“He is gone,” Marten murmured to the beaten demon. “He is well and truly gone and will trouble you no more. We shall keep you safe. Take the offering, it will restore you.”
Raven looked slightly wild-eyed, as if she couldn’t believe that she had some respite from the pain. Marten repeated himself twice, three times. Me, I wouldn’t have needed a second invitation, but Raven had no experience of this kind of thing. And she wouldn’t know that there would be anything restorative in Marten’s offering.
Slowly she raised the glass. “Do I drink it?” she whispered.
He nodded and she raised the small crystal glass to her lips. She seemed hesitant, which I could understand. Our kind do not necessarily drink blood. There are so many stories of vampires, of blood as the currency of magic, that a young and quite ordinary demon would be confused.
The blood is the life.
We of Hell use blood to seal a pact, to bind ourselves and others. We use it because it carries the recognition of the soul. Demons have no blood to give. We have ichor, a thing very like blood. A human could not tell the difference, though possibly a chemist in a crime lab might. But our ichor is red and viscous to the degree of human blood, salty and slightly metallic. What changes it, what it lacks, is the energizing existence of an independent soul.
Raven drank the offering and made a face. But the soul stuff within it started the healing and, as we watched, as she was trapped in the magical triangle, we could see it take effect. The bruises faded, her skin became clear and then started to glow subtly, her hair straightened out and fell dark against her shoulders. But now that hair was gleaming, healthy and strong and clean. Her nails healed before our eyes, and the ends of her fingers, and suddenly her hands re-formed and became smooth and whole and undamaged.
Her body changed. The magic stripped the glamour that made her resemble me and she appeared as herself, but a vigorous, vital self that had more energy, more presence, than she had had when she appeared for the first time at my apartment. She didn’t even appear so skinny and drawn, but graceful and willowy. The same Raven, but Raven perfected, as she ought to have been, as perhaps she might have been before despair and fear had sapped her and led her to suicide and soul death.
She was still adolescent, and defiant. And she was still a demon. But I could see beyond that to the demon she could become if she survived and advanced and found favor. As she already had, since Satan had given her to me as a little sister of sorts.
I could even imagine liking her.
She got up, stretched, and showed off her navel piercing and the tattoos on her arms.
“I feel . . . fantastic,” she said. Then she turned to Marten and smiled. “Thank you.”
Marten smiled back, but not with quite so much innocence. “In return I will request a bargain,” he said evenly.
“Oh?” Raven asked, immediately on guard. She probably hadn’t gotten to even beginning bargains in the curriculum yet.
“First, of course, I will require that you do nothing to cause me, or my place and property, or my friends, any harm,” he said, setting out the first condition in the prescribed pattern.
“Oh, sure,” Raven agreed immediately. “I wouldn’t have done anything anyway.”
I heard Meph sigh next to me. She really did need to learn a lot before she could be sent off unsupervised.
Marten nodded. “Second, I will require that you come to me when I call, simply and without ceremony, and that you answer truthfully and fully any questions I will put to you.”
“Okay, I don’t like all the hokey stuff anyway,” she said, again too easily. “I mean, the implements are nice but some of the wording of those chants is just a bit pretentious. Don’t you think? Do you feel funny doing it?”
Marten raised an eyebrow. “You agreed to answer my questions. I did not agree to answer yours. But the truth is that no, I do not feel funny or hokey. The words and phrases and even entire segments are formulae that correspond to levels of Hell, types of demons, astrological conditions and—well, it takes years just to learn the basics. But no, I feel they are no more hokey than you might think singing a song was hokey.”
“I think he just likes saying ‘hokey,’ ” Nathan whispered into my ear.
It took all my concentration not to break out laughing. And suddenly my equilibrium was restored. I looked at Nathan again and saw why he was here, saw what I’d seen in him when I first met him at the end of the winter. He was attractive, beautiful even. At least as beautiful as Marten, though a different kind. The dark, brooding, scholarly kind, in fact, that I’d always found attractive.
But I’d recovered my memory of Nathan’s sense of humor, his slightly offbeat, sardonic take on events. And I could see as he adapted to the ritual that he was able to break through his own prejudices and assumptions. I started to wonder if he could adjust, if he could learn to handle my life as a succubus.
Hope sprang unbidden to my heart, evil bad hope that made me want what I couldn’t have. And that hope was tinged with something else—with a feeling that maybe I was being unfair to Marten in hoping for Nathan. Marten had proven himself to me over and over again, and even for Nathan I wasn’t willing to give him up. Was I?
