by Ivy Sinclair
“Great,” I said. “I could use a little shut-eye myself. But first that phone.”
Fernando leaned down and whispered something in Abigail’s ear. Then he turned on his heel and loped across the yard toward the barns. His long gait belied the fact that his feet never touched the ground. As if I needed the reminder that the man might look human, but he certainly was not.
Abigail was already on the porch opening the front door for Paige. I wanted to watch where Fernando went, but I wasn’t about to leave Paige alone with Abigail.
“You don’t need to worry, dear,” Abigail was saying to Paige when I joined them on the porch. “Bruno won’t be able to reach through the realms to touch your soul as long as you are wearing that necklace. It’s a small trinket, but it has big powers.”
“Thank you again,” Paige said. “It felt like I was going to die back there.”
“He wouldn’t have let that happen,” Abigail said with a snort. “At the point where you felt like you were standing at the precipice of death, he would have asked you where you were. Then he would have reeled you back to him just like a psychotic fisherman. Scare tactics are his specialty. I don’t blame you for feeling pressured to make a deal with him.”
“A blood pact with a demon is always a bad idea,” I said grimly.
Abigail turned to look at me. “And yet I thought you found ours mutually beneficial, Mr. Stone.”
Shit.
Paige’s mouth fell open. “What is she talking about, Riley?”
I wanted to strangle the diminutive demon. “It’s not a big deal. Critical information in exchange for Fernando’s corporeal form.”
Paige crossed her arms. “So you make me feel bad for making a blood pact with a demon when you went off and did the same thing?”
“I knew what I was doing, and I have everything under control,” I said. I watched as the lines around her mouth tightened. “Look, none of this is coming out right.”
“You’re right about that,” Paige said heatedly. “I’m starting to think I don’t know you at all.”
The situation was getting out of hand, and I felt the rush of anger again. “In case you’ve forgotten, I’m the guy who keeps saving your life,” I said.
“I never asked you to do that!” Paige’s voice rose a notch.
“Please, lower your voices,” Abigail said, clucking her tongue. “Folks rise early around here, and they won’t be happy having their last few minutes of sleep disturbed. Come inside. Have some tea. You are both on edge, and that isn’t helping matters.”
I could tell that by the stiffness of Paige’s spine as she followed Abigail into the house that she wasn’t forgetting a thing. That was fine. I wasn’t either. I ducked my head as I entered the house. The inside matched the outside perfectly in that it was quaint and simply decorated. We passed a staircase leading up to the second floor as we traveled the narrow hallway to the back of the house. We emerged into a kitchen area.
Across the room, there was a door that likely led out to the back porch. A large wooden table sat in the middle of the room with a multitude of mismatched stools around it. Abigail pointed at a phone on the far wall. “You’re welcome to use the phone. It’s the only one here on the farm. If you’ll excuse me, I need to check on something. Then I’ll be back to make your tea and show you to your rooms.”
The demon was gone before I could object. Paige made her way over to the table and sat down on one of the stools. Her shoulders drooped as she placed her elbows on the tabletop and rested her forehead in her hands. Her long hair fell around her face. My earlier anger was already fading.
“Let me make this call, and then we can talk,” I said quietly. Paige didn’t give any indication that she heard me. With a sigh, I made my way to the other side of the room.
I dialed the number that I knew by heart. It rang three times. I heard a pick-up on the other end and then a dial tone. I hit the button to hang up, and then redialed. This time it rang three times, and I hung up. I counted to ten, and then dialed the number again. This time, the call was answered on the first ring.
“Code?”
I had no idea how much I had missed that voice. “We already did the code,” I said grimly.
“It’s been seven days. For all I know, the Riley I knew was involved in an interrogation gone wrong, and this is a demon who possessed Riley’s body and is now trying to infiltrate his life.”
“Your logic is truly dizzying, Klein,” I replied. “But if some demon possessed me and knew my secrets, don’t you think it’d just show up on my doorstep? Why bother with a call?”
There was a long pause. I could practically see the gears whirling in Klein’s head.
“I will proceed from this point as if you are the real Riley then,” Klein said slowly. “But if I hear anything funny, then this conversation is over.”
I rolled my eyes. I was going to have to work with the kid on his threats. “Are you done?”
“Yes,” he said. “Where have you been?”
I looked over my shoulder. Paige was sitting up staring at me. Her expression was unreadable. I turned back to the wall and leaned my forearm above the phone’s base. “Would you believe hell and back?”
“Sweet!” Klein’s reserve finally broke. “What was it like? What did you do there? Do you have to go back?”
“Whoa, slow down. Look, I’m not out of the woods yet.” I had to chuckle at the literal meaning of my words. “I need you to get up here ASAP. Full gear. I’d estimate you are about ten hours from here, so if you leave now you should be here by dinner time.”
“I don’t do field work,” Klein said flatly. “Not after the last time.”
“At some point in time, you are going to have to forget about Barcelona,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “This job requires field work.”
“Not after Barcelona,” Klein said. “You don’t pay me enough.”
