Page 13 of The Demon’s Due (Bedeviled #5)

Opening portals here in HQ or inside Sach’s and my apartment wouldn’t work because of the mezuzah wards, so Ezra traipsed downstairs to the bottom of the underground parking lot, which wasn’t warded.

It was a more private place for him to practice than in the alley behind our home, which was where we’d ultimately depart from, since Sach had to get the cowboy hat that Burning Eddie had gifted her.

Sachie and I intended to follow, but the garage was outside the calculated safe zone of the thrall, and I had to discover the effects of Ezra breaching that.

Ezra stayed on the phone with Sachie, slowly making his way down each level.

The tightness in my chest grew stronger, sweat running between my shoulder blades, and my head throbbing to the point of my teeth hurting.

By level P2, my vision was a blurry pinprick, but I insisted on pushing the limit a bit more. Halfway to P3, pain shot up my left arm, my breathing shallow.

Sachie called it and Ezra blurred back up to P1.

Weirdly, the second he was back in range, all my symptoms vanished. I didn’t have any lingering effects, not even fatigue.

According to my boyfriend, he hadn’t even sensed he’d breached the safety zone until I’d freaked out.

Sach glared at me.

Ezra was now two stairwells ahead of us, going back to the lower level of the parking garage.

“I still don’t regret thralling him,” I said. “And this valuable data will help keep me safe.”

P4 smelled like trapped exhaust and mildew, but there weren’t many cars. No operatives willingly parked down here, and visitor parking was up on P1.

Ezra was stationed in a far corner, practicing the portal.

I unzipped my coat. “It occurred to me that while I didn’t feed off Ezra when we thralled, I did feel his magic inside me. Surely I’ve gained some new ability from that.”

Sachie’s stare grew flatter. Impressive.

She shook her head and wandered over to Ezra.

I tried to tear the elevator sign off the wall, but I didn’t suddenly possess superstrength, nor could I hear conversations on other levels.

Lowering my expectations, I attempted to illuminate Ezra’s weaknesses with my blue flame sight. After all, that was possible when I was in Babel. Was it so unreasonable that I’d be granted that one power?

Apparently, yes, it was. I still couldn’t illuminate vampire weaknesses, not even when I tried in Cherry Bomb form.

“Avi.” Sachie waved me over.

The air thickened and hummed, resisting Ezra’s magic as if he was trying to part honey rather than empty space, but a portal slowly materialized. It was made of the same dark light woven into a mesh net as all the portals from the Hell.

I leaned forward on the balls of my feet.

Its edges wavered, threatening to unravel.

“Come on,” Sachie whispered.

For a heart-stopping moment, the black netting grew so thin I could barely see it, leaving only the faintest web of shadows. Then the portal pulled taut and held, its center crystallizing into a stable, though delicate, gateway.

A heaviness settled behind my eyes, and I suppressed a sudden yawn. “Got a protein bar?” I murmured.

Sach dug one out of her coat pocket and slapped it in my hand.

Ezra busted out a pleased smile. “I only crossed the city with it, but not bad for a first attempt.” He waved a hand and the portal disappeared.

While he practiced, I dealt with the increasingly panicked texts from my mom, my friends, and even Maud, from my time in the Brink.

Even with the ordeals I’d recently faced, in some ways I’d been lucky.

Most of the time I’d been too busy trying to survive and able to keep my fears about Ezra to a dull roar.

That hadn’t been the case for the others.

The vamp problems hadn’t started until after the Brink blew up, which meant they’d worried about me for two days.

I swallowed the last third of the peanut buttery lump and texted Maud, relieved when she immediately replied back.

I promised we’d have a longer catch-up soon.

As I scrolled through the rest of the messages, I found a few from Orly.

The first one asked where Ezra was, since he always messaged her back quickly, with follow-ups demanding I check in with her as well.

“Call your cousin,” I told Ezra. “She’s worried sick. Also, she wants you to know that yarn is on sale at the place in Toronto you like.”

“We already spoke before I joined your meeting, but check this out,” he said with a huge grin. He moved his fingers like he was playing chords on a piano, moving the dark strands of varying thickness that were woven into the mesh netting.

“Pretty.”

“It’s not a party trick, Aviva,” he said with much more hauteur than the moment warranted. “I’m manipulating magical forces in an entirely new way.”

Sach looked up from her phone and elbowed me. “Bad girlfriend.”