But Marten wasn’t finished with his bargaining yet. “And further, you will agree to come to my aid, as I have come to yours. To do as I bid you and to aid those I have chosen to be my friends.”
Raven cocked her head. “That’s taking it a little far,” she said warily. “What if I say no?”
Marten shrugged. “Then perhaps I will send you back from whence you came.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not so sure about that.” Raven smiled and so did I. Much better, given her lack of experience and Marten’s long training. I was actually proud of h
er.
“You can take your chances, but vowing to aid me will help you in the end. You know that I work for your masters, that I am here at the bidding of Mephistopheles.”
Raven bit her lip as she considered his response. Bargains in Hell are . . . legalistic. We’re very careful about the letter of the law, about the precise language, about what we promise. Marten was giving her very little and asking a lot.
“Ask for something in return,” I muttered, but Meph turned to me and shook his head. “No coaching. You know that, Lily. No coaching once they enter negotiation.”
I could hear the tension in his voice, and I bet that he would dearly love to be coaching her. Oh, the things he would ask for—the things I would ask for! If I were in that triangle with him needing information from me, there were all kinds of things I would require.
She thought about it. “Well, if I agree to that then you have to promise that you won’t ask me to do anything that Mephistopheles wouldn’t approve of,” she eventually suggested.
Meph and I smiled together. She was good, this kid. That was a perfect comeback, a request that Marten couldn’t refuse as Mephistopheles’ ally, but that protected Raven from any requirement that she might find at odds with her own preferences and loyalties.
Well done, I thought at her. And I resolved then and there to take her to brunch on Sunday. Raven was showing the kind of mettle my friends would like. No wonder Satan wanted her groomed.
Marten agreed to her condition. Reluctantly, I could tell, because no magician wants to give up anything, even a codicil he had no intention of ever using. But I could see the way he looked at her now, with a new respect. In fact, I felt some of the respect myself.
I turned to Meph. “Girl’s got game,” I said. He smiled and nodded.
I turned to Nathan and took his hand briefly and squeezed it. He turned to me and I saw a bit of haunted pain in his eyes.
Or maybe it was just overwork and exhaustion. In any case, he didn’t pull away.
chapter
TWENTY-SEVEN
“It is agreed then,” Marten intoned, and went over the points of their agreement. “To this I put my hand and seal.” And he wrote it all down with a quill on parchment (magicians are very fond of parchment) and signed with a flourish (but no blood). “You give your word that you will emerge into this space in peace, and sign this agreement, and be as a friend to all gathered here?”
“Yeah, like I said,” Raven sighed. “As long as it’s written down the way we said.”
Meph and I exchanged glances. I’m sure this is the way parents must feel when a child does a good job at a recital or in a soccer game.
“Of course,” Marten said graciously. And then he raised the sword and cut an opening in the triangle that held Raven prisoner—and held her safe from her kidnappers as well. Then, very slowly and deliberately, he cut an opening into his own circle of protection.
Raven stepped inside delicately. If she were bent on his destruction this was the moment when she would have struck. She was inside his defenses now and had not yet signed the pact. She was, technically, a free agent. This is the peak of danger for the magician, the fraction of time when the demon can renege and tear him limb from limb.
But not Raven. No, for all her tattoos and scowls, for all her ugly shoes and nasty attitude, she was a perfect lady in the circle. She waited quietly in the North, the appointed region of the demon, and took the parchment with the agreement with dignity. She read it over carefully and slowly. Her Hell Latin was probably not up to full speed and I could see her lips moving as she sounded out words to herself. But she made it through, nodded, and took the quill that Marten offered her.
She affixed her signature to her very first Magical Contract as the representative of Hell. Then she put out her hand and Marten shook it, something that I had never seen or heard of in a magical ceremony and contract between Hell and human. Marten instructed her to remain just north of the main altar, and he began the ritual of dissolving the circle, banishing the quarters and removing all the barriers.
Except ours. Meph, who had constructed this final protection, had to dismantle it, which he did with a sweep of his hand. And then we were all in the same space together, the two-level sitting room of the hotel suite.
Exhausted, Nathan, Meph and I sank into the sofa together. Raven flopped onto a wing chair, one leg thrown over the arm, giggling. “Awesome. I don’t even need a shower,” she said between bouts of laughter. “And you have no idea, really none, how much I wanted just to take a bath and eat something and, well, just to stop hurting. That’s what I wanted most of all; I just didn’t want to hurt anymore. And now I feel fantastic.”