“I pay you three times what you’d find anywhere else.” This was an argument that Klein and I had often. “Get your ass in the van and get up here. I need you.”
There was a long pause. “I don’t even know where you are.”
“Ask Marshall to do a locator spell,” I said. “Tell him to look for a masked area in central Iowa. Tell him I’ll owe him.”
The pause was even longer this time. “This must be bad if you’re willing to go in on an open-ended favor for Marshall.” Marshall Yager was a small-time warlock who lived three blocks over from me. We had a love-hate relationship. He loved me, and I hated him. “Do you know where you are, Riley?”
“Of course, I do,” I said. “A farm. In the middle of nowhere. Make sure to use the four wheel drive when you turn off the interstate. Ten hours, Klein. I mean it.” Then I hung up the phone.
“Nice to know I’m not the only one you feel it necessary to be bossy with,” Paige said.
“He works for me,” I said curtly. “Technically, I am his boss and so it’s my right if I want to be bossy.”
“I don’t work for you,” Paige said as she stood up. I could see the circles under her eyes. Her skin was pale. She looked like she was about to fall over, but she was still beautiful. “You can’t tell me what to do. If you truly want to help me, then you need to include me in whatever it is that you are planning and let me have a say.”
“Okay,” I said. If it meant that she’d talk to me again, I was willing to tell her whatever she wanted to hear.
She looked surprised. “Okay?”
“I think you’ll see that I’m not asking you to do anything crazy. I just want to keep you safe,” I said. I wanted to say more, but then Abigail reappeared next to my shoulder.
“Tea?” she asked brightly.
“I’d really just like to go to my room,” Paige said, touching her forehead. “I’ve got a bit of a headache.”
“Of course!” Abigail exclaimed. “The tea can wait. And you, Mr. Stone?”
“I’m with Paige,” I said.
“I should have guessed,” Abigail
said. Her tone had flattened. “This way.” She led us back into the hallway and then up the stairs to the second floor. She pointed at a doorway to her right off the landing. “The bathroom is there.” Then she opened a door directly across from the staircase. “Paige, you can sleep here. I’ll put you next door, Mr. Stone.”
I shook my head. “No way. One room.” I started walking toward the room.
Paige snorted. “I think not.” She crossed in front of me and looked me in the eye. “I get a say, remember?”
I cursed that I had agreed to her terms so easily. I clenched my jaw. “Of course.”
“We’ll talk later,” she said. Then she stepped into the room and closed the door in my face.
I turned around to find Abigail staring up at me. “She’s a spirited one,” Abigail said with a smile. “I can understand why she was chosen.”
I stalked to the door that she indicated and stepped inside before I let my dark side out and decided to throw her down the stairs.
CHAPTER FOUR – PAIGE
There was no way that I would admit that I wouldn’t have minded sharing a room with Riley. Regardless of how annoyed and frustrated I was with his behavior, I still felt safer with him close by. There was no one else that I could trust. It was hard to reconcile that code that I lived by for so long with the fact that I did believe Riley had my best interests at heart.
Heart. Matters of the heart were still so foreign to me. My head throbbed as I thought about the fact that I no longer fit into any familiar mold, from my old life or my new one. I was a different person than the one who traveled those paths, and in another time or place, I didn’t think that it would be possible to merge those two personas at all. But this was my new reality whether I liked it or not.
Riley completely blocked my request to tell him what I knew about his mother and sister, and that was more worrisome the more that I thought about it. If I couldn’t even get him to listen to me, I wasn’t sure what I’d be able to do to get back to them. Part of me understood why he shut down on the topic, but the other part, the part that knew that I saw the truth of the matter, wanted to throttle him.
He wasn’t used to interacting with me as an equal. When we met on Calamata Island, I had no idea of the world that I was about to be plunged into. But with my memories returned, that wasn’t the case any longer. I grew up understanding that darker creatures existed, at least in concept. That became reality when I was fourteen. But yet I wasn’t an inept player at the demon game. I needed Riley to appreciate that if he and I were going to continue working together.
I laid down on the bed and willed my mind to stop its incessant spinning, but it was impossible. Riley’s reaction to my deal with Proctor had been over the top, but I couldn’t deny that I felt queasy about it. Everything seemed to hinge on locating the relic that I pursued before I lost my memories. Once I had it, I could use it to kick Eva out of my life forever. No more chance of possession. She’d have to find herself another vessel.
Riley’s indication that I was missing a much larger and more dangerous picture gave me pause. The old Paige wouldn’t have given two shits about the fate of the rest of the world and the people in it. So why did I find myself caring about it now?
Somehow, living on Calamata Island brought about a fundamental shift in my morals and values. It was reminiscent to me of my younger, more innocent days when I lived with my parents in a commune, not unlike the one where I found myself now. There was a sense of peacefulness and belonging that resonated with me on a deeply spiritual level.
“Great. I’m going through a flipping existential crisis,” I said out loud as I flung my arm over my eyes. Although a flimsy curtain covered the window across from the bed, the morning sun lit up my room making it all but impossible to sleep.
