“Pip! I’m so glad you came. I need your help, please—” But a stream of high-pitched squeaking interrupted her, and she fell silent, trying to decipher the words that came too fast to make out. “Please, I can’t understand you. I’m sorry, I’m not used to this like Sebastian is. Could you just talk more slowly?”
An explosive wheeze that sounded suspiciously like a pixie sigh came from near her right ear, and Lily started, the little creature having zipped over to her shoulder to settled there. She kept perfectly still, afraid of scaring the pixie off.
Pip repeated herself, still so fast Lily could barely understand, but she thought she got the gist of it.
“What will I give you for your help? Well, I don’t know exactly what you like, but Sebastian does. I’ll give you whatever he normally gives you, after we find him.” Lily had little knowledge about the fae in general, but from watching Sebastian she knew better than to be sloppy in her promises. Bargains were sacred and binding to the fae, and they usually tried to twist the terms to their advantage.
The pixie’s reply was shorter and more emphatic, almost petulant.
“What do you mean Sebastian sent you away? What’s happened to him? Where is he? We have to help him.”
More squeaking, and Lily could feel the pixie’s gossamer wings flutter against her neck in agitation.
“He was caught and you…wait, say that one more time? You couldn’t help, so he told you to leave and…and he didn’t even pay you? How could you think of payment when your friend is in danger, Pip? He could die.”
The pixie made a sort of splutter and took off, flying right in front of her face to scold her so fast it was just a high-pitched whine. Lily winced, resisting the urge to cover her ears.
“I—I’m not sure what you said, but believe me I know what it feels like to be let down by Sebastian. It seems to be a habit of his. But, please. If we don’t help him…please,” she ended in a whisper.
To her horror, the little creature crossed her arms and started to fly away.
“Wait! Pip! Don’t you remember me? We fought together. You—you—died. You died protecting my life. Don’t you remember?”
Lily’s words must have meant something to the fae, because she stopped, the ghostly light about her pulsing faintly.
“Please, take me to him. I—I promise I’ll make sure you get his payment. And mine. In fact, double mine. Whatever he normally pays you, I’ll make sure you get double. Just help me…please.”
The hovering pixie hesitated, the beat of her wings a barely perceptible hum. Finally, she gave a single squeak, and headed for the back door.
“Wait, was that a yes?” Lily scrambled to her feet, hurrying through the mess and trying not to trip as she clutched her carpet bag in one hand and the wrinkled ransom note in the other.
The pixie led her outside, barely giving her time to shut off the lights and lock Sebastian’s door behind her. Then the little fae headed off across the abandoned lot.
“Wait! I have a car, wouldn’t that be easier?”
Pip made what seemed to be an annoyed sound and switched direction, zipping around the apartment building faster than Lily could go even at a jog. She followed as best she could, and arrived at her car to find Pip gleefully making tiny snow angles in the frost that had begun to gather on the windshield.
As soon as Lily opened the car door, the pixie rose from the windshield and vibrated furiously, sending half-frozen droplets of slush flying in all directions, then zipped inside the vehicle.
“Hey! Watch where you’re flinging that stuff,” Lily complained, wiping her face.
The pixie didn’t bother apologizing, simply gave a few perfunctory squeaks, something about “heat” and “on.”
Sighing, Lily climbed in, body stiff and still half in shock. Her eyes were swollen, her cheeks cold with damp from her tears, and her nose was in great need of a handkerchief. Somehow, she had called on the fae all by herself, and was about to embark on a possibly suicidal mission to save her good-for-nothing friend from his own idiocy. If he had just told her, had asked for her help like any sane person would have done, then together they would surely have been a match for whatever demonic tricks those witches had up their sleeves. But now she would have to find a way to rescue Sebastian all by herself. Madam Barrington, as much as she would insist on helping, was in no shape to go gallivanting around Atlanta, and under no circumstances would Lily let her mother or brother anywhere near such a dangerous situation. Perhaps it was foolish, but she felt confident that the power in her ward bracelet would not let her come to harm. Whether or not she would have the strength to protect others, however, was another matter entirely. Anyone who went with her, especially a mundane like Richard, would be vulnerable to the witches and their demon minions. It would be better if she did this alone…
An impatient squeak roused her from her stupor, and she turned the key in the ignition. “All right, all right, here’s your heat. But we can’t go save Sebastian just yet. There are two things I need first, and one of them you may not like.”
