Trouble with the Cursed, page 31
“What are you doing?” Al muttered at my elbow, and I jumped.
“You might want to put yourself in a circle,” I said as I scrambled up onto the bar. No one but Al noticed, and I gathered my strength, feeling ill as I pulled in the line until every demon in the place could feel it. A head turned to find me, then another.
“Mother pus bucket,” Al whispered, and then he spun, suit coat furling as he scribed a circle on the floor with his toe.
“Dilatare!” I shouted, invoking a simple white charm.
The spell exploded outward, raising cries of annoyance and pulling every eye to me as they rocked back. My hair was a staticky halo. Line energy dripped from my fingers as I glared at them in the new silence. Even the music had cut off. Jenks and Trent were gone, but no one noticed. “You’d better know what you’re doing,” Al said as he dropped his circle and edged a few feet away from me.
Grimacing, I flicked a wad of unfocused energy at an incoming curse, bursting it before it got three feet from its maker. The second one found me, and black crawled over my hastily invoked protection circle until Dali yelled at them to knock it off before they damaged the bar. My knees were wobbly, and I didn’t dare look at Vivian pinned down on the stage. They could shoot spells at me if they wanted, but they knew better than to really piss me off. God, please. It has to be Hodin.
“Vivian Smith is mine,” Dali said as the last spell fizzled. Clearly pleased, he vaulted up onto the stage to leave a cautious eight feet between him and Vivian. Her lips were pressed in hatred, but her eyes were still hidden behind her glasses. “You have lost, Rachel Morgan. Even your elf has left you. Get off my bar. Go home. Warn them we are back and to be afraid of the sun as well as the night.”
I was alone. My face was cold, and I locked my knees. Trust me, Al, I thought as I looked at him, trying to tell him I had a plan. Everyone was staring at me, waiting to see what I’d do. Al gestured for me to get on with it, and I took a slow breath.
“I’m not trying to tame you,” I said softly, my gaze far from Vivian. I had to stall until Jenks returned. If I was wrong and that was really Vivian, they’d kill her thinking she was Hodin. “I’m trying to keep you in the game,” I said, and several demons chuckled. “Every game has rules. You agreed to them. Don’t screw this up.”
Dali laughed, the bitter sound making me shudder. “Rules don’t exist if you can’t enforce them.” He looked over the bar at me. “And you are outnumbered.”
I fidgeted as a few low grumbles joined into a hum of background noise. They were not the frightened, powerless demons I had convinced last time. I had to give them an excuse to behave, one that would save their pride. Fortunately, some twisted logic might give me just that.
“You really want to turn the world against you over her?” I said, gesturing vaguely at the stage. “A single coven member?” I said, head shaking as if in disbelief. “No offense, guys, but wow. Right now you can walk anywhere, anytime, sun or moon. You can go shopping and drive the clerks mad with your endless questions they have to answer. You can get a driver’s license and rack up points for bad behavior, and as long as you pay the fines they can’t do anything because you belong to society and are following the rules.
“No, listen!” I said when several began to lose interest. “If you start a war with reality, you will win, and I’m sure you will all have fun proving your strength and punishing people who dare to stand up to you, but you’re going to end up right where you were before, stuck in a magic-polluted hell, on the outside looking in. But can you imagine the news coverage you’ll get when you misbehave and then willingly pay your dues? Or the frustration you will cause by finding legal loopholes to evade punishment? Doesn’t that sound fun to you at all? That’s what you are giving up if you start snatching people.”
Most were shaking their heads, and Al sighed, thinking I’d lost my mind, but I needed to give them something to justify agreeing with me when I dropped the real kicker on them.
“Laws and rules are there to hobble true power,” Dali said. “Why should we hold to your ideas of what is morally right and wrong?”
Because I’d given them a sun of their own and they’d already forgotten the night with no dawn. A low rumble of discontent began to rise, and I lifted a hand, acknowledging it. “I see your point,” I said, glad I had a wall behind me even if it was mostly mirror and bottles. “I did accompany a highly valuable, very experienced magic user to the ever-after. It was stupid,” I said, risking a glance at Vivian. “But if you let me walk out with her, I can give you something you all really, really want.”
