“Thanks. May I ask your name?”
She lifted her chin. “Rochelle Ironford,” she replied.
Ah, demon’s balls. I should’ve seen the resemblance. Her older brother Darius had been my partner for my first and last hunting assignment. Seth had flung him into the San Francisco Bay when I’d failed to kill him.
She probably hated me. “Nice to meet you,” I said anyway. “You’re Flint level?”
“Just like you,” she said, lips pursing. It was the lowest level, and I hadn’t lasted long enough to be promoted.
“Not me,” I said. “I’m nothing now. Nothing at all.” And I liked it that way.
I didn’t need directions to find Raynor’s office. I’d been there often enough as an agent when his predecessor worked there and, more recently, when I gave a statement about the murders and mayhem in Silverpool.
Raynor stood behind a battered oak desk to greet me. I could feel the power in the wood, and I appreciated it for a moment before shaking his hand. As promised, there were bagels. And hot coffee.
So far, so good. It was Raynor who knew more about me than any other Protectorate official and seemed to have a high opinion of my talents—quite in contrast to anyone else in the organization, including my late partner.
Raynor had redecorated. The previous director had liked steel and glass, everything modern; Raynor had restored the Victorian woodwork, heavy furniture, velvet upholstery, stained glass lampshades—all the old stuff I loved.
He didn’t look the type to appreciate antiques. More the type to smash heads with them in a fight. A hilarious picture had gone around the office two years ago of him in a Halloween costume at the New York office. It wasn’t funny that he’d dressed up as The Rock. What had amused everyone had been the dozen paparazzi chasing him down Broadway because his costume had been so convincing.
He was a bronzed mountain of a man, bald, muscular, and utterly terrifying unless he was smiling, which was seldom. Before he’d accepted this desk job, he’d been the most famous demon hunter in the United States. Nobody knew how he’d managed to track them down as well as he did, although I had a suspicion. We’d learned during the attack on Silverpool that we shared a rare talent. He’d hidden his from the world, and so had I; learning we shared a secret had established a strange bond between us I didn’t understand.
I also didn’t trust it. I enjoyed his company too much and even now wanted to relax in the wingback chair in the corner and ask him to tell me stories about hunting demons in New York, ask him if our inexplicable ability to hear and see the fae had given him an edge.
But no. As curious as I was, I had to keep my distance. He wanted to pull me back into the Protectorate for his benefit, not mine.
“Help yourself to the coffee,” he said. “It’s clean this time.”
On our last visit, he’d spiked it with wellspring water. For witches, the water would alleviate pain and tiredness. Fairies got even more pleasure from it, and found wellsprings irresistible. “Run out of the good stuff?”
“For now. I usually refill my bottle at the Silverpool spring. I can’t get more until it floods again this winter.” The secret wellspring was underground during the dry season, only surfacing after heavy rains, usually around the solstice.
“Is that why I’m here?” I asked. “You want me to fill your empties this winter?”
He leaned back in his chair and tugged at a diamond-studded earlobe. “If you had the torc, you wouldn’t have to wait until winter.”
So that was it. My posture eased. A stolen amulet was familiar ground for me. If all Raynor wanted was the torc, he wouldn’t keep me long. “I don’t have it,” I said truthfully.
About two months ago, a powerful amulet was stolen from the Protectorate, and they’d blamed my father, Malcolm. Unknown to me, he had indeed done so, then hidden it in my house. Seth, that same night, had stolen and hidden it from me before I’d even realized it was there in the first place. Although I’d eventually gotten it back for a brief period, I’d had to return it to my father in exchange for Random, who wasn’t being cared for properly. Among other insults, my father had bewitched him into a little fire-breathing dragon.
“You’re sure you don’t have it?” Raynor asked. “Our agents followed Malcolm and are convinced he no longer possesses it. We think he might’ve sold it to a non-Protectorate witch.”
“I have no idea.” He wouldn’t care about the oak leaves in my bra, but I made a show of dropping the shield the beaded necklace gave me—my defenses were weak in his office, which was heavily bonded to him—to show him I told the truth. Since the night six weeks ago I’d given my father the torc, I hadn’t seen or spoken to him. “I guess I can’t help you after all, so I’ll be going.”
He shook his head. “Help yourself to the coffee,” he said. “Then I want you to see something.”
“I don’t need anything,” I said. “Show me now.”
He shrugged, took a thick gold chain off his desk, attached it to his wrist, and then moved around his desk to me, arm out. “Maybe that’s for the best,” he said. “Our girl is stimulating enough as she is.”
I felt a shielding spell coming off his gold bracelet, enveloping us both. “What kind of girl are we talking about?”
Without touching me—physical contact could be dangerous between witches, especially powerful ones like Raynor—he waved me away from the desk to a small door at the other side of the room. “They caught her last night,” he said.
I dug in my heels. “I don’t want to know what you’ve got in there.”
“Sure you do,” he said. “You’re a witch. You always want to know.” He looked down at me, his lips curving in a rare, quick smile.
Curse him, he was right. I looked away from him to the door. It was a closet, which at Diamond Street meant it wasn’t a closet. “Demon?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said. “We’re calling her Mission because that’s where we caught her. And because of what I’m going to do to her.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “You know I don’t approve of how the Protectorate assassinates creatures without due process.”
