American Demon

by Kim Harrison

  Because you can’t, I thought, managing a smile as I said, “I’ve heard of it before.” Which wasn’t entirely a lie, considering the circumstances.

  Sandra relaxed, and I shone a light in her eyes to make sure they dilated properly. “Do you think you could get a message to her?” the woman asked, and I forced my smile to stay in place.

  “I don’t know. I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t have access to that information.”

  “I’m never going to see her again, am I?” Sandra warbled, and then she began to cry again. “I tried to kill her, and they’re going to put me in jail, and I don’t even know why I did it!”

  I dropped back, not sure what to do. Crap on toast, this sucked. I was hearing the same story over and over. There was nothing new. This was going nowhere.

  “I did it,” Sandra said, gasping around huge sobs as she pulled tissue after tissue from the box. “But I don’t know why. Please, you have to believe me.”

  “I do,” I said, my hand going to her shoulder, and Sandra blinked gratefully at me.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, and then we both turned at the dry rasp of pixy wings.

  “Wrap it up, Rache,” Jenks said as he darted in. “Her leash holder is coming back.”

  Sandra’s breath caught, her watery eyes darting from Jenks to me. “Wait,” she said, her tone suddenly flat. “Are you Rachel Morgan?”

  “Yes. And I’m going to find out who’s doing this,” I said. And then she jerked out of my grip.

  “Rache!” Jenks shrilled, but I’d seen Sandra’s eyes narrow, and I backpedaled, tripping on the rolling cart and sending it crashing into the gurney in the next bay over as I hit the floor.

  “This is your fault!” Sandra shrieked, and I gasped when she lunged at me, jerked to a halt at the limit of her leash. “You let the demons in!” she screamed, hair wild as she pried at the cuff on her wrist. “They’re here. All the time. And you’re protecting them! You little bitch!”

  I sat, stunned, on the floor of the med lab, silver pixy dust sifting down over me.

  “Holy fairy farts,” Jenks said as Ivy boiled out of the back room. “She lost it!”

  “I’m fine. I just slipped,” I said, shaken, as I put my hand in Ivy’s and she hoisted me up. The Were’s glasses had fallen off the cabinet, and I set them on the counter before I stepped on them. Together, Ivy, Jenks, and I watched Sandra try to get out of her cuffs, her insults gaining strength and volume.

  “Is she awake?” I asked, and Jenks nodded, hands on his hips as he hovered between us.

  “Yeah,” he said, frowning. “That’s weird. Her aura is almost exactly like yours, Rache.”

  “You’re kidding,” Ivy said, and unfocusing my attention, I opened my second sight. Sure enough, the woman’s aura was a bright, cheerful gold. Harsh streaks of red darted through it to give evidence of some past trauma. There was zero black in it, but I’d always thought my thin layer of smut gave my soul a nice patina. That our auras were so similar wasn’t unheard of—a good portion of the population had gold auras streaked with red. But I was glad Jenks had mentioned it. Considering the circumstances, close auras seemed less of a coincidence and perhaps more of an indicator.

  “You stinking evil demon!” Sandra shouted, distracting me. “You should be locked up. Give me my blood back. Give it!”

  I ducked when she threw the box of tissue at me, then spun at the loud voice in the hall booming, “What the hell is going on?”

  Sandra cowered and Jenks darted for my hair as that cop came back in.

  “It’s about time you got here . . . Tony,” Ivy said, her hip cocked as she read his ID tag. “Ms. Betric-Tenson needs a quiet spot to calm down.”

  “Tamwood?” Tony’s shoulders rolled as he came in. “A little off your floor, aren’t you?”

  “She hurt Gabby, not me!” Sandra pointed at me, still trying to wedge her hand through the cuff. “That’s Rachel Morgan. She let those stinking demons in. She’s protecting them. She should be in jail, not me!”

  Tony looked up from the prepped syringe in Ivy’s hand. “Morgan?” he said, his smile telling me he knew who I was. Jenks making a peace sign from my shoulder probably didn’t help.

  “Hey, hi,” I said, feeling stupid in that lab coat.

  “Let me go. Let me go!” Sandra demanded, but Tony had taken her arm, and Ivy had pumped it full of something clear. In three heartbeats, the woman’s eyes went unfocused.