I had no idea how long I tossed and turned on top of the covers before I heard the sounds of laughter outside. I got up and walked over to the window and drew the curtain to the side. An expansive side yard dipped down the small hill and extended out to the fields a hundred yards away. There were children playing on a swing set alongside the house.
There was no conscious thought after that, and moments later I found myself outside leaning against the porch railing watching the children run and chase after each other. The group was fairly large; I lost track counting at ten, but seemed to be an equal mix of boys and girls. I placed the age range from four to probably ten. Although a couple of them glanced in my direction, my presence didn’t seem to faze them at all.
I felt a lump in my throat as I watched their carefree play. When we lived in the commune, every afternoon after school my mother would send me outside to play with the other children who lived there. She often had to drag me back inside for dinner. Then I usually managed to gain permission to play outside for another hour or two afterward until it got dark.
I loved being out in the sun, and I closed my eyes and turned my face fully into its beams now. It warmed my face, and I felt my shoulders finally relax. I remembered taking for granted the idea of peace and serenity in the world. When I was six, my world was made up of the people that lived in the commune and the invisible walls of the land that surrounded it. I had been happy then. Life had been so much simpler.
“I forgot to tell the community to send the children into the fields for their playtime today. I’m sorry if they’ve been keeping you awake.” Abigail’s voice caused my eyes to fly open, and I whirled around to find her standing behind me.
“I wasn’t having much luck falling asleep anyway,” I said ruefully. “I feel like I’m about to fall over where I’m standing, but my brain refuses to shut off.”
Abigail pointed to a pair of chairs several feet away. “Why don’t we sit? Watching the children at play is one of my favorite things to do. Perhaps the fresh air will help soothe your mind. You have nothing to fear here, Paige.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to refuse and go back to my room, but I missed being outside. Although my time in captivity with Bruno had been short, I still felt as if the world was closing in on me after being trapped in the small, dank room. Riding in a car for several hours hadn’t helped that. “Okay,” I agreed. “But I don’t think I’ll be much of a conversationalist. My brain is mush.”
Abigail chuckled. “You give an old demon to much credit. Sometimes it’s nice to simply have company even if there is no talking involved.”
It was a sentiment that I appreciated. Before I knew that my roommate on Calamata Island was one of the most powerful archangels on earth, he had been simply ‘Christopher’ to me. He and I had a weekly ritual where we spent every Sunday afternoon lounging on the sofa reading the newspaper and doing our own crosswords or sudoku. That was quiet together time that always left me feeling re-energized and excited about the week ahead. I was sad that I would never have that experience again. It was another thing on a long list of things that I had taken for granted.
We sat in the rocking chairs, and I tucked one of my legs up under my thigh. It took several minutes of silence before I allowed myself to lean back and enjoy the gentle rocking as I watched the children play.
“I envy them.” I hadn’t meant to speak the words out loud, and I felt a flush rise in my cheeks when I heard them.
“Innocence is a precious gift,” Abigail said. “One that is lost all too quickly if it isn’t ripped away entirely.”
“That’s what happened to me,” I said. “I came home from school and what I found was a memory that I’ll never be able to scrub from my mind. My parents thought that they were protecting me. They only delayed what seems to be an inevitable fate.”
“Fear is a powerful emotion, and it causes people to do things all the time that they’d never consider at any other time. That is only accentuated when it involves those we care about.”
My gaze swung to the older woman. If I hadn’t known any better, I would have thought she was a grandmother of one or more of the children in the yard. It would be easy to imagine that at any minute fre
shly baked cookies and milk would appear on a tray. I never knew my own grandparents. My parents refused to talk about them other than to say that they weren’t ‘of the faith.’
The story of how my parents ended up as disciples of Eva was a story that I long wondered about, but had never had a chance to explore. I was focused on staying alive, but it didn’t mean that I forgot about it.
“Riley said that he brought Fernando back to corporeal form as part of your deal with him. You must care about him a great deal.”
Abigail smiled and nodded. “Fernando is the other half of my soul. He completes me.” Her smile fell. “When he was taken from me, I thought that I’d never see him again. I have been looking for a way to rescue him for quite some time, but as I’m sure you can imagine, poking around Hell isn’t safe for someone like me.”
“A disciple of Eva, you mean,” I said. There was little sense of beating around the bush. “I imagine that puts a wedge into any demon interactions you have. From what I’ve seen, your kind isn’t particularly fond of those that even do play on the same side.”
“I could say the same of your kind, dear,” Abigail said. “But nevertheless, I mean you no harm. You are a guest here as long as you would like to stay.”
It was exhausting that I found it necessary to examine and pull apart each and every word she said. It was something that was second nature to me, but I would have loved to have had the innocence of being able to take someone’s words at face value again. Demons, in particular, were master manipulators when it came to the true intention of their words. That’s why I had required such specificity when I struck my own deal with Bruno Proctor.
I had burned his words into my brain.
“I will teach you how to harness and control your magic, which you are not allowed to use against me. In return, you will owe me a favor that I can collect at my discretion that is bound only by the limitation that it does not put you or your loved ones at peril.”