Kindling the Moon (27 page)

Fascinated, I continued to touch both horns gingerly, as if he were a goat in a petting zoo. When he made a small noise, I became self-conscious. “Sorry,” I mumbled and drew my hand away. Nostrils wide, he gave me a mischievous smile that sent a flutter through my chest.

My face and neck flushed as I laughed nervously, suddenly realizing that the horns and gilded halo were only physical. How could I have forgotten? He could
hear
me now. Not just my emotions but my thoughts.
Everything.

I froze, trying not to think about anything at all. That plan shattered almost immediately; the more I tried to empty my mind, the worse it got. A vortex of random images and thoughts swirled in my brain.
Don't think about the time you slept with that skanky delivery guy who worked at Thai Garden, or
when you threw up on the middle couch cushion and just wiped it off and flipped it over, or …

My eye twitched as panic fired through my chest. Was he seeing all this roiling around in my head, like Dorothy watching her family being swept up in the tornado?

“Slow down,” he said. “I can only read surface thoughts.”

“If that's true, then why did you just tell me to slow down?”

“I can still hear your emotions, remember?”

Oh. That's right. Crud. Was nothing safe? I was going to be sick.

“You're not going to be sick,” he insisted.

“Oh,
God
.”

“Please, Arcadia. I really need to you to be okay with this. I know it's hard to accept, but I won't betray anything I might hear in your head.”

“I know that,” I grumbled, “it's just … I'm a private person. I'm not used to sharing anything with anyone. Emotions are one thing, but this is different. I don't want you to see something that might embarrass me.”

“I've seen all kinds of shit in people's heads. Believe me, there's nothing you could think that I haven't already heard somewhere else.”

I cringed. “Seen it all, huh? You're like an OB-GYN of the mind-reading world?”

He snorted a laugh. And, surprisingly, that made me smile. I took a few breaths and tried to come to terms with this more invasive side of his knack. As long as he couldn't poke around in my memories—

“We've already done a spell for that.”

I stomped my foot. “Goddammit!”

“Well, we
have
.”

Ugh. This was more difficult than I expected. I grappled with the magnitude of his ability for a long moment while he waited in silence, watching me. Finally, I said, “Okay, I'll get used to it eventually. Just try not to pry, and don't judge me. Be nice.” I folded my arms and looked him over once more. Damn. He was a demon. I mean, I knew that, obviously, but no getting around it now. “Do you have a tail or scales under your clothes?” I asked.

He chuckled softly and shook his head. “Would that make a difference? Is there something you draw the line at?”

Okay, I felt silly now. He was still Lon. Just with horns, that's all. Right?

Oh, crap. I was dating a demon. Me—a magician. What would my parents say? They wouldn't be all that thrilled about it, I knew that much. But maybe I didn't care. Was that bad?

I really liked Lon. He'd saved my life when that Pareba demon was attacking me, and he was helping me save my parents. He'd used up his police favor and was getting my memories back for me. He put up the ward around my house and helped me deal with Riley. Who does all that for someone they've known only a couple of weeks? Demon or not, he was a good person. And on top of it all, he was smart and thoughtful. Funny, even, especially for a curmudgeon. We had a lot in common. Okay, and he was damn fine to look at, even now, like this. His halo was oddly beautiful, and in a weird way that I couldn't really justify, the horns were kinda sexy.

“Well, shit,” he said softly, shaking me out of my thoughts. “Now I don't know why I was so worried.”

“Let's not get cocky.” I twisted up my mouth to hold back a smile.

His big hand enveloped mine as he grinned back at me. Then he tilted his head toward the door. His halo left a trail of flames in the night air as he moved. “Ready?” he asked. And I guessed that I was.

He knocked twice at the cave entrance. One of the windows darkened, then a door swung inward. A burst of sound and smoky red light illuminated the doorway as a tall man stuck his head out; his neck was wider than my waist.

“Mr. Butler, nice to see you. It's been a while.” He opened the door wider in invitation; my eyes dropped to the gun strapped to his side.

“I'm sure you've managed without me.” Lon herded me inside, past the beefy doorman, who shut the door behind us without saying another word.