With that, she drove off into the night, embarking on what was probably the stupidest thing she’d ever done, yet feeling at peace for the first time in days.
I’m coming, Sebastian, she thought. Just hold on. Hold on.
Epilogue
When Lily pulled into her apartment complex and came to a halt with a screech, she was not surprised to see Sir Kipling crouched on the low wall in front of her building, fur puffed up and paws tucked under him for warmth.
“Something’s wrong,” he meowed at her as she passed.
“I know. I’m going to run inside and change, and then we’re leaving.”
“Where are we going?” Sir Kipling jumped down from the wall and followed her inside at a gallop, shaking the frost off his whiskers once the door was closed behind them.
“To save Sebastian.”
“Well obviously. I meant, where is he.”
“I don’t know, but Pip does,” Lily replied as she hurried to her bedroom and started searching through her closet.
“Wait, that pixie? But I thought she—ahem, well—was no longer with us.”
“This is the new Pip. She doesn’t like me very much, so you have to promise to behave. Don’t even look sideways at her. Not a single prank or bit of mischief. If she decides not to help us, Sebastian could—could—” She swallowed, unable to finish the sentence.
“Of course. I would never do anything to jeopardize Sebastian’s safety,” the cat promised, sounding uncharacteristically grave. “Do we have a plan?”
“No. Well, sort of.”
“What a pleasant change of pace.”
“Oh hush. Go grab some food and water, I don’t know where we’re going or when we’ll be back.”
Sir Kipling, for once, did as he was told without a single protest. Lily, meanwhile, had finally found what she had been looking for at the very back of her bedroom closet. It was an outfit made for her by a high-class tailor in England. But that was not what made it special. The tailor in question, Emmaline Nichols, was part of a family business. A wizard family business. They made clothes with various spells for protection and durability woven into the fabric, and Lily had been gifted a set. The blouse and jacket would be a bit light for the current cold snap, but she could always wear a normal coat over them. The skirt was a sort of half kilt, half pencil skirt that provided maximum mobility while still preserving a sense of style and professionalism. Beneath it, she wore thick leggings, and on her feet, she laced up a pair of knee-high, oxblood-red Doc Martens. Not only were the thick-soled boots durable with a good grip for running and climbing, but they let her deliver a mean kick, should the need arise.
Now that she was properly equipped, she carefully stashed the FBI files from Sebastian’s apartment in her dresser, grabbed a few extra casting supplies and threw them into her carpet bag, then rushed to the kitchen to wrap up a handful of scones. The sight of them nearly brought her to tears once more, bu
t she hardened her resolve, promising herself that Sebastian would live to eat them, come hell or high water.
“Ready?” she asked Sir Kipling as he emerged from the closet where his litter box was tucked away.
“As I’ll ever be. It’s a shame there’s no time for a proper nap. One should always be well-rested when embarking on an adventure.”
The quip warmed her heart, but Lily couldn’t find it in her to smile. “Come on, Kip. We have someone’s butt to save.”
“Well, I sincerely hope we will be saving more than just his posterior. Could we at least include his fingers? They are very good at scratching behind my ears.”
This time a tiny smile did twitch her lips, but she pushed it away, trying to focus. “We don’t have time for jokes. Let’s go.”
“On the contrary, one always has time for jokes. But if you insist then, by all means, lead on, oh fearless one.”
Lily just rolled her eyes and headed for the front door, turning off lights as she went. While she locked the door and paused to check that all her apartment’s wards were in place, Sir Kipling bounded down the steps and began sniffing around the outside of her car.
“Most curious. This may be a ‘new’ pixie, but I cannot detect any difference in her scent.”