Al made a soft sound. It was the beginning of understanding, no more, but it was enough. His weight shifted, and he began to look around, searching for a clue as to what I was doing, where I was going with this. All I knew for sure was that they were listening.
“What is it we really, really want?” Dali mocked as he stood beside Vivian, and I allowed myself a little smile.
“Hodin.”
A smile curved over Al’s face, and he leaned against the bar, shoving one of the encroaching demons away from between us. It was a small move, but it was noticed.
Dali frowned, arms over his chest. “Hodin. Who you have vowed to protect even at the expense of losing your teacher.” His gaze flicked to Al’s new protective stance. “Perhaps we should address this arrangement you have with Hodin. Seeing as it’s more than you and me here. With you gone, we could have a go at him. Take who and what we want. It’s a big win-win—for us.”
“Short-game, maybe.” I walked down the top of the bar until I stood over Al, feeling like Newt all of a sudden. I’m not alone, Jenks. I’m going to be okay—but hurry. “Did Al tell you he drove Hodin from my church?”
Dali’s eyes slid to Al, then me. “Are you breaking your word, Rachel Morgan?” he asked, the oily words practically dripping threat. “To rescue a soul that isn’t even yours? A demon’s word is truly all he or she has. Disregarding it brings any number of penalties against you. Penalties you don’t have enough to pay for.” He smiled evilly at me, but I wasn’t afraid. Breaking their word was exactly what they were doing, but in their minds, if there was no one to tell them different, it was permissible. That’s how demon logic worked.
“My, oh my,” I said lightly, and Dali’s smile froze as Al chuckled. “I am in a hard spot, aren’t I? All my allies out of commission or driven from me?” I fanned myself as the demons began whispering. “My subrosa position uncertain? If Vivian and I don’t step from the ley line and back into Eden Park together, I’m sure to have the I.S. knocking at my door with a warrant for my arrest. And we all know how honest Rachel Morgan is. I’ll go to jail. Oh, boo-hoo.”
Dali squinted at Al. I am not alone, I thought again, hope welling up, not because Al was beside me, but because Al was beside me having no clue where I was going. He trusted me. And as I stood before all of them, I really, really needed that.
“She left herself an out,” Al said, and the demons buzzed and whispered, vestiges of a past hatred blossoming anew on them. “She agreed to stand between us and Hodin concerning his decision to do elven magic. She never said she wouldn’t put him in a bottle herself.”
Dali shifted his bulk, head tilted. “And why would Morgan do that?” he prompted.
Al shrugged, but he hadn’t joined me on the bar, and I knew his help was conditional on me actually having a plan. “He lied to her,” he said simply. “As he lies to everyone. She outed his plot to rob her of her subrosa position.”
“Before or after she lost it?” Dali asked as he scanned the crowded room. “Regardless, it doesn’t follow that she is leaving with Vivian Smith, much less Sikes or my new librarian. We have a contract.”
“Perhaps.” I shrugged in a false nonchalance. “I propose a trade,” I said, relief sagging through me when Jenks darted in, flashing me a bright green across the room in a pixy version of a thumbs-up. Al’s eyes narrowed when he saw him, but the demon probably thought I was simply getting Trent out of the line of fire. A quiver raced over my aura as Al began to ease power into himself, so slowly that no one else would likely sense it.
“You tear up Sikes’s and Melody’s contracts,” I continued, forcing myself to not look at Hodin on the stage disguised as Vivian. “And I tell you where Hodin is.”
Dali’s attention shifted from me to Al. “It took us forever to pin him down. No deal. You put him in a bottle and we can talk.”
My legs felt like water, and I locked my knees. I knew I should have eaten first. “Fine,” I said, and someone guffawed. “If I’m to have a chance to put him in a bottle, I need access to the vault. I have to have something he doesn’t, or I’ll never catch him.”
Dali made a low, evil chuckle. “You want access to a millennium of war curses, most crafted by our long dead, each holding enough hate and bile to destroy two realities? It would take an entire class of disposable flesh to buy access to our world-breaking curses.”
