“No kidding. Aren’t you hot?” I fanned out my tank top. There wasn’t much shade here under the Granville Street Bridge, though the humongous chandelier art exhibit certainly jazzed up the joint, as did the cute sailboats moored in the small marina next to the red nautical-themed yacht club with its porthole windows.
“Eh. You get used to it. Ooh. Wait.” She ran back to the car. Even if she hadn’t been encased in a catsuit, there wouldn’t have been any jiggle. Sitting on her ass as the Brotherhood Executive Administrator by day was counterbalanced by her exertions as a popular dominatrix by night. The woman was insanely toned.
The cars rumbling up top of the bridge were a comforting white noise, the bats zipping in and out of the struts overhead were cute, and it didn’t smell like pee. All in all, a decent meeting spot.
“You like?” Slamming the trunk of her Mini Cooper, she spun around, now wearing a black leather face mask with oval eyeholes and an unzippered slash for the mouth. She stuck her tongue out. “So I can’t be recognized.”
“Like may not be the right word.”
“What in good heavens is that?”
I spun at the molasses-smooth voice, tinged with a hint of the Deep South. “Hiya, Baskerville. How’s tricks?”
The demon swallowed several times, his pronounced Adam’s apple twitching. Using all three of his fingers and his linen handkerchief, he pointed at Ms. Clara. “What are you supposed to be?”
Again with the whip crack.
“Your worst nightmare,” Ms. Clara growled.
Baskerville pressed his handkerchief to his face, the picture of a 1950’s Southern gentleman in a linen suit with pressed cuffs. Well, except for his iridescent blue skin and a snout. “No, chérie. That’s Frisbees.”
“Says the dog demon,” I said.
“Child, we don’t need petty insults in our line of business. There is a robust market for these kinds of wares and you are by no means the only demand I have for my supply.”
“How is that an insult? You have a whiskered, wet dog nose.”
“I have a proud proboscis. I am not a dog, demon or otherwise. Do you see a tail on me? Floppy ears?”
“Not floppy, but they are pretty large.”
Ms. Clara patted his arm. “Don’t worry, sugar. According to the Japanese proverb, a powerful man has large ears.”
“She can stay.” He blotted the sweat at his temple with the handkerchief, frowning at her face mask. “Maybe.”
“How’s the demon world? Seen Malik lately?” I said. Last time I’d seen him he’d threatened to rain vengeance down on my ass. Then he’d gone M.I.A. and even Leo couldn’t find him. So that wasn’t worrying at all.
He sniffed. “I honestly cannot be expected to know the whereabouts of every demon.”
“Like you don’t. You’re the most plugged in demon around. Come on,” I cajoled.
He sniffed at my blatant butt-kissing, but didn’t deny it. “Suffice it to say, you’re safe from him. For the moment.”
Small comfort.
I motioned between Ms. Clara and myself. “We both know you aren’t going to hand over the Bullseye without wanting something in return, and my partner here is a master procurer. She’s got a list of items to intrigue and delight.”
Baskerville raised an eyebrow. “Such as?”
Ms. Clara coiled her whip around her wrist. Damn, she had badass down cold. “The Vashar.”
She’d tapped into her admin network and discovered where the Brotherhood was storing the amulet capable of stopping a Rasha’s induction. Sure, it was a risk handing it over to a demon, but if he actually used it on someone, I had a magic ritual that would make an initiate a full Rasha anyway, so it wasn’t like anyone was going to be prevented from fulfilling their destiny.
I allowed myself only a small smirk at the look of surprise and greed that flashed across his face.
“It’s true, that did intrigue back when I actually wanted it.”
My smirk vanished.
“But I’ve got something else in mind.”
“Let me guess, you want tears from a virgin guarded by a sleeping dragon. Or no.” I snapped my fingers. “A unicorn dwelling up the ass of an ogre.”
“One of Rabbi Mandelbaum’s tzitzit,” Baskerville said.
Ms. Clara frowned. Well, she gave off a frowny vibe. I couldn’t really tell in that face mask. “Why do you want one of his knotted tassels?”