“You can puzzle over it later. Get in.” Opening the driver-side door, she waited for her cat to hop across to the passenger seat, then got in herself. She had already explained to Pip about Sir Kipling, and only hoped the two would get along, because she didn’t have time to break up any squabbles. Pip squeaked in protest when the cat entered the car, but once Sir Kipling had settled down in his seat, ignoring her completely, the little pixie seemed to decide the situation was tolerable and flitted over to perch on the rearview mirror.
“One more stop,” Lily promised, and started the engine.
Knocking on the Humphrey’s impressive front doors for the second time in a week, Lily hoped the family was home. To her relief, she finally heard footsteps inside, so she took a few steps back, smoothing her skirt and hoping she didn’t look too anxious.
The man who opened the door was unfamiliar to her, but she swallowed her nervousness and forged ahead. “Hello! My name is Lily Singer. I was here last Saturday with my colleague, Madam Barrington to discuss some… extracurricular studies for Mr. Seth Humphrey. I had a question for him, is he home? I only need a minute.”
“Oh, well, certainly. If you’ll wait just a moment, I’ll go get him. Please, step inside. It looks cold out there.”
Lily gave a grateful nod, then crossed the threshold to stand just inside the hall as the man closed the doors and strode off.
“Seth! There’s some teacher at the door to see you.” The man’s voice echoed through the vaulted ceiling of the great room which opened up at the end of the hall. Somewhere up above, a door slammed and there was a thump of feet running on carpet. Lily caught sight of Seth’s wiry frame coming down the sweeping front staircase at a run, barefoot and wearing lounge clothes. When he caught sight of her, he slowed considerably, confusion on his face. Glancing behind him, he seemed to check to make sure the other man had gone, then hurried forward.
“I thought you were Mrs. Barrington. I’m so ready for my first lesson. What are you doing here?”
“First of all, her title is Madam Barrington. And I’m here because I need to, well, ask you a favor.” She looked this way and that, wondering if it was safe to speak inside.
“Oh, don’t worry. That was my dad, and he’s probably back in his office by now. Mom is out.”
“Good.” Lily hesitated, but then swallowed her fears. This was for Sebastian. She couldn’t let anything, not even her own insecurity, get in the way. “I need the ring back that Sebastian gave you. Since your mother agreed to let you learn magic, you won’t need it anymore.”
“That doesn’t mean it isn’t still useful,” Seth said, left hand moving to cover his right almost reflexively, as if to protect the ring. “Besides, he said it was a gift. It’s mine now.”
Lily sighed. She didn’t have time for this. “Look, I don’t have time to explain, but Sebastian’s life is in danger. If you don’t give me that ring, he could die. We both could die.”
The young man hesitated, uncertainty clouding his eyes. “I…I don’t want Sebastian to get hurt. I’m grateful to you both, really I am. So, I guess…” Sighing, he slid the ring off his finger and held it out. “But it’s just a loan, okay? I’ll get it back?”
“I’ll do my best,” Lily offered, taking the ring and slipping it into her pocket before he could change his mind. “Be safe, and please don’t mention to Madam Barrington that I came by. This is just between us.”
“Uh, okay, sure.”
Without so much as a “thank you” or “goodbye,” she left him standing in his foyer with a furrowed brow as she slipped out the door and ran to her car. For once, being rude didn’t bother her. It was time to make someone pay for threatening her best friend. She could only hope Sebastian was still alive to see it.
Interlude
The Price We Pay
Earlier that week
Sebastian felt absolutely miserable. Not because it was Monday, surprisingly enough, and not even because he was about to be thrown out a window—though that certainly wasn’t going to help matters. No, it was because he had flat-out lied to Lily, snuck off without her, and was pretty sure she would hate him forever for it.
“Look, man, I just wanted to ask some questions, there’s no need to—”
“Shuddup an’ get outta my house!”
