American Demon

by Kim Harrison

  I exhaled, making a fist to squeeze out the last of the latent magic that had soaked into me, then shaking my hand to send little trills of static power out to be lost. The large estate was empty without the high voices of the girls and the responding rumbles of their dads. They’d be coming back tonight. I didn’t have to leave, but I would.

  Twisting, I took my phone from my pocket to check the time. It caught the ring that Hodin had given me, and the dull silver engraved band came with it, hitting the floor with a thump and rolling into the sun to glisten like an unsaid promise. Frowning, I picked it up, turning it to study the glyphs. It looked Celtic, the symbols intertwined with one another until it was hard to decide where one started and another left off. Pretty, I thought, wondering why Hodin had been so adamant that he wouldn’t help Al. It had sounded personal.

  Souls, I mused as I rolled the band between my thumb and index finger. Hodin claimed he could shift a soul’s expression. It would change my neutral aura expression permanently, not simply for an instant the way all demons modified their auras to travel the ley lines. Other than ley line travel, there was very little concerning souls in either the demon or elf texts.

  Maybe I’m going about this the wrong way, I thought, one eye squinted shut as I raised the ring to look through it to the covered pool. Auras, souls, souls, auras . . . My eyes closed and I gripped the ring in my fist as my eyes began to twitch despite that wake-up spell.

  “Rachel?” Trent called distantly, and my eyes flashed open. “Sandwiches are ready.”

  Crap on toast, I almost fell asleep. What good is a wake-up spell if it doesn’t keep you awake? “That coffee smells great,” I said as I put my no-doze amulet back on, then Hodin’s ring—just for safekeeping. A frown creased my brow, and I looked at it there, glinting dully on my finger. It fit. As if it had sized itself.

  “I think so, too.” Exhaling in pleasure, Trent set a well-loaded tray on the coffee table.

  I sat up out of the comfort trap the couch had become. “Wow. You didn’t just make all this,” I said as I took in the array of cheese, crackers, fruit, and, yes, finger sandwiches. There was an insulated carafe of coffee, too, and that was where Trent started, pouring out two mugs of richly scented brew and handing me one.

  “Maggie prepped most of it,” he admitted. “I only put it together while the coffee perked.”

  The mug warmed my hands, and again my eyes closed, this time in bliss as I took a sip. “Perfect,” I said as it eased into me, working with the no-doze charm to bring me fully awake.

  The mug clicked as I set it on the table, and I leaned forward to fill a small plate. Trent was already doing the same, and we were silent for a moment. Vertigo came and went when the no-doze amulet swung forward and back into me, and I tucked it more firmly behind my shirt. “You make the best coffee,” I said, and he smiled, his eyes especially green in the reflected light.

  “Flatterer.” Seeming happy with the world, Trent eased down beside me with his plate, and we both looked at the pile of books. “Find anything?”

  “Nothing that the demons couldn’t have tried themselves in the past.” I sighed as I took a bite of sandwich. Weast was being a dick for not sharing information. The I.S. was being a coward for ignoring what was going on, and Hodin was an ass for not setting whatever grudge he had aside and helping Al. I am dead to him, echoed in my mind. The way he’d said it implied more than the belief he’d died long ago, as if Al had turned his back on him as he had once turned it on me. I knew how that felt—when someone you needed abandoned you because of something you had to do to survive. Stop it, Rachel. Hodin is not a kindred spirit. He’s a dangerous unknown.

  “How do you hold something made of energy?” I said as I reached for my coffee again, and Trent scrambled to catch his plate when his balance shifted with my motion.

  “Perhaps a circle that’s held by a ley line, not a practitioner?” he suggested. “Or trap it in the line itself?”

  I stifled a shudder as I recalled being stuck at the bottom of a ley line, my very soul being scoured away by time itself until I got Al free of it. I had saved him as much as he had saved me. Perhaps that was why he overlooked his anger and . . . listened. “I’ve never heard of a stand-alone circle,” I said, and Trent frowned when I put my arches on the edge of the table.

