“Voluntary?” Aerie snorted. “Demons actually volunteer for this?”
“To get out of Hell? Sure, they do. Anything is better than being in Hell. Being tied to an amulet is a day in the park, no matter what kind of master. And don’t forget—amulets are used by humans. No matter how cruel or how twisted, they can never be worse than the Devil itself.”
“So, this one has a demon that was forced into entrapment?” Her mind raced, replaying the snips of conversation she never managed to get Pop to clarify.
Greysen’s voice: “Charles, you bound this demon?”
Pop: “She’s your damned mother.”
Aerie shook her head, trying to focus. Hard to do with something like that clinging to the front of her brain.
“That’s what we thought, at first,” he said. “The power signatures emanated by the device seemed demonic in nature. Few variant power sources exist anymore. Fairy magic can’t be trapped and sky magic doesn’t last long once it’s sequestered. And you know the risks of using Elemental magic in public.” He glanced over at Cara, who only pursed her lips and turned to look out the window. “Based on the dating, we were originally convinced it was demon.”
Aerie scrunched her brows. “What changed your mind?”
“It’s not damned. Once we got hold of the right tools, we divinity-tested it.”
Aerie shrugged, clueless at what “divinity-tested” even meant.
Cara made a noise of agreement. “My dad teaches a class on it. Divinity tests reveal what class demon is held inside an object and, therefore, what they are capable of doing.”
“Right,” Finn said. “The problem, though, was that when we tested it, it registered no result.”
Aerie shook her head, losing patience. “Operator error?”
“No. No result means…” Cara sounded gobsmacked. “It’s not a demon.”
“Yeah, well.” Aerie pinched her lips together, hiding her reaction. Secretly, she was relieved. Being possessed by a demon—even a maternal one—wasn’t high up on her bucket list. Shit like that left a mark, an indelible one. “It sure acts like one.”
“Yes, she does. And that’s the problem. Whoever is in there isn’t a demon…but she’s morphing.”
“Are you sure?” Cara gave Aerie an uneasy glance.
Finn shrugged. “You saw her, back there. All our information on this amulet was passive, until you showed up.”
“And kicked your butt,” Aerie said with a snort. She turned to Cara for a light high-five.
“And stole the amulet,” Finn shot back.
There was that bossy tone again. She barely knew this guy but already that bossy tone got on her frigging nerves. “Which, you keep forgetting, was ours to begin with. I’m not just some random hood, you know. I’ve got papers.”
“And that’s not necessarily a good thing.” Finn narrowed his eyes and leaned up between the bucket seats. “What can you tell me about your father?”
“Other than he’s a pain in the ass, I’m not telling you anything.”
“That makes me even more concerned.”
“Well, don’t be. My family might have issues to work out, but it’s my family and I’m not a traitor.”
“Your father is Charles Pathering, proprietor of PSS.”
She gave him a side eye and swiveled in her seat to look back at him more fully. “Yeah.”
“Well, you said yourself, he legally owns this amulet. How did he get it? Look, I know you don’t want to feel like you’re betraying him, but, there’s a spirit trapped inside. A person. She doesn’t deserve this fate.”
That dug at her moral core. If it truly was her mother, was she contributing to the damage? God, how she hated this flip-flop bullshit. She had been perfectly fine in her worldview, quite secure knowing how she felt about her own family before this guy got up in her grill. “I’m not sure. He usually keeps detailed files on these things.”
“So, it’s an unregistered device?”
“Or I just didn’t find the whole file yet.”
“Well, what about him? Is he Natural or apprenticed?”
“He doesn’t practice much anymore. Too busy running the business. I haven’t seen him cast in forever. But, considering I’m not apprenticed, I imagine he isn’t either.”
“I never thought you were apprenticed. That circle of yours…” He mimicked her cast-gesture, the finger and thumb. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Only a Natch could pull that off, and not many of them. What does your mom do?”