“It was a very powerful gift, and an uncommonly generous one.” Meph decided to use the teaching moment. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a ceremony where the magician offered so much of himself. You should feel wonderful, and you should honor the magician who gifted you so generously.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Raven said, twirling her hand. “I’ll do what he says, and I’ll answer any of your questions that I can. But there’s this one problem.” She sat up and clasped her hands earnestly, like an eager schoolgirl. “I didn’t see anything useful. I don’t think. I didn’t hear anything that would identify them. They used really dorky fake names.”
“What fake names?” Nathan asked.
“Stupid things,” Raven said. “Lemme see. Percival and Lancelot. They were an old guy and a young guy. The young one was pretty hot, too, if you like the type.”
“What type was that?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Not mine, that’s for sure. Short dark hair, pushy, really cute ass though, and shoulders to there.” She spread her hands wider than any human’s shoulders could be.
“That’s not a description we can use,” Marten said wearily, one hand raking through his own hair. He looked tired, as if he were barely hanging in for the debriefing. “Please try to be more specific.”
Raven sat quiet, trying to think.
“How about if I show you some pictures?” Nathan asked gently. He moved near Raven’s side and opened his computer and began showing her pictures.
“No, not that one,” she said, shaking her head. “Not him, either,” to the next. The third was just a shake.
And then she became agitated. “Yeah, that one. He was there, I’m sure of it. And he wasn’t one of the ones who was being an asshole, either. I mean, he didn’t torture me or anything. The others were into it, you know? They were hurting me and they thought it was funny.”
“But he didn’t do that?” Nathan asked, his voice still low and warm.
“No, that one just came by a few times. He didn’t talk to me at all, he only talked to the old guy, Lancelot. They called him ‘Guardian.’ ”
“That’s great,” I chirped encouragement. “That’s really useful.”
Nathan just shot me a look to shut up and hit another key. Two more nos, and then one that got more reaction than any of the others. “Him, him, him,” Raven said, turning away from the screen and wrapping her arms in front of her body. “That was the one with the cute butt like I was telling you. They called him Gawain. I told you the names were stupid.”
Nathan motioned me over and it took only a moment to recognize the face. The photo wasn’t very good and was grainy, but it was clearly Steve Balducci, who had picked up Desire and dumped her at the Brooklyn Museum when this all began. Who had known about Public and had managed to position himself so that one of us would find him appealing.
Gawain, huh? Raven was right, the Arthurian stuff really was a little moronic.
“Do you have any sketches of high demons?” Marten asked from across the room. Marten’s voice was thin and exhausted. He lay draped across the chair like a limp ribbon, utterly spent, with a blanket wrapped around him.
While Nathan tried to pull up a few of the better-known faces of Hell, I called room service for tea and coffee and plates of tostis. We could all use tostis, little sealed m
elted cheese sandwiches that were particularly Dutch and warming and comforting.
“I don’t think I saw any of those,” Raven was commenting as Meph and Nathan consulted on the faces.
“That’s fine, no surprise,” Mephistopheles told the girl. “I don’t think the higher demons would show themselves anyway. These idiots don’t even realize that they’re working for Hell. They think they’re working for Upstairs, as if that were a completely different Administration.” He shrugged elegantly. “Probably they forget that Satan was one of the greatest angels Upstairs before She took the job in Hell.”
Meph, being utterly elegant and understated, didn’t have to make the point to us that he had been an angel of high rank himself. And could probably look like one again if he wanted to.
“Let’s call it a night,” Meph said. “We’re all tired, it was a very hard evening and we could all use some sleep. And some food. We’ve got at least tomorrow before we have to return and we can continue with the debriefing then.”
Just on cue, room service rang the bell. Raven jumped but I got up and got the door. A young man in a starched uniform rolled in a cart with three large silver pots and two trays of small golden sandwiches, which he unloaded on the dining table. They must train the staff very well at the Royal Sonesta because the waiter’s face did not change at all as he set aside the altar furniture, spread a damask cloth on the table and set it up for our snack.
“These have tomato,” he said, gesturing to one tray, “and these others have ham. Have a pleasant meal.”
We ate. I put together a plate for Marten, two sandwiches with ham and one with tomato and a large mug of hot tea. He was too drained to leave his chair but he perked up just a bit when I brought over the food.
“You’re cold,” I said. “Have something to eat, it’ll ground you.”
He nodded and dug in. I knew that much about ritualists, after they expend energy in ritual they are more than mortally tired and they get horribly cold. It’s too easy for them to drift at that point and hurt themselves, too open and without reserves.