Demons in My Driveway (22 page)

Our djinn had transformed into a flapper.

I smiled. “Pretty.”

She smiled back and dumped the cups into the sink.

It made sense. Kam had escaped her master for a time back in the 1920s, and by all accounts, had a great time until he caught up with her. Now that she was missing a gem, there was no reason to save up her magic. Plus, after what she’d been through, she deserved a new outfit.

A thump sounded from the roof, then the back door opened. Darius stood in his human form looking especially serious and dire. “You’d all better come look outside.”

I took a deep breath. “Let me guess. The evening’s expected portal is already here.”

He glanced past me to my mom. “Try five of them.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Five portals sparkled in the late afternoon sun, spaced out around the front of the house and stretching toward the woods.
Five.

Nothing had come out of any of them yet, so that was a good sign. Also a good sign: I didn’t hear any humming or chanting, so the religious guests hadn’t arrived yet.

As the group of us stood slack-jawed on the front porch, two more portals popped into existence.

I swiveled my head back and forth from the portals to the rest of my friends and family. “Guys, whoever’s doing this can’t be far away, right? Spread out. Those who are most vulnerable, try to stay in the ring, but we have to find who’s opening these portals before they crack the code or whatever. With this many portals open, the zombie world can’t be far from opening.”

They scattered. Maurice headed straight for the woods, and by the look on his face, I think he was more concerned with the safety of the people living that way.

Darius kissed my mother, then climbed the porch railing and onto the roof for a bird’s-eye view.

“I’ll look for cultists. I’m sure they’re on their way.” Kam took off down the driveway.

I pulled out my phone. “I’m calling for backup. We need everyone here. I think this is it.”

“Wait.” Sara put her golden hand on my shoulder. “I’m going to look inside the portals. See where they go.”

I frowned. “Do you know how dangerous that is? You’re going in blind. Anything could be standing on the other side.”

“I have a feeling I’m more resilient than I used to be.” Her voice was laced with irony.

I rubbed my face with my palm. “Hold on, at least. Give me a minute.”

I typed a frantic text message into my demonic cell phone.

Seven portals open here. HELP!

I hit send and handed it to my mom. “Hang on to this.” I handed my real phone to her as well. “And call Andrew and Daniel, please. They need to know what’s going on. But tell them to stay put until we call for them! I don’t want my healers getting hurt in the crossfire.”

I stomped down the steps with Sara.

“Zoey, wait!” Mom ran after me and threw her arms around me. “Be careful.” She whispered in my ear, then let go and backed away. Her face showed how frightened and worried she was, but she didn’t ask me to stay behind with her.

She didn’t ask me to be someone I wasn’t.

Then her face changed. I only saw it for a moment. The fear and worry evaporated, leaving her expression blank, her eyes unfocused.

And then
I
saw nothing. Blackness spun around me. I tried to reach out for Sara. I knew she was right next to me, but my arms didn’t move. Or maybe they did, but I couldn’t feel them.

I couldn’t feel anything.

A tiny spark ignited in front of me, then went out. It lit a second time, caught and grew into a great blaze that gave off no heat. A figure stood before me—a moving shadow, small and round, but had no other discerning qualities than that.

The rush of wings was familiar from the last time darkness had swallowed me like this. I might have been frightened, but the figure gave off no animosity, only a deep weariness, heavy with time and wisdom. This was an ancient thing that wanted to help, and I was small and young and ignorant in comparison.

“Curator,” it whispered in my ear. “Ablaze.”

The figure dissolved and the whooshing of wings increased, then faded away. Light returned and I stood next to Sara, watching my mother’s eyes blink back to life.

“Curator ablaze,” she said.

I nodded. “Me, too.”

Sara scowled. “Another secret Aegis vision?”

I scratched an itch on my head. “It doesn’t make any damn sense.”

“Neither does this,” Sara said. She pulled an enormous, colorful feather from my hair. It was far longer than my hair had room to hide, as if she were a magician pulling flowers out of a hanky or Mary Poppins pulling a tall lamp out of a short carpetbag.

“What the...” Mom pulled a similarly impossible feather out of her shirt. If we hadn’t been in the middle of a dangerous situation, it would have been comedic watching her pull and pull with the feather going on forever.

I handed her my feather to add to the collection. “I don’t know who’s sending us these ridiculously obscure clues, but until they speak in full sentences, I can’t do a damn thing about it.” I kissed her cheek. “I’ll be back.”

