American Demon

by Kim Harrison

  But he was hovering so close, I couldn’t. “Then perhaps you shouldn’t have cut off his ear. You look okay to me. Hang tight, okay?”

  Jenks turned in midair, spilling his coffee as he looked Hodin up and down. “Hear that, Home Slice? She wants me to hang tight.”

  “Keep your dust off the table.” Hodin eyed me uneasily. “What are you trying to do?”

  Gotcha. Smiling, I sat before him with a little flip of my robe to make the sash bells ring. “I’m trying to see the inner shells of the aura.”

  Hodin’s lip twitched, and what I thought was guilt crossed him. “I’m sorry, Rachel. Even if you could, it wouldn’t help Bis reach you through your adjusted aura.”

  “That’s not what this is for.” I shoved the heartache down. I could feel Jenks looking at me, but I didn’t dare meet his eyes as I took Ivy’s vials from her bag and stood them up in a row on the table. “It’s for the baku. Zack said he could see the accumulated damage from the baku in Landon’s aura. Bis couldn’t see any evidence of its attack in my outer shells, but if it shows in my inner, and I can find the same damage in the people it attacked, then I have reasonable cause to blame the baku for the murders.”

  “I can vouch that the baku caused their actions,” Hodin said, and I nodded, carefully opening up my scarf to show my snips of cedar, wintergreen, chicory, and tight dandelion buds.

  “Fair enough, but I can’t prove it. This might.” I glanced at the ten-pointed star. “Or at least prove the accused were goaded into it, possessed maybe.” The memory of wanting to kill Trent sifted through me, and I stifled a shiver.

  “This is what comes from trying to live within a human system,” Hodin said darkly. “You are a demon, Rachel.”

  “So I should take and do what I want?” I said, weary of the good old boy’s privileged mind-set, and Jenks snickered. “This isn’t only for them. Landon is using the baku to get me to kill Trent, and though I’m sure all the demons would be thrilled,” I said with a bitter drama, “it would put me back in Alcatraz and Landon in power.” I arched my eyebrows. “Or rather the baku when it takes Landon over. All the progress we’ve made integrating demons into reality won’t mean goose slip. I like you all here. I don’t know why. All of you seem dead set to ruin it.”

  Hodin frowned, slumped as he looked at the table. “I just told you you’re right. Why do you have to prove it?”

  “It’s what we do here,” Jenks said. “All are innocent until proven guilty. Even demons.”

  Hodin’s feet scuffed the old wood floor. “How . . . quaint.”

  “And sometimes a pain in the ass, but it keeps me from being lynched.” I used my ceremonial knife to whittle a tip on the cedar stick and set it on the table. “Want to help?”

  “Help you steal my work? No.” He pushed back into the chair, settling deeper into its sawdust-laden comfort. “But your efforts are sure to be amusing. You can’t open a decahedron. There’s too much distance between the All candle and the connecting threads.”

  “Ass,” Jenks said, and I shifted my hair from my shoulder to lure him off the table.

  “Then you won’t mind if I try,” I said as I took up my magnetic chalk.

  “What’s your plan, Rache?” Jenks asked as he landed on my shoulder, a muffled swearing coming from him when he slipped on the slick pixy-dust silk and fell into the air.

  “Playing it by feel,” I said, eyebrows rising when Jenks warily perched on the back of the couch instead. “I’m hoping that all I need is to double the candles and open a closed pentagon into a decahedron. If Hodin’s curse is worth the salt to circle it, it will function the same.”

  “My curse,” Hodin said possessively as he looked sourly at Jenks, now four inches from his ear. Then he added, softer, “A double pentagram?” He shifted, either to get closer to the table or farther from Jenks. “How do you propose to get a ten-pointed star from a five-sided pentagon?”

  “Like this,” I said as I drew a pentagon with the usual radiating lines from the center, then added five additional lines running through the midpoints of the walls. I guesstimated how far I needed to go for the proposed star points, and Hodin’s eyes widened in interest. “What were the words you used to open it?” I mused aloud, then brightened. “Obscurum per obscuris,” I said, strengthening my hold on the ley line and letting it fill the glyph.

