She spoke in my ear. “Look sideways.”
I closed my eyes.
A winding fire of intuition flowered in the pit of my belly. Shot up the length of my spine until it burned behind my eyes. I opened them again. Looked from the corner of my eye. Not directly at the spot. Sideways.
The willow’s thick trunk swayed in the wind. Its long tendril branches whipped at my face. The earth around its roots looked stone cold dead. Not a single blade of grass. Not one insect.
The tree asked me to look at it straight on. Not out loud. Inside my head. I heard its voice clear as I could hear my own. I heard menace in its words.
I remember you.
“That’s a good thing, right?”
You came once with the seer. You never came again.
“I’m here now.”
Too late.
“I know what happened here. At least, I know part of it. The girl next to me did something bad. Something evil.”
Then why have you brought her with you?
“To help put things right again.”
It cannot be done.
“That’s what she says. I’ve been in awful situations before, though, and I’ve always found a way to solve the problem. There’s got to be a way here.”
The only way out is through.
“What does that mean?”
You must complete the spell.
“Summon the Demon?”
Only then can the Demon be defeated and order be restored.
Of all the things I’d never expected to hear. I wanted to end this before the Demon got here. That kind of power—how could I possibly get ahead of that? Hell, how could we do it? We had a lot of talent, but this kind of crap was way beyond our collective skill.
“The only way?” I asked.
Yes.
“It’ll put everything back the way it was?”
No. That can never be done.
Why would that be? I could only think of one reason. “The damage is too severe.”
That is correct.
The words made my heart hurt. I rubbed the center of my chest. It didn’t help. “Is there anything else I should know?”
The tree said nothing.
“Any clue you have for me? Any help?”
Nothing again.
“You sure?”
This is your responsibility, seer. It is your magic to wield and to right.
I nodded. The willow seemed to see it and understand. I thought about asking one more time, but I’d thrown three questions. The most significant number.
There was a reason we had sayings like third time’s the charm. Trite, but true. Especially in connection with magic.
The tree wouldn’t answer a fourth question.
I let my intuition guide me back to the hill. The grass I knelt on. The wind that lifted the tail of my shirt. Cooled my sweat.
The earth had stopped shaking. The night filled with normal sounds again. Leaves and branches moving in the breeze. Cicada song. The huskiness of Melody’s voice.
“What the hell’s going on, Rude? Where did you go?”
“What do you mean, where did I go?”
“You up and disappeared. How did you do that? You were just supposed to look sideways.”
“I thought I did.”
She shook her head. “You vanished.”
“I talked to the willow.”
“You’re different again. Your hair.”
I reached for the top of my head. “What about it?”
“It’s white, Rude.”
“It can’t be.”
“It is.”
Footfalls sounded behind us. Three sets of feet, human and dog, on the metal bridge. I smelled them at the same time I heard them.
“This is bad,” Melody said. “Real bad.”
“I agree.” The Singer stepped onto the incline behind us and climbed up. I sensed her blinding blue light without having to look, just like before. I focused on it until her combat boots came even with me. “Can you stand up, Davies?”
I tried. Started with my good ankle. While I pushed to my feet, Kevin came up behind me. He gave me a winged shoulder to lean on.
“Tell us what happened,” he said.
“Not until Melody here tells us why she lied. She did a lot more than pour out her blood.”
She shook her head. “No.”
“It’s your word against the willow’s. I can’t think of a reason for the tree to lie. Can you?”
Her shoulders dropped. “No.”
I raised a brow. Was it white, too? Or was only the hair on top of my head bleached by magic?
Melody glowed a darker red in my sight. “I couldn’t take the risk that what I did would be reversed. I needed the spell to work. I needed my father to be able to come. I knew you would try to stop it, Rude. That’s how you are.”
“That’s my job,” I said.
“It’s more than that. You’re like some kind of Hawaiian-shirt-wearing hero. You don’t stop until you make it right.”
“How would you know that? You don’t really know me.”
“How long have we gone to school together?” she asked.
I shrugged. “High school.”
“Longer than that. You just don’t remember me.”
“I remember everybody.”
“Since you started training to be a seer, but not before.”
I thought back. Maybe my elephant memory wasn’t a lifelong gift. Maybe it, like my luck, had something to do with the training like she said. “What’s your point?”
“You might not have known who I was, but I knew who you were. God, I even had a crush on you.”
How was a dude supposed to take that? My face flushed hot. A million dollars, my ears and neck had turned bright pink.
“You were larger than life,” she said.
“That’s because I’m tall.”
“It’s because you’re you. So you understand why I had to make sure you couldn’t come here and undo what I worked so hard for, right?”
Oh, I understood. “You could’ve mentioned it to begin with. You know, like when you came to me for help. Or later, when we came looking for you and you conveniently turned up in the first spot we checked. Or later than that, at Beth’s house before we drove here and I looked sideways or vanished or whatever and turned into an even more interesting monster getting answers that you already had to questions you knew I’d ask.”
She backpedaled a step and barely kept her balance on the slope. “I wanted to.”