“Nothing.” Except turn me into a raging hellfire. “She’s dead.”
“Oh.” Finn’s face clouded and his voice dropped. “I’m sorry.”
“Why?” She fell back to her smart-assed defenses and cocked off to him. “Did you kill her?”
“No—”
“Right. So, don’t be sorry. She died when I was little. I don’t remember much but, from what my Pop says, there wasn’t much worth remembering, other than she was powerful.”
“Well, so is the spirit in that amulet. Very powerful, all on her own. But trapped in there, so close to the demonic leys, it must be hard for her to not tap into everything available to her in an effort to escape.”
“Oh. That’s not good.” Cara tapped her lips, her dark green eyes looking troubled. “My dad says that a wizard who uses power not his own may end up taking on the characteristics of the foreign powers. Like, magic adapts to a source. It was what was behind the pseudo-Elementalist attacks back in the 70s.”
“Exactly.” Finn exhaled hard and sat back in the seat again. “The longer she’s in there, the more likely she’ll morph into demon. Especially if her powers are tapped from the outside.”
He furtively eyed Aerie, a quick flick of his gaze.
She pressed her lips together. That look told her everything she needed to know about Finn: he blamed her for everything the amulet was doing.
What else was new? She’d spent her whole life being blamed for everything that ever went wrong. Now this. Now, if her long-estranged mother turned demon, it was because Aerie was pushing her to be one.
It blew the last of her cool. A hot flush crept up along the sides of her face, dripping down her neck. “You know what? I didn’t ask for this. All I’ve ever done is my job. Not that any of you guys can relate.”
“That’s not fair.” Cara’s bruised tone revealed the wound Aerie had inflicted. “You know my parents are academics. They had my college plans laid out for me since middle school—”
“And you don’t know anything about me,” Finn interjected. “How can you, when you just bust into a stranger’s house and take what doesn’t belong to you?”
“Yep, that’s what I do. I’m a thief. Not at all a Licensed Artifact Adjustor, legally employed by a registered dealer.” She yanked the door handle and got out, slamming the door. “Well, screw you. If people didn’t take what didn’t belong to them, or if they’d just stop being such assholes, nobody would ever end up in a situation like this.”
She stomped away a few steps before whirling around, arms wide. “Because, you know what? I try. All right? I try to be a good person. Everyone else gets away with doing whatever the hell they want and as usual, I’m the one paying for it.”
“Aerie, get back in the car.” Cara pleaded. “You can’t just take off. Come on.”
Aerie turned her back and started walking.
“Aerie.” Finn’s voice carried across the lot. “Don’t be stupid.”
She lifted a middle finger in reply and kept walking. When the amulet’s power seeped out over her, she didn’t even resist it. Sometimes, a bad mood needed a little Hellfire.
It annoyed the literal Hell out of her to hear them following a short distance behind, the crunch of tires on stone as she walked the main drag home. The blasts of horns of irritated drivers, the rude yells, the occasional insults as some redneck jackass hollered an Elemental slur at Cara—all of it just fed the fire and kept her angry enough to keep walking.
Finally, she turned the corner onto a residential street, and leaned on a retaining wall, arms crossed, watching Cara’s car come to a stop.
She and Finn had a brief but animated discussion, lots of hand-waving, head-shaking, and a few arm-grabs when one or the other tried to open the door. In the end, though, it was the guy that got out.
He approached slowly, trying not to spook her, she guessed. At length, he leaned against the wall, not looking at her.
Good thing, too. She wanted to choke him, to stuff a fistful of blue flames down his throat. It was all she could do to keep from wheeling on him and screaming herself hoarse or yanking the nose off his smug face. One direct look from him might be all it took for her to fall under its thrall again.
With the chakra charm back in place, she stood a chance at holding back the hot, red flood. Didn’t mean it was fail-proof. She fisted her hands, nails biting into her palms, and tried to focus on each ragged breath.
