Page 14

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O nce I dragged my demon around the twisted wreckage of my dad’s greenhouse, the magicals who’d come to our aid during the attack came into view, their silhouettes against the yellows and oranges of fire consuming my house both heartening and eerie. Griffith had arrived just in time, with a small contingent of battle mages the guild boss had intended to watch our backs, but no one, including Griffith, had believed the assassination attempt would come so swiftly after testing. The mayhem and destruction weren’t his fault, and it certainly wasn’t Clara’s, who stared at my burning home with unwavering focus as she worked her magic to summon and direct water to quench the flames collapsing the north corner of my roof.

The fault was mine. And Jae’s.

We’d known an attack was coming. We should’ve been better prepared.

“Leave the kitchen,” my demon said, clutching onto me with fierce determination despite the whispery faintness of his gasping voice.

When he pushed images into my head of what he had in mind, I shouted to the mages fighting the inferno eating my house. “He needs fire to heal.” I stumble-lurched past the others and picked a cautious path up the back porch stairs. The deck of the porch dipped, unstable under my bare toes. The blond oak bled into scorched wood as, panting, we neared the kitchen door which hung askew.

Two water mages and an air mage, who magicked oxygen from the fire’s greedy maw in ungentle gusts, directed their attention to the south end of the house. But I could see the cause was lost. “Be quick,” Skip said, crouching next to Griffith from the yard. “The house could collapse any minute.”

This is far enough. Jae forced a tight smile. “I am impervious to flame,” he said, his gaze darting to the red blossoming on my irritated skin from the explosive heat. “You are not.”

I ducked under his arm, leaning him against the doorjamb. “Remember, both quartzes, hematite…” I flinched at a crackling crash followed by a burst of sparks, signaling another section of my house caving in. “Never mind. Get the black tourmaline. It’s vital. Collecting the other crystals will take time we can’t afford, but they are replaceable. That chunk of black tourmaline is special. You know which crystal I mean?”

“Issa. I will find your rocks.” Jae grinned, his pain and exhaustion clear in the darkness of his eyes, where no red glimmered. “You go.”

My mind knew this fire was what my demon needed, but my screaming instincts told my head to fuck off, so turning to hurry from the smoky back porch was more difficult than fleeing the obvious peril should’ve been. My feet dragged. Chest heaving, I coughed as clouds of hot ash choked me, but despite that, I had to force myself away.

Once Jae slipped inside, that house contained everything that had ever mattered to me…and the house was dying.

My stomach plummeted once my toes dug into the mud at the bottom of the porch steps. I’d been singularly focused on reaching the house on my trek from the ruined greenhouse, set on guiding my demon to the fire he needed. I had noticed little else, but with Jae staggering around my burning kitchen to soak up the heat and flames that strengthened him, at last I could make room in my head for the catastrophe otherwise around me.

Griffith bent over a long pile of rags, wispy smoke rising as the white glow of the guild boss’s odd magic lit up hands grasping the tatters in bunches. But the charred lump wasn’t rags. I knew it wasn’t. Rags wouldn’t grab at his father with desperate, ash-streaked fingers trailing ribbons of burned skin.

Pulse roaring in my ears, I dropped to my knees next to Griffith and stared at Finnegan, afraid to touch what was left of him, the terror that I’d hurt him worse riding me hard. He looked…done. His coppery hair was mostly gone, only odd clumps of it kinking in singed coils near his bizarrely uninjured ear. The other ear appeared melted, the wet glisten of goo dripping from the damaged lobe. Firelight flickered on blisters where his eyebrows should’ve been, highlighting a long furrow bisecting his cheek that oozed a thin yellow pus. One shattered lens of his glasses had embedded into his cheek, but the other lens, the frame…gone.

The agony-filled eyes that focused on me were Finnegan’s, though, the same dark chocolate as his dad’s and despite the lashes having been burned away, I wondered why I hadn’t noticed the resemblance before—I’d looked into those same eyes wearing the affectionate stare of my godfather my entire life. “You’re going to be okay,” I told my roomie, my voice cracking on the lie.

A quick glance showed me the rest of Finnegan was just as bad or worse. What my brain had identified as rags? As clothing? Most of his clothes had burned away. What was left of him was skin sloughing off him, only the boots on his feet and the bottom hem of denim blue jeans recognizable. Sick, scared, I hovered, droplets from the water that had drowned me in the fight slipping from my chin and onto the charred meat of his stomach. “Is he…” I turned to ask Griffith. To beg him.

