by Angie Fox
Right. I leveled a switch star at the thing’s head, slicing it open, as the other two from the window leapt into the study. I caught one of them as it took cover behind a potted ficus tree in the corner. The imp fell forward and the tree wilted and turned to dust before my eyes. Another one landed on the oriental carpet by a massive fireplace. The carpet curled and blackened.
Sweet Mary. Everything they touched aged and died.
“Lizzie!” Dimitri yelled as the last imp hurled a curse directly at me. I dodged as it struck my bronze-clad shoulder, bouncing off.
I gasped, panic shooting through me. But the bronze had protected me. Thank God.
The imp launched itself straight for my head. I grabbed a switch star and stepped backward to throw, when an electric shock radiated through my body. A momentary panic seized me. I’d stepped on a gooey tennis shoe. I flung the switch star hard. It zinged sideways as I fell, the imp crashing straight for me.
“Lizzie!”
I forced every bit of focus I had on the switch star hurtling back to me. It sliced straight through the imp as I rolled sideways, scrambling to avoid the body.
“Jesus!” Dimitri tackled me, crushing me against the hard floor with his weight. “Lizzie.” He yanked me upward, inspecting me before hauling my body against his.
I shoved against him. “What are you doing? Where are the imps?”
“Outside.” His chest heaved against me and it felt, well, nice. “For now. I sealed the window to keep out anything demonic.”
He pulled away, his face a maze of worry, “Lizzie, I thought I’d lost you.”
Before I could tell him that would be hard to do, he wrapped me in a crushing kiss. He was all heat, fire and tongue. I kissed him back, hard. Either one of us could have been dust on the floor, like the plant or the desk. By the sheer grace of the heavens, we’d survived.
I could not lose this man, this life. Not yet. He was solid and strong against me. Ribbons of pleasure wound through me. I felt his relief and his love and, yum, him against my leg.
He groaned, or it might have been me, as we luxuriated in being alive and whole. Way too soon, Dimitri pulled away, looking as dazed as I felt.
I ran a finger along his jaw. “Mmm…That was almost worth getting zapped.”
Dimitri frowned. “No, it wasn’t.”
“Oh yeah? Let’s make sure.”
I tipped my lips to his and delighted in his swift and utterly complete surrender. I’m not sure how long we kissed. I didn’t care. He was my port in the storm.
A small boulder crashed through the open window, bringing us back to reality.
I stiffened, ready for attack, and saw Diana, in human form, perched on the windowsill. Oh my goodness. It was at least a fifty-foot drop.
“Don’t worry about us,” she said, shaking out her mass of dark hair, easing a leg inside the window as Dimitri murmured an incantation to allow her to pass. “We were happy to drive off the rest of the devil’s spawn while you two made out.”
“Where’s Dyonne?” Dimitri asked, evidently used to this kind of behavior.
“She’s going the long way—around the house, up the stairs.” Diana shivered as if she found the whole thing a complete bother. “Dyonne also has to stop by her room on the way up.” Diana winked. “She lost her dress.”
“How did you manage to keep yours?” I asked.
Dimitri always shifted back naked. Not that I was complaining.
Diana lifted the skirt of her yellow sundress and showed me a loop under the hem. “I tie it to my tail before I finish shifting.”
“It’s dangerous,” Dimitri added, making it clear they’d had this discussion before.
Diana rolled her eyes. “Pshaw. I haven’t done it in any griffin battles. Let the imps try to grab it”—she wiggled her rear—“or my tail.”
Speaking of such, “How did you touch those things? They turned everything in here to dust.”
“Griffins have Skye magic,” Diana said. “Cursed imps can hurt us, even kill us. But they can’t…well…” She waved a hand over the ashes on the floor.
Dimitri wrapped a protective arm around me. “Cursed imps can only disintegrate things that owe their existence to the earth—the carpet, my plant, my desk.” He cringed slightly. It had been a nice desk.
“And people like me,” I said.
Dimitri nodded. “For all your powers, it’s still a matter of dust to dust.”