Finn started that weird chant, the drumbeat rhythm that had worked on the amulet back at the coffee shop.
If it helped before…she tried to focus on the shifting, indecipherable words, letting the meter pace out her breathing, reaching for resonance between her heartbeat and the sound of his voice.
The cadence lulled the amulet to a dormant mode. She felt it loosen its death grip from around her heart. Her breathing slowed, the air tasting normal again, and she slumped, exhausted in the aftermath.
As it quieted, he returned to English. “That’s right. Just rest. Reserve your strength.”
She knew he wasn’t talking to her, specifically. “Why do you talk to the demon like that?”
He shrugged and looked off toward Cara’s car. “Because I know her and because I know she’s not a demon.”
“You don’t know anything. It wants to kill my father. That’s pretty demonic.”
“She’s acting that way because of the prison she’s in.” He turned to her, his blue eyes intense. “She’s trapped. Going insane. You would be, too, if you were stolen from the people you loved.”
“Then you know how far I’ll go to protect my father.” Crossing her arms, she swiveled to face him full-on. “This bitch needs to be stopped. Serves her right.”
Finn looked like he really wanted to hurt her, and part of her wanted him to try. “Have you ever lost any one? Someone that you actually knew? Actually cared about? Someone that mattered?”
For a moment, it seemed like the clouds passed over the sun. True, she did not remember her mother, and all she had of her was what her father had told her. But there was someone she lost. Trevor. And, while she was at it, there was the friend she had once thought was Jels, before he betrayed her and killed everything she’d loved about him.
So many feelings, and not all of them sentimental. She drifted toward the curb, toeing the crabgrass snaking up through a crack in the sidewalk. “You can’t lose what you’ve never had.”
“I’ll tell you what it’s like.” Finn grabbed her wrist and spun her toward him. “I’ll tell you what it’s like to wake up happy one day and go to sleep at night knowing that half your family is gone.”
Was this all about him, now? Boy, was he about to get woke. “Buddy, I don’t have time for your problems. This is a case of ownership. I have papers. Case closed.”
“Screw your papers! Don’t you care? This is a person.”
“No.” She snapped open her collar hard enough to pop a button off, giving him a good look at the amulet, melded to her, the ugly red rawness of burned skin surrounding it. “This is an Asmodeus amulet. Created by one of the most despicable magicians ever known. Named for a demon who’d been around way longer than Christ. This is an instrument of evil.”
“That has a desperate soul trapped inside. Stop saying the word it. That spirit is a she. A woman. A wife. A mother.”
“Used to be. Now it’s—”
“Stop saying it!” He grabbed her lapels and hoisted her up on her tiptoes, pulling her close to his face. “That’s a life and you’re fucking around with the amulet like it’s some hunk of tin that doesn’t mean anything.”
Aerie brought her fists down hard, chopping his hands away. Breaking his hold, she kneed him and shoved him away. “Let go of me!”
Putting several paces between them she jabbed an angry finger at him. All this crap about it’s a wife and a mother—knowing her mother was dead—she tipped her hand on that one and now he was trying to use her emotions against her.
This was why she hid her feelings. It was the first thing someone turned against her to get what they wanted.
“You’re just trying to manipulate me.” She shook her head, screwing her lips into a grimace. “Well, you know what? I’m not giving it to you and I don’t care what you say. But bravo on the act. You’re a great liar.”
“I can prove it.”
“Do it, then.”
“I can’t do it here.” He lost the whole beat-down stance. “Come back home with me. You can meet my father.”
“No way. I had enough bullshit for one day. There’s only one place I’m going, and that’s home. Mine.”
She took a few backwards steps before whirling and starting off down the broken sidewalk in the direction of the shop. This time, they didn’t follow her. Cara did a three-point turn and left the way they’d come, presumably to take him back to his car.
His last words replayed in her agitated brain for most of the walk. Home, to meet his father. Funny, when he said it, for a moment, there was nothing she wanted more. Maybe because when he said home and father, there was a sense of affection behind the words. Like they were fundamentally good things.
