“And you hate that he’s got a close female friend who is beautiful and talented and has known him a lot longer than you.”
“Yeah.”
He nudges me with his elbow. “Want to try to make him jealous?”
“What?”
“Come on. We can totally do it. It would be fun.” He steps in front of me and looks into my eyes. “Don’t you remember how nice it was to kiss me?”
“No!”
“No?” He leans closer. “Do you want me to remind you?”
I push him away. “No! Will you stop that?”
He grins. “Probably not,” he says. “I may not be evil, but that doesn’t mean I’m a saint.” He looks at me a moment more, his smile changing into something slightly less impish. “Did you really have a dream about me?”
“Never mind,” I say firmly.
“Ah. I’ll take that as a yes. I hope it was a good dream. I bet it was.”
“Shut up,” I hiss at him. “You are never ever to mention that again. Ever.”
“Or what?”
“Or I will find a way to make you sorry. I swear it.”
“Okay, okay. Sorry. It’s just so hard to resist. Plus, I like thinking about it. And I like the way your face looks when I make you think about it.”
“My face doesn’t look like anything. And I’m not thinking about it. And speaking of my face, is this rash ever going to go away?”
“Hmm,” he says. He reaches toward me but I jerk back out of range. “Oh, relax. I’m just trying to look at it. Hold still.”
I do. I feel another of those tiny delicious shocks when he touches me, but I try very hard to pretend that I don’t.
“I . . . think so. I think it will fade over time. It must be a physical reaction, since his essence shouldn’t be able to affect you. But then, he did get into your dream. . . .”
I stop walking. “That didn’t even occur to me. What does that mean? Could . . . could my resistance be wearing off?”
“No,” Peter says. I’m immensely comforted by how sure he sounds. “If you’re a super-roach, you’re one for life. But . . . hmm.”
“Hmm? What hmm?”
“I’m not sure. Just trying to sort out what your ability protects you from and what it doesn’t.”
I think about this. “He was able to use his powers on me when I let him,” I say slowly, never really having reasoned this out before. “The halo thing, for example, when he did whatever he did to my eyes that makes me able to see them. I mean I didn’t exactly let him, Principal Kingston was holding my arms, but . . . I had agreed to help him collect the other demons, and that was part of it. . . .”
“That makes sense,” Peter says. “You’d opened yourself up in that specific case, so that allowed him access.”
“But I didn’t let him do this!” I protest, pointing to my rash. “And I certainly didn’t invite him into my dreams.”
“No . . .” Peter says, pushing up his glasses. “But dreams are . . . tricky. Maybe, on some level, your subconscious mind was open to him. If you were already dreaming about demons, for example, which would be understandable, maybe he could have used that as an entryway somehow.”
He is making my brain hurt again. “Well, crap,” I say. “How do I get my subconscious to keep him out?”
“I don’t know,” he says apologetically. “I think . . . I need to think about it some more.”
“Well, share whatever you figure out, please. I need to know that kind of stuff.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He gives me a little salute.
We finally reach his bunk and head inside. Ryan and Jules are sitting beside each other on one of the beds. Just sitting.
“Okay,” I start right in, wanting to get down to business. “I think we’re all up to speed on recent events, yes? So the question has been what to do next. Unless anyone has a better idea, I think we should try to contact the demoness to ask for help with our evil-demon-brothers situation. I guess the first thing is to make sure we can even do that — contact her, I mean. But you said you’ve been in contact with Aaron before, right, Peter?”
“Yes. I can summon Aaron. I can’t summon her, though. It would take a lot more power than I’m capable of to call up the demon queen in a containment circle.”
“That should be enough,” I say. “If we can get to Aaron, we can ask him to ask her. Or, if necessary, to take me down there again to ask her in person.”
Ryan makes an unhappy noise at this. I am tempted to make some unhappy noises myself.
“Sounds like a plan,” Peter says. “Should I go ahead and do it right now?”
I look at Peter, surprised. “Can you? You don’t need to . . . prepare or something? Aaron said . . .”
Peter rolls his eyes. “Aaron. Aaron likes to make a big production. Also he probably wanted to fix his hair or something first.”
Ryan and I both burst out laughing. Because, of course, he did.
Our eyes meet, and just for a second, in our shared moment of memory and amusement, I forget that anything is wrong. I love the way his eyes crinkle when he laughs. It feels like ages since I saw him do that.
Then Jules opens her mouth, ruining it. “What’s so funny?” she asks, looking back and forth between us. Ryan makes what is clearly a never-mind-you-kind-of-had-to-be-there gesture. She looks annoyed, which I am pleased about.
“Classic Aaron,” Peter goes on, smirking. “No, none of that stuff is really necessary. I mean, to be safe, sure, you do want to make a containment circle, but you can do that with anything, really.”
With no further preamble, he gets up and traces a large circle on the ground with his finger. A glowing ring of red energy follows the arc traced by his hand.
“Don’t you need chalk or something?” Ryan asks.
“He’s using his own demon energy,” I tell him. “I can see it.”
Peter nods and keeps working on his task. When the circle is done, he sits down and closes his eyes for a minute. We all wait, silently.
