Page 16 of Buzz Kill (Smoke & Mirrors Tavern #7)

Chapter sixteen

ALWIN

It wasn’t until my feet hit solid ground again that I noticed the strange tugging sensation. My eyes scanned our surroundings, quickly noting that we hadn’t returned in the same place we left. Once I’d confirmed we weren’t about to be attacked by the Prescotts, I looked down, finding Rith standing next to me with his fingers still wrapped around my belt.

I quickly switched to my human glamour upon stepping through. Luckily it was the middle of the night, but standing in a street with a dead sorcerer in my arms and a demon at my side was… not ideal. No doubt, had Declan been awake, he would have found this funny, but he wasn’t even alive to lighten the mood. My jaw ached and I forced myself to stop grinding my teeth at the thought of his actions. There was nothing to be done about it now.

I’d pulled the artifact through with us again just in case we didn’t end up where we intended and it sat in a puddle at my feet where I’d dropped it. Steam swirled off the stone, but there was no time to wait for it to cool before picking it up again. I tucked the hot stone away and quickly pulled Rith out of sight. We ducked down a dark side street and picked out an older car, breaking the lock to slip inside. It was a temporary solution, but it was better than standing in the open. Rith spread out one of my blankets on the back seat and we laid Declan down while I took the front seat and Rith curled up in a ball on the ground next to Declan.

The little demon kept sneaking peeks out the window, getting glimpses of the surroundings like he expected something to attack us any moment.

“Home?” he finally asked.

“The human world, yes. But this is not Eastbend.”

Our cellphones were destroyed when we fell through the gate the first time, so I had no way to contact Aiden or the others for the moment. I didn’t normally have to find ways to survive in urban areas, but I had money and once our immediate situation was remedied, that would be enough get us home.

Based on the license plates of the cars I’d seen parked along the street, we were in New Jersey. It could have been much worse. In fact, New Jersey was certainly preferable to being dropped back at Prescott Manor under the circumstances.

I pulled one of my court charms from my pouch and began weaving a glamour for Rith. The magic in the human world was weak, but easier to work with than the magic in the demon world. The weaving came together far more quickly, but it wasn’t strong enough to work on its own. Normally I wove glamours for humans in my home world where the natural magic was much stronger, but this glamour wasn’t for a human and Rith had his own natural magic that it could pull from. While the charm acted almost as a battery, it was a nearly depleted battery at the moment and would need time to pull a charge.

I looped the charm over Rith’s neck and he glanced at it curiously, but before he could ask what it was, Declan’s coughing pulled our attention away. The sorcerer rolled to his side, coughing up blood with a groan.

“I am out of healing charms,” I informed him.

Declan cracked his eyes open and arched an eyebrow at the bitterness in my tone, though no one else would have noticed.

His eyes ran over the inside of the car. “What’s with the attitude? I got us home, didn’t I?”

I turned my eyes out the window, ignoring his teasing as he coughed up the remaining blood from his lungs. He’d already told me the curse healed his mortal wounds but left everything else to heal on its own. He’d been stabbed through the chest and coughing was obviously causing him great pain, but there was nothing I could do for him now. He was too reckless. Too dismissive of his own safety. It was extremely difficult to protect someone who continuously threw themselves into danger. And it angered me more than it should.

Declan groaned as he pushed himself up to look out the window. “So… where are we?”

“New Jersey.”

“And whose… Alwin, did you break into some poor unsuspecting human’s car?”

His tone was teasing, but I was finding it hard to be amused at the moment.

“What choice did I have? You opened the gateway as you were dying,” that last word came out between gritted teeth and I took a second to force my composure back into place. “I had to come through carrying your body or it would have closed. Standing out in the open with you and Rith wasn’t an option. If it had been the middle of the day and someone saw us, you would be waking up in a morgue and I’d likely be in a human jail by now.”

“Speaking of, why is Rith here?”

Both of us looked at the little demon, but he avoided meeting our eyes. I hadn’t questioned him when our immediate circumstances required my attention, but now was a good time to get that answer.

“Rith?” Declan prompted.

“Wanted to stay with you,” Rith finally answered, burying his face in his arms.

Declan sighed. “This world isn’t the easiest place for demons, either. Most sorcerers would do anything to get their hands on an unbound demon. Plus, you can’t ever be seen looking like that. Al, can you make him a glamour?”

“It’s around his neck, but the human world doesn’t have enough magic to power it on its own. It needs to draw on his magic for a while before it will activate.”