I’d remember that.
“Are we safer in the house?” I asked. Aside from a burn hole in the floor, the imps hadn’t been able to damage it.
“Perhaps,” Dimitri said, his fingers playing along my arm. “The house has been soaked in generations of protective magic. Still”—he leaned forward and treated me to a lingering kiss on the forehead—“let’s not test the theory, okay?”
That was more than fine by me.
“What I can’t figure out is why they were going for the floor safe,” Dimitri said, moving away from me.
He brushed his foot across the remains of his desk and over one of the slate tiles. “I keep our family histories in here, but nothing else of consequence.”
“And the light box?” I asked.
Dimitri led us to the massive stone fireplace behind what had been his desk. It was white like the walls, blackened inside from generations of fires. He said a few hushed words over a carved griffin head at the apex of the mantel, and it opened with an eerie creak.
We crowded around him to see as he pulled out a drawer the size of a cereal box. He peeled away layers of gossamer cloth to reveal a thin glass lantern with bronze fittings. A wisp of light danced inside like a flame.
My stomach tingled. “Is that my magic?”
Dimitri stood silent for a moment. “No.” He cast his eyes down, hesitant to say what came next. “From the color of this flame, it seems as if your magic has been missing for quite a while.”
I stepped back, shock washing over me. “Gone?” I’d prepared myself for the possibility, but it still felt like a punch to the gut. “And what do you mean it’s been missing for a while? I’ve only known you for two months.”
Wouldn’t I have sensed it if I’d been compromised? I had to believe I’d have had an inkling. If something was working against me, I’d have felt weaker, I’d have felt exposed—I’d have felt something.
Dimitri looked as horrified as I felt. “From the blue of the flame, I’d say it’s been two weeks. About the time you were hanging out with Max in Vegas.” He couldn’t let it go.
“Oh, so Max broke in here and did this?” Dimitri had blamed a lot of things on the half-human, half-demon Max, but this was stretching it even for him.
“No,” he said with a forced calm. “I’m merely giving you a timeline. Whoever—or whatever—has taken this thread of your magic hasn’t used it yet. Or you’d know it.”
Diana’s fingers shook as she brought them to her mouth.
I was both relieved and disturbed. “Why would they take part of my magic and not use it?” It didn’t make sense. “Are you sure I’d feel it?”
“Yes,” Dimitri said, with more conviction than I would have liked.
“Lizzie?” Pirate called from the hallway. “Ohhh biscuits,” he said, his voice wavering. “You have to see this.”
“Whatever it is, don’t sniffit, don’t lick it and don’t eat it.” I threw open the door and barely avoided running right into Dimitri’s killer slime.
Son of a sailor.
“Pirate?” I fought to keep my voice even. “Don’t move.”
Chapter Five
Dimitri and I stood dumbfounded as Pirate hovered on the other side of the door. My dog drifted a foot above the slime, doggie-paddling in midair.
“Pirate?” My jaw slackened. “What did you do?”
“Nothing, Lizzie. I didn’t do a thing, I swear. I was sniffing the hallway, minding my own business, and bam!”
“Bam?” I stared at his furry paws churning in the air. “You’re goi
ng to have to be more specific than that.”
Pirate gave me the startled, wide-eyed innocent doggie look he’d perfected after years of sneaking Pup-per-roni Bites out of my purse. “I hit a cold spot and it was like hopping in the bathtub at the Posh Pooch. Only not so smelly.” He did a doggie version of the breaststroke. “I’ll bet I look fierce.”
Concerning was more like it. “Dimitri?” I hoped he’d have some explanations. And fast.
“This isn’t my magic,” he said, watching Pirate doggie-paddle into the room. “Diana?”
“Not Skye magic.”
I reached down to touch the air under Pirate’s paws. “It’s cold.”
Pirate’s tail hadn’t quit. “I know. It surprised me too, but you get used to it after a while.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “It doesn’t feel demonic.” At least not like anything I’d ever seen.
