Page 4 of Demon's Bane

And now all of it’s come crashing back into my life in the form of a High Priestess who knows she’s got the upper hand.

“And what?” I ask after another sip meant to calm the quaver in my voice. “You’ll expel me if I don’t agree to help you?”

“It would be well within my right per our covenant to do so.”

It’s not a yes, but it’s not a no, either, and as much as I wish I was brave enough to tell her where she can stick her expulsion and order her out of my shop, I set my cup and my pride aside.

“What do you need help with?”

The flash of satisfaction on Esme’s face makes my jaw ache with every word I’m holding back.

“It involves the demon realm.”

“I don’t know anything about the demon—”

“Let me finish.” She raises one elegant hand between us. “Since Allison’s new bargain opened up travel between the realms…”

Esme trails off, glancing toward the wide windows at the front of the building. I follow her gaze, but she must have somesort of High Priestess super-senses, because I can’t see anything out of the ordinary on the darkened sidewalk.

“Ah. I was wondering when he would arrive.”

Before I can ask whoheis and what the hell she’s looking at, a figure clad all in black appears in the middle of Main Street between one heartbeat and the next.

“Rhett is here as a representative of the demon realm. Glamoured, so he won’t draw any unwanted attention.”

A demon.

There’s a demon in the middle of Beech Bay.

There’s a demon in the middle of Beech Bay, with a deep scowl set into his glamoured face as he glances left, then right, then turns his attention back to my shop and stalks forward.

“Let him in, would you?” Esme says, raising her cup for another delicate sip. “And the three of us can talk.”

2

Rhett

I need to get out of this Goddess-damned realm.

Every inch of me prickles with discomfort and watchfulness as I portal myself to the spot Esme Hawthorn told me I should meet her, the middle of some sort of human settlement.

Though there are echoes and mirrors of the same type of architecture I might find back in my own realm—wood and brick and glass, paved roads for easy transport—the buildings here are short and strange. The lights shining from within and blinking red and green over the road are strange. The sounds and smells coming from all directions are strange.

The veryairhere is strange.

The magick is different, less potent than the easy power I can access back in the demon realm. As I get my bearings on the human street, it takes me a few disoriented moments to pick up on the familiar strands of the High Priestess’s power.

They meld with the glamour I’m wearing. It’s held in place by an obsidian ring on my right hand, and though it’s finely made and constructed by Esme herself, it still itches against my skin like damp wool and pulses with the High Priestess’s magick.

Iron, her witchmagick, a steady pull that has me headed in the direction of a two-story building half-way up the street.From within, a shadowed figure approaches a glass door, and on my next inhale I sense something new, something different.

Something delicious.

I’m still trying to work out exactly what it is—witchmagick, possibly, but not like Esme’s, something softer and gentler that makes me think of meadows in springtime—when the door to the shop opens and time itself seems to freeze and fracture.

A woman, standing there. A witch.

It’s not some great witchmagick I sense from her, no spell meant to disarm or injure me, nothing that would easily explain the way my knees buckle and my focus narrows to her. Only her.