For a Few Demons More (11 page)

“Now over here,” Jenks said when he lifted into the air and dropped down at a new spot.

I played connect the dots, my lip finding its way between my teeth until a pentagram took up nearly the entire mirror. My back was feeling the strain, and I straightened. “Thanks, Jenks,” I said, and he lifted up, his complexion red.

“No prob,” he said as he went to sit on Ceri's shoulder.

“Now the symbols,” Ceri prompted, and I reached for the top triangle, being careful not to smear my other lines. “Not that one!” she exclaimed before the chalk could touch the glass, and I jumped. “The
lower left,” she added, smiling to soften her voice. “When you scribe, you want to rise clockwise.” She made a fist, her eyes going to the cheat sheet. “This one first.”

I glanced at the diagram, then the pentagram. Taking a breath, I held the chalk tighter.

“Just draw it, Rache,” Jenks complained, and as the hush of cars shushing against wet pavement soothed me, I sketched them all, my hand becoming more sure with each figure.

“As good as I,” Ceri praised, and I leaned back and let my breath slip from me.

Setting the chalk down, I shook out my hand. It was only a few figures, but my hand was starting to ache. I glanced at the yew, and Ceri nodded once. “It should etch the glass if you tap a line and let your aura slip into the glass,” she said, and my face scrunched up.

“Do I have to?” I asked, remembering the sinking, uncomfortable feeling of my aura stripping away. Then I looked over the church. “Shouldn't I be in a circle?”

Ceri's hair floated when she leaned to stack our plates up. “No. The mirror isn't going to take it all, just a slip of it. No harm in that.”

She seemed confident, but still…I didn't like losing any of my aura. And what if Minias showed up or called in the meantime?

“Oh, for the love of little green apples,” Ceri said darkly. “If it will make this any faster.”

I winced, feeling like a chicken, then jumped when she tapped the line out back and, with a word of muttered Latin, set a loose circle. Jenks's wings hit a still-higher pitch when the large bubble of black-coated ever-after shimmered into existence around us. Ceri was at the exact center, as was the way with undrawn circles, and I could feel the pressure of ever-after against my back. I scooted forward, and Jenks's wings hit a still-higher pitch. He finally settled himself on the table by the salt. I knew he didn't like being trapped, but after seeing Ceri's impatience, I decided Jenks was a big boy and could ask to be let out himself if it bothered him that much.

Ceri's circle was held with only her will, completely undrawn and entirely from her imagination. It wouldn't hold a demon, but all I wanted was something to keep nebulous influences out while my aura was not protecting my soul. Why ask for trouble? And with that in
mind, I earned a huff of indignation when I picked up the phone and took out the batteries. An incoming call could open an opportunistic path.

“You're not going to lose all your aura,” she said, moving our stacked plates aside.

Yeah, well, I felt better, and as much as I liked Ceri and respected her knowledge, I was going to fall back on my dad's admonishment never to practice high magic without a protection circle around you. Demon curses probably fell under that umbrella.

So it was with a lot more confidence that I plucked the makeshift stylus of yew from the table and tapped a line through Ceri's circle. The energy spilled in—warm, comforting, and a little too fast for my liking—and I tilted my head and cracked my neck to hide my unease. My chi seemed to hum, and my fingers about the yew cramped briefly. I flexed them, and a tingling ran from my center to my fingertips. I'd never felt anything like it before while spelling, but then I was drawing a curse.

“You okay?” Jenks asked, and I blinked, brushing my hair from my eyes and nodding.

“The line seems warm tonight,” I said, and Ceri's face went empty.

“Warm?” she questioned, and I shrugged. Her eyes grew distant in thought for a moment, and then she gestured to the chalk-marked scrying mirror.

My eyes fixed on the chalk lines, and with no hesitation I reached for the pentagram.

The stick of yew touched the glass resting on my lap, and with a shudder my aura pooled out of me like icy water. I gasped at the sensation, my head jerking up, my eyes finding Ceri's.

“Ceri!” Jenks shouted. “She's losing it! The damn thing just left her!”

The elf caught her alarm fast, but not so fast I didn't see it. “She's fine,” she said, getting up and fumbling for the chalk on the table. “Rachel, you're fine. Just sit tight. Don't move.”