“But you didn’t.”
She opened her mouth to say something, then shut it again. The breeze ruffled her hair. Carried the scent of her amber perfume. I breathed it in.
When I’d seen her at the pub the first time, I’d smelled a sickly sweet cough syrup smell underneath the amber. The demon smell. I couldn’t make it out any longer. Either it’d gone away, or my destroyer self didn’t differentiate between woman and demon. Or, worst case scenario, demon smelled normal to me now.
“How did you change the land?” I asked.
“Another spell. The tattoo—it was a link to the city, to the land. It was a kind of doorway that Malek made for the city to find me and claim me so that I belonged to it. So I’d have a home.”
Right. “All of which we already know.”
“That kind of doorway is like those portals you guard, Rude. Like the oak tree in front of the pub?”
“A portal like that goes both ways.”
“Exactly. I just had to figure out how to send magic back through mine, to the city.”
“How?”
She undid the hooks on the bib of her overalls and tied them around her waist. She reached over her shoulders and pulled up the back of her tank. It looked like one of Malek’s tattoos—full of life and movement—until her shirt rose above the center of her back. A thick, shiny, red welt rose from the skin there. Obliterated the pattern of the ink.
I took a step toward her. My legs shook, but they held. I r
eached to touch the welt. She drew a sharp breath.
The heat of her skin took me by surprise. Warm as they were, my fingers might as well have been ice against her. She sank into my touch as if she didn’t mind it. More, as if she wanted it.
That surprised me. And it triggered an avalanche of feelings out of nowhere. Completely inappropriate feelings.
I tried to put them out of my mind. I could not, however, put it out of my pants. My cock started to get hard at the idea of it, and because she shivered with pleasure, and because of the curve of her hips and the way the bottom of the tattoo continued on below where I could see and I wondered how far down the curve of her ass it went.
Did I actually want her? Or was that the Destroyer part of me talking?
God, I didn’t want to know. I didn’t have time to know.
I forced my attention where I needed it to be.
The welt had to be a half-inch higher than the skin around it. I thought at first that the shine had to be from oil or ointment or something she’d put on it to help it heal, but it didn’t feel greasy. It felt raw.
“A brand?” I asked. My voice shook. I hoped no one else noticed.
She nodded. “It burned like a motherfucker.”
That sounded like the understatement of the year. “You did it yourself? Or did somebody help you?”
Beth chimed in fast. “Wasn’t me.”
I glanced at her. Her eyes were wide behind her glasses and her mouth had fallen open. She looked sunshine yellow around the edges. Clear and bright. Telling the truth.
“I did it myself,” Melody said. “The spell said I had to.”
“You find it in the same book?”
“Yeah.” She dropped her shirt. Untied the tabs of her overalls and put herself together again.
“What’d you use?”
She turned to face me slowly. “Tire iron.”
Kevin gasped behind me.
“It was the only thing I had that was big enough, and I needed it to be made of metal so I could get it hot enough.”
The whole idea of her taking a tire iron to her own flesh made my whole body crawl. “Not with a normal fire, you didn’t. Magic needs more than that.”
She touched the tip of her index finger to her nose. “Can’t get anything past you, can I?”
I shook my head.
“A normal fire would get it hot enough, but not in the right way. It had to be a special fire. It had to have a little of the same magic Malek used in his ink,” she said. “There’s a spot in the upper left corner, where the tattoo wraps over my shoulder. I stuck a needle in it when I got home from Snake Bite, to open it up while the ink was still fresh. I used tweezers to take a pinch of ink and skin. I saved it to add to the fire when the time was right.”
“That’s hella screwed up,” Beth said.
“All that mattered to me was that it worked.”
“A demon fire,” I said. “You’re in so deep with Malek.”
Melody thinned her lips.
“Is there anything else at all I should know about?” I asked. “I don’t care how small a thing it is. I don’t care if it seems inconsequential to you. I want to know it now.”
“No. I swear.”
I wanted to believe her. I searched her aura for any sign of a lie, any shift in color that would tell me she was off the rails. I didn’t see one thing to create a sliver of doubt. Nothing to ignite my suspicion, and I had plenty to go around.
“I think you’re telling the truth.”
She blew out a long breath.
“But given that my new superpowers aren’t exactly super good, I want a second opinion. Kevin?”
Kev stepped up next to me. The feathers of his wing brushed against my back. Would I ever get used to that? God, I hoped not. “I don’t trust her. For what it’s worth, though, I think she believes she’s telling the truth.”
“Not the same thing,” I said.
“No. But how’re you gonna tell the difference?”
I couldn’t. “Singer?”
“I agree with Kevin.”
Beth didn’t rate an opinion. That left one of us. The four-legged one who seemed to have no problem showing us exactly what he thought of Melody. He’d growled at her when we’d found her at the pub. He’d put himself between her and me. Tried to protect me.
The Singer had called him a lucky dog.
I whistled. “Hey, Zach.”
His paws made a jangle sound several times on the bridge as he came to my call, the last time extra-loud as he braced himself and leapt onto the incline. He scrambled up, claws digging divots in the dirt.