“You can see for yourself we didn’t kill her. Nothing to get upset about.”
During my training, I’d seen five demons in captivity. Three were male, or their stolen human bodies had been; two were female. They’d been a variety of ethnicities and ages, nothing to give them away but their aura of malicious energy, which was detectable only with specialized metal amulets designed by Protectorate witches. The powerful ones—the old ones—could evade even those amulets. Seth had once told me I didn’t want to know how many old demons were walking around among us undetected and unstoppable.
I looked at Raynor’s wrist, but the gold wasn’t the kind of amulet that found demons. He pulled a black sheath out of a hip belt. From that he took out a compact silver stake, which he held out to me.
“Tell me what you see,” he said.
See covered all the senses, magic and mundane. I drew back, shaking my head. “I don’t—”
“Yes, you do.” He pushed the stake into my hands.
I felt her immediately. It was like a blinding light and a bad smell, the sickening rumble before an earthquake, an unreachable itch.
When I’d worked for the Protectorate, other agents had seemed to receive lesser stimuli from holding a silver stake than I had. Now, for instance, I had to slip the stake into my back pocket because the input was too overwhelming. Even with a layer of denim and polyester between it and my skin, I could almost see the outline of the creature on the other side of the wood door.
“She’s a child,” I said.
“The human host is a child, but so is the demon, relatively speaking. That’s why the stake finds her so easily,” Raynor said. “We think the little girl is still healthy. The possession is only a few days old.”
I turned to him in surprise. “You’re going to try to save her?”
“Of course,” he said.
>
“Lorne wouldn’t have. He would’ve—”
“Lorne is gone.” He reached past me and opened the door.
The girl was standing in the middle of the room, facing us. She looked about five years old with long, ink-black hair combed into a smooth ponytail and a floppy white bow above her left ear.
Her golden-brown eyes were not her own. “Hello, Alma,” she said, smiling to reveal a missing front tooth.
My stomach churned with revulsion to hear the alien voice coming out of the little girl’s mouth.
“Leave her alone,” I said.
“I want to,” the demon said. “As soon as they break the magic keeping me here, I’m gone. I never meant to stay.”
I glanced at Raynor. Expressionless, he pulled the door shut, locking the demon back inside her cage.
“You’ve got to help her,” I said, stepping forward to touch the door. The wood was hot, smelling faintly of burning hair. “Her parents— They’ve got to be terrified. You can’t just lock her up here and not do something.”
“Your heart is good, as always,” Raynor said. He lifted his arm and pressed the back of his wrist with the gold bracelet against the door. Then he drew a circle, mumbling something under his breath.
I jumped back and gaped at him. He was doing it now, right here. Sweat broke out on his scalp, and a sharp, slicing energy spun out of his extended arm like a weed trimmer.
My hands began to flex, searching instinctively for an amulet or focus bead to give them power. I swallowed over my dry throat, my breath coming swiftly now as power swirled around us.
I looked around in a panic. The only power I had was my wood beads, nothing else, and I was away from the home that amplified my power. If he wanted to do this, couldn’t we talk about it first? Go to my house? Get some other self-described mage to help us? An Emerald witch in a silver jacket?
Raynor’s broad shoulders were trembling. I reached up and let my hand hover over his shoulder blades. Energy wafted off him like heat.
He knew I didn’t believe in killing possessing demons, but an exorcism wasn’t the kind of spell to be done alone. I’d read about one that had entailed a circle of nine witches, a full moon, a beach at high tide, special amulets of gems and metal, the tail feather of a raven, the spit of a field mouse, and other things I would look up in the library if he would just slow down.
“Wait! You’re going too fast!” I cried. If he collapsed, I wouldn’t have the strength to support his body. Giving in to the urge to touch him, I stretched my fingers around his massive bicep. A jolt of electricity ran up my arm, and I flinched. “You should call for help—”
Muscles flexed along his thick neck. “I’ve got you.” Without warning, he turned to me, set a heavy hand on my shoulder, and began drawing power from the well deep in my bones, guts, and soul.
Feeling his purpose—the child, the little girl, her parents—I let my energy rise up my chest and meet his hand. It soaked into his skin like water into a paper towel.
Now I was sweating too. Stars flickered in my eyes as if I’d stood up too quickly.
I squeezed my fingers over my beaded necklace. “Raynor, please,” I whispered. “Wait. I’m not ready. I only have one necklace on me—”
And then he let go, and the draining, drinking pressure eased. He stumbled forward and braced one hand on the wall. “You and I work well together. I’m not sure I could’ve done that without you.” He coughed, pushed away from the wall, and wiped the sweat off his forehead as he gave me a thoughtful look.
“You should’ve warned me,” I said.
“Sometimes it’s better to just dive in,” he said. “Let’s see what we’ve got.” He pulled open the door.
The little girl was curled up on a bed in the corner. I didn’t feel any demon presence, but I was on the opposite side of the room.
“Well?” Raynor asked me. “Was our mission successful?”
