Diana Read online

  Geez.

  He’d managed the hermit thing so well for so long. What did she think she was doing?

  “You should pick it up, now,” she said.

  “People can contact me if they want to,” Carter said, walking past to go to his room.

  “No,” she said. “Right now. You should pick it up.”

  It rang.

  He turned and she flicked an eyebrow at him.

  Fine. It was a pretty good party trick.

  He answered.

  “I have your answer,” an old woman said, then hung up.

  “Bella?” he asked, putting the phone in his pocket. Abby nodded. He pulled his mouth to the side in a grimace, then shrugged. What had to be done had to be done.

  “There’s a demon waiting downstairs to drive you,” Abby said.

  “Show off,” he answered. She beamed and went to go sit on the couch, her eyes going vacant the moment her body hit the cushions. Off looking for the bauble.

  He took the elevator down and found Trigger, one of Nuri’s bound messengers and errand boys.

  “Short straw?” Carter asked, going to the box of keys and picking a set at random.

  “Not even close,” Trigger said, lazy, leaning against a wall and waiting until the last second for Carter to throw the keys at him to catch them and glitch into the car.

  Carter got into the back seat and gave Trigger the address. Trigger hissed softly and Carter smiled to himself. At least he was forcing a demon to go hang out in a gypsy neighborhood.

  “One day someone’s going to exterminate them, and no one is ever going to miss them,” Trigger said.

  “I’d say the same thing about you, and look how well you’ve done,” Carter said.

  He looked out the window, wondering for a moment what Bella had to tell him. The demon who had splashed Justin’s family had some odd power signatures that he’d left in their blood, and with demons, odd could mean a lot of things. Their history, hellside, left a mark on them, gave them patterns and preferences that they weren’t always conscious of, as well as magical auras that imprinted on things, particularly blood, indelibly. The gypsy woman would have magical ways of teasing out information about it that Carter didn’t know, but if it had taken this long, the results were either really esoteric or really important, and she’d taken the opportunity to react before she told him about them.

  Or it had just been really, really hard, and he was about to get quite a bill.

  Trigger dropped him off at the curb and drove away. Carter hit the cement walking even as the door closed behind him, pushing open the door to Bella’s shop to the sound of bells. The shop remained empty for a few minutes, and he picked up a green rock with purple crystal growing off of it, feeling a moment of vertigo as it drained the magic off of him. He almost dropped it on the floor, but a raw discipline hard earned from his time hellside kept the crystal in his hand. He wasn’t sure if it was an illusion or real, but it was like holding a canyon in his palm. He felt… human in a way he hadn’t in a long time, and he felt the sword on his back like a hot whip, still charged with a magic disconnected from him and intense, potent. His.

  “How does it work?” he asked, turning to look at Bella, who was eying him with a quiet insightfulness that suited her. She closed one eye, then shifted her hips to move around the counter, drawing a thick deck of cards out of her apron pocket. Tarot.

  “Take a card,” she said. He set the crystal down, his sense of self rebounding to where it had been moments before, and he crossed his arms.

  “I don’t play games,” he said. She watched him, hard, through her eyebrows, then her mouth gave a little shrug and she drew the blue stone out of her pocket and put it on the counter.

  “Good luck,” she said, turning away.

  He bit his lip hard, angry, then shook his head.

  “Fine.”

  She swung and held out the deck again. He drew a long card out of the stack and her hand followed, holding it face-down so that neither of them could see it and guiding his hand over to the counter. She pressed his palm down over it, then offered him the deck again. He used his other hand to draw another card, and she guided this one in the same fashion over to the counter, putting the deck away and walking around the counter to stand opposite him, her hands over top of his.

  “Do you believe?” she asked.

  “No,” he said, rolling his jaw to the side and blinking at her once. He looked down at her hands. He didn’t like her touching him.

  “You know the secrets of heaven and hell,” she said. “Does it matter if you believe?”

  He brought his eyes up to look into hers.

  “No,” he finally said. She gave him a firm nod.

  “What is, is,” she said, moving his hands and turning both cards out.

  “The chariot and strength,” she said, looking at him again. He raised an eyebrow. There was a stirring in the wrinkles under her eyes that suggested a smile. He sighed.

  “You’re going to make me ask,” he said. She nodded, once, low.

  “What does it mean?” he asked.

  “Look at them,” she said. He rolled his eyes, then dropped onto his elbows to look at the pictures.

  The dude on the chariot had a huge sword and a pair of goats, one black, one white. He could identify with that. The strength card had a woman holding a lion’s mouth closed with an expression that suggested gentle reprimand. He looked at Bella again.

  “Is this a joke?” he asked. “I don’t play games.”

  “Neither do I,” she said. “What do you see?”

  “Dude with pecs and a sword, and a chick with a lion,” he said.

  Bella didn’t look amused. Carter didn’t look amused right back at her.

  “Do you know anyone who carries a sword?” she asked.

  “You want me to identify with pictures,” he said. “I’m not a child.”

  She shook her head.

  “The child is more important than you think,” she said.