Finnegan was only seventeen. He couldn’t die.

As bad as this was for me, Finnegan’s agony was worse for the guild boss who had discovered his son late in life and had never been able to claim him as his own. Entire worlds of misery shone in his stare, in the tight press of his mouth and the bob of his Adam’s apple as he gulped. He shook his head, reckless power flowing from him and into his mortally injured son. “No,” he said, tone stubborn but no less aching. “We can bring him back. I’ve seen others survive worse.”

Not often, his transparent anguish said. And not the same as the person the grievously wounded had been before.

I startled, realizing I could help. Shaking, I reached into the pocket of my shorts, fumbling for the fifth tincture, and jumped again when Finnegan’s hand flew to vise over my wrist with a strength and speed that wrenched a gasp from my lips. When my glance rushed to meet his, he glared at me.

Glared.

Dude was fucking dying, struggling to inflate his chest to breathe his last gasp, and he glowered at me? What the hell?

Frantic hope and devastation and grief, the sweaty tangled knot of emotion roiling inside me had shut off the little restraint I’d scraped together for my spying roomie these last few days, all of that evaporated, I spoke what was in my head for once. “What the fuck, man.”

Cracked, bloody lips curved at one corner. “Is for the array,” he said on a pained slur.

I shook off his grip. Too easily. The strength he’d mustered to stop my clumsy grope for the tincture bottle was all he’d had remaining. My fingers wrapped around that bottle. “He made plenty.” I scowled at Finnegan. “It’ll help ease the pain.”

When I pulled the tincture from my pocket, I checked Griffith, who poured still more of his own weird power into the charred crisp of his son. The guild boss nodded. “Only a few drops.” His jaw clenched. “He’s a lousy fire mage, but he is a fire mage. The damage looks worse than it is. He’ll heal from burn injuries faster, but he’ll hurt the same as mages with every other elemental magic.”

All I needed to know. I jammed my thumb against the cork and flicked it free with a loud pop. With no dropper to measure a precise dose, I covered the narrow opening with the pad of my finger and upended the bottle to wet the tip. Whipping the tincture upright, I concentrated on my finger to confirm I’d captured a little of the magical brew, and then I dangled that finger over Finnegan’s mouth.

“Fine.” He cursed, voice tight. “Do it.”

Naturally, the tincture was as thick as tar. Whatever base my dad had cooked, fermented, or done what the fuckever with to absorb the magical properties of the ingredients into this elixir had condensed to a gooey syrup. And I’d thought measuring out vetiver essential oil as a kid was a trial of patience? At least a friend hadn’t lain dying, too weak to writhe in what must’ve been terrible agony, while I waited for the viscous fluid to gather and drop.

Black as death, the tincture splashed Finnegan’s gritted teeth.

Two unhurried droplets later, his muscles loosened, and the misery glittering in his stare lessened by degrees.

By the time my clumsy search for the cork to reseal the slender amber bottle yielded success, Finnegan was gratifyingly stoned. “Dad? I can hear colors,” he said, and I laughed, tears wetting my eyes.

“You’ve got some shitty timing, kid,” Griffith said, exertion of the magic he continued to pour into Finnegan etching his face in harsh lines. “But you’re going to be okay. Right as rain. Try to sleep.”

Returning the tincture to my pocket, I smothered my happy snort as best I could. “He’s drugged. Technically, I don’t think recognizing you as his father right now counts.”

Griffith scowled at me. “Shut up.”

“Does count,” Finnegan said on a mumble. Then he passed out, which didn’t lend confidence to the intentionality of his declaration and, in magic, intention was all. Intention meant everything.

Skip limped to us, banged up, seeping blood from gashes and pricks from flying glass, some of which still sparkled and glimmered from his skin, hair, and clothes. “We trapped one of them.”

Griffith’s eyebrow arched, and his spine stiffened in surprise. “Alive?”

“Sort of.” The grin Skip summoned chilled me to the core. “Wanna talk to him?”

“Yes,” I said, pushing to my feet.

Waving at healers who arrived in a Towpath SUV that had off-roaded around the burning shell of my house to reach us in the backyard, the guild boss grunted. He, too, stood. “Wait your turn.”

Interrogating the prisoner ended up more of a challenge than I’d guessed.

He was encased in granite.