“My client wants it. I don’t ask questions.”
Mandelbaum wasn’t going to hand over one of the tzitzit attached to the corner of his poncho-like prayer shawl, and given he wore this mini tallit under his shirt, would probably notice if I tried to cut one off.
“It’s a really nice Vashar,” I said. “Shiny, never used, brimming full of dark witch power.”
“I think not.”
It’s not like tzitzis were rare. I could buy one and pass it off as the rabbi’s.
“I’ll know,” Baskerville said.
“What?”
“I’ll smell if it’s the rabbi’s. You humans are very easy to read.” He glanced at Ms. Clara’s mask. “Some of you.”
“You know what Mandelbaum smells like? That’s creepy, dude.”
Ms. Clara cracked her whip at his feet, making the demon jump. “We could just take the Bullseye from you and give you nothing.”
“I knew I was right to bring you,” I said.
The demon crouched down and brushed dirt off his trouser hem. “You could. But you’d have nothing more than a paperweight. The Bullseye is a delicate artifact and I’ve encased it with a protective spell keyed to my touch.”
Sparks flew off my skin. “Let me get this straight. I have a magic sanitary pad clogging my toilet body and to get it out, I have to handle Mandelbaum’s fringe in order to get a demon to finger me so that Esther can blow my pipes?”
Baskerville turned to Ms. Clara. “Is she making sense?”
“Not a clue,” she said. “But I wouldn’t mess with her.”
“Do we have a deal or not?” He spoke very slowly, over-enunciating each word.
“Just because you don’t understand me, doesn’t mean I’m communicationally challenged.” I pretended to think it over, though with my options being steal off the rabbi’s person versus die, it wasn’t much of a choice. “Deal.”
“Pleasure doing business with you.”
“Then I said, ‘I hope a strix shits in your face’ because like strix are these owl demons who eat humans and their shit is really naaaasty.” The lamia demon gnawed on the femur of her former boyfriend, her lips smeared with blood.
“Sure. He shouldn’t have cheated on you with that cockatrice.” Those were two-legged demons with the head of a rooster so I couldn’t begin to imagine how that coupling had gone down.
I’d been driving along East 33rd Avenue, on the stretch that bisected the two halves of the city cemetery, mulling over how best to rob Mandelbaum, and failing that, looking for demonic troublemakers so I could pound my way to an answer on the Rohan front, when I’d spotted a woman slashing a guy’s throat. I’d jumped out of my car, magic ablazin’, until I’d seen that the guy in question was green and scaly with one arm too many and the “woman” had fiery red eyes and was screaming, “I’ll give you head like nothing you’ve ever imagined, asshole!” before ripping his actual head off with her claws.
Domestic disputes didn’t generally warrant my involvement, but tomorrow she’d be off feeding on small children, so she had to be stopped. I allowed her this last supper in sisterhood solidarity.
“I mean, you have to show them who’s boss.” She sucked his marrow with quiet snuffling noises.
I pulled my leg into my chest, trying to find a comfortable spot to settle back against the gravestone. “I’m not sure my situation warrants killing and eating my boyfriend.”
“Your call, honey.” She flung the femur over her shoulder and popped one of the eyeballs she’d been saving into her mouth, munching and making “mmmm” s
ounds. She picked an eyelash out of her teeth. “But if you’re not gonna go with door number one, it seems to me that your only choice is to own it.”
“I’m happy to own it. So long as I wasn’t forced into it. So long as my boyfriend wants this for more than an assignment. Mandelbaum is behind this. He has to be. I swear that man was birthed through his mom’s anus because no one is naturally that much of an asshole.”
“Good one.” She wiped her hands clean on the grass, pushing her luxurious fall of black hair over her shoulder. “You’ll figure it out.”
“Yeah.”
Time to get this fight over with. Lamia were only moderately dangerous and in my mood, this was going to be a quick kill.
I got to my feet, but before I was fully upright the front of my chest was slashed open. The demon hadn’t moved. Brushing aside the ruins of my shirt, I touched my fingertip to one of the three diagonal gashes across my boobs and hissed.
