by Faith Hunter
I opened my eyes just to slits so I could peek around without drawing attention. Unfortunately, I was lying on my side on the carpet, my hands and ankles bound, and so all I could really see were shoes in motion. From the sound of the conversation I deduced that the witches had arrived. My trapped and tied state led me to further deduce that I was the sacrifice for which they’d been waiting.
If I’d thought it through all the way I would have realized they’d need me for the spell. They wanted to curse Lucifer, and nothing carries a curse better than blood. The blood of the victim, if you can get it, is ideal. I couldn’t imagine anyone with sense in his head trying to stick Lucifer and carry away a sample, though. The next best thing was someone from his bloodline. Wasn’t it convenient that his great-granddaughter was at hand?
I wriggled experimentally, trying to see if there was any play in the knots. There wasn’t. I considered trying to set the ropes on fire, then discarded that idea. I don’t have fine control of my powers. If I tried to burn the ropes apart, the whole hotel could go up in a giant conflagration and thousands of people could be killed.
Still, I’d managed to open the elevator doors without setting the building aflame, so maybe I could play Jedi and unknot the ropes with the power of my mind.
I reached for my magic—and it wasn’t there.
Or rather, it was there, but it wasn’t available to me. Now I knew why I felt like I’d had a blanket thrown over me. Someone had put a dampening spell on my power so I couldn’t use it. Well, it was nice for the bad guys that Sammy Blue had thought of everything.
Beezle’s reassuring weight was still in my front pocket. Either Sammy Blue had forgotten about him or decided that Beezle was no threat. It was true that Beezle was a threat only if you were a bag of candy that did not want to be eaten, but that didn’t mean that my gargoyle wasn’t useful.
“Beezle!” I said through closed lips. My back was pressed up against a wall and no one was near me, but a lot of supernatural creatures have better hearing than I do. I knew werewolves that could hear a pin drop on the other side of the continent.
My gargoyle did not respond.
“Beezle!” I repeated, trying to wriggle my shoulder so that the coat pocket my gargoyle was nestled in would move.
The only response was a long exhalation.
“Seriously? You’re still asleep?” I muttered.
Beezle could untie my hands and feet. Even without my magic I could still use my sword. If I could find it. Since Sammy was so thorough, I was sure he hadn’t left it within my reach.
I opened my eyes a little more. Nobody was paying any attention to me. The furniture was pushed against the walls. The curtains were drawn. Three witches stood around a circle on the floor. They were young and completely ordinary-looking. They might have been office workers or college students. There was nothing to indicate that they were about to use their magic to torture another human being to death.
They were walking through the process of the spell, and occasionally one of them would use a piece of chalk to add a symbol inside the circle. Sammy Blue stood off in the corner, talking quietly on his cell phone, his back to me. I noticed he’d taken the time to change out of the suit he’d worn earlier and put on a different one—one that didn’t have a hole in the back from my nightfire blast.
The thing that hit me in the head had disappeared. Maybe it was taking a nap in the bedroom.
My sword leaned against the wall near the elevator, just about as far from me as it could possibly be. I’d have to get untied, sprint across the room—difficult, as I’d just been conked in the head and probably had a concussion—grab the sword, fight off three witches and a clever faerie, avoid whatever giant monster had hit me in the first place, find the Red Shoes and escape from the highest room in the building. All this without my magic.
No pressure.
“Beezle!” I said again, as quietly as I could.
“Your gargoyle will not wake,” Sammy Blue said, sliding his cell phone into his pocket. He turned and walked toward me, looking altogether too pleased with himself. “The circle that surrounds you quashes your magic as well as his. And since he is so small and infinitely more magical than you, the circle keeps him asleep. So do not seek his help, nor anyone else’s. No one will come.”
I opened my eyes fully, and for the first time noticed the circle drawn around me. It was far enough away from my body that I couldn’t smudge it and break the spell. Okay. This was actually good news. It meant that if I could get out of the circle my power would wake up. Now I just had to get out of the circle.
Sammy Blue stopped just outside the circle, his violet eyes bright with anticipation. “My queen was correct. She knew that you would fall into a trap if you thought you were acting the heroine. It was pathetically easy to lure you here.”
“And now with the evil-villain monologue,” I said under my breath, then more loudly, “You didn’t lure me here. I was sent here for another purpose.”
Sammy nodded. “To obtain the Red Shoes, yes. My queen made certain the rumor of the shoes reached Lucifer’s ears. Then she sent me here, to your city. Lucifer predictably recruited you to get the shoes for him. So you see, it was all planned from the start. And you behaved exactly as my queen expected.”
“Smugness is not an attractive quality,” I said.
Sammy gave a short laugh, then crossed to a watercolor of Lake Michigan that hung on the wall. He moved the painting aside to reveal a safe. He punched in a code on the electronic keypad, and the safe door swung open. Before continuing he carefully pulled a pair of latex gloves from the pocket of his suit and put them on. Then he reached into the safe and drew out the Red Shoes.
“I believe you were looking for these,” he said.