My lips parted. Disposable flesh? He was talking about high-magic users. My students. He thought I’d give him my students to gain access to curses to catch Hodin so I could sell him to Dali to buy their promise to hold to our laws and not snatch people? What kind of backassward deal was that? Besides, I’d already gotten from them their promise to not steal people. I needed a way to enforce it. Like . . . say . . . the ability to put them in a bottle?
“What if I bring him before you?” I said, thoughts churning. If I put Hodin in a bottle, I’d have the clout to make them toe the line. Win-win. “If I do that, can I have Sikes, Melody, and your promise to cut this crap out? No more tricking people into servitude.”
The demons were exchanging ugly glances. Al frowned as the call to take the deal rose up and was seconded, and in a wave of agreement, Dali put up a hand, silencing them. “They are mine, therefore it is my decision,” Dali said, clearly thinking I’d never be able to bring Hodin before them. “No, Rachel. I will only give you Sikes and Melody for Hodin in a bottle. Until you do that, they stay here.” His smile became ugly, reminding me of who he was. The friendly neighborhood barista had never been anything but an act. A means to this end, perhaps. An end that I was going to snip cleanly and leave no thread for them to pull.
“Fine. Let me hear it,” I said as someone called for odds on a side bet and Al harrumphed, interested. “I need to hear that everyone agrees. If I bottle Hodin, you free Melody and Sikes, and no more luring people into servitude.” I didn’t dare look at Vivian, but Jenks was watching, and I knew the demon didn’t have a clue I was on to him. Where is Stef, you slimeball?
Dali, though, squinted at me in distrust. I knew how he felt. If you think you’re getting the better end of the deal, you aren’t. “Not can, but do bottle him, Morgan, and yes, you have your deal,” he finally said, and my held breath slipped out. “But you only get Sikes and Melody. You forgot to add Madam Coven Member to the deal. She is mine.”
“I didn’t forget,” I said, smug as I turned to Hodin. “That’s not Vivian. That’s Hodin.”
“What!” Dali exploded, and in a thundering clap of sound, the diminutive shape of Vivian vanished in a swirl of yellow and green.
An angry howl of a roar rose as the demons found their feet. In a wash of magic that set my hair on end, the room went suddenly silent as they vanished, chasing him.
“Damn my dame!” Dali exclaimed, and Jenks giggled, sounding like a soothing rain.
“Where are Melody and Sikes?” I said as I sat down on the bar and took Al’s hand, allowing him to help me to the floor.
“No!” Dali spun, his face red. “This does not give you anyone. How long did you know that was Hodin?” he said, then softer, more angry, “You should have told me. I might have . . .”
“Caught him?” Jenks landed on my shoulder, a wash of dust spilling down my front.
I smiled, feeling both strong and vulnerable as Al slipped in behind me. “Her idea to bring my class here to prove you were safe was really dumb. Vivian knows you are not tame and you never will be.”
Dali pinched the bridge of his nose. “We will never catch him if he is doppelganging again.”
“Why not?” Jenks asked, and Dali squinted at his four-inch-tall belligerence. “I’ve seen you guys change into everything from a dog to a vampire to a redheaded, pain-in-the-ass witch. Al pretended to be Hodin just this last spring. What’s the diff?”
Dali jolted as if stung. Al cringed, then pulled himself upright under Dali’s obvious disgust. “I was ascertaining if Morgan was taking instruction from him. That’s all.”
His frown heavy, Dali looked me up and down as if I was stupid, and wincing, I decided I probably had been. There had been differences I should have recognized: “Hodin’s” ordered feathers, the way he talked, the casual feel of him. “Ah, I would think a finding charm would be enough to ferret him out from the real person,” I offered, and Dali nodded, easing himself behind the bar as if needing something to do.
“It normally would be,” he said, and each glass he touched sparkled as he charmed them to a shiny purity. “But when Hodin changes, he goes down to the DNA. It can be done, obviously, but why when surface appearance is sufficient?”
Al pulled his lips from his teeth in a wide smile of remembrance, and I stifled a shudder. The night we had met, when he had turned into what scared me, Al had become a vampire. Not just a vampire, but Ivy, filling me with vampiric enzymes and leaving me paralyzed. That demons didn’t become another so fully all the time was a matter of convenience, apparently.