When Griffith had selected the team of Towpath battle mages to guard me, he’d chosen my keepers with a broad range of power. No telling what attacks or weaponized magic they risked facing. So, he’d picked a mage from each element to fill the teams Griffith meant to rotate on eight-hour shifts until my danger lessened.

An earth mage had discovered and trapped this guy.

Shoulder to shoulder, I stalked with Griffith to the boulder now occupying my driveway and the short wisp of a brunette next to it who kind of resembled my old kindergarten teacher. Looks deceived, though. I whistled low, impressed at the solid hunk of rock. “I didn’t know earth mages could manifest rock.” None of the earth mages I’d friended as a kid could. “Not like this.”

Griffith gestured to the brunette. “Tracy’s a level ten. She can melt rock, too.”

A shout resonated from deep within the boulder.

The lady flashed an evil grin. “Want to see?”

Excellent. “I don’t know,” I said on a considering drawl as we came to a halt in front of the chest high stone. Vindictive amusement spiked through me when I spotted the first joints of four fingers poking out of the granite. “Can you melt enough of the boulder so we can talk to him without killing him too quickly?”

The fingers flexed in stiff alarm.

“Nah,” Griffith said, tone ripe with malignant satisfaction. “We don’t need him to talk. Mike!”

When I furrowed my brow in question, Griffith shrugged. “He was in the group who met you four on your way through town this morning. Minor telepath.”

“I’m a mediocre telepath, thank you very much,” a skinny kid with spiky blue hair and a nose ring who looked like he was maybe sixteen said, then glared at me. “And I’m twenty-three, pal. That’s older than you.”

“We don’t have much time.” Griffith waved at the boulder.

“Oh yeah. Right.” Mike rolled his shoulders and glanced at the boulder. “Merc.”

“We know he’s a hired gun.” The guild boss rolled his eyes. “The info we need is who paid him.”

The telepath closed his eyes. His lips moved, though no sound slipped from him. Then his eyes widened, and he pivoted to gape at me. “You’re a Chicago Mace? The consortium of level ten druids up north? Those Maces?”

“God damn it, hell, stank ass, shit, cunty bitch.” Next to me, Griffith pitched his head to the sky and roared. “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck!”

“Right?” Tracy studied me up and down, her disappointment transparent in her moue of disapproval. “David is practically royalty, and he isn’t even wearing shoes. I’ve seen runaways fresh off one of the trails pouring into Cumberland who dress better.” She wrinkled her nose. “Smell better, too.”

The guild boss scrubbed his eyes with his hand. “Not helping.”

The mage inside the boulder screamed shrilly.

“This,” I said, waving helplessly to the burning house, “was Teddy’s family? My grandparents? Aunts, uncles, and cousins?” I shifted my bewildered appeal from Griffith to the earth mage, to the telepath, then back to Griffith, but no clue from any of them gave me the slightest hint why my father’s estranged family had rushed to kill me. “But Teddy and Rosie cut off contract with both their families when they moved south. I’ve never met these people.”

Mike patted my shoulder. “Sorry, bud. You’re a loose end.”

“I’ve been a loose end for, oh,” I said, checking the non-existent smart watch on my wrist, “twenty-one years now.”

“You weren’t a druid before. You weren’t binding a demon, either.” Griffith’s pained grimace stirred the hair at my nape. “When you were a half-mundane embarrassment, they could ignore you. Pretend you didn’t exist. When state and national media splashed you and Jae across the daily news, they couldn’t maintain their illusion of indifference anymore. Making their move now, while you and your demon are loosely bound to one another, was the wisest strategy. For everyone. Not just Teddy’s killers, but the Maces, too.”

“Is there anyone—anyone at all—on the East Coast who isn’t trying to kill me?” I pinched the bridge of my nose, frustration eating at me like acid. “All right. Tell me this. Has word leaked about Dad’s grimoire?”

“No, I’ve kept that under wraps. I didn’t even tell Bea you gained access to the greenhouse to retrieve it.” Griffith gestured at the house, which at least wasn’t burning as intensely. “I know where you’re going with this. If possessing the grimoire was common knowledge, no one would be more motivated to eliminate you as a threat, including your dad’s kin. But the Maces were as surprised by his death as anyone, had nothing to do with it. Believe me. I checked. No evidence linked his family to Teddy’s murder.”

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend, though.” My brow furrowed in thought. “Could my loving grandparents have joined forces with Dad’s killers?”

Griffith shook his head. “The faults of the Chicago Maces are legion, but they would never, ever be associated with the trafficking of magical beings or their parts. Not a chance. They’d believe themselves above crimes they deemed so sordid.”