Pirate’s tail stopped wagging. It was a valid concern. If Dimitri and his sisters hadn’t created it—and I certainly couldn’t fly—it stood to reason that someone else had left it behind.
“Come on, Pirate.” I reached down for him. “Time to get out of the pool.” While I was glad the power hadn’t come from the imps, I still didn’t want Pirate playing around with unknown entities. He must have seen the look on my face, because he started paddling harder—in the other direction.
“Hey.” I lifted Pirate off his invisible airstream.
“Aw, Lizzie.” He scrambled against my arms. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“Stick close to me,” I said, “and don’t go near those arrows over there.” Exactly how did one go about cleaning up curses?
Dimitri left and came back with an industrial broom. He used it to sweep away the toxic remains of the imps, as well as the char marks on a section of red slate.
“Do you have an extra broom?” I asked. I was used to cleaning up messes in preschool. Granted, imp parts were worse than baking-soda volcanoes and half-digested hotdogs, but I wasn’t going to complain.
“I don’t have anything else soaked in enough protective magic,” Dimitri said, ignoring the fact that a quite a few of his broom bristles had, indeed, turned to ash. “If you can handle the curses, I’ll get the rest of it.”
“Deal.”
Dimitri began piling the imps in the fireplace while I went looking for curses.
I found both of the arrows near the back wall. They were rough-hewn and brown, made from a material I didn’t recognize. It could have been wood, except for the small moving particles inside. The points of the arrows had dug chunks out of the plaster wall, meaning they were sharp, or powerful—probably both.
“Stand back, baby dog,” I said, wondering if it would be safe to switch-star these things with other people in the room.
But Pirate wasn’t listening. He’d found Diana. Since she couldn’t clean, she’d plopped right back down on the windowsill and given Pirate a nice lap. He lolled his head off the side of her leg and arched his back as she scratched his belly and cooed sweet nothings into his ear. Some guys had all the luck.
I stowed my mom’s magical box on the fireplace mantel before returning to the arrows on the floor. I didn’t have much experience with demonic curses. If I tried to blow them up with a switch star, would they scatter cursed bits like a land mine? Would they rear up and attack? It didn’t look like they were alive, but then again, things had a way of popping up and surprising me.
“Dimitri, I’m going to have to fire on this,” I said, unhitching a switch star, hoping I was right.
“Okay, Lizzie. Give me a second.” He tossed the last imp into the fireplace. “Hell and damnation.” He patted himself down. “My matches were in the desk.” We both looked to where the desk had been. Only a few scattered ashes remained.
“Diana?” he asked.
The breeze from the window blew wisps of hair about her face as she stroked Pirate’s belly. “I quit smoking. Dyonne too.”
“Good,” he said, and then as an aside to me, “I’ve been after them for years.”
“Subtle as a sledgehammer,” Diana added. “But truly, why go to the trouble of quitting if we were going to be dead by age twenty-eight? It’s not as if we had to worry about our lungs, or even frown lines, for that matter.” She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear as Pirate bucked and squirmed at the interruption. “Anyway, we’re alive and we quit,” she said, as if daring Dimitri to push it.
He didn’t.
“Do you need to burn the imps right now?” I asked. Dead was dead, when it came to imps. “I’d rather get rid of the curses.”
Dimitri used the broom to push a path through the slime outside his office. Then the three non–demon slayers took shelter behind the spelled door while I pulled out a switch star and—I’ll admit it—said a little prayer.
I hit the first curse with a switch star and it exploded with a screech worse than fingernails on a blackboard. I winced and heard Pirate howl. An acidic dust settled on my face and arms. I held my breath and blinked as my eyes watered. I could feel particles of it behind my eyelids, like hot sand. I used the inside of my shirt to wipe some of it away. My mouth tasted metallic. Still, I wasn’t writhing on the floor, so I took it as a good sign.