One by one, Dali lined up the glasses in a row under the counter. “The elves demanded purity in their entertainment,” he said, his thoughts clearly in the past. “Hodin learned how to shape-shift beyond what is normal to survive. When he is a crow, he is a crow. When he is a pixy, he is a pixy. When he is the leader of the coven of moral and ethical standards, he is Vivian Smith in all but his thoughts. He is a true chameleon, and if he has chosen to hide as another, we will never catch him.”
“We don’t have to catch him,” Al said. “Rachel does.” His lip twitched, and I saw odd tension in his shoulders. “Your thinking is short-term, itchy witch. What you intend will last only as long as demon eyes remain closed. What we see, we covet, and we will be under no obligation if, say . . . people wander in? Finding is not luring.”
“That’s not how I saw this playing out,” I said, and he shrugged, his predatory gleam growing. Worse, if there was one thing I knew about Cincinnatians, it was if you tell them something is illegal for their own good, they’ll try it to find out why. If I could get Melody and Sikes back, their story might be enough to keep the curious at bay until Trent could get something on the books and close the ever-after borders—if only on paper.
Dali was still frowning, putting his glasses away one by one. “You should have told me it was Hodin. If I had taken him thinking he was a coven member, he could have killed me.”
“Then maybe you need to rethink your practice of forcing people into signing contracts,” I said, tired of it all. “Sweet hotcakes with syrup, why do you hate each other so much?” I said, not expecting an answer, but Al’s head had snapped up, his gaze almost frightened as he looked at Dali. The old demon had gone deathly still.
“You believe you deserve to know?” Dali said, and Al moved, eerily fast, to take my elbow and draw me stumbling away.
“No, she does not,” Al said, and I scowled, jerking from his tight grip.
But if Dali was angry, Al was scared to death—which made me more than a little curious. “Hey, if I’m going to put him in a bottle, I need a reason other than you don’t like him,” I said, dropping back when Al reached for my arm again. “He’s a citizen, same as you. The I.S. will be on my case for wrongful incarceration if I slap him in a bottle without cause. You guys are always writing things down. You locked him up before the lines fell, right? You must have his original arrest warrant somewhere.”
“Yeah,” Jenks said, his wings rasping as he hovered by my ear. “You got anything to keep the I.S. off Rache’s case?”
I doubted the I.S. would care one way or the other, but I wanted to know what Hodin had done that was so bad he deserved to be jailed for the rest of his life.
“We did not keep records of Hodin’s indiscretions. We lived in their aftermath!” Dali thundered. “Get out of my restaurant!”
I gasped as I was suddenly shoved into a ley line. There was a moment of disconnection as I threw a bubble around Jenks and myself—and then Al’s aura slipped over mine, shifting his aura to reality and taking me with it. The park. My car is at the park! I thought frantically before Al dropped me at my church—and then I was again in reality, my sneakers pressing into the beaten-down grass and the low sun shining on my face. Eden Park. “Trent?” I called, scanning the park benches.
“I’ll get him,” Jenks said as he flew up and away from my earring.
“The Goddess save you, Rachel. We do not remind Dali of his son. Ever.” Al’s face screwed up in distaste as an elaborate fan misted into existence. “It is bloody hell hot up here.”
“Maybe you should put on a pair of shorts,” I said, eyeing his overdone Victorian finery. “I didn’t know Dali had a son.” My thoughts went to Keric, the Rosewood baby he was teaching—for free. “What did Hodin do to him?”
Al studied the nearby buildings, hazy with humidity. “I don’t wish to speak the words.”
“Seriously, I ought to know what he’s done if you want me to put Hodin in a bottle.”
A bitter bark of laughter, cold and hard, came from him. His focus shifted to me, the hatred in him striking me cold. “You want to put Hodin in a bottle. We want him dead. However, the agony of inescapable incarceration has a long-term satisfaction. Death is an empty revenge.”
“What did he do?” I asked again, then spun at Trent’s distant hail. “Trent,” I whispered, relief bringing my shoulders down.
