by Lucy Auburn
Up ahead, Meyer calls back over his shoulder, “Dani? You alright?”
“Fine!” I scramble for an explanation. “I had to take a leak. Just a sec.”
“Uh, okay.”
Sebastian throws me an incredulous look, which pairs well with his wild black hair. “Did you just tell your teacher you’re pissing in the woods?”
“There’s not much time.” Breathing in, then out, I scan their faces, memorize the little features on all of them I’ll miss: Sebastian’s sharp blue eyes and mussed black hair, Lynx’s curving smile and strong hands, Mateo’s white flash of teeth and stubble-shadowed jaw, Ezra’s sure green gaze that reflects his unbreakable moral compass. “We’re about to do the spell. After this... I’m not sure how long it’ll be until we see each other again.” Taking the black opal necklace out, I squeeze its chilled surface. “My powers are an echo of what they were before. Once this is over and they’re back, I’ll try to learn how to summon you again. But if I can’t...”
“Then this is it,” Ezra says. “This is goodbye.”
I nod.
“Ah, fuck.” Mateo dabs at his eyes with the back of a hand, which is absurdly holding his gun; I didn’t even see him draw it from his shoulder holster. “I hate goodbyes.”
“You’ll find us again.” Lynx sounds so certain, which is reassuring; of any of them, he should know. “After this, we’ll go back to Purgatory. We’ll grow strong again. You’ll be able to summon us.”
Sebastian adds, “And if you can’t, just pray for retribution against your enemies. I’ll come to the mortal plane and poison to death anyone who crosses you.”
His words warm my heart, even though they should disturb me. I guess we’re all a little broken inside, but our jagged pieces fit together.
“If you guys weren’t draining my powers...” I trail off, uncertain what I was even planning on saying. “Well, you have to go home either way. I can’t keep you here or banish you to the nowhere place forever. So let’s do this thing.”
It doesn’t matter how we fit; I have to let go.
Reminding myself that this isn’t my first or last tortured goodbye, I hold my chin up and point my flashlight towards the clearing where Meyer is standing in the distance, preparing what he needs for the spell. And I walk in his footsteps, the four demons by my side, silent but strong and somehow comforting.
In the darkness, without light caressing their incorporeal forms, they almost look human. If it weren’t for their strength or their penchant for slaughter, I think I might forget that they aren’t.
“Are you ready?” Meyer asks as I step into the clearing.
I never will be. But I can lie like the best of ‘em. “I am.”
“Then let’s begin.”
Chapter 25
Smoke fills the air, leaving an oily film on my skin. Meyer chants soft words in a foreign language as he swings a coal-filled lamp on the end of the chain, pacing around the clearing in a circle, stepping over the solar-operated lamps he placed in the ground. I stand in the center of the dim light they cast, feeling lost and confused, mind flashing back to that night on the cliffs. I was in the middle of a spell then too, but I didn’t know it until it was too late.
How long ago that seems. Yet right now, it feels like it was just yesterday. Once the demons are gone, will memories of being with them feel the same: far away yet just at the tips of my fingers at the same time?
I certainly won’t forget watching them sever dicks or blow up things, that’s for sure. Not to mention the night of sexual debauchery we enjoyed. If a girl’s first time stays with her forever, my first four times definitely will live on in infamy. I pity the poor guy who tries to follow up one of them, much less all four. He might as well cut his own dick off right now, that’s how useless it’ll be at impressing me now that I’ve had them.
“This is dark magic,” Lynx says, sounding troubled. “I’ve never seen a ritual like this before, but I know the type. It has roots in the old rituals.”
Mateo scoffs. “All Grim magic is dark magic.” I glower at him. “What? There’s nothing wrong with a bit of darkness. As long as it’s not all that you are. Fuck knows I’ve got my share of it in me.”
“It’s almost like voodoo,” Sebastian adds. “But... different. Dutch or German in some way.”
Ezra’s voice is firm. “Whatever it is, it’s what we all need. We can’t stay here with Dani and risk her life, and we can’t stay in the nowhere place and risk our sanity. If this is what we have to do to return to Purgatory, then we’ll do it.”