  “Maybe that’s why it will work when we figure out how to do it,” he said, still looking at my feet. “We know the Order caught it once. Weast is pretty good at cutting off access to a ley line with that amulet.” His head rose, his eyes alight. “How about that? It’s energy, right? The baku has to be connected to the line in some fashion. Cutting that off might give us control.”

  I shrugged, not convinced. “The demon I talked to implied the baku gets its energy from the people it feeds on, not the line. I still think it has something to do with auras. That’s what it’s focusing on.” Thinking, I put my feet back on the floor and added some cold smoked squash and grapes to my plate. “You catch a man with what he wants, not what he needs. Maybe we can adapt that spiral curse we used to snare Nina’s soul.”

  “Put it into a soul bottle? Mmmm.” Trent leaned deeper into me, and my weight shifted. “I don’t think a spiral curse will work on something that has no soul. I mean, that’s the point.”

  He was warm against my side, and my breathing slowed as we both slumped in thought. “I’m sorry about filling our weekend with this,” I whispered, fatigue pulling at me.

  Trent set his plate down and tugged me closer. “Don’t go there,” he said as he gave me a light kiss. “We are in this together. Besides, the sooner we figure this out, the sooner you can get some sleep. You’re not much fun when you’re tired and cranky.”

  A smile quirked my lips, and I snuggled into him. “I’m not cranky,” I said sourly.

  “Yes, you are, and I love you for it,” he said as he eased his warmth against me until I couldn’t tell where I ended. Slowly our breathing synchronized. The two of us were all alone in this big house, and it felt okay.

  “There has to be a way,” I said, my thoughts returning to Al in self-imposed seclusion. “The little info you found about the baku said it was the bogeyman for elven children.”

  Trent’s arm slipped from around me, and leaning, he tugged an oversize children’s book out from under my legal pad. “Sort of a beneficial spirit,” he said as he dropped the beautifully illustrated book open on our laps and leafed to the right page. “One that eats the nightmares of children so they can go back to sleep.”

  Together we looked at the swirling purple and gold hovering over a scared child in his bed, the parents peeking supportively around the door. “Sure, but if you called it for no reason and the nightmare wasn’t scary enough to fill it up, the baku would eat you. I swear, parents can be so cruel sometimes. You think maybe the reality is that the baku was eating the kid’s soul?”

  “What an awful, terrifying thought,” Trent said, but his frown said he was considering it. “The kernel of truth in the fairy tale,” he murmured as he closed the book and dropped it on the pile. “Remind me to put this on the locked shelf. I’m not reading this to the girls.”

  “No problem. I’ll get you a copy of the girl-empowered fairy tales my mom read me.” I shifted to make room for him as he eased back. “Let’s look at what we do know,” I said as the coffee began to hit me. “Glenn said the baku took refuge during the day in a real presence, one that they couldn’t nail down yet. The, uh, demons said pretty much the same thing,” I said, trying to keep Hodin’s name out of it. “If we could identify the host, we could maybe stop the baku by trapping whoever is dumb enough to be hosting it.” A host that was in danger, if Hodin was to be believed. But I wasn’t sure I cared, if that person was willfully sending the baku out to kill people.

  “We need a list of who wants the demons dead.” Again Trent leaned forward, this time for a cookie, and I shifted a few feet down t
he couch, tired of his up and down. “It’s a pretty long list.”

  “Not if you winnow it by who might know about the baku.” Crap on toast, it was probably someone on Trent’s Christmas card list. Sitting almost sideways on the couch, I picked at a cracker. “Who has the baku targeted so far? Where’s the logic here?”

  Head bobbing, Trent pulled a cookie apart to get to the filling. “Average people.”

  “At first,” I agreed. “Then it hit Al. Me to some extent. Perhaps the baku was trying to find Al and the others got in the way.” Trent eyed me in concern, and I fidgeted. “Or maybe it was weak after its extended capture and needed to build up its strength before tackling a foe that knew how to fight it. Dali said it nibbled away at the soul, shell by shell, which implies it takes time to destroy someone completely before it can take them over.”