  I hadn’t set any candles, so I didn’t know what I expected, but with a thrill, I felt a drop of energy in me, and on the table, a perfect five-pointed pentagram ghosted into existence, the lines more visible energy than anything else since there was no candle ash to give them substance.

  “Okay . . . ,” Hodin said hesitantly, eyes intent. “But it’s still only five points.”

  I bit my lip, then went for the cedar twig still holding half a dozen frost-dark leaves. “It just needs to be shifted a few degrees,” I said, reaching out.

  “Rachel!” Hodin shouted as I breached the glyph. Jenks’s wings clattered in warning, but then his eyes widened as I gave the lines-not-there a nudge, and they shifted, the points setting at the freestanding lines like a roulette wheel clicking to a stop. Left behind was a ghostly image of the original placement. I had my ten-pointed star.

  “Looks like a ten-pointed star to me,” Jenks said smugly as Hodin pushed forward.

  “Seal it,” Hodin said, and I drew back, the bells on my sash jingling. “Name what you did, and register it in the collective so you can do it again!” he exclaimed. “Latin. Bind the motion with a naming. Do it, Rachel. I can’t. I’m not in the collective. This can’t be forgotten.”

  “Oh!” I stared at what I’d done, only now realizing how rare it was. “Um.” Turning. I had turned it. What was the Latin word for turn? “Ah, Wee-keh Wehr-sah. Evulgo, Rachel Mariana Morgan,” I said, the last words imprinting it on the collective.

  “Vice versa?” Hodin’s long face screwed up. “You jest. That’s hardly Latin anymore.”

  “Which is why I stuck with the original pronunciation,” I said, embarrassed. “Ut omnes unum sint,” I said, and with a slight pull on my awareness, the ten-pointed glyph vanished to leave only the original pentagon. “Look, if you don’t like it, leave. I’m doing the best I can here.”

  “Mmmm.” Hodin’s fingers twitched as if looking for chalk. He took a slow breath and exhaled, his eyes touching on my no-doze amulet, then dropping to the wilting vegetation on my gathering scarf, and finally on my fingers still holding the dirt from the garden now mixed with a smear of magnetic chalk. “I’m impressed,” he finally said, and Jenks nearly choked, inking a startled silver. “Will you show me your ideas, Rachel?”

  My gaze flicked to Jenks, and seeing his shrug, I nodded. It was a request, and somehow that was more worrisome than a demand. A demanding demon I knew what to do with.

  One who thought I was smart . . . That was a whole new game. And I smiled.

  CHAPTER

  21

  Hodin was close. Actually, he was too close as he sat on the couch beside me, and I shifted my knee before he could touch it with his own. An unopened pentagon with ten radiating lines waited on the slate table, pristine in its unmagicked state. The faint scent of burnt amber pricked my nose, and I glanced at Hodin scribbling notes on Ray’s sketch pad with a half-busted pen Jenks had found in the floorboards. He’d changed into a spelling robe to minimize his aura contamination, this one gold at the top, radiating down to black with stars about the hem and Möbius strips on the ties. There were no bells, so I was the only one jingling.

  It had been hours now, and he was getting frustrated.

  “Shall we try it?” Hodin prompted as he set his notes down with a smack. “Modifying the All candle with a broom straw in place of traditional cotton should facilitate a smoother energy movement.” His tone was scholarly, nothing like Al’s bluster, and his expression was serious as he tried out another of my lame ideas. “Obscuru
m per obscuris,” he intoned, and I felt a dip in the line we were both connected to as he snapped his fingers. “Wee-keh Wehr-sah.”

  Breath held, I stared at the chalk lines, willing something to happen. But nothing did. My All candle sat and burned with exactly the color one would expect from a birthday candle.

  “Damn my dame,” Hodin muttered, slumping back into the cushions. His knee hit mine, and I stiffened. Noticing, he sat up and shifted down a few inches. “I thought your addition of a straw in place of a cotton wick would have changed something.”

  “Try it again,” I said as I blew out the candle and removed it from the glyph.

  “I did not draw it wrong,” he muttered. Snapping his fingers, he added, “Obscurum per obscuris. Wee-keh Wehr-sah.”

  Again I felt a drop in the line, and with a soft hiss of undrawn chalk, the pentagon opened and twisted to form a perfect ten-pointed star. But without the candle, that was all it did.