Frightened, I did exactly that, listening to my heart pound as she drew a circle inside her original one and invoked the more secure barrier immediately. My smut-damaged aura had colored my reflection, and I tried not to look at it. The click of the chalk hitting the table was
loud, and Ceri sat across from me, her legs tucked under her and her back straight. “Continue,” she said, and I hesitated.

“That wasn't supposed to happen,” I said, and she met my eyes, a hint of shame in them.

“You're fine,” she said, looking away. “When I did this so I might screen Al's calls, I wasn't making such a deep connection. I erred in not making a secure circle. I'm sorry.”

It was hard for the proud elf to apologize, and, knowing that, I accepted it with no lingering feelings of “I told you so.” I didn't know what in hell I was doing, so it wasn't as if I could expect her to get it all right. But I was glad I had insisted on a circle. Very glad.

I turned my gaze back to the mirror, trying to keep my focus shallow so I wouldn't look at my reflection. I felt dizzy without my aura, unreal, and my stomach was knotting. The scent of burnt amber rose to tickle my nose as I drew the lines of containment, and I squinted, seeing the faint haze of smoke on both sides of the glass where the yew was burning the mirror. “It's supposed to do that, right?” I asked, and Ceri murmured something positive-sounding.

The red curtain of my loose hair blocked my view, but I heard her whisper something to Jenks, and the pixy flew to her. I shivered, feeling naked without my aura. I kept trying not to glance into the mirror as I scribed, the haze of my aura looking like a mist or glow around my dark shadow of a reflection. The once-cheerful pure gold color of my aura had been tainted with an overlaying black of demon smut.
Actually,
I thought as I finished the pentagram and started on the first of the symbols,
the black gives it more depth, almost like an aged patina.
Yeah, sure.

A rising of tingles cramped my hand as I finished the last symbol. Exhaling, I started on the inner circle, relying on the points of the pentagram to guide me. The haze of burning glass grew thicker, distorting my vision, but I knew the instant my starting point and ending point met.

My shoulders twisted when I felt a vibration chime through me, first in my extended aura in the mirror and then in me. The inner circle had been set, and it seemed to have been etched onto my aura by way of marking the glass.

Pulse quickening, I started on the second circle. This one, too, resonated upon completion, and I shivered when my aura started to leave
the scrying mirror, pulling the entire figure into me and carrying the curse with it.

“Salt it, Rachel. Before it burns you,” Ceri said urgently, and the white drawstring bag of sea salt edged into my tunnel vision.

My fingers fumbled at the ties, and I finally closed my eyes to make better progress that way. I felt disconnected. My aura was coming back painfully slowly, seeming to crawl over my skin and soak in layer by layer, burning. I had a feeling that if I didn't finish this before my aura came entirely back, it was really going to hurt.

The salt made a soft hush as it hit the glass, and I flinched at the feeling of unseen cold sand rasping against my skin. Not bothering to trace the patterns, I dumped it all, my heart pounding as the weight of it hitting the mirror seemed to make my chest heavy.

The bucket appeared at my feet and the wine at my knee—silently, unobtrusively. Hands shaking, I scrabbled for my big-ass symbolic knife, pricking my thumb and dropping three plops of red into the wine as Ceri's voice hovered at the edge of my awareness and told me what to do: whispering, guiding, instructing me how to move my hands, how to finish this thing before I passed out from the sensations.

The wine cascaded over the mirror, and a moan of relief slipped from me. It was as if I could feel the salt dissolve into the glass, bonding to it, sealing the power of the curse and quieting it. My entire body hummed, the salt in my blood echoing with the power, settling into new channels and going somnolent.

My fingers and soul were cold from the wine, and I shifted them, feeling the last of the gritty salt wash away.
“Ita prorsus,”
I said, repeating the words of invocation as Ceri gave them to me, but it wasn't until I touched my wine-wet finger to my tongue that it actually invoked.

The wave of demon smut rose from my work. Hell, I could see it looking like a black haze. Bowing my head, I took it—I didn't fight it, I took it—accepting it with a feeling of inevitability. It was as if a part of me had died, accepting that I couldn't be who I wanted, so I had to work at making who I was someone I could live with. My pulse jumped, then settled.

