Kindling The Moon

by Jenn Bennett

  It took us over an hour, but Lon helped me lock up anything lying around that would give her a clue as to where she was, anything that might make her question our story. We added extra wards on the doors and windows to discourage her from leaving; even if someone knocked on the door, she wouldn’t answer it. I locked up the landline and told her that her cell had been lost in the accident—convinced her that she’d already spoken to her family and that she didn’t need to contact them again for the time being.

  “Well, until I decide what to do about her, she’s clueless,” I said in my living room once we’d finished securing everything.

  “And she’s not chained up. I think Father Carrow would be much happier with this arrangement.” He gave me a soft smile. “Right now I’ve got to get back and make dinner for Jupe.”

  “Of course.”

  I walked him to the front door. He paused as he reached for the handle. “Do you have anything nicer than jeans and T-shirts?”

  I wondered if that was an insult. “Why?”

  “I made some calls. Remember that club I was telling you about, the one where I met the man who bought the glass talon?”

  “Yes?” I looked at him intently.

  “They meet monthly. Their next meeting happens to be tomorrow night.”

  For the last twenty-four hours, I’d convinced myself that I was going to have to use Riley Cooper for leverage at the Luxe council, and that any hope I’d ever had of finding the talon or the albino demon’s summoning name was forever lost.

  Lon watched me, waiting patiently for his words to register. “You still want to get the talon, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “God, yeah.”

  “Okay, then. This club is strictly for demons, and I was just going to go there and do this myself, but … I think I’m on a roll with you, being open about things.”

  “I feel honored.”

  “You should.” He grinned, tucking his hair behind one ear. “Anyway, I think even though you’re human, you’re novel enough to pique their curiosity. They’ll let you in, and your being there might help our cause.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Just what kind of club is this?”

  “We-e-ell …” he drawled, “have you ever heard of a Hellfire Club?”

  “Like in England, back in the eighteen hundreds?”

  “Seventeen hundreds, but yes. Exclusive high-society clubs—”

  “Where rich men went to whore around and drink?”

  “Pretty much.”

  In the midst of all the chaotic thoughts in my head, an unsettling pang jumped to the forefront. He laughed softly, identifying it before I even could. “Mmm … someone is jealous. Guess I’m not the only one.”

  “I’m not jealous,” I protested. “The one in La Sirena is not strictly a men’s club,” he explained. “Women are members too. That’s not to say that there’s any lack of immoral behavior at these things. Depends on how easily you shock.”

  “Not easily.”

  “Excellent. We’re just going to go in there, talk to our guy, and get the talon. In and out.”

  “Why am I novel enough to get in?”

  “Your halo.”

  “Oh.” Duh. I smiled. “Am I going to have to lie and say I’m demon?”

  He squinted out of one eye, contemplating. “Just don’t admit to being human.”

  “What time tomorrow?” I asked, hopeful again.

  “It’s not going to be a fun night out, so don’t expect to enjoy it. If I ever get a chance to take you on a proper date, it won’t be to this damn thing.” He turned to leave. “I’ll pick you up at nine.”

  26

  The ties of my black wrap dress fastened into a tidy bow. It was the most adult thing I owned. Maybe the most expensive thing, too. The thin fabric hugged the curves of my hips and made my breasts look bigger. My ass too, and it didn’t need any help, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. The only jewelry I wore was a wide silver bracelet and the small silver moon pendant that my mother had given me on my sixteenth birthday.

  “You look fantastic.” Dressed in my pajamas, Riley Cooper stood in the doorway, holding a bag of chips. I’d scaled back to a milder medicinal that kept her calm. Unfortunately, it also made her chatty. And hungry. I’d already had to go to the grocery store and bring back food. It was pretty weird to be playing house with the person who’d recently been chained in my basement. It set my teeth on edge, but I did my best to keep up the charade.