The moment I saw the shoes I felt an almost overwhelming desire to possess them. They looked like a pair of red satin ballet slippers, just like the red shoes in that old movie about the dancer. Ribbons trailed from the ankles, shackles for whoever was unfortunate enough to be tempted to put them on. An aura radiated from the shoes, a palpable sense of wrongness, and it blended with desire.
I realized that was the power of the shoes—not simply that they would hurt you but that you would want the hurt, that they would twist you and bend you and break you, but you would love it all the while, down to your last moment on earth, still dancing, dancing forever like the twirling ballerina in a music box. I could see myself there, spinning in joy and agony, my arms thrown to the sky, welcoming death.
No, I thought. I was an Agent of Death. Death did not dictate to me. I would not let my life end like this, a broken marionette for the amusement of Sammy Blue.
The effort it took to tamp down the desire for the shoes made me nauseous. It took every shred of will that I had to remember who I was, and why I was there.
I looked at the shoes, and then at Sammy Blue with clear eyes. Surprise registered on his face.
“Interesting. There are few who can withstand the call of the shoes. Your will is very strong. It must be, to have survived the Maze.” He seemed lost in thought for a moment, then smiled. “That strength will make the spell last longer. And that will give it more power, yes?”
He turned to the witches for confirmation. They had all paused in their activities to watch Sammy gloat over me. One of them, a skinny redhead in designer jeans, nodded.
“The greater the endurance of the sacrifice, the stronger the curse will be when it is completed,” she said. She looked at me as she said this, with no malice or guilt. It didn’t make a difference to her one way or the other if I lived or died. This was just a job to her.
The other two seemed to share her indifference. There was no help coming from that quarter.
It was down to me, as usual.
“Now,” Sammy said, smiling widely. His smile was getting crazier by the minute. He was definitely looking forward to
this. “I think you need to change your shoes.”
The longing for the shoes rose up again, but I tamped it down. I shook my head. “Uh-uh.”
Sammy narrowed his eyes at me. My resistance was a benefit to them, but it was also a problem. No doubt they had counted on me wanting to put the shoes on voluntarily. Now someone would have to break the circle to get them on me, and that would mean I’d have access to my magic again, even if it were for only a moment. I could see him calculating rapidly. He turned his back on me so he could conference with the witches.
I had to do something. I couldn’t wait for Sammy and his three little sorceresses to figure out how to force the shoes on me. But the only thing I had at the moment was my will—no magic, no sword.
Your will was enough in the Maze.
The thought appeared out of nowhere. My will had been enough in the Maze. My magic had been taken from me there, and I’d survived. More than survived—I’d beaten it, and no one in history had ever beaten the Maze. Except me.
The snake on my palm twitched. My Agent’s magic wasn’t the only power inside me. The blood of Lucifer Morningstar ran in my veins. The well inside me was deep with magic, more than I’d even begun to touch. That magic made the witches’ circle seem like a toy, a toy I could break if I so chose.
The spell over me wavered. I felt it, like a radio signal breaking up. I drew up my will, concentrated on the place where I felt the spell breaking.
And I snapped it. Beezle grunted awake inside my pocket and poked his head out.
“Better stay inside,” I said. He ducked back under my lapel. I pushed the force of my will into the knots that bound me and, like that, they were gone.
I stood and faced Sammy Blue and the three witches. They were huddled together, not concerned about me at all. Too bad for them.
Before I’d learned I was the many-greats-granddaughter of the first of the fallen, I’d killed a nephilim called Ramuell. I’d done this by letting my power flow up through me, allowing the full force of it to blossom and become something I could not control. It had exploded out of me like a burst of sunlight.
All that had remained of Ramuell was a little pile of ash. Ramuell had been a creature of darkness, and the merest hint of the sun would have melted him anyway. But it’s not a good idea for humans—or faeries—to fly too close to the sun, either.
I drew on the power that lay buried inside me—the light of the sun, the light of Lucifer Morningstar. Instead of letting it explode out of me indiscriminately, I focused it on the four people in front of me, who all looked up at the same time.
And who all looked very surprised to see me standing there.
“Impossible,” Sammy Blue said.
“Your eyes,” one of the witches said. “There are stars in your eyes.”
“I know,” I said, and let my magic fly.
The air was filled with the light of the sun, a light like a nuclear weapon exploding. Four sets of arms flew up in the air to block that light, to attempt in vain to hide from it.
The Red Shoes fell to the ground.
I tamped down the magic that flowed crazily in my blood now, put it back in a box for another day. That power was too intoxicating—and too close to Lucifer for my liking. The light in the room returned to normal.
Beezle poked his head out. “So you managed to melt them all without setting the room on fire. Congratulations.”
“Yeah,” I said, a little breathless. I stared at the Red Shoes. They could be mine. I could be something great and terrible with those shoes. My enemies would suffer like none had suffered before.
I shook my head from side to side, pushing away the spell. Apparently the shoes had decided that since I wasn’t willing to put them on, they would tempt me another way.