“Think of it as bandwidth in a network,” Ezra said. “When I create thicker strands, larger objects or more entities can pass through my portal, while thinner ones limit the flow.” He practically bounced up and down. “Magic knitting.”

I smiled at the giant nerd. “Very cool. Should we find ourselves on a speeding bus needing a magic exit, you’ve got our backs.”

“Or”—he glared at me—“I can cast off the thread, so to speak, and prevent others from following.”

“Yeah, that’s more useful,” Sachie agreed. “How far have you gotten?”

“I’ve made a portal as far as the Gander airport in Newfoundland. It’s tricky because I have to have been where I’m going. I tried creating one to Notre-Dame Basilica in Montreal, but I’d only seen photos, so it didn’t work.”

She waved her phone at us. “I’ve got something to take care of upstairs, so let me know when you’ve nailed this, and I’ll drive us home to portal.”

“Copy that,” I said. “Can you grab the bag you brought me earlier?”

“Will do.” Sach left.

I sat down on someone’s trunk with another yawn.

Ezra hovered nervously around me. “Could we top up the thrall?”

I tried to keep the surprise off my face that he required it this soon. But he had been exerting himself and those bruises—the remnants of Rukhsana’s magic—were still present. Some of the purply black might have faded into yellow but that also might have been the lighting down here.

Was my battery power flushing her magic out of his system or simply keeping it at bay?

“It’s a lot to ask,” he said, “but I can’t portal all three of us directly to Burning Eddie’s and expect to have any strength left over. I’d rather not be vulnerable.”

Would this add another two or three more days to our current thrall effect timeframe?

“Yeah, of course.” No point risking Ezra powering down mid-portal, and it hadn’t been too harsh a process for me. A couple more protein bars wouldn’t hurt though.

I glanced around the parking garage one more time to ensure no one was around, then he fed.

The first time I’d thralled him, at least I’d blissed out a bit from it. Not now. There was a mild enjoyable pull on my end, and I felt his magic for a moment, but that was about it.

Yet the gentle brush of his shoulder against mine sent electricity dancing across my skin like summer lightning, leaving me breathless and wondering if it was this amazing for him—and fuck, that was the thrall, wasn’t it?

I scowled.

“Thank you for rethralling me.” He smiled.

I pressed my hands to my heart. “Is that active verb usage I hear? Half a point for the Prime.”

“Tough judge,” he joked.

My gash healed almost as quickly as his. “Do you mind avoiding the Hell a little longer?”

For all that I disparaged Ezra playing Lord of the Copper Hell, he took pride in how he ran the casino and had turned it into a well-oiled machine.

“No.” He shook out his hands. “Let me get back to work.”

There were a few misfires, including a splash of Atlantic Ocean seawater from the portal that sent me searching same-day delivery lifejackets, and Ezra stopped at one point while the parkade got busy, but it wasn’t long before he announced he’d stabilized a portal directly from here to the foot of Burning Eddie’s driveway. No Copper Hell transit point required.

I texted Sach we were ready to go, then sprinted up a few levels to where her car was parked. Sadly, I was no faster, I couldn’t leapfrog an SUV, and I almost crashed into someone’s car door because I didn’t hear it opening over the electrical hum in the parkade.

This was the second time I’d sensed his magic inside me while he fed, yet I still had bupkis in the way of enhancements. Was the thrall really just the one-way street that Darsh and Silas had warned me about?

“To be fair,” Ezra said after beating me in less than a second in the arm-wrestling contest I’d demanded, “it’s not like I’m feeling any bump in my powers.”

I shook out my hand. “Boo-hoo. You’re already a Prime. And you’re opening portals outside of the Hell, you big liar.”

“I’m sure something will kick in for you,” he said.

“No, you aren’t.”

“I hope something will?”

“I know you do. Hey, Sach.” I waved at my friend’s approach.

We spent the drive home discussing strategies over the rhythmic swipe of the windshield wipers. Sachie and Ezra sketched out Eddie’s property, including any known boobytraps, so we weren’t blindsided by flaming arrows or something.

The safest route was via the front door. Sach and I proposed that Ezra stay out of sight but within thrall range until Eddie allowed us in.

My boyfriend presented a reasonable counterargument to that strategy (i.e. pitched a fit about insane ideas) but our logic convinced him. (We wore him down until he gave in.)

The plan was to dump our stuff in the condo and then head down to the alley for Ezra to portal us, but in the elevator, Sach and I got a text from Darsh telling us to tune into a local news broadcast.

We raced into our place and turned on the TV.