  “Hey,” she said. “Remember when Joey took you to prom at my school, and you wore that crazy strapless dress?” Her eyes were bright and cheerful as she recalled some memory with Jane. “God, we got wasted that night.”

  “We sure did,” I agreed. “I really need to hurry now, though. Can we talk about this later?”

  “Oh, yeah, no prob. I’ve already picked out two DVDs to watch while you’re gone. It’s been so long since I just sat around and chilled. I’m looking forward to it.”

  “Enjoy yourself, but don’t overdo it with”—that concussion I gave you—“your injuries from the car accident.”

  “Oh, Jane. You were always such a worrier.” She shook her head slowly, then stuffed a chip in her mouth. “Have a great time, and if I’m asleep when you get back, wake me up and tell me how your date went.”

  “I might be out late. Don’t wait up.”

  “In that case, I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” she said brightly.

  I patted her on the arm. “Alrighty.”

  As she tromped off to the guest room, I turned off the bathroom light, then flipped it back on. In an inexplicable moment of audaciousness, I decided to take out my brown contacts. The change it made startled me. Just when I began considering putting them back in, I heard a loud knock at the door downstairs.

  On my way to answer it, I grabbed a small clutch, then unlocked the door and gawked at the debonair demon standing in the porch light. “Holy shit, is that you?” I asked with a grin. Lon was dressed in a tailored black suit over a white shirt. The jacket was unbuttoned, no tie.

  His eyes wandered over me in all directions: up, down, across, and back. Quickly, then leisurely. Many times. At first I was flattered, but when he didn’t say anything and his expression was blank, doubts rose.

  “Okay, if this isn’t appropriate then you need to tell me, like, right now, because it’s going to take me a few minutes to dig up something else.”

  No response.

  “Dammit, Lon.”

  His eyes connected with mine, and he finally spoke. “Christ, they’re blue.”

  I relaxed when I realized what he meant. “I took my colored contacts out. You are the first person in seven years to see the real deal.”

  Yet again, no response.

  “Appropriate or not? I’m starting to get irritated now, in case you can’t sense it.”

  He nodded several times in quick succession. “Appropriate.”

  I made a face at him, then locked the door to my house. “Let’s get this over with.”

  We drove in silence from Morella to the coast in a silver Audi coupe. The chrome-and-leather interior was spotless, in noticeable contrast to his truck and SUV, both of which were matted with dog hair, the backseat floorboards hidden under a pile of comic books. The owner of those comic books was apparently feeling better today, Lon told me when I asked, but that was the only conversation we engaged in for half an hour.

  When we got to La Sirena, Lon pulled onto Ocean Avenue, which runs the length of the town’s beaches. We headed away from the Village into neighborhoods that were a mix of small businesses, restaurants, and homes. The rocky cliffs that bordered the edge of town loomed dark in the distance, standing out against a sky hung with a bright, waxing moon. I hadn’t really spent a lot of time out here near the beach, especially at night; it was rather pretty and romantic.

  “I didn’t expect you to look so nice,” Lon said abruptly. “It caught me off-guard earlier.”

  I stared at the glove compartment, w
eighing his clumsy words, then said, “Thanks?”

  He nodded once, clearly relieved to have that out of the way. “I’m going to be transmutated the entire time we’re in the club. Remember what we discussed, that I’ll be able to hear you in my head. So you can talk to me without speaking.”

  Yeah, I still wasn’t all that sure how I felt about this enhanced ability of his. I’d only just become comfortable with the old ability. “How many others besides you are going to be transmutated?”

  He slowed the car to turn into a small, unmarked road that I never would’ve spotted on my own. Bordered by beach cottages on one side, it wound along the side of the cliffs toward the ocean. “There are only thirteen of us in the club who can shift.”

  “Does that make you one of the higher-ups?” I asked with a nervous smile.