  “There it is!” Hodin said in disgust, the sleeve to his spelling robe shifting as he pointed at it. “It’s got to be something to do with the blood, not the candle. The double-star twist isn’t working when there’s blood involved, and that’s the entire point.”

  The cushions shifted and, sash bells jingling, I pushed forward to the edge of the couch when I began to slump toward him. “We’re missing something is all. I think we can go back to the cotton cord if you want. Maybe we’re asking too much. Demon curses are always so . . . spare.”

  Hodin rubbed his chalk-stained fingers together. “Because most of the hard work is predone and stored in the collective,” he said. “But perhaps you’re right.” He leaned to clean off the glyph to start over, and we both jumped when his knee bumped mine. Again. “We need a bigger space,” he muttered, eyebrows furrowed as he looked at the pool table.

  “Don’t think so,” Jenks said from atop the nearby light. “No touchy or Ivy get bitey.”

  I shook my head as well, and Hodin frowned. “Fine. We continue at the kiddie table.” Clearly miffed, he pulled his notes to him, pen tip ticking our tried modifications. “The problem isn’t with the wick, or the herbs carrying intent within the wax, or the wax itself,” he said. “We’ve changed all of that to no effect. It’s the presence of the blood, and I don’t understand why. Something basic in the glyph is blocking the transition of power once the blood is added. Perhaps the modification should be in the glyph itself.”

  “I don’t know.” Elbows on my knees, I leaned over to study it. We’d added words of power to attract the points, bits of our own hair to carry out intent. I even tapped directly into the collective for an energy boost, but nothing worked. “Maybe?” But the glyph was the only thing that felt right.

  Hodin’s fitfully moving fingers stilled. “It opened and turned fine before we added auratic samples. We both saw it.” He took up my All candle and frowned at it. “Why would the addition of the substrate itself block it when it worked before?”

  Hodin’s attitude had shifted dramatically over the last two hours, going from annoyed instructor to puzzled peer. It was gratifying that he thought my knowledge of earth magic was valid, but I was tapped out. “Perhaps it’s the twist,” I said.

  “I don’t think so. That piece of innovation was inspired.” Hodin leaned over the table, my candle in hand. “I thought of another placement word. Hang on.”

  Jenks snorted from the light fixture, a silver dust spilling down just shy of my elbow.

  “Explicatio,” Hodin intoned as he set the candle where all the lines connected, fingers opening to show a new flame.

  I started, grinning as my eyes found his. There was a new power rising in the glyph. It wasn’t unpleasant, and by his eager smile, I could tell Hodin felt it, too. It was the best connection we’d had since sitting down, and his silk robe shifted in excitement. “Try it,” I said, and Jenks poked his head over the light fixture.

  “Obscurum per obscuris,” Hodin said boldly. “Wee-keh Wehr-sah.”

  “Look out!” Jenks shrilled as Hodin clapped his hands, the pixy inking blue dust as he shot halfway across the sanctuary.

  A surge flared in the line, singeing my thoughts. Yelping, I ducked, snapping a protection circle in place around me as a sodden thump of air and a clap of thunder hit me simultaneously.

  “Way to go, Home Slice,” Jenks said snarkily, back again and hovering over the power-smeared glyph.

  “You okay?” I let my circle fall, and Hodin grimaced and let his own larger circle drop. It had encompassed me as well, which left me not knowing what to think.

  “I guess that’s a no.” Mood bad, Hodin pulled his notes to him, flipping back a few pages before adding to the tried-and-failed word list. “I need a moment,” he added, and I jumped when the sketchbook hit the table and he stood.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “Front steps. I need to sit in the sun and remind myself how good I have it. Besides, I think someone left a sugar confection out there.”

  “Okay.” I uncurled my legs and set my feet back on the floor. “Thanks for the circle.”

  “You didn’t need it,” Hodin muttered, skirting the hole in the floor as he strode to the front door, spelling robe drifting about his slippered ankles until the door shut loudly behind him.

  “Thanks anyway,” I whispered as I flipped through Ray’s sketchbook. His hand-printed letters were razor sharp. The church felt empty without him. Really empty.