  “Tink’s titties, that’s good stuff,” Jenks said, and I didn’t know what bothered me more: that it worked that fast, or that Ivy had known what it was and how to administer it.

  “She made me hurt Gabby,” Sandra slurred, head drooping, and then she collapsed to the floor, her arm hanging from the gurney’s grab bar.

  Tony gave her a dismissive glance, then turned to me. “I need to see your tower pass.”

  “Sure.” I patted the lab coat’s pockets. “Must have left it in my other lab coat.”

  Ivy sighed. “How much?” she asked, and Jenks rose up from where he’d been trying to make out Sandra’s slurred, whispered words.

  Tony grinned. “To forget this? You don’t have that much.”

  Ivy’s eyes narrowed, but Jenks hovered between them, his dust a cheerful gold.

  “I’d think it would be just about equal to Ivy forgetting that you cuffed your charge to a rolling table and went to get a quick bite from the girl down the hall,” he said, grinning.

  “Fuck.” Tony looked from the clearly defunct cameras to Jenks. “You saw that?”

  “Saw? I got pictures,” Jenks claimed, and Tony slumped, hands on his hips as he looked from Sandra, mumbling about red daisies, to the empty hallway.

  “Can you get her downstairs, or would you like some help?” Ivy asked sweetly.

  “I got her.” His mood clearly bad, Tony uncuffed Sandra, then slung her over his shoulder. She was crying again, but with any luck, she’d forget about Jenks and me. Tony got about three steps to the door, then jerked to a halt. “You did the blood work, right?” he questioned, and I slapped Sandra’s paperwork into his hand.

  “Thanks,” I said, and he looked me up and down.

  “Don’t mention it,” he said. “If you do, I’ll mention it.”

  “No problem.”

  Tony used his foot to push open the door, and that fast, he was gone.

  “That woman has some serious demon issues,” Jenks said, hovering in his best Peter Pan pose.

  “Maybe this is what happened this morning.” Ivy stood the rolling cabinet upright and pushed it to the corner. “Something set her off, and she lost it.”

  I rubbed my hand, red from hitting the tile. “No. She knew what she was doing. That wasn’t what happened with her wife. She was awake this time.”

  “You sure?” Ivy asked, and both Jenks and I nodded.

  “Your aura fades when you sleep. She was wide-awake,” Jenks said, then brightened, his thoughts probably returning to where mine had been.

  “Yes,” I said slowly, still trying to rub the sting from my palm. “Ivy, Jenks said her aura was a lot like mine.”

  Ivy frowned at the bottle she’d injected Sandra from, then wedged it in her pocket. “So?”

  “So Al’s aura is similar to mine as well, and he tried to break into the demons’ weapons vault this morning in his sleep,” I admitted. Al’s, Trent’s, and mine. Son of a bastard, Trent . . . “If we can get an auratic reading on the other suspects and find they’re all similar, it proves that this is not random. That they were goaded into it.”

  Ivy nodded, clearly seeing what I was getting at. Deep in thought, I slipped out of the lab coat and left it on the chair before following Ivy and Jenks into the hall.

  “I can show you their auratic baselines,” Ivy said. “We take them in case of possession.” Her eyes flicked to Jenks on my s
houlder, the pixy unusually quiet. “What am I missing?”

  I twisted to reach for my phone in my back pocket and checked how many bars I had. “The numbers would be good, but we really need a visual.”

  “Rachel, I can’t get you downstairs into lockup,” Ivy said, and Jenks’s wings rasped.

  “I can do that,” he said, hovering backward before us as we headed for the elevators. “Hey!” Jenks shouted when I waved him away from my phone when his dust blanked it out. “I just said I could do that! What’s with ignoring the pixy?”

  “No one is ignoring you,” I muttered as I hit the icon for Al, then frowned when I was dropped immediately into his voice mail. “Hey, Al? It’s Rachel,” I said as it beeped. “I’m at the I.S. Jenks and Ivy are verifying it, but I’m pretty sure that every person down here for aggravated domestic assault has the same basic aura pattern. You were attacked. Something is looking for you, and they just got in the way. Call me, okay? And don’t go to sleep.”

  I hung up, immediately scrolling for Trent. Maybe I should have contacted him first. “What?” I said as I noticed Ivy and Jenks staring at me.