I gawped at the guild boss. “My dad’s murderers trafficked in magical beings?”

The guild boss winced. “Mostly parts of magical beings. Dragon scales, demon heartstring, phoenix feathers, and fairy dust. Wendigo blood, hair, and bones can fetch a premium on the black market if sourced properly.” He jerked a taut shoulder. “Teddy was on the trail of a ring operating in the Appalachians when he was killed.”

Because the reason the police had never recovered my father’s head and heart was now painfully obvious to me, I cringed, and the gallons of water I’d swallowed while trying not to drown during the attack pushed nauseatingly up my gullet. Swallowing foul bile, I gulped. “It wasn’t them then.”

Griffith hugged my neck. “The Maces didn’t kill your dad.” He glanced around. “But that doesn’t mean they aren’t dangerous.”

The Chicago Maces hadn’t sought to chop me into pieces and auction my heart or brain on the black market. They just wanted me dead. I laughed, the sound lacking genuine amusement. “This is it. Too much. I need to get out of here.”

I leaped what felt like twenty feet when fat chunks of crystal as big as my clenched fist plopped to the earth at my feet, including the black tourmaline. Finnegan’s overstuffed backpack, only partially singed, landed next to the stones. Jae vibrated with fury beside me, Skip’s arm captured in his grasp. “The traitor is too damaged to join us, but the imp must come.”

Skip waved, then bent to grab the backpack and sling it over a shoulder with a surprised grunt. “Hi. You ready?”

My demon looked so much better, astonishingly sturdy considering he hadn’t been able to walk under his own power minutes ago. His skin, which had faded to a dusky gray, shone as dark as the night that was falling now that the sun had dipped under the mountain horizon. Battle scars mapped his arms, legs, and torso, but the wounds had knitted. His eyes had regained flaring red glints, too. Jae wasn’t in prime condition, but my burning house had returned much of his power.

Griffith must have agreed because he nodded. “You’ve enough magic to portal?”

“Issa.”

“I’m fine, too. Thanks for asking,” Skip said.

Ignoring my familiar, the guild boss dug into a front pocket of his blue jeans and, after muttering an incantation into the speaker, he handed his phone to me. “It’ll recognize your magical signature to unlock.”

Stupefied, I blinked at him.

“What? I need a way to contact you,” Griffith said on a gruff growl.

Reeling, I stared at him and then his phone cradled in my palm. “But how will I call you?”

“Finnegan’s number.” He grimaced when I glanced at the ruins of my house, where Finnegan’s smartphone must have melted into a useless metal lump. “I’ll figure it out. Just use his cell number to reach me. He’s in my contacts under Evil Spawn.”

“He isn’t evil. Just devious.” Skip hummed in disapproval. “You, of all people, should comprehend the difference.”

I bent to retrieve the stones we needed for the first layer of Teddy’s array from the dirt while they argued. “Whatever. We gotta go.” I reached for my demon, halting stingy inches from his waiting hand. “You’ll let me know,” I said to Griffith. “About Finnegan.”

The guild boss nodded. “When I know, you’ll know.”

“Okay.” I threaded my demon’s clawed fingers with mine. “Do it.”

“Anywhere?” Jae cocked an eyebrow at me. “You trust me that much.”

“Not daemonica . He won’t survive that realm,” Skip said, clasping tight to my demon’s other hand. “You barely did.”

“Issa,” I said to answer my demon. “I trust you.”

The gods and goddesses knew I couldn’t trust anyone else. “Wait.” I held up my palm to inhale and take one last look at my childhood home. Mages still poured water on the roof, some of which had tumbled in. Most of the flames had died under the onslaught, but looking through the charred front windows, I could make out bright sparks in the smoldering living room.

I hadn’t appreciated it enough.

Instead of avoiding the painful memories, I should’ve come home sooner.

No chance for that now, but I’d had my fill of bitterness and regrets. One day, if I survived this, I’d return to rake through the burned-out wreckage for mementos of my boyhood and the family I’d lost. I’d rebuild.

Today, though, I had to leave the tattered, smoking remnants of my past behind me and hope, with my demon’s help, to find safety. And a future.

No more looking back.

“All right,” I said to Jae. “I’m ready.”

This time, I held my breath so when we popped into a narrow clearing carpeted with dry leaves and twigs in the middle of the woods, I didn’t collapse or wheeze. I shook my head, ears ringing from the pressure and depressurization too soon after my first portaling from the Towpath to my now-destroyed home.