She was mad for wanting to go, even just for that one, stupid minute.
The amulet stayed oddly quiet for the rest of the trudge to Back Street.
11
A tow truck was unhooking the van in the back lot by the time she got home.
“Great. Just—great.” Knowing Pop’s obsession with his balance ledger, she was sure her next paycheck would be proportionately docked. With a sigh, she shoved her hand down the front of her jeans, readjusting the chakra stone, and took several cleansing breaths, wanting as much control over her temper as possible before she faced him.
Her phone dinged with an incoming text, from an unknown number.
Just get the whole story before you do anything else. Finn.
She stuck her phone back into her pocket with a sigh. Cara must have given him her number. Fabulous.
Greysen was phoning in an order when she walked in. He glanced at her when she passed the counter, a brief assessment before reading off the next item on his list. He covered the phone with his hand. “Wait, please.”
She turned back to see him pointing at a package on the counter. He tapped it with his pen before pointing toward the far end of the store.
With a nod, she retrieved the brown-papered box, noting it was much heavier than it looked. Deliveries like these usually were, since the containment spells generated a gravity field around the relics within. The UPS drivers never smiled when they delivered to the shop, and they changed routes fairly often. Aerie couldn’t blame them, knowing what consequences came when a package was damaged during shipment.
She carried it back to the storage room where Pop housed his artifacts collection: the vault.
From the outside, it looked like a walk-in freezer, with a burnished grey metal door with a broad pull handle. It was usually kept closed, since it wasn’t part of the general sales floor. The vault was an extension of the main building, one that stretched out indeterminately to the rear. Few people would be able to, describe it, either its inner or outer dimensions, because few people had ever been inside—not even Greysen.
But Aerie—she knew that room as well as her own bedroom.
She yanked on the heavy handle, dragging open the door. Amber lanterns, which kept the vault in a perpetual wash of warm glow, spilled out their luminescence. No charm was in place upon the door itself, no magical lock,
no spelled mechanism. All of this room’s protections lay in the wards that encapsulated it.
She circled her fingers and cast upon herself. A tingle dripped down her scalp, her limbs, and she shivered, delighted in the subtle touch of magic. Thusly dowsed, she could pass through the wards without resistance.
Not that she needed magical help getting in—it was getting out that the wards prevented. It kept thieves from getting out with their booty—but, should an accidental explosion occur, it would keep most of the damage contained.
Artifact Rule Number One: safety first.
The wards also masked the presence of what lay within. Nobody in their right mind would rob a walk-in freezer. If anyone could sense the contents, the temptation would be too great to resist.
This room always took her breath away. It wasn’t just the rows of shelves loaded with the most beautiful and most intriguing of devices. It was their power, all confined in one space, concentrated to the point of generating a nearly audible hum. The pool of power was as copious and as palpable as any ley line she’d ever tapped.
The power danced along her skin like glitter on a spring breeze, feeling like carbonation and dandelion fluff, and as intoxicating as any potion. Simply standing still in this room was enough to make her head spin if she allowed it to consume her.
Indulging herself just for a moment, she drifted in the sheer wonder of it all before she dimmed the sensation. She’d learned to block out the rush long ago so that she could keep her head in here. And she needed to keep her head in order to get her work done.
As a child, she played inside when Pop conducted inventory. She shadowed Trevor when he visited the collections, whether he went to compare notes to prepare for the next adventure, or when he paused to recall an adventure of the past. Every moment with Trevor became a lesson, and the ones she learned in the vault were the best lessons of all.
As she grew and took on more responsibility, she spent more time working in the vault. She catalogued, she organized, she inventoried…and she experimented.
Without Pop’s knowledge, of course. He never would have approved of her tinkering with the artifacts. He was a shrewd businessman, with a keen eye for finance and a proprietor’s sensibility. He was way too big into ownership.
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