Pausing in his chanting, Meyer turns towards the darkness where the guys stand, arranged in a semi-circle of their own. “They’re here, aren’t they? I can sense their energy, even though I don’t see their spirits.”
“They are.”
“Good. We’ll need them here for this next part.” He studies the spot where they are, then somehow manages to meet Ezra’s eyes with unnerving accuracy. “I look forward to meeting you.”
Ezra frowns. “Not on your life, Grim. You’ll never enslave us. Get rid of the bond without making us corporeal—tell him that, Dani.”
Licking my lips, I pass the message on to Meyer. “I don’t think they want to be here in person as long as you’re here. Since you’re... you know.”
“Oh?” Meyer raises a brow. “Well, they are upper demons, I suppose. Tricky and paranoid.”
Mateo snorts. “It’s not paranoia if it’s true.”
“I suppose I don’t need to have them corporeal in order to cast the spell,” Meyer muses. “I just need to be able to see their shapes accurately, and there are other ways of doing this. Let’s see...”
He rummages around in his pack, which he leaned up against a tree when we got here. I watch him, taking note of the books he has shoved inside, wondering why it is that he checked out so many the night he got here. The paranoid part of me wants to believe that he’s keeping knowledge from me, hoarding it away—but that’s ridiculous, since he’s my teacher. He’s probably just like Lynx, incapable of walking away from a good first edition, obsessed with knowledge in printed form. Besides, it’s not like I would know what to do with the books if I did have access to them. I’ve only had three classes on my Grim powers so far and I haven’t managed to summon my wings on purpose. It’s probably better that he checked them out, because otherwise I might end up raising one of the dead students from the dead.
Now isn’t that a ghastly thought. While the campus has somehow moved on, the memorials forgotten in favor of studying and classes, some part of me will always be in that hallway with Kayla, watching the life leave her. It’s enough to make me want a good drink and a good fuck—which I’ve learned from my guys can make you forget all your troubles and cares.
“Alright.” Meyer’s voice brings me out of my dark and perverted thoughts. “This should make them visible so we can do the next part of the spell.”
He’s got, unsurprisingly, a little mound of powder in the palm of his hand. You’d think dark magic would be more interesting and less gross than various powder-y things and a chicken foot, but here we are in the woods, getting bitten by bugs so my teacher can use ashes to do weird things to souls.
At least there are no entrails or severed dicks. Yet.
Meyer chants, “That which is out of sight, show yourself in the dead of night.”
Holding the palm full of powder up to his mouth, he lightly blows on it, spreading it in the direction of the demons. It swirls in a purposeful cloud, almost like it’s alive, surging through them and trailing around their bodies. They all scowl at him; Lynx coughs, looking offended, and Sebastian’s hands twitch in the direction of his poison-laced knives. But even I can see them more clearly now, and based on the way Meyer is observing them, he can see them too.
“There we go,” he says, sounding satisfied. “That’s better. Now, let’s get on with the show.”
“Wait!” The word tumbles out of my mouth before I can stop it. “I just...” I stare at
the four of them, helpless and sad. It feels cheap and wrong to say goodbye with Meyer standing here, judging us for our strange connection, but it feels even more wrong to say nothing at all.
So I let myself feel it instead. I let it pour out of my eyes and my heart and my chest. I’m such a fucking sap, apparently, but it seems to work, because I can feel them say goodbye too. Our souls are connected, after all, and maybe leaving certain things unsaid is a better, purer way of spending our last moments together.
It’s not like they make a greeting card for “Saying Goodbye to Your Demon Lovers” or “Severing a Bond Between Your Soul and the Soul of a Bunch of Murderers” or whatever. Even if they did I doubt I could mail them to Purgatory itself.
Meyer is watching me, a grim (ha!) look on his Grim face. “We have ten minutes until 1:57, and only one chance to do this. Are you ready, Dani?”
No. “Yes.”