I cocked my head toward Melody. “Check her out.”
Not anyone’s idea of an official command. Probably not even words he understood all that well. Except he did just what I asked.
He sidled between Kevin’s and my legs and trained his sniffer on Melody’s kicks. His hackles didn’t rise. He didn’t bare his teeth. He didn’t bark, or growl, or whine. He tilted his head and met her gaze. She didn’t move—didn’t even blink—for a full minute. Then she looked away before he did.
Zach backed away from her and rubbed against my leg. I scratched the top of his head.
“All right,” I said. “We have to finish what Melody started if we’re gonna have a chance in hell of stopping it. How’s that for laughs?”
Kev didn’t look amused. In fact, his eyes had taken on a disturbing dark blue rim around the pupils. “What?”
“I’ll tell you later,” I said.
“Faery stuff?” he asked.
I nodded. “Most likely.”
“Shit,” Kevin said.
I slid my hands into the pockets of my shorts. “I know, right?”
He chewed on the inside of his mouth for a minute. “So that’s what the tree told you? We have to let the Demon come? Then what? Kill it?”
“Tree didn’t say.”
“Fantastic.”
I flashed him a wry grin. “If we’re gonna complete the spell, we need to check the book for the next steps.”
We’d left it in the Explorer. Which I’d parked in the halo of a streetlamp, surrounded by shadows and asphalt. There hadn’t been a single soul nearby. Not even a squirrel. But there was somebody there now.
Malek leaned against the passenger door, arms at his sides, hands curled into fists. He bristled with pent-up pissed off. It flowed off his muscled arms. Off the gleaming top of his head. He smelled like blood.
He pushed away from the car and I saw it. A single slice across the belly. The stain of red on his white shirt. The smears on his black leather pants. Spots on his boots.
I couldn’t see the wound through the hole in his shirt.
He saw the question on my face and unclenched his fists so that he could sign an answer. I heal fast.
“That happen tonight?”
An hour ago.
“Was it deep?”
Mortal, he signed.
The Singer wove her way up to the front of the pack and stood beside me. “Serpent,” she said.
He inclined his head. Peacock. I see you’ve brought me a prize.
“I wouldn’t call her that. She’s more of a pint-sized screw-up. ‘Course, when she messes up, the world ends.”
Words are your thing, Singer. Not mine.
It struck me that she had what had been taken from him. The voice that persuaded. The voice that seduced. The ability to make people feel whatever she wanted them to, which in her case usually amounted to their fiercest desire. I wondered if he hated her more than a little.
“Dude,” I said. “What happened to you?”
Somebody sent an assassin to take me out. Who would be that stupid?
“Nobody with a brain. Or even a brain stem.”
He glared around us. At Melody.
I spun on my heel and caught a glimpse of the horror on her face before she locked it down behind the mask of innocence I’d already seen way too much. “Please tell me you didn’t do that.”
She didn’t answer.
“I just asked you up there if there was anything else I needed to know. You said no.”
She looked at her feet. Paced a quick circle. Glanced at me. “I meant it.”
“Clearly, you left out this one small point.”
“You said he wanted me dead. You said nobody double-crosses him and lives to tell about it. I don’t want to die.”
“Clearly, you do,” I said. “You put a hit out on him?”
She nodded sharply.
“You did this when? While we were at Kevin’s house? In the car on the way to here? You’ve been with us the whole time. You haven’t even taken a potty break—you should hydrate more, right? So when did you call in the dead assassin? He is dead, isn’t he, Malek?”
Kevin read Malek’s signs. “Way dead. Cut into small pieces and scattered out back for the murder of crows that’ve taken to hanging out there. They’ve probably eaten what’s left of him by now.”
“How in the hell did you do that?” I asked.
“Do what?”
“You couldn’t understand sign language to save your life back at Snake Bite. All of a sudden, you’re an expert?”
Kevin’s jaw tightened. “I don’t know. I mean, I’m not reading the signs. I’m reading what’s behind them.”
Behind them. “Thoughts? Emotions?”
“They’re popping into my head. Like pictures in my mind,” he said.
“Dude.”
“I know.”
“That’s faery.”
“I. Know.”
I didn’t want to wrap my head around that. I couldn’t get stuck on it either. Too much I didn’t get. Too much at stake.
“So,” I said. “When?”
Melody mumbled. It sounded a little like before.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t catch that.”
“Before. When I was waiting for you at the pub. I did it then.”
“Which meant you didn’t know how much trouble you’d gotten yourself into yet. Was it part of making sure that no one could undo what you started?”
Melody folded her arms across her chest. Angry that she’d been caught. A-freakin’-gain.
“Look, if we’re gonna work together, you’re gonna have to do so much better. The part where you lie or conveniently forget to tell us important stuff? It’s not working for anybody. You already know that we’re prepared to help you fix your sideways shit and you’re still producing fallout. I’m leaning toward letting Malek have you.”
Demon (The Faery Chronicles Book 2) Page 10