Declan reached out and brushed his fingers over the crest, adding a touch of power. Since elven magic was mostly natural magic from the earth that we wove into various spells, it didn’t have the same compatibility issues the various magic users here had. All of the human world’s magic users could touch the earth’s natural magic. It was just far weaker than the natural magic on my world, which was plentiful enough to power all of our weavings. This was the biggest reason so few fae stayed in the human world for long — we were far stronger at home.

Declan’s added power gave the weave the boost it needed and Rith’s form shimmered. When the glamour settled into place, his skin lost its red tint, fading into a deep tan and his eyes muted to a perfectly human brown. His teeth and nails blunted, and his ears lost their point. The demon reached up to run his fingers through his shoulder length black hair, finding his horns missing. His eyes went wide and he looked down at his human hands.

The little demon touched his dull fingernails and ran his tongue over his teeth. “Only fight with magic and weapons?” He seemed less than pleased to lose those defenses.

“Don’t fight here unless you absolutely have to,” Declan answered. “There are threats, but they’re different from the ones in your world. We’ll protect you while you’re here, but as long as we have the artifact, we have the ability to send you back home at some point.”

My jaw clenched so hard I could hear it, but then Declan was at the door, hunched over and clutching his wound as he tugged at my sleeve to urge me out of the driver’s seat.

“Other side,” he ordered.

Not wanting to aggravate his injury, I moved to the other side of the car as Declan took the place behind the wheel. He immediately started fumbling with wires under the dashboard, wincing every time the movement pulled at his wounds.

“Let me do that,” I finally said.

“It’s fine. If you knew what to do, we wouldn’t still be sitting here.”

“But you know what to do?”

“Sure, I’ve been making off with my family’s cars since I was fourteen. Kinda hard to plan an escape with no vehicle. Gotta say though, this one’s in rough shape. We’ll be lucky if it starts, let alone gets us home.”

“I did not want to set off an alarm while I was holding your body,” I informed him flatly. I’d purposely selected an old car and I fully intended to return it once we no longer needed it.

Before Declan could respond, the engine caught and the car started.

“Guess it was a good choice, after all.”

He shifted the car into gear and the car made it three blocks before it stalled out. Declan swore and got the car started again after a few tries. It happened two more times before it finally seemed to be running smoothy.

“She’s just a little finicky, that’s all,” Declan informed me. “I’ve never driven a car this old before. I mean, it’s not like I was ever taught how to drive at all.”

I eyed the man warily. “You don’t know how to drive?”

“We’re driving, aren’t we? I just said I wasn’t taught, I figured it out on my own. Stealing cars is another matter entirely. That I learned from the mechanic who took care of all of my family’s cars. He was an ornery old goat shifter, but he hated my family and we bonded over that when he caught me hiding in the garage. He was one of the few servants who never turned me in. When someone would finally show up to chew him out, he just kept working on the cars and told them that ‘keeping track of the brat’ was their job, not his.

“That crabby old bastard taught me everything I know about cars. But our time together was short, eventually the garage became the first place they looked when I disappeared. In the end, I realized the two most important things he taught me were his schedule, including the days he was allowed to go home to visit his family, and how to hot-wire a car. It took me a while to realize it, but he’d been practically handing me a key to freedom.”

“But you did not get away?” I concluded.

Declan laughed, then winced and clutched his injury. “Oh, I got away. Took the car the mechanic showed me, one they rarely used and probably wouldn’t notice was missing until he returned and had to report it, and then I casually drove off. The second I was out of sight, I slammed on the gas and flew toward freedom. But I was a pampered fourteen-year-old idiot who’d had drivers cart me around my whole life. What did I know about cops and speed limits? Red lights, sure, but the rest of it?” He shook his head with another laugh.

“Needless to say, it took no time at all before I was cornered by cops and arrested for fleeing and stealing the car. I told them I didn’t have parents when they took me in, but since the car I stole belonged to the Prescott estate, it didn’t take long for them to piece the whole situation together. Still, sitting in that cell was miles better than being home with my family and I was perfectly content to stay there. But when your family has as much money and power as mine does, it doesn’t take long for charges to get dropped. In the end, it was just another failed attempt and I had no one to blame but myself.”

“Pull over. I will drive the rest of the way.”

“What’s the point? I’m already here and I’m a great driver now. It’s not like I haven’t learned to watch for cops after that,” he informed me as he wove around every car he encountered on the busier streets now that morning was breaking.