  An elongated strip of light from an oncoming car briefly lit up his face. His shoulders lifted slowly, then fell. “My father and his best friend started the Hellfire Club before I was born. Club rules strictly limit the number of members who can join the higher ranks and undergo the transmutation spell. Only thirteen knights at their Round Table, I guess you could say. They keep those thirteen seats filled, so the only way to get a seat is when a member either dies or is kicked out. That’s how I got mine—someone died.”

  “What about Yvonne?”

  “Same thing. The seats are highly prized, and there’s a long waiting list for them. Being the son of one of the founders moved me to the top of the list, and I pulled rank to get Yvonne inducted. On hindsight, that was a mistake.”

  From the little he’d shared about her, I’d have to agree.

  The road split. To the left were more beach cottages. To the right, a Dead End sign posted above a larger No Trespassing/Private Property sign. We turned right. The road dipped down and opened up into a large parking lot filled with cars. Lon drove to the front and parked in a space marked with the number 9; except for spaces 1 and 3, the remainder of the thirteen numbered parking spaces were already occupied.

  Lon turned off the engine and sighed, slouching forward.

  “Are you okay?”

  He took the keys out of the engine and handed them to me. “Take these. If something happens, and you want to leave … I just don’t want you to be stuck. There’s only one taxi company in La Sirena and they won’t come out here.”

  “Okay, now you’re starting to scare me.”

  He curved his hand around the parking brake. “Let’s just talk to Spooner about the talon and get out of there.”

  I couldn’t agree more. I stashed my clutch in the glove compartment and exited the car. After setting the alarm, I stuck his keys in a small, hidden pocket in the side seam of my dress.

  It was after 9:30 when we walked out of the parking lot through an arch cut into a sculpted wall of shrubbery, and down a stone sidewalk bordered with gas torches. The wind whipped off the ocean and cut right through my dress. It had to be ten degrees warmer inland in Morella than out here by the water. I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself to stave off the chill.

  The beach narrowed and we continued walking through another archway, this time carved into a stone wall, and emerged into a circular patch of beach. A large bonfire burned in the middle. The sidewalk looped around in back of the bonfire and led to a grand set of dilapidated stairs that headed straight into the rocky cliff.

  “A cave?” I murmured.

  “A network of caves.”

  At the top of the short set of stairs, I tapped my shoes to knock off sand that was clinging to my heels. We stood in front of a large set of thick wooden doors, each with a small round window covered by crosshatched iron bars.

  Lon’s hands covered my shoulders. He rotated me around to face him and, without warning, kissed me. It was close-mouthed and insistent, much different from the way he’d kissed me before, and during the last second, it got strange.

  Something had changed. His lips were on mine, but he wasn’t really kissing me anymore. I wanted to pull away, but I just … couldn’t. The air shuddered and a rush of crazy energy rushed around me like an army of a thousand soldiers galloping past. Then he released me with a disarming groan. I inhaled sharply.

  When I opened my eyes, words left me. I stumbled backward in shock, mouth gaping open. He had transmutated.

  It was still Lon. He’d hadn’t grown extra arms or a tail. But he’d changed. Drastically.

  His eyes were different. They were more intense. Harder.

  His halo had altered from a solid, steady glow around his head into a crown of dancing flames. The green was nearly gone, and the speckled gold moved and flickered, growing and shrinking. It formed an aureole of fiery light that flamed higher in the center and draped around his shoulders. The golden fire was almond shaped, like the halos of Tibetan and Persian deities that I’d seen in dozens of paintings and sculptures.

  As dazzling as this was, it paled in comparison to the most radical alteration in his appearance. Just above his hair-line, two thick, spiraling horns jutted out from his head and looped backward over his ears. They were auburn brown, with the satiny finish of a fingernail, and ringed with ridges. Each horn was nearly a foot in diameter.

  Transfixed, I blinked, both awed and frightened at the same time. I’d summoned demons from the Æthyr that looked similar to him—with the addition of a few scales or wings or hairy body parts—but they were always safely enclosed inside a binding triangle. To see something like that standing in front of me … to see Lon like that … It was intimidating, and, at the same time, astounding. I didn’t realize that I was clutching my hands together in front of my chest until he gently pried them away. My fingers were cramped, knuckles white.