  “You’re assuming that whoever is doing this is targeting Al?” Ivy asked.

  “Why not? Everyone else is,” I said, then texted Trent to stay awake and that I’d explain later.

  Ivy and Jenks exchanged an odd look. “Maybe they’re targeting you,” Jenks said, and I jerked, hitting send.

  “Me?” I went cold, thinking back to being jolted awake in fear outside my church yesterday, and then again this morning. Crap on toast, it could have been me. My aura was almost identical to Al’s, thanks to Newt changing it to hide me from the mystics so they wouldn’t kill me in their quest to improve the Goddess.

  “Why would anyone target me?” I said sarcastically as I put my phone away, but my gut tightened into a nauseating knot as we got into the elevator. “I want to pick up some no-doze amulets. Jenks, go with Ivy. Get a visual on who you can. It won’t hold up in a courtroom”—Jenks bristled—“but we’ll know what we’re dealing with.” I hesitated. “That is, if you can get him down there.”

  Ivy smiled to show a slip of teeth, and I stifled a tingling sensation going all the way to my groin. Damn vampire pheromones. How did she stand working in it day after day? Or maybe it’s the elevator. . . .

  “Sparkle Dust and I got this,” she said, and Jenks bristled again. “You want to meet somewhere? It shouldn’t take more than an hour.”

  “Perfect,” I said. “You know that charm shop downtown?”

  “You mean the one that you and Minias trashed?” Jenks said, and I winced.

  “That’s the one.” Patricia wouldn’t still be sore about that, would she? “Meet me there.”

  “Sounds good,” Ivy said when the doors opened and cold air smelling of oil and cement rolled out. “See you in sixty.”

  “Sixty,” I affirmed as I strode out, my bag tight in my grip as I remembered where I’d left my MINI. How long can a person stay awake without going crazy? A week?

  “Jenks, if you touch the scars on my neck, I’m going to pull off your wings” came from behind me as I heard the staccato clicking of Ivy tapping the down key.

  “Awww, I love you, too, you putrid blood bag. Relax. She’ll be okay for an hour. It’s not like she’s going to fall asleep in a charm shop.”

  And then the doors shut, and I was alone.

  CHAPTER

  12

  “Out! Out of my store!” Patricia yelled, and my chi tingled as she tapped a line.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I exclaimed, my bag held tight to my middle as the woman came around the counter, her eyes narrowed. “I just need a few no-doze amulets,” I added, then gasped, ducking when she threw a package of stink spells at me.

  “You want amulets?” the woman shrieked. “Here you go. Something to make you smell better. Get out, you demon lover. Out of my store!”

  They weren’t invoked, and the charms still in their cellophane wrappers hit the floor with a crinkle. I backed to the door, eyes wide. “Out!” she shrieked, pointing, and I fled, pulse fast as I slipped past the door and to the sidewalk.

  It shut behind me with a bang, and I spun. “Patricia, please,” I pleaded as she stood with the closed door between us, her hands on her hips.

  “You’re a demon. Make a curse,” she said, voice muffled.

  Crap on toast. I hadn’t even gotten two feet inside the store. The passing people gave me a nervous wide berth, and I turned away, worried when I remembered telling Francis to do nearly the same thing before I quit the I.S. He died because he was less than up for the task.

  Hoping it wasn’t an omen, I made a sarcastic bunny-ear kiss-kiss to Patricia and walked away, head down and purse held tight to my middle. It had been Minias and Al who’d trashed her store. But did they get blamed for it? No. It had been me, and now I’d have to go all the way to the university bookstore to get my no-doze.

  Embarrassed, I checked to see what time it was before heading to my car, parked two streets over. I had maybe forty minutes before Jenks and Ivy would come looking for me. Not exactly enough time to buzz across town and back, but close.

  “Small-minded moss wipe,” I whispered, hands in my pockets as I hustled down the sidewalk. The wind coming from the river was chill, and the windows were up on the cars going by. I was glad that Jenks would be overwintering with Trent, exchanging room and board for positive PR opportunities apparently. I was going to miss him, though.

  Hunching deeper into my dark green leather coat, I stared up at a few yellowed leaves still clinging to the street trees. Everything would have been different if the insurance money for the church had come through. But I scuffed to a stop, eyes narrowed as I stared at a straggly blackbird watching me from the dark branches. Hodin.

