The Good, The Bad, And The Undead th-2

by Ким Харрисон

  "Good." He sat and pulled the book onto his lap. Head bowed, he read the next passage. "Okay, put the scrying mirror into the transfer medium, being careful not to let your fingers touch the media or your aura will reattach and you'll have to start over."

  I refused to look in the mirror, worried that I'd see myself trapped in it. Shoulders tense, I scuffed my slippers back on. My feet ached and my head throbbed with the beginnings of a migraine. If I didn't finish this quickly, I was going to be stuck in a dark room with a washcloth all day tomorrow. Taking up the mirror, I gingerly slipped it into the media. The specks of wild geranium flashed to nothing, dissolved by my aura. It was eerie, even by my standards, and I couldn't help an "ooooh" of appreciation. "What's next?" I asked, wanting to be done with it so I could take my aura back.

  Nick's head was bent over the book. "Next, you need to anoint your familiar with the transfer medium, but you have to be careful to not touch the media yourself." He looked up. "How do you anoint a fish?"

  I felt my face go slack. "I don't know. Maybe I could just slip him into the vat along with the mirror?" I reached for the book on his lap, turning the page. "Isn't there anything about making a fish your familiar?" I questioned. "Everything else is in there."

  Nick pushed my hands from the pages as one tore. "No. Go put your fish in the spell pot. If it doesn't work, we'll try something else."

  My mood went sour. "I don't want my aura smelling like fish," I said as I dipped a hand into Bob's bowl, and he snickered.

  Bob didn't want to go in the spell pot. Trying to catch his darting shape in a round bowl was almost impossible. Getting him out of the bathtub had been easy—I simply drained it until he was beached—but now, after a frustrating moment of near misses, I was ready to dump him onto the floor. Finally I got him and, dripping water over the counter, dropped him in. I peered into the spell pot, watching his gills pump the amber liquid.

  "Okay," I said, hoping he was all right. "He's anointed. What's next?"

  "Just an incantation. And when the transfer medium goes clear, you can take back the aura your familiar left you."

  "Incantation," I said, thinking ley line magic was stupid. Earth magic didn't need incantations. Earth magic was precise and beautiful in its simplicity. My eyes shifted to the not-there candles and I stifled a shudder.

  "Here. I'll read it for you." He stood up with the book, and I made a spot for it beside Bob in the bowl. I leaned close to him over the book, thinking he smelled good, manly good. Intentionally bumping into him, I felt a warm current that was probably his aura. Too busy deciphering the text, he didn't notice. Sighing, I put my attention on the book.

  Nick cleared his throat. His eyebrows bunched and his lips moved as he whispered the words, sounding dark and dangerous. I caught about one in every three words. He finished, giving me one of his half smiles. "How about that," he said. "It rhymes."

  A sigh shifted my shoulder. "Do I need to say it in Latin?"

  "I wouldn't think so. The only reason they made these things rhyme is so the witch can remember them. It's the intent behind the words rather than the words themselves that does the trick." He bent back over the book. "Give me a moment and I'll translate it. I think I can even make it rhyme for you. Latin is very loose in its interpretation."

  "Okay." Nervous and jittery, I tucked my hair behind an ear and looked into the spell pot. Bob didn't look happy.

  " 'Pars tibi, totum mihi. Vinctus vinculis, prece factis.' " Nick looked up. "Ah, 'some to you, but all to me. Bound by ties made so by plea.' "

  I dutifully repeated it, feeling silly. Invocations. Could it be any more hokey? Next I'd be standing on one foot and shaking a posy of feathers at the full moon.

  Nick's finger ran under the print. " 'Luna servata, lux sanata. Chaos statutum, pejus minutum.' " His brow furrowed. "Let's go with, 'Moon made safe, ancient light made sane. Chaos decreed, taken tripped if bane.' "

  I echoed him, thinking ley line witches had a substantial lack of imagination.

  " 'Mentem tegens, malum ferens. Semper servus, dum duret mundus.' Ah, I'd say, "Protection recalled, carrier of worth. Bound before the world's rebirth.' "

  "Oh, Nick," I complained, "are you sure you're translating that right? That's dreadful."