  “She isn’t a child,” he said. Not anymore. As often as he thought of her like that, it simply wasn’t true. Bella nodded.

  “Strength comes in many forms,” she said, picking up the cards. He sighed.

  “They’re just cards with truisms on them,” he said. “Tell me about the blood.”

  “There’s power in something that’s always true,” Bella said, reaching over and drawing the blue stone across the glass with a faint screech so it sat in between them. “Tell me about what happened, this day.”

  “That’s your job,” Carter answered. “That’s a fortune-teller’s trick, and you’re better than that.”

  She smiled.

  “If you know I’m better than that, then you won’t mind telling me.”

  He narrowed his eyes.

  “People died.”

  She leaned on her elbows.

  “More.”

  “People that mattered to me.”

  She shifted to one side.

  “They say no one matters to you.”

  “No they don’t,” Carter said, turning so he could lean with his hip against the glass display. She grinned.

  “No they don’t.” She sucked on a tooth and looked at the blue stone. “Tell me more, Carter.”

  “Sam’s fiance,” he said, feeling a thick darkness in his voice as he said it. Bella gave him a sad, knowing look and put her hand over the stone.

  “I spoke to a niece who is gifted with blue gypsum,” she said. “The heat it gives off…” Her eyes came up to look at him again. “Gypsum likes power. Light power and dark power alike, it feeds on them and it vibrates with them. I couldn’t tell you whether an angel or a demon did this, but you already know that. What I can tell you is that the power here is…” her fingers closed, containing the stone in her palm. “This is a powerful demon.”

  “I could have told you that,” Carter said. “Powerful or stupid are the only kinds that come a
fter me sideways like this.”

  “You think this is about you?” Bella asked. He gave her a false smile.

  “What isn’t?”

  She nodded. He’d expected more of a reprimand than that.

  “You’re looking for a power demon,” she said. “One who likes to eat raw fish, who has replaced his two top incisors with gold, and who wears an African ancestry. He is a wolf, one who likes to consume things while their hearts still beat, who prefers to take prey on the run, and who knows he has great strength and has an instinct for creating fear.”

  She turned her hand over and opened her fingers, and Carter looked at the stone for a minute before he picked it up and put it into his pocket. For the hassle, she was worth it every time.

  “What do I owe you?” he asked.

  She gave him a number in the low thousands, and he paid it in cash out of another pocket, then straightened.

  “Well, it’s not a lot to go on…”

  “Get out, or I’ll make you draw another card,” she said. He twisted his mouth to the side and looked around the shop again. So many secrets.

  He walked to the curb and waited. Less than a minute later, a car pulled across oncoming traffic and stopped next to him. He got in.

  “I’m going to tell Sam you did that,” he threatened. Trigger made a dismissive noise, then ignored him.

  Fish.

  It was insanely detailed, but right on the verge of useless.

  He had things to do, now.

  It was another two days before Samantha got back. She found him sitting at the counter stools, crouched over a glass tray, watching a highly-tuned hybrid chemical-magical reaction through a magnifying glass. Samantha had watched him do this one once before and threatened to get him a microscope, and he’d mocked her for it. Now he wished he’d let her do it.

  “Well, that was interesting,” she said, throwing a bag into her room and coming back to sit next to him. He turned his head.

  “Feel better?”

  “You were right about Singapore,” she said, “but that was the best library I’ve ever seen. He had Nuri beat.”

  He nodded. That wasn’t surprising.

  Green flame and the scent of burned… tar. He needed to review his scents. It had been too long since he’d used them.

  He put his hands on the glass, feeling the energy there, a careful interaction of his magic with the magic in the blood, each picking at the other, finding shape, behavior, strengths, weaknesses. After he was done, he would burn the entire preparation in magnesium; if he could learn from this, the demon could, too, just by putting his hands on it.

  He looked over at Samantha, finding that she was watching him.

  “I met him,” she said.

  “Couldn’t care less,” he answered. She nodded.

  When he looked over again, she was drawing on a piece of paper, circles and arcs, things with wings.

  In the end, obnoxiously enough, his lead only got him so far. Fish was a better clue than he’d realized; with some digging he found that there was a cult of demons that devoured the flesh of things that lived in water, which had some appropriate symbolisms in it. There’s no water in hell.

  The Platta cult had risen and fallen long before Carter had gotten himself stranded hellside, and had very few remarkable characteristics, particularly ones that the hellside demons would remember. They’d had a small renaissance earthside after a number of them had crossed, but the complex earthside politics had scattered them pretty quickly, and it had taken a consult with several different demons to even find someone who remembered them. Ozy hadn’t been able to tell him much, but he had had a few ideas where to look - they were coastal dwellers and liked to haunt fishwarves and buy directly off the boats, when they could. If there was a demon in New York who had been Platta, he had probably been to the docks.

  The rest of the next step came from Marvin, Samantha’s new best friend. Carter found the two of them in the back lot, sitting on a section of clear dirt, talking about New York politics and magic.

  “What up, chicken butt?” Marvin asked.

  Samantha looked away, her hand starting toward her mouth and then freezing.