We meandered through a narrow tunnel strung with white lights. After a few sharp turns, it ended and opened into an enormous cavern. The low, rounded ceiling was populated with stalactites hanging only a few feet above our heads, but the room extended in all directions, as big as a gymnasium. Strings of grapefruit-sized globe lights illuminated everything with a crimson glow while casting deep, ominous shadows in dark corners.

Rock walls, eroded with holes and crevices, divided the room into smaller sections; each of these areas was covered in throw rugs and dotted with intimate groupings of antique armchairs and sofas. And between these lounging zones, the jagged stone skeleton of the cave wove around small pools of water.

It smelled of damp stone, stale cigarettes, and alcohol. Another low-note scent mingled below those, spicy and herbal, and it rose like incense in a soft haze from metal braziers that swung from the ceiling.

A long, uplit bar carved from stone stood against one wall, a couple dozen stone and leather seats lining the front of it. Heavy red velvet curtains hung toward the back of the cavern, blocking two dim passageways. Three long, wooden banquet tables surrounded by red tufted Louis XIV dining chairs sat in front of a medieval tapestry woven with Bosch-worthy scenes of debauchery and near-comical torture.

An opera reverberated softly around the space, competing with the hundred or more Earthbounds who were laughing and talking throughout the cavern. Dressed to the nines, they were drinking and smoking, clustering among life-size stone statues of Æthyric demons with curling horns and tails, massive wings, and muscular torsos; some were quite beautiful and seductive, others were menacing.

My eyes trailed around the room. Trays of beautiful bites of food and flutes of sparkling wine circulated through the crowds, carried by voluptuous women and men wearing togas or pleated Egyptian shendyt kilts. The fabrics were white and sheer; they might as well have been wearing nothing at all. I did my best not to stare.

I was used to seeing halos in the bar, but not nearly as many as I saw now. Earthbounds, all of them. And in the mass of green and blue, it was easy to spot the transmutated ones. Golden flames sprang from the horned heads of a middle-aged man at the bar, an elderly man on a couch, and a tall, young woman who was fondling a much younger, possibly teenage, boy sitting on her lap.

“This is the ballroom,” Lon said in my ear, as I caught a glimpse of several transparent imps milling under the stools around the bar. “Things get worse in the back rooms and the grotto.” I lifted an eyebrow and he added, “Don't use your full name. I don't want these people bothering you later.” I
glanced at a long-haired man pissing in a dark corner against one of the cave walls; I was pretty sure I didn't want them bothering me later either.

Another fiery-haloed man approached us with outstretched arms. In his seventies, perhaps, he had short, gray hair and drooping wrinkles below his eyes. He was dressed in a black three-piece suit with a red tie. His horns were short, knobby, and ashy-looking, not half as lovely as Lon's imposing spirals.

“Lon,” the elderly man purred as he enthusiastically shook his hand. “Two years is too long. Your father, rest his soul, would be glad to know you've returned to the fold.”

Lon acknowledged these comments with a brief nod. “David.”

David's gaze lit on me. He was stoned out of his mind. Through slitted eyes, he looked me over from bottom to top, then jerked his head in surprise when he spied my halo. “Well, now. Who is this, son?”

“This is … Cady. Cady, David. He's one of the original members of the Hellfire Club.”

“Cady? Charmed. Delighted … and quite surprised.” Bringing my hand to his lips, he flipped it over, smelled my wrist, and planted a lingering kiss that radiated a strange heat up my arm. “Lon always had excellent taste in women.”

Lon wrangled my hand away from David and slid a shoulder in front of mine, blocking David's access to me. “No,” he commanded. By the tone of his voice, I could tell that he really meant to say “Mine.” Frankly, I wasn't offended. Especially under the circumstances.

David pursed his lips and frowned, then moved his head to look around Lon. “My apologies,” he told me. “We're not used to seeing Lon with anyone significant since Yvonne. How is she, by the way? Still in Miami?”

Lon grunted an affirmation.