  He sighed. "Try this then." He thought for a moment. "You could also translate it as, 'lee of mind, bearer of pain. Slave until the worlds are slain.' "

  That I could live with, and I said it, feeling nothing. We both peered in at Bob, waiting for the amber liquid to go clear. My head pounded, but other than that, nothing happened. "I think I did it wrong," I said, scuffing my slippers.

  "Oh—shit," Nick swore, and I looked up to find him staring over my shoulder at the doorway to the kitchen. He swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing.

  The hair on the back of my neck pricked. My demon scar gave a pulse. Breath catching, I spun around, thinking Ivy must be home.

  But it wasn't Ivy. It was a demon.

  Sixteen

  "Nick!" I cried, stumbling back. The demon grinned. It looked like an aristocratic Brit, except that I recognized it as the one who put on Ivy's face and tore out my throat that spring.

  My back found the counter. I had to run. I had to get out of here! It would kill me! Flailing to put the counter between us, I hit the spell pot.

  "Watch the brew!" Nick shouted, reaching out even as the bowl tipped.

  I gasped, tearing my gaze from the demon long enough to see Bob's bowl spill. Aura-laced water spilled over the counter in an amber wash. Bob slid out, flopping.

  "Rachel!" Nick exclaimed. "Get the fish! He has your aura. He can break the circle!"

  I'm in a circle, I thought, strangling my panic. The demon isn't. It can't hurt me.

  "Rachel!"

  Nick's shout tore my eyes from the grinning demon. Nick was desperately trying to catch Bob, flopping on the counter, and keep the spilled water from reaching the edge. My face went cold. I was willing to bet just the aura-laced water would be enough to break the circle.

  I lunged for the paper towels. As Nick fumbled for Bob, I made a mad dash around the counter, laying squares of white to sop up rivulets before they could make puddles on the floor that would run to the circle. My heart pounded and I frantically alternated my attention from the water to the demon standing with a bewildered, amused expression in the archway to the hall.

  "Gotcha," Nick whispered, his breath exploding from him in a ragged sound as he finally gained control of the fish.

  "Not the saltwater!" I warned as Nick held him over my dissolution pot. "Here." I shoved Bob's original bowl at Nick. Ordinary water sloshed out, and I blotted it up as Nick dropped Bob in. The fish shuddered, sinking to the bottom with his gills pumping.

  Silence descended, framed by the heavy rasping of our breathing and the ticking of the clock above the sink. Nick's and my eyes met over the bowl. As one, we turned to the demon.

  It looked pleasant enough, having taken the shape of a young man with a mustache, elegant and polished. It was dressed as an eighteenth century businessman in a suit of green velvet with lace trim and long tails. Round glasses were perched atop its thin nose. They were smoked to hide its red eyes. Though able to shift its form and shape at will—becoming everything from my roommate to a punk rocker—its eyes stayed the same unless it made the effort to take on all the abilities of whomever it was mimicking. Hence, my demon bite laced with vamp saliva. A tremor shook me as I recalled that its pupils were slitted like a goat's.

  Fear tightened my stomach, and I hated being afraid. I forced my hands to unclench their grip on my elbows, pulled myself straight and tossed my head. "Ever think of updating your wardrobe?" I mocked. I was safe in a circle. I was safe in a circle.

  My breath caught as a red mist of ever-after hazed it. The demon's clothes molded to a modern-day business suit I'd expect to see on a Fortune-twenty executive. "This is so… common," it said, its resonate, British-laden accent perfect for the stage. "But I wouldn't want i
t said that I wasn't accommodating." It took its glasses off, and my breath hissed in. I stared at the alienness of its eyes, jerking as Nick touched my arm.

  Nick looked wary—not nearly scared enough to please me—and I felt a flush of embarrassment at my earlier panic. But damn it, demons scared the crap out of me. No one risked calling up demons since the Turn. Except for whoever called this one up to maul me last spring. And then there had been the one that attacked Trent Kalamack. Maybe demon summoning was more common than I wanted to admit.

  I hated that Nick's respect for them stopped short of terror. They fascinated him, and I was afraid his search for knowledge would someday lead him to make a foolish decision, letting the tiger turn and eat him.

  The demon smiled to show thick flat teeth as it glanced over its attire. It made a deep-in-thought sound and the wool disappeared, to become a black T-shirt tucked into leather pants with a gold chain belted around narrow hips. A black leather jacket appeared, and the demon stretched in a cloud of sensuality, showing every curve of the new, attractive muscle pulling its T-shirt tight across its chest. Blond hair cut short grew as it shook its head, and its height lengthened.