  Okay, it had been Hodin, not Dali, and I looked at his ring when I took a sip of coffee.

  “Shell by shell?” Trent asked, voice intent. “Are you sure those were his exact words?”

  Embarrassed for not only my lie, but that Trent didn’t catch me at it, I nodded. But I didn’t want to admit it had been Hodin. I wasn’t afraid of his death threats. No, it was that damned feeling of kinship born from separate but identical trials that was keeping my mouth shut. I knew him, his desire to belong, and the fear that went with it. Rachel, you are a Turn-blasted fool.

  “Souls have shells?” I asked as Trent rose and went to one of his glassed bookshelves.

  “I’d call them layers, but sure.” Trent’s back was to me as he unlocked the cabinet with a key hidden on the shelf next to it. “You can see it in how the girls are developing. Almost by the day their emotions are becoming more complex, but they started out very simple.

  “Give me a second,” he said softly, distracted as he opened the door and scanned the spines of a small section of what looked like theme books. “I think this was it,” he said as he chose one near the beginning and closed and locked the cabinet again. “This is one of my mom’s journals,” he said as he came back and sat beside me.

  “I thought she was a genetic engineer,” I said as we sort of slid together again, our heads bowed over the yellowing pages filled with a careful script. A warm feeling of belonging stirred as our body warmth became one and a faint thrill crept through me. Trent was many things: a drug lord, a politician, a philanthropist, a cold-blooded killer, a student of magic and science both. This was the Trent I liked best, intent on solving a problem others could not, where his skills dovetailed so beautifully it was almost a crime.

  “She was.” Trent confidently flipped through the pages. “But she had to give up her career after she married my dad. It was the sixties, and the more well-to-do you were, the more you had to conform. She spent a lot of time recovering lost elven magic. They called it a hobby. A hobby,” he said, clearly disgusted. “She worked harder than anyone I know and got zero credit for it.”

  “Mmmm. I’m glad we live in more enlightened times,” I said, appreciating the way Trent smelled when he got excited. All cinnamon and sugar. Like a cookie.

  Oblivious to my thoughts, Trent kept shifting the pages. “She kept a diary from the day the Turn started until she died. I’ve read them all at least twice to try to remember her. There’s a lot about my siblings until they died—mostly good; my dad—mostly bad; her horses—all joyful.”

  My eyes traced the faint frown lines now furrowing his brow. I’d forgotten he’d had older siblings once. “I’m sorry,” I said, and he flicked a distant smile at me before returning to the text.

  “She doesn’t mention her magic studies in her diary very often, which makes me think there might be another set of these somewhere.” His lips pressed in what I guessed was an old annoyance. “She was first a scientist. I can’t believe she didn’t write everything down. This one here was a few years after she got married.” Slowly his smile faded as he flipped a page, finger running down the careful cursive. “Quen worked for my dad even back then. I think she’d be delighted to know that Quen had a little girl named after a witch-born demon.”

  “That’d be me,” I said as I tugged him closer, wishing we had more afternoons like this.

  “Here it is,” he said, and I looked down.

  “‘My heart hurts,’” I read aloud when Trent remained silent. “‘And now that I can sleep, I can’t. Agnent is gone, and it pains me more than I want to admit. It might be easier if I knew what happened, but he’s gone, and only the ache remains.’” Excitement trickled through me as I looked up, but Trent was still reading. “That sounds like a forget curse. Who is Agnent?”

  “No idea,” he said shortly. “He’s not mentioned in any other volume. Okay, this is what I really wanted you to see.”

  He turned back a page, and I leaned over the text. “‘Woke up to Agnent blowing a hole through the wall. He tapped a line in his sleep’”—I hesitated, tamping down a flash of fear—“‘but he seemed okay apart from being afraid to go to sleep. He says he feels like he’s being eaten alive, shell by shell. So tired. Haven’t slept in days. Quen and Kal are meeting someone who says they know who this thing sleeps in. He won’t let me go with him. He’s a chivalrous ass.’”