Suddenly Aaron appears in the middle of the circle.
“There you are!” he says, sounding relieved. “Thank God. We’ve been trying to contact you, but the queen’s enemies are interfering. You guys are in serious trouble up here.”
We all take a minute to recover.
“Uh, yeah,” I say, finally. “No kidding.”
Aaron pauses. “What do you already know?”
“We know that Mr. Gabriel is back. Oh, and that the demon that followed me up here is his horrible brother.”
“Okay.” Aaron nods. “So that’s the first part.”
“There’s more?” Ryan asks.
Aaron suddenly notices Jules, who I notice has moved closer to Ryan since Aaron appeared. “Who’s this?” He looks back and forth between me and Ryan. “Did you guys break up?”
“That’s Jules,” Peter explains, irritatingly, before I can hear how Ryan might have chosen to answer Aaron’s question. I bet he did that on purpose. “She’s . . . an old friend of Ryan’s.”
“Ah,” Aaron says. He shares a knowing look with Peter that I don’t like one bit.
“Anyway!” I break in. “You were saying?”
“Right,” Aaron says. “So, everything that’s been happening downside — the trouble that made my mistress call upon you in the first place, the demons that chased us, the chaos that’s going on down there now — all of that was orchestrated by your Mr. Gabriel. Well, and his brother, but if you’ve met him, then you’re probably pretty clear on who the brains of the operation must be.”
“Yeah,” Peter and I say together.
“Gabriel has apparently been stirring up trouble and gaining followers with the help of his brother for the past few months,” Aaron continues. “He found out about Peter’s little stowaway maneuver and realized he could use the tether to follow Peter to you, Cyn. And meanwhile, his supporters kept their forces moving against the queen, and Gabriel knew she’d call you when things got bad enough. And he made s
ure his brother would be ready to come back with you when she did.”
“But . . .” I am trying to catch up with all of this very-far-in-advance planning. “Why didn’t he just wait until he could get another body or whatever? And come back for real? Right now he’s only sort of here and can’t take over anyone for more than a few minutes at a time.”
“He’s a little impatient to get his revenge,” Aaron says. “And I can only assume that since Peter provided such a convenient opportunity, he wanted to take advantage of it while he had the chance, and then worry about the other part later.”
Peter has the grace to look chagrined. “Sorry,” he mouths at me.
“Anyway, we’re pretty sure he’s just going to take his brother’s body and then work on adapting that into whatever he wants it to be, over time.”
“But . . . then what happens to his brother?” I ask.
“Either he stays trapped in there underneath, or he gets pushed out and won’t have a body anymore.”
“And he’s okay with this?”
Aaron laughs. “I doubt it. But from what I understand, Gabriel always was kind of an asshole big brother.”
“Then why is his little brother helping him?” Jules asks. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
“You obviously don’t have anyone maniacally evil in your life,” Aaron tells her. “You don’t really say no to someone like that. Not when he’s about a zillion times stronger than you are.”
“Cyn did,” Jules says, which is such an unexpectedly complimentary thing for her to say that I don’t even know what to do with it.
“Well, Cyn is blinded by love and loyalty,” Aaron says, as if I’m not standing right there. “Also, she’s got that roach thing.”
Jules looks at me. “Roach thing?”
Thanks, Aaron. To Jules I explain, “That’s what the demons call my resistance. I’m a super-roach. As compared to all you regular roaches, I will just point out.” I sigh and add, “They think it’s hilarious.”
“Anyway,” Aaron says. “We have a plan, if you want to hear it.”
“Why are you helping us?” Ryan asks suspiciously.
“Look,” Aaron says. He sits down in the middle of the (to my eyes) glowing circle. “We all have the same goal here. To stop Mr. Gabriel. If he succeeds in regaining physical form and returns to our world with a body and a human consort, he can try to kill the queen and take the rule from her.”
“Why is that even allowed?” I ask. “I mean, he lost, fair and square! He shouldn’t get another chance.”
“It’s the demon world,” Aaron says. “They aren’t very big on fair and square. Certain things are frowned upon, but generally if you can get away with something, then that’s that.”
“I will never understand why you want to live there.”
“Anyway,” Ryan says. “The plan?”
“Right. Basically, if you guys can force him back down here, we can set a trap and be ready for him.”
“And how are we supposed to do that?” Jules asks.
“First, you have to reestablish the tether.”
“What?” Peter and I ask together.
“If you re-create the tether,” Aaron goes on, “you can force Mr. Gabriel back through it. It’s not really gone, you see. It’s just . . . in a few pieces. You only need to stitch them back together.”
“But I don’t want to stitch them back together,” Peter says. “I want to be free!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Aaron says. “And you will be. You can cut it again afterward, and my mistress will grant you an official ticket out so you won’t have to worry about being dragged back ever again. Satisfactory?”
“Oh,” Peter says, sitting back. “That’s — yes. Definitely yes.”
“Thought so,” Aaron says, a little smugly.
“But . . . but . . . how do we force him back?” I ask. “And what do we do about his brother in the meantime?”