  I felt myself pale. It had become Kist, pulling my old fear of him right out of my head. The demon seemed to take great delight in changing into whatever frightened me the most. I wouldn't let it shake me. I wouldn't.

  "Oh, this is nice," the demon said, its accent shifting to a sultry, bad-boy drawl to match its new look. "You're afraid of the prettiest people, Rachel Mariana Morgan. I rather like being this one." Licking its lips suggestively, it sent its gaze across my neck, lingering on the scar it had given me while I was sprawled on the floor of the university library's basement, lost in a haze of vamp-saliva-induced ecstasy as it killed me.

  The memory sent my heart pounding. My hand rose to cover my neck. The pressure from its gaze pushed on my skin, making it tingle. "Stop it," I demanded, frightened as it sent the scar into play and tendrils of feeling ran like molten metal from my neck to my groin. My breath hissed in through my nose. "I said stop it!"

  The blue of Kist's eyes went wide and flashed to red. Seeing my resolve, the demon's outlines blurred. "You aren't afraid of this one anymore," it said, its voice shifting to become lower and laden with a proper British accent again. "Pity. I do so like to be young and testosterone laden. But I know what frightens you. Let's keep that a secret, hum? No need to let Nick Sparagmos know. Not yet. He may want to buy the information."

  Nick's breathing sounded harsh beside me as the demon doffed the biker's hat—which promptly vanished in a haze of ever-after red—and shifted, returning to its previous form of British nobility in lace and green velvet. It smiled at me over its round smoked glasses. "This will do, in the meantime," it said.

  I jumped as Nick touched me. "Why are you here?" he asked. "No one called you."

  The demon said nothing, glancing over the kitchen with undisguised curiosity. Showing a predatorial grace, it began to circle the bright room, its shiny buckled boots silent on the linoleum. "I know you are new to all of this," it mused aloud as it tapped at Mr. Fish's brandy snifter on the windowsill and the fish quivered, "but generally the summoner is outside the circle, and the summoned is on the inside." It turned on a heel to send its long coattails furling. "I'll give you that for free, Rachel Mariana Morgan. Because you made me laugh. I haven't laughed since the Turn. We all laughed at that."

  My pulse had slowed but my knees felt watery. I wanted to sit down but didn't dare. "How can you be here?" I asked. "This is holy ground."

  The vision of British grace opened my fridge. Making a tsk-tsk sound, it shuffled through the leftovers, coming out with a half-empty container of fudge frosting. "Oh yes, I do like this arrangement. Being on the outside is ever so much more interesting. I think I'll answer that query for free as well."

  Oozing old world charm, it pulled the top of the frosting off. The blue plastic disappeared in a smear of ever-after, and the demon dipped the gold spoon that had taken its place into the container. "This isn't holy ground," it said as it stood in my kitchen in a gentleman's frock and ate frosting. "The kitchen was added after the sanctuary was blessed. You could have the entire grounds sanctified, but then you'd connect your bedroom to the ley line in the graveyard. Ooooh, and wouldn't that be delightful."

  A sick feeling twisted my stomach at what that might mean. Eyebrows raised, it looked at me over its smoked glasses, its red eyes showing a shocking amount of sudden ire. "You had better have something worth hearing, or I'm going to be royally buggered."

  I straightened in understanding. It thought I had summoned it with an offer of information to pay off my IOU. My pulse jackhammered back into full throttle as the container of frosting vanished from the demon's hand and it came close to the circle.

  "Don't!" I blurted as it tapped the sheet of ever-after between us. The demon's face lost its amusement and, expression deadly serious, it ran its attention over the seam with the floor. I gripped Nick's arm as it mumbled about tearing summoners limb from limb, interrupted teas, and how inconsiderate it was to pull someone from their dinner or Wednesday night telly. Adrenaline shook me as the demon dissolved to a red mist and sank through the floorboards.

  I clutched at Nick, my knees threatening to give way. "He's checking for pipes," I said. "There are no pipes. I looked." Fear made my shoulders hurt as I waited for the demon to rise through the floor at my feet and kill me. "I looked!" I asserted, trying to convince myself.