  Carter was stunned to the point that it took him a second to recover and actually answer.

  “I think…” he said, straining himself to keep from stuttering, “that may be the first time anyone has ever used that salutation with me.”

  “What’s your take on it?” Marvin asked. “What’s freakier, daytime or nighttime demons?”

  Carter looked at Samantha, mentally erasing Marvin from existence. Tempting as it was to ash the insubordinate creature where he sat, Carter sensed that would draw physical conflict with Samantha, and he wasn’t in the mood.

  “As much fun as it’s been keeping Abby on a constant watch for a black man with two gold teeth near the docks, it’s time to move on.”

  “Which teeth?” a gnat buzzed in his ear.

  Samantha glanced over at the empty spot, waiting to see if Carter would answer it, then laughed to herself and stood.

  “What have you got in mind?” she asked.

  “I’m going to mix traps and I want you to take them down to the docks.”

  “Which teeth?” the gnat asked again.

  “You’re just hoping he’s going to walk through them and tell you where he is?” Samantha asked.

  “I could leave you standing there, instead, and let you watch for him,” Carter said.

  “I’m willing,” Samantha said. “I just hope there’s a plan B.”

  “Are they these two?” the gnat asked. Odd, a gnat having teeth.

  Samantha looked at the empty space.

  “Yes,” she said. “You know him?”

  “That’s Tiber,” the gnat said. Samantha cast a glance at Carter, but seemed to predict he wouldn’t do anything about it.

  “Who is he?” Samantha asked.

  “Bully,” the gnat said. “Likes to take things and not pay for them because he’s the biggest, baddest demon who ever lived. You’re hunting him down, I’m happy to help.”

  “We know he’s powerful,” Samantha said.

  “Wait, why are you looking for him?” the gnat asked.

  “This is about Justin,” Samantha told him.

  And then the empty space was actually empty.

  Carter raised an eyebrow, and Samantha tipped her head.

  “Wonder what that’s about,” she said.

  “How did he get here?” Carter asked. “He shouldn’t be able to do that.”

  “I let him in,” Samantha said. They both understood that they weren’t talking about opening the front gate.

  “You shouldn’t be able to do that,” Carter said. She gave him a catch-me-if-you-can little smile.

  “You want me to go find him and figure out what he knows, I assume,” she said.

  “You let him in,” Carter said. “He called me chicken butt.”

  “Yeah, I’ll see if I can’t get him to not do that again,” Samantha said, brushing off her clothes. “I like him.”

  “He’s a demon,” Carter said.

  “He’s nice to me and he’s funny,” Samantha said.

  “Is that all it takes?” Carter asked. “You’re cheaper than I thought.”

  “You just don’t like that he gave you a lead,” Samantha said.

  That was true, so he didn’t deny it. They started in toward the building, and Carter looked over his shoulder.

  “Where’s my hellsgate?”

  “It’s on backorder,” Samantha said.

  “He’s making you cheeky,” Carter said.

  “And we don’t tolerate a sense of humor other than yours,” Samantha said, her voice mocking and low.

  “They’re coming tomorrow to rip off the back of the building,” he said. She looked up at the bricks overhead.

  “Failing is that bad?” she asked.

  “I just don’t want you
interrupting me sleeping when you blow up the block,” he answered. “Get to work. You don’t have enough to do if you’ve got time to sit in the dirt and tell stories with the miscreant.”

  She laughed.

  “He’s got your number and you can’t stand it.”

  Once again, he couldn’t argue with that, so he didn’t say anything at all.

  He spent several hours the next morning watching demons scaling up and down the back of the building in harnesses and hardhats. Despite the fact that most of the work they were doing was magical, they did have to physically reinforce the building, and that was visible from any of the neighboring buildings, so they had to put on a good show. He’d helped design a number of the spells and potions they’d be putting in, particularly around windows, and he’d check their work later in the day after they finished their union-limited hours and gone home. He didn’t honestly expect Samantha to blow herself up, as meticulous as she was, but he hadn’t made it this far in life planning only for the things that were likely.

  After, he took the subway to Tolemny’s shop. He hadn’t been able to find Samantha, and her new attitude, between Singapore and Marvin, was unnerving him. He didn’t want to get Trigger tied up in this because, while the kid was bound to Nuri, there was no telling what loopholes he had in his contract to talk to other demons, and Carter didn’t want news of a new sword getting out into the demon community until he’d surprised at least a few of them with it.

  What was the fun of having a new toy unless people weren’t prepared for it?

  Besides, there were speculators out there who would use the fact that he was in the market to drive up prices on the margin. He’d gotten caught in that one before.

  Divan made the correct afraid face when he saw Carter, and then Carter let himself into the back room where Tolemny was working.

  “Morning,” he said when the demon pretended not to notice him.

  “I don’t have anything for you, Carter,” Tolemny said. “I told you I’d be in touch.”

  “Did you?” Carter asked. “My memory is fuzzy. Who have you talked to?”

  “So you can go around me for a better price?” Tolemny asked. “No.”