“Oh, come on. This isn’t a house, it’s an abandoned building.” Unfortunately for Sebastian, the hulking homeless man who had him by the collar didn’t seem impressed by his logic and simply hoisted him higher as they headed across the debris-strewn floor toward the broken window set amid crumbling brick.
Sebastian didn’t want to hurt the half-drunk squatter, and so he hadn’t ordered Pip to give the man a distracting prick or two on the back of the neck. “Look, just put me down and take a look at these pictures. I’ll make it worth your while. I need to find out what happened to these men—”
“Yuh can—can’t fool me. I dun t-talk to no cops. Now, gerrout!”
“But I’m not a cop!”
Sebastian’s protestations went unheeded, and he barely had time to remember not to grab for the frame—it was lined with broken glass—before the homeless man threw him through the window. They were on the ground floor of the abandoned warehouse, so he didn’t have far to fall, but that didn’t mean being thrown through a window hurt any less. Sebastian landed on the withered, frost-covered grass outside with a grunt of pain as all the air was driven from his lungs. For a moment he just lay there, wheezing. A squeaking sound rang out above him, rising and falling like a donkey’s high-pitched bray at ten times the speed.
“Oh, shut up, Pip. That was not funny.”
The pixie continued her squeaky laugh, obviously begging to differ.
“Blasted little flying butt monkey,” Sebastian muttered, foul mood turning even blacker. As if he didn’t already feel like a complete piece of garbage for breaking his promise to Lily, now he was a pixie laughingstock—and sore all over to boot. With a groan, he hauled himself to his feet and headed back to his car, knowing he would get no further with this line of investigation. That, to his disgust, brought him right back to square one.
Agent Grant had come through with copies of the relevant case files within hours of their parting Saturday morning. After leaving the federal agent with a “polite” request to stay the heck away from Lily, Sebastian had holed up in his apartment for the weekend to pore over the files, trying to understand what was going on in Atlanta’s magical underbelly.
The patterns he’d found were familiar—on the surface, at least. He had seen similar tactics used by witches before. But not on this scale, and not using such drastic methods. Based on the symbols of calling and binding in the pictures, it looked like a group of witches were s
ummoning frighteningly powerful greater demons left and right. But where were the evil bastards? Creatures of enough magnitude to require a human sacrifice—like the poor homeless sods he’d been trying to track down—would cut a swath of destruction through Atlanta like Godzilla. So if they’d been summoned, where were they hiding?
Part of the problem was that it had been so long since Sebastian had used demonic magic himself that he didn’t recognize half the symbols in the case file pictures. He had to rely on memories almost a decade old, and all they told him were that the symbols were powerful and quite advanced.
He finally concluded that the demons must have been summoned simply to talk, then sent back to the abyss whence they came. Why any witch would waste so much blood, sweat, and tears on a game of twenty questions, Sebastian had no idea. But it was a more comforting thought than the idea of half a dozen greater demons lurking in the shadows, eager to wreak havoc throughout the city. Of course, if witches were looking for information only a greater demon possessed, that was bad. Very, very bad. Nothing in the malevolent minds of those creatures was even close to beneficial. And, based on the spattering of random violence reported in the case files, some lesser demons had been getting loose in the process, slipping through the cracks and causing mischief.
But it got worse. Sebastian knew of only one man with the willpower, skill, and control it would have taken to organize a group of witches able to summon so many powerful denizens of hell: Roger. It had been a fool’s hope to think he would never run into that miserable, cretinous, slimeball of a snake again. But what was the man after? Rarely did witches who dabbled in the demonic band together in any kind of cohesive group; they were usually too power-hungry and cutthroat to trust each other. Which meant someone had provided them an incentive.
Sebastian had hoped that, with a little discrete digging, he’d find some leads. But so far all his digging had gotten him was pixie mockery and an extremely sore back. Which left him only one option—the exact option he’d been hoping to avoid. If someone was hiring witches to do their dirty work, there was only one person in Atlanta guaranteed to know the details. The problem was, the last time Sebastian had asked this person a question, he’d nearly gotten a bullet in the chest for his troubles.
Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus Betrayal Page 11