It was disturbing to think of a pair of red ballet slippers with something like sentient thought.
“Are we taking those home?” Beezle asked, giving me a beady-eyed look that told me he’d guessed some of what had passed through my mind.
“Yes,” I said. “They’re what I came for.”
I looked around for something to cover my hands so I could carry the slippers. There was an empty plastic bag attached to one of the bags that must have belonged to the witches. She probably had a dog.
Had a dog. I’d just killed her, and she would never go home to her dog again.
My breath came in sharp gasps suddenly, my heart pounding. I’d killed a human. Three humans, as a matter of fact.
Beezle clambered out of my pocket and up to my face. He put his little clawed hands on my cheeks.
“They were going to kill you,” he said.
“Yes, I know,” I said.
“You had no choice,” he said.
I nodded, swallowing the tears that threatened to spill over.
“You’re still yourself. You’re still Maddy Black,” he said.
“Okay,” I said, getting hold of myself. “Okay.”
I picked up the slippers carefully with the plastic bag and wrapped it around the shoes. I jammed the shoes deep in my pocket. Their proximity made me feel a little sick. Then I picked up my sword and went to the elevator.
The giant whatever that had knocked me in the head rumbled out of the bedroom. He looked sort of like a troll, big and lumpy and gray.
He looked at me, then at the ash that remained of his master.
“I wouldn’t try it if I were you,” Beezle said.
The troll turned around and went back to the bedroom.
The elevator door opened, and I went home.
I went straight to my bedroom, took out an empty shoe box from underneath the bed, and placed the plastic-wrapped slippers inside. Then I tucked the box into an old suitcase that I never used because I never went anywhere and put the suitcase in the back of my closet. The menacing aura around the shoes was hidden from me, and the low thrum of nausea subsided. I went back downstairs to wait. Beezle was already camped out in the middle of the living room couch, watching an infomercial for some kind of ab machine. A giant bowl of potato chips sat next to him on the cushion.
I sat on the front porch in the starlight, the sky bleeding midnight blue around the edges as the sun rose, and I waited. I knew he was coming. I could feel him. The tattoo on my palm wriggled in anticipation.
And suddenly he was there, golden blond hair gleaming in the light from the streetlamps, hands tucked in the pockets of the long coat that hid his wings from mortal view. He was older than the moon and the sun, but he looked ten years younger than me. The only thing that gave him away was the ancient secrets in his eyes. He joined me on the porch, companionably slinging an arm around my shoulders.
“I hear tell that you have managed to quash another threat to my kingdom,” Lucifer said.
I shook my head. “I don’t know how you hear these things so fast. Do you have someone following me with a camera?”
“Perhaps I have a crystal ball,” he said.
“Perhaps you do,” I replied. I took a deep breath, girding myself for what was to come. I’d already decided as soon as I’d touched the shoes. Now I just needed to follow through.
“And I also understand that you have obtained the object which I was seeking,” he said.
“How about this?” I said slowly. “Finders keepers.”
Lucifer looked at me steadily. “You are not in a position to keep those shoes from me should I decide that I wish to take them from you.”
I was scared. Of course I was scared. Lucifer Morningstar, the first of the fallen, was just about the biggest and baddest thing going. As far as I could tell, the only thing stopping him from ripping me into tiny little pieces of confetti was his attachment to anyone of his bloodline, no matter how distant. But there was no way Lucifer could have good intentions for the Red Shoes. And Beezle kept telling me that Lucifer respected strength. So I gazed
just as steadily back at him, and hoped he couldn’t see my fear.
“I can’t let you take them,” I said.
“And what will you do with them?” Lucifer asked. “How will you keep them safe? Once word gets about that you have the shoes in your possession, there will be creatures aplenty coming to claim their power.”
“I’m counting on two things to stop them from bothering me,” I said.
Lucifer looked amused. “And those two things are?”
“Your reputation. And mine,” I said. I might not be the first of the fallen, but there were lots of rumors about me, and I’d already proved more than once that I was no pushover.
“So you are willing to claim me if it’s convenient to your purpose, and otherwise you would disdain my offer?” Lucifer asked.
He’d implied more than once that he wanted me to be his heir, but I wasn’t interested in being mistress of all evil.
“Yeah, that’s pretty much it,” I said. “I keep the shoes, and if anyone tries to take them from me I’ll just remind them who I am. And who you are.”
Lucifer laughed suddenly, his eyes sparkling. You could see when he laughed like that how he managed to tempt so many, to charm good people onto a path strewn with thorns.
“Very well,” my great-grandfather said. “Let us say that you will keep the shoes for me, then. For a little while.”
That was probably the best deal I was going to get. The shoes were out of Lucifer’s hands for the time being. Maybe, if I was very lucky, he would forget about them.
Or maybe not. Lucifer had been alive for a long time and he seemed to remember everything.
Still, it was a victory of sorts.
Lucifer rose and stretched, turned his face toward the east and the rising sun.
“You may find that those shoes will be useful to you someday, granddaughter,” Lucifer said.