I staggered over to the bed and knelt down. She looked even younger now, too small to go to school, too vulnerable to be alone with two strange witches. I let my fingers hover above her forehead for a moment, searching for the wrongness I’d witnessed earlier before feeling for a pulse.
Finally I touched the tender spot under her ear and found a steady heartbeat, warm skin, a gentle snore. She was even smiling faintly, as if she was having a nice dream.
I let out the breath I’d been holding and sank to the floor.
The stake was still in my pocket; if the spirit was still inside the girl, I would’ve felt it.
“She’s fine,” I said, blinking away tears. Raynor could’ve killed her, the poor little girl, and he hadn’t. He’d trusted me to help him. I bit my lip and looked away.
Raynor made an approving snort. “We’ll get her home within the hour,” he said.
I looked at the little girl, imagining the joy of her family, and climbed to my feet. I wiped the tears off my cheeks before I looked at him. “Can we always do this? Save people?”
His granite face broke into a smile more terrifying than the demon’s. It was too late to regret my question.
“We?” he asked.
Chapter Five
Two older female agents dressed in forgettable nonmagical clothing—loose sweaters, casual pants, practical walking shoes—came into the room and bent over the girl. The smaller one glanced at Raynor, her approval apparent on her face, but the bigger woman only looked at the girl, who was rosy-cheeked and still smiling in her dream.
“They’ll bring her home,” Raynor said to me, walking away. “Help the parents forget. Give the police a cover story.”
I stayed near the bed to watch the larger woman pick up the girl, arrange her little head on her shoulder, then glance at the other woman. Finally she smiled. The smaller one nodded, turned, and—pointedly ignoring me—led the way out of the closet. A moment later they were gone.
I walked back to Raynor’s desk, remembering the smaller woman from my years at the Protectorate. She’d been the witch you went to for jewelry repairs. Brilliant with a soldering iron. I wasn’t offended she hadn’t said hello; that was standard operating procedure. Everything was a secret unless defined otherwise.
Still emotional from the girl’s rescue, I pulled a tissue out of my pocket and blew my nose before I sat down again in front of Raynor’s desk.
He clapped his hands together. “So, how about that?”
I tucked the tissue in my pocket. It was unwise to leave parts of your biomatter—anything like spit, snot, hair, or skin—in a powerful witch’s possession. With the right spells, such materials could be used against you. “That was great,” I said. “Really great. I hope you do that more often.”
“I aim to.”
“Next time, find a Protectorate witch to help you. I don’t work for—”
“But you should,” he said. “In fact, I’ve got a job for you right now.”
So that was it. The little girl, the exorcism—just a ploy to manipulate me. He’d never intended to change Protectorate policy. It was all about fooling the soft-hearted, gullible Alma Bellrose.
I got to my feet, my temper rising like steam. “No.”
I’d been saying no for weeks. Ever since I’d revealed Tristan’s murderer, Raynor had been writing me, trying to lasso me back into working for the Protectorate. He said he thought I was capable of killing things—even people—after all. Although there had been a fight to the death six weeks ago, the death hadn’t been at my hand. It didn’t seem to matter to Raynor, but it mattered to me.
“Think of the good you could do,” he said. “Think of how happy that little girl’s parents are going to be.”
“You don’t care about her,” I said. “You only used her to get to me.” I kept my voice steady, but I wanted to shout at him.
He let out a long breath. “It’s not my job to care about one human being,” he said with a shrug, conceding my point. “It’s my job to care about all of them by keeping the Protectorate strong. And you can help with that
.”
“You haven’t even been in management for two months and you’re already talking like Lorne,” I said, alluding to the arrogant moron who’d been the director before him.
“Management entails responsibilities,” he said. “Don’t you feel any responsibility to take care of someone other than yourself?”
I crossed my arms over my chest. He’d already tried that tack. “Working for the Protectorate is hardly the only way to help people.” I glanced at the door, although I knew he wouldn’t let me leave until he was done with me.
“The job I have in mind isn’t a case of demon elimination,” he said.
“I’m not going to help you capture any demons, either. You helped the girl, but I don’t trust you or the other agents to do it again.”
“The assignment has nothing to do with demons,” he said.
“Or any supernatural creatures you don’t like,” I said.
“None of those either,” he said. “Only witches. One in particular.”
“I won’t kill anybody,” I said.
“I wouldn’t want or expect you to.”
Now I was confused. What else would he want me for? He had trainee agents to pick up his coffee.
I was curious enough to sit down. “What then?”
He leaned back in his chair and smiled. An unexpected dimple formed in his left cheek. His eyes were hazel. Good luck for a witch. I wondered if he shaved his perfect dome with a razor or if he used a spell. It was still shiny with sweat from the demon expulsion.
“I don’t expect you to behave like an ordinary Flint agent,” he said. “You won’t be an agent at all. More of an unofficial, independent subcontractor with confidential motivations, seeking information that might be useful.”
“A spy?” I shouldn’t have encouraged him. Curiosity always got me into trouble. “Do I get a special car? An amulet that fires magic grenades?”
“Not a spy. A curious bystander with unusual talents and the ability to act with force when necessary.”
Hex at a House Party Page 3