  “It’s still me.” Though gentle, his voice was deeper—so rich, it sent chills up my arms.

  He held one of my hands while I tentatively stepped forward and reached for his spiraling horns with my other. My fingertips danced over the surface, inspecting the texture. The horn was surprisingly warm. Living. Not an illusion, but real.

  Fascinated, I continued to touch both horns gingerly, as if he were a goat in a petting zoo. When he made a small noise, I became self-conscious. “Sorry,” I mumbled and drew my hand away. Nostrils wide, he gave me a mischievous smile that sent a flutter through my chest.

  My face and neck flushed as I laughed nervously, suddenly realizing that the horns and gilded halo were only physical. How could I have forgotten? He could hear me now. Not just my emotions but my thoughts. Everything.

  I froze, trying not to think about anything at all. That plan shattered almost immediately; the more I tried to empty my mind, the worse it got. A vortex of random images and thoughts swirled in my brain. Don’t think about the time you slept with that skanky delivery guy who worked at Thai Garden, or when you threw up on the middle couch cushion and just wiped it off and flipped it over, or …

  My eye twitched as panic fired through my chest. Was he seeing all this roiling around in my head, like Dorothy watching her family being swept up in the tornado?

  “Slow down,” he said. “I can only read surface thoughts.”

  “If that’s true, then why did you just tell me to slow down?”

  “I can still hear your emotions, remember?”

  Oh. That’s right. Crud. Was nothing safe? I was going to be sick.

  “You’re not going to be sick,” he insisted.

  “Oh, God.”

  “Please, Arcadia. I really need to you to be okay with this. I know it’s hard to accept, but I won’t betray anything I might hear in your head.”

  “I know that,” I grumbled, “it’s just … I’m a private person. I’m not used to sharing anything with anyone. Emotions are one thing, but this is different. I don’t want you to see something that might embarrass me.”

  “I’ve seen all kinds of shit in people’s heads. Believe me, there’s nothing you could think that I haven’t already heard somewhere else.”

  I cringed. “Seen it all, huh? Y
ou’re like an OB-GYN of the mind-reading world?”

  He snorted a laugh. And, surprisingly, that made me smile. I took a few breaths and tried to come to terms with this more invasive side of his knack. As long as he couldn’t poke around in my memories—

  “We’ve already done a spell for that.”

  I stomped my foot. “Goddammit!”

  “Well, we have.”

  Ugh. This was more difficult than I expected. I grappled with the magnitude of his ability for a long moment while he waited in silence, watching me. Finally, I said, “Okay, I’ll get used to it eventually. Just try not to pry, and don’t judge me. Be nice.” I folded my arms and looked him over once more. Damn. He was a demon. I mean, I knew that, obviously, but no getting around it now. “Do you have a tail or scales under your clothes?” I asked.

  He chuckled softly and shook his head. “Would that make a difference? Is there something you draw the line at?”

  Okay, I felt silly now. He was still Lon. Just with horns, that’s all. Right?

  Oh, crap. I was dating a demon. Me—a magician. What would my parents say? They wouldn’t be all that thrilled about it, I knew that much. But maybe I didn’t care. Was that bad?

  I really liked Lon. He’d saved my life when that Pareba demon was attacking me, and he was helping me save my parents. He’d used up his police favor and was getting my memories back for me. He put up the ward around my house and helped me deal with Riley. Who does all that for someone they’ve known only a couple of weeks? Demon or not, he was a good person. And on top of it all, he was smart and thoughtful. Funny, even, especially for a curmudgeon. We had a lot in common. Okay, and he was damn fine to look at, even now, like this. His halo was oddly beautiful, and in a weird way that I couldn’t really justify, the horns were kinda sexy.

  “Well, shit,” he said softly, shaking me out of my thoughts. “Now I don’t know why I was so worried.”