  I knew the circle bisected rocks and roots, and the top of it went into the attic, but as long as there wasn't an open path like a phone or gas line, the circle was secure. Even a laptop could break a circle if it was connected to the net and an e-mail came in.

  "Oh good. He's back," Nick breathed as the demon reappeared outside the circle, and I stifled a laugh, knowing it would sound hysterical. What kind of a life did I have when seeing a demon was a good thing?

  The demon stood before us, taking a tin of what probably wasn't snuff out of a tiny vest pocket and sniffing a pinch of black powder into both nostrils. "You cast a well-built circle," it said between cultured sneezes. "As good as your father's."

  My eyes widened and I stepped to the circle's edge. "What do you know of my dad?"

  "Reputation, Rachel Mariana Morgan," it simpered. "Strictly reputation. He was not in my realm of expertise when he was alive. Now that he's dead, I'm interested. I specialize in secrets. As does Nick Sparagmos, it seems." It put the tin away and pulled Ivy's chair out from before her computer. "Now," it said idly as it shook the mouse and brought up the Internet, "as amusing as this is, can we get on with it? Your circle is tight. I won't be killing you now." Its red eyes went sly. "Later, perhaps."

  I followed its gaze to the clock over the sink. It was one-forty. I hoped Ivy didn't walk in on this. An undead vamp might survive a demon attack, but a live one would stand as much of a chance as me.

  I took a breath to tell it to go away because I didn't call it, but a thought stopped me cold. It knew Nick's last name. It had said it twice.

  "It knows your last name," I said, turning to Nick. "Why does it know your name?"

  Nick's mouth opened and his eyes slid to the demon. "Ah…"

  "Why does it know your name?" I demanded, my hands on my hips. I was tired of being afraid, and Nick was a convenient outlet. "You've been calling it up, haven't you!"

  "Well…" he said, his long face reddening.

  "You idiot!" I shouted. "I told you not to call it. You promised you wouldn't!"

  "No," he said, his hands taking a grip on my shoulders. "I didn't. You said I wouldn't. And it just sort of happened. I didn't even mean to call him the first time."

  "The first?" I exclaimed. "How many times have there been?"

  Nick scratched the bristles on his cheek. "See, I was sketching pentagrams—for practice. I wasn't going to do anything. He appeared, thinking I was trying to call him with some information to pay off my debt. Thank God I was in
a circle." Nick glanced at the soggy papers with their silver chalk lines. "Just like he showed up tonight."

  Together we turned to the demon, and it sent its shoulders to rise and fall in a shrug. It seemed more than willing to wait out our argument, more interested in Ivy's favorites list than us at the moment.

  "It's an it, not a him," I said. "And I'm not going to let you blame this on the demon."

  "How very kind of you, Rachel Mariana Morgan," the demon said, and I scowled.

  Nick was starting to look angry. On sudden impulse I pushed the hair from his left temple. My breath caught as I saw two lines bisecting his demon scar instead of one. "Nick!" I wailed. "You know what happens when you get too many of those?"

  He took a bothered step back, and his brown hair fell to hide it.

  "It can pull you into the ever-after!" I shouted, wanting to smack him a good one. I had only one line through my demon scar, and the worry still kept me up at night.

  Nick said nothing, watching me with unrepentant eyes. Damn it all to hell, he wasn't even trying to explain himself. "Talk to me!" I exclaimed.

  "Rachel," he said. "Nothing is going to happen. I'm being careful."

  "But you have two IOUs," I protested. "If you don't make good, you belong to it."

  He smiled confidently, and I cursed his belief that the printed word held all the answers and he would be safe if he followed the rules. "It's okay," he said as he took my shoulders again. "I've only entered into a trial contract."

  "Trial contract…" I stammered, floored. "Nick, this isn't twenty CDs for a penny with only three more to buy. It's trying to take your soul!"

  The demon chuckled, and I flicked a glance at it.

  "That's not going to happen," Nick soothed. "I can call on him whenever I want, same as if I gave him my soul. And at the end of three years I walk away with no ties or commitments."

  "If it sounds like too good a deal, you aren't looking at the fine print."

  Still he smiled, his face showing confidence instead of the terror he should have been feeling. "I read the fine print." His finger rose to touch my lips and stop my outburst. "All of it. I get minor questions answered for free, and I can put larger questions to him on credit."