  “You.” My pulse hammered, and the man in a suit coming toward me started in surprise. “Not you, him!” I said, pointing at the bird, and the man halted, clearly unsure if he should turn around or cross the street.

  “Don’t you fly away from me,” I demanded as Hodin cawed as if it was all a big joke. “Is this you? Are you targeting people?”

  He opened his wings, and I tapped a line, fingers tingling as it rushed in. “Hodin!”

  When he hopped to the outer branches as if to leave, something in me snapped.

  “Move,” I said to the man in the suit, staring at me. “Too late,” I said when he froze, briefcase clasped before him. “Don’t move.” My gaze narrowed on Hodin, now in the air and struggling for height. I flicked a gaze up and down the street, imagining a circle that wouldn’t impact the oncoming traffic. The timing would have to be perfect, though, and the circle really big.

  “Rhombus!” I shouted, hand outstretched as I wrestled a huge amount of line energy into a barrier. Yes! I thought, elated when Hodin hit the inside of the circle with an indignant squawk and fell. Feathers leaking, he slid down the barely visible barrier until I dropped it. The passing cars continued on, never knowing it had been there, but Hodin, who’d regained the wind under his wings, awkwardly landed on a light pole and shook off the hit.

  “I said I want to talk to you,” I said, and the businessman, who was still standing next to me, began to inch away.

  Hodin cawed again, the harsh, dangerous sound echoing between the buildings. Red goat-slitted eyes fixed to me, he dropped to the ground, misting out halfway down to land as a big, black, straggly, malnourished wolfhound. Growling, he began to pace forward.

  “What is it with the dogs,” I muttered, pushing the businessman behind me. “Bring it on, big boy,” I mocked, feet spread wide and pulling on the ley line until my hair began to float. Damn it, people were noticing, gathering at the crosswalks and stopping their cars right in the middle of the street to watch. “I’ve tangled with Ku’Sox and run him to ground. You’re nothing but a big puppy with slobbery kisses!” />
  He barked, a low, threatening growl that reached deep into my gut and pulled on my fear.

  “Holy shit!” the man behind me swore, and I yanked him back to me as Hodin sprang.

  “Rhombus!” I shouted, imagining a much smaller circle this time.

  Yelping, Hodin skidded to a stop, nails scraping on the sidewalk and all four feet splayed awkwardly to avoid hitting the outside of my circle this time.

  “Watch this,” I whispered to the terrified man with me. “Arrado!” I shouted, throwing the curse right at him. Hodin, more concerned with not slamming into my circle again, didn’t react. My magic tore through my bubble as planned, dropping the barrier and adding to its own strength before hitting Hodin.

  “Whoops,” I said, jerking the man with me out of the way as Hodin slid over the sidewalk right where we had been—only now he had absolutely no hair. “Oh, that’s nasty.”

  Denuded, Hodin the dog gave a startled yelp, immediately vanishing into a pearly mist of unfocused magic.

  “Okay. Now you can go,” I told the guy with me, and he ran down the sidewalk in a fast staccato of dress shoes, pushing past the few watchers to beat a quick retreat.

  Hodin, once again tall, dark, and pissed, touched his head to make sure his long wavy hair was back. He looked wildly demonic there in the sun with his narrowed eyes, stiff posture, leather jacket, and all-around-threatening presence, and I strengthened my hold on the ley line. Attractive or not, he was a demon, and that meant he was more dangerous than a weaving snake.

  “You circled me,” he said, hands clenched and a murderous expression in his red eyes.

  “I circled us!” I exclaimed, tired of being stalked by this guy. “For like three seconds. And I only did it because you walked away from me when I was talking to you.” I took a step forward, neck bent to look up at his suddenly startled face. “I don’t have the time or the energy to deal with another demon bent on world domination, so put that right out of your brain right now. Got it?”

  Hodin stared down at me. I’d been careful in what I’d done, embarrassing him without any real threat. He might not be as powerful as me, but he had a bigger spell lexicon. I was used to fighting for my life, though. The threat was in how I’d tagged him, and he knew it. “You are following me,” I said, startled when the scent of burnt amber drifted out to tickle a memory. “And I don’t like it.”