The thing had dented my switch star, however. I held my finger in front of the spinning blades in order to stop them. With some effort, I managed to bend the metal back into place. One blade remained a bit rumpled, but…well, I was about to damage it yet again. I threw the star at the second curse. That one wasn’t as bad, probably because I was expecting the shriek and the stink.
A breeze from the open window took some of it away as my friends ventured back into the room.
“Makes me wonder what they’d have done if they hit me,” I commented to no one in particular.
“Most of them fling you to hell,” Dimitri said. “Hence the expression.”
God, they tasted awful. “Excuse me?” I asked, sweeping up the remains of the curse.
“Go to hell.”
“Right.” I deposited the particles in the fireplace. We were going to have one big evil bonfire before we were through.
“Now that we’ve got that handled…” Dimitri popped open a floor panel to reveal a black metal door with a combination lock.
The rest of us gathered around, eager.
Dimitri glanced up and cleared his throat. “If you don’t mind. If someone is going to bewitch and torture this combination out of anyone, I’d prefer it to be me.”
Diana nudged me as she crossed her arms, and we turned our backs. “Gallant, as always.”
Dimitri dialed the longest combination in history, then pulled the vault open. Inside lay an envelope, a homemade book made of orange construction paper and something small wrapped in blue cloth. He carried the objects to a clean spot in front of the fireplace and we gathered around.
He shifted his weight from side to side and for the first time seemed uncomfortable. “I don’t see what anyone, besides me, would want with any of this.”
I touched the old orange book. A green string bound together several pages and on the cover, written in a child’s hand, it said, Dimitri’s book about Dimitri. Two smiling creatures flew in the clouds below the title. From my experience with preschool drawings, I knew they could be anything from bears to ice cream cones, but I had a feeling these were griffins.
“Mom made that with me shortly before she died,” Dimitri said.
Diana took the book and studied it.
“This,” he said, pulling a folded parchment from the envelope, “is a copy of our family tree. There are others in the house. But this one was illustrated by my father, for me. It was a tradition in our clan.”
Diana looked up from the picture book. “I still say we should hang it.”
“I know,” he said, automatically. “I remember the day we drew it together. His leaves were green, as they’re supposed to be. I made mine yellow for fall.”
Diana snorted. “You just had to be d
ifferent.”
“Yeah, I did.” He folded up the paper quickly, as if the memories were still too fresh.
“And what’s that?” I asked, resisting the urge to pull open the blue cloth and see what it hid.
“It’s important to me,” he said, lifting it gently, “but nothing of interest to a demon.”
The mention of the word demon jarred me out of the moment. I pushed it down. Focus. I had a fresh perspective on this. Maybe I could see something the rest of them didn’t.
Dimitri unwrapped the package to reveal a jagged aquamarine stone. It fit easily in his palm and radiated a quiet beauty. One could feel calm and harmonious simply looking at it.
“This is a piece of our mother’s Skye stone,” he said. “It’s the only part that she didn’t—” He stopped, unwilling to go on. “I’ll tell you later.” He cleared his throat. “My sisters work with their own larger stones, the ones that contain the most energy.” He touched a reverent finger to the very center of his mother’s stone, and it glowed in recognition. “This fragment is of sentimental value only.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
He tried to smile. “Yes. Diana and Dyonne have the real power over our ancestral home and lands. If you don’t believe me, just ask them. My sisters will be more than glad to tell you how the lines of ancestral magic run through the women in our line.”
“It’s true,” Diana said, touching him on the shoulder. “Big Brother here may have the strength to protect, but we’re the ones most closely tied to our home. It’s the way it’s always been.”
I nodded, realizing how it had been even more tragic, then, when the women in his clan had no hope of living to an old age. They died young, knowing their clan would wither and fade. I’d seen how Dimitri’s tree narrowed rather than widened at the top.
He gave the stone to Diana and it practically pulsed in her hand. “Diana is regaining more of her powers every day.”
“More like refinding.” She stroked the stone and it glowed even brighter. “We’d been so focused on the curse, we hadn’t spent much time exploring what else we could do.”
Now they’d be free to live.