The portals, of course, were all outside the safety zone, since the magic of the ring kept even an insider from opening a portal within its boundaries. But they were damn close to the edge. Each portal had maybe two feet of space between itself and the barrier. Anything coming out would smack into it if it came out at a run. After watching the aswang test the strength of the field a few nights ago, I wasn’t feeling as secure as I had been. The fairies had kept the aswang from breaking through. Did that mean without their intervention, the aswang eventually would have made it?

I shuddered. The local fairy tribe was large, but not large enough to keep out seven aswangs at the same time, should they all come flying out at once.

Sara and I approached the portal on the far right. It hung in the air with no visible support, its surface rippling like a puddle of quicksilver.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” I gave Sara a worried look. “If this goes wrong, you could be fried on entry. Or be attacked the minute you cross. Something.”

She gave me a half smile. “Let me do this. Don’t let this awful thing that’s happened to me go to waste. I need to do
something
.”

I understood. Everything about Sara—externally, anyway—had been changed without her choosing it. She wanted the change to have meaning. Nobody knew what was on the other side of those portals. What if the zombies were already coming? Better to be proactive and find out. Sitting there waiting wasn’t doing us any good. I nodded. “I’ll be right here.”

She stepped toward the portal and stuck her fingertips through the shimmering surface. Nothing grabbed her, and her hand didn’t get torn off, so she sent her arm through and waited. Nothing happened.

Sara stepped through the portal and disappeared.

My heart banged against my ribs, and my breath came in short, shallow bursts. A minute went by. Two. I stepped forward to go after her.

Sara stumbled out, her odd, silver hair disheveled and golden eyes blinking. “Well,” she said. “So,
that
happened.” She plucked a piece of what looked like straw from her hair, then smoothed her sweater. Mud caked her shoes and the bottoms of her pants. Dark splotches spattered her thighs and arms.

“What the hell did you walk into?”

She patted her hair in a fruitless attempt at taming it. “Pigpen. I walked into a damn pigpen.”

I bit my lip to keep from laughing. “You stepped through a magical portal to another world and ended up in a muddy pigpen? Were the pigs at least green or furry?”

She gave me the stink-eye. “No, they were just pigs. I saw a village in the distance with smoke rising into the sky, but there weren’t any people around. I came back so you wouldn’t worry.”

I’d been worried. Hell, I’d almost gone in after her. I struck a casual pose. “I wasn’t worried.”

Sara didn’t seem convinced. Fooling her had always been next to impossible. “Well, nothing dangerous seems to be coming out of there. Not for the moment, anyway.” She tried again to smooth her hair and smacked her hand against one of her horns. “Dammit.” She winced and shook her hand to get rid of the pain. “That’ll take getting used to.”

We picked our way across the grass to the next portal. “Don’t get cocky,” I said. “Just because the last one was deserted doesn’t mean this one won’t be.”

“Yes, Mom.” She squared her shoulders and stepped through the portal.

Within seconds, she backed out, laughing and holding her hands up, as if someone had her at gunpoint.

I grabbed her by the elbows before she tripped over me. “What did you get this time?”

She spun around, still laughing. Her gold cheeks were darker than the rest of her face. “I can, without a doubt, tell you that portal leads to the werefolk.”

“You saw someone?”

She laughed. “Let’s just say, I now know they don’t necessarily do it doggy style.”

My eyes grew wide. “No! You walked in on somebody?”

She nodded. “My guess was goat people, but mostly all I saw was his tail flick back and forth and her hooves up over his back. And the bleating. Oh, the bleating! It was so loud.”

“Oh. God.” I would need brain bleach to get rid of the picture she’d described.

“Yeah.” She took a deep breath and blew it out. “Okay. Third time’s the charm, right? Maybe this time I’ll find out something useful.”

“Well, that last one was sort of useful. We know where it leads, at least.” I grinned and raised my eyebrows.

“They weren’t in the mood to help us, though. One more.” She marched ahead of me across the yard and didn’t hesitate before stepping into the third portal.

Movement from the portal Sara had vacated a moment earlier snagged my attention. The portal folded in on itself and disappeared. On the other side of the yard, another portal did the same.

Panicked, I ran toward the one Sara had gone into. Before I crossed those few feet, the portal folded up and winked out.