The air pressure shifted, and I felt Ceri's bubbles go down. From above us came the hint of a bell resonating in the belfry. The unheard vibrations pressed against my skin, and it was as if I could feel the curse imprinting itself on me in smaller, gentler waves, pushed by
sound waves so low they could only be felt. And then it was done, and the sensation was gone.

Inhaling, I focused on the wine-damp mirror in my hands. A glistening drop of red hung, then fell to echo in the salted wine inside the bucket. The mirror now reflected the world in a dark, wine-red hue, but that paled next to the double-circled pentagram before me, etched in a stunning crystalline perfection. It was absolutely beautiful, catching and reflecting the light in shades of crimson and silver, all glittery and faceted. “I did this?” I said in surprise, and looked up.

I blanched. Ceri was staring at me with her hands on her lap, Jenks on her shoulder. It wasn't that she looked scared, just really, really worried. I shifted my shoulders, feeling a light connection from my mind to my aura that hadn't been there before. Or perhaps I was more sensitive to it. “Does it get better?” I said, concerned by Ceri's lack of response.

“What?” she asked, and Jenks's wings blurred, sending a strand of her hair flying.

I glanced at the bucket of salted wine next to me—hardly remembering pouring it on the mirror—then set the glass on the table. My fingers parted from it, but it was as if I still felt it with me. “The feeling of connection?” I said uncomfortably.

“You can feel it?” Jenks squeaked, and Ceri shushed him, her eyebrows knitting together.

“I shouldn't?” I asked as I wiped my hands on a napkin, and Ceri looked away.

“I don't know,” she said softly, clearly thinking of something else. “Al never said.”

I was starting to feel more like myself. Jenks came forward, and I kept wiping my hands, dabbing the damp off. “You okay?” he asked, and I nodded, discarding the napkin and pulling my legs up to sit cross-legged. I tugged the mirror to sit atop my lap. It made me feel like I was in high school, playing with a Ouija board in someone's basement.

“I'm fine,” I said, trying to ignore the fact that I thought the white crystalline pattern I had made on the glass was absolutely beautiful. “Let's do this. I want to be able to sleep tonight.”

Ceri stirred, drawing my attention to her. Her angular features were drawn, and she looked frightened by a sudden thought. “Ah, Ra
chel,” she stammered, standing up. “Would you mind if we waited? Just until tomorrow?”

Oh, God. I did it wrong.
“What did I do?” I blurted, reddening.

“Nothing,” she rushed, reaching out but not touching me. “You're fine. But you just readjusted your aura, and you probably ought to go through an entire sun cycle to settle yourself before trying to use it. The calling circle, I mean.”

I looked at the mirror, then her. Ceri's face was unreadable. She was hiding her emotions, and doing a damn fine job of it. I'd done it wrong, and she was mad. She hadn't expected all my aura to slide off, but it had. “Crap,” I said, disgusted. “I did it wrong, didn't I?”

She shook her head, but she was gathering her stuff up to leave. “You did it correctly. I have to go. I have to check on something.”

I hurried to get up, knocking the table and almost spilling my glass of white wine when I set the mirror down. “Ceri, I'll do better next time. Really, I'm getting better at this. You've helped me so much already,” I said, but she stepped out of my reach, disguising it as swooping forward for her slippers. I froze, scared. She didn't want me to touch her. “What did I do?”

Slowly she halted, still not looking at me. Jenks hovered between us. Outside, I could hear the neighbors yelling friendly good-byes and a horn beeping. Reluctantly her eyes met mine. “Nothing,” she said. “I'm sure the reason your aura all spilled out was because your blood invoked it and not another demon's, as was in my case when I was bound to Al's account to field his calls for him. You need to let your aura settle in firmly before using the curse, is all. A day at least. Tomorrow night.”

I took in Jenks's worry. He had heard the lie in her voice, too. Either she was making up the reason my aura pooled out or she was lying about the need to wait to call Minias. One scared the crap out of me, and the other was just bewildering.
She doesn't want to touch me?

She turned to go, and I glanced at the calling circle, beautiful and innocent-looking on my coffee table, reflecting the world in a wine-stained hue. “Wait, Ceri. What if he calls tonight?”