  “You want anything from the garden?” Jenks asked as he drifted down to land clear of the magnetic chalk lines. “We’re hitting the peak temp for today.”

  I shook my head, thoughts still on Hodin. He wasn’t what I had expected, his attitude shifting fast at my suggestions even if none of them had panned out. My jumps of reason were clearly surprising him, and I had a suspicion he was enjoying having someone to work this out with. Until now.

  Motions slow, I cleaned the spoiled glyph from the slate. He’d stuck with this longer than I would have expected, but his pleasure that I might be a worthy peer was slowly smothering under continued failure. “It should have worked,” I said. “Jenks, how did you know it was going to misfire?”

  Sitting atop the lamp, Jenks’s wings moved fitfully. “I heard the Goddess laugh.”

  A stab of fear cut me as I glanced at the closed door. “Excuse me?” I whispered.

  He grinned, green eyes merry. “It’s an expression. Like walking over your own grave? The energy flowing through it sounded wrong, and it gave me the heebie-jeebies. Jeez, Rache. You really think I heard her? I’d probably explode in a flash of dust if she whispered in my ear.” He shuddered, his dust sifting a cheerful gold.

  “I didn’t know you could hear curses twisting,” I said, focus blurring.

  “I usually can’t.” Jenks vaulted from the lamp. “It’s like he pissed her off, you know?”

  “Yeah . . . ,” I drawled, a new thought tickling through me. Somewhere deep within the Goddess was a crazy demon. It was probably why the elves’ magic wasn’t working right, and maybe why this curse, which should have, wasn’t. “Jenks, watch my aura, okay?”

  “Whoa, wait. What are you doing?” he said, suddenly very much awake.

  I scraped my magnetic chalk on the table to sharpen it to a point, adrenaline seeping through me in a slow, invigorating wash. “Just tell me if I start gathering mystics. Hodin can shift my aura again if necessary.”

  “You don’t know if he’s still out there.” Jenks dropped down to the table. “Rache . . .”

  Head down, I sketched out a new pentagon with its ten guiding lines. “We’ve tried modifying it with earth magic, ley line magic, and bolstering it with the demon collective. There’s only one branch of magic left.”

  “Uhhh . . . ,” Jenks drawled, his dust almost transparent. “Sure. You look okay so far.”

  The chalk was slippery in my hand, and the word
s were already a whisper in my mind. I sat straighter, remembering the fear in Al’s eyes. Still, if Hodin put my aura back correctly, I could shout in the Goddess’s face and she wouldn’t recognize me. “If you see them gathering . . .”

  “I tell you to quit and get Hodin,” he said, glancing at the door. “Better hurry before he tries to stop you. He might tell you no, and I’m starting to like the guy.”

  “Seriously?” I stared at Jenks, and he shrugged, his dust shifting to an embarrassed red.

  “I’ve been watching you. He fills a void Trent can’t. That’s all,” he said, discomfited. “Tell me I’m wrong, but if you and Trent were experimenting with line energy and covered in garden dirt, you’d be playing with his hair and bumping uglies after the first half hour.”

  “Jenks!” I exclaimed as I glanced at the door to the church, and he laughed, gyrating his hips suggestively. “We would not.” But I could feel myself warming, and it bothered me.

  “Yeah, okay.” He drifted down to land on the cold coffee cup. “I’m just saying that Hodin likes your ideas and doesn’t have Trent’s tendency to try to stop you before you do stupid things that might hurt you. He’s okay. A little closed and broody, but okay. You can have friends, you know? Go on.” He looked at the table and waved his hand at me. “Do your demon-elf thing.”

  Stupid things that might end up hurting me. Yep, that’s exactly what this is, I thought, twice as nervous. Unadorned pentagon ready, I took up my original All candle. Ta na shay, I thought to set the melted monstrosity as I placed it in the center. Hear me. See what I do.

  And a little demon magic to counterbalance it, I thought as I pricked my finger to smear more blood on the wick as I pinched it. “Ta na shay,” I said softly as I parted my fingers and let a tiny ribbon of line energy flow to ignite the candle. A flickering golden flame mirroring my aura emerged. I sat back, eyes on Jenks, and he gave me a thumbs-up.

  “It’s humming like a two-year-old’s wings, Rache,” he said. “Sweet and pure.”