Jae dropped to his knees, though. The demon shook, the well of his power drained to nothing. When Skip released Jae’s hand and let Finnegan’s backpack drop to the ground with a groan, I anchored my fingers more firmly in my demon’s grasp. “Siphon my magic. I can pull up power from the earth. I’ll be fine.”

With a malevolent glare, my demon sneered at me. “No. A bone fire will satisfy my needs.”

“You’re too weak. Your translation sigil is working for shit.”

“Keeping you both alive this long is surely proof of miracles from the Generous and Loving Anand.” Skip planted his hands on his hips and stretched his back. “You.” He pointed at me. “Get naked and spread out on the ground. The more of your skin that touches the ground, the better.” He stabbed a finger at Jae next. “And you. Tap into whatever strength he has left until I get a campfire burning.”

My uneasy glance took in the deepening darkness as night fell in the mountains. From overhead, the flicker and glow would be seen for miles. “Any fire will make us a target.”

My familiar waved away my concern. “The Goddess will hide us from your enemies.”

I was too damn tired to argue with him so, what the hell. Anand, take the wheel.

Rather than pursue the argument, I yanked my wet tank top over my head. When I shoved my shorts over my ass to finish stripping off the little clothing I wore, dad’s grimoire landed in the high grasses spearing above the layer of leaf litter. If Skip’s goddess liked me enough to send a familiar? Fine. She could intervene to keep me alive tonight, too.

“Hey,” Skip objected, already gathering twigs and dry moss for kindling. “Be careful with the grimoire. We need that.”

Ignoring him, I sprawled on the ground and let the day’s heat trapped in the earth bake into my sore muscles. Every part of me hurt. Patches of hair on my legs had kinked from the fire when the house blew up. The soles of my feet throbbed—I’d spend hours picking slivers of glass out of them tonight if I wanted to walk tomorrow. Skip’s body had shielded most of me from the greenhouse’s explosion, but cuts and blisters still canvased my left forearm, a dire warning of the injuries I would’ve sustained had he not tossed me to the ground and covered my body, barring my wounded forearm, with his own. When I heard the click of a lighter, I turned my head and narrowed my eyes on Skip. “You took more damage from the greenhouse than I did. Why aren’t you in a coma?”

My familiar sat cross-legged next to a crude circle he’d stripped of dried leaves and twigs. Jae curled into a ball of misery beside him. “The Goddess healed me.”

My brow furrowed. “Could she heal him?” I gestured to Jae. At Skip’s sniff of contempt, I hastened to add, “Not completely. Just a little?”

“The Beauteous and Magnificent Anand does not abide demons.”

Jae grunted. “You mean your goddess has no authority over those belonging to the true and only god of demons, Pazzuza.”

Skip squawked in outrage.

I winced and glowered at Jae. “Can you not, please?”

Rather than listening to them bicker and bitch, I tuned them out. If they killed each other, fine. Two less problems for me to deal with. Instead, I focused on the buzzing insects and the low hoot of a waking owl. With my heartbeat steadying and the jasmine-like scent of wild phlox surrounding me, I connected with this land, wherever we were, and the earth responded. Far beneath us, deep in the topsoil and burrowing down to the water table below, magic surged toward me in an enervating flood.

Though physical touch wasn’t required, I reached out for Jae. “You don’t need fire. Let me.”

That he didn’t mouth off or grouse about my human weakness and stupidity was a valid measure of how severely today’s string of disasters had depleted him, but the tentative stretch of his hand toward mine was…nice. For once, the scrape of his claws on my fingers didn’t inspire a quick shudder or roll my stomach with fear. He suffered. I could help and wanted to help him, not because strengthening Jae would improve the likelihood I’d continue to draw breath, though a demon protector at his full power would keep me alive longer. I just couldn’t stand watching him hurt anymore, not when power coursed up from the ground and into me, filling me up in a wild, electric tingle. I wanted Jae to feel that too, to share this with him.

The spark of red that ignited in his midnight eyes showed the magic of this place surged into him as fast—or faster—than any fire. “Where are we?” I asked, almost a whisper so sacred did this magic come to me and from me, to him.

“Oh, couldn’t you tell? You worked so much, I thought you’d recognize the woods in and around the botanical garden.” Skip stabbed at the growing flames of his campfire. “We’re inside the nexus.”