“You are a nuisance on the road,” I informed him.

Declan let out an offended gasp and immediately winced. He’d been taking careful shallow breaths since he woke and breathing deeply still cause him pain. His expression smoothed out quickly in an attempt to hide his discomfort, and he forced a strained smile.

“Lies.” His tone reached for light, but his voice was raspier than it had been moments ago.

At least three people blared their horns at him as he wove through traffic again and I gave him a pointed look, which he steadfastly ignored.

“This is far enough,” I decided. “Pull off the highway and find a hotel. We’ll use the phone to call Eastbend.”

Declan cut across three lanes of traffic to take the next exit, earning another round of horns. He found a hotel only a few blocks from the exit and pulled into a space some distance from the entrance. I left them in the car to book a room. The clothes I was wearing in my human glamour were dark enough to hide the blood, but Declan still had a bloody hole through the middle of his shirt that left his wound exposed.

Thirty minutes later, Declan was settled in one of the beds and Rith was playing in the bathroom while I ditched the car in the back parking lot of a nearby diner with a few hundred dollars tucked away in the glove box. By the time I returned, Declan was holding the phone away from his ear while Ollie yelled at him from the other end.

I took the phone and Ollie calmed immediately, but her tone was still on edge when she questioned me. “The demon world? How the hell did you get back?”

“Declan got us home, but we’re in New Jersey close to the border of Delaware. Can someone pick us up?”

“ Declan got you back? Really?”

“We will explain everything when we return.”

“Okay, yeah, but it’ll take a few hours to get there. Or I can buy you plane tickets?”

Rith had moved on from playing in the water and was now examining his glamoured face in the mirror.

“We won’t be able to take a plane,” I told her. I had my documents, but I doubted Declan had brought his and flying home might be too much for Rith to handle if we could even get him through security without any kind of identification or custody documents.

I gave Ollie the address and she promised to send someone as soon as possible.

“Thanks for the save,” Declan said when the call ended.

I handed over two the bags I brought back with me. “It’ll be about five hours before anyone arrives. You should eat and get some rest.”

“Yeah, in a bit. First, we have to deal with the demon in the room. Rith? Come here.”

The demon looked away from the mirror and came to Declan’s side a little reluctantly, like he knew he was finally going to be scolded for coming through the gateway with us.

“Now that I’ve figured out how to use the artifact, we can use it to send you home if you want,” Declan started.

I clenched my jaw shut against the protest I wanted to voice. While the very thought of how he would activate that stone made me angry, what right did I have to tell the sorcerer what he could do now that we were back in his world?

Rith frowned. “Want to stay with you.”

Some of the tension in my shoulders eased and Declan nodded.

“I figured you’d say that. In that case, there are things you’ll need to learn about this world. First of all, always stay with one of us for now. Second, never tell anyone your real name or that you’re a demon. Keep that glamour charm on all the time, understand? And you’re going to need a new name to go by while you’re here.”

The two of them kept talking while I removed Declan’s ruined, bloody shirt and pulled out medical supplies I’d purchased to clean and bandage his wounds. Between those and the Fawn’s Willow moss, we should be able to stop the bleeding until Elliot could heal him. Deep cuts remained on his chest and back, still seeping blood, but not the way they had when he’d first been stabbed. The sorcerer was talking with Rith almost normally, but his breathing was still careful and he was pale and sweating from pain and blood loss. When his wounds were taken care of for the moment, I handed Declan a clean white t-shirt that he gingerly pulled over his head with Rith’s help while I stuffed the bloody shirt into an empty shopping bag to dispose of once we returned home.

Declan divided up the food while Rith settled on the new name of Seth. It was perhaps a little too similar to his original name, but with a summoning spell ‘close enough’ didn’t cut it, and Rith wasn’t willing to listen to any more names.

The demon made faces over the fast food like he couldn’t decide if he liked it or not, but he ate it since that was the only option at the moment. Declan chuckled at the demon, but then grimaced, clutching his chest again.

“Don’t worry, you’ll like Connor’s cooking much better.”

Once the food was gone and the immediate issues were taken care of, Rith… or rather, Seth and Declan finally settled down to rest.

“You’re not resting?” Declan asked when I took a seat at the small table while each of them took a bed.

“I will keep watch while you rest.”