“Lamia can’t attack from a distance.”
“Yeah, demon daddy had some surprising genes. Gotta love being underestimated.” Jumping to her feet, the lamia flexed her fingers.
Two of my ribs snapped. Her magic flooded me, a million spiky barbs ripping me up from inside. Paralyzing me.
“Let’s wrap this up,” she said. “I’ve got a date. Gotta get back on that horse. Literally. It’s a kelpie.” She slashed at the air in front of her…
…and sliced through my heart. I felt the pulpy mass goosh through her fingers, even though her fingers were nowhere near me. My heartbeat turned sluggish, trumpeting impossibly loud in my ears. The world buzzed in and out.
The lamia licked my viscera off her fingers.
Swaying, I crashed onto my ass. Blood streamed from my gashes; flaps of skin hung loose exposing my barely-connected fragments of heart muscle. I called up a red bloom of witch healing magic, trying to knit my mangled self back together.
I attributed the sharp stab and loss of breath to my dying and not any kind of regret at the life that had been within my grasp.
My witch magic pulsed faint pink and dimmed.
I collapsed onto my back like a sack of flour slipping out of someone’s hold. My body was so cold, so heavy. My insides were fractured, my magic splintered like panes of cracked glass. So this was what death felt like.
Something dark and powerful, a black wisp of something other, drifted inside me.
Desperate, I hooked one of my magic splinters to it, and visualized tying the two together in a solid knot. My shredded chest began to knit itself back together so I reached for another wisp of Lilith’s magic and another, knotting faster and more furiously, my body repairing itself at warp speed.
My magic re-up loosened the lamia’s hold on me. I reached overhead, grabbed her boyfriend’s femur, blasted the end, and hurtled the flaming bone at her like a javelin.
Her hair caught fire with a satisfying whoosh, though it stank like mad.
The lamia wasn’t expecting that, shaking her head like a none-too-bright puppy. Her mouth twisted, opening in a soundless roar that sent a flock of little brown bats soaring into the late afternoon sky like a rippling curtain.
She dove to the ground with a high-pitched shriek that bottomed out into a ghastly moan, attempting to stop, drop, and roll. It just tangled the tiki torch up worse.
I leapt on top of her, pinning her to the ground, and fired my electric magic into her kill spot deep inside her ear canal.
She disappeared, dead.
I beat the smoldering grass so the cemetery didn’t go up in flames, then marched back to my car, accidentally stepping on her ex’s remaining eyeball. His femur winked out of existence. Right. That meant he hadn’t technically been dead while she’d been eating him.
My stomach heaved.
Popping the trunk of my Civic, I got out the first aid kit and cleaned up my wounds. Then I chugged a Gatorade to replenish my electrolytes, checking in on my internal injuries. All was well. Strong heartbeat, repaired ribs. The dozen or so wisps of Lilith’s magic had dissipated, and while I didn’t perceive any other new wisps, I also didn’t feel any lingering effects of having helped myself.
Esther had detected Lilith’s magic before, but I hadn’t. Would I be able to sense and use it again? Because that had been a handy little trick.
I slid onto the hood of my car, soaking in the heat of the summer sun. Almost dying had given me some perspective. I’d spent the past month in limbo, waiting for Mandelbaum to make a move, for Sienna to show up, for Lilith to break free, and for Rohan to care.
I was done being the girl who waited.
The lamia had been right. I could be mad or I could own every fucking aspect of my life. If I was going to die, then I’d die trying for the version of my life that meant something.
Using a selfie of Ro and me, I fired off a quick post on Instagram to all the followers I’d amassed during my party days, trusting those gossipmongers to do the heavy lifting. Can’t wait to be reunited with my guy. One more sleep, baby. #thatsmyrockstar #RoMantic
Go big or go home.
7
I drove directly to Rivka’s house to update Esther on this new and exciting turn of events. She’d paused her light gardening to give me a quick check-up, then proceeded to subject me to a stern lecture about dark magic that essentially came down to “just say no.”