“Okay, so it’s kind of a multipart plan,” Aaron says. “First, you have to re-form the tether, like I said. Then you kind of have to wait for Gabriel to take over his brother’s body and attack you. Then, you need to kill or hurt the body enough that Gabriel is forced to flee or risk being killed along with it. Then, at the moment that he flees the body, you will use a — I know you love these, Cyn — special magic item that my mistress will give you to force him back into the tether and into the demon world. And then we’ll take it from there.”
We all sit there staring at him.
“What?” he says finally.
“That’s the plan?” Ryan says. “That’s not a plan, it’s a suicide mission.”
“How are we supposed to hurt the brother’s body once Mr. Gabriel takes it over?” I ask. “You have seen that thing, right?”
Aaron turns to look at Peter.
The rest of us turn to look at Peter, too.
Peter looks back at us like we’re nuts. “Um, Cyn, do you remember how I had trouble just holding him back for a few seconds last night? In fact, I believe I distinctly said that I could not take him in a fight. I have not grown miraculously stronger since then.”
“Cyn will have to lend you her power,” Aaron says. “That will protect you from demon energy attacks.”
“But what about his giant legs and those pincer things?” Peter asks. “I’m honestly more concerned about those.”
“My mistress is willing to send you a gift of strength,” Aaron says.
“She’s going to lend me her strength?” Peter says, obviously impressed.
“No. Not hers. The strength of some . . . volunteers. It should be more than enough.”
I study Aaron for a moment. “She really wants this taken care of, huh?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Enough to release me from my third visit?”
I see Ryan perk up with interest at this idea.
“No.” Aaron looks at me seriously. “Do not try to weasel out of a previously made deal, Cyn. That is seriously bad form. I’m not even going to tell her you said that, because she would be very annoyed about it.”
“I’m not trying to weasel out of anything! This would be a new deal!”
“No. It’s not remotely an option. She is granting you a lot of help, without, I must point out, asking anything in return other than your cooperation with the plan. You’re lucky that your goals align with hers right now, or you could be granting her another ten trips in return for her assistance.”
Bah. Well, it was worth a try.
“Anyway,” Peter says, trying to rescue the conversation from this latest tangent. “When is she going to give us these magical items and gifts of strength? Because I don’t know how much time we’ll have before Mr. Gabriel and his brother decide to make their move.”
“Three days,” Aaron says.
“That’s too long,” I say at once.
Peter nods emphatically. “A lot of bad things can happen in three days.”
“Three days,” Aaron says again, unruffled. “She has to finish getting everything ready. And in the meantime you need to reestablish the tether anyway.”
“Which we do by . . . ?” I ask.
“I’ll show Peter how,” Aaron says. “It’s not really very complicated. But Mr. Gabriel will know when I do it.”
“Which means he will know we are up to something,” Peter says.
“Which might provoke him to attack,” I say. “So we shouldn’t do it until we have the gifts from the demoness.”
Jules has been following all this mostly silently. Now she raises her hand. “What happens if Peter can’t hurt the brother enough to make Mr. Gabriel jump ship?”
Aaron cocks his head. “Then you’ll all die, most likely. Gabriel will kill you all, maybe everyone else at camp, too, then go after Cyn’s friend Annie, and then head home to take on the demoness.”
“What’s stopping him from going after Annie now?” I ask. “I mean, what’s keeping him here at camp with us?”
“He can’t travel very f
ast or far without a body,” Aaron says. “In theory, he could jump from body to body until he got there, but he’d have to keep killing people to gather enough strength to keep going, and eventually the trail of bodies would add up and draw way too much attention. And then when he got to your friend, he probably wouldn’t be strong enough to subdue her, anyway. She’ll fight him this time, knowing what he is, and he’ll be weak. No, he’s got to take care of you first, secure his brother’s body as his own, then go after Annie.”
“Why doesn’t he just take his brother’s body right now, then?” Ryan asks. “What’s he waiting for?”
“He needs a little more strength for that, too,” Aaron says. “His brother will probably fight him once he realizes Mr. Gabriel doesn’t intend to share.”
“Which means he’s going to keep killing people,” I say. “Because that’s how he gets stronger?”
“Yup,” Aaron says. “You’ll probably hear about some more family emergencies and things. Maybe a water-ski accident, someone busted for drugs and sent home . . .”
“We can’t just wait around while he does that!” I feel Aaron should not really need this pointed out. “Tell the demoness to give us those gifts now so we can get this over with. We can’t let more people die, and we certainly don’t want to let him get any stronger, anyway!”
“Three days,” he says again. Then he stands up. “Now if you’ll excuse me, we’re still dealing with your evil librarian’s loyal faction down there. I need to get back.”
“Will you be able to get up here again to bring us the magic stuff?” Ryan asks. “You seemed to be having trouble finding us before.”
Aaron smacks himself on the forehead. “Right! Almost forgot.” He turns to Peter. “Summon me again on the night of the third day.”
With that he vanishes, and the glowing circle winks out.
“So . . . now what?” Jules asks.
“Now we wait,” I say glumly. “I hate the waiting part.”
Revenge of the Evil Librarian Page 17