“Then let’s begin. The air is cleansed, the ground is prepared, the demons are visible to the naked eye. Sit down on the ground cross-legged and close your eyes. I’ll do the rest.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
I want to scream, to shout, to stomp my feet and tell him no, never, I’d rather die. But childish tantrums have never gotten me what I wanted, and childish tears are useless in the face of things like this. So I make myself follow his directions, listen to his words.
It’ll all be over soon.
I’ll come out the other end like always, wipe away the tears, and pretend like they never rolled down my cheeks in the first place. The streets were my most devoted guardian, after all, and they taught me how to grin and bear it.
The ground is cold beneath my legs, even through the wool tights I have on underneath my pleated dark red skirt.
For a moment there’s nothing but the whistling of the wind in the trees. Then Meyer’s voice rises up, chanting dark words, calling to the smoke below and the stars above. Despite the clouds overhead blocking the view, I can practically feel the stars and the moon echo the sound of his voice, the dark arcane rising up to meet the challenge of a thing like this.
It’s nothing like when I stood in my room, blood in my hand, and tried to dismiss the guys. It feels so much bigger than that, so much scarier—and it’s barely begun.
“Dani.” I peek open my eyes to look at Ezra’s face. He’s wearing his patented Ezra frown, his green eyes tracking Meyer over my shoulder. “He can see our shapes, but he can’t hear our voices. If you don’t want to go through with this...”
I have to. But I’m afraid to speak in the middle of all the chanting; for all I know I’ll turn into a toad if I interrupt Meyer’s spell. So instead I lift my hand and give him a thumbs up as subtly as possible.
“Okay.” Ezra sighs. “I guess we’re doing this, then.”
Sebastian grumbles. “You’re the one who pushed us down this path in the first place. And now you’re regretting it?”
“We all thought Dani would be the one to perform the spell,” he points out. “And even when this guy showed up and it became clear he’d have to be the one to do it, I didn’t think it would be...”
Lynx ventures, “Like this?”
Mateo reaches for his belt, no doubt wishing he could throw a grenade into the middle of things. “It does seem pretty fucking different from the spell Dani was doing. Almost like...”
“Like what?” Lynx asks, echoing my thoughts. “This is Grim stuff. It’s always this dark, arcane, weird occult shit with powders and dead things and spell books. There are never any unicorns or rainbows involved.”
Rolling his eyes, Mateo shakes his head. “I dunno, man. I get a bad feeling about this.”
“That’s just your soul,” Sebastian scoffs. “It’s not used to being summoned like this. You should wipe the dust off the thing more often.”
“You’re one to talk, sadist.”
“Pain is just another word for pleasure.” Giving me one of his patented dirty-eyed Sebastian stares, he adds, “Isn’t that right, Dani? Too bad I didn’t get some solo time to show you just exactly how intense I can make things for you. Although if you stop the spell right now, I might have something up my sleeve.”
I’m thankful for the darkness as Meyer completes the circle and strides in front of me for a few moments. If he could see me now, he’d see a ripe, plump tomato with dirty thoughts circling in her head. Let’s just say I’m glad that I gave into temptation while I still could; this not-virgin definitely doesn’t regret losing her virginity one single bit.
Before the teasing and quipping can continue, before I can say or do anything in response to it, a sudden dizzy feeling clamps down on my head. I gasp, head lolling to the side.
Meyer’s voice chants on.
The guys go silent, their forms suddenly struck by the light of the moon, clouds parting overhead so it shines down on them.
My head is full now, not with dirty thoughts or sad goodbyes, but with chanting. Words I don’t recognize. A deep, sinking feeling, like a pit is opening wide in my chest, yawning and empty. I go limp in the middle as my energy drains out of me, and am suddenly glad that I’m sitting down. The ground rises up to meet me—no, I fall over, graceless and weak. Groans fall from my lips as I taste the damp dirt beneath me.
Striding forward, Meyer grabs my shoulder and rolls me onto my back. “Almost there.”