My counterargument that my actions had been instinctual and I’d do the same again if it meant not dying failed to placate her. Neither did the fact that there was no spike of dark magic or any trace of Lilith that she could detect.
“Allow me to list all the ways dark magic will destroy your life.” Esther pruned dead blooms off the rambling rhododendron in her sister’s back yard. “It starts with paranoia-inducing voices, then you’ve got hallucinations of giant insects out of the corner of your eye and itchiness where you scratch yourself bloody.” She jabbed the pruning shears at me. “And your growing debasement where you’ll do anything for the high, forgetting to eat, and screwing over your loved ones.”
I picked up the discarded foliage with the puffy gardening gloves she’d given me and dumped them in the compost bin. “Is that what happened to Tessa?”
“She skipped a couple stages and jumped right to the ‘burning up from the inside’ part.”
I flicked an ant off my arm. “Lilith is inside me, which means, like it or not, this dark magic is inside me, too. Might as well use whatever is leaking out, assimilate it, and turn it into good magic by merging it with my own.”
She snorted. “That’s conjecture, not sound logic.”
“Tell me with absolute certainty that doing nothing won’t negatively affect me.”
She pruned a branch with a hard snap.
“Exactly,” I said. “You can’t. I’m trying to make the best of this situation and I’m happy to follow any advice you have.”
“Focus on getting the Bullseye and interact with Lilith and her magic as little as possible.”
“I will.” I lay my hand on her shoulder. “I’ve got a lot to live for. So I choose that.”
It earned me a grumbled assent.
Being somewhat busy, I ignored my boyfriend’s call in favor of a text that said we’d talk when I got to Los Angeles. We were doing things on my timeline now.
Twelve hours later, I’d bought my plane ticket, requested intel from Pierre after tearing a strip off him for manipulating Rohan and me, packed, and was currently headed to the airport.
“Emotions are going to be running high with you two right now,” Leo said from the back seat of the Honda. “Better to be in the same room with Ro for your next talk.”
I popped another extra-strength Tylenol, wishing I hadn’t given in to my nervousness last night about this reunion and drank quite so much. Grabbing the bottle in the cup holder, I took a swig of water and swallowed it down.
“Roll down the window if you’re gonna puke,” Ari said.
“You are looking a little green,” Leo said. “I told you not to a
dd coolers into the mix. What are you, sixteen and trying to seem grown up and cool?”
I appreciated the teasing, since the coolers had been broken out at about 2AM. Why did the worst drinks always seem like a good idea at that unholy hour? As a result, my twin was still in pajamas, wearing the darkest shades he owned, and Leo was hiccuping softly, still tipsy.
She reached forward to pat my shoulder. “Kane should have come along for moral support so you could be distracted from how badly this could all crash and burn.”
I shifted around to glare at her. “Your pep talk needs work.”
“I don’t think you and Ro are going to crash and burn. I just know that neurotic brain of yours is envisioning all those scenarios. Like a little worker bee.” She hiccupped again and then stretched out across the entire back seat, singing some made-up song about bees.
Ari eyed her through the rearview mirror. “There’s no room for Kane in the car.”
I frowned at him. “Are you guys back to not speaking?”
I’d asked Kane to come out with us last night, but he’d mumbled some excuse about demons that needed killing and taken off.
Ari shrugged. “We’d have to be in the same room for that level of interaction. I’m refusing to buy into his issues, so Kane is avoiding me all together.” He pulled up to the curb at Vancouver International Airport. “You ready?”
I unbuckled my seat belt. “Let’s go with ‘yes.’”
The good thing about spending the flight knotted up in anxiety at this reunion was that it distracted me from my broken economy seat, my shitty entertainment selection, and the fact that I had to sell a kidney to buy some Pringles and a sandwich.
I ponied up for the onboard wifi to see if Pierre had gotten the information I’d requested from him. It seemed likely that this demon had struck out at high-level people before Gary. Remembering the course my dad was teaching, I’d wondered if there were cold cases that fit its evil M.O. Other than the spawn possibly being attracted to cockiness, it was a fairly meagre demon profile, but I had to start somewhere and I’d bring a fresh set of eyes to it all.
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