Declan looked like he wanted to argue, but in the end he said nothing and turned off the lamp next to the bed. The two of them were exhausted after a day of working and the late battle that followed. Rith was an exceptionally fast learner, both with learning our language and his sword training. He’d mastered everything we taught quickly and asked for more. The child had significant potential and while Declan had agreed to let him stay, I was more than willing to accept him into my household to continue his training. Though, now that we were back within the reach of Declan’s family, it was probably best that I kept both of them with me for the time being.

The only problem was, I still had a mission to complete. I had originally intended to take Declan with me once we located the hunter’s headquarters so I could keep an eye on him. But now we had another life to worry about. Maybe keeping them both at my household in Faerie would be safer for the time being. But I wasn’t na?ve enough to think that Faerie was out of reach for the Prescott family.

I didn’t come to a final decision before Ollie and Elliot showed up and I let them inside the hotel room as Declan and Rith pulled themselves from the bed. Ollie’s eyes immediately went to Rith and her eyebrows inched up over her violet eyes.

“You… kidnapped someone? Is this another cousin Elliot didn’t know about?” But then she stepped closer and her head tipped curiously. “No, he doesn’t feel like a… cousin.” She’d stopped herself from saying sorcerer when she noted that Rith seemed human.

Rith shuffled a step closer to Declan, but lifted his chin as he answered. “Seth.”

Declan ruffled Rith’s hair. “Good job. It’s okay to tell these two, but no one else, understand?”

Rith shot him an unconvinced look, but he nodded, trusting Declan’s judgment.

“Why’s he going to you for protection, what are you going to do?” Ollie chuckled. “So Seth, where are you from?”

Rith answered with a word not from any human language and Ollie’s eyes widened.

“He’s a demon?” she guessed.

Declan frowned. “How did you get that from some place you’ve never heard of?”

“Because Ash, Zane and Jet have talked about their home world before,” Elliot answered. “Not all demons speak the same language, but it sounds similar enough to place.”

“Shit,” Ollie muttered. “Let’s get him home and do a binding spell.”

“No,” Declan answered firmly. “We’ll just hide him, why would he need to be bound?”

Ollie looked at him like he was an idiot. “Glamours are great, but who knows how many magic spells are out there that can find demons? What if a sorcerer or a hunter find him?”

“They won’t find him if we keep him hidden. He won’t want to be bound.”

“Maybe not, but it’s not safe to leave him unbound. You should have thought of this before you brought him back here!”

Ollie punctuated her argument with a hard poke to Declan’s chest and the sorcerer went pale as blood bloomed on his clean t-shirt. She’d hit him right in his stab wound and broke it open again. Ollie’s eyes went wide at the sight of the blood and she immediately reached for his shirt.

“What happened? Why didn’t you tell us you were hurt?”

“Just a scratch,” Declan said, though his voice was strained.

Elliot rushed forward, but Declan evaded his hands, putting the bed between him and his cousin as he inched toward the bathroom.

“I don’t need healing,” he said, though the growing bloodstain and sweat forming at his temples said otherwise.

“Declan!” Ollie growled. “Why are you always like this? Just let him heal you.”

“Nah, don’t waste your magic,” he answered, snatching up the bag of medical supplies and disappearing into the bathroom.

“He is the most stubborn jerk I have ever met!” Ollie snapped. “Why wouldn’t he just let you heal him and be done with it?”

She wasn’t wrong. Declan might act like he didn’t care about anything, but he was actually quite stubborn about the things that mattered to him. He could never have survived the things his family did to him if he wasn’t. And clearly the sorcerer didn’t want Ollie or his cousin to know what he’d done to himself, so he couldn’t let them see his wound and he couldn’t let Elliot heal him. The second the other sorcerer started searching the wound with his magic, he would discover the curse that had taken root so deeply.

Elliot was still staring at the bathroom door with a contemplative look. “Maybe it has something to do with his hatred of magic. Or maybe he just doesn’t trust me.”

That thought seemed to rile Ollie up even more and she started toward the bathroom looking like she was about to beat down the door.

I swiftly stepped between Ollie and the bathroom. “Even if his rejection is due to his mistrust in magic or his family, you cannot force your will on him. Do not take it personally, his issues are not with you.”

Ollie backed off, but gritted her teeth and forced a smile. “Fine. Then I’ll just help bandage him up so we can get going.”

She started toward the door again, but I stopped her once more. “I will take care of it.”

Before she could argue, I knocked on the door and told Declan to let me in. A second later, the door opened a few inches and Rith darted in before me, leaving Ollie and Elliot alone in the hotel room.