I open my mouth to croak something to him, ask him for water or even better, tell him to stop. But my voice has left me, along with my energy and my dirty thoughts. There’s nothing but weakness and emptiness—and a terrible, cold feeling that starts in the middle of my chest and spread out towards my shoulders and hips. As Meyer chants faster and louder, as his circle grows tighter and closer to me, the cold spreads in tingling surges down my limbs.
It starts with the black opal resting against my chest and moves outward.
For a wild, terrible moment, the instincts I’ve had since I was a child scream out danger! They remember the sight of men who moved like predators and a mother’s limp body, head lolling to her shoulder. I’m back in that place where dark voices laughed in pleasure and disgust. There are shadows in the darkness, a child hiding in small spaces. But before I can spiral completely, before I give in to the fear and trauma buried deep in my body, I feel a comforting hand on my cheek and all the pain and fear goes away.
“It’s going to be alright.” Sebastian feels solid and real, but somehow I know this isn’t him here with me; this is our souls, touching each other on a plane that lives parallel to my world, normally invisible to the naked eye. “This is the first and the last of it. Just a bit more.”
“I’m scared,” I admit to him, Meyer’s chanting a mile away in the darkness. “I don’t know what happens after this.”
Lynx speaks up, kneeling on my other side and stroking calloused fingers through my hair. “You’ll go to classes. You’ll learn how to be the badass you really are.”
“And you’ll make friends,” Mateo adds, crouching on my other side next to Sebastian, his fingers curled on his knees. “They’ll be lame and boring compared to us, but they’ll be friends.”
“You’re going to be just fine, Dani.” Unlike the others Ezra doesn’t get down on my level. Instead he stands at my feet, hand on the hilt of his sword, eyes searching the empty air around us like he’s waiting for a predator to strike so he can gut them from forehead to toe. “You were meant for greater things than getting dragged down in the muck with us. You’re special—you’ll see that. You’re going to be okay. Better than, even.”
I want to say no, no, don’t do this, don’t say goodbye, but my mouth is dry and my tongue won’t obey my mind. So I listen. It’s the least I owe them.
“Whatever you do, don’t forget to soak up all the knowledge you can get. This place is a gift, and you should take advantage of that.”
I take a deep breath to hide how I feel, to choke down the tears.
“Be the best you can be at firearm prac
tice, and I’m sure Kade will let you check out some of his forbidden incendiaries. Blowing things up can make even the dullest days interesting.”
A laugh, incredulous and impossible, escapes my lips. What follows is a twist of my heart as I realize it’s the last time I’ll laugh like this.
“Don’t let the pain consume you. It’s only powerful if you feed it. And when in doubt, pray to the old gods for retributions and revenge. We’ll do everything we can to answer your call, even if it means breaking the rules.”
It’s the last words, the last piece of advice, that breaks me.
“Never forget that we love you.” Steady eyes, strong hands, shoulders squared off to face the world. “Me most of all, even though it was a bad idea from the beginning.”
“Goodbye, Dani.”
“Always remember us.”
A moment. Just one.
Then they’re gone.
Chapter 26
Three Months Later
Yanking my hand through my hair, I scowl when my fingers get stuck in the ends. I’m due for another haircut, but after last time Petra will probably refuse to help me. But it’s not my fault that her super special hair-cutting scissors got dulled by my extra-strong phoenix hair; that’s all part of regeneration, at least according to Yohan. It’s also why my hair grows faster these days, turning a sharp shoulder-length bob into a shaggy collarbone-brushing affair in a few weeks or less.
Some of the other phoenix students, I’ve learned, cut their hair with their own fire. I could try that, but I’m just as likely to wind up bald on one side. Maybe it could be a new trend—the accidental undercut, with a side of burnt-hair perfume.
While I’ve managed to impress Yohan with the strength of my flame lately, my control still leaves much to be desired. And that’s not even touching on my persistent inability to get my wings going. I can punch a hole through a piece of wood and leave a trail of smoke behind, my hands wrapped in flame up to the elbow, but there’s zilch in the way of impressiveness going on from the back—except for my fabulous ass, of course.