“She was a little much to handle, even for my tastes. Passion without joy is
so
draining. Shame we didn't recognize that before, well, you know.” He shrugged and looked up at my halo again. “May I ask about you? I've never seen anything like it. Have you undergone some sort of initiation elsewhere? Where are you from?” He squinted his eyes at me in curiosity.

“No, it's natural,” I said with a light smile. “I'm from the city. Morella, I mean.”

“Natural, eh? What kind of demon are you, chickadee?”

As he spoke, I began to feel lightheaded. Why? I glanced around us. Everyone was either drunk or high. Manic laughter, roaming hands, comatose stares, stumbling gaits. If they were in Tambuku, I'd be worried about a fight breaking out any minute. Well, what did I expect? Hellfire Club, duh.

“Something regal and quite special, I'd guess,” David continued babbling. “Higher echelon. Can you trace your blood-line back to the Roanoke colonists? Or maybe descended from one of the strays that popped up during the Middle Ages?”

“Not Roanoke, no. My family is originally from Europe,” I said. That was true enough, but I certainly wasn't going to offer up anything more.

“Fascinating,” he said before waving his hand toward the bar. “Would you like anything? Wine? Food? Drugs? Please, come meet the others and tell me more about your ancestry.” He tried to move around Lon, but he wasn't budging.

People were starting to stare and murmur, mostly at me. I was used to being the only human in a room. Days often elapsed in Tambuku without another human in sight. I was also accustomed to Earthbounds staring at my halo, so I wasn't sure why it made me so uncomfortable all the sudden. Perhaps because they were all eyeing me like a piece of meat …

“We need to speak with Spooner,” Lon said. “Is he here yet?”

“Oh, yes. He's here. A little indisposed at the moment back in one of the gypsum rooms. I'm sure he'd love company, if you two would care to join him.”

“It can wait,” Lon said.

David shrugged as if it were our loss, then turned to me. “What's your knack, dear?”

I smiled. “You first. What's yours?”

“Temperature control.” The air around my legs warmed considerably. That explained the earlier heat from the wrist kiss. It felt pretty good, admittedly. The cave was cool and damp and I regretted not bringing a sweater.

“David,” Lon scolded.

“Pooh.” The gray-haired man frowned in disappointment and the heat faded. “Let me get you both drinks and find the others. I'll be right back.”

He sauntered off, swaying a little as he walked. I took a step and swayed myself. Then I eyed the braziers. “What the hell am I inhaling?” I whispered.

“Ketynal.”

He gave me a questioning look, but I knew exactly what he was talking about. Ketynal is a mixture of two powdered roots, one of which grows only on a couple of islands in the Philippines. That particular root is expensive and hard to come by, but I use it in one of my medicinals as a calming agent. However, when combined with the second root, it synergizes to create a compound that gets you buzzed and lowers inhibitions.

“Try not to get too close to the braziers,” he warned.

Too fucking late for that.

We spent almost an hour in the smoky ballroom rubbing elbows with various members of the inner circle, The Thirteen as they called themselves. To my dismay, I was left unattended for a small chunk of time and fell prey to David again, along with a couple of city councilmen who tried to grab my ass, and an heiress in her fifties who did. I had to get out of this place before things got worse.

After all the freaking out I'd done earlier about Lon's enhanced abilities, I genuinely hoped that he was monitoring me now.
Distress signal!
I thought.
Mobbed by smarmy demons trying to cop a feel … where the hell are you?
I had no idea how well he could hear my thoughts in a crowd like this, but it was worth a try. In the meantime, I wasn't going to sit around waiting for him to rescue me. I made an excuse and shuffled off into the melee, navigating my way between chattering cliques and underdressed servers. The occasional transparent imp ran underfoot, making me itch for my portable imp portal.

As I made my way toward the back of the room, I slipped out of the crowd and edged around a stone wall. Without warning, an arm grabbed me around my waist. I squealed as
I was yanked behind the wall into the shadows. Panicked and furious, I rammed a clenched fist back over my shoulder and struck a hard blow on my assailant's face.

“Oww!”

Released, I twirled around, ready to fight … only to find Lon holding his hand over his eye.

“Goddamn!”

“Oh, Lon—I'm so-o-o sorry. I didn't know it was you.”