Horror stricken, I stood with my hands up in protest, unable to squeak an objection. Sara was gone. I didn’t know what world she’d gone to. I didn’t know if she was in danger.

I didn’t know how to get her back.

One by one, all the portals closed, leaving me stranded in our world and Sara imprisoned in another.

And I had no idea which one of us was in the worst danger.

* * *

I didn’t receive a text back from Talia, and it finally occurred to me that I’d never received one from her since she gave me the phone. Not once. This led me to wonder if maybe she didn’t have a phone of her own, but instead used fancy demon mojo to collect the message from me, then came to talk about it in person. This time, however, she didn’t respond right away.

In fact, once the seven portals winked out, no others took their places. One at a time, my friends reported in, having found no sign of anyone who could have opened the portals in the first place.

Riley and Maurice came back, exhausted from beating bushes and running an ever-widening circle around the property. Having found nothing but a greasy McDonald’s bag stuck to a neighbor’s fence and a crusty sweat sock half buried at the end of my driveway, they’d given up.

Maurice didn’t stick around for long. I explained what happened to Sara, and he blew up. “You let her go inside one of those things?”

I flinched. Guilt was already eating me alive. “I didn’t
let
her, exactly.”

Maurice scowled. “Both of you are crazy.” He ran a hand over the top of his head, causing the sparse hairs there to wave in the breeze as he paced. After several trips to the porch and back, he stopped and threw his arms in the air. “I can’t even look for her! What am I supposed to do?”

He didn’t wait for an answer, stomping up the steps and into the house. I expected a soufflé or some other complicated dish to come out with him later. Unfortunately, I probably wouldn’t get any. I was in the doghouse.

I totally deserved it. I could have done something to stop her. I didn’t know what, but something.

Riley stood by, a sympathetic look on his face. “She’ll turn up. You’ll see. Sara’s tough.” I brushed the hair out of my eyes. “And so is Kam. We’ll find out who’s behind this.”

I tried to clear my head of my guilt and fear. The sooner we figured this out, the sooner we’d all be safe. I hoped. “What about Marcus?” It seemed a stretch that Marcus was also a priest and had flown in to replace Lionel.

A stretch. But not impossible.

“I checked.” Riley dropped onto a porch step, pulling me with him, and slipped his arm around my waist, as if we’d never broken up. “He was in his tent, sleeping. I poked at him and he got mad. If it was him, I don’t see how he could have done it, anyway. Not from inside the circle.”

I leaned in closer, absorbing the warmth of his body and breathing in the familiar, comforting smell of him. “Still, I’d feel better if we could keep an eye on him without his knowing it.”

Gris leaped from the windowsill. “I can do it. If he’s sleeping, I can slip in there and hide. I’m small enough to stay out of sight.”

“I don’t know, Gris.” I wasn’t crazy about the idea. Even if Marcus wasn’t the bastard behind everything that was going on, he was still a garden-variety bastard. If he caught Gris spying on him, what might he do to him? I shook my head. “We’re already down two people. I can’t lose you, too.”

The miniature golem crossed his ankles and leaned against the silver napkin holder Maurice had recently acquired. “Listen, I know it’s dangerous. Everyone’s in danger right now, whether they act or not. I might as well be of some use. If the end comes, I don’t want to have my nose buried in stereo instructions. Let me contribute.”

I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead. “I suppose. Just...just be careful, okay?”

He grinned. “I’m always careful.” He hopped off the table to a chair, then to the floor. “Besides. You know me. I can talk my way out of it if I get caught.”

He blew me a kiss, then disappeared into the house through a doggy door Maurice had installed for our smaller guests.

I groaned. “I hate this.”

Riley smoothed the curls down my back. “He’ll be okay. I don’t trust Marcus. Somebody has to keep close tabs on him.”

The more I thought about it, the less likely it seemed that Marcus could be involved. If he were trying to bring about the end of the world, he wouldn’t be planning to take over the U.S. Board of Hidden Affairs. What would be the point?

That didn’t mean I trusted him. He was still an asshole.

I glanced at the driveway, empty of portals, and my heart squeezed. “We have to get Sara back.” I covered my face with my hands and mumbled through my fingers. “Anything could be happening to her.”

Riley pressed his lips against my hair. “It’s going to be okay, Zoey. We’re going to fix this. We always do.”

I truly wanted to believe that. I cleared my throat and pulled myself together. “We need to go outside and watch for portals.”