  “Kal is my dad,” Trent said, answering my first question. “Short for Kalamack. He never liked his first name much.”

  “Which is?” I prompted.

  “Same as mine.”

  I nodded, sort of remembering something like that when I’d looked up his I.S. file three years ago. “I think I would’ve liked your mom,” I said as I traced her words with my finger. “Hey, some of the pages are torn out.”

  “You noticed that, too,” Trent said flatly, but it really wasn’t a question. “The ‘shell by shell’ sort of stuck in my mind. It made no sense at the time.”

  “It doesn’t make much sense now, either,” I said. “You know what this means, right? Your mother helped catch the baku in the seventies. Jeez, how often does this thing get away?” I reached to take possession of the journal, but Trent pulled it away and closed it, his mood somber. “Does she say how?” I asked as he stood and went to put it away again.

  “No. It’s probably in those missing pages.”

  The click of the key in the lock was loud, and I couldn’t help but notice that he put it in his pocket, not back on the shelf. “Not much help, then,” I said as he sat down, perched on the edge of the couch with his elbows on his knee and his expression lost in thought.

  “It proves that this thing can be caught, though.”

  “But not how.” I put a hand on his back, feeling the worry in his shoulders like rocks. I leaned in, putting pressure into trying to rub the tension out. “Maybe . . .” I hesitated, my hand’s motion across him slowing. “Maybe capturing it involves the Goddess.”

  Trent jerked, his expression holding a decisive surety. “If it does, then you’re sitting this one out. I’m not losing you to that tricky bitch again.”

  Tricky bitch, eh? “Mmmm.” My hand began to move again, and his shoulders to ease. “What was that your mother said again? Oh, yes. Chivalrous ass?” I chuckled when he frowned, adding, “Don’t worry about it. I’m not doing any elven magic.”

  “Good.”

  Finally his shoulders fully relaxed, but I didn’t stop, just glad that he was here, and I was here, and we were doing this together. “The girls will be back tonight,” I said, my gaze drifting about the empty room. It was easy to imagine them here, growing up as a bold ten, a blossoming fifteen, a confident twenty. Marrying Dali’s apprentice. God, that was a weird dream.

  Trent shifted to glance at his watch. “Not for hours yet.”

  “I only meant we could ask Quen. He might know if your mother had any secondary journals. Ones that might cover what someone ripped out.”

  “He won’t talk about her,” he said. “But I’ll press the issue. This is important.” He turne
d, taking my hand in his and his eyes widening as he noticed my new ring. “Where did you get that?”

  “Oh!” I hated that I was flushing, and I forced myself to not jerk my hand from his. “Ah, the demon who bought the no-doze for me.” Trent’s expression tightened, and wanting to reassure him there was no issue here, I took it off and handed it to him. “It’s a call ring,” I said as he looked over the twined writing, and then through the hole as I had. “Put it on. Twist it. I’m guessing it works like a private scrying mirror.”

  Trent handed it back, and I let out a breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding. “It looks elven,” he said. “This demon got a name?”

  “Trenton Aloysius Kalamack, are you jealous?” I said playfully as I put my ring on.

  “Damn straight I am,” he admitted, the rims of his tall ears red.

  Smiling, I slid closer until our thighs touched. “He, ah, knows how to adjust how a soul expresses its aura. He offered to tweak mine so the baku won’t target me. I could get some sleep.”

  “Huh. I thought auras were female-demon things.” Trent went still, worry pinching his brow. “You know . . . if he put it back to your original expression, Bis could teach you how to jump the lines,” he said hesitantly.

  “Sure, and maybe the mystics could find me,” I finished for him. “I already told him no, which was why he gave me the ring in case I changed my mind.” I slumped, depressed. “I want to talk to Al about it first. Get his opinion.” Something that might not happen now. Not Al, I thought, shoving the panic down. He couldn’t die. Not after surviving everything else.

  Everyone who becomes important to me dies.

  “Ah, Rachel, can this demon